by Noreen Nielsen

This morning, ConocoPhillips announced its 2011 fourth-quarter earnings, reporting profits of $3.4 billion — a 66 percent gain– bringing total profits in 2011 to $12.4 billion. Below is a quick look at some other facts about ConocoPhillips:

• ConocoPhillips has spent over $16 million lobbying Congress in 2011, ranking in as the fifth largest spender last year – and number one in the oil and gas industry.
• ConocoPhillips has contributed over $200,000 to federal campaigns in 2011, with 90 percent of the contributions going to Republicans.
• ConocoPhillips used 88 percent of their 2011 profits – $11 billion – to buy back their own stock.  That enriches their shareholders, but it doesn’t add to oil supplies or investments in alternative fuels or other new technologies.
• The five biggest oil companies – BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell – are likely to make $130 billion in profits in 2011. Added together, the Big Five oil companies are sitting on cash resources of $59 billion and made nearly $1 trillion in profits over the past decade.

Chevron Corp. plans to release its quarterly figures on Friday, followed by Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell next week.

How to Build America’s Energy Future

Schott Solar employee trims a photovoltaic panel in a glass room at the company's plant in Albuquerque, NM. A strong clean energy industry will give rise to more American manufacturing jobs and in turn will help rebuild our struggling middle class and create a more sustainable and fair economy. AP Photo

by Kate Gordon

President Barack Obama last night presented in his State of the Union address a blueprint for sustained growth in our economy consisting of four key parts: manufacturing, energy, worker preparedness, and American values. When it comes to America’s global leadership on clean energy, these four are inextricably linked.

A strong clean energy industry will give rise to more American manufacturing jobs, especially for skilled workers. This in turn will help rebuild our struggling middle class and reinforce the basic American idea that the economy must work for everyone, not just a wealthy few. Here’s how the four parts work together to build what the president says is an economy that can last.

Scaling up America’s clean energy sector

America is already in a leadership position on clean energy. In 2011 we reclaimed the title of “World’s Largest Energy Investor” from China. U.S. investment in these technologies rose a staggering 33 percent to nearly $60 billion, whereas investment in China remained steady at about $47 billion. Globally, U.S. venture capital dominates the cutting-edge clean energy investment market, with U.S. venture dollars accounting for 76 percent of the $2.2 billion in clean-technology venture investments across the world in 2011. Visionary programs such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s targeted subsidies to renewable energy developers have catapulted us into this leadership position, and contributed to bringing renewable energies to a place where they are nearly cost-competitive with the much more established, much longer-subsidized traditional fossil fuels.

The president’s energy recommendations in his State of the Union address will continue this trend. As my colleague Dan Weiss writes, the speech included important recommendations to increase renewable energy development on public lands, provide incentives to businesses to upgrade their buildings and factories, and support the U.S. Navy in its goal of making the largest purchase of renewable energy in history. President Obama also called on Congress to show similar leadership by passing a clean energy standard, and by finally extending the Production Tax Credit for clean energy development.

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Current proposed and forecasted coal-fired capacity in the U.S., as projected by the Energy Information Administration’s scenario in 2011.

In 2010, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that coal would drop to 44% of America’s electrical generation by 2035. Actual generation dropped to that level in 2011.

This week, the agency again adjusted its long-term figures for coal in the U.S., projecting that generation will fall to 39% by 2035. But groups on the front lines of fighting coal plants say those figures are still far too conservative.

Due to a combination of cheap natural gas, higher coal prices, increasingly cost-competitive renewable energy, and an aggressive community of activists working to prevent the build of new coal plants, the coal sector is facing an unprecedented decline in generation. At least, that’s what leaders of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign are saying.

“The pipeline has essentially dried up,” said Bruce Nilles, the senior director of the Beyond Coal campaign, to Climate Progress. “Our view is that the rush is almost over.”

Here are some of the top indicators for coal’s future that Sierra Club pointed to after this week’s release of the EIA’s figures:

• At least 33,000 megawatts worth of existing coal-fired power plants are expected to retire in the coming decades, not including any retirements due to the recently-finalized mercury and air toxics standard from the Environmental Protection Agency. For reference, an average-sized coal-burning power plant is approximately 500 megawatts.
• The biggest difference from last year’s EIA projection is that more coal retirements will be driven by rising coal prices, state renewable energy standards and EPA clean air standards. All these signs point to reduced market share for coal and expanded market share for clean energy.
• No new coal plants are predicted to be constructed in the time period, beyond those few that are already under construction.
• The share of electricity production from clean energy sources (including hydropower and biomass) should increase from 10 to 16 percent during the time period.
• Overall electricity demand growth is expected to remain below one percent annually.

Certainly, the outlook for coal isn’t good. But there’s a common misconception that coal is completely dead.

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AP/Rich Pedroncelli

by Daniel J. Weiss

President Barack Obama described a “Blueprint for an America Built to Last” in his State of the Union address last night. It is designed to keep alive the promise of “an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

The plan includes a clean energy agenda that would help achieve this promise with well-paying jobs, lower energy bills, and cleaner air and water. Hopefully Republican congressional leaders will help him build it.

These energy proposals are reinforced by the Energy Information Administration’s just-released Annual Energy Outlook 2012 Overview, which includes the latest energy data and future projections. These predictions reveal that we must invest more in energy efficiency and clean renewable electricity while we produce more domestic oil and gas.

Below are the highlights of President Obama’s proposal and the new Energy Information Administration information that reinforces their importance. They include:

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Voters just love government investment in renewable energy — much more than their representatives in Washington, it seems.  I was reading an analysis of the State of the Union Address based on the response of “a group of 50 swing voters armed with dial meters” and came across this nugget:

Not surprisingly, the moment in the speech that brought the most positive reaction was Obama’s mention of the death of Osama bin Laden. It drew an average reading of 80 on the 0-100 scale used by the meters. Obama’s call for more investment in renewable energy drew nearly as strong a reaction, however, said Andrew Baumann, another of the pollsters who conducted the study. The passages of the speech that talked about phasing out subsidies for oil companies and competing with China and Germany for new developments in wind power and solar energy did particularly well.

And while small dial groups are hardly definitive by themselves, Climate Progress readers know that poll after poll after poll show the same thing (see Democrats Taking “Green” Positions on Climate Change “Won Much More Often” Than Those Remaining Silent and links to polls therein).

This enthusiasm has not waned even with all the attacks on clean energy — see Independents Support Federal Investment in “Green Jobs” 2-to-1 Despite Solyndra Media Storm:

In dozens of focus groups we have conducted this month across the country on a wide variety of subjects, when voters are asked where they would like new jobs in their state to come from, the first words out of their mouths are almost always the same – clean energy and related technology.  Voters believe that the clean energy economy is here and is growing, and they want their state to have a part of it.

And yet in the face of this overwhelming popularity of clean energy, we’re staring at job-killing cuts in federal clean energy investment and tax credits.  Why?  As a German State Minister explained: We Can Decarbonize With Renewables Because “We Don’t Have the … Koch Brothers.”

Again, the Kochs haven’t won over the majority of Americans or even the majority of swing voters — only the majority of that narrow slice of the electorate that drives conservative politics, the Tea Party (see “Independents, Other Republicans Split With Tea-Party Extremists on Global Warming“).

Some day, some masterful, Churchillian politician will figure this all out and lead the country toward true clean energy revolution. Some day.

The Chevy Volt has received the highest ratings possible for overall safety

by Roland Hwang, reposted from NRDC’s Switchboard

Top safety regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Transportation Administration (“NHTSA”) have closed the books on the Chevy Volt safety investigation. NHSTA concluded last Friday that it does not believe the Volt and other electric vehicles “pose a greater risk of fire than gasoline-powered vehicles.” This is good news for drivers, the economy, and our energy future.

Unfortunately, there are some in Washington D.C. that are attempting to turn a prudent safety investigation into a referendum on our nation’s commitment to clean energy and ending our dependence on oil. Congressman Darrell Issa will hold a hearing today with the country’s top safety regulator, David Strickland, and the CEO of GM, Dan Akerson, as the main witnesses.

Let’s quickly review the facts of the investigation:

• First, no fires have been reported in real-world to be caused by lithium ion batteries that power the Volt and other electric vehicles including the Nissan Leaf, Tesla Roadster, and the hybrid versions of the Hyundai Sonata, Infinity M35, Buick LaCrosse, and Mercedes S400. The Volts in question caught fire under laboratory test conditions that NHSTA and GM were unable to replicate in subsequent tests. With an abundance of caution due to the novelty of the technology, NHTSA chose to launch its safety investigation in the absence of any real world incidents, something it rarely does.
• Second, GM moved quickly to install retrofits that strengthen the battery case and ensure the integrity of the liquid cooling system. Crash tests by both NHTSA and GM of Volts with these modifications have produced no fires.
• Third, gasoline vehicles carry a significant risk of fire.  According to the National Fire Protection Association, there were 184,500 reported vehicles fires in 2010. This is high rate of fire, about 0.75 fires for every 1,000 vehicles.  With about 17,000 Volts and Leafs driven tens of millions miles to date, the first year of electric vehicle experience supports NHTSA’s conclusion that the Volt and other electric vehicles do not pose a greater risk of fire than gasoline-powered vehicles.

The Volt received the highest ratings possible for overall safety from both NHTSA and the independent Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (”IIHS”), neither of which intends to alter its ratings as a result of the investigation. The IIHS crash tests found no evidence of damage to the Volt’s battery packs. “If we had found that the battery pack had been damaged or certainly if we had subsequent concerns about fire risk – that would have raised red flags,” IIHS spokesman Russ Rader told Reuters.

Rather than promoting clean energy technologies to get America off oil, electric vehicle naysayers in Washington D.C. have chosen instead to attack the Volt. If successful, these attacks will only serve to benefit oil-exporting countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, at the expensive of workers building electric cars in Michigan, Tennessee, and California.

Fortunately, Volt owners know better. Ninety-three percent of Volt drivers told Consumer Reports they would “definitely buy (the Volt) again,” the highest ranking of any car ever included in the survey.  That’s a hopeful sign that consumers are ignoring the political theatrics and are voting with their wallets for an oil free future.

Roland Hwang is the transportation program director for NRDC’s energy program. This piece was originally published at NRDC’s switchboard.

What’s the only thing worse than turning a Congressional investigation into a months-long political circus? The leaders of that investigation not having a firm grasp of the policies they’re supposed to be examining.

California Republican Darrell Issa chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, one of the top bodies responsible for looking into the loan guarantee to the now-bankrupt solar manufacturer Solyndra. So you’d think that Mr. Issa would, after almost four months of investigation, be able to distinguish the extraordinary differences between a tax credit and a loan guarantee.

You would, sadly, be wrong.

In a shockingly ignorant commentary on the President’s State of the Union address last night, Issa blamed tax credits — the foundation of energy policy in this country — on the Solyndra bankruptcy, calling them a “scandal.” He was responding to this tweet, which was a response to the President’s call for Congress to extend vital tax credits for wind and other clean energies:

In a YouTube video message, Issa explained:

“We know that not only doesn’t it work out, but there are loads of additional scandals coming out and certainly the Administration is trying to double down on his ability to play political favoritism in the name of clean energy.”

Never mind that Issa has been a strong supporter of loan guarantees for nuclear energy and has requested multiple grants for clean energy companies in his district. Issa has also been a vociferous supporter of permanent tax credits for the oil and gas industry, which he calls absolutely necessary for job creation.

Yet, somehow, Issa and his colleagues in Congress have been completely silent on extending expiring short-term tax credits for the wind industry — a lapse that may cost the American wind industry 37,000 jobs next year. And when asked for his characterization of tax credits for clean energy, Issa gets them confused with loan guarantees and calls them a “scandal.”

For the record, here is the gaping difference between the two:

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Visit the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund website. Support climate scientists – give to the fund

by Scott A. Mandia, Climate Science Legal Defense Fund

Joshua Wolfe and I are very pleased to announce the official launch of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) home page. CSLDF is now a project of the non-profit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The official press release is below.

Please spread the word to all so that CSLDF can grow its support base. Cross-post the press release, Facebook it, Tweet it, e-mail it, etc. to all of your contacts and tell them to do the same.  Let us send a strong message to those that have harassed and attacked our scientific experts and dissuaded countless others from entering the field of climate science.

CLIMATE SCIENCE LEGAL DEFENSE FUND GETS NEW BACKING

PEER Sponsors Effort to Counter Fossil-Fueled Attacks on Climate Scientists

Washington, DC — The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) has found a non-profit home in Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) which provides it fiscal sponsorship and logistical support. CSLDF lets scientific colleagues and the public directly help climate scientists protect themselves and their work from industry-funded legal attacks.

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Other stories below: Bernie Sanders pledges to roll back fossil fuel subsidies; Not all wetlands are created equal

State of the Union 2012: Obama speech full text

…Our experience with shale gas shows us that the payoffs on these public investments don’t always come right away. Some technologies don’t pan out; some companies fail. But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy. I will not walk away from workers like Bryan. I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here. We have subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough. It’s time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that’s rarely been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that’s never been more promising. Pass clean energy tax credits and create these jobs.

We can also spur energy innovation with new incentives. The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change. But there’s no reason why Congress shouldn’t at least set a clean energy standard that creates a market for innovation. So far, you haven’t acted. Well tonight, I will. I’m directing my Administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public land to power three million homes. And I’m proud to announce that the Department of Defense, the world’s largest consumer of energy, will make one of the largest commitments to clean energy in history – with the Navy purchasing enough capacity to power a quarter of a million homes a year.

Of course, the easiest way to save money is to waste less energy. So here’s another proposal: Help manufacturers eliminate energy waste in their factories and give businesses incentives to upgrade their buildings. Their energy bills will be $100 billion lower over the next decade, and America will have less pollution, more manufacturing, and more jobs for construction workers who need them. Send me a bill that creates these jobs.

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BREAKING:  Energy parts of speech posted below — one, resigned, mention of climate plus lots and lots of hydrocarbons.  It’ll be a long, long night….

I propose the following drinking game:

1. The first time the President uses the phrase “climate change” or “global warming,” down the drink of your choice.
2. The second time, empty out the liquor cabinet.
3. The third time, it’s a weekend in Las Vegas with Charlie Sheen or Chelsea Handler.

OK, perhaps this is best called a sobriety game, if this is anything like his last State of the Union Address (see Obama calls for massive boost in low-carbon energy, but doesn’t mention carbon, climate or warming).

Given that Obama is apparently going to push domestic hydrocarbon production but not a price on carbon, I’m adding this:

1. Every time Obama talks up domestic oil production, drink one cup of coffee.
2. Every time Obama talks up domestic natural gas production, drink one cup of non-herbal tea.

And remember, if you don’t get any sleep tonight, it’s not my fault!

UPDATE:  The energy parts of speech posted below

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President of American Gas Association, 1981:  “In fact, gas energy — currently America’s largest domestically produced fuel — could prove to be the keystone to solving the nation’s energy crisis by serving as the ‘bridge fuel’ to the next century’s renewable energy technologies.”

VP of AGA, 1988, “refers to natural gas as a bridge fuel — the least harmful alternative while the world looks for other, longer-lasting solutions to the ‘greenhouse’ effect,” the Washington Post reported.

Chair of AGA, 2008:  “Natural gas will be the bridge fuel to the future…. The electric industry is expected to turn to natural gas as a bridge until clean coal and nuclear generation are available.”

It’s the longest bridge in history!  Heck, the Golden Gate Bridge only took 4 years to build!

The President will be touting natural gas in his State of the Union address tonight, according to sources.  Nothing wrong with touting gas — if you also tout a rising carbon price, which the president once did but no longer does.

Way back in June 2009, I pointed out the value of gas in the context of a climate bill with a rising CO2 price — see “Why unconventional natural gas makes the 2020 Waxman-Markey target so damn easy and cheap to meet.”  But the key point of that post was that you could put gas in existing, underutilized plants to replace existing coal power cheaply to meet the key 2020 target Obama.

Building lots of new gas plants doesn’t make much sense since we need to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next few decades if we’re to have any chance to avoid catastrophic global warming. We don’t want new gas plants to displace new renewables, like solar and wind,  which are going to be the  some of the biggest, sustainable job creating industries of the century.

Late last year, some of the leading (center-right) economists in the country — Nicholas Z. Muller, Robert Mendelsohn, and William Nordhaus — concluded in a top economic journal that the total damages from natural gas generation exceed its value-added at a low-ball carbon price of $27 per ton! At a price of $65 a ton of carbon, the total damages from natural gas are more than double its value-added!

For the record, stabilizing at 550 ppm  atmospheric concentrations of CO2, which would likely still be catastrophic for humanity, would require a price of $330 a metric ton of carbon in 2030, the International Energy Agency (IEA) noted back in 2008.

The fact that natural gas is a bridge fuel to nowhere was in fact, first demonstrated by the IEA in its big June 2011 report on gas — see IEA’s “Golden Age of Gas Scenario” Leads to More Than 6°F Warming and Out-of-Control Climate Change.  That study — which had both coal and oil consumption peaking in 2020 — made abundantly clear that if we want to avoid catastrophic warming, we need to start getting off of all fossil fuels.

Then came a remarkable new study by Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) that concluded:

In summary, our results show that the substitution of gas for coal as an energy source results in increased rather than decreased global warming for many decades.

Here was the key figure:

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by Kiley Kroh

Floridians have long been wary of offshore drilling – evidenced by a two-decade ban on drilling in state waters – due to the potentially devastating impact on the tourism industry.

During last night’s Florida Republican presidential debate, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum was asked whether a few thousand jobs from increased offshore drilling is worth the risk to the state’s vital tourism sector.

Santorum responded by avoiding the issue, showing his strong support for more drilling in a roundabout way, while making a completely bogus connection to pipelines and tankers:

Moderator: “Senator Santorum, here in Florida, BP is still airing apologetic appeals on television, but there are proposals to expand offshore oil drilling. The state’s most optimistic estimates say more drilling would create 5,000 jobs, but an oil spill would threaten Florida’s tourism industry, which employs nearly 1 million people. Is that worth the risk?”

Santorum: “What threatens the tourist industry in Florida, as we’re seeing, is a very bad economy — and a very bad economy that became a bad economy why? Because of a huge spike in oil prices in the summer of 2008. So energy is absolutely key to keeping all of our country healthy, specifically Florida, which is a destination. This is a place that relies on people being able to travel and afford to travel to come down here,” Santorum continued, “it relies upon an economy being strong.”

“It is absolutely essential that we have as much domestic supply of oil, that we build the Keystone pipeline, that we create the jobs that — that that would create, and provide oil from domestic sources. Pipelines that run on the floor of the sea or pipelines that come through America are the safest way to transport oil. It is tankers that are causing — that cause much more problems. Pipelines are the safe way. Building those rigs, piping that oil into — into — into our shore is the best way to create a good economy for the state of Florida.”

Santorum’s response completely ignores the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon disaster – a spill caused by an exploratory drilling rig, not a pipeline or a tanker. And many Floridians might take serious issue with his assertion that “building more rigs” for oil is the best way to grow their economy.

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In 2011, two deeply intertwined themes dominated international climate and energy stories: equity and the intersection of the economy and the environment.

“These two themes – equity and economy versus environment – will continue to shape stories in 2012,” says Manish Bapna, acting president of the World Resources Institute, in an interview on the Climate Progress podcast.

The Arab Spring, the Occupy movement, and protests in China all forced leaders and journalists to talk about issues of equity. And those movements all influenced climate and energy stories in some way.

“What’s quite interesting is that those notions around justice and around inequality played out not only politically…but also played out in the environmental arena,” says Bapna.

Protests in Tunisia and Egypt were sparked partly because of rising food prices – raising awareness of how climate change may impact agriculture and thus help drive political and social conflict.

The Occupy Movement helped breath new life into the Keystone XL protests, helping environmental groups delay – if not possibly stop all together – the tar sands pipeline that was considered a “done deal” last summer.

And in China, a wave of protests against oil spills, coal plants and air quality stimulated greater discussion of environmental issues in the country.

The events of 2011 came to a head at the Durban climate talks, where a last-minute agreement rested on fairness: “Equity has to be the centerpiece of the Climate discussion and our negotiations should be built on it,” said India’s Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan before agreeing to loose language that may bring developing countries on board for long-term emissions reduction commitments.

Meanwhile, as developed countries struggled with debt crises, high unemployment and sluggish economies, the political debate over the prudence of environmental protection raged on.

While some European countries rolled back support mechanisms for renewable energy, the region stayed committed to aggressive emissions reductions targets through 2020.

In the U.S., the picture was decidedly more negative. Energy became an extraordinarily contentious topic and conservatives pushed forward a political narrative that environmental protection and economic growth are diametrically opposed.

“This issue will undoubtedly be central to elections in the U.S.,” says Bapna. “And the way candidates respond will tell us a lot about how the President and Congress will deal with them in 2012.”

In this podcast, we speak with WRI’s Bapna about how concerns over equity and economic growth will influence a wide range of global issues, including climate policy in China, world-wide investment in renewable energy, and the conversation moving from the Durban climate talks and into the Rio +20 conference on sustainable development.

To listen to the interview, play the podcast above.

If you want to get automatic updates of our podcast, subscribe to us in itunes. You can simply go to itunes, search for Climate Progress, and click “subscribe free.” If you don’t use itunes, you can follow our RSS feed.

by Michael Conathan

This piece was originally printed as an op-ed in the Energy Guardian.

America’s oceans provide tremendous value to our economy, and are among the most valuable natural resources we possess. In an effort to maintain both the financial and environmental benefits of our marine resources, last week, the White House issued a draft implementation plan for the National Ocean Policy outlining the specific steps it will direct federal agencies to take to establish a more comprehensive, collaborative, and efficient approach to managing our ocean resources.

Since its initial release in 2009, the National Ocean Policy has been pilloried by the president’s political opponents as a misguided effort to circumvent congressional approval and impose new regulations that slow the pace of business and innovation. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

The policy creates no new regulations and relies entirely on existing authority to do precisely what Republicans have touted as one of their highest policy priorities—improve the efficiency of the federal government.

Much of the opposition centers on a concept known as coastal and marine spatial planning. In most cases, planning is considered a good thing. Business plans are the foundation of most successful ventures. And across the country, federal, state, and local governments have established land use plans that prioritize certain activities to protect private property and ensure we get the best value from public space.

Yet somehow, when these principles are applied to our oceans, even those who recognize the value of solid, well-conceived plans suddenly decry them as the tactics of government heavies, coming to kill jobs and abscond with our fundamental freedoms.

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by Zachary Rybarczyk

The destruction of ecosystems necessary to sustain California’s ranching and timber industries could cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars per year by 2070, according to a new study.

By combining an economic analysis with environmental models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, researchers from eight different institutions calculated the amount of environmental and economic damage to woodlands and shrub lands necessary to sustain California’s timber and livestock industries.

The costs could add more than $200 million each year in the next six decades.

The research was conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund, Duke University, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation Biology Institute, USDA Forest Service, Stanford University and the University of California at Santa Barbara. It concluded that global warming will lead to the destruction of non-irrigated vegetation and a “consistent decline” in the acreage of conifer forests, an environmental impact that will force the “gritty worlds of cattle ranching and forestry [to] take it on the chin.”

“It’s important for policymakers to better understand the value of services that nature provides to California’s economy, so that they can work to protect our natural resources and the economy in the face of climate change,”  said lead researcher  Rebecca Shaw, Ph.D.,  associate vice president of EDF’s ecosystems program and a working group member of the IPCC.”

Most of the costs to the livestock industry would be attributed to additional feed expenses necessary to overcome a lack of naturally growing grasses used by ranchers to forage their cattle:

“A less stable climate will reduce the ability of natural landscapes to support cattle grazing, so ranchers may have to grow or buy extra hay instead of getting it for free from nature, as they do now,” said lead report author Rebecca Shaw, Ph.D., associate vice president of EDF’s ecosystems program and a working group member of the IPCC.

The threat to forestry, agriculture and livestock is very real: In the last year alone, Texas has seen $5.3 billion in losses in the agricultural sector and $2 billion in losses in the livestock industry due to a serious, prolonged drought that was made worse by global warming.

The collaborative study on California was issued just as the state implements a carbon cap and trade system under the Global Warming Solutions Act – a program that will provide farmers and ranchers new economic opportunities by allowing them to sequester carbon and sell credits.

— Zachary Rybarczyk is an intern on the energy team at the Center for American Progress

Related Post:

• Catastrophic $5.3 Billion Texas Drought Hits Global Cotton, Beef, Peanut Butter and Even Pumpkin Market
• Warming-Enhanced Texas Drought Is Once in “500 or 1,000 Years … Basically Off the Charts,” Says State Climatologist: Leading experts explain how human-caused warming exacerbates the drought

Other stories below: John Podesta on why we need to continue leadership in clean energy; Obama to tout natural gas in State of the Union

Coal Industry Losing Steam

This year’s outlook is grim for the U.S coal industry, which after two years of rising profits has begun closing mines, signaling a new wave of production cutbacks and, possibly, another round of industry consolidation.

The country’s biggest coal producers, which begin reporting fourth-quarter results on Tuesday with St. Louis-based Peabody Energy Corp., should provide insight into how bad this year could be. Most should meet Wall Street’s earnings expectations for the last quarter of 2011 on export gains over a year ago, while tempering investor expectations for 2012, say analysts.

The two biggest threats facing U.S. coal companies are the low price of domestic natural gas, which is making thermal coal a less-attractive fuel for their utility-customers, and the shaky economic picture in Europe, which is damping exports of metallurgical coal.

Demand among European steelmakers has fallen off, pushing down the benchmark price for the highest grades of coal by nearly 30% over the past year. Also damping prices is tougher federal emissions rules for U.S. utilities, resulting in more planned closures of coal-fired generating plants and eroding the market for thermal coal.

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Record Ice Loss and Tundra Melt Amplify Warming Feedbacks

by Nick Sundt, reposted from the World Wildlife Fund

By 2020, California will face a shortfall of fresh water as great as the amount that all of its cities and towns together are consuming today

by Kevin Benfield, cross-posted from NRDC’s Switchboard

When you look at the official US drought monitor map, you immediately see that many American cities may be in the wrong places for long-term water sustainability.  In particullar, note the presence of “long-term,” severe-to-extreme drought conditions across most of Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona.

It’s a very sobering set of facts, especially when you consider that essentially every high-growth part of the US is experiencing significant dryness.  Now let’s look at a second map, this time world-wide:

This is not just a US Sun Belt problem but a major international problem.  Here are a few facts and projections extracted from a very good summary of the issues by Jay Kimball on his blog 8020 Vision:

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The 23,000 citizens of Bainbridge Island in Washington State are showing how a combination of transparent price signals, online social networking and old fashioned community organizing can make a big difference in reducing energy consumption.

Located in Puget Sound, Bainbridge Island has been a major energy hog — with residents consuming 60% more electricity than the regional utility’s average customer due a large chunk of building stock not being up to modern energy codes.

Residents were offered a choice by the utility: pay for a new substation to support increasing energy demand, or reduce energy consumption. The island chose the latter — and in the process is helping train new workers, save residents money, and illustrate the power of collective action.

Helped by a grant from the Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Neighborhood Program — an initiative created through the stimulus package — island residents have created an online community network for monitoring energy use. In the first winter since the RePower Bainbridge project was rolled out, peak power consumption dropped by 10 megawatts. Over the next few years, the program will also facilitate efficiency upgrades for 4,000 houses and 150 businesses, while training around 65 people.

Watch the video below, produced by Climate Solutions, to see the local action that’s driving change in Bainbridge. You can also check out the Climate Solutions website for more great Solutions Stories.

RePower Bainbridge from Climate Solutions on Vimeo.

Rising human carbon dioxide emissions may be affecting the brains and central nervous system of sea fishes with serious consequences for their survival, an international scientific team has found.

Carbon dioxide concentrations predicted to occur in the ocean by the end of this century will interfere with fishes’ ability to hear, smell, turn and evade predators, says Professor Philip Munday of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.

“For several years our team have been testing the performance of baby coral fishes in sea water containing higher levels of dissolved CO2 – and it is now pretty clear that they sustain significant disruption to their central nervous system, which is likely to impair their chances of survival,” Prof. Munday says.

That’s from an ARC news release on a new Nature Climate Change study, “Near-future carbon dioxide levels alter fish behaviour by interfering with neurotransmitter function” (subs. req’d).

The authors “report world-first evidence that high CO2 levels in sea water disrupts a key brain receptor in fish, causing marked changes in their behaviour and sensory ability.”

We’ve known for quite some time about the threat global warming and human activity poses to marine life (see Nature Geoscience study concludes ocean dead zones “devoid of fish and seafood” are poised to expand and “remain for thousands of years“).  And we’ve known the threat ocean acidification poses to shell-forming mollusks and crustaceans (see The Great Oyster Crash and Why Ocean Acidification Is “A Ticking Time Bomb” for Both Marine Life and Humanity and links below).

Here’s more on this ground-breaking new paper:

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