Lethal Heating: 01/05/17

05/01/2017

Our Cars Are Choking Us

Sydney Morning Herald - Editorial

Motorists sitting in the lines of traffic as they return from holidays or just try to get back to work this week will probably be irritated to learn about the federal government's draft plan to improve the quality of fuel and the efficiency of vehicles on Australia's roads. The reason: the cost of motoring may rise.
Certainly the motoring lobby would like them to get angry. Its representatives have reacted predictably to the draft proposals. As we have reported, the Australian Automobile Association, the peak body for state-based organisations such as the NRMA and RACV, is already making warning noises about costs. The motoring lobby's confidence it can block any change has some justification. On the environment, this government is an easy mark. When denialist critics savaged Canberra's plan to review (not even to alter) Australia's current inadequate response to climate change, the idea was quickly dumped.

The draft proposals cover three things: higher fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles, higher air-pollution standards, and better-quality fuel. Photo: Glenn Hunt

That review had been announced less than 48 hours earlier by Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg who, along with the Urban Infrastructure Minister, Paul Fletcher, announced the present draft proposals. Perhaps the latter is there to give the former some backbone this time. Let us hope he succeeds, because this is a worthwhile project.
The proposals, for which the government is seeking reaction from industry and the public, cover three things: higher fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles, higher air-pollution standards, and better-quality fuel. Although they have been described as "new" standards, in fact none are new. They already apply in Europe, the United States and elsewhere – major sources of new vehicles on our roads now that the government is allowing the local motor industry to die.
Why, many will ask, should Australians accept cars, trucks and buses that are dirtier and operate to lower standards than those sold where they are made?
The same Australian Automobile Association has done both motorists and environmentalists a service by setting up real-world tests of fuel efficiency and emissions from motor vehicles. Preliminary results show cars emit noxious gases at up to four times the rate current regulations allow, and greenhouse gases 35 per cent higher, while using 35 per cent more fuel than is measured by government-mandated tests carried out in laboratories. The present testing regime, in other words, leaves a lot to be desired. It appears Volkswagen may not be the only car maker building cars deliberately to pass the test in the laboratory, but not on the road. However, even if current laboratory-based measures of vehicle performance are flawed, that is no argument against stricter standards. Clearly, if even existing standards are not being met, future standards will have to be all the stricter to bring emissions down, and to boost fuel efficiency.
Transport is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, which Australia is bound to reduce under its commitments to the Paris climate change agreement that it signed and ratified last year. The latest available figures from Australia's Department of the Environment show that in 2014 the services, construction and transport sector generated 11.5 per cent of Australia's 525 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent gases. If Australia can reduce this output by improving the efficiency of its vehicles and raising the standard of the fuel it uses, it obviously must do so.
Other critics of the proposals have also emerged – on the other side of the argument.
For health experts, the proposed changes do not go nearly far enough. Air pollution is a major cause of deaths from respiratory diseases, and about half of these are attributable to the effects of vehicle exhaust. A federal government study estimated that in 2015, 2266 deaths in Sydney and Melbourne could be attributed to air pollution. That combined total is projected to rise to 2500 by 2030 – even if the strictest fuel standards are introduced, and even higher if they are not.
We hear much about the road toll, which is shocking enough: 384 deaths in NSW. Compare that with the number – nearly twice as great – that the study suggests were poisoned or choked by fumes from motor vehicles. The price of our national obsession with petrol- and diesel-driven vehicles is written in those figures. It is far too high. The federal government is right to seek ways to stop our cars from choking us.

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Thinking Globally, Suing Locally: Chelsea Activists Join Fight Against Exxon Mobil

Boston Globe - Stephanie Ebbert

Plaintiffs in the suit against Exxon Mobil include Damali Vidot, at-large city councilor in Chelsea; John Valinch; and Roseann Bongiovanni and Maria Belen Power, both from the leadership ranks of GreenRoots, an environmental organization. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff

CHELSEA — Roseann Bongiovanni was on an early morning training run for the Boston Marathon a decade ago when a stench from the Mystic River made it difficult to breathe. A Chelsea native accustomed to the industrial waterfront's malodorous scents, she recognized this whiff as different: It was diesel.
The cause turned out to be 15,000 gallons of fuel spilling from an oil terminal across the river in Everett, where tankers deliver petroleum products. Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, had failed to replace a $2 metal coupling, contributing to the spill, which resulted in criminal charges of negligence and a $6 million settlement for polluting the Island End and Mystic rivers.
The lingering memory led her to sign on to a new lawsuit alleging Exxon Mobil is neglecting to protect her community against the effects of climate change.
The first-of-its-kind lawsuit is drawing new attention as Exxon Mobil's longtime chief executive, Rex Tillerson, faces scrutiny as President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of state.
The suit's allegations shift the climate change debate from the distant domains of polar bears and the fate of future generations to the here and now. The suit claims that along the Island End River, which separates Everett and Chelsea, rising sea levels will make it more likely that Exxon's oil terminal could disgorge a toxic stew of carcinogens into residents' basements and streets. "Exxon Mobil's failure to adapt the Everett Terminal to increased precipitation, rising sea levels, and storm surges of increasing frequency and magnitude puts the facility, the public health, and the environment at great risk because a significant storm surge, rise in sea level, and/or extreme rainfall event may flood the facility and release solid and hazardous wastes into the Island End River, Mystic River, and directly onto the city streets of Everett," the suit says.
Local activists — including Bongiovanni, executive director of GreenRoots Inc., an environmental justice group — have testified about the terminal's effect on their lives, in an attempt to shore up the suit.
"What people in the national press are talking about, we feel this every single day," said Bongiovanni. "It's not just about climate change and saving polar ice caps. This is about sea levels rising and people being forced out of their houses."
The suit was filed in US District Court in Boston in September by the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation, the environmental advocacy group responsible for forcing the cleanup of Boston Harbor.
Exxon Mobil has filed a motion to dismiss it, saying the organization does not have standing to sue and has no personal interest in the terminal.
A spokesman for the company declined to speak about the allegations, calling the suit "yet another attempt to use the courts to promote a political agenda."

Exxon Mobil's tanks, seen in this photo from a residential street in Everett, are a prominent part of the landscape for many residents of Chelsea and Everett. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff

Exxon Mobil is also the target of investigations by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York, who are seeking documents on the company's decades of research on climate change.
The inquiries follow last year's reports by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times that the petroleum company had studied the effects its products could have on climate as early as the 1970s but spent subsequent decades casting doubt on the certainty and legitimacy of such research.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a Jan. 11 confirmation hearing for Tillerson, at which allegations about an Exxon climate coverup could emerge.
Unlike the law enforcement probes, though, Conservation Law Foundation's suit focuses on existing environmental laws and permits, claiming Exxon Mobil is violating them daily. Any violations would be exacerbated by the rising sea levels and stronger storms associated with climate change, which Exxon has failed to make adaptations to guard against, the suit asserts.

'We're not asking them to prepare for a meteor strike. We're asking them to prepare for the conditions that their own scientists affirm are certain to come.'
Bradley Campbell, Conservation Law Foundation

"What it means, in simple terms, is that Exxon is using the Mystic River as an open sewer, rather than invest in the controls and treatment and preventive measures that this facility needs," said Bradley Campbell, the group's president.
"We're not asking them to prepare for a meteor strike," Campbell added. "We're asking them to prepare for the conditions that their own scientists affirm are certain to come, some of which are already here.

"Just as when they're operating an oil tanker, that vessel has to be prepared for sea conditions that may arise, this has to be ready for the weather conditions they know are coming."
A Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman did not directly address allegations that Exxon Mobil is violating its permits and not facing enforcement penalties. The EPA, she said, "focuses its resources on the most significant pollution problems that pose the greatest threats to public health and the environment."
In its court response so far, Exxon Mobil has said the Conservation Law Foundation's lawsuit is improperly aimed at trying to persuade the EPA to tighten regulations that do not currently require permit holders to consider "alleged climate change impacts."
In a memo supporting its motion to dismiss the case, filed in December, Exxon Mobil noted that in its EPA permit, "Nowhere does that permit mandate consideration of the speculative risks of climate change."
The Conservation Law Foundation has also seized on the company's plans to respond to an oil spill or other emergency. As it was gathering documents for the suit, the group was unable to obtain Exxon Mobil's emergency response plans, from either the company or the government, Campbell noted.
As a result, more than 160 activists descended on Exxon Mobil's Everett Terminal last month with a letter seeking the response plans. They were unsuccessful — the terminal manager wouldn't accept their letter and called the police — but they captured the awkward exchange on video.
"We wanted to send a message," said City Councilor Damali Vidot. "If a Category 1 hurricane does come, what does that mean for our community?"
Part of their message is that they're not getting the respect that another, wealthier municipality might demand from a multinational corporation.
Chelsea is a congested, low-income city of immigrants and people of color. Exxon Mobil's Everett Terminal, which runs up against an Everett neighborhood, is at the Island End River, which flows into the Mystic River. While other stretches of the Mystic are being revitalized by development — think Assembly Row in Somerville and the Wynn Resorts casino in Everett — this stretch of the waterfront is dotted with oil tanks and other industrial structures, and its few parks are disconnected. Canoes are few and far between.
"I believe that the industries in Chelsea and other neighboring communities profit off of the use of our water resources, including the Mystic and Island End rivers," Vidot said in her affidavit in support of the Conservation Law Foundation's suit, "while residents pay the price of living with and around polluted waters."

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Government Accused Of Policy Paralysis While Uncertainty Reigns Over Renewable Energy Targets

ABC Rural - Babs McHugh

The full moon sets behind a wind farm in the Mojave Desert in California, Januray 8, 2004. (Toby Melville: Reuters)

The bickering between state and federal governments on renewable energy targets is creating massive uncertainty, according to climate change and energy specialists.

David Blowers from the Grattan Institute says investors, utilities, industry and householders are in the dark about what to expect in 2017.
Mr Blowers said the only certainty was that electricity prices would rise for everyone.
"Electricity prices have already been factored into next year and they're going to be higher," he said.
"Tackling a new energy system makes that inevitable.
"Replacing a lot of generation stock and infrastructure with a whole lot of new stuff is expensive, so prices will rise.

"What we'll see, if there's no agreement around Australia's climate change policy, is that for the foreseeable future, price increases will be greater than they need to be."

Mr Blowers said it might be unpalatable, but there must be give and take on both sides if politicians are to reach consensus and enable investment.
"At the moment, on the federal level, we have two sides of politics, both arguing two separate things," he said.
"It's a battle between the Federal Government and the Opposition on what they want policy to be, and at the end of the day both parties are going to have to give a little.
"Then there's the situation where state governments have introduced their own renewable energy targets, so it's hard to see [consensus] happening and I guess you'll see more of the same going forward.
"But if we have certainty and clarity around climate policy, that will give those involved in the electricity sector the confidence to make the investment that we need to have a reliable and reasonably affordable electricity sector.

"At the moment all we have is stagnation."

CSIRO stresses urgent need to have carbon change policy consensus
The CSIRO and Energy Networks Australia have submitted research called the Electricity Network Transformational Roadmap to the Finkel Review on electricity, which is scheduled to be handed down by April this year.
Paul Graham, CSIRO's chief energy economist, said policy certainty, including a price on carbon, was needed urgently.
"The reason it is so urgent is because by 2030 we want to have meet our Paris climate target, [which] will involve shifting to using a lot of low emissions electricity, he said.
"But low emissions electricity costs more. Electricity bills will rise because of the deep decarbonisation trend.
"And we want to make sure we don't spend any more than we have to. We've got to have a clear, stable carbon policy."

Electricity only one third of emissions
Mr Blowers is concerned that there is too much focus on electricity as a means of reducing emissions and decarbonising.
"I think this is a major problem," he said.
"We're spending a long time focusing on electricity generator sector, which only accounts for 30 per cent of our emissions.
"It's the biggest, but we've still got two-thirds of your emissions to deal with.
"I'm yet to see someone come up with a method of making steel or cement without burning carbon or how to stop methane gas coming off cows, pigs and sheep."

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