Tag Archives: florida

Where’s the action on climate change in the U.S.?

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My reply to another comment on the post No Kyoto Protocol for the United States:

Most Americans are very concerned about climate change. It is a smaller percentage who are not. Even the United States is threatened by coastal inundation but the threats are largely ignored by the press and therefore not communicated to its citizens. Third Planet is making some progress on public awareness but we are a small organization and it is not enough.

For example my local newspaper, The Florida Times-Union, did publish the following letter I wrote them in November:

Protect the buffers

Although “Rising seas could soak taxpayers, study says” is a news story that no one wants to read, it is a subject we might ignore at our peril.

The prudent approach for government in their planning scenarios is to take a much harder look at the 100-year floodplain, existing wetlands and low-lying agricultural lands, and consider these as ground zero upon which all future development must be based.

Ultimately the reinsurance industry will have a much louder voice about which developments can be insured. It just plain makes sense to give tidal wetlands, and the valuable services they provide to humans, the room to retreat with the possible onset of rising sea levels.

In Louisiana, for example, coastal wetlands and the buffer they provide against hurricanes are being eroded at a rate of 1 acre every 30 to 40 minutes.

It is time we started applying the precautionary principle to the expensive development decisions we are making, particularly in light of the Reality Check development exercises that have been underway in Northeast Florida for the past six months. (Florida Times-Union letter)

We don’t know if our concerns will be considered by our local planning community in their development decisions, or not. We only know that while Florida is threatened it is not our survival that is at stake—for the time-being.

We can only hope that we all come to our senses on the global implications of climate change before it is far too late.

Governor Crist’s Serve to Preserve Summit

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June 24, 2008

Wednesday and Thursday I’ll be attending the Governor’s 2nd “Serve to Preserve” Summit in Miami. The occasion will be highlighted by Governor Crist’s signing of Florida’s new energy bill, HB 7135, into law.

It’s a mammoth bill by Florida standards, 287 pages in all, with something for many people. Third Planet’s interests lie in community-level sustainable development and energy planning so we’ll be taking this up as a necessary process.

We had thought that the forum for this discussion could be, in part, the Florida Energy Commission in the Office of Legislative Services. The work and recommendations of the Commission appear very prominently in HB 7135. However, under the new bill, the Commission now transfers to the new Florida Energy and Climate Commission in the Executive Office of the Governor.

On the sustainable development and energy planning front, local comprehensive plans are not affected by the new bill but the Governor is now authorized to include goals, objectives, and policies related to energy and global climate change in the state comprehensive plan.

So the Summit is setting up for an interesting time for Third Planet as we look to find allies and partners for our future-thinking planning efforts. Please revisit us again soon and consider supporting our continuing activities with your financial contribution. THANK YOU!


The Everglades and Sustainable Energy Development

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January 14, 2008

Last weekend I moderated a Breakout Session Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Development in the Everglades at the 2008 Everglades Coalition Annual Meeting on Captiva Island. While the panel addressed some key energy and climate change issues of interest to an Everglades audience I was personally surprised that the audience wanted to know more about renewable energy related to their homes rather than exploring further the relationship of sustainable energy development to the Greater Everglades Eco-System. Fortunately for me there were people at the main conference, including ‘Rock’ Salt, my friend and Energy Advisory Committee colleague from the Governor’s Commission for a Sustainable South Florida (1996-97), with whom to share my questions.

What of the relationship between long-term sea level rise, new power plant siting, and restoring water flow to the Everglades, the latter also functioning as a climate change adaptation measure to protect our drinking water from saltwater intrusion. Modeling even 6″ of sea level rise and setting up monitoring stations at the pressure points would help us understand the rate at which change is taking place. Monitoring sea level changes at this time would be analogous to a Hurricane watch, albeit over much longer times, as a precursor to going to a sea level warning. This information has to be invaluable to the Corps of Engineers. Given that over 30% of the Everglades are less than 1 foot above sea level even a 6″ increase would be calamitous. Who is the lead agency for this kind of measurement and monitoring? Is it NOAA, USGS, USACE, someone else? Continue reading →

New biofuels studies raise serious questions

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Originally published September 2007, in Third Planet’s newsletter.

As if long-term energy planning and climate change mitigation were not difficult enough, along come two startling biofuel research reports from Europe in the past two weeks that serve to remind us of the need for constant vigilance and rational decision-making by government, especially with regard to the scientific process, long-term energy planning, and capital investments in a very uncertain future.

Worse than CO2 emissions?

In the first study (PDF), a team of research scientists from Britain, the U.S. and Germany led by acclaimed atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen re-examined the amount of nitrous-oxide (N2O) emissions from biofuel production. They found that when the emissions are calculated in “CO2-equivalent” global warming terms, many biofuels contribute as much or more to global warming through N2O emissions than by using fossil fuels alone.

There can’t be that much N2O emissions compared to CO2, you say. But N2O is a greenhouse gas with a 100-year average global warming potential (GWP) 296 times larger than an equal mass of CO2. That reason alone validates the study.

The team has published its findings for open review in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and, just like the science of climate change, their findings promise to be a hotbed of scientific debate in the months to come.

What makes the study resonate in particular is that Prof. Crutzen is no stranger to success in environmental science. In 1995 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland “for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone”. It was their Nobel Prize work that became the underlying basis for the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer. Continue reading →

Fossil Carbon Emissions and Mitigation

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April 2007

On April 14, 2007, I was the moderator of the Step It Up 2007: Jacksonville Public Forum on Climate Change.

I also made a presentation on “Fossil Carbon Emissions and Mitigation” at the event. My presentation is available as a PDF by right-clicking this link.