Fri, 2013-05-10 05:00Guest
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Into Wine: New Book by Olivier Magny Explores Terroirism, Soil Health and More

This is a guest post by French sommelier Olivier Magny, author of the new book, Into Wine: An Invitation to Pleasure. 

When you like wine, and start to learn more about it, you quickly realize that the soil makes a difference. Studying how vineyards were farmed has helped me grasp that the importance of the soil actually goes far beyond wine, and that the implications of mistreating it are also much more far-reaching that we think.

Under the combined effects of chemical pesticides, chemical fertilizers, deep plowing and tractors, we’ve managed to eradicate most of the life of our soils. Even though it may come across as unchanged on the surface, the truth is that for the most part, our soil has now turned to dirt.

After a few decades of mining our soils instead of farming them, we have destroyed them[1]. Messing with the soil is a gigantic mistake—and Nature has already started to get back at us for it.

Read more: Into Wine: New Book by Olivier Magny Explores Terroirism, Soil Health and More
Thu, 2013-05-09 11:11Stephen Leahy
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BC LNG Exports Blow Climate Targets Way, Way Out of the Water

Rendering of BC LNG export facility in BC.

This post is the second of a two part series. Read the first installment, Unreported Emissions From Natural Gas Blow Up BC's Climate Action Plan.

Methane leaks from British Columbia's natural gas industry are likely at least 7 times greater than official numbers increasing the entire provinces' carbon footprint by nearly 25%. That's like putting 3 million more vehicles on BC's roads.

As Part One revealed official government figures state only 0.3% to 0.4% of BC's natural gas production leaks into the atmosphere. No believes that is accurate. Independent studies in the US show these methane leaks range between 2% and 9%.

All aspects of natural gas operations including drilling gathering, processing and pipelines can leak methane into the atmosphere. The industry doesn't like to call them leaks, preferring the term “fugitive emissions.”

Seals, valves, joints, compressor pumps all can leak. There are literally hundreds of thousands of points where this can occur said Bill Tubbs Manager, Environmental Permitting & Regulation at Spectra Energy Transmission. Headquartered in Houston, Texas Spectra is the biggest gas pipeline and processing companies operating in western Canada.

“We don't measure fugitive emissions, we estimate how much for reporting purposes,” Tubbs told DeSmog.

Read more: BC LNG Exports Blow Climate Targets Way, Way Out of the Water
Wed, 2013-05-08 12:35Steve Horn
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Interview: Energy Investor Bill Powers Discusses Looming Shale Gas Bubble

On Sat., April 27, I met up with energy investor Bill Powers at Prairie Moon Restaurant in Evanston, IL for a mid-afternoon lunch to discuss his forthcoming book set to hit bookstores on June 18.

The book's title - "Cold, Hungry and in the Dark: Exploding the Natural Gas Supply Myth" - pokes fun at the statement made by former Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon at the 2011 Shale Gas Insight conference in Philadelphia, PA. 

"What a glorious vision of the future: It's cold, it's dark and we're all hungry," McClendon said in response to the fact that there were activists outside of the city's convention center. "I have no interest in turning the clock back to the dark ages like our opponents do." 

What Powers unpacks in his book, though, is that McClendon and his fellow "shale promoters," as he puts it in his book, aren't quite as "visionary" as they would lead us all to believe. 

Indeed, the well production data that Powers picked through on a state-by-state basis demonstrates a "drilling treadmill." That means each time an area is fracked, after the frackers find the "sweet spot," that area yields diminishing returns on gas production on a monthly and annual basis.

It's an argument regular readers of DeSmogBlog are familiar with because of our recent coverage of the Post Carbon Institute's "Drill Baby, Drill" report by J. David Hughes. 

Powers posits this could lead to a domestic gas crisis akin to the one faced in the 1970's.

We discuss these issues and far more in the interview below. 

Read more: Interview: Energy Investor Bill Powers Discusses Looming Shale Gas Bubble
Mon, 2013-05-06 17:02Guest
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The Death of ‘Sustainability’

This is a guest post by Glenn Hurrowitz, author and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy.

Can destroying a tropical rainforest be “sustainable”?

Well, according to a decision taken yesterday by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the major industry-NGO body, this greatest of environmental crimes is now officially “green.”

Read more: The Death of ‘Sustainability’
Fri, 2013-05-03 10:04Ben Jervey
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Koch Brothers, ALEC Attack Maine Renewable Energy Standards

Maine’s clean energy legislation has spurred more than $2 billion in local investment and created at least 2,500 jobs in the Pine Tree State. That isn’t stopping some state lawmakers from trying to weaken and kill these laws, as the local political puppets do the will of their fossil fuel masters, the Koch brothers.

A quick reminder: there’s a coordinated national campaign to dismantle renewable portfolio standards (RPS) at the state level. Behind the campaign is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), who we’ve covered quite a bit before. Behind ALEC is the Heartland Institute and the Koch brothers.

It’s a scene playing out in State capitols around the country -- from Kansas to Missouri to Michigan to North Carolina. And now in Maine. State legislators, who typically receive hearty contributions from the Heartland Institute, Big Fossils, and local front groups who are wholly funded by the former, introduce legislation that was drafted by ALEC (a “corporate bill mill”) with the help of Heartland and the Big Fossils. The state legislators then present biased studies created by compromised think tanks that are funded by Heartland and the big fossils to support this boilerplate legislation. The legislation, of course, written to benefit Big Fossils -- and the Koch brothers -- and not the people of the respective states, where renewable portfolio standards are having great positive economic and environmental impact.

(For a good overview of ALEC’s work to bully state legislators into weakening these laws that undeniably help the economies and environments of the states in which they’re passed, check out this NRDC Action Fund post.)

Up in Maine, some local groups are asking, “Why do two rich men from Kansas want to dismantle Maine's renewable energy policy?” A new report just published by the Maine People’s Alliance, Maine’s Majority Education Fund, and the Maine Conservation Alliance (PDF) seeks to answer that question for Mainers.

Read more: Koch Brothers, ALEC Attack Maine Renewable Energy Standards

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