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  Carleton wins Climate Crews Contest

  January 19, 2009 at 11:26 am

  The Sustainability Assistants recently applied for and won the UN Climate Crews Contest, aimed at helping schools get at those issues that are most weighing them down in the quest for a more sustainable campus. The grant money was awarded to proposals that would best address those points of the Sustainable Endowments Institute’s Annual Sustainability Report Card that the institution most needed to improve.

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• Senator Amy Klobuchar Speaks on Climate Change at St. Olaf

  May 13, 2008 at 10:43 am

   

  This past Saturday, Irwin Hall at St. Olaf was full of St. Olaf students and faculty along with a handful of Carleton students eagerly waiting to hear what Amy Klobuchar had to say on climate change. She began by showing some fun video clips about her visit to Greenland last summer in which, decked out in rain gear, she floats in fishing boats around icebergs. As the video is geared towards kids, Klobuchar frequently uses it when she speaks at schools about climate change.

  Though Greenland’s melting ice sheets may not seem directly linked to the lives of Minnesotans, Klobuchar made the issue if rising global temperature hit home by drawing a connection with the decreasing water levels that we are currently experiencing in the Great Lakes. She explained that barge traffic is an essential part of the economy and supplies many jobs in northern Minnesota. The dropping water level of Lake Superior has already done damage to the barge traffic industry.

  When Klobuchar approached the issue of what is being done to address such problems, she made it clear that leadership is coming from individual states, not Washington. It was evident that she feels that Minnesota is doing its part to be a leader on climate change. She was beaming as she referenced Minnesota’s renewable energy standard which commits the state to using 25% renewables by the year 2025.

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• A Bargain? $1.19 Trillion for a Cap-and-Trade System

  April 21, 2008 at 10:43 am

   

  It seems like everybody’s got a blog these days. Over at the Congressional Budget Office Director’s Blog is a newly-released cost estimate of S. 2191, otherwise known as the America’s Climate Security Act of 2007 or the Lieberman-Warner climate bill. This Senate bill proposes a series (well, two) of greenhouse gas emissions cap-and-trade systems which initially gifts permits to greenhouse gas emitters (such as power plants, any facility importing or producing petroleum and/or natural gas, and any facility which produces a certain amount of hydrofluorocarbons) while, over its decade-long implementation, segueing to an auction-based permit system. The cost estimate of the system between 2009 and 2018? 1.19 trillion dollars (read the whole report here). This large influx of revenue would, however, be allocated and spent by the government. The bill allocates:

  • $64 billion to the Energy Assistance Fund, which would support various energy assistance programs for low-income families;
  • $12 billion to the Climate Change Worker Training Fund, which would promote training programs for “green-collar jobs;”
  • $31 billion to create the Adaptation Fund, which will support research and education to assist fish and wildlife in adapting to climate change;
  • $16 billion to the Climate Change and National Security Fund;
  • $6 billion to the Energy Independence Acceleration Fund, among other allocations.

  With such immense costs of implementation for the private sector (but also noble programs like the aforementioned which are funded as a result), most of these costs will be passed onto consumers through higher prices. Given this reality, the American public may not be so keen for the bill’s passage. We at Shrinking Footprints, however, will closely monitor its progress throughout the remainder of the congressional session.

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• An(other) Inconvenient Truth

  April 15, 2008 at 2:29 pm

  An(other) Inconvenient Truth Perhaps it’s naturally a bit easier to talk of turbines and solar here on the Carleton campus. Most students are from the United States, unarguably one of the richest nations in the world, and our priorities of preferential premiums reflect this wealth. I specifically remember that when David Shipler, the author of The Working Poor, asked a large group of Carleton students whether we would approve vastly higher taxes, at least 75% of the 400-some students raised their hands with pride. It’s also a bit easier for this group of people to speak of clean energy priorities, both because it can afford the cost premium which sometimes occurs, as well as because the clean energy generally remains to be small projects which still supplement a primary fossil-fuel system. However, there are two billion other people on the planet who can neither afford these premium preferences nor supplement their pre-existing energy infrastructure with renewable choices because they lack ANY viable choices.

   

  This inconvenient truth spurs decisions such as the International Finance Corporation’s announcement that it will issue a $450 million loan to India Tata Power, which is planning to build a $4 billion, 4-billion watt coal-burning power plant complex in the country. To give some perspective, that’s 2,425 of Carleton’s wind turbines or eight large-scale (500 MW) American coal power plants. India has 400 million people without regular access to electricity, and is expecting to expand its energy generation by 160 billion watts over the next decade. Is there a way to meet such demand—and help a country develop—with a more environmentally-friendly approach?

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• Rockin’ Out to Our Emissions

  April 14, 2008 at 2:41 pm

   

  Climate change got you down? Does our country’s perceived inability to reduce greenhouse emissions make you a tad depressed? Well, here’s a bit of news to ameliorate your melancholy: scientists have generated CDs and DVDs from carbon dioxide emissions . The new process involves rendering smokestack carbon emissions into polycarbonate plastics, which is the main material in compact discs, beverage bottles, and eyeglass lenses, among a myriad of other things. So can we mitigate climate change by rockin’ out to new CDs and increasing our home viewing of feature films? "Using CO2 to create polycarbonates might not solve the total carbon dioxide problem, but it could be a significant contribution,” Prof Muller, the German scientist leading the project, said.

  Photo by Flickr user *Cati Kaoe* used under a Creative Commons license.
  
  

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• What does it look like when the U.S. breathes?

  April 9, 2008 at 2:41 pm

  

  Map of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. To see how this map was made, check out this video.

  Hat tip to Dot Earth 

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• Europe's Not-So-Easy Carbon Reductions

  April 8, 2008 at 3:57 pm

  As the United States slowly debates the merits of implementing a tax or permit trading system for greenhouse gas emissions, there’s a tendency to look to the European Union, whose Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has been sometimes perceived as a potential model for the U.S.  It is also becoming an example of what the United States should NOT do, as it not only produced increases in 2005 and 2006, but 2007 as well, when emissions rose by 1.1%. The Wall Street Journal's blog Environmental Capital attributes this failure to the ETS’s excessive gifting of permits to power generators and heavy industry, to the point where these sectors could continue as usual and still not exhaust their permits. Environmental Capital doesn’t go as far to say that the U.S. should auction off all emission permits (which both Democratic presidential nominees support) rather than give them away (which the Warner-Lieberman bill, presently the prominent climate bill, mandates and the ETS did), but rather recommends that the U.S. strive to obtain superior emissions data before implementing any tax or regulatory system.

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• Alum engages students in responsible investing

  February 7, 2008 at 3:56 pm

  Last evening, Heidi Welsh, '88, spoke to Carleton students, faculty, and Northfield residents about climate change and corporate responsibility. Welsh, a research analyst with RiskMetrics, deals with analyzing corporate performance in environmental and social responsibility based upon on numerous indicators of success.

  During her talk, Welsh stressed the fact that much of the analysis her group does is based upon voluntary reporting by companies, a system which favors the "good actors" and leaves bad ones in the shadows. Without a proper reporting scheme instituted by the government, she noted, corporations will lack the motivation to track and mitigate their climate impacts in a significant way.

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  The perfect tool for winning Green Wars

  February 5, 2008 at 9:17 am

  Think that you would participate in Green Wars if you didn’t have to constantly unplug and re-plug everything in your dorm room? Props if you already do (keep it up!), but for those less inclined, check out Belkin’s new tool: the Conserve, an eight outlet surge protector equipped with a wireless remote control which allows you to cut all power to unused appliances which still draw “phantom” power, such as televisions and cell phone chargers, with the flick of a button. According to Belkin, phantom power can comprise up to 15% of a household’s utilities, thus allowing for the Conserve (estimated to be $49.99) to pay for itself. (Picture above)

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• Can you spot the vending miser?

  February 4, 2008 at 11:40 am

  There have been large changes with the sustainability program at Carleton, so it’s easy to see how some of the little things can get overlooked. However, one of the little things that the writers of Shrinking Footprints are excited about is the vending miser. The many vending machines—loaded with lights, electronics, and a cooling compressor—that are spread across campus comprise a significant electricity demand for the College. A Tufts University study determined that each of their vending machines drew 3,468 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, with average carbon dioxide emissions of 2.26 tons and a financial cost of $381. Though Carleton’s electricity is cheaper, by installing vending misers we can still halve the College’s energy and carbon expenses. What is a vending miser? The device simply consists of a motion sensor, which activates the lights on the vending machine when an individual passes by, and the “miser,” a box that controls the frequency which the machine’s compressor runs. The installation of misers on the least-frequented vending machines on campus would be instrumental in Carleton’s energy efficiency initiative, a critical component for meeting the goals of the Presidents Climate Commitment and also in the spirit of this month’s Green Wars.

  The cost of the vending miser (a princely $165 per unit) is no longer an issue either—check out Carleton’s Sustainability Revolving Fund to learn how the Sustainability Assistants are purchasing the units based on their energy savings.

  Also, Carleton has installed a prototype vending miser on only one of its machines. Can you find it?

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• Academic Travel and Global Warming

  January 24, 2008 at 12:03 pm

  

  There's a good article in this week's issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education:

  How do we reduce our contradictions or, better yet, our carbon emissions? The solutions are obvious, which is why no one wants to talk about them. They would require sacrifice, or at least a new way of thinking about and conducting our professional lives. Bring up the issue among a gathering of scholars and you will get something like the following responses:

  • "I know that flying is an environmental problem, but travel is essential to my work (and I really like San Francisco in the fall)."
  • "My research is a collaborative enterprise. I need to discuss it with colleagues face-to-face (over wine and cheese)."
  • "The importance of my research outweighs the environmental costs of air travel."

  All of those points are reasonable (despite my parenthetical interjections). However, only the third argument directly engages the issue. And in some cases it might be accurate. The environmental costs of flights by scientists whose research, teaching, and outreach deal with environmental problems might be offset by their contributions to the development of sustainable policies, practices, and technologies.

  But what about the rest of us?

  I'm not sure how much professors at Carleton wrestle with this dilemma, but I'm curious to see if there was a survey, how many would give one of those three answers? However, the emissions from air travel are not just the fault of our faculty, but also the students who often fly home for breaks and study abroad. Should all of this stop? I'm by no means one to point fingers, but is there anyone looking at carbon offsets?

  Photo by Flickr user Gilbert R. used under a Creative Commons license

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