Advanced BioFuels USA

by Ben Adler (Grist) … But many of the administration’s moves, including a string of recent actions by federal agencies under Obama’s control, show this conventional wisdom to be false. Here are the president’s top eight climate failings, many of them from just the three months since the midterm elections:

1. Opening more federal land and water to offshore oil and gas drilling

… The White House frequently brags about how oil and gas extraction, on both public and private lands, has risen under Obama. …

2. Selling off public coal deposits at a loss

…The coal leases have only brought in $2.3 billion in revenue, while the CO2 pollution from burning all that coal will cause societal damages ranging from $52 billion to $530 billion, according to the government’s own figures on the social cost of carbon. …

3. Promoting fracking

… Natural gas companies point to the dearth of data linking fracking to water pollution or long-term health effects — a problem which has not been helped by EPA abandoning at least three studies of fracking’s effect on drinking water. … Letting frackers pollute their neighbors’ air and water is just another way of subsidizing fossil fuel production. We’re currently awaiting the soon-to-be-finalized rule.

4. Allowing more gas and oil exports

… Last year, the admin streamlined the process for approving export terminals for liquefied natural gas, even though LNG has a much larger carbon footprint than regular natural gas due to the energy needed to freeze, ship, and regassify it. … The administration is also chipping away at the long-standing ban on exporting crude oil.

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5. Proposing weak rules on methane leaks

… they would apply only to new wells and pipelines, leaving thousands of existing sources of leakage untouched.

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6. Regulating coal ash like banana peels

… The EPA was tasked with developing rules for disposal of coal ash, a byproduct of coal burning that’s laden with toxic heavy metals such as arsenic and lead. … Green groups want EPA to label coal ash as hazardous waste, in order to subject it to more rigorous disposal regulations. Instead, in the rule that was finalized in December, EPA is treating coal ash as “solid waste,” which has lighter requirements.

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7. Going soft on ozone pollution

…  The current allowable level of ozone in the air is 75 parts per million, and the EPA’s scientific advisory committee recommended lowering that to 60 to 70 ppm, while health and environmental advocates say it should be set at 60. The EPA is proposing 65 to 70…

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8. Counting chopped-down trees as “clean energy”

… “A November 19 EPA policy memo suggests that the administration intends to treat electricity produced from most forest and farm products as carbon-free.” … The rationale is that if you plant a new tree to replace the felled one, you do not lose a carbon sink, but the science is not that simple, plus the whole process of drying and shipping wood pellets creates carbon emissions.

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If he took the strongest, most climate-protective stance at every opportunity, he might then have something to trade with congressional Republicans — like drilling offshore or coal mining on public lands — in exchange for a carbon price. More realistically, Republicans will continue to reject a carbon price and refuse to make any compromises. But why does Obama compromise with himself? Six years into his presidency, he still shies away from using the levers of power that are readily available to him. Perhaps he just doesn’t care about climate change as much as he claims to.  READ MORE