American Forum Op-Ed

Several times I have been invited to the weekly meetings of the Rotary Club of Birmingham. Like any busy business club meeting, with a couple of hundred people in attendance, there is a chorus of knives, forks and spoons, clanging ever so slightly as members try to finish their meal when a speaker begins to speak. This past May, when Bill Finch, former director of Conservation at the Nature Conservancy and longtime nature writer spoke to Rotary it took only 30 seconds before the room fell completely silent.

He was speaking about the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Only a few weeks after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, Finch described the slow moving invasion that was taking place on Alabama’s and the Gulf Coast’s shores and its devastating impact on our people and the environment. When he finished his presentation, the audience was shell-shocked. I remember walking amongst the members of the club after the meeting – heads were shaking, and shoulders slightly lowered. The members were somber.

According to Finch, we are in the midst of a “severe ecological rearrangement.”

Oil sheens had invaded Grand Bay, Alabama’s model estuary. On Petit Bois Island, an area west of Dauphin Island, 60 tons of oil pebbles and patties have already been picked up. The beaches looked like a Dalmatian.

In some places the effects may not be obvious for a year or two. Because of the toxicity and the oxygen deprivation caused by the spill, whole generations of fish, crabs, and shrimp will be impacted this year, next year and beyond. Life in our estuaries, the beaches and wildlife will change, and in some cases disappear altogether. Whole links in the food chain are broken.

One of the questions within Rotary’s four-way test, the guiding principles members ask of each other is: “Will it be beneficial to all concerned?” We need to start developing strategies and solutions that will benefit all Gulf residents as well as our delicate environment.

One such benefit and strategy has been developed by the Nature Conservancy and endorsed by the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, Mobile Baykeeper, Alabama Coastal Foundation and the Alabama Department of Conservation, which calls for the construction in three to five years of 100 miles of oyster reefs and 1,000 acres of marsh and sea grasses in Mobile Bay. The new reefs will help nurse our local fisheries back to health. Over the last century, we have lost 90 percent of our marshes, sea-grasses and oyster reefs in the bay. The oil spill threatens the remaining fragile habitat which we need to ensure a viable seafood industry. This strategy will repel the effects of the oil spill and start the natural and ecological recovery process.

This crisis will be unlike any other confronted by our state and region. It will take years; maybe even a generation, to address the harm that has been caused. Be mindful, Alaskans are still dealing with the adverse effects of the Exxon Valdez spill, more than 20 years later. This spill is many times greater than that disaster.

In response, Gov. Riley needs to create a permanent non-partisan task force in Alabama to develop beneficial strategies that will nurse the gulf back to health. This is not just a Mobile-South Alabama crisis. We all need to pitch in and help our fellow Alabamians.

Along with the task force, we must insist, that every candidate for Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General pledge to work immediately on the oil spill once elected in November, if not sooner. There is no time for a transition.

The motto for Rotary International is “Service Above Self.” Maybe that is why the Rotarians leaving that meeting were so somber. They understood the enormous generational task ahead.

Dave Rauschkolb took on the oil industry when it got personal—it threatened his beach and his business.

Rauschkolb is not an environmental lawyer or professional Sierra Club-type. He’s an avid surfer and owns a pizza bar on the northwest coast of Florida, within range of the BP spill. Rauschkolb has never called himself an activist. But he was so incensed that state and federal politicians let the oil industry take a gamble on the safety of drilling in the Gulf Coast that he recently organized a protest called “Hands Across the Sand." What started just weeks ago as an idea on a website mushroomed into more than 900 events in all 50 states and more than 30 other countries—thousands of people who linked hands on beaches to take a stand for protecting coastlines and waterways.

Many people have a profound connection to their rivers, lakes, oceans, and reservoirs. “It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican, or an environmentalist or a businessperson,” Rauschkolb says. “Floridians are passionate about their coastal heritage, as much as Americans are passionate about their coastal heritage.”

Since water is a universal, basic human need, threats to our water become immediate, personal and frightening. That may be why Rauschkolb’s demonstrations appealed to so many, why the public gets so upset by threats to water, and why groups like the Waterkeepers can attract such ardent citizen advocates. Waterkeepers are known for using their own boats, canoes, and kayaks to patrol rivers. Robert Kennedy Jr. helped found the Waterkeepers, which started as a group of fishermen who were enraged over Penn Central Railroad’s practice of dumping oil into the Croton River, north of New York City. Starting in the 1980s, Kennedy went to some extremes to clean up the river and end dumping. In an interview with YES! Magazine, he described crawling up a discharge pipe to gather evidence to use in suing polluters.

Water is part of our common public trust. That’s a simple, democratic idea that has no party lines. Legal principles that are part of our environmental laws and date back to before the

Magna Carta give every one of us the right to access clean beaches and drinkable water. Those principles also imply that we have a responsibility: We—the people, businesses, civic associations, and government—have to protect our water so that everyone is able to use it.

Americans’ passion for protecting water has long been a force behind the environmental movement. Anger over the 1969 oil rig blowout in Santa Barbara, with its images of oiled birds and polluted beaches, led to the creation of the first Earth Day in 1970. Today, the destructive effects of our fossil fuel economy on our coasts and rivers have never been clearer.

Rural Tennessee is still recovering from the 2008 coal-ash spill that smothered rivers and wetlands with toxic sludge. New processes of natural gas extraction, which involve injecting chemicals below the ground surface, are rendering water sources across the country undrinkable. A rash of new natural gas projects in upstate New York has led American Rivers to list the Upper Delaware River, a water source for 17 million people, as the nation’s most threatened stream. In the rural West, some water supplies have become so contaminated with the byproducts of gas drilling that homeowners can light their tap water on fire. Meanwhile, the State Department is considering a proposal to allow Canadian oil companies to build an oil pipeline from Canada to Texas that would cross the Ogallala Aquifer, exposing the water source for communities in eight states to the risk of oil leaks.

Most Americans can recite the reasons why we need to move away from the fossil fuel economy—climate change, dwindling supplies of easy-to-access oil, dependence on foreign sources of energy—but much of the damage caused by our fossil-fuel addiction is hidden from view. When it shows up on our beaches or in our water glasses, it’s enough to make you want to paddle out in a canoe and raise a ruckus, or get out of your car, or join a throng of people on the beach and demand a new energy policy and climate bill.

AMERICAN FORUM

By John Decock

According to current nuclear industry proposals, over two dozen new nuclear reactors would be constructed in the United States, the vast majority in the Southeast and Texas. President Obama recently offered $8.3 billion worth of taxpayer-backed loan guarantees to two of them in Georgia, which could be the first to be built in the U.S. in nearly four decades.

Wall Street isn’t interested in investing in these expensive and risky projects, so these guarantees promise that taxpayers will pay back the nuclear industry’s loans if the project fails.

In addition to the high cost and risks, new reactors create another problem, one that is rarely mentioned: they put enormous pressure on water resources. Nuclear reactors require huge amounts of cooling water to operate; without adequate water, they cannot produce electricity. (According to the industry’s Electric Power Research Institute, nuclear reactors can consume between 400 and 720 gallons per megawatt hour; while coal consumes about 300 gallons and natural gas, less than 250 gallons.)

So, the U.S. is pinning its energy future on a power source that is the most vulnerable to weather extremes and that stresses the water resources on which we rely for healthy people and strong economies. As we all have seen in recent years, weather patterns can be wildly erratic, producing floods as well as droughts.

Does anybody remember the drought that hit the Southeastern U.S. in 2007? During that summer and fall, one of the worst dry spells in over a century triggered water wars, forced power stations – including reactors – to reduce operations, and saw rivers and lakes reach their lowest levels in memory. Water had to be trucked into communities and rationing was widespread. In many areas, daily life was heavily disrupted.

Scientists say that warmer temperatures from climate change will mean a less dependable supply of water. This should be of special concern to residents of the southeastern United States, which is seeing its energy demand grow – and its water resources become increasingly stressed. In the Southeast, electric power production accounts for nearly two-thirds of all freshwater withdrawals, or nearly 40 billion gallons daily. (That’s as much as all public-water supply customers in the U.S. use each day.)

During a 2006 heat wave, reactors in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Minnesota were either forced to cut output or shut down entirely because there was not enough cooling water. During a 2003 heat wave in France, air temperatures at nuclear reactors came within two degrees of requiring an emergency shutdown. Employees were forced to use garden hoses to spray cold water on the exterior walls of the reactors to keep them from overheating.

Concerns about adequate cooling water have been raised in the context of Exelon Corporation’s plans to build two reactors in Victoria County, Texas. Those reactors would use water from the Guadalupe River, which during a 2009 drought dropped so low it could no longer supply drinking water to the community. On March 25, Exelon withdrew its application for a construction and operating license for the site, and has applied for an “early site permit” that must examine the water issue.

The water supply question isn’t an arcane one to be thrashed out quietly among engineers working for utility companies. Taxpayers have a multi-billion-dollar stake in this question. They are guaranteeing the loans to build these reactors. If they aren’t economical and reliable, then the utility could default, leaving US taxpayers to bail them out.

The Obama administration has proposed tripling loan guarantees for additional reactors. Some in Congress even support a “permanent financing platform” in the form of risky loan guarantees to underwrite all new reactors.

So, as investors in these projects, taxpayers have every right to ask: Will these multi-billion-dollar reactors be rendered useless each summer as rivers and lakes dry up and the region scrambles to meet basic water needs? Will this expensive and risky power source be able to help us curb our global warming pollution?

We need to make smart choices for our energy future – choices that are economical and protective of public health and natural resources. Nuclear power falls short in both categories.
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Decock is the President of Clean Water Action
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Copyright (C) 2010 by the American Forum. 6/10

Forty years ago, 20 million Americans took to the streets to celebrate the first Earth Day. Their agenda was wide-ranging: pollution, smog, endangered species. But one issue—population growth—was seen as the mother of all environmental problems. As Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, famously remarked: “Whatever your cause, it’s a lost cause without population control.”

Fast-forward to Earth Day 2010. Climate change and other looming environmental threats make the concerns of 1970 look downright tame. Meanwhile, world population has grown from 3.7 billion in 1970 to 6.8 billion today—an increase of 84 percent. Yet population growth, for the most part, has fallen off the environmental agenda.

Why? The reasons are complex, but here’s the short version. Concern about population growth launched a worldwide movement to promote family planning, and it worked: Fertility rates fell, population growth rates slowed and the “population bomb” was defused. At the same time, while family planning has had huge benefits for human health and well-being, some programs trampled women’s rights in pursuit of lower birth rates. Those abuses, and a right-wing backlash against family planning, have rendered population issues untouchable in many quarters.

And that’s too bad, because unsustainable population growth hasn’t gone away, and we are in a much better position to deal with it now than we were 40 years ago. We have a much more nuanced understanding of connections between population dynamics and environmental health. And the abusive programs of the past have been replaced with a commitment to reproductive health and rights. Forty years after the first Earth Day, it’s time to put population back on the environmental agenda—and craft a 21st century population policy.

That policy must be grounded in understanding of the demographic landscape, which has changed dramatically in the past half century. Today, the largest generation of young people ever is coming of age in developing countries, while the developed world ages and shrinks. And while the rate of population growth has slowed in most parts of the world, our numbers still increase by 75 million to 80 million every year, the equivalent of adding another United States to the world every four years or so. A certain amount of future growth is inevitable -- an echo of the great boom of the late 20th century. But choices made by young people today will determine whether human numbers climb to anywhere between 8 billion and 11 billion by mid-century. What does that mean for the global environment? In the past 40 years, we have learned a lot about the relationship between population dynamics and environmental quality. We now know that population growth has a significant effect on the natural environment, but that effect is neither linear nor simple, instead shaped by a wide range of mediating factors -- including technology, consumption patterns, economic policies and political choices. Nonetheless, evidence suggests that a world population of 8 billion would be better than 11 billion, for human beings and the natural systems that sustain us.

Of course, slowing population growth is not all we must do. Facing climate change will require an unprecedented mobilization of resources and ingenuity.

The good news is, we know how to do this. Since 1970, we have learned a lot about how to deal with population growth—and about how not to. The best way to slow growth isn't with top-down “population control,” but by making sure all people have the means and the power to make their own choices about childbearing. That means, first of all, ensuring universal access to family planning and reproductive health services -- which remains elusive for 215 million women around the world.

It also means tackling poverty and gender inequality, which are strongly associated with high fertility.

In other words, everything we need to do to slow population growth is something we should be doing anyway— ensuring access to family planning, fighting poverty, educating girls and empowering women. Each of these measures is important in its own right, as a matter of human rights and social justice. Together they will slow population growth and help protect the environment.

At this critical moment of environmental awareness, it is again time to take up the cause of population growth. That doesn’t mean we should go back to alarmist rhetoric and draconian solutions, any more than we should go back to dial-up phones or computer punch cards. Instead, let’s go forward to a 21st century population policy that's sustainable and just.

By Laurie Mazur

Forty years ago, 20 million Americans took to the streets to celebrate the first Earth Day. Their agenda was wide-ranging: pollution, smog, endangered species. But one issue—population growth—was seen as the mother of all environmental problems. As Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, famously remarked: “Whatever your cause, it’s a lost cause without population control.”

Fast-forward to Earth Day 2010. Climate change and other looming environmental threats make the concerns of 1970 look downright tame. Meanwhile, world population has grown from 3.7 billion in 1970 to 6.8 billion today—an increase of 84 percent. Yet population growth, for the most part, has fallen off the environmental agenda.

Why? The reasons are complex, but here’s the short version. Concern about population growth launched a worldwide movement to promote family planning, and it worked: Fertility rates fell, population growth rates slowed and the “population bomb” was defused. At the same time, while family planning has had huge benefits for human health and well-being, some programs trampled women’s rights in pursuit of lower birth rates. Those abuses, and a right-wing backlash against family planning, have rendered population issues untouchable in many quarters.

And that’s too bad, because unsustainable population growth hasn’t gone away, and we are in a much better position to deal with it now than we were 40 years ago. We have a much more nuanced understanding of connections between population dynamics and environmental health. And the abusive programs of the past have been replaced with a commitment to reproductive health and rights. Forty years after the first Earth Day, it’s time to put population back on the environmental agenda—and craft a 21st century population policy.

That policy must be grounded in understanding of the demographic landscape, which has changed dramatically in the past half century. Today, the largest generation of young people ever is coming of age in developing countries, while the developed world ages and shrinks. And while the rate of population growth has slowed in most parts of the world, our numbers still increase by 75 million to 80 million every year, the equivalent of adding another United States to the world every four years or so. A certain amount of future growth is inevitable -- an echo of the great boom of the late 20th century. But choices made by young people today will determine whether human numbers climb to anywhere between 8 billion and 11 billion by mid-century. What does that mean for the global environment? In the past 40 years, we have learned a lot about the relationship between population dynamics and environmental quality. We now know that population growth has a significant effect on the natural environment, but that effect is neither linear nor simple, instead shaped by a wide range of mediating factors -- including technology, consumption patterns, economic policies and political choices. Nonetheless, evidence suggests that a world population of 8 billion would be better than 11 billion, for human beings and the natural systems that sustain us.

Of course, slowing population growth is not all we must do. Facing climate change will require an unprecedented mobilization of resources and ingenuity.

The good news is, we know how to do this. Since 1970, we have learned a lot about how to deal with population growth—and about how not to. The best way to slow growth isn't with top-down “population control,” but by making sure all people have the means and the power to make their own choices about childbearing. That means, first of all, ensuring universal access to family planning and reproductive health services -- which remains elusive for 215 million women around the world.

It also means tackling poverty and gender inequality, which are strongly associated with high fertility.

In other words, everything we need to do to slow population growth is something we should be doing anyway— ensuring access to family planning, fighting poverty, educating girls and empowering women. Each of these measures is important in its own right, as a matter of human rights and social justice. Together they will slow population growth and help protect the environment.

At this critical moment of environmental awareness, it is again time to take up the cause of population growth. That doesn’t mean we should go back to alarmist rhetoric and draconian solutions, any more than we should go back to dial-up phones or computer punch cards. Instead, let’s go forward to a 21st century population policy that's sustainable and just.
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Mazur is Director of the Population Justice Project.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by American Forum. 4/10

NORTH CAROLINA EDITORIAL FORUM

By Mary Olson

When advisor Dave Freeman helped President Carter navigate the rough waters of the 1970s oil crisis his compass was to find energy that is produced but does not perform a useful function – and stop that waste. Like pumping gasoline on the ground much of our electric power capacity today is effectively wasted.

How is power dumped? An un-insulated roof or leaky old windows cause a furnace to work too hard; newer appliances and industrial motors use a fraction of the juice, paying for themselves many times over (once is savings, more is profit). The trick is that wasted energy when “saved” is “here” and available for another purpose…since it is already generated there is no additional pollution or toxic waste, and also no need to build a new power plant; it is pure “cream.”

North Carolina is awash in power we already have, that is not being used. Imagine an economy nearly twice the size on what we generate today – or alternately a fraction of the power we have now supporting what we do today – possible? Yes. Architects Mike Nicklaus in NC, and Steven Strong nationally, design buildings that not only use less power, they save a system as much energy as they use: net zero.

Unfortunately, our current market is not structured for energy corporations to take advantage of this “cream.” To make more money, they must make and sell more power…even better, build new power plants. NC utilities are rewarded for building new plants on a percentage basis (12.4% guaranteed return on capital investment) so the more they spend, the more “rewarding” this is. Thanks to a 2007 law, NC utilities now charge customers “upfront” for new power plants and still get that return on investment. This may explain why there is such a debate going on about “what kind of power plant we need,” rather than the real question: do we need one at all?

Sadly, President Obama is calling for three times as much taxpayer support for reactor construction than the Bush Administration offered (from $18.5 to $54 billion). The problem is, we don’t need new plants – we have enough wasted energy in our system now to transition to renewables while phasing out both coal and nuclear in the process.

Even without factoring in the real costs (construction, contamination at all fuel cycle sites, waste management or isolation for 100,000 human generations), nuclear is still one of the most expensive forms of power out there, on a par with retail photovoltaic panels – except the solar panel does not need police to protect it, threaten anyone with cancer, or take billions of gallons of water to cool it.

There are many reasons that on February 11, 1985 Forbes Magazine declared nuclear power the “largest managerial failure in history” including the $100 billion default in nuclear loans for the nuclear reactors we have today. A vibrant economy will not result from investment in a dead industry. President Obama and his team are repeating a titanic mistake by pouring billions of dollars into loan guarantees for the all but dead nuclear reactor industry. Thirty years without a new reactor order means that Obama is really trying to resuscitate a cold corpse.

Here in North Carolina we have a better idea: NC SAVE$ Energy would create an independent, non – utility administration for a statewide energy savings program. If you have read this far, read “energy recovery program!” The mandate begins with residential housing stock and would invest in energy upgrades and retrofits. NC SAVE$ Energy will stimulate the NC economy, create three to six times more jobs that investment in new nuclear, reduce air pollution, prevent radioactive waste and oh by the way, free up a significant portion of the power already being generated here and now in NC.

It is discouraging to hear that the Governor’s new Energy Policy Council is going to tour Progress Energy’s Shearon Harris nuclear reactor; this is not progress. It is time to listen to President Carter’s advisor, Dave Freeman again – who later as the head of TVA presided over the cancellation of 7 nuclear power plants because they would have cost too much. We have what we need; we simply need to use it wisely.
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Olson is the Southeast Regional Coordinator for Nuclear Information and Resource Service.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by North Carolina Editorial Forum. 4/10

ALABAMA FORUM

By Pat Byington

On the grounds of one of the world's largest cathedrals, St. John the Divine Episcopal Cathedral in New York City, is a simple piece of art: seven human-shaped arches, each representing a generation, lined up in a row.

Next to this graceful sculpture is a gray footstone topped by a plaque with this inscription: "In all our deliberations we must be mindful of the impact of our decisions on the seven generations to follow ours." -- from the Great Law of the Six Nations of the Iroquois

Most folks count a generation as 20 years, so the total would be 140 years, or two lifetimes. What a mission statement. When we confront difficult environmental issues, the Great Law of the Six Nations of the Iroquois offers us the best path. And if there were ever a state that should adopt such a law, it would be Alabama, because we have the most to lose.

In 2002, The Nature Conservancy released a report called "States of the Union: Ranking America's Biodiversity" in which Alabama was ranked fifth nationally for the most species. Digging deeper into the numbers, Alabama came up first nationally in the number of different kinds of freshwater fish, mussels, snails and turtles. Also, to the dismay of many Louisiana citizens, Alabama ranked first in the number of different kinds of crayfish.

According to the longtime environmental writer and Nature Conservancy staffer Bill Finch, Alabama has played a critical role in maintaining the biological richness of the entire Eastern forest, from New England to the Gulf of Mexico.

For example, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, often described as the most diverse national park, has just more than 100 different tree species and 12different kinds of oak trees over a 500,000-acre area. In southwest Alabama's Red Hills near Monroeville, Finch said he has identified more than130 varieties of trees and 20 kinds of oak trees in an area one-tenth the size of the Smokies.

Finch said it's not hard to find similar diversity in dozens of native forests throughout the state, from the Paint Rock Valley, in northeast Alabama near Huntsville, to the forests along the Cahaba River and the coastal forests along the Mobile-Tensaw Delta.

These Alabama forests have likely played a critical role in nourishing North American forest diversity through hundreds of thousands of years, and they'll likely be called on to share their wealth in the future. Alabama is home to one of nature's largest libraries. We must think in terms of protecting our special places and the environment for "generations."

This year marks my 20th year, a generation, working for groups such as the Alabama Environmental Council, the Wilderness Society, the Alabama Environmental Management Commission and the Forever Wild Board of Trustees. There was one special moment in my memory that the Great Law of the Six Nations of the Iroquois – Seven Generations -- was followed. That was when a very diverse group of people convened in 1992 to write the Forever Wild constitutional amendment.

For nearly 20 years since its passage, Forever Wild has protected more than 200,000 acres across the state and is one of the most successful conservation laws in Alabama's history. More important, even today, that diverse group of people on opposite sides of the political spectrum continues to work together to make Forever Wild succeed for generations to come. On reflection, we were all working together for future generations. Forever.

Forty years ago this week, Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson may have summed it up best when he said on the original Earth Day, two generations ago:

"Our goal is not just an environment of clean air and water and scenic beauty. The objective is an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all other human beings and all other living creatures."
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Byington is senior associate with The Wilderness Society and publisher of Bama Environmental News.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by Alabama Forum. 4/10

KENTUCKY FORUM

By Doug Doerrfeld

Kentucky officials are betting our future on an unproven technology known as carbon capture and storage (CCS) or carbon sequestration. It’s a misguided gamble that takes us down an expensive path when there are clearly better options.

No doubt there is a problem. Kentucky coal burning power plants produce about 100 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. And though there are modest efforts to reduce this amount, Kentucky’s electricity use is expected to grow which adds to the problem unless we turn down a different path.

Politicians and utilities are betting on geological sequestration – using porous rock, and a lot of it, deep under our land as the place to dispose of this waste. But after years of experiments, we still have no proof that carbon capture and sequestration will work on the scale necessary, and at a cost that’s affordable. It’s the wrong solution.

The sheer volume of carbon dioxide that we produce in Kentucky requires a scale that goes way beyond any feasible options. To dispose of this much waste would result in the creation of the largest toxic waste distribution and disposal system ever conceived. It will take, literally, the whole state to provide storage capacity that even then might not be enough, and then only for a limited number of years. But state officials have crafted a program that, either through outright seizure or condemnation, gives the coal industry access to almost all deep rock strata under the state.

The speculation until recently was that it would take a 359-square-mile area to store carbon waste from a 500-mega-watt (MW) power plant. But that formula was shattered with research from a recent peer-reviewed article in the Journal of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Professors Michael and Christine Ehlig-Economides concluded that geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide is “a profoundly non-feasible option for the management of carbon dioxide emissions.”

“Published reports on the potential for sequestration fail to address the necessity of storing carbon dioxide in a closed system," wrote Professors Ehlig-Economides. "Our calculations suggest that the volume of liquid or supercritical carbon dioxide to be disposed cannot exceed more than about 1 percent of pore space. This will require from five to 20 times more underground reservoir volume than has been envisioned by many, including federal government laboratories.” By their projections, a small 500 MW plant's underground carbon dioxide reservoir would need to be the size of the state of Vermont to work.

Kentucky has about 16,510 MW of coal-burning capacity and officials want to add more. That’s just one of the problems with the sequestering side of the plan.

Carbon capture technologies built into a new power plant would increase the fuel needs of such plants by 25-40 percent. In other words, it would take a third more coal to produce the same amount of electricity. The overall energy costs of new coal-burning plants equipped with CCS will jump 30-90 percent. Applying CCS to existing plants or plants far from a storage location will be even more expensive, elevating costs by 50-300 percent.

A 2008 federal Government Accountability Office report concluded that the sheer energy cost of CCS outweighs any potential benefit. Rodney Andrews, executive director at University of Kentucky’s Center for Applied Energy Research, predicts CCS electricity cost increases of 60-200 percent.

The only way utilities will find CCS to be affordable is to get taxpayers, and eventually their customers, to foot the bill. The Kentucky General Assembly has been more than willing to go along with this scheme, introducing several proposals to provide subsidies for sequestration experiments – and exempting corporations from any permanent liability for their wastes.

We need to stop our obsession with coal and move toward energy efficient power such as solar, wind, biomass and the wide variety of available and developing non-fossil fuel energy options. This is where our future economy needs to be headed.

But in Kentucky, some officials don’t see beyond coal.

“For many of us who realize only too plainly the very real dangers and difficulties associated with sequestration, over-inflated claims for CCS have become the last refuge of the energy scoundrel. There is no need to research this subject any longer,” the Ehlig-Economides concluded. “Let's try something else."

I agree. It’s past time to get started.
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Doerrfeld is a member of the Executive Committee of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by the Kentucky Forum. 4/10

AMERICAN FORUM

By Kathleen Rogers

Climate change is a critical issue in the 21st century, and as we observe Women’s History Month we should bear in mind the effect of the environment on women. Women make up the majority of the earth’s population, and are most vulnerable to changes in climate and environment.

“The poor are not living in industrialized countries where the environment is distant -- where you have to go out to appreciate it. Our lives depend upon it," said Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.

Problems such as air pollution, contaminated water, lack of adequate sanitation, disease vectors and degraded ecosystems are all risk factors for women and their children. In 2005, 1.1 billion people lacked access to safe and affordable drinking water, nearly 20 percent of the earth’s population, while 40 percent of the earth’s population lacked clean sanitation. Approximately 1.8 million children die every year as a result of diarrhea caused by lack of clean water and proper sanitation. That is an average of 4,500 children per day.

Air pollution can aggravate symptoms of cardiovascular and lung disease, and can increase blood pressure in women 50 and older more so than in their male counterparts. Indoor pollution has been named a "silent killer" among women. Approximately 1.5 women die annually as they inhale poisonous gases while cooking or heating their homes. Post-menopausal women who were exposed to lead early in life often suffer bone loss. This exposure also releases lead into the blood stream, which can precipitate kidney failure. Nearly half of all people in developing countries suffer from health problems caused by water and sanitation deficits -- and most of them are women.

Women play a critical role in the quality of the environment and often depend on natural resources. In places such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia, women are responsible for 60 percent to 80 percent of crops produced. When climate change affects their crops, domestic burdens are increased, which includes additional work to fetch water or collect fuel and fodder. As these domestic burdens increase, some young girls walk as much as 20 miles a day and because of time and fatigue, are unable to attend school. Without proper education, the needs and opinions of young women are seldom heard.

The World Health Organization encourages simple filtration and disinfection of household water. Improved or energy-efficient appliances to reduce exposures to indoor air pollution and washing hands with soap about 20 seconds can reduce diarrhea related illnesses by 40 percent. Education also is crucial – innovative prevention and treatment protocols need to be developed and implemented for women at high risk for environmental-related illnesses. Women in regions such as Africa and central Asia who are informed about environmental risks present in their homes and communities are better equipped to take appropriate action to reduce or eliminate exposure.

The United Nations says an estimated $9 billion investment would achieve universal access to clean water and sanitation. Consider that Europe spends more than $11 billion a year on ice cream. Every dollar invested in water yields an economic return of eight dollars in saved time, increased productivity and reduced health-care costs. Our economy cannot -- and will not -- achieve maximum sustainability without proper care of women.

Nearly all U.N. millennium development goals have implications for women and the environment. Since 2005, the U.N. has supported women’s roles in protecting biodiversity, indigenous knowledge and overseeing environmental resources.

In order to achieve true environmental justice, we need to empower women. As we take steps to sustain our environment we must not further undermine women’s increasing vulnerability on the planet. Women can play a larger role in the future of a sustainable environment and can be real catalysts for change. From the green-belt movement in Africa to women working for environmental justice in Southeast Asia, around the world women are making a difference.
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Kathleen Rogers is President of Earth Day Network -www.earthday.org.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by the American Forum. 3/10