He Said, She Said… It’s all politics in Copenhagen

Words of wisdom given to me growing up: "Never give up your dreams", "Be wary of letting others know your dreams because they'll just try and step on them" and "never go into politics". Three days into the United Nations Climate Change Conference here in Copenhagen, we have a grand spectacle at the Bella Center of the reasons to follow all three pieces of that advice.

The United States delegation, which showed up today and attended the plenary session promised to be a full partner to the world in the negotiations. Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA, was warmly greeted after the EPA's recent announcement that the Clean Air Act will now regulate carbon dioxide emissions. Although Jackson was warmly received, US representative Todd Stern and the Chinese delegation exchanged some sharp words over, who needs to be taking the bigger steps. Stern stated that "If you care about the science, and we do, there is no way to solve this problem by giving the major developing countries a pass." China's climate change ambassador, Yu Quingtai, then retorted that the United States should do "some deep soul searching" and revisit its position.

Stanislaus Di-Aping Lumumba, G-77 chairman, called out the Danes who prepared the treaty saying that poor nations are being excluded from the treaty process and that the current text "aims at preserving and advancing developed countries economic dominance".

Testing to see if that was true, the main plenary session today, in which the island nation of Tuvalu, threatened by rising sea levels, attempted to get delegates to move on a legally binding protocol that would make both industrialized and developing nations make higher admissions cuts. The proposal was blocked by China, India, and Saudi Arabia. In response to the debate, about 100 activists in the hall outside the official session started chanting "Tuvalu! Survival! Listen to the Islands!" UN police, having their say, were forced to shut down the plenary area. Dreams quickly dashed, Tuvalu's delegate Ian Fry reiterated that "this is a moral issue" and emissions reductions are not to be taken lightly. The deep rift between developed and developing nations growing at the conference, many representatives of developing nations and activist are taking the position that the developed nations are more worried about their economies than the survival of island nations.

Sarah Palin, who was published today in the Washington Post, gave the best piece of advice to the US delegation: "Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits -- not pursuing a political agenda." Precisely! That's after all what everyone was talking about today, right? Coming together and compromising for a sound climate treaty that benefits all? Which is precisely why President Obama… "should boycott Copenhagen". Thanks for the advice Mrs. Palin, but I think I'll follow my head and my heart.

E-Waste

Electronic waste (E-Waste) includes discarded computers and other consumer electronics including items like laptops, personal computers, televisions, and cell phones. Within the last two decades, e-waste has also become the fastest growing portion of our solid waste stream because massive piles of electronics present other problems for all life on earth because there are toxics in all computers and the piles keep growing. These electronics contain some toxics such as lead, mercury, cadmium, nickel, zinc, and brominated flame retardants. So how is the United States coping with the problem?

According to the India’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research the amount of electronics imported to their country is increasing by 10% per year. Other firms export to other places such as unregulated toxic waste dumps in China. These toxic wastes ultimately pollute the land water and air causing cancers and miscarriages. One then turns into the federal level and wonder if there any proper U.S. policy in place that addresses e-waste?

The answer is no, with the country’s inadequate “recycling policies, short useful life-span, and high costs of recycling these products” only leaves firms with no concern for their adverse impacts on the environment and public health and disregard of them and their byproducts throughout the product’s life as cheaply possible.

The only solution we have until the federal government figures a policy for e-waste, “the best bets for responsible recycling come from industry groups like the e-Stewards certification of electronics recyclers, which requires recyclers to abide by five rules: No incinerating or land filling waste; no exporting; no prison or forced labor; protecting private data on discarded machines; and managing environmental data at dismantling facilities and across the supply chain.”

Eliana Sejas

EcoArt in VT: Plastic bottles and awareness

EcoArt in VT: Plastic bottles and awareness

Americans have increased their plastic bottle consumption over the years. According to the Container Recycling Institute (CRI), beverage sales have increased over five-fold in the last 30 years. On average, American consumers purchase over 500 million beverage bottles and cans every day. This amount of purchased bottles means that Americans spend more money on bottled water than on iPods or movie tickets, totaling about $15 billion a year. More specifically, Americans use 60 million PET plastic bottles everyday, which is about 2.5 million plastic bottles an hour. However, a growing concern is the disposal of those millions of plastic bottles. Two out of every three bottles sold end up in landfills, are incinerated or littered. Therefore, only one out of three plastic bottles is actually recycled. Once a plastic bottle reaches a landfill, it takes 450 years to decompose. That means that if Queen Elizabeth I threw away a plastic bottle, it would still be here today. The CRI claims that the United States’ container recycling rates have declined from 53.5% in 1992 to 33.5% in 2004. Many Americans are unaware of the impacts that the plastic bottles they throw away have on the environment.

Carnegie Mellon’s Ecoart project emphasized an environmental issue through the use trash as public art. The Carnegie Mellon students constructed a wall out of campus waste to help show the students how much trash their community was creating. After seeing Carnegie Mellon’s Ecoart project, an Earth Sustainability class group was inspired to build a similar installation to emphasize plastic bottle consumption. For the project, they wanted to raise campus awareness about consumption of plastic bottles through a public art display.

The results: a five-panel display built by plastic bottles. They used 1,328 soda and water bottles to build a color spectrum wall. They collected 537 trashed bottles (not recycled), which made up 40% of our structure. By doing some calculations, they found that for a whole academic year, here at Virginia Tech, the campus population would throw away approximately 17,184 bottles in front of just one building, Dietrich. In addition, if we lived on the Virginia Tech campus all year round and throw around the same number of bottles per week, we would throw away a total of about 28,000 bottles in front of Dietrich alone.

Ecologica Art (EcoArt) is a growing contemporary movement of green art today that is created by those who are concerned about local and global environmental situations, and who take art making to a functional format. It seems as though we need more projects like these to provide a better sense of what problems we as consumers are creating.

-Eliana Sejas

Fighting Congestion

Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) reported that traffic congestion is costing Americans $63.1 billion dollars a year. If you add in today's raising fuel prices that's another 1.7 billion per year. The wasted fuel from result of this congestion is 2.3 billion and the time wasted from these delays totals to 3.7 billion hours in 2003.

In order to solve this growing concern I hope that major urban areas in the US implement congestion pricing or variable toll pricing. Congestion Pricing is the most powerful tool to reduce driving, promote environmentally sound transportation, and finance improvements to mass transit. This program was recently debated in New York City and came close to being implementing in spring of 2008. It was rejected by the State Legislature even though there was huge support from New Yorkers and had the City Council approval.

This program works by an electronically-collected toll system that charges drivers more to use the most congested roads at the most congested times. These prices may be cheaper at off-peak times. This program brings in returns as well from benefiting the travelers, helping pay for innovative transit choices, and faster travel.

Singapore was the world's first major city to employ this which started out only in their central business district in 1975. It was so successful that the decided to expand it citywide with toll rates that change over the course of a day. The funds generated have gone towards expanding and improving public transits and keeping traffic at an optimal flow. Environmental Defense report that there was a 45 percent traffic reduction, 10mph increase in average driving speed, 25 percent fewer accidents, 176,000 fewer pounds of carbon dioxide emitted, and a 20 percent increase in public transit use.

All is not lost as this program hasn't been abandoned in the US. San Francisco has received a federal grant to study the possibility of this system in their downtown. Their program will be similar to programs in London and Stockholm. A key concept with this program is not to allow traffic to overflow into neighboring roads. I believe that if this program is successful in San Francisco then the US will have taken a giant leap towards future sustainability since it almost forces people to consider other alternative means of transportation.

By: Shawn Page

Train Travel

Train travel is the lowest impact form of travel besides walking, jogging, or bicycling. In response to the declining use of America's rail networks, the U.S. government created Amtrak in 1971. With traffic congestion becoming worse and gas prices raising more people are looking to mass transit. In 2007 there was a 15 percent increase in mass transit use.

In the spring of 09 Obama has allocated 8 billion of his stimulus package to developing more high-speed rail lines. Obama's reasoning was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on foreign oil. Currently there is only one high speed rail line in the U.S., which is Amtrak's Acela Express. American transportation analysts suggest that U.S. should fallow this trend of high speed railroads that have been success in Asia and Europe. These high-speed rails can be as fast as flying, but without long waits and security hassles.

The first federal funds to be put into the rail system will be for upgrading and increasing speeds on existing lines. The majority will go towards construction of new high peed train travel lines in ten areas across the country.

Studies by Center for Clean Air Policy and Center for Neighborhood Technology have found results that this new system could save six billion pounds of CO2 yearly. This could result in 29 million fewer car trips and 500,000 fewer plane flights each year as well. This will be the equivalent of removing a million cars from the road a year.

I am all for this new high-speed rail line. My family may actually use Amtrak this year when we go on vacation this winter break. Maybe in the future we will be able to use this new railway and reach our destinations faster than ever. This is relevant to class because it helps reduce sprawl by increasing urban populations' densities which in turn reduce energy consumption by reducing travel distances, fuel consumption, and traffic congestion. These new rail lines will help us move to more sustainable growth and reducing our carbon footprint.

By Shawn Page

Invasive Species in the Chesapeake Bay

Similarly to my previous posts, I am going to talk about an issue with the Chesapeake Bay. Since I am from Maryland living on the Severn River- a direct connection to the Chesapeake Bay, I find this issue very important and pertinent. The issue is invasive species in the Chesapeake Bay.
As stated on the Chesapeake Bay Program’s website, invasive species are defined as “animals and plants that are not native to their current habitat and have a negative effect on the ecosystem they invade. Invasive species negatively affect an ecosystem by encroaching on native species’ food and or habitat.” Forty two percent of endangered or threatened plants/animals are in great danger because of these invasive species. In the Chesapeake Bay region, there are over 200 invasive species that are a threat to the native plants and animals. There are six that pose the greatest threat to the bay’s ecosystem that I will discuss.
The first is the mute swan. They were introduced in the 1930s, and they are a threat today because they threaten the protection and restoration of the bay grasses, which are an important part of the bay’s ecosystem. The second is the nutria, a aquatic rodent native to South America. They are considered invasive because they feed on the roots of marsh grasses, and therefore create circles of mud called “eat outs.” With the roots eaten, the grasses cannot stabilize in the soil and the marshes erode. It has said that they have destroyed over 7,000 acres of marsh. The third is phragmites, a reed. It is a marsh plant that overwhelms the marshes and reduces wildlife habitat and species diversity in the marshes. The fourth is the purple loosestrife, a perennial wetland plant native to Eurasia. It threatens rare and endangered species like the dwarf spike rush, bog turtles, and American bitterns. Fifth, is the water chestnut. It threatens the underwater bay grasses by forming a canopy of leaves, blocking sunlight from the reaching the bottom of the bay where the grasses grow. Finally, is the zebra mussel. Since it is not a native species, its tendencies to filter the water significantly reduces the amount of plankton in the water, which many native filter feeders need.
The impacts of these species are both costly and degrades the ecosystem. They are costly because a lot of money is spent on terminating the invasive species so the native species can flourish and support a healthy ecosystem. I personally believe more needs to be done. For instance, I believe the public should know about the invasive species, so they can try to prevent their spread. Things you can do include cleaning all your supplies you bring out to the bay with you (includes fisherman and hunters) to ensure no invasive species can be spread with your equipment. Also, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s website includes ways you can help like replanting bay grasses, because of the loss to the invasive species. All and all, I believe action needs to be taken on this issue, and little by little the bay will get healthier.

-Alex Athans

(**Sorry this wasn't posted yesterday, I forgot my user name, but sent an attachment to Professor Pitt so it WAS on time originally... Sorry.)

Mountain Top Removal...is it all bad?

Being surrounded by Mountain Justice, the Sierra Club, VT Beyond Coal, and all my friends in the Environmental Coalition, I have always believed that Mountain Top Removal (MTR) practices were horrendous.

Turns out.... there are more sides to this issue than I thought.

This is a hugely controversial issue, so first the basics: Why MTR? It is cheaper, safer, and more efficient.

Most of us know this. What is interesting is what is not talked about which could have some potential: When the tops of mountains are blown off and flattened to travel across and strip then transport the coal, the resulting topography is much different. After reclamation to try to restore the vegetation and habitat, the land is flatter and development is then possible. In these very rural areas of WV, Kentucky, and SW VA land development could very positively affect the area. If commercial and residential progress were possible then people could have better access to grocery stores and new things that were not possible in such a mountainous area in the past. My geography teacher mentioned that in his hometown they built a Wal-Mart (mixed feelings here) which cut the trip to the store significantly (from about two hours to 20 minutes..think of the emissions saved!)

Also, unfortunately, coal is a huge part of the economy in some of the aforementioned areas. There have been huge protests from residents to not kick out the coal companies (“Coal turns on the lights.”) There is even a festival, museum, and Miss WV Coal Festival Pageant in WV celebrating coal and how the livelihood of the town depends on it. However, it is also been argued that with an increase in coal production, there has been a decrease in available jobs in these areas for many reasons, such as better machines and less human labor demand.

So while MTR practices are generally condemned, I am just arguing that it is a MUCH deeper issue that needs to be very intensely evaluated. Of course, alternatives (wind farms, hydroelectric, etc) should be considered and reclamation efforts need to be more intensive and thorough. But we need to be aware of the entire issue when protesting MTR, so we can more effectively argue for a more environmentally-conscious practice. As we should because overall MTR is irreversibly destructive to the beautiful mountains and the effects have been proven to be dirty and detrimental.