Brave New Leaf

The American West is heating up nearly twice as fast as the world

A recent report by the NRDC indicates that the American West has experienced average temperature increases at a rate of 70% greater than the rest of the world. This is resulting in loss of snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, which leads to pervasive drought and water shortage.

Glaciers are melting faster than forecasted as well. Glacier National Park was projected to be glacier-free by 2030, but now it appears 2022 will be the year. In the Washington Cascades, the 37 glaciers tracked there have lost 20-40% of their mass in the last 20 years, with five glaciers having disappeared entirely.

You can read the full report at NRDC.org.

WA governor Christine Gregoire kicks off Governors' Clean Energy Summit

WA governor Christine Gregoire kicked off a 2-day national summit to focus on “Clean Energy Research, Development and Demonstration” today. Governor's will discuss and hear presentations on the challenges of funding renewable energy R&D, emerging transportation technologies, clean coal, nuclear power, and  which states have managed to launch successful clean energy programs. The schedule for the summit can be found here.

edit: My apologies for the hasty, sloppy report on this story. All errors and links have been updated.

Where are the dirtiest power plants?

All morning, I've been playing with a site called http://www.carma.org. CARMA stands for Carma Monitoring for Action which is an organization financed by a couple of thinktanks in Washington DC.

What they've done is compiled a comprehensive database of power plants across the world including the megawatts of power that they product, and the carbon emissions of that plant. Then they mashed up the data with Google Maps.

The result is something that's endlessly interesting to play with to get a better feeling for how and where power is generated across the world. For example, to start with I typed in my zip code in their search box. Puget Sound Energy immediately came up, and I was able to get a complete picture of their power mix. My power mix.

Generally, green dots mean that the installation is a hydroelectric plant, but every so often it's a wind farm. Red dots are usually big, bad coal plants.

The data can be sliced any number of ways. You can look up the most polluting plants in the US or admire how many clean plants there are in Europe. Or get data on how the carbon for a power plant has gone up or down over time. In some cases, you can even get a look into power companies' future power goals.

It's a very rich resource. I strongly recommend you spend a little time with it to better understand your power mix.

Washington Ecology Dept. funds several biowaste-to-fuel research projects

The Washington Department of Ecology announced that it will grant over $600,000 to several research projects focused on conversion of organic wastes to ethanol, biodiesel, and organic fertilizer.

We at Brave New Leaf are not fans of turning food into fuel, but food waste is a much better story. Converting waste into food prevents the organic material from going into a landfill and extends its lifecycle. Washington is rich in organic waste from its logging industry and high rates of food scrap and yard waste recycling, so successful results from these projects could be boons for WA state. Read more about the various projects.

Bellevue rolls out the "Carbon Yeti" to schools

In a case of only-in-the-Pacific-Northwest, the City of Bellevue has rolled out an animated carbon footprint mascot called the "Carbon Yeti".

I'm not really sure why they chose the Yeti, which is the Himalayan Bigfoot, rather than the native Sasquatch, but Carbon Yeti has been designed to teach kids how to reduce their footprint. (Get it? Because Yeti have big feet.)

Carbon Yeti will be touring local sixth grade classrooms in the weeks to come. He is accompanied by a colorful book that asks families to pledge certain actions that will create a small footprint. The book is actually pretty cute and has a number of useful suggestions for how to reduce your footprint. Check out the "Smaller Footprint Pledge Book".

801 U.S. mayors pledge to fight climate change

801 mayors of cities across the United States have signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ (USCM) Climate Protection Agreement.

The Agreement came to pass in 2005 when the United States failed to sign the Kyoto Treaty. Several cities, citing the importance of actively fighting climate change, decided to agree to the Kyoto guidelines independent of federal adoption.

Since then, adoption of the agreement has been staggering. Still, the USCM represents all cities in the US with populations over 30,000. There are 1,139 such cities in the US today, so some hold-outs remain. Notable cities who haven't signed include Houston, Texas and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Under the agreement, the mayors commit to taking the following actions:

• "Strive to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol targets in their own communities, through actions ranging from anti-sprawl land-use policies to urban forest restoration projects to public information campaigns;
• Urge their state governments, and the federal government, to enact policies and programs to meet or beat the greenhouse gas emission reduction target suggested for the United States in the Kyoto Protocol -- 7% reduction from 1990 levels by 2012; and
• Urge the U.S. Congress to pass the bipartisan greenhouse gas reduction legislation, which would establish a national emission trading system."

View a map of committed cities, or learn more about the agreement at usmayors.org.

Do you know your area's climate change plan?

As I've been greening my own life, it's become increasingly important to me to understand how my city, county, state, and nation are addressing the issues of peaking oil and climate change.

Most of the information for my local government is online, so it hasn't been too difficult to investigate and figure out what my government representatives are up to. Let's have a look.

The City of Bellevue
Bellevue is a city experiencing a period of epic growth. Looking out my window, the skyline is dotted with dozens of cranes cranking out endless numbers of skyscrapers. New restaurants and businesses are popping up almost daily.

Because of this, I'm not shocked that Bellevue has been a little reticent on the matter of climate change. If you go to the city website, their environmental section covers a number of pressing issues: water conservation, flood prevention, saving salmon, etc. But there is no information on Bellevue's emissions or how it plans to cut them.

A further look online shows that the Bellevue City Council refused to sign the global warming plan at the Conference of US Mayors last year, prefering to go with their own version of a global warming plan. If they are putting one in action, it's not in the public eye.

Clearly, Bellevue needs some more encouragement to focus on the environment.

Neighboring Seattle does much better. They have a full climate change plan you can read here.

King County
King County is a completely different story. The richness of information about King County's global warming plan is astonishing.

If you live in King County, I would strongly recommend perusing the 2007 King County Climate Plan. Some highlights:

King County produces .08% of worldwide emissions. To compare, King County has .03% of the world's population. Likewise, Washington contributes .31% emissions and has .1% of the world population.

The projected impact of climate change on the King County area is spelled out in an extremely detailed way. Forecasted weather changes include:

• More rain in the west
• Less rain in the east
• Less snow in the mountains

Resulting in:

• More floods in the winter
• More droughts in the summer
• More droughts in the East
• Widespread issues with ecosystem, agriculture, and disease
• And then, of course, there's the potential impact of sea rise if the ice shelf collapses...

King County's goal is to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050. They present several ideas and projects that directly relate to the goal, many with immediate timelines.

It shouldn't be shocking, but the biggest emissions fight King County faces is not electricity or industry or landfills, but transportation. There are more cars on the road every year in King County, and more miles driven every year. The County is going to have to get clever in figuring out how to face this.

The State of Washington
Governor Christine Gregoire has taken many material steps to committing Washington to a green path. The Washington State Climate Change site has a wealth of information about the analysis and planning the State government has done to address the issue

Of significant interest are the emissions projections, where again, you can see the problem for Washington State is transportation.

The other fantastic read is the recently released report by the Climate Advisory Team called "A Comprehensive Approach Towards Reducing Greenhouse Gases in Washington State".

To summarize it, Washington States goals are as follows:

• By 2020, reduce emissions to 1990 levels. By 2035, reduce 25% below that, By 2050, reduce 50% below that.
• By 2020, increase green jobs to 25,000 (this legislation passed the house yesterday).
• By 2020, reduce $$ spent on imported fuel by 20%.

At a high level, here are some of the ways they recommend we achieve this:

• Implement a cap-and-trade with clear emissions reporting
• Integrate emissions analysis into all projects and decisions, especially development.
• Redesign communities to have less dependency on Single Occupancy Vehicles
• Make vehicles as efficient as possible, use alternative fuels
• Focus infrastructure on clean transit
• Upgrade local buildings to be energy efficient
• Deliver energy from less coal-dependent sources
• Keep forests and farms healthy,planting more = more stored carbon.

Do you know your area's climate change plan?

Evergreen Cities Bill will make our cities greener

Today the WA House passed the Evergreen Cities bill, which will help restore urban forests throughout Washington.

Satellite imagery has revealed that nearly half the tree canopy in the Puget Sound has been lost, resulting in poor air quality, more wind, and trouble with storm water.

A similar program in Portland has been a success, including financially, recouping $3.80 in water management and air cleaning for every dollar it spends on trees.

This is yet another example of how greening our cities can save us money over the long run. The bill next goes to the WA Senate.