This was not an easy decision, and will be extremely difficult to implement, but needed ASAP.

Letter Update from the Climate Reality Project, December 19, 2023

Despite its many flaws and contradictions, COP 28 marks a major step forward for our movement. For the first time ever, a COP agreement explicitly acknowledges the main culprit responsible for the climate crisis: fossil fuels. While the agreement falls short of a complete phase out of fossil fuels, it urges countries to transition away from them, calling for a tripling of renewables and doubling of energy efficiency this decade.

Yes, there are caveats. The agreement lacks binding commitments, leaving countries to decide on their own pace of transition. It’s riddled with loopholes to benefit petrostates and fossil fuel lobbyists – who had more representation at the UN climate summit than every country except Brazil and the UAE – through “transitional fuels” like natural gas and unproven and expensive technologies like carbon capture and storage.

Plus, for the many island nations and climate-vulnerable countries whose very survival depends on the world holding rising temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the agreement doesn’t go nearly far enough. But our fight is far from over. If there’s anything to take away from COP 28, it’s the fact that the world is ready to leave fossil fuels behind.

The almost 130 countries supporting a phase out, the near open revolt by island nations, and the public outcry from thousands of climate advocates from around the world all point towards a future where fossil fuels are no longer king. For a recap of COP 28 and what comes next, check out our wrap-up videos at 24hoursofreality.org.

WATCH THE RECAP WITH AL GORE

The road ahead will be challenging, but we are not giving up yet. The science is clear: We need to phase out all fossil fuels to keep our goal of holding warming to 1.5 degrees within reach. Not just unabated fuels. Not just emissions. All fossil fuels.

Critically, we also have to do it fairly. The wealthy nations that got us here need to lead the transition away from coal, oil, and gas and provide the long-promised financing for developing countries to build clean energy economies of their own.

But the biggest takeaway is that now the world is talking about a future without fossil fuels. And that’s worth fighting for.

>>>Your friends at Climate Reality Project

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PS. Take action today by calling on leaders of the G20 group of major economies to end all subsidies for fossil fuel companies making billions driving climate devastation.

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PS. For the United States, it is now crystal clear that our country can no longer justify the Halliburton Loops, that is preferential environmental regulations for the fossil fuel industries. DGN

Trees deserve special attention from all segments of our society

From an Article by Cristen Jaynes, EcoWatch News, August 1, 2023

In order to fulfill the ambition of the United States federal government’s REPLANT Act, the U.S. Forest Service has funds available to plant more than a billion trees in the next nine years. The problem is, there aren’t enough trees. Not only that, but U.S. tree nurseries don’t have enough variety of species necessary to meet the goal.

Cities around the world are suffering from urban heat islands made unbearable by record heat waves. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, air temperatures underneath trees can be as much as 25 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than directly above blacktop.

A new study by scientists at the University of Vermont (UVM) has shown that the limited diversity of tree species available has frustrated how much the forest service can do to respond to the climate crisis by planting trees, a press release from UVM said.

“Trees are this amazing natural solution to a lot of our challenges, including climate change. We urgently need to plant many millions of them,” said professor and director of the UVM Forestry Program Tony D’Amato, who co-led the research, in the press release. “But what this paper points out is that we are woefully underserved by any kind of regional or national scale inventory of seedlings to get the job done.”

The study, “A lack of ecological diversity in forest nurseries limits the achievement of tree-planting objectives in response to global change,” was published in the journal BioScience.

In their research, the team of 13 scientists looked at 605 plant nurseries in 20 northern U.S. states. They found that just 14 of them were operated by the government, and only 56 of them grew and sold seedlings in adequate amounts for reforestation and conservation.

Even more disappointing for the researchers was the “overwhelming scarcity of seedlings” from varied species and “seed collection zones,” which refer to local climates and conditions that trees have adapted to, they wrote in the study, according to UVM.

The research team found that forest nurseries have a tendency to keep a limited inventory of a few tree species, such as those used in commercial timber production, rather than species necessary for ecological restoration, climate adaptation or conservation. They also discovered that, in many areas, no locally adapted trees were available.

“The world is thinking about a warming climate — can we plant towards that warming climate? We know we’re losing ecologically important species across North America and around the world. So, the goal is: can we restore these trees or replace them with similar species? It’s a powerful idea,” said Peter Clark, UVM applied forest ecologist and lead author of the study, in the press release. “But — despite the excitement and novelty of that idea in many policy and philanthropy circles — when push comes to shove, it’s very challenging on the ground to actually find either the species or the seed sources needed… [F]inding the diversity we need to restore ecologically complex forests — not just a few industrial workhorse species commonly used for commercial timber operations, like white pine — is an even bigger bottleneck.”

The researchers said a much larger amount of seedlings and diversity within those is needed at regional nurseries in order to achieve a successful tree planting program directed at addressing climate change.

The financial risk and novelty involved in providing increased variety “likely generates uncertainty among forest nurseries, hampering investment,” the authors of the study wrote. Another issue is that the number of nurseries, especially in the northeastern U.S., has gone down in recent years.

Seedlings from a different region might also have trouble succeeding in a new area, the researchers found. For instance, 80 percent of the seedings in the study found in northern states were produced in north central states. “Such concentration of production will hinder tree planting efforts,” the researchers wrote, “because species and seed sources likely originate from similar geographic or bioclimatic zones.”

This is exacerbated by seedlings being sensitive to stress. A mismatch between when they are available, such as earlier in nurseries farther south, and when they need to be planted, like in northern soils after the last frost, could be an issue.

The researchers suggested improvements in financing and policy, as well as expanded research and better training to help alleviate these issues.

Government agencies like the U.S. Forest Service, as well as state governments, rely on seed zones from the 1970s based on climate conditions that are very different from those predicted for the future. Also, forest research and policy has been centered around timber production species rather than those that are more adapted to changing climates and a more diverse array of tree species. Clear policies regarding tree genetics and tree species’ movement are also lacking in many government policies.

The scientists recommended an expansion of state and federal investment in seed collection and public tree nurseries. “This strategy may stimulate production from private nurseries once a stable demand is apparent,” the authors of the study wrote.

This year, the federal government invested $35 million in expanding the capacity of the federal nursery, but the authors of the study said that, due to “the existing (and growing) reforestation backlog, declines in nursery infrastructure, and complex needs for diverse seeds and seedlings, it is likely that substantially more public investment in the form of grants, loans, and cost-share programs will be needed to reinvigorate, diversify, and expand forest nurseries.”

“People want trillions of trees,” Clark said in the press release, “but often, on the ground, it’s one old farmer walking around to collect acorns. There’s a massive disconnect.”

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NOTE: By planting one tree every second, it will take 31.7 years to plant a billion trees. Plant a tree every minute and the time necessary becomes 1902 years. It is very clear that new trees cannot be relied upon to resolve the climate crisis, but can help. DGN

Hydrogen has become ripe with hype — the answer is blowing in the wind.

From an Article by Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com, November 27, 2022

>>> In the United States, the Department of Energy is doling out billions of dollars in federal funding to create up to 10 “hydrogen hubs”.

>>> International Renewable Energy Agency: diverting too much green energy toward hydrogen production could be counterproductive.

Contrary to much decarbonization hype, jumping on the green hydrogen bandwagon is not a silver bullet solution to climate change. In fact, it’s a double-edged sword. A versatile energy carrier, hydrogen is projected to play a major part in decarbonization of global manufacturing and industrial supply chains, but its production, transport, and conversion require major inversions of energy and investment that could slow down the rest of the green energy transition if mismanaged.

Hydrogen is touted as a key element in any decarbonization trajectory because unlike solar and wind energy, hydrogen can be used as a combustible fuel source. This means that it can replace fossil fuels in industrial furnaces, but instead of emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses when burned, it leaves behind nothing but water vapor. The implications of a wide-scale replacement in high-heat industrial applications are enormous. “Replacing the fossil fuels now used in furnaces that reach 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,732 degrees Fahrenheit) with hydrogen gas could make a big dent in the 20% of global carbon dioxide emissions that now come from industry,” Bloomberg Green wrote last year in report titled “Why Hydrogen Is the Hottest Thing in Green Energy.”

The problem is that hydrogen is only as green as the energy source used to make it. The process of creating hydrogen is energy intensive, and the vast majority of hydrogen being produced today is made using fossil fuels. This is referred to as gray hydrogen, and it is already used widely in global industry. Green hydrogen is made with all renewable energy sources. ‘Blue hydrogen’ is also sometimes used as a third designation referring to hydrogen produced using natural gas, which yields lower emissions than other fossil fuels and is seen by some as a stepping stone to full decarbonization.

While it seems like it would be a no-brainer that the increased production and consumption of green hydrogen would be an obvious win for the energy transition, however, the reality is not so simple. A new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) warns against the “indiscriminate use of hydrogen,” cautioning policy-makers to weigh their priorities carefully and to consider that extensive use of hydrogen “may not be in line with the requirements of a decarbonised world.” The report goes on to single out green hydrogen, arguing that it “requires dedicated renewable energy that could be used for other end uses.” As such, diverting too much green energy toward hydrogen production could actually slow down the decarbonization movement as a whole.

According to current projections, hydrogen use is going to skyrocket between now and 2050 in order to meet the energy and fuel demands of a net-zero emissions future. In G-7 countries alone, hydrogen use could balloon to four to seven times its current size by mid-century.

In the United Kingdom, the government is experimenting with the use of hydrogen to heat homes in the midst of a major energy crisis. By next year the nation will have chosen its very first “hydrogen village” to take part in a two-year pilot program. Not everyone is enthusiastic about the experiment, but it is likely just the beginning of such ventures as European nations move to shore up domestic energy independence while simultaneously trying to reach their stated emissions targets.

In the United States, the Department of Energy is doling out billions of dollars in federal funding to create up to 10 “hydrogen hubs” across the nation. These would function as “a network of clean hydrogen producers, potential clean hydrogen consumers and connective infrastructure located in close proximity.” And the $7 billion dollars earmarked for the hubs is only one part of hydrogen investment at the federal level. The Inflation Reduction Act also provisioned a clean hydrogen production tax credit and created other decarbonization incentives such as carbon capture tax credits that could prove to be a boon to the nascent but fast-growing green hydrogen sector.

On the whole this is good news for the energy transition and for global climate goals. But the growth of the green hydrogen industry will need to be balanced with other energy needs going forward for a smooth trajectory toward decarbonization. (Such a balance is not happening. Moreover, decarbonization needs to mean LESS production of greenhouse gases rather than relying on CO2 removal from the atmosphere, an extremely expensive activity at a scale that would make a difference. DGN)

Will the costs of “loss & damage” be shared by polluting nations?

From an Article by Bob Berwyn and Zoha Tunio, Inside Climate News, Nov. 19, 2022

SHARM El-SHEIKH, Egypt—A new COP27 agreement that establishes a funding mechanism to compensate developing countries for losses and damages caused by global warming may be the biggest breakthrough in global climate policy since the 2015 Paris Agreement. If it sticks?

The deal was reached as two weeks of nail-biting negotiations here went into overtime with little to show for all the talk. Many negotiators arrived at the conference halls Saturday morning with their suitcases packed for the trip home while facing the prospect of being called out for failing to make progress on one of the key promises of the United Nation’s effort to address increasingly severe climate change impacts like floods, droughts and deadly heat waves.

Along with finding ways to stop the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to slow global warming, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was established in 1992 to address the fundamental inequalities of climate change impacts. Developed countries in the Global North are responsible for about 79 percent of cumulative greenhouse gas emissions, but less developed countries in the Global South have taken the biggest hit from climate change and don’t have the financial and technical resources to recover from them.

That disparity is at the heart of global climate justice and the 1992 United Nations climate framework committed all the parties to take “into account their common but differentiated responsibilities,” with developed countries committing to assist developing countries “that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in meeting costs of adaptation to those adverse effects … by providing new and additional financial resources.”

The 2015 Paris Agreement added more detail by recognizing “the importance of averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including extreme weather events and slow onset events” like sea level rise.

“The issue of climate justice has been at the heart of the climate negotiations from its inception over three decades ago,” said Lavanya Rajamani, an international law expert who advised African nations at COP27. “Yet it is only now that its crucial importance in addressing climate change is being realized. The U.N. climate regime needs to place as much emphasis on adaptation, loss and damage and support as it has on target-setting for mitigation, in fairness to vulnerable nations, and in light of the increasing incidence of devastating impacts as mitigation efforts fall short.”

On Saturday at COP27, 30 years after those first promises were made, developed countries finally agreed to “establish new funding arrangements for assisting developing countries in responding to loss and damage, including a focus on addressing loss and damage by providing and assisting in mobilizing new and additional resources.”

The 11th hour deal was sealed Saturday afternoon when the United States reversed its earlier opposition and agreed to the creation of a specific loss and damage fund, surprising climate activists who just hours earlier had been excoriating the U.S. for its decades of obstruction.

This response to the long-standing demand by developing countries was overdue, said Harjeet Singh, who leads global political strategy for Climate Action Network International, an umbrella organization representing 190 civil society groups in 130 countries.

Intensifying global warming impacts require a systemic response, not just piecemeal post-disaster relief efforts, he said. “Humanitarian aid is welcome, but was never sufficient to help people recover from these impacts,” he said, “We wanted the U.N. climate change system to come in and actually create a mechanism that can help people at scale.”

Under the framework U.N. climate treaty, “Countries with the greatest historical responsibility for emissions, and the greatest capacity to act, have committed to bear the costs of climate change,” said Brian O’Callaghan, lead researcher with Oxford University’s economic recovery project. “Rich countries should act with speed or otherwise increase their future liability.”

The complex negotiations on loss and damage featured shifting alliances among various groups of countries that, at different times in the process, put competing proposals on the table. Ahead of COP27, United States climate envoy John Kerry was careful not to commit to a specific loss and damage mechanism, promising only that the U.S. was open to talking about the issue in the coming years.

Singh said that before COP27 started, the United States appeared to be opposed to the creation of a specific loss and damage fund, preferring to talk about potentially restructuring existing climate finance mechanisms to address those climate impacts that go beyond countries’ capacities to adapt.

The collective push from developing countries and resistance from a large part of the developed world led some attendees to fear a repeat of COP15 in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009, where a similar rift between the wealthy nations most responsible for climate change and poorer ones that are enduring its worst impacts led to an impasse.

At the end of the two-week talks in Copenhagen, world leaders dropped many of their goals for the negotiations and significantly lowered their targets. The parties agreed to recognize the scientific evidence for keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, but made no tangible commitments to reduce emissions in order to achieve that goal.

But this year, civil society groups applied relentless pressure during the talks, and Singh credited activists with keeping negotiators and the public focused on the topic of loss and damage. At the same time, developing countries maintained a unified front in the talks, “which actually made a huge difference in getting this over the line,” he said. Ultimately, it was the United States taking the step and backing the loss and damage funding mechanism that made the difference, he added.

The fact that the agreement came during a climate summit on a continent enduring some of the world’s most severe climate impacts gave it particular relevance. During the two-week conference, 14 flood alerts were issued for Africa, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

“After 30 years a loss and damage fund is coming home and it’s coming home on African soil,” said Mohamed Adow, director of energy and climate change for Power Shift Africa on Saturday afternoon during a press conference by Climate Action Network International.

As written, the loss and damage agreement includes views from all countries, but discussions about “some of the thorny issues around who will pay and where it (the funding mechanism) is going to be located have been moved to next year,” Singh said. “In fact, that’s exactly what we as civil society … were also demanding, because the most important thing to be done here was to establish the fund. You cannot do everything in two weeks.”

Yet to be determined is how the fund will be administered, who will pay into it, and which countries will receive money. He said there is still a long road ahead before it actually starts helping people hurt by climate impacts, “but the important thing is we now can send a message of hope to people who are suffering right now.”

Q.E.D.

The time has come for everyone to adopt new lifestyles to minimize GHG.

An Overview from Oxfam Policy & Practice, United Kingdom, November 7, 2022

The world’s richest people emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon and, unlike ordinary people, 50% to 70% of their emissions result from their investments. New analysis of the investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 3 million tonnes a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.

The study also finds billionaire investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement are double the average for the Standard & Poor 500 group of companies. Billionaires hold extensive stakes in many of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations, which gives them the power to influence the way these companies act. Governments must hold them to account, legislating to compel corporates and investors to reduce carbon emissions, enforcing more stringent reporting requirements and imposing new taxation on wealth and investments in polluting industries.

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NOTICE ~ Twenty (20) of the richest billionaires are emitting more than 8000 times more greenhouse gases (GHG) than the billion poorest people.

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INFORMATION FOR COMPARISONS WITH LARGE NUMBERS:

1,000,000,000. One BILLION seconds is equal to 31.5 years.

In Egypt from Nov. 7th to Nov. 18th.

From The Climate Reality Project of Al Gore, et al., October 31, 2022

What an October it was! Earlier this month, we hosted 24 Hours of Reality: Spotlight on Solutions and Hope, a global day celebrating action and solutions that we can use in our fight against the climate crisis. Below you can check out some powerful stories from the day, and learn how you can get involved to build the future we all want.

Now, we’re looking ahead to COP 27, the formal annual meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). At COP 27, attendees will push for urgent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, building resilience, adaption to climate impacts, and financing climate action in developing nations. And it can’t come at a more critical time – a new report from UNFCCC says we’re failing to meet our climate pledges.

Climate Reality staff and some of our Climate Reality Leaders will be on the ground this year to bring you behind the scenes information from the conference. Follow along at #C2COP27 on social media from November 6-18!

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SEE ALSO: Cornell students to work at UN’s COP27 conference in Egypt, Blaine Friedlander, Cornell Chronicle, October 31, 2022

At the United Nations’ upcoming Conference of the Parties – better known as COP27, the annual convention to ensure countries meet global climate targets set by the Paris Agreement – 11 Cornell students will help delegations from specialized agencies and small countries gain a stronger voice.

The undergraduate and graduate students, all taking Cornell’s Global Climate Change Science and Policy course in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), will travel to the United Nations Climate Change Conference at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Nov. 6-18.

See the full article for more details.

Natural gas is primarily methane, i.e. CH4

From the Republican & Herald, Pottsville, PA, October 18, 2022

Schuylkill County, Penna — Cleaner air, progress against dangerous climate-warming and well-maintained highways all are in the public interest, which means that there is no guarantee that any of them will materialize in Pennsylvania — where polarization and parochial politics are more important.

The state government faces a December 16 federal deadline to adopt regulations controlling emissions from gas wells. Although the rules apply primarily to a class of smog-forming gases known as volatile organic compounds, the regulation also would result in reducing emissions of methane — one of the most potent gases responsible for trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Methane is what drilling companies sell as natural gas. Any captured methane would be sold, generating revenue for the companies.

Gas escapes from two types of wells in Pennsylvania — “conventional” vertical wells characteristic of the state’s older drilling industry, and new “unconventional” deep, horizontally drilled wells that mark drilling across the Marcellus Shale fields.

Regulations to better reduce those emissions are required by federal law. Likewise, the federal sanction for not doing so is mandatory rather than discretionary. If the state misses the deadline, the federal government will withhold from Pennsylvania about $450 million in highway funds for this fiscal year. If the delay carries into the next fiscal year, that year’s federal highway funding will be at risk.

This should be an easy one, but this is Pennsylvania. The Department of Environmental Protection broke the regulation into two parts — one covering conventional wells and the other applying to modern wells — after majority Republicans on a House environmental committee objected to the combined rule.

In June, the Environmental Quality Board approved the rule applying to modern wells. And Wednesday, by a 15-3 vote, it approved the regulation for unconventional wells.

But two of the “no” votes came from chairmen of House and Senate committees. They don’t have the power to void the regulation, but they can order a six-month review. That would cause the state to miss the December 16 deadline, putting $450 million in highway funds at risk.

Operators of older wells don’t want to assume the cost of long-overdue environmental regulations. But that narrow interest should not exceed that of Pennsylvanians in healthy air and roads. The obstructionists should get out of the way.

Flares involve incomplete combustion of VOCs & pollution

Urgent Attention is Needed to Preserve & Protect Public Lands

From an Article by Carole King, Opinion Editorial, New York Times, August 25, 2022

Ms. King is a singer, songwriter, author and environmental advocate.

My career as a songwriter began in Manhattan, not far from where I was born. When I moved to Los Angeles in 1968, I became part of the singer-songwriter community that coalesced around Laurel Canyon. I thought California would be wild in the sense of nature. It turned out to be wild in the sense of drugs and parties. I wanted to live close to the kind of wild nature that must exist somewhere on a large scale. Somewhere turned out to be Idaho.

In 1977 I moved to a mobile home on Robie Creek, a 40-minute drive from Boise. For the next three years, I lived in the backcountry northeast of McCall in a cabin with no running water or electricity. After that I lived adjacent to the Salmon River for 38 years, with a national forest as my nearest neighbor.

The future of America’s national forests is being shaped now. The Biden administration is developing a system to inventory old-growth and mature forests on federal land that the president wants to be completed by next April. But given the immediate threats facing many of these forests and their importance to slowing climate change, bold action is required immediately to preserve not just old-growth and mature trees but entire national forest ecosystems comprising thousands of interdependent species.

President Biden should issue an executive order immediately directing his secretaries of the interior and agriculture to take all steps available to them to stop commercial logging on public land. We can’t wait a year.

One of the best technologies to store carbon is an unlogged forest with minimal human intrusion. Forests sequester vast amounts of carbon in the trunks, leaves and roots of trees of all ages and sizes and the soil beneath them. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and water from the air and ground and through the process of photosynthesis release oxygen into the air. It costs nothing to leave them as they are. Allowing commercial logging to continue in our national forests would also be a catastrophe for the biodiversity they contain.

The order I propose would bring about a significant reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide. And it will help the United States meet the requirements of the Paris agreement, which Mr. Biden rejoined on the first day of his presidency. Even with the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, he will fall short of his promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 50 to 52 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Cutting more forests isn’t going to help hit that mark.

Last fall, over 200 climate scientists from around the country sent Mr. Biden a letter underscoring the consequences if timber harvesting continues in the national forests. They wrote that “greenhouse gas emissions from logging in U.S. forests are now comparable to the annual” carbon dioxide “emissions from U.S. coal burning.” Protecting federal forestlands from logging, on the other hand, would remove 84 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, they wrote.

My experience in Idaho led me to become involved as a volunteer in the ongoing effort to protect a bioregion of 23 million acres of nationally owned public land in Idaho, Montana, Washington, Oregon and Wyoming by means of the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act.

That legislation would designate corridors for the safe passage of wildlife between existing wilderness and roadless areas on federal forestland. It was proposed by scientists in the late 1980s who understood that protecting and connecting large-scale forest ecosystems is necessary for species to thrive. Despite the legislation receiving some bipartisan support in past years, it has not been enacted in the nearly 30 years since it was introduced.

Forest preservation is a climate solution. That’s why we need action to safeguard the forests on the public lands we all share. Federal law requires that most public lands be managed for multiple uses, such as recreation, gas and oil development, mining and logging. But this longstanding policy is running headlong into efforts to slow the warming of our planet.

Forests on federally owned land are being destroyed at breakneck speed by heavy equipment that can saw through a tree, strip its branches and set that tree on a pile of logs in the time it took me to type this sentence.

The effects of the climate crisis are undeniable. People are suffering, and the scale of the problem sometimes makes us feel helpless. But the public can do something right now by asking Mr. Biden — in numbers too big to ignore — to use all of his powers to stop the logging of the nation’s mature and old-growth forests.

In 1970, my collaborator Toni Stern wrote the lyrics to my most popular song, “It’s Too Late.” That title should not refer to the climate. That’s why, at age 80, I’m using my voice to call on Mr. Biden to stop commercial logging in our national forests. Please add your voice to mine.

>>> A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 26, 2022, Section A, Page 18 of the New York edition with the headline: Leave Forests Alone, Before It’s Too Late.

The “Keystone Pipeline” won’t make gas any cheaper

From an Essay by Ted Williams, Writers on the Range, July 17, 2022

The Keystone Pipeline is fully operational, daily delivering 590,000 barrels of tar-sands oil from Canada to U.S. refineries.

Most of the criticism comes from people who recycle truthiness. Former vice president Mike Pence: “Gas prices have risen across the country because of this administration’s war on energy — shutting down the Keystone Pipeline.” Republican Rep. Jim Jordan: “Biden shut off the Keystone Pipeline.”

Here’s what really happened: No one shut down, canceled, or shut off the Keystone Pipeline. It is fully operational, daily delivering 590,000 barrels of tar-sands oil in Canada to U.S. refineries.

What some pipeline advocates think is the “Keystone Pipeline” is a 1,700-mile “shortcut” called Keystone XL, or KXL. It would have sliced through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma to the Texas Gulf Coast, delivering 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day. Many residents of those states fought fiercely against the pipeline cutting through their land.

Now, “Build the Keystone Pipeline” has become a social-media mantra, as if the United States could so decree. It is the Canadian firm, TC Energy, formerly TransCanada, that officially terminated the project once President Biden withdrew its permits.

Even if construction on the pipeline began tomorrow, KXL could not be up and running in less than five years. The KXL pipeline was a project developed by a foreign company that would have delivered foreign oil products to mostly foreign markets.

When President Trump re-permitted KXL in 2017, his own State Department reported that it would not lower gasoline prices. The price of oil is set by the global market and certainly not by U.S. presidents. What’s more, the project was just about dead for a number of reasons, including litigation from aggrieved property owners whose land TC Energy seized by eminent domain.

We should also remember that rendering gasoline from tar-sands oil, the planet’s dirtiest petroleum, is far more polluting and energy-intensive than conventional refining. Some carbon content is burned off in a process that belches greenhouse gases and generates toxic waste called petcoke, which is dumped around the United States in piles six stories high. Petcoke billows through neighborhoods and infiltrates schools and houses even when windows are shut.

Bitumen, basically asphalt, continues to be strip-mined from what used to be Canada’s boreal forests in Alberta. Too thick to be piped, it’s spiked with volatile liquid condensate from natural gas and thus converted to a toxic tar-sands cocktail called ”dilbit,” short for diluted bitumen.

Dilbit, sent through the existing Keystone pipeline, contains chloride salts, sulfur, abrasive minerals and acids, and must be pumped under high pressure. It’s murder on pipes.

In addition to greenhouse gases and petcoke, tar-sands waste products end up in lakes, rivers, fish, wildlife and people. Between 1995 and 2006, when tar-sands extraction was accelerating, Alberta’s First Nations suffered a sudden 30 percent increase in cancer rates.

KXL, if built, also threatened the world’s largest aquifer — the Ogallala. Anyone who thinks Nebraska lacks water should visit Green Valley Township, where I encountered Ogallala water so close to the surface it flowed along dirt roads and ditches. Pintails, mallards, and widgeon billowed out of them. But parts of the aquifer are now depleted, and a major dilbit spill could finish those parts off.

In 2011 a pipeline representative named Shawn Howard assured me that ramming a dilbit pipe through the Ogallala aquifer would be risk free. “Why,” he demanded, “would we invest $13 billion in a pipeline and put a product in it that was going to destroy it like these activists are trotting out? It makes absolutely no business sense.”

The existing Keystone pipeline has ruptured 22 times, including spills in 2017 and 2019 that fouled land and water with 404,000 gallons of dilbit. Business sense, as the oil industry consistently reminds us, is an attribute more often desired than possessed.

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NOTE ~~ Writers on the Range, Essays from the Mountain West

Writers on the Range provides editorial essays to Western newspapers in the intermountain west. Our topics include public lands, outdoor recreation, water and economic institutions serving the west. Our writers are westerners from 10 states with diverse opinions and insight. As a 501c3 corporation as defined and approved by the IRS, donations to Writers on the Range are tax deductible.

Pittsburgh and Allegheny County dominate western Pennsylvania

PITTSBURGH – County Executive Rich Fitzgerald issued the following statement regarding the release of the 2022 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER), an annual study which tracks employment trends across the energy sector and within key energy technologies:

“The USEER report showed that U.S. energy sector jobs grew 4% over 2020, outpacing overall U.S. employment, while also adding more than 300,000 jobs in the past year. Pennsylvania is one of the top states in terms of percent growth in transmission, distribution and storage energy jobs, and its energy workers represent 3.3% of all U.S. energy jobs, and 4.6% of total state employment. And employers in Pennsylvania are more optimistic than their peers across the country about energy sector jobs growth in the coming year.

“It’s easy to see why. Energy, and our transition to clean energy, has really been this region’s strong suit. We’ve been looking at and finding ways to make the transition from reliance on fossil fuels well before addressing climate change became a priority. We have the country’s first Green Building Alliance, and its largest 2030 District. We have focused on reducing our energy footprint for existing buildings, while also talking about standards for new construction. Pittsburgh International Airport has invested in a microgrid and generates its own power from natural gas and the largest solar farm in the county.

Pittsburgh Regional Transit has begun work to electrify its bus rapid transit (BRT) system. Our building trades have invested in training, green technologies and innovations to build a green workforce. We have invested in hydro by entering into a power purchase agreement for renewable electricity from a new low-impact, run-of-river hydroelectric facility on the Ohio River. The development of autonomous vehicles in our region will assist in net reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. Wabtec is located here and is exploring the electrification of rail.

“No matter the industry, this region is working towards net-zero emissions. The USEER reflects that investment and our commitment. President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides $62 billion for the Department of Energy to expand access to energy efficiency, deliver reliable and clean power, and build new technologies. We are thrilled to have had Secretary Granholm here today to release the report and to convene a roundtable of officials to talk about the opportunities for good-paying jobs that will drive clean energy across the country and in this region, while also revitalizing our manufacturing industry.”

“One of the things that we heard today was that between now and 2030, as industries across the globe look to decarbonize, there will be an approximately $23 trillion market in which clean energy jobs will thrive. We look forward to the opportunities and the future growth that these investments will mean to our region. We partner better than anyone – from private companies to public institutions to the building trades, universities and the philanthropic community – and will work collaboratively and cooperatively to meet the needs of our region and this country in clean energy.”

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Office of County Executive Rich Fitzgerald
101 Courthouse │ 436 Grant Street │ Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Phone: 412-350-6500 │ Fax: 412-350-6512 │www.alleghenycounty.us