Fresh Loaf

By Janisse Ray

Taped next to a light switch in my house is a photo of an Appalachian mountain that has been mined for coal by blowing off its peak. That photo reminds me to keep the light off as much as I can.

This week we have a chance to shut off lights together, to create a massive blackout that NASA will be able to document.

The event is called Earth Hour.

At 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 29, people around the world plan to join together to raise awareness about how human actions affect the planet. Not only does our use of electricity tear down old mountains, it causes global warming and other climate disruption.

Even as we search for alternatives to fossil fuels, we must reduce the kilowatts we consume and get efficient in our use of power.

The world is too bright. It’s ablaze. Terrible things are happening.

Sydney, Australia, organized Earth Hour 2007, when millions of Sydney-ites shut off their lights and consequently reduced power consumption by 10 percent.

This year, the event, organized by World Wildlife Fund, is going global, and including Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, and cities worldwide. In Atlanta, the list of participating attractions and businesses that will darken is long: the IBM Tower, the Varsity, the Georgia Aquarium. Even Turner Field plans to turn out its lights! Word is that Georgia Power will monitor consumption during the event.

To sign up to participate, go to www.earthhour.org.

Better yet, simply turn out all light in your home at 8 p.m. on March 29 and leave them off for an hour. Turn off all inessential appliances. Turn off computers.

Don’t just turn off appliances. Unplug them and leave them unplugged. Many appliances use a small amount of electricity even when switched off, for indicator lights or remote-control signals.

While the lights are out and the television is off, think about ways you can reduce electricity in your life. Replace incandescent bulbs with LED lighting. Turn down your hot water heater thermostat. Turn your washer setting to cold.

If you can see what you’re doing, use the time to plant a shade tree — I’ve been told that each hardwood tree absorbs an average of 25 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air annually.

Together we can make next Saturday night powerfully dark.

Janisse Ray is a writer, poet and environmental activist from Appling County, Georgia. Her latest book is entitled Pinhook: Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land

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DELTA BLUES: Airline offers voluntary buyouts to more than half its workforce to deal with rising fuel costs.

GOING GREEN(HOUSE): Power plant greenhouse gas emissions increased nationally by 3 percent last year, with Georgia as one of the worst offenders.

WESTIN P’TREE: Shifted “a few feet” when tornado hit it Friday; structural engineers to examine foundation.

WEATHER: High winds, thunderstorms to hit this afternoon, isolated tornadoes possible. Still won’t be enough rain for Lake Lanier, though.

SMITHSONIAN: Clough will have his hands full.

RUNAWAY BRIDE’S GROOM: Marries someone else.

DEANGELO HALL: Trade to Oakland will be finalized by Thursday; could send the Falcons three second-round draft picks.

TYLER PERRY: Will begin filming a new movie in downtown Covington next month. The release date is Sept. 12; Andisheh will be first in line.

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While leaders and scientists debate the pros and cons of setting long-term goals to lower carbon dioxide emissions, the greenhouse gas responsible for global warming continues to rise. According to the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit environmental group, carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants climbed 2.9 percent in 2007, the biggest single-year increase since 1998. The electric power industry’s carbon dioxide emissions have risen 5.9 percent since 2002 and 11.7 percent since 1997, the group says. Carbon dioxide emissions from power generation are predicted by the U.S. Department of Energy to increase 19 percent between now and 2030. The EIP used data from the Environmental Protection Agency to compile its findings.

In Georgia, the report says, CO2 emissions from power plants have risen 20 percent, or by 16.8 million tons, in the last five years, second to Texas. Last year, the Southern Co.-owned Plant Scherer outside Macon emitted 27.2 million tons of CO2 in 2007, up roughly 2 million tons since 2006. The facility is the country’s foulest coal-fired power plant.

From the report, here’s where Georgia ranks:

• The top 10 states that emitted the most CO2 in 2007 (measured in total tons) are: Texas, Ohio, Florida, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, and West Virginia.

• The top 10 states with the largest increases in CO2 emissions over the last five years (between 2002 and 2007) are: Texas, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and North Carolina.

• The top 10 states with the largest increases over the past ten years between 1997 and 2007) are Texas, Arizona, Georgia, California, Illinois, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Missouri.

So, what can we do?

The EIP recommends the nation’s oldest coal-fired power plants, some of which were constructed 50 years ago, need to be retired and replaced with cleaner sources of energy, such as wind and solar power. Problem (from my point of view): A 2007 study by Georgia Power and Georgia Tech concluded that wind power could be generated along the state’s coast, but the capital costs associated with the technology are expensive.

Second, the EIP says that we have to start constructing more energy-efficient buildings. Since the study pegs utilities as the biggest contributor to carbon dioxide emissions, if we lessen our demand, we’ll lighten the load on energy the plants have to produce. Problem (again, from my point of view): Energy-efficient homes, while becoming more affordable, are still not affordable to everyone. Especially the segments of the population who face the most severe burden from high energy bills.

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The World Wildlife Fund has organized Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco as well as cities across the world to participate in its first global Earth Hour on March 29. For one hour at 8 p.m., major buildings and landmarks in participating cities will go dark to raise awareness about global warming and the impact our daily lives have on the environment. Essential lights, such as street lamps, will remain humming.

The list of participating businesses and landmarks in the city is long, and includes much of the city’s notable buildings such as the Bank of America Plaza and the Equitable Building. Other participants include AT&T headquarters, the Wachovia Building, 1180 Peachtree, Colony Square, Coca-Cola World Headquarters, Hyatt Regency, Turner Field, the Westin Peachtree Plaza and the Georgia Dome. (Full list of participants follows after the jump below.) Hell, even the Varsity is going dark.

Georgia Power will measure changes in the city’s energy consumption during the event and word is that NASA will be taking photos of the United States cities that have volunteered to switch off the lights. The WWF urges all residents and businesses to participate at home and turn off all non-essential lights to do their part and help raise awareness about global warming.

More than 2 million people and thousands of businesses participated in the organization’s first Earth Hour last year in Sydney, Australia. The WWF says power consumption dropped 10 percent during the event.

(more…)

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WATER FIGHT: Now the ball’s in the courts’ court. And the drought will still get worse. At least what water we have left is full of drugs to soothe us.

CHENEY: Coming to Atlanta tonight.

SHARK WEAK: Brunswick fishermen leaving sharks to die on the beach.

“ALTERNATIVE LIVESTOCK”: South Georgia legislator wants to bring deer farming to Georgia.

GLOBAL WARMING: More holier-than-thou environmentalists.

HAMPTON: Hurt again.

CLAYTON: SACS approves of postponing search for permanent superintendent.

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John Coleman, founder of the Atlanta-based Weather Channel, spoke at a gathering of loons in New York and said to “finally put some light on the fraud that is global warming,” critics of the glaringly obvious changes happening in our world should sue those who are bringing it to attention, such as Al Gore and those selling carbon credits. Legal action would force them to honestly describe the policies they propose.

The gathering of loons is the serious-sounding “International Conference on Climate Change,” a global-warming deniers paradise coordinated by the Heartland Institute.

From ThinkProgress:

Heartland’s extreme anti-environmentalism no doubt spawns from its supporters. Between 1998 and 2005, oil giant ExxonMobil gave nearly $800,000 to Heartland. The group’s Board of Directors also explains the group’s climate change denials:

– Thomas Walton is the Director of Economic Policy at General Motors.

–James L. Johnston is a former senior economist for oil company Amoco Corporation.

–Walter F. Buchholtz is a former member of Heartland’s board of directors and worked as ExxonMobil’s Senior Issues Advisor.

–James M. Taylor is editor of Heartland’s weekly Environment & Climate News and wrote an op-ed criticizing Gore’s “Assault On Reason” insisting that “global warming threats they should not be deliberately exaggerated as a means of building support for a desired political position.”

Any day now, some sanity would be nice.

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The environment’s one of the most important issues our country and world face, but to this point has gone relatively uncovered. This is the best rundown on the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates’ positions I’ve seen yet. It’s filled with links to other articles and resources. Brookings did a great job on this.

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A planned expansion for Plant Vogtle, a Southern Co.-owned nuclear plant in Waynesboro, Ga., has been stymied because of the possible impact it may have on the nearby Savannah River. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, a federal panel that oversees nuclear facilities in the country, agreed with concerns voiced by such environmental groups as the Savannah Riverkeeper, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and the Center for a Sustainable Coast, and will now forward the matter to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. For more details, click here.

The various concerned groups also sent a letter to David Ratcliffe, Southern Co.’s CEO, outlining the environmental risks and financial uncertainties the plant’s expansion could pose. Click here to view the letter the opponents of the expansion sent to Ratcliffe.

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By Janisse Ray

This past Sunday my friend Albert Culbreath heard a strange bugling in the Tifton sky. Actually, he felt it more than heard it, he said. Gazing upward, Albert witnessed a flock of sandhill cranes, flying northward, calling back and forth to each other their magnificent “ga-roo-roo-roos.”

Before Albert lost count, he had tallied more than 100 cranes.

Sandhill cranes stand four to five feet tall, with a gray body and a red forehead. They court with enthusiastic, leaping dances. They mate for life and nest in marshes and other open, treeless places.

Florida naturalist Archie Carr once wrote that only three great animal voices remain in the southeastern United States — “the jovial lunacy of the barred owl … the roar of the alligator … the ethereal bugling of the sandhill crane.”

The birds never fail to put me in mind of my great friend Milton Hopkins, a passionate observer of wildlife on his Osierfield, Ga., farm until his death last year. Milton always dropped me notes to say the cranes were passing in their flyway. Sometimes they descended to feed or spend the night. Once, Milton was standing in a field when a flock of more than 300 cranes landed.

After Milton died, right in the middle of his funeral a long “V” of sandhill cranes passed overhead, sounding their ancient music, their rattling trumpets. Maybe Milton heard the cranes, Albert wrote me, and decided to fly off with them.

When I hear sandhill cranes in late winter, I know spring is on its way. I start looking for the first purple martin scouts to come flying in from South America, and the first dogtooth violets to bloom in the woods. Soon frogs will be breeding, and we’ll see our first swallow-tail kites.

Milton always reported the cranes migrating between March 1 and 19. February is early for them.

People say the cranes are moving earlier in the spring and later in the fall, and that global warming may be responsible. In fact, studies show spring has rushed forward an average of 10 days worldwide in the last 30 years. This led the Arbor Day Foundation to redraw its hardiness zone maps in 2006 based on new weather data. All across the country gardeners are getting longer growing seasons.

This year, then, I’ll start looking early for trillium to bloom and cypress to leaf out, and for cranes to come calling.

Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, keeps a pair of binoculars handy.

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The Athens Banner-Herald’s Blake Aued writes of a Classic City event on Thursday where scientists, academics and writers gathered to discuss global warming’s effect on Georgia. Their take: Even if we act now, we’ll still see drastic changes to our state, including an encroaching coastline, permanent drought, and perhaps the most frightening vision of all … we’ll be more like Houston.

This quote by James Porter, an ecologist at the University of Georgia, really stood. He was speaking about how scientists feel a sense of urgency the more they learn about global warming.

“I’m a heck of a lot less worried about terrorism than I am about carbon dioxide,” he said.

For CL’s take on what Georgia might look like globally warmed, click here.

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Coming in over the transom: A new “coal-fueled” power plant has been proposed for Washington County. Here are the filthy details.

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Power juggernaut Southern Co. and other utilities, along with oil companies and manufacturers, were doing their best to rail against a bill voted on last week by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The so-called Lieberman-Warner bill, which called for a 70 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050 compared with 2005 levels, was approved by a slim margin Dec. 5. The bill would also allow major polluters to swap pollution permits in a “cap-and-trade” system.

But Wall Street either didn’t notice what happened in the nation’s capital, or knew the bill didn’t have a chance in hell of passing when Congress eventually votes on it. The stocks of some of the biggest coal-burning companies and coal-mining operations rose Dec. 6, the day after the vote. Southern Co. was one of those lucky companies.

This coming via e-mail from Frank O’Donnell, executive director of D.C.-based Clean Air Watch:

For the record, here’s what happened for the week for the top three coal-burning power company sources of carbon emissions:
Southern Company – up $1.28 a share for the week, to close at $38.90
American Electric Power – up $1.50 to close at $49.17
Duke Energy – up $.77 to close at $20.56

And the three top coal mining firms:
Peabody Energy – up $3.25 for the week, to close at $58.89
Rio Tinto – up $.52 to close at $468
Arch Coal – up $2.30 to close at $40.16

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Online environmental news site Grist partnered with Outside and produced a succinct rundown of where the 2008 presidential candidates stand on global warming, energy and the environment. Grist also hosted a global-warming debate with the Democratic candidates on Saturday. Well, with three of ‘em — John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Dennis Kucinich. They’re the only ones who accepted the invitation. I’m looking for a link to the debate but am coming up short — if anyone has it, please post it in the comments.

Here’s a LiveBLOG (Part I, Part II) from DailyKos detailing what went down.

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Emory grad, former West Georgia prof and all-around party animal Newt Gingrich, when not busy playing coy about a run for the White House, likes to write books. Usually they’re about the Civil War or have self-help titles — Winning the Future, Restoring the Dream — but now he’s got a new tome out about saving the environment.

The book, A Contract with the Earth, espouses an anti-regulation, pro-technology approach to moving toward a cleaner environment.

Bravo, Newt, thanks for caring! But Joe Romm at ClimateProgress — he no likey. (Emphasis Romm’s.)

You may be surprised that Newt calls himself an environmentalist, given that he co-authored and then worked to enact the anti-environmental Contract with America. Oh, but Newt now claims:

I don’t think that the environment was a central focus of the Contract With America. I don’t think that it was bad for the environment. I don’t know of a single thing in the Contract that was bad for the environment.

I think Salon had to pause in the interview at that point to allow Newt to douse the flames that began engulfing his trousers. In fact, the CWA was a clever, stealthy attack on the environment as detailed by NRDC in a lengthy analysis (summarized here), by the Sierra Club, and by the National Wildlife Federation, which wrote at the time: “Taken as a whole, the House plan constitutes the broadest and deepest attack ever mounted against laws that protect public health, the environment, natural resources and wildlife.”

The only thing more gut-busting than Gingrich claiming that the CWA and related legislation wasn’t bad for the environment is his newfound embrace of technology as the answer to climate/energy problems.

Recall that in the 1990s, the Gingrich Congress tried to shut down the Department of Energy, slash all clean energy research (including biofuels), stop the joint government-industry effort to develop a superefficient car, and zero out all programs aimed specifically at reducing greenhouse emissions and accelerating technology deployment (for some history, see my 1996 Atlantic Monthly article and this 1997 article).

Well put. He goes on to stab a bunch of holes in Gingrich’s “incentives” idea — rewarding companies that produce cleaner technologies with huge tax breaks — and brands him as the politician who has done the most to undermine America’s leadership in clean technology since Reagan. Worth reading.

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While perusing the job ads in The Economist — I think I’d make a fine general director for Doctors Without Borders, thank you very much — I stumbled upon the latest appearance of our fair state’s woes in a major publication. In its usual fashion, the anonymous author(s) ends the piece with a view into the future, and offers a subject I haven’t seen broached in news reports about the drought.

The weather forecasters aren’t offering much solace, either, predicting a warmer and drier winter than normal for the south-east. As for the longer term, the fear is that global warming will make droughts like these more common.

Complex issue. But one worth examining.

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“The fashion industry is so upset because they can’t sell their cashmere sweaters.”

— Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., on global warming’s hidden victims, as quoted in Sunday’s New York Times.

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On Aug. 21, a panel of scientific experts — heavily stacked with global warming skeptics — testified before the state House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee. One of the panelists at the “Global Warming: Fact or Fiction?” hearing was the outspoken director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, John Christy.

“I plow through the data from scratch. I don’t see the catastrophes happening.”
— From Christy’s testimony at last week’s hearing

“I hope all your viewers understand one very simple fact, that the carbon dioxide we have put in the atmosphere has been put there to our great benefit. There are more people that live longer and are able to survive because of the energy technologies we have out there.”
— Christy, during an April 2007 appearance on “CNN Newsroom”

“If we just significantly minimize our vulnerabilities to the [temperature] extremes which occurred during the last 250 years, we’ll be O.K. for the next 100. You’ve got 100 years to move inland.”
— Christy, quoted in a February 2005 New York Times article

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A new coal-fired power plant hasn’t been built in the Peach State in decades; for the past few years, natural gas has been the energy source of choice. And now, with millions of dollars in federal incentives available, it appears nuclear energy is on the ascendancy. Georgia Power this year submitted early paperwork to expand its Plant Vogtle nuke facility.

But don’t count out the black stuff yet. Even as it’s crunching the numbers for Vogtle, our hometown energy monopoly is planning to put in a bid for a new coal plant. If coal turns out to be significantly less costly for Georgia consumers than nuclear, then coal it will be!

Georgia Power spokeswoman Carol Boatright says the company hasn’t settled on the type of plant it will propose. The options are to use new “clean coal” technology that reduces sulfur and carbon discharges — or to build a traditional, old-fashioned “pulverized coal” plant with some pollution controls.

The proposal will be delivered to the Georgia Public Service Commission, the entity responsible for regulating utilities, by Nov. 1, Boatright says.

Sierra Club lobbyist Neill Herring says he’s not surprised by the news that Georgia Power is considering another coal plant, given the company’s long history of burning the stuff. Its Plant Scherer near Macon is one of the biggest coal plants in the United States and has often been cited as the country’s single largest source for carbon dioxide emissions — the gas blamed for global warming.

If coal is selected over nuclear, then Georgia Power should be made to take advantage of the latest coal-gasification technology that screens out pollutants, says Sara Barczak, safe energy director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

In fact, the utility would be required to adhere to current clean-air standards in any plant it builds, says PSC Chairman Bobby Baker, who adds that it’s a sensible business move for Georgia Power to cover its bases by submitting competing proposals to meet the state’s future energy needs.

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In February, I asked what the deal was with the AJC and global warming. In an attempt to explain our balmy January weather, the lede of a story had flatly stated that “global warming, it’s not.” It’s not? Then, a few days later, the paper ran a story quoting a UGA professor about how global warming is still a “natural variation.” That story conveniently didn’t mention that the UGA prof is at odds with hundreds of international scientists.

In today’s AJC, Jay Bookman writes a very sobering column on what scientists predict could happen in Georgia, and it’s not pretty:

In fact, scientists who have studied the potential impact of climate change warn that this region’s ecosystem is more vulnerable than most to disruption.

According to Ron Neilson, a renowned bioclimatologist with the U.S. Forest Service, “the southeastern United States appears to be among the most sensitive regions in the world to increasing temperatures.” As the climate changes, he warns, our forests will disappear “through drought, insect infestation and massive fire,” to be replaced by open savannas.

In fact, we may be seeing just such a change occurring in South Georgia, where wildfires have raged for weeks. There’s no concrete proof those fires are related to climate change, but they are certainly consistent with what Neilson and others have predicted for this region, with fire clearing vast swaths of land and permanently altering the landscape.

Wow. Is it too late to move?

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On Saturday, April 14, Emory will host what might be a pretty interesting conference (as conferences go) on the topic of rising gas prices, global warming and the Iraq war.

Even if it’s not that interesting, there will be free breakfast and lunch.

Folks with impressive titles (former administrator of the Energy Information Administration, for instance) will discuss ways to stave off climate change and oil addiction. There also will be a slide-show presentation of An Inconvenient Truth and speakers from the Turner Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

The conference runs from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. at Emory’s Dobbs University Center (in the Winship Ballroom), 605 Asbury Circle. Check out the agenda and register, for free, at www.power-shift.org.

If you can’t make it, you alternatively could sell your car and buy either a hybrid or a biodiesel-friendly clunker.

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What is it with the AJC and global warming?

A few weeks ago, in an attempt to explain our balmy January weather, the lede of a story flatly stated that “global warming, it’s not.” It’s not?

Then on Saturday, Stacy Shelton wrote a story that quotes Gerrit Hoogenboom, a University of Georgia biological and agricultural engineer, as debunking global warming.

“We used to be able to grow citrus crops in South Georgia,” the AJC quotes Hoogenboom. “To me, I think [climate change is] still a natural variation.”

Maybe he thinks that. But it doesn’t reflect the reality of the scientific community at large. What the story doesn’t mention is that Hoogenboom is at odds with the hundreds of international scientists who worked on a new report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states it is “very likely” that climate change is caused by human activity.

(more…)

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