January 16, 2012

Beyond Arguing About Fracking for Natural Gas: A Cleaner … and Cheaper… Sustainable Energy Future for New York State

Tompkins Weekly 1/16/2012
By Helen Slottje

The ongoing debate about fracking has people asking many questions among them: What can be done to move America toward cleaner and more sustainable energy solutions? Is there a plan out there that does not suffer from the flawed assumption that natural gas is clean? Are we really going to let industry define “clean” as anything the least bit cleaner than burning coal? Are opponents to fracking compromising jobs and energy security simply to protect their health? Isn’t it unfair for New Yorkers to dare to say no to fracking when so many others around the globe are suffering the ill effects of energy extraction pollution? Is it a foregone conclusion that we must all sacrifice our health and environment in the name of energy?

The Civil Society Institute (CSI) has long been focused on energy economics and such questions. CSI recently released a major new report by Synapse Energy Economics, Inc. that outlines a realistic and affordable path to a cleaner and less expensive sustainable energy future. The good news is that we can choose to reject increased reliance on dirty fossil fuels – and reject fracking — without sacrificing jobs, energy security, or the economy. Yes, that’s right: A clean energy future can also be more affordable!

For years the fossil fuel industry and their bought and paid for politicians have claimed that it is just not possible to have reliable low cost energy and maintain our health. This new report puts the lie to these false claims and clearly demonstrates how a clean energy future can be less risky to the public and can still meet electric energy demand reliably. The Synapse report makes a persuasive case that by 2050 we can phase out all coal-fired power, reducing natural gas use, and eliminating about 25 percent of the nuclear fleet while phasing in aggressive energy efficiency and renewable energy investments that replace that power.

The Synapse report compares status quo trends (which it refers to as “Business As Usual” or BAU) with a “Transition Scenario” that maps out this cleaner energy future by 2050.  The report finds that a transition to efficiency and renewable energy in the power sector can be less expensive than BAU. In fact, the Transition Scenario is superior to BAU in terms of cost, public health, water usage, and carbon dioxide emission reductions.  And it creates jobs!  Better yet, the report details how we can accomplish all this with off the shelf technologies and efficiency, and without any assumptions about as-yet-unreleased innovations currently in research and development.

This study estimates the creation of 310,000 full-time equivalent jobs in each year of the entire first decade of the transition to a more sustainable energy sector. The manufacturing base would receive a much needed near term boost with investment in energy efficiency.

There is something for everyone in a move towards a clean energy future. Some will like the fact that net savings over 40 years are projected at a whopping $83 billion. That’s great news for consumers!  Others will embrace the notion that eliminating pollution from dirty coal-fired power plants by 2050 will mean roughly 55,000 fewer premature deaths over the next several decades.

The bottom line for New York is clear. We must move beyond a future based on dirty gas and fracking, and start focusing on the bigger issue of our clean energy future and how we get there.

A link to the Synapse Report is available online at http:www.CedcLaw.org//?page_id=598

Helen Slottje is a resident of the Town of Ithaca and the Managing Attorney of Community Environmental Defense Council, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit law firm that assists communities that desire to protect their resources, health and property from the negative impacts of fossil fuel extraction.

Helen Slottje is with the Community Environmental Defense Council, Inc.

January 9, 2012

Living Green Starts From the Ground Up

Tompkins Weekly 1/9/2012
By Carole Fisher

Is a green home necessarily a healthy home? Recently, the National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH) looked at some of the national green building and indoor air quality guidelines to see how they compared against the NCHH healthy housing principles. Their report states that “while all the programs have components aimed at improving resident health, many are missing critical elements” such as injury prevention and protection from contaminants such as lead, radon, and pesticides.

Most communities rely on residential housing codes for protection of residents from health and safety hazards, but some of the factors that influence indoor air quality are often not addressed.  As noted above, even homes that pass some green building qualifications do not require builders to address all potential health hazards.
One of those potential indoor air hazards is the presence of radon, an odorless gas that can seep into your home from the surrounding soil. Radon gas enters through cracks and openings—such as doors, windows, and plumbing—on the lower levels of your home.
Why should you be concerned? While levels in outdoor air pose little threat to health, radon can accumulate to dangerous levels inside buildings. Exposure to radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States and the number one cause among non-smokers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that radon causes more than 20,000 lung cancer deaths in the country each year.
What can you do? The U.S. Surgeon General recommends that all homes in the U.S. be tested for radon. Testing your house for radon is easy to do. Find out how to do a simple home radon test at Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Radon Action Event, January 19th, from 3:30 to 5:30pm at 615 Willow Ave, Ithaca. Free radon test kits will be given to the first 50 people. Others will receive an order form for a discounted radon test kit. If your house has a radon problem, you can take steps to fix it. Take action and encourage your friends and family members to do the same!

Carole Fisher is an Extension Educator in Consumer Education and Food Safety at CCE-Tompkins.

January 2, 2012

Steps to Sustainability- Part 4 of a Series: Unique Empires

Tompkins Weekly 1/2/2012
By Richard W. Franke

The modern concept of sustainability was launched in 1987 with the publication of Our Common Future, the report of the United Nations sponsored “World Commission on Environment and Development.”

Sustainable practices, however, existed from ancient times in many traditional societies. We saw in the previous two installments that both Native American and African peoples developed many effective traditional sustainable practices. Some sustainable practices can also be found in the developed empires of these two areas. Among the most successful of these were the Inca Empire of the Andes and the Fulani Dina of 19th Century West Africa.

The Inca empire ran from 1438 to 1532, and was the culmination of up to 5,000 years of indigenous development in the Andes Mountains of modern day South America. In 1531 it was probably the largest organized state society in the world. It stretched 2,500 miles from modern Ecuador to northern Chile and included 10 million subjects.The Inca Empire is unusual in that it developed not in a river valley but in the difficult terrain of steep mountains and high altitudes.The Inca built the world’s longest high quality road system that ran for more than 14,000 miles over steep slopes and through low valleys.They built an amazing array of bridges. Inca gold, religion, architecture, astronomy and irrigation practices have long fascinated observers, but recent research suggests the Inca may have been the first centralized state society to engage in formal conservation practices. Inca society maintained a level of social justice by setting aside special land parcels for widows, orphans, people with disabilities and soldiers.They built extensive terracing, implemented by engineers who created canals up to 70 miles long that controlled water flow. In the Lake Maracocha region they reforested areas that had become barren. The Inca protected by law certain species of animals such as sea birds and regulated the hunting of many animals. Only certain predators such as foxes and wild cats could be hunted without restriction.

Across the Atlantic there arose in 1818 the Fulani Dina or empire of Macina that lasted until 1862. The Dina arose inside the great inland delta of the Niger River that has some of the richest farmland and best pastures in all of West Africa. Macina was governed by a grand council of forty marabouts (Islamic clergy) who supervised district governors in each of five provinces of the empire. Authority flowed downwards to subdistrict heads who supervised designated heads of herder groups. Each herding group had a controlled number of animals so that overtrampling of pastures and destruction of pasture grasses could be prevented. Markets were regulated by the administration for both environmental maintenance and social justice.
The Dina increased the capacity of the traditional systems to feed large populations. The Dina administration marked off and protected fishing areas and animal trek routs. Officials fixed payment levels and set fines for damage to crops. Standard weights and measures were introduced. Administrators organized conferences and made an inventory of farming areas, herding pastures and camps. Animals were placed in three categories with limits for each: animals primarily for reproduction, those for milking and a small number allowed in farming villages year-round. Returns to farming and herding were carefully monitored to identify sudden declines. One third of certain milk herd returns was set aside for needy people in the farming villages.

In both the Inca and Macina empires we thus see examples of highly centralized state societies that were able to monitor and regulate their relations with their resource base. Other empires, however, often collapsed from within through abuse and overuse of resources. In Parts 5 and 6 of this series we shall see some examples.

Richard Franke is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology: Montclair State University, New Jersey
Resident and Board Member: Ecovillage at Ithaca, Member of Sustainable Tompkins