Running Gamak: Warren Senders' Blog

With over 16,000 sensors tied to automatic shut-offs, the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline (as in Xtra-Large) is not your father’s pipeline. However, it’s still a pipeline, and the long history of ruptures, leaks, spills and other “incidents” call attention to the problems that face all pipelines in America.

It’s not that these pipelines and rigs can’t be run safely, it’s that they aren’t. Maybe the managers and operators who originally built them once cared, but after they’ve retired or died, the new managers don’t have the same ownership.

Whether it’s coal or oil, the core mentality underlying fossil fuel is essentially simple-minded: make a hole in the ground and burn the stuff that comes out. When your goal is to enrich your investors, then it’s good business to transfer the costs and consequences of leaks, spills, collapses, and containment failures to ordinary people, who’ll take care of it with their tax dollars. Furthermore, given the short attention span of most citizens, TransCanada and other pipeline promoters have nothing to lose by downplaying the risks and inflating the benefits of projects like the Keystone XL — and nothing to gain by making huge investments in safety, infrastructure, and maintenance.

As a path to riches, it’s not complicated — but as a way to encourage good citizenship, it’s a failure. As the climate crisis intensifies, the extractive industries can no longer ignore the grave moral dimensions of their environmental irresponsibility.

Warren Senders

WESTERLY — On a cold, blustery day in April, Janet Freedman and Nate Vinhatiero stand gazing at Misquamicut beach. There is so much sand in the air, it’s like being in a desert during a windstorm. Freedman, a coastal geologist with the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council, assesses the progress made since Superstorm Sandy hammered the area at the end of October 2012.

As Freedman and Vinhatiero observe and record the lingering storm damage — and the scores of workers repairing and restoring the beach, homes and businesses — they and other scientists worry that all this work could be for nothing.

There are several reasons that climate change is all too often excluded from discussions of post-storm reconstruction, despite its obvious relevance. First is that we humans are notoriously poor at thinking about the long term; in the aftermath of a devastating hurricane, people simply want their lives restored to normal as rapidly as possible. While our climate is indeed transforming with exceptional rapidity, most of its effects will be felt by our descendants, and most of us don’t give more than lip service to the lives of people a century or more from now.

Second is that Earth’s climate is a complex dynamic system to which simple rules of causality don’t apply. This means that the greenhouse effect will have different impacts in different parts of the planet, and that we can’t describe single events like Superstorm Sandy as definite consequences of increased atmospheric CO2.

Finally is the inconvenient fact that fossil fuel corporations wish to avoid a hugely expensive responsibility, so they’ve spent extraordinary amounts to influence our politicians and media away from any reasonable, fact-based discussion of climate change — because such discussion would inevitably turn to the central role of oil and coal in creating the climate crisis.

Warren Senders

Either governments are not serious about climate change or fossil-fuel firms are overvalued

If governments were determined to implement their climate policies, a lot of that carbon would have to be left in the ground, says Carbon Tracker, a non-profit organisation, and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, part of the London School of Economics. Their analysis starts by estimating the amount of carbon dioxide that could be put into the atmosphere if global temperatures are not to rise by more than 2°C, the most that climate scientists deem prudent. The maximum, says the report, is about 1,000 gigatons (GTCO2) between now and 2050. The report calls this the world’s “carbon budget”.

“Either governments are not serious about climate change or fossil-fuel firms are overvalued” reads the subhead on your May 4th article, “Unburnable Fuel.” But the two propositions are hardly mutually exclusive. It is obvious that the governments of the world’s developed nations are averse to the political risk-taking demanded by meaningful action on climate — and the staggering long-term costs of oil and coal demonstrate that the real price of these energy sources has been profoundly miscalculated.

Once disaster mitigation, public health impacts, and runaway global warming (not to mention the various expensive wars fought over oil) are considered, it is apparent that unburned fossil fuel reserves are only “assets” if a stockpile of unexploded nuclear bombs is likewise valued.

No, it’s far from an either/or proposition. Rather, it is precisely because fossil-fuel corporations are grotesquely overvalued that industrialized governments aren’t serious about addressing the climate crisis.

Warren Senders

General Motors officially acknowledged today that implementing policies to prevent climate change is “good business.”

“It’s not a regional strategy; it’s a global strategy for us,” Akerson said, adding that it’s “pretty hard not to be convinced that something is going on in the world” with the climate.

While it’s good news that General Motors acknowledges the existence of climate change and the importance of a robust strategy for combating the greenhouse effect, this turnaround in corporate thinking won’t make much of an impact unless we address some of the root causes of the problem. Our national addiction to fossil fuels goes hand in hand with our consumer society; as long as we continue to believe that we can buy our way out of trouble, we will never be able to make the broader societal transformations necessary to provide happiness and prosperity for our descendants.

There are deeper questions that need asking. Can profit-fixated corporate systems function sustainably over the long term? Is an economy focused on consumption good for our species or our planet? Yes, preventing climate change is “good for business,” and allowing it to continue is “bad for business.” But is business good for us?

Warren Senders

SAN ANGELO, Texas — Finally, there’s some good news on reducing climate change, which is great news as far as I’m concerned.

For a host of reasons, international policy makers have been unable to agree on how to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide or CO2, the main greenhouse gas created by human activity. The new study shows that by limiting emissions of four substances — methane, soot, refrigerants and gases that lead to the formation of ground-level ozone — progress could still be made, possibly even more quickly.

As the planetary greenhouse effect accelerates, making catastrophic climate change all but inevitable, any good news is welcome. Certainly, regulating and reducing our emissions of four other pollutants can help slow our headlong rush to disaster, although this cannot be a substitute for the real work of eliminating fossil fuels from our energy economy — ultimately the only approach to a meaningful and lasting solution to the climate crisis.

But it’s disingenuous to assert that there is a “host of reasons” for the world community’s failure to make this happen. Ultimately, there is only one reason: money. Big oil and coal corporations reap huge profits from processing and selling the fossilized solar energy of the Carboniferous Era, but they can’t make similar margins from sunlight when it’s fresh. The sums involved are staggeringly huge; buying a few politicians or a few governments is cost-effective for these corporate malefactors, if it can delay a global shift to renewables for even a few more years.

Warren Senders

Stating that India had launched itself to double the renewable energy capacity to 55000 MW by 2017, Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh on Wednseday expressed serious concern over the “painfully slow” progress of climate change talks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday lamented that the goal of stabilising global temperatures at acceptable levels was nowhere in sight.

“In India, we have set ourselves a national target of increasing the efficiency of energy use to bring about a 20 to 25 per cent reduction in the energy intensity of our GDP by 2020. The 12th Plan envisaged an expanded role for clean energy, including hydro, solar and wind power. The cost of solar energy for example has nearly halved over the last two years, though it remains higher than the cost of fossil fuel based electricity. If the cost imposed by carbon emissions is taken into account, then solar energy is more cost effective, but it is still more expensive,” added.

Doubling the role of renewables in India’s energy economy is a hugely important step which can serve both as an inspiration to developing nations and a prod of conscience to the industrialized West. For too long American politicians, deep in the thrall of fossil fuel corporations, have used China and India as excuses for their own failure to act on climate change, arguably the gravest threat humanity has faced in its long and troubled history.

However, Prime Minister Singh is in error when he states that even when carbon emissions are taken into account, solar energy is “still more expensive” than fossil fuels. When we consider the costs of spill and leak mitigation and cleanup, of the complex and problematic public health impacts of these energy sources, and of the grave economic impacts of global climate change, it becomes clear that sustainable energy sources are by far the better deal.

Warren Senders

WASHINGTON – The world’s two biggest polluters have signed what could be a groundbreaking agreement and “call to action” on the fight against escalating climate change.

The statement recognizes an “urgent need to intensify global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions… is more critical than ever.” It goes on to say, “Such action is crucial both to contain climate change and to set the kind of powerful example that can inspire the world.”

A US-China agreement on tackling global warming may indeed help Canada recognize that its positions on climate are inconsistent with the rest of the developed world. However, there’s another industrialized country with an appallingly backwards stance on this issue. “Conservastan” is a religion-dominated nation-state whose borders match those of the United States, and whose lawmakers have for decades adopted willful obduracy and inflexible scientific ignorance as policy.

Conservastani politicians have inordinate influence on US affairs, often exploiting their dual-citizenship status to block or hinder important treaties and legislation, often for bizarrely ignorant reasons. Texan Congressman Joe Barton recently cited Noah’s flood as an example of climate change unconnected to CO2 emissions, and asserted that this Bronze Age myth provided a “scientific” justification for ignoring the conclusions of the world’s climatologists.

While this intellectually backwards theocracy maintains its geopolitical influence, agreements between China and the USA may never be ratified.

Warren Senders

As a meteorologist for FirstEnergy Corp., Pete Manousos’ job is to keep the electric utility informed about any upcoming extreme weather that might cause outages, or hamper repair crews’ ability to restore power.

However, the increasing frequency of catastrophic weather events over the last three years — including some that affected Ohio in general and northwest Ohio in particular — are causing some in the insurance industry to adjust their climate-risk models and consider establishing a new baseline for weather events in the future.

Given their significant role in weakening health care reform, it seems strange to wish that major insurers had even more influence on Congress — but these companies might be the only corporate actors able to overcome fossil fuel corporations’ determination to block meaningful legislative action on climate change.

As the greenhouse effect accelerates, extreme weather will increase in severity and frequency everywhere in the world. On a local and regional level, that means more homes destroyed, more agriculture devastated, more infrastructure disrupted, leading to more damage claims — a connection that’s already part of the insurance industry’s calculations. Conservative lawmakers are fixated on the electoral risks of offending their tea-party constituents and the fiscal risks of crossing their Big Oil and Big Coal paymasters; by contrast, insurance companies have everything to lose and nothing to gain from policies built around ideology rather than data.

As do the rest of us.

Warren Senders

The 1,700-mile project, which would bring crude oil from Hardisty, Alberta to refineries in Port Arthur, Tex., enjoys broad support from the public. A Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday found 66 percent of Americans back the project, as opposed to 23 percent who oppose it.

“The question is, how can it be transported in the safest possible way? ‬” Yunits asked. “Congressman Lynch believes that if we can construct the pipeline safely, we should consider it. But, as he has said all along, if President Obama and Secretary Kerry ultimately decide that it cannot be constructed safely, he will support their decision.”

We’re often told they’re a cheap source of energy, but the true cost of fossil fuels has long been camouflaged by government support on one side, and a collective refusal to consider externalities on the other. While subsidies have kept prices artificially low and enriched a few individuals beyond any dreams of avarice, unacknowledged costs (health impacts, cleanup of spills and leaks, and global climate change, not to mention the wars) are piling up. Who’s going to pay the enormous bill? The taxpayers, of course.

We have long known that sustained exposure to petrochemicals can cause brain damage, but it’s becoming clear that it’s toxic in ways that go beyond the purely physiological. How else to explain the grotesque responses of oil company executives to the recent oil spills in Arkansas, Texas, Minnesota and Ontario? Oil apparently damages ethics and morality as effectively as it decimates wildlife and ravages ecosystems.

Warren Senders

But in recent years, keeping the world’s coffee drinkers supplied has become increasingly difficult: The spread of a deadly fungus that has been linked to global warming and rising global temperatures in the tropical countries where coffee grows has researchers scrambling to create new varieties of coffee plants that can keep pace with these new threats without reducing quality.

“The threats climate change pose isn’t a surprise to us,” says Haley Drage, representative for the company. “We’ve been working on this for more than 10 years and it’s something we continue to work with farmers on.”

The fact that climate change will significantly impact the world’s coffee growers should open a few more eyes to the dangers of a runaway greenhouse effect. But beyond the Arabica beans that go into our morning cup, practically every aspect of agriculture around the world is facing enormous disruption.

Starbucks’ work on developing new varieties which can withstand the coming weather extremes is a rare example of corporate readiness to look farther into the future than the next quarterly report — something which other corporations should emulate.

If fossil fuel companies behaved this way, they’d abandon an irresponsible fixation on short-term profits, and instead foster respect for the planetary environment. Instead of providing lavish funding for anti-science politicians, we’d see them investing heavily in the development of the sustainable energy sources we’ll be needing in the years to come.
And that would be a wonderful thing to wake up to.

Warren Senders