Port Fourchon: perpetual motion machine

Several Louisiana newspapers carried the Associated Press version of the Baton Rouge Advocate article on the Loren Scott & Associates study on the economic importance of the Port Fourchon energy complex.

In the style that has become expected of studies for hire, the report lays out the case for which it was produced, namely that getting more money to raise the road to the the port is a very important project. However, in making the case, it ignores the reason that the road must be raised — a sinking coast and rising sea levels.

Here are the opening paragraphs of The Advocate article:

Port Fourchon services 90 percent of the deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, and even a brief interruption of services would cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs, a study released Thursday shows.

The Greater Lafourche Port Commission, which commissioned the study, hopes the information will help convince Congress to fund upgrades and repairs to the area’s levee system and the $250 million shortfall for an elevated highway and bridge from Golden Meadow to Port Fourchon, port director Ted Falgout said.

It's understandable that the Port Fourchon study would not mention the reasons the road must be raised are due, at least in part, to the significant energy industry contributions to the destruction of coastal marsh lands and the climate change producing the rising seas.

So, raising the road to Port Fouchon (and, probably, the levees around the port, as well) is something of a perpetual motion machine.

The port serves the energy industry that is drilling for oil and gas in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Those fuels add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as they are burned, thereby contributing to the warming of the earth, which speeds the rate at which sea levels rise. The rising sea levels (combined with the continued sinking of Louisiana's coastal wetlands) will make it necessary to raise the road to the port and the levees around it.

What's wrong with this picture? The energy industry wants the public to pay the price for mitigating the impact processes to which their own work are prime contributors. Yet, the energy industry as a whole and companies working — and profiting — from the operation of Port Fourchon (pdf) are some of the most ardent opponents of public policies that would slow the rate of climate change.

Louisiana is quite literally on the front line of the climate change front. The impacts of climate change are being felt here first — sinking land, disappearing marshes, rising sea levels are each impacts of this larger process.

Like Shell Oil and other energy companies championing a tax-payer funded repair of the damage they inflicted on our coast, the plea to save Port Fourchon is a shameless cry for help from an industry that refuses to accept responsibility for its own actions.

So, yes, save Port Fourchon. But, at least require that the energy companies and the companies that support them implement policies that mitigate the contributions that they make to the processes that require the need to save the port to begin with.

Condition support for saving Port Fourchon on their support for policies that would wean our economy from carbon-based energy.

Something about Climate Change that Mary Does Not Get

Will someone please tell Senator Mary Landrieu that she represents the state of Louisiana and not the oil and gas industries!

Landrieu was the lone Democrat to vote against ending a Republican filibuster against provisions in the energy bill which would have mandated that utilities get at least 15 percent of their power from renewable energy sources by 2020.

The bill, in its final form, does some good things, but it could have done much more if not for Landrieu's placing of the interests of oil and gas companies ahead of the interests of the people of the state she was elected to represent.

Why do I say Landrieu voted to defend the interests of a leading industry over the interests of the state? For starters, there is the matter of the accelerating rate of climate change, which is speeding the melting of the polar ice cap and the cap in Greenland.

Less ice, means more water in the oceans, which translates into rising sea levels. Louisiana's coast is very flat. Rising sea levels combined with sinking land is a bad combination for us.

How bad? Check out the images from the University of Arizona at the top of this post.

The image on the left is what Louisiana's relationship with the Gulf of Mexico was like earlier this year. The image on the right shows the impact of a one-meter rise (a little more than three feet) would have on our state. Look at it closely (you can find another set of the images here).

Orleans and Jefferson parishes are inundated. Terrebonne and LaFourche, too. Gulf waters reach up to I-10 in West Baton Rouge Parish. Most of Cameron and Vermilion parishes are under water.

Oh, well, you might say, "that won't happen for a century. We'll be gone and someone else will have figured out what to do."

Wrong!

The pace of the melting is increasing.

Well, then, it's hopeless you might say.

Wrong again!

McKinsey & Company (the business consultants) recently released a report (PDF) that substantial progress could be made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the next 23 years without disrupting the U.S. economy. It focuses on increased energy efficiency as a means of reducing the growth in the release of greenhouse gases.

But, McKinsey report states that the measures that need to be taken include the very kind of energy production shift that Landrieu wrong-headedly blocked by supporting the Republican filibuster against the energy bill:

5. Reducing the carbon intensity of electric power production — 800 megatons to 1,570 megatons. This potential derives from a shift toward renewable energy sources (primarily wind and solar), additional nuclear capacity, improved efficiency of power plants, and eventual use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies on coal-fired electricity generation.

This is McKinsey & Company writing! It's only radical if you're so deep in the back pocket of the energy industry that you think their farts are perfume.

Again, why is this important? Go to the images at the top again.

Louisiana, due to our geology, topography and geography, is going to be among the areas most dramatically affected by rising sea levels (not the only one, to be sure!).

It would be nice if any of our elected officials would give even the slightest indication that they understand what is at stake here.

The senior Senator from Louisiana has gone all 'flat earth' on climate change at a time when we need her to be rational. Maybe her polling numbers have unnerved her?

Entergy and the PSC: Stupid Is as Stupid Does

The Louisiana Public Service Commission and Entergy have teamed up to confirm Forrest Gump's observation that "stupid is as stupid does."

New Orleans CityBusiness reports that the PSC has granted permission for Entergy to convert a natural gas-powered plant in St. Charles Parish to a coal and coke-fired plant. Coal, Entergy said, would produce cheaper power.

"Penny wise, pound foolish," comes immediately to mind.

So, too, does stupid.

For starters, there's the matter of the link between coal-fired plants and Mercury contamination — particularly in fish. The Louisiana Wildlife Federation has found extensive Mercury contamination in fish and wildlife in our state. Something like 40 lakes, rivers and bayous in the state have Mercury warnings posted advising that children and pregnant women not eat fish taken from those waters. Louisiana now has a Mercury Initiative that seeks to mitigate the problem and prevent it from getting worse.

So, you can hunt and fish all you care to do so in Louisiana, you just need to think twice about actually eating what kill.

Then there is the matter of coal's role in the production of greenhouse gases and the contribution those gases make to climate change. One of the side affects of climate change is rising seas. Someone might need to tell the members of the PSC that we have a lot of lowlands in Louisiana that are going to be among the first places affected by rising sea levels.

Entergy has a lot of customers located in those low-lying areas. Just as an aside, it should be noted that the high cost of electricity provided by Entergy was a big reason cited by ThyssenKrupp AG for its decision to locate it's steel plant in Alabama instead of Louisiana.

It would be ironic were it not for the fact that the course of action that will result from this PSC vote is so short-sighted and — well — stupid.

1 Meter = 3.2808399 Feet

Al Gore (you remember him, don't you? The man who won the popular vote in 2000 and who leads in New Hampshire when included in presidential preference polls?) has an op-ed piece in Sunday's New York Times.

Yes, it's about climate change and the urgent need for America to assume the leading role in the global shift from a carbon-based economy rather than continue the dance of denial being performed by the current administration.

Here are a few paragraphs that need your attention:

Our home — Earth — is in danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is not the planet itself, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings.

Without realizing the consequences of our actions, we have begun to put so much carbon dioxide into the thin shell of air surrounding our world that we have literally changed the heat balance between Earth and the Sun. If we don’t stop doing this pretty quickly, the average temperature will increase to levels humans have never known and put an end to the favorable climate balance on which our civilization depends.

In the last 150 years, in an accelerating frenzy, we have been removing increasing quantities of carbon from the ground — mainly in the form of coal and oil — and burning it in ways that dump 70 million tons of CO2 every 24 hours into the Earth’s atmosphere.

The concentrations of CO2 — having never risen above 300 parts per million for at least a million years — have been driven from 280 parts per million at the beginning of the coal boom to 383 parts per million this year.

As a direct result, many scientists are now warning that we are moving closer to several “tipping points” that could — within 10 years — make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet’s habitability for human civilization.

Just in the last few months, new studies have shown that the north polar ice cap — which helps the planet cool itself — is melting nearly three times faster than the most pessimistic computer models predicted. Unless we take action, summer ice could be completely gone in as little as 35 years. Similarly, at the other end of the planet, near the South Pole, scientists have found new evidence of snow melting in West Antarctica across an area as large as California.

This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue, one that affects the survival of human civilization. It is not a question of left versus right; it is a question of right versus wrong. Put simply, it is wrong to destroy the habitability of our planet and ruin the prospects of every generation that follows ours.

Then, Mr. Gore adds this:

There are some who will try to pervert this precedent and use xenophobia or nativist arguments to say that every country should be held to the same standard. But should countries with one-fifth our gross domestic product — countries that contributed almost nothing in the past to the creation of this crisis — really carry the same load as the United States? Are we so scared of this challenge that we cannot lead?

Our children have a right to hold us to a higher standard when their future — indeed, the future of all human civilization — is hanging in the balance. They deserve better than a government that censors the best scientific evidence and harasses honest scientists who try to warn us about looming catastrophe. They deserve better than politicians who sit on their hands and do nothing to confront the greatest challenge that humankind has ever faced — even as the danger bears down on us.

We should focus instead on the opportunities that are part of this challenge. Certainly, there will be new jobs and new profits as corporations move aggressively to capture the enormous economic opportunities offered by a clean energy future.

But there’s something even more precious to be gained if we do the right thing. The climate crisis offers us the chance to experience what few generations in history have had the privilege of experiencing: a generational mission; a compelling moral purpose; a shared cause; and the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness and conflict of politics and to embrace a genuine moral and spiritual challenge.

A few weeks ago, I posted an entry that included a map that showed coastal elevations in Louisiana. That post was prompted by a Washington Post article about the thawing of the Greenland ice cap and how that process — if it continues unabated — could raise sea levels by over 20 feet.

The map at the top of this post shows the areas of coastal Louisiana that will flood if the oceans rise a total of one meter. Look at that map (you can click on it for a larger view). Think about it in the context of Al Gore's op-ed piece.

Then, answer these two questions:

1) What do candidates for Governor and the Legislature say when you ask them about the state's energy policies and climate change? If citizens ask these questions, candidates will feel obligated to at least formulate an answer. Who knows? They might actually think about the issue. And;

2) What are you doing to reduce your carbon foot print? Have you switched to energy efficient light bulbs? Are you keeping your car tuned so that it at least runs as cleanly as it can (and why don't you buy something smaller and more efficient when it's time to replace what you're driving now?)?

The reason this issue is important to Louisiana is explained in the map at the top (click on it for a larger view).

Climate change is as real as any issue confronting Louisiana. Our political leaders will address it ONLY if you demand that they do so.