Cool your jets

Updated Twice So is anybody in this country actually doing anything about all this? Well, of course they are. Lots of folks are. Some are doing the lifestyle thing, trying to change their own habits; others are focusing on political or anti-corporate work. (And I will say here for the record that just as I have no patience with those who say things like "if only everyone bought organic" or "if only everyone drove a hybrid," I have just as little patience with those "don't-bother-me" "radicals" who use corporate guilt as a means to excuse themselves from having to make any changes at all.)

So I won't even try to make an extensive list. But I did want to mention just a couple of things you might not have noticed. One was the report a couple of months ago that

Americans are trading in the keys to their Hummers for a bus pass. USA Today reports that “[m]ass-transit systems across the USA are accelerating orders for diesel-electric hybrid buses, despite an extra cost of more than $100,000 per bus.”

In fact, according to General Motors - one of the two manufacturers for hybrid buses - four U.S. cities have already ordered 1,700 hybrid buses. The orders include 950 for Washington, D.C., 480 for Philadelphia and 300 for Minneapolis and St. Paul.

New York has ordered 850 hybrid buses - and smaller areas like Ashville, North Carolina, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Evansville, Indiana are either buying or looking into buying hybrids.

While hybrids accounted for just 2-3 percent of buses in APTA’s [American Public Transportation Association] 2007 survey of its mostly North American members, about 22% of buses on order at that point were hybrids.

More recently, just last week a conference of 10 state governors and global warming experts at Yale was intended to

develop a strategy to combat global climate change.

"I think we have high hope this will mark a significant turning point in a commitment to action on climate change," said Dan Esty, a Yale environmental law professor and director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. ...

Governors who plan to attend the conference include M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut, Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Jon Corzine of New Jersey, Christine Gregoire of Washington and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas. Quebec Premier Jean Charest will also be there.

Some 28 states and 600 cities have pledged to address global warming, but their biggest adversary may not be ecological but political. Governor Terminator could speak about the bitter experience of trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars only to have the program shot down by the most politicized EPA administration in the agency's history, which thereby also blocked the efforts of 16 other states to institute similar controls.

Esty predicted the decision would be overturned on appeal, but he's more optimistic about our increasingly-politicized court system than I am. Personally, I suspect the chances on appeal will depend to a fair degree on if oral arguments take place before or after January 2009.

What's really so frustrating about all this is how narrow-minded, how small-minded, how trapped in convention it all is. How with a little national investment, a little national leadership, a little national commitment such a big difference could be made. How little for how big? How's this:

The United States could shave as much as 28 percent off the amount of greenhouse gases it emits at fairly modest cost and with only small technology innovations, according to a new report.

The report, prepared by energy experts at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company,

said the country was brimming with “negative cost opportunities” - potential changes in the lighting, heating and cooling of buildings, for example, that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels even as they save money. “These types of savings have been around for 20 years,” said Jack Stephenson, a director of the study. But he said they still face tremendous barriers.

Those barriers consisting mostly of the fact that manufacturers and other businesses see no profit in investing in efficiency when they can go for a lower cost and pass the expense of the inefficiency on to the consumer.

What I found particularly interesting was that the report found that

[i]n contrast to improved efficiency, measures like capturing carbon dioxide from coal power plants and storing it would be relatively costly, and they account for less than 10 percent of the potential to cut emissions, the study said. The potential contributions from new nuclear plants and renewable energy supplies from wind or solar sources are also relatively modest, the report said.

It's the low-tech path that shows the way. Ain't it (almost) always the truth.

Updated with a Footnote: Hard on the heels of my description of the EPA as more politicized than at any other point in its history (Remember when it was possible for Republicans to be environmentalists, at least to some degree?) comes this from AP (via Raw Story):

The Union of Concerned Scientists said that more than half of the nearly 1,600 EPA staff scientists who responded online to a detailed questionnaire reported they had experienced incidents of political interference in their work. ...

"The investigation shows researchers are generally continuing to do their work, but their scientific findings are tossed aside when it comes time to write regulations," said [Francesca] Grifo[, director of the UCS's Scientific Integrity Program]. ...

The report said that 60 percent of those responding, or 889 scientists, reported personally experiencing what they viewed as political interference in their work over the last five years. Four in 10 scientists who have worked at the agency for more than a decade said they believe such interference has been more prevalent in the last five years than the previous five years.

The reports of interference, again all based on personal experience, included agency officials misrepresenting scientific findings, the "selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome," and directing scientists to "inappropriately exclude or alter technical information" in an EPA document. Significantly, the highest number of complaints came from scientists involved in writing regulations and making risk assessments.

The response rate, about 29%, was reasonable but not great for an unsolicited survey, and it might have been higher but for the fact that initially, some managers ordered their staff to not take part. The agency's general counsel later sent a message saying anyone could participate on their own time, but I suspect some damage to the response rate was already done.

Update to the Update: The UCS survey is attracting some notice. TPM Muckraker is reporting that both Rep. Henry Waxman, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, chair of the Senate Environmental Committee, say their committees will be looking into the matter. Based on past experience that doesn't mean a whole lot since these investigations never seem to be followed by any action, but any unwelcome attention directed at the Shrub gang's activities is fine by me.