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USDA Tries Pricing and Trading Environmental Benefits

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

The announcement that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is creating a new Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets was largely overlooked in December amidst the recession and presidential transition.

The importance of the announcement was not lost, however, on editors at The Katoomba Group, whose Ecosystem Marketplace website is the largest clearinghouse of information on markets and payment schemes for ecosystem services. There, the creation of the Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets was welcomed as "part of a massive realignment of the management of natural resources."

USDA is already far too big and has not served taxpayers well. The agency specializes in doling out entitlements, administering corporate welfare, increasing the cost of food for consumers, and generally ensuring that the nation's agricultural sector operates in a bubble untouched by the realities of the market. However, the new ecosystem and markets program offers a little bit of hope for an agency that is otherwise hostile to free markets.

Refining the concept of ecosystem services has been the topic of serious academic deliberation only in the last few years. The definition of ecosystem services depends on the context. The most widely known assessment of ecosystem services is the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment published by the United Nations in 2005. That report described declining stocks of natural assets as an impediment to reaching international development goals relating to basic human welfare in impoverished communities.

Among the ecosystem services identified in the report as diminished worldwide were fisheries, wild foods, genetic resources, and processes that naturally moderate or regulate air quality, local and regional climate, erosion, water purification, pests and natural hazards like flooding. Other ecosystem services were reported on an upward trend, including production of crops and livestock, and a net increase in climate-stabilizing carbon sequestration worldwide.

Agricultural lands are managed ecosystems that produce market commodities, like food and fiber, but also ecosystem services such as the mitigation of flood waters, recharge of groundwater aquifers, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, and, at a stretch, even the warm fuzzy feelings brought to mind for some at the idea of happy cows and family farmers. In economic parlance, these services are positive externalities of agricultural production. If the idea of positive environmental externalities is a more foreign concept than that of negative environmental externalities, there's good reason for that. There's little incentive to provide positive environmental externalities, so such goods and services are produced more or less accidentally, altruistically-or just not at all.

From subsidized irrigation water to price supports to special property tax credits, our agricultural policies reveal a general sentiment that farms and ranches provide social value beyond the sum of the commodities they produce. The 2008 Farm Bill, which directed USDA to undertake research into markets for ecosystem services, also provided hundreds of billions of dollars in farm subsidies that have an effect exactly opposite from markets for ecosystem services. The subsidies promote production of commodities out of proportion to actual market demand, frequently at the expense of environmental values. Ideally, the Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets will review these farm subsidies that have, at best, only a sloppy relationship to any social values, and scrap them in favor of programs that more accurately represent market demands.

The new ecosystem and markets program is far from being USDA's first trial in incentive payments to farmers for conservation. Conservation payments have been a popular method of subsidizing farms and improving on-farm environmental performance dating back to the 1930s. USDA will administer more than $4 billion in conservation funds this year, including $1.8 billion in rental payments through the Conservation Reserve Program.

The presumed role of the new office differs from these older conservation programs in that it will try to find private buyers for environmental services from agricultural lands, as opposed to using public funds as carrots to reduce environmental harms associated with farm operations. In comments to the press last week, outgoing Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer said, "…as important as publicly funded conservation efforts are, we also need to supplement them with strong private markets where environmental benefits can be priced and traded."

The first ecosystem service to be examined at the new office will be carbon sequestration. There is a relatively small domestic market for carbon sequestration in the form of retail carbon offsets-the international voluntary carbon offset market was worth an estimated $258 million in 2007. However, rural landowners don't need the help of the Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets to engage in that market. (In a recent report on the U.S. voluntary carbon offset market the Government Accountability Office concluded that increasing the role of the federal government in that market might "reduce flexibility, increase administrative costs, and stifle innovation.")

The bigger game is anticipated in carbon offsets to comply with government caps on greenhouse gas emissions, a niche for ecosystem service providers that is market-like only in the sense that offsets are volunteered for sale. Similarly, there are many active domestic compliance schemes trading pollutant permits driven by government water quality standards in regulated water bodies.

As yet, there has been somewhat less action in implementation of truly private markets for such ecosystem services domestically, though there are numerous examples in Costa Rica, Mexico, and elsewhere. A private market could help to clean up one of the nation's most concerning areas of environmental devastation, the dead zone that can stretch for more than 8,000 square miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River out into the Gulf of Mexico each summer. Surveys show that nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from corn and soybean production is primarily responsible for the problem. It's no coincidence that the two crops are among the most heavily-subsidized nationwide. The first-best solution would be to cut subsidies that encourage over-intensive production of these crops.

Another needed approach is to implement market schemes to facilitate payments by downstream water users-including other farmers, municipalities, and potentially the shrimping and fishing industries-to improve the way fertilizers and runoff are managed on agricultural lands upstream. In this case, ecosystem services markets will allow the biggest beneficiaries of cleaner water and healthier fisheries in the Mississippi River system to make the smart investments that are so badly needed.

A "massive realignment in the management of natural resources" to bring more ecosystem services out of the political realm and into the market would be welcome news. It is hard to imagine such change coming from within USDA, but that would certainly be a good place to start.

California Air Resources Board Passes Costly Plan During Economic Crisis

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

In one room in Sacramento last week, state lawmakers were staring into a $40 billion budget hole stretching sometime into 2010. There's talk of the cash-strapped state government handing out IOUs when bills come due in February. Not far away, in another room in Sacramento, the California Air Resources Board was unanimously adopting what The New York Times described as the "country's first comprehensive plan for curbing emissions of heat-trapping gases." What about the economic implications of the emissions plan during this huge budget crisis and national recession? The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office said the plan was not "directly influenced by cost-effectiveness considerations or macroeconomic analysis."

The disconnect is startling. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's words of warning about California's impending "financial Armageddon" were still hanging over the Capitol, but environmentalists didn't seem to notice.

Mainstream environmental groups have been slow to acknowledge that, realistically, progress on climate change will need to take backseat to stabilizing the economy right now. In September, while new bank failures were in the headlines on a daily basis, the Sierra Club was asking its members to "turn up the heat" on American Funds, Vanguard, Fidelity, Ameriprise, Morgan Stanley and other mutual funds that the organization believes don't take climate change seriously enough. It was not the most opportune moment to discuss the global distribution of permafrost, to say the least.

On the other hand, reducing greenhouse gas emissions need not wait for climate change policy to be enacted-the economic downturn is also an emissions downturn. For example, the most recent state figures showed gasoline consumption this August was down 8 percent and diesel consumption declined 14 percent compared to the same month last year. The decrease in gasoline and diesel transportation emissions in August alone was 40 percent larger than a year's worth of greenhouse gas savings associated with building the high-speed rail system, as estimated in California's adopted climate change plan for 2020. That's right, a large emissions reduction achieved without any mandate passed down from Washington or Sacramento.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters' recent announcement that Americans drove 3.5 percent less in October 2008 than last October (the sharpest decline since 1971), and November's 37 percent drop in national auto sales are two signs indicating that the sour economy will continue to keep fuel consumption low, even though gas prices are no longer near this summer's historic highs. So this is a perfect time to implement the radically moderate principle at the heart of both fiscal conservatism and environmental conservation: living within our means.

There are several ways to help taxpayers save money and reduce emissions simultaneously. Pay-as-you-drive car insurance will be available to California drivers next year, giving people an incentive to drive less. Groups like the Brookings Institution, Environmental Defense Fund and others, suggest if 30 percent of California drivers switch to the new usage-based insurance coverage, most will pay less in premiums, while reducing their time on the road enough to save 5.5 billion gallons of gasoline by 2020 (on an annual basis, this is more than four times the savings of the proposed high-speed rail project which is being pushed in California as a way to reduce emissions).

Similarly, pay-as-you-save programs for everything from major appliances to building retrofits can help individuals overcome the initial price hurdle of energy-efficiency upgrades in homes and businesses. These types of programs allow people to pay off the initial cost of such upgrades in installments, with the money they save on their utility bills. (And amidst the fiscal backdrop, the small loans entailed in such programs are as secure as they come.) Combined with the smarter metering and pricing currently being implemented by utility companies, consumers will soon have the means and the incentives to make more efficient energy decisions. Based on the results of pilot programs using smart meters, being able to see electricity prices at the time of use could prompt consumers to cut peak energy demand by 5 percent. Much more significant reductions are observed when these metering and pricing systems are used in conjunction with smarter thermostats and appliances.

The California Energy Commission has modeled scenarios that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity use to 1990 levels by the year 2020 using these types of efficiency measures alone. These measures would save more than $100 per metric ton of avoided greenhouse gases. The adopted climate change plan would implement roughly equivalent measures, but it also calls for increased renewable energy generation that, by air board estimates, would cost about $84 per metric ton.

Innovative pay-as-you-go approaches can work to cut unnecessary waste and increase efficiency at the same time that they help balance the environmental accounts, making sure we keep a safe margin of natural resources in the bank. Lawmakers working to curb greenhouse gas emissions and those looking to cushion the blow of the recession should focus on measures that cut costs first.

A previous round of major make-work projects in the Western states, the massive New Deal water projects-like California's Central Valley Project and the damming of the Colorado River-were carried out with virtually no regard for expense or environmental disruption. Today, those projects still represent some of the greatest examples of corporate welfare in history, with a costly and complex legacy that has yet to be paid off. Right now, more than ever, California can't afford bad policies.

Measure Q: The Wrong Train

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:00:00 EDT

These tough economic times make many of us think twice about what we're buying. This critical thinking is important as voters consider potential purchases like Measure Q, the 20-year sales tax increase proposed for the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District (SMART).

Our priorities don't change just because our budgets are overextended, but in times like these, households and governments alike are challenged to use what limited funds we have as effectively as possible. Proponents of Measure Q say their diesel train plan will fight global warming and support "environmentally responsible" transportation. Voters need to decide not only whether the plan achieves the right goals, but whether it can deliver at the right price.

Evaluating the cost-effectiveness of greenhouse gas abatement projects is relatively simple. The standard approach is to calculate the cost of the project and divide it by the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are avoided as a result of the project. Measure Q proponents say the rail plan will cost $450 million in construction costs and an average of $19 million to operate each year, while it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 14,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. That's a cost of more than $2000 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, or $1357 per metric ton in operating expenses alone. These figures don't include construction of the bike path (incidentally, the part of the project that would be postponed if revenues run short) or debt service on bonds (roughly $8 million per year).

Thus, by proponents' own estimates, the train project would be at least 30 to 45 times more expensive than the most expensive greenhouse gas abatement projects being considered to meet current climate stabilization goals at state and national levels.

To put these costs in perspective, consider that in the nation's first mandatory cap-and-trade auction last month, allowances in the northeastern states' greenhouse gas regulatory program sold for $3 per metric ton of carbon dioxide. Voluntary offsets can be bought from popular vendors like TerraPass for $13 per ton. Permits in the European Union cap-and-trade program are currently about $30 per ton-the general price range that many analysts expect to see around the world as more industries enter into the market. Numerous studies show that the significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions sought at state and national levels can be achieved for less than $50 per ton. Hybrid electric cars and solar energy generation are notoriously pricey, but even so, these technologies are ten or 15 times more cost-effective than Measure Q.

The proposed tax increase is money is taken out of household budgets that can't be spent on proven, cost-saving energy conservation measures like home insulation or more efficient appliances. For many North Bay residents, the rising cost of living-exacerbated by higher sales taxes-makes the difference between renting or owning a home, between driving an old car or buying a newer, more fuel-efficient car, and between commuting long-distance or living near good jobs and schools. There's nothing "environmentally responsible" about that.

The train plan would reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Sonoma and Marin counties by an estimated 0.2 percent below current levels. SMART proponents paint pictures of idyllic commutes with riders "checking the morning headlines as you sip your java," but the reality is that no transit system in the U.S. has persuaded more than 0.5 percent of drivers to take transit by adding rail service in recent decades. Rail proponents ask voters to approve a project that will cost more than $1 billion all told, for the promise of reducing peak-hour traffic congestion and overall greenhouse gas emissions by less than 1 percent.

Measure Q fails to meet reasonable cost standards for greenhouse gas abatement. Real environmental responsibility requires that we reject wishful thinking and wasteful spending and focus instead on proven, cost-effective measures.

Environmental Costs of Hemp Prohibition in the United States

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Journal of Industrial Hemp

This article seeks to add to the discussion about hemp prohibition in the United States by comparing the environmental performance of industrial hemp relative to its substitutes in a few key industrial applications. The life cycle environmental performance of industrial hemp products is of particular interest because environmental inefficiencies often impose costs on society as a whole, and additionally, the government has initiated a large number of programs intended both to reduce pollution and to increase production of bio-based industrial feedstocks. The positive attributes of industrial hemp are considered here in the context of counter-vailing attributes.

Analysis of California's Propositions 7 and 10: Renewable Energy Mandates and Handouts

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Introduction

California has just set out on a highly ambitious mission, a decades-long effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the equivalent of 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Two propositions on the California General Election ballot for November 4 exemplify the kind of bold thinking that makes the state an environmental and economic leader: Proposition 7, which would raise state standards for renewable energy procurement, and Proposition 10, which would authorize bonds to finance a variety of alternative energy research and development. Unfortunately, the two propositions fail to transcend the legislative shortsightedness that has burdened California with high budget deficits and poor economic performance in recent years.

Proposition 7 would require unprecedented and costly alternative energy acquisitions that far exceed the alternative energy goals set by Governor Schwarzenegger, state legislators, state energy agencies and expert advisors to the California Air Resources Board for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The goal set by Proposition 7 probably can’t be met, which will mean penalties on utilities that will be passed on to customers as rate increases. Worse, it would mean diverting state revenues and household budgets away from more cost-effective greenhouse gas emission reduction strategies. Tough economic times mandate that we are allowed to use the most cost effective means to reduce greenhouse gases.

Proposition 10 is likewise badly flawed. It gives subsidies to people who already buy clean energy cars or solar or wind, and of course lots of grants to some special interest companies that are pushing for this plan. It would not effectively increase the use of alternative energy. Worse, among other provisions, it would give out rebates (at an eventual taxpayer expense of more than $1 billion) to buyers of the Honda GX CNG, a natural-gas-powered car that emits more greenhouse gases than the more popular and more easily fueled Toyota Prius. The $10,000 rebate to Honda natural gas car buyers comes as no surprise, as this proposition is bankrolled by T. Boone Pickens, founder of Clean Energy Fuels Corporation, a company that makes natural gas refueling stations. Pickens has already secured at least $107 million in public grants for its private projects and would almost certainly line up more contracts with the money provided in Proposition 10.

This situation has prompted another California rarity: virtually every major environmental group in California opposes Proposition 7, and Proposition 10 has earned criticism from the state’s top energy experts.

The Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act: Prison Overcrowding, Parole and Sentencing Reform (Proposition 5)

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Introduction

California’s prisons are overburdened because state policies have created an endless cycle of incarceration that does little to promote public safety. An estimated one-third of inmates in California prisons are nonviolent recidivists who have never been sentenced for a violent crime. Meanwhile, as a result of sentencing changes in the late 1970s and early ’80s, the prison population has quadrupled, the parolee population has more than quadrupled, and general fund expenditures for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) have ballooned from 2 percent to 10 percent, or more than $10 billion today. State institutions are at double their capacity, resulting in such poor performance that portions of the state’s criminal justice system are now run by federal mandate. The threat of federal takeover of more of the state’s failing prison system is real and significant.

Proposition 5, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act, will be decided by voters in the November 4, 2008 General Election. The proposition contains within it some of the important reform measures that numerous advisory committees have for years urged the state to implement.2 These reforms would help to break the state’s appallingly high prison recidivism rate by bringing California’s parole terms and sanctions for parole violation more in line with other states’, which have managed incarcerated populations more effectively. Proposition 5 would also build on the cost-saving drug treatment programs approved by voters in 2000 under Proposition 36, the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act.

California's Proposition 7 Is Flawed

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Television ads about Proposition 7 have been airing for weeks in California. The ads are part of a ballot battle that pits Arizona billionaire Peter Sperling and campaign spokesman Jim Gonzalez against a coalition which includes the state's Democratic and Republican parties, big utilities, alternative energy providers, California Labor Federation, California Taxpayers' Association, California League of Conservation Voters and California Chamber of Commerce.

Proposition 7 would change California's renewables portfolio standard (RPS), a set of state mandates for electricity procurement from geothermal, biomass, small hydro, wind, solar and other state-approved alternative energy sources. California's first RPS was enacted in 2002, when 11 percent of the state's electricity came from renewable sources. The 2002 RPS mandated that 20 percent of the state's electricity be renewable electricity by 2017. In 2006, the state's actual renewable energy share was unchanged at 11 percent, but legislators upped the ante and called for an accelerated RPS anyway-20 percent by 2010.

Today, the state's renewable electricity share still hovers around 11 percent, yet government energy experts remain confident that the state will eventually meet the 20 percent goal-if not in the next 16 months, then soon enough. They've even begun workshops to explore what will be needed to meet Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's longer-term goal of 33 percent renewable electricity by 2020.

Without even a preliminary analysis completed, Proposition 7 would arbitrarily mandate an increase in renewable electricity share of 40 percent by 2020 and 50 percent by 2025.

Anyone with a bad idea and a billion dollars can buy their way onto the California ballot. What remains to be seen is whether the combined opposition of California's major lobbies is enough to convince voters to oppose a proposition that nearly two-thirds of them supported in preliminary polling.

Voters have many reasons to oppose Proposition 7. The RPS targets are imprudent and regrettably out of sync with the considerable effort already underway to devise a coherent greenhouse gas reduction strategy for the state. Further, the poorly-worded initiative may inadvertently drive small and mid-size renewable energy projects out of the state market. But the biggest problem with Proposition 7 is that it requires Californians to buy renewable energy no matter how expensive it is-a scenario that promises to damage both ratepayers and the environment.

Proposition 7 softens the criteria for determining the state's reference price for electricity, allows utilities to charge 10 percent over that reference price to accommodate the higher price of renewable energy generation, and locks utility companies into 20-year contracts with generators. That means Californians could be bound to very expensive utility contracts even as far more cost-competitive renewable energy sources, energy-saving technologies, and other greenhouse-gas-cutting opportunities become available. To top it off, the proposition specifies that the new laws it creates could only be changed by a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature or another ballot initiative, so it would be hard to fix the problems that Proposition 7 would create in the future.

Proponents of the measure get one thing right: they say it won't raise taxes. But since it will expand state government, create redundant responsibilities among state agencies, and increase local government costs, it will certainly result in greater government spending. Their claim that the measure won't increase electricity rates by more than 3 percent is simply false; the Legislative Analyst's Office has determined that "the measure includes no specific provisions to implement or enforce this declaration."

The solar thermal generation favored by the proposition's authors is still two-to-four-times more expensive than electricity from natural gas (20 to 40 cents per kWh as compared to 9 cents for natural gas), and it will take billions of dollars in new transmission infrastructure to bring these alternative energy sources into the California grid.

Greenhouse gas reduction policies will backfire if they significantly raise the cost of living and doing business in California. Bad policies like Proposition 7 can easily increase near-term greenhouse gas emissions more than no policy at all. The effort to clean up California's power supply is better served by maintaining the state's flexibility to buy from the best sources at the right time and the right price.

Cars Disproportionately Blamed for Greenhouse Gas Emissions

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EDT

General Motor's Hummer brand, popular back when gasoline cost a little over a dollar a gallon, is well on its way to becoming a historic anecdote now that gas prices top $4 a gallon in many places. Yet, the myth persists that American drivers-and U.S. automakers-will never change. If the U.S. is going to be successful in its climate change policy, that kind of anti-economic thinking needs to follow the Hummer into the dustbin.

In the near future, the United States will likely commit-just as some individual states already have-to a long-term goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60 to 80 percent. Many assessments of this significant challenge begin with the observation that transportation currently accounts for 33 percent of total CO2 from fossil fuel combustion, the "largest share from any end-use economic sector," and end with the conclusion that meeting greenhouse gas emission reduction targets means eliminating the personal automobile as a mode of transport. But before jumping to that conclusion, it is worth examining more closely how much transportation contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and what forces are already at work reducing transportation emissions.

Personal transportation is unduly targeted for emission reductions at the onset as an accident of how we account for greenhouse gas emissions. We're frequently told that the transportation sector is the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, but this is a misleadingly statement. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) inventories emissions in six main categories-electricity generation, transportation, industry, agriculture, commercial and residential. When inventoried in those categories, electricity generation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions (34 percent in 2006), followed by transportation (28 percent), industry, agriculture, commercial, through to the smallest sector, residential (5 percent). Electrical power is an industrial product "consumed" by the other economic sectors, however, so the next step EPA reports is a calculation of emissions with electricity generation allocated among the five smaller sectors. After these emissions are distributed, "industry" accounts for the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions (29 percent in 2006), followed by transportation (28 percent), commercial, residential and agriculture (8 percent).

This simple example shows how the categories in which emissions are reported in has a large influence over how each economic sector is perceived. Distributing emissions from the electrical power industry dramatically changes the respective contribution of the other sectors, with the exception of transportation, where a nearly insignificant amount of rail transportation contributes a small amount of electricity to the mix. Transportation is "consumed" by the other sectors, just as electricity is, but the accounting method just lumps together passenger cars, light-duty trucks, sport utility vehicles, commercial trucks, domestic aviation, military aircraft, commercial and recreational boats and emissions from all other modes of motorized transport.

Even with commercial, personal and other kinds of transportation included in one sector, it still doesn't add up to the "largest share" of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, it is the largest share of carbon dioxide (CO2)-the dominant greenhouse gas-from fossil fuel combustion-the main source of anthropogenic CO2. Weighted for global warming potential over a 100-year time horizon, EPA reports that CO2 from fossil fuel combustion accounted for approximately 80 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2006. The other 20 percent, including CO2 from industrial processes, methane from livestock and landfills, nitrous oxide from agriculture, and some chemical solvents and propellants, should not be overlooked in greenhouse gas reduction strategies-in fact, these categories provide some of the quickest and least expensive opportunities for emission reductions. Household vehicle use currently is responsible for a much smaller portion of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, 16-18 percent, than is commonly believed.

What is vastly more important than the relative amount of greenhouse gas emissions from this sector, however, is the utility provided by passenger cars and light-duty trucks and the opportunities that lie ahead for reducing the greenhouse gas intensity of personal motorized transport while maximizing utility. Recent data show that is exactly what has occurred in recent years, even without greenhouse gas emission reduction schemes in place. Since 1990, fossil fuel consumption in the U.S. has grown at an average rate of 1 percent per year, lower than the average annual population growth rate (1.1 percent), electricity consumption (1.9 percent) and GDP (3.0 percent).

CO2 emissions from personal automobiles are widely viewed as a function of three factors: carbon content of fuels, fuel economy (often expressed in miles per gallon, but passenger miles per gallon is another important measure), and vehicle use (typically expressed as vehicle miles traveled or VMT). Since 1990, the average fuel economy has increased slightly while the power and capacity of vehicles has increased to a large degree. Fuel carbon content has remained relatively unchanged.

Changes in vehicle characteristics (e.g. hybrid fuel-electric engines) and the types of fuels used (e.g. ethanol and biodiesel) increasingly require full life-cycle analyses-including emissions from production and disposal processes (in the case of batteries)-to make meaningful comparisons to fossil fuel carbon contents possible. A related affect of the growing market share of these alternative vehicle types is that the transportation sector may become more similar to the industrial sector, in which energy-intensive production processes are increasingly "off-shored" under the pressure of domestic environmental regulations.

Life-cycle analysis of mass transportation, particularly rail transit, is likewise revealing. When greenhouse gas emissions associated with the underlying infrastructure required for rail transit are included in the lifetime operating emissions, new rail systems are unlikely to compare favorably to the average passenger car.

Of the three factors contributing to vehicle greenhouse gas emissions, vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is the most complicated and controversial in many respects. Strictly speaking, VMT for the U.S. vehicle fleet-unlike the volume of gasoline sold or the number of car registrations-isn't measured, but estimated from traffic counts, sample odometer readings, household surveys and other references. Of these three factors, VMT has arguably the closest relationship to the actual utility (mobility) derived from vehicle use and the most distant relationship to greenhouse gas emissions. VMT estimates derived from travel demand models are a very poor basis for estimating greenhouse gas emissions, though they are frequently used for this purpose by regional planning agencies. Greenhouse gas emission estimates derived this way fail to capture excess fuel consumed as a result of congestion, among many other factors.

A final perception that makes personal automobiles disproportionately maligned as a source of greenhouse gas emissions is the idea that demand for this mode of transportation is somehow out of control, and that consumers are indifferent to price signals, including the price of gasoline. In one recent analysis, for example, analysts noted that "a $10/ton CO2 permit price would have a large impact on coal prices, creating a relatively strong incentive for coal-dependent electric utilities to consider shifts in their generation portfolio. In the transport sector, by contrast, the same carbon price would translate into a 10-cent per gallon increase in gasoline prices." In the short-run, automobile drivers would be expected to absorb the carbon-adjusted cost of gasoline without significantly changing their behavior.

Consumer behavior is not completely unaccountable, however, as the considerable response to fuel prices and other economic signals in the past couple of years has proven. The popularity of light-duty trucks and sport utility vehicles has waned, and average new vehicle fuel economy improved in 2005 and 2006 as a result. Growth in VMT among passenger vehicles, at 2.7 percent per year for the period from 1990 to 2004, dropped to an average annual growth rate of 0.8 percent from 2004 to 2006. As gas prices spiked this year, the U.S. Department of Transportation reports that Americans traveled 40.5 billion fewer miles from November 2007 through May 2008 than they drove during the same period a year ago. Additionally, nationwide, hybrid vehicle registrations increased 38 percent in 2007.

Policymakers should not despair if, as expected, reducing CO2 emissions from the transportation sector is more expensive in the short-term than reducing greenhouse gas emissions in other sectors of the economy. Personal transportation is responsible for a relatively small share of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and provides a value which consumers rightly place in high priority - mobility. In the long-term, consumer preferences will undoubtedly change as efficient and cost-effective new vehicle technologies become widely available.

What Exactly Is One Planet Living?

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

One Planet Living Communities, a program of BioRegional Development Group, is a radical sustainability initiative promoting development that fits what proponents consider a socially equitable ecological footprint. As defined, a "one planet" ecological footprint is a consumption pattern in which individuals use, directly or indirectly, no more than their proportionate share of the natural resources that the world can sustainably produce. In North America, using proponents' assumptions and calculations, that means scaling back overall resource use by 80 percent on average. In the BioRegional framework, it also means achieving zero waste and zero carbon dioxide emissions from building operations, among other metrics.

To BioRegional, "one planet" living is not just a lofty ideal, but a fully-operational design principle. Based in London, the company currently coordinates with a handful of One Planet Living Communities including Masdar City, the "world's largest eco-city," under construction 11 miles outside of Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. BioRegional's flagship North American project is Sonoma Mountain Village, a private, for-profit development by Codding Enterprises in Rohnert Park, California.

Codding Enterprises is best known for building some of the first suburban shopping malls in northern California. Local historian Gaye LeBaron has reportedly likened company founder Hugh Codding's sweeping influence on the area to the 1906 earthquake. (The natural disaster nearly leveled Santa Rosa at the same time that it devastated San Francisco, 50 miles further south.) At first glance, it seems incongruous that building the first "one planet" development in North America has fallen to Codding Enterprises. In reality, the company is doing what it has always done: building and selling the suburban "American dream." Only, at least in the heartland of progressive northern California where there is already a Prius on every block, the market in suburban ideals is changing.

Rohnert Park (pop. 41,000) is also a storied setting for Sonoma Mountain Village. The city was incorporated in 1962 and modeled after the master-planned and mass-produced postwar "Levittowns," the archetypal American suburb. One feature of its masterminding is Rohnert Park's maddeningly circuitous, alphabetically clustered street network. An unwary visitor trying to get across town can easily find themselves at any number of cul-de-sacs dead-ending at neighborhood parks. (Dana Court, Diane Court, Darlene Court and Donna Court near Dorotea Park, to take a random example). There are no cul-de-sacs in the plans for Sonoma Mountain Village. This next-generation master plan utilizes the SmartCode design template, intended to promote forms similar to the organic patterns of development of traditional villages and cities-in essence a reversal of the patterns of development rigidly enforced by conventional zoning laws.

Eventually, 1,900 homes and 500,000 square feet of commercial space will be built at the 200-acre site. The project already boasts of a $7.5-million, 1.14-megawatt solar panel array, biodiesel-powered construction, and an on-site zero-waste steel frame factory. (Project planners find steel framing ideal because it dramatically reduces construction time as compared to wood-frame construction, and because, unlike most wood posts and beams, the steel beams can be recycled into new buildings at a later date.)

The scale of Sonoma Mountain Village and Masdar City make them more than just your average utopian or alternative-living experiments. Those who are not motivated by, for example, social equity for its own sake, may view these projects simply as more green businesses in the booming sustainability industry, albeit ones that are pushing the edge of what is technically and legally possible.

There is plenty of room for disagreement on the merits of the assumptions embedded in the environmental and social ideals that appear to be driving these developments. And life in these communities is clearly not for everybody. But even skeptics and critics of the initiative may find it interesting to see how these developments fare, and wonder if the challenge of their implementation will reveal anything about the environmental and social questions that lie underneath the carefully-calibrated design metrics of "one planet" living.

Reason Foundation's Skaidra Smith-Heisters recently interviewed Kirstie Moore, Sustainability Project Manager for Sonoma Mountain Village, to get details on what the project entails.

Skaidra Smith-Heisters: Social equity is a fundamental of the One Planet Living initiative, the ecological footprint framework and (along with environment and economy) one of the so-called "Three Es" of sustainability. How does the design of Sonoma Mountain Village accommodate social equity?

Kirstie Moore: Sonoma County has relatively high housing costs compared with wages. And combined with the high percentage of single-family homes in the existing housing stock, there is a shortage of affordable housing. We will build more affordable housing than required by law and without deed restrictions to promote upward economic mobility. We intend to make it easy and affordable for our residents to live and work within Sonoma Mountain Village. Our goal is to create over 4,400 jobs from Sonoma Mountain Village, which will more than replace the 2,500 lost when Agilent, the former owner of the [high tech manufacturing] campus, vacated Rohnert Park. The mixed use plan of the community allows for jobs and people to be within a close proximity to each other, which also reduces the amount of carbon produced from VMTs (vehicle miles traveled). Codding has also invested in a Business Incubator which currently leases approximately 30,000 square feet of office space at Sonoma Mountain Village; the Incubator is available to new business specializing in sustainable resources and socially-relevant technologies. [According to Moore, a "socially-relevant technology" is technology that solves a social problem-Ed.]

Smith-Heisters: So, over the next 50 years as population grows-not only in Sonoma County, but in the world as a whole-you'll be recalculating how this community fits in?

Moore: We'll be constantly recalculating and looking at the data that is available to make sure that we keep within the "one planet" footprint. We have our 2020 goals, and various goals along the path, but it is a moving target. We can only base our calculations and our project development on the information that we currently have. We do have to be flexible, that's kind of the beauty of having BioRegional One Planet Communities overseeing us. It entails continual monitoring.

Smith-Heisters: How does social equity as a design principle at Sonoma Mountain Village sync with bioregional ideas and local environmental considerations? (For example, the differences in natural amenities between northern California and sub-Saharan Africa?)

Moore: BioRegional looks for appropriate ways to create social equity within the context of the specific region. For example, in the Masdar City project in the UAE they paid particular attention to labor practices. In Sonoma County, due to local and state laws, that is not a challenge we face.

Smith-Heisters: What regulatory impediments has the project faced? How do the technological challenges of the development compare to the challenges of "legalizing sustainable development"?

Moore: If you clear a path for technology it is usually created pretty quickly in today's world. The challenges that we face "legalizing sustainable development" are usually policy-related, which takes a lot longer.

PUC Rule 18 states that it is illegal to cross property lines with privately-metered energy. If PUC Rule 18 gets changed at some point, then we would be able to take central solar systems and supply individual residences with power. If we manage to overcome that at some point, we would actually be able to make it more affordable for people to buy these homes with all this technology on it-it is about a 30-35 percent cost difference.

Water is a huge story in Sonoma County. The fact that it is currently illegal to flush a toilet with anything but drinking water is almost funny, especially when you look at the plight of the rest of the world and the kind of water the rest of the world is drinking. It is really very sad. If that rule can be changed- [State Assemblyman] Jared Huffman has been extremely successful in getting that rule changed in multi-family units, condos and prisons, in everything but single-family-then our homes will be able to reduce water use by probably over 85 percent. Currently, without those kinds of technologies available, we can reduce water use within the individual home by 55-60 percent, which is still pretty good.

Smith-Heisters: Do you have a sense of why there is resistance to changing the PUC requirements?

Moore: I don't actually think there's resistance, frankly. PUC Rule 18 was put in to encourage people to reduce energy use. It was put in there for a reason that made sense at the time, it is just outdated and we need to start the process of changing it. One developer can't do it alone, but a lot of people actually do recognize that it is an issue. It is just a matter of getting it done.

Street widths are another issue for us. With SmartCode, we want to have narrower streets. We don't want our streets to be set up for drag racing. The City of Rohnert Park is absolutely on board with narrowing the street widths. Most cities are. It is actually the [Office of the] State Fire Marshal that is the roadblock there with concerns about fire truck access. Again, there are sensible reasons why it should be a certain way. However, there are options. Cities (such as Chico) in California have gotten narrower street widths. In Sacramento, a couple of weeks ago, I presented at an Attorney General and local government commission workshop, where a supervisor from Sacramento was talking about the Elverta Specific Plan. They have incentives within that plan to say if a developer will commit to exceeding [California energy efficiency regulatory requirements] by 25 percent, one of the things they'll be granted is narrower street widths.

If the [neighborhood] electric vehicle speed limit could go up to 35 miles per hour instead of 25 miles per hour, it might encourage people to use electric vehicles. [Neighborhood electric vehicles are light-weight one- to four-person battery-powered vehicles intended for short trips, restricted by law from going over 25 miles per hour and driving on any roadway with a speed limit in excess of 35 miles per hour-Ed.] Trying to encourage people to get out of the car is probably one of the hardest things. Vehicle miles traveled and the effect VMT have on the environment is absolutely huge in relation to land use. Planning your development around something like the SmartCode, and providing residents with options like links to rail, bus routes, really good car sharing, positioning the community so that everybody is within maybe a 10-minute walk to a school and then setting up systems like "walking buses" to actually get children to school (where you've got children walking in twos, with adults on either end). You can provide them with safe access to school without 25 parents individually dropping their kids off in the car.

Smith-Heisters: What is the timeframe that you're using for this particular development-how far out are you looking? How long do you think this community will be functioning in the way you've imagined it?

Moore: We are looking for this to be a community that will go on and on and on. As new technologies or different practices come online in 20-, 50-, 100-years' time, maybe things will change. The houses that are built from steel frame can be truly recycled into different structures that the technology of the future will be able to support. The community will be governed by an HOA [Home Owners' Association], which for the foreseeable future would need to be part of this. I would hate to see that it exists over time exactly as it does at build-out, because with the way the world is moving and the knowledge that the world is gaining, things will need to change. Hopefully we will set a framework where that will happen, and the "one planet" footprint will go on for as long as people are living here.

Smith-Heisters: What will the HOA require of people that live and work in this community, and what does that allow you to do in terms of design that you wouldn't be able to do in a more conventional development?

Moore: HOAs are pretty common. With Sonoma Mountain Village, it is imperative that you have some form of HOA. Codding will be part of the HOA until it is large enough to be taken over by the homeowners. With so many common areas on the site-wetlands, a riparian corridor, a retention pond area with natural habitat, community gardens, the town square, underground water storage of around 4 million gallons-all of that infrastructure eventually needs to be adopted by the city, water agency, county, community, and/or HOA. That's all factored into how we set up the HOA. Eventually, say PUC Rule 18 does get changed. Then, the HOA would most likely be responsible for managing the solar array that provides power to the single-family homes. Maybe they would manage certain greywater systems. In a typical HOA, or what CC&R [covenants, conditions and restrictions] would govern, you see things like: you can't paint your house pink, can't leave a car parked outside for more than X amount of time, can't rent a bed and breakfast room for more than two weeks, things like that.

We don't want to restrict people from becoming more environmentally conscious. My background is with traditional, very large, mass-producing homebuilders. In the CC&Rs and HOA rules and requirements I'm used to looking at, you would never be allowed to put a solar array on the roof, because "it would be ugly!" You wouldn't be allowed to grow vegetables in your front yard because it would "take away from the street presence." You couldn't have a water collection tank on the side of your home. There are still parameters-we don't want Sonoma Mountain Village to become wild and crazy, we want it to be appealing, to have people be able to live here in luxury and have all of the amenities you would normally have, and still have an infrastructure set up that is within a "one planet" footprint. The HOA and the CC&Rs will give process for people to manage disputes, how the common land is maintained, govern the wetlands. When the project is built out we envision that there is going to be more wildlife and natural habitat here than there is now-it is pretty barren after Agilent-bee gardens, butterfly gardens, green roofs to encourage the ground-feeding birds to go where the cats can't get them. We're really trying to think outside of the box, but all of those scenarios are going to have to be managed eventually. If a roof garden is private, that's one thing. But if it is part of the community, that would have to be managed by the HOA. Unfortunately, not everybody has the same idea about how things should be used, so you have to have some kind regulation about what those parameters are.

Smith-Heisters: But will you be able to paint your house pink?

Moore: It depends on the shade-probably not, I'm thinking. But that's no different than any other community out there. There is always going to be that kind of tug-of-war.

Paper Grocery Bags Require More Energy Than Plastic Bags

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Whole Foods Market won't offer plastic shopping bags at their stores after Earth Day this year. It is a savvy move for the upscale natural foods retailer, who estimates that by the end of the year the policy will have averted use of 100 million new plastic grocery bags at their 270 stores. It won't save the company any money-since the paper and multi-use bags that will replace plastic bags at their stores cost more to manufacture, stock and handle-but it is a savvy public relations move that will likely help to soothe the guilty environmental consciences of devoted Whole Foods shoppers who, like most Americans, believe paper bags are environmentally superior to plastic bags.

Unfortunately, the reality is that paper isn't better than plastic.

One hundred million new plastic grocery bags require the total energy equivalent of approximately 8300 barrels of oil for extraction of the raw materials, through manufacturing, transport, use and curbside collection of the bags. Of that, 30 percent is oil and 23 percent is natural gas actually used in the bag-the rest is fuel used along the way. That sounds like a lot until you consider that the same number of paper grocery bags use five times that much total energy. A paper grocery bag isn't just made out of trees. Manufacturing 100 million paper bags with one-third post-consumer recycled content requires petroleum energy inputs equivalent to approximately 15,100 barrels of oil plus additional inputs from other energy sources including hydroelectric power, nuclear energy and wood waste.

Making sound environmental choices is hard, especially when the product is "free," like bags at most grocery stores. When the cashier rings up a purchase and bags it in a paper bag, the consumer doesn't see that it took at least a gallon of water to produce that bag (more than 20 times the amount used to make a plastic bag), that it weighed 10 times more on the delivery truck and took up seven times as much space as a plastic bag in transit to the store, and will ultimately result in between tens and hundreds of times more greenhouse gas emissions than a plastic bag.

Biodegradable bags don't fare much better than paper bags; in a recent life cycle analysis, one type of compostable plastic bag was found to use somewhat less total energy and generate less solid waste, but represent more fossil fuel use, greenhouse gas emissions, and fresh water use than the comparable paper bag.

Part of the invisible cost of shopping bags is passed down to consumers as retailers recoup the price they pay for the bags-pennies in the case of plastic, a nickel or a dime for paper bags (ones with handles cost more), and the same or more again for biodegradable plastic bags. Costs like greenhouse gas emissions and air or water pollution might eventually be captured in a carbon tax, cap-and-trade scheme, or regulatory fee (again, ultimately passed down to consumers, whether they are aware of it or not). Still other costs are borne by the public (e.g. litter pick-up) or in less calculable ways (e.g. diminished aesthetic values or impacts to marine animals).

The good news is that, given a choice between plastic, paper and multi-use grocery bags, most people make the best available environmental choice: whichever bag they are most likely to reuse. In an informal online MSNBC survey last month, 38 percent of respondents said reusability was the most important factor in choosing what type of grocery bag to use. The plurality, 41 percent, choose plastic. Twenty-eight percent reported that environmental concerns were their top consideration and-unfortunately, given the comparative life cycle analyses-56 percent believed that paper is more "environmentally friendly."

The vast majority of people reuse "single-use" plastic bags for household tasks like bagging garbage and cleaning up messes. Ireland's plastic bag tax, initiated in 2002 to combat the aesthetic impacts of litter on tourism, virtually eliminated the use of the targeted bags but also resulted in a 77 percent increase in the sale of kitchen garbage bags. San Francisco's first-in-the-nation ban on non-biodegradable plastic bags last year surely has had similar rebound affects.

Nationwide, the most recent Environmental Protection Agency data show recycling rates for broad categories that include paper and plastic grocery bags to be 25 and 9 percent, respectively. The recycling rate for plastic is growing quickly under the pressure of new mandates and markets. The actual amount recovered nationwide doubled between 2005 and 2006. Most of the plastic bags recycled are reclaimed for use in the United States or Canada to manufacture decking, railing and fencing which replace the use of virgin forest products.

For those bags that aren't recycled, misconceptions about plastic and paper bags follow them all the way to their graves. In a landfill, paper bags, petroleum-based plastic bags and even degradable plastic bags share roughly the same fate. Modern landfills are managed for stability, not decomposition. Plastic bags can be better in a landfill because their compact size takes up the least space and, as opposed to biodegradable bags, they release zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Reusable shopping bags may be the norm at Whole Foods a year from now, but they're not for everyone in every circumstance. A multi-use plastic or durable bag is environmentally and economically cost-effective only if it is actually used multiple times. Some of these bags are recyclable or compostable, others are not. The basic principles of conservation apply here: the greenest individual choice is the one that results in the greatest actual reduction, reuse and recycling.

Less than a year after a law requiring grocery stores to accept plastic bags for recycling took effect, lawmakers in California are now proposing mandatory reductions in plastic bag use and up to a 25-cent charge for plastic grocery bags statewide.

Those who are cognizant of the environmental realities of the paper versus plastic debate, but nevertheless believe providing complimentary plastic bags at grocery stores should be illegal, cling optimistically to the idea that plastic grocery bags can be erased from the environmental equation without unintended consequences. At present, the only honest assessment is that a plastic bag ban is a de facto paper bag mandate, and increased use of paper bags means an increase in environmental ills including air and water pollution, greater energy and water use and higher greenhouse gas emissions.

In a sense, the persistent view of plastic bag use as emblematic of the nation's progress on environmental issues is right for the wrong reasons. It shows how far good intentions coupled with bad information can lead us astray.

Reviewing Blue Covenant

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, by Maude Barlow, New York: The New Press, 196 pages, $24.95 (2007).

"Like a comet poised to hit the Earth," Maude Barlow writes, "The three water crises-dwindling freshwater [sic] supplies, inequitable access to water and the corporate control of water-pose the greatest threat of our time to the planet and to our survival."

Barlow's sixteenth book (in nearly as many years) critiquing free trade and globalization, Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, is a follow-up on a book Barlow co-authored in 2002, Blue Gold: The Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World's Water. Barlow is, herself, transnational in a sense, as she chairs the Ottawa-based Council of Canadians, where she founded the Blue Planet Project, while also serving on the boards of the International Forum on Globalization and Food and Water Watch in San Francisco.

In Blue Covenant, Barlow provides a recent history of global water politics, highlighting in particular the policy conflicts played out at global conventions, beginning in 2000 at the World Water Forum in The Hague, subsequent Forums in Kyoto and Mexico City, the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, and others. The narrative focuses on alleged injustices by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and others who have promoted private infrastructure development, water and sanitation services in the developing world.

The book's introduction invites the reader to "imagine a world in twenty years in which no substantive progress has been made to provide basic water services in the Third World; or to create laws to protect source water and force industry and industrial agriculture to stop polluting water systems," where "the rich will drink only bottled water found in the few remaining uncontaminated parts of the world, or sucked from the clouds by corporate-controlled machines, while the poor will die in increasing numbers from a lack of water." Barlow predicts two-thirds of the world population will face water scarcity by 2025, and, relying on the research of Slovakian hydrologist Michal Kravçik, argues that water use is as great a cause of climate change as greenhouse gas emissions are.

Through her earnest attention to the plight of people in the disenfranchised and destitute regions where she has traveled, Barlow successfully balances human and ecological concerns where many of her contemporaries in water and environmental writing fall short. That attention makes her narrow view of human progress and her projections for the future harder to understand.

The ambitious water improvements identified in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals call for halving the proportion of people in the developing world without adequate drinking water and sanitation by 2015. Eastern, South-Eastern and Western Asia, Northern Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean are on track to meet those goals. Though still short of the goal of 68 percent of people in the developing world having access to adequate sanitation, overall that measure has improved from 35 percent in 1990 to 50 percent in 2004. In important related measures, such as the incidence of cholera, the absolute number of cases has remained stable in the last decade while affected areas have seen rapid population growth. These are no small feats.

The fantastically dystopian future Barlow invokes in Blue Covenant might have more utility in the water policy debate if it weren't for the unfamiliar and bleak hints she gives to describe her utopian alternative. According to Barlow, irrigated agriculture has done "more harm than good," technology is "part of the problem," and private investment in "sophisticated new technologies to recycle our dirty water" is deplorable. These ideals alone should belie any efforts to cast Blue Covenant as a populist creed.

In Blue Covenant, Barlow fails to explore the key dimensions of water scarcity at the heart of her first two premises for alarm: dwindling fresh water supplies and inequitable access to water. The water supplies for most human needs come from precipitation captured in streams and underground aquifers. Except for occasional inputs from ice-filled comets (not to be confused with Barlow's virtual "comet called the global water crisis") Earth's hydrological system is a closed cycle. The total amount of available fresh water is not as relevant as when and where the water occurs. All you have to do is look at a map of average annual precipitation in the United States to see that water equity is not an element of the natural system, a fact which makes both the underlying values in Blue Covenant and Barlow's ultimate goal harder to justify.

Barlow concludes that the solution to crisis three-corporate control of water-is a binding United Nations mandate asserting water as an inalienable human right, not an economic commodity. It is unfortunate that the divisive depiction of water as either a right or a commodity has proven galvanizing in this debate, because in practice these qualities are far from mutually exclusive. Declaring water a government-controlled resource and a human right in the United States would mean wrenching away existing "water rights," long-standing legal rights evolved from the days of the pioneers. Similarly, satisfying an inalienable human right to government-controlled water sanitation means drastic changes to current incentives, in which people who invest labor, ingenuity, technology and capital into water purification systems currently have the right to sell that water as a commodity.

Rights of any kind depend on the rule of law, and water and sanitation are certainly not the only problems faced by people living under despotic and unaccountable regimes. Government corruption features so strongly in the concerns of Blue Covenant-in issues relating to national sovereignty, the legal rights of indigenous people, and the misappropriation of public resources-Barlow's conclusion that water and sanitation should be wholly in the purview of the public sector is utterly unconvincing.

Illegally Green: Environmental Costs of Hemp Prohibition

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:00:00 EDT

Regulation of Cannabis sativa L. is complicated by the fact that there are two common varieties of the plant with very different properties: the agricultural variety, known by the common name hemp, and the pharmacological variety, marijuana. Prior to prohibition in the United States, industrial hemp was the subject of considerable excitement and speculation. The same is true today, as lawmakers and stakeholders in many states are considering the potential for reintroducing industrial hemp into the domestic economy.

The environmental performance of industrial hemp products is of particular interest because, to a large degree, environmental inefficiencies impose costs on society as a whole, not just on the producers and consumers of a specific good. Many commodities which came to replace traditional uses of industrial hemp in the United States in the last century and a half have created significant environmental externalities.

Assessments of industrial hemp as compared to hydrocarbon or other traditional industrial feedstocks show that, generally, hemp requires substantially lower energy demands for manufacturing, is often suited to less-toxic means of processing, provides competitive product performance (especially in terms of durability, light weight, and strength), greater recyclability and/or biodegradability, and a number of value-added applications for byproducts and waste materials at either end of the product life cycle. Unlike petrochemical feedstocks, industrial hemp production offsets carbon dioxide emissions, helping to close the carbon cycle.

The positive aspects of industrial hemp as a crop are considered in the context of countervailing attributes. Performance areas where industrial hemp may have higher average environmental costs than comparable raw materials result from the use of water and fertilizer during the growth stage, greater frequency of soil disturbance (erosion) during cultivation compared to forests and some field crops, and relatively high water use during the manufacturing stage of hemp products.

Overall, social pressure and government mandates for lower dioxin production, lower greenhouse gas emissions, greater bio-based product procurement, and a number of other environmental regulations, seem to directly contradict the wisdom of prohibiting an evidently useful and unique crop like hemp.

Measure 50: Are Tobacco Taxes The Answer To Funding Children's Health Programs?

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:08:00 EST

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California's Looming Water Crisis

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:47:00 EDT

With drought conditions in affect across California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger picked an auspicious time to warm up his campaign for more surface water storage (i.e. dams) and additional water "conveyance" (i.e. building a peripheral canal) in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. In doing so, he waded into a debate that has long epitomized the tensions between water-rich Northern California and the populous southern half of the state.

The governor's press conferences in Merced and Sacramento counties last week drew criticism from some Delta interest groups, who say he is jumping the gun by advocating for construction of a peripheral canal. They think Schwarzenegger should wait to hear the recommendations of the Delta Vision task force that he appointed to study remedies for the extremely precarious environmental and economic situation in the Delta, which are expected in January.

Restore the Delta, a group of Delta residents criticizing Schwarzenegger's move last week, opposes plans for any water conveyance that would take water around—instead of through—the Delta. This opposition is because "there will be no incentive to fix Delta levees or to create a flood management plan that will protect Delta people, Delta property, and Delta infrastructure." That's the same unfortunate conclusion that many environmentally-minded policymakers reached back in 1982, when then-Governor Jerry Brown's plan for building a peripheral canal was rejected on a statewide ballot.

The interconnectedness of ecological and economic systems in the Delta is a reality that should not be underemphasized. But what environmental and in-Delta opponents of the peripheral canal sought and won a quarter-century ago was a policy that built even greater dependency into the system. By drawing water through the Delta, water users south of the Delta (most importantly, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California)—so the reasoning goes—would be forced to have a stake in the maintenance of levees and water quality in the Delta.

A second motivation for opponents of the peripheral canal was to create an intentional bottleneck in the state's water conveyance infrastructure. As in many planning processes, bottlenecks are the worst nightmare of engineers but a commonly-used last resort tactic for activists.

The CalFed planning process, which brought together 25 state and federal agencies to negotiate goals for improvement of the highly contentious California water supply and environmental values which depend on the Delta, approached the conflicting interests carefully—too carefully, perhaps. The CalFed mantra that all stakeholders would "get better together," essentially meant that failure of the process would amount to something like mutually assured destruction.

In fact, there is little dispute that routing water around the Delta has always made good engineering sense. Numerous planning processes, beginning as early as the 1940s, settled on around-Delta water conveyance as a promising compliment to the rest of the state's considerable water infrastructure. In 2000, CalFed's approach to the issue was to agree not to discuss it.

Earlier this year, the Public Policy Institute of California reiterated the benefits of peripheral water conveyance in a report that indicated, based on computer modeling at the University of California at Davis, that higher salinity levels as a result of water diversions would not be catastrophic to in-Delta agriculture (as canal opponents claim) and that in some scenarios, using projections for the year 2050, a canal could make a difference in the need to develop other expensive and controversial water supply improvements, like seawater desalination facilities in the Bay Area. Flexibility in the "plumbing" of the state's water resources is expected, overall, to lower the costs of ensuring that water is used where it is needed most—including in the environment.

Maybe critics are right that Gov. Schwarzenegger's move is self-interested and betrays his lack of regard for the public process. At the same time, there is no need to wait another day, much less another year, to see that the decades-old gamble that has tied water conveyance to the south Delta has failed. You need only look at the Delta.

What stands between the Delta and inundation by San Francisco Bay? The "19th-century piles of dirt that we call levees," (as they were characterized by the chair of the Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife, Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, at a Congressional field hearing in Vallejo earlier this month). Groups like the Metropolitan Water District, which peripheral canal opponents hoped might invest in levee improvements after the failure of the ballot proposition in 1982, instead made safer investments in water storage and conservation outside of the Delta.

The so-called Delta "islands" are farther below sea level today then they were in 1982, and some are still sinking. Meanwhile, the number of lives and value of property protected behind levees is increasing. That means both the risk and the liability of serious flooding as a result of levee failure, especially that which might accompany a major earthquake, continues to grow.

Most absurd of all, the solution purportedly preferred by some environmental opponents of the peripheral canal results in sections of the Middle River and the Old River running backward, uphill, toward the intake pumps in the south Delta, killing endangered Delta smelt in the process. This endangered fish is regarded as an indicator of overall ecological health in the Delta, and is already imperiled by toxic agricultural runoff and other threats.

Marc Reisner, author of Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water, wrote: "Imagine two segments of sleek superhighway separated by a forty-mile jumble of dirt roads. There one has a crude allegorical image of the California water system today. The jumble of dirt roads is the Delta." That was in 1979, but it is just as true today.

At this month's Congressional field hearing on this topic, Phil Isenberg, head of the governor's Delta Vision task force, said that during the peripheral canal debate years ago, "we all argued that routing water through the Delta would protect it." Isenberg co-chaired the campaign against the peripheral canal measure in 1982. What should change the current debate, according to Isenberg, is that nobody can argue the Delta is better protected from environmental or economic collapse today.

Expanding water conveyance around the Delta won't solve all the environmental problems the region faces, it won't make politicians honest, and it won't promise to enrich all stakeholders equally—nothing will—but it would be a critical mistake to put progress in the Delta on hold any longer.

Environmental Timetables Built for Style, Not Substance

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:22:00 EDT

Timetables are taboo in President Bush's strategy for the Iraq war, but in energy and environmental policy, they're as trendy as can be.

Of these, the Kyoto Protocol is perhaps the best-known environmental timetable: under the original Kyoto agreement, by 2008-2012, participating countries were expected to cut greenhouse gas emission levels to (on average) 5 percent below 1990 baseline emissions levels.

More than a dozen U.S. states have already set greenhouse gas emission reduction targets—though no two states have set the same timetable. The most common initial goal—reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2010—is shared by many of the Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, including Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont.

California, seemingly always a trend-setter in environmental regulations, plans to reduce greenhouse emissions to 80 percent below 1990's levels by the year 2050. That number is considered the benchmark by many in the environmental community.

Also popular with policymakers these days are timetables and goals for renewable energy generation by state electric utilities. Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia already have these standards, but again, there are wide deviations in the specifics of each law.

When Oregon joins Minnesota and New Hampshire, as it is expected to soon, the three states will share the same renewable energy standard. Each state will mandate that utilities produce 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, a goal promoted nationally through the "25x'25" campaign of the Energy Future Coalition. The challenge of meeting that goal is different for each state: Minnesota currently has about 3.5 percent renewable energy generation and plans to meet most of the rest of the goal through conservation and wind power; in New Hampshire, where renewable electricity generation capacity is already at 16 percent, the University of New Hampshire predicts that the state will soon be exporting excess wind energy to neighboring New England states.

The 25x'25 campaign loses a little credibility when you notice that the coalition's website still promotes a study it commissioned from the Rand Corporation last year that concluded their renewable sources goals could be achieved "at little or no additional expense." The RAND researchers were forced to withdraw their study when they discovered serious errors in their estimates just a couple of weeks after the report's release.

Abroad, environmental timetables are even more dramatic. Leaders in Iceland have declared their nation will be completely oil-free by 2050. Sweden aims to be oil-free even sooner, by 2020. Norway is drafting plans to be carbon-neutral by 2050, Costa Rica by 2030.

Such goals are rarer domestically, but there are stand-outs here, too: the city of Austin, Texas, plans to be "carbon-neutral" in just over 12 years, by 2020. That will entail powering the city's facilities with renewable energy, converting the city's fleet of almost 5,000 vehicles to electric power and non-petroleum fuels, reducing greenhouse gas emissions throughout municipal operations and providing incentives for individuals and businesses to do the same, capping carbon dioxide emissions from the city's utilities and generating 30 percent of electricity from renewable sources, constructing new homes with energy-saving and energy-generating capability and offsetting the balance of municipal carbon emissions through mitigation projects. Austin Mayor Will Wynn admits that to make it all happen, "We're having to bank on—cross our fingers—technology advances."

If the eye-catching numbers in some of these timetables seem like they're built for style and short on substance, it's because they are.

A case in point is President Bush's so-called "energy security" initiative, cleverly titled "Twenty in Ten." Sounds simple—the U.S. will cut gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next 10 years. But what is actually intended by the policy is far less concise. Bush says he wants to see the substitution of approximately 15 percent of projected gasoline consumption in 2017 with alternative fuels, plus reduction in gasoline demand through higher fuel economy standards. That would mean holding gasoline consumption more or less steady for the next decade, while supplementing it with fuel derived from corn and possibly coal, and mandating that automakers sell more expensive, more fuel-efficient cars.

Like many of the popular environmental timetables being established right now, it conceals controversial issues—such as what actually qualifies as a "renewable" or "alternative" fuel—under convenient slogans. In terms of practicality, the Sierra Club should support the plan. But Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope calls the President's mandate "magic wand stuff."

Mandates based on politics rather than science almost always make better sound bites than they do sound policy.

Participants in the Kyoto climate agreement are infamously off-track for meeting their initial targets. Among western European countries, despite caps intended to stabilize emissions levels, carbon dioxide emissions have continued to grow since 1990 (an increase of 2.8 percent from 1990–2003 according to a World Bank report last month).

Research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory last year found that renewable energy standards in Arizona, California, Massachusetts and Nevada were plagued with "chronic under-compliance." Meanwhile in Maine, Maryland and other states the renewable energy standards were ineffective because they were set too low to begin with (essentially just supporting pre-existent renewable energy generators, not increasing renewable energy generation).

And while objective measurement of environmental progress is laudable, there is bias written in to even the simplest of measures, such as the selection of 1990 as a baseline for greenhouse gas emissions inventories in California. Consider that in 1990, California was at its peak in terms of its share of the national economy, while the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse.

When you start to look at these energy goals practically, things get really dicey. If the United States, as a whole, committed to the greenhouse gas emissions reduction target set in Sonoma County, California—ratcheting down emissions to 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2015—we would need serious help or risk serious economic consequences. The last time U.S. emissions were at that level was in the mid-1960s.

In 1967 the U.S. population was just passing the 200 million mark. In 2015, the U.S. population is expected to be 325 million. That means that in just the next few years, we'd need to fit a population almost two-thirds bigger, and a Gross Domestic Product more than four times bigger (real GDP in 1967 was $3.5 trillion; in 2006 it was $11.6 trillion, 2015's GDP is projected in the range of $15 trillion), into a carbon footprint we outgrew 40 years ago. (In this case, that carbon footprint—the measure of all our activities in terms of the amount of greenhouse gas produced—doesn't even account for the carbon-intensive industries we rely on outside of the United States, sort of like weighing ourselves without both feet on the scale.)

Clearly, these kinds of timetables offer powerful inspiration, but the rhetoric often has little relationship to either strategy or practicality.

The rising consciousness concerning global environmental issues has generated a welcome surge in long-term thinking about natural resources and our economy, and moved political leaders to stake unprecedented bold claims in the frontier of the future. However, with timetables for mandates stretching not just past the current administration's tenure but to 2025 and beyond, it will be vitally important to extend the timeline for accountability to match our ambition.

The Rush to Ban Incandescent Light Bulbs and Plastic Bags

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Wed, 09 May 2007 15:29:00 EDT

The ways you bring food home from the grocery store and light up your living room could change soon if lawmakers succeed in their efforts to turn some everyday household items into kitchen contraband – light bulbs and grocery bags.

Australia, the European Union, Britain, several Canadian provinces, and state legislatures in Connecticut, North Carolina, Rhode Island and California are among those who have already proposed or enacted bans on the sale of incandescent light bulbs in the next few years.

Last month, San Francisco became the first city in the country to ban non-biodegradable plastic grocery bags in hopes of reducing litter and conserving petroleum. Phoenix, Boston, Portland and New York state are among those considering following suit.

In the push for this unprecedented legislation, Greenpeace recently named light bulb manufacturer Philips Electronics a "climate criminal." Some politicians and environmentalists believe both the light bulb and plastic bag bans will reduce the use of fossil fuels, greenhouse gas emissions and environmental toxins. However, the environmental cost-benefit analyses of these products and their most likely replacements present mixed results at best.

The compact fluorescent light bulbs expected to replace today's incandescent bulbs actually require more energy to produce and ship to stores than traditional bulbs do. Fluorescent bulbs recoup the difference in initial costs through energy savings and longer service (a single fluorescent bulb is expected to use approximately one-fourth of the energy used by a traditional bulb and last six to 10 times longer). Unfortunately, fluorescent bulbs also contain small amounts of toxic mercury, meaning they need to be recycled properly rather than being thrown away at the end of their use.

Because fluorescents constitute roughly 10–20 percent of light bulbs in U.S. homes and, of those, only 2 percent are recycled, the costs of disposal—environmentally and financially—could increase exponentially in coming years, depending on patterns of use. Though the amount of mercury in a fluorescent bulb is small, some of it inevitably is released into the environment when bulbs are broken, either as they are (illegally) trucked to landfills, incinerated, or processed by hazardous waste handlers. The most at-risk for mercury poisoning are people and animals that eat fish from aquatic environments where mercury accumulates.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suggests that compact fluorescent bulbs, which contain an average of 4–6 milligrams (mg) of mercury per unit, are responsible for less mercury released into the environment than incandescent bulbs because "a power plant will emit 10 mg of mercury to produce the electricity to run an incandescent bulb compared to only 2.4 mg of mercury to run a fluorescent for the same time." But that's assuming that all the electricity comes from coal power. In places where the electricity comes from cleaner sources—like California (only 16 percent of electricity in California comes from coal; nationwide, coal accounts for less than 50 percent of electricity generation)—the balance of life-cycle mercury pollution shifts back in favor of the incandescent bulb.

A similar balance is found between the production costs of paper and plastic grocery bags. Life-cycle analyses have shown that energy costs, solid waste, air and water pollution generated by the manufacturing and use of plastic bags is significantly lower than for paper grocery bags. But here, too, there's at least one exception—if paper bags are recycled at a rate of more than 50 percent, the energy costs of production can be less for paper than plastic.

Bag bans also attempt to address wildlife impacts of plastic bags, a topic that deserves separate consideration. Plastic litter isn't a major problem in all U.S. cities; where it is, plastic bags are only a part of the problem. Improving urban wastewater systems so that they route less litter to waterways and making sure that plastic bags don't blow away and "escape" from landfills can help to keep litter of all kinds out the marine environment, where it does the most damage.

The alternatives to plastic bags have their own unique drawbacks. Paper bag manufacturing impacts wildlife habitat through the logging and milling of trees. Plant-based plastics may someday play an important role in reducing non-biodegradable litter impacts on wildlife—but for now, they require processing that essentially combines the impacts of both paper and conventional plastic bag manufacturing (first growing and harvesting the crops, then manufacturing the plastic) and are largely untested in either commercial or environmental settings. Ensuring that biodegradable plastics do not interfere with the recycling of conventional plastics is a challenge that San Francisco and other cities may face in the future if more plant-based products are introduced. In 2005, Los Angeles opted to improve recycling rates of conventional plastic bags rather than create taxes or incentives to promote use of biodegradable plastics.

Averages also lie. We're told the average household has 45 light bulb sockets and Californians each use about 552 disposable plastic bags per year—but a quick count tells me that no such "average people" live on my block—we all use substantially less. Individual circumstances vary, which is why it is so important that policy allow households to economize energy use on their own terms.

The mixed results from environmental analysis of light bulbs and grocery bags shows why any ban on these consumer goods will inevitably result in unnecessary waste and pollution in some circumstances. A ban binds us and forces us to use a single tool, regardless of the task at hand.

As evidenced in a spike of compact fluorescent light bulb use during the California electricity crisis in 2001, consumers respond to energy prices with more conservative purchases. A bag or bulb ban comes at it from entirely the wrong side: forcing consumers to buy something that costs them several times more than the standard item without a clear benefit.

There is real dissonance in the histories of fluorescent bulbs and plastic grocery bags from a consumer perspective. In the first instance, there's a product that has for the most part been more popular with policymakers than consumers, and which, over a period of more than 20 years has gained only marginal market share despite massive government procurement programs, giveaways, and now take-back programs funded by taxes and utility rates. In the second instance, a product so unequivocally more economical and easier to work with that retailers in the U.S. provide it for free to customers who would otherwise gladly buy it. Guess which one is getting banned.

Preparing for "Earthquake Katrina" and a Levee Disaster in California

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EDT

California lawmakers are considering legislation that would restore incentives for local governments to minimize flood risk in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Assemblyman Dave Jones (D–Sacramento) and Assemblywoman Lois Wolk (D–Davis) are among those who have authored bills to reform the levees-as-usual politics that jeopardize the prudent use of state flood control funds.

More than $47 billion in infrastructure sits behind protective levees in the Delta today, according to Lester Snow, director of the California Department of Water Resources. Since a court ruling in 2003, California taxpayers have been liable for damages to that infrastructure if a levee breaks.

The massive taxpayer liability in the Delta is one reason some fiscal conservatives have backed bond funding for levee repair. Another reason is what the water represents to downstream consumers. The Delta's network of levees keeps this increasingly urbanized area from swimming in water that, for every individual house actually in the Delta, represents drinking water for two and a half dozen Southern California and Bay Area households and irrigation for a couple hundred acres of corn or tomatoes.

The taxpayers who are really getting the worst end of the deal are the households in northern and coastal California who are not reliant on the Delta for water or levees for protection, but who would still pay for flood damage resulting from a failure of the levee system.

And unfortunately, that taxpayer liability is only getting bigger—for every house in the low-lying Delta today, another is planned to be built in the next decade.

California experienced an unusually mild winter this year, banishing the specter of catastrophic flooding that motivated voters to approve nearly $5 billion in bonds for flood control in November 2006. It doesn't take rainy weather to make a flood in the Delta, though; the most recent major levee break flooded the Jones Tract in 2004 under sunny June skies.

Last November's bonds were only the first part of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $35 billion 10-year plan to improve flood control, water supply and other vital services that depend on the Delta.

The governor's Blue Ribbon Task Force, which is supposed to recommend an overarching plan for the Delta by January 2008, is expected to report what politicians in office rarely admit: that maintaining the competing interests in the Delta (housing, farming, water exports, shipping and transportation networks, endangered species protection, commercial fisheries, and recreational uses, to name a few) indefinitely is not possible at any price.

The first of the Proposition 1E bond monies are being used to patch up holes that appeared this month in West Sacramento levees that are only three years old, a fact that does not bode well for the rest of the state's aging levees. Almost every so-called Delta "island" (actually bowls up to 25 feet below sea level) has flooded in the last century, some three or more times. In the same time period, the many earthquake faults underlying the Delta have been quiet.

In a scenario aptly dubbed "Earthquake Katrina," the region will more likely than not experience a 6.7 magnitude - or greater - earthquake in the next few decades. The Delta's levees are not designed to withstand a major flood, much less a major earthquake. A sudden levee failure of that extent would have serious impacts on the Delta ecosystem, already strained under the pressure of urban and agricultural resource demands, in addition to threatening human lives and property and disrupting water supplies and the state economy for months or years.

The Department of Water Resources estimates that levee damage due to an earthquake of this magnitude would require at least 15 months of repairs (realistically, much longer), flood as many as 85,000 acres of agricultural land and 3000 homes, and disrupt water and natural gas deliveries, shipping and transportation, with total costs to California's economy in the range of $30 to 40 billion in the first five years.

People often respond with amazing generosity in the wake of natural disasters—but that should never obscure the fact that the first and highest priority is for local jurisdictions to limit predictable losses before they happen. To do that, both the risks and the responsibilities for flood control must belong to local policymakers. As long as California taxpayers across the entire state carry the burden of compensating those who live in the Delta for flood damages, local governments will have no incentive to curb the rate of housing development behind risky levees and prospective home buyers will likely have little indication of the real danger they face.

A number of lawmakers have introduced legislation this session in a good-faith effort to begin to address the untenable mismatch between who pays for levees and who benefits from them. Jones' bill (Assembly Bill (AB) 70) will make local governments jointly liable with the state for property damages caused by levee failure when the localities approve new developments in previously undeveloped land protected by state levees. Weaker legislation authored by Wolk (AB 5) would give priority for state funds to local governments that have completed flood plans indicating adequate protection for areas of new development.

At a minimum, realigning the costs and benefits of flood control at the local level should be part of any legislation passed this year for the use of California's flood bond monies.

Industrial Hemp Can Boost Economy, Cut Pollution

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EDT

If not for a curious veto by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year, California farmers would be tending to their first, very useful and profitable crop of industrial hemp right now. Instead, legislators in Sacramento are back for the second year in a row, working on a law to allow industrial hemp cultivation in the state.

Last year, the California Industrial Hemp Farming Act, which would permit and regulate the cultivation of hemp in the state for the first time in more than a half-century, sponsored by Assembly members Chuck DeVore (R– Irvine) and Mark Leno (D–San Francisco), was vetoed by Schwarzenegger. The two assemblymen have re-introduced the act this year with the notable help of fiscally conservative Senator Tom McClintock (R–Thousand Oaks).

The sizeable economic opportunity for domestic industrial hemp products explains the tenacity of lawmakers and industrial hemp advocates seeking a second chance for the law. The long, strong fibers of the hemp plant require less energy to manufacture than many petroleum-based plastics used in comparable industrial applications today. Carmakers like Ford and BMW report that replacing heavy fiberglass and epoxy automotive components with durable, lighter-weight hemp-based fiberboard cost—and pollute—less. Savings are realized both in the production stage and through better gas mileage for the life of the vehicle. Altogether, millions of cars are already on the road today with hemp components, and the industry says they'd likely use more hemp if it was available domestically.

The California Energy Commission even lists hemp as a possible biomass energy crop; a source of fuel that will be needed to meet the ambitious emissions reductions goals set by the governor.

Hemp can also produce textiles similar to cotton, an important agricultural commodity in California, worth $630 million in 2005. On a per-acre basis, however, hemp would likely produce more fiber, using half the irrigation water and half the nitrogen fertilizer, in half the time that it takes to grow even genetically-engineered herbicide tolerant ("Roundup Ready") cotton varieties in California.

Substituting hemp for cotton would also result in substantially fewer herbicides, pesticides and other agricultural chemicals being used in the San Joaquin, Sacramento and Imperial valleys.

According to the Hemp Industries Association, more than 75 percent of the sales of legal hemp products are already made by California-based businesses, many in the popular hemp foods and cosmetics industries. But California companies must import the raw materials for their products from Canada or other places where hemp growing is allowed, at an added expense of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

For politicians the hang-up seems to be that some believe the relationship between industrial hemp and marijuana is too close for comfort. In the message explaining his veto last September, Gov. Schwarzenegger stated that he would not support a law perceived to conflict with federal statutes, and that, "California law enforcement has expressed concerns that implementation of this measure could place a drain on their resources and cause significant problems with drug enforcement activities."

With worries about terrorism, school shootings, and escalating gang violence, you'd think California law enforcement would have better things to do than complain about growing hemp, based on the unfounded and archaic linkage between this promising industrial crop and marijuana as it is grown and consumed today. Law enforcement authorities should understand that a field of industrial hemp is the last place anyone would try to grow marijuana. They have an ally in California hemp farmers, who will be required to take extra precautions to keep illegal marijuana growers from trespassing and damaging hemp fields. And from the marijuana grower's perspective, cross-pollination with a hemp crop in close proximity would ruin their product—not unlike crossing two purebred dogs of different breeds. The two plants are the same species, but industrial hemp contains insignificant amounts of the active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (or THC), that is valued in marijuana.

Further, hemp grown for fiber is planted in dense stands of tall, thin plants, similar to bamboo in appearance—easily distinguished from the bushy, flower-laden drug varieties. As an added precaution, the California Industrial Hemp Farming Act would require that farmers test their crops before harvest and only use seed from stock containing three-tenths of one percent THC or less.

The fear that marijuana could be "hidden" in industrial hemp crops is unfounded. When harvest season comes around this year, hopefully Schwarzenegger won't have trouble identifying the California Industrial Hemp Farming Act for what it really is: a serious opportunity to make economic and environmental gains for all of California.

Sensible Policies for Medical Marijuana Dispensaries in Los Angeles

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

edical marijuana dispensaries serve a critical purpose in the city of Los Angeles, providing a reliable means for qualified medical patients to obtain medical marijuana in accordance with California law. Dispensary regulation also creates a mechanism for local government oversight of medical marijuana cultivation and distribution. Though many aspects of medical marijuana dispensary regulation are the responsibility of the state government, zoning decisions and conditional use permitting processes governing the operation of the city’s medical marijuana dispensaries are the purview of the City Council.

The Los Angeles Police Department recently issued recommendations to the City Council for a list of restrictions to be imposed on all existing and future medical marijuana dispensaries in the city. These recommendations serve as a useful reference point for some of the issues facing the City Council in its determination of appropriate guidelines for the operation of medical marijuana dispensaries; however, they do not reflect an entirely accurate understanding of California’s medical marijuana laws.

Expanding Smoking Bans Should Worry Us All

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:01:00 EST

San Francisco Examiner

The Bay Area is considered one of the most diverse, tolerant places on the planet. Its reputation as a stalwart defender of minority rights is unparalleled. "San Francisco values" is how Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly likes to describe our uniqueness.

The region's policy decisions on hot-button topics usually strike a careful balance between protecting private rights and public health. But there's one group that we apparently see as nothing but a bunch of social pariahs: smokers.

Two years ago, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed what was, at the time, one of the most comprehensive outdoor smoking bans in the state, making it illegal to smoke in city-owned parks and squares.

Smoking has long been banned at outdoor restaurants and theaters in Berkeley, and similar outdoor smoking restrictions have recently been implemented in a half-dozen other Bay Area cities as well as in unincorporated Alameda, Contra Costa and Marin counties. An ordinance enacted last year in Dublin declared secondhand smoke a public nuisance and made it easier for residents there to sue each other over secondhand smoke.

In Belmont, it is already illegal to smoke in hallways and other common areas in apartment buildings and similar multi-unit housing complexes. But next month the Belmont City Council is expected to go even further by approving the nation's most restrictive anti-smoking policy. It will soon be illegal to smoke anywhere in Belmont except in your detached, single-family home.

You won't be able smoke outside. You won't be able to smoke in your car or in your apartment. If you can come up with the $900,000 median price, you can buy a stand-alone house and smoke there – at least for now. This final refuge for smokers is surely the next target of the prohibitionist regulators.

In Belmont whatever you want to do in the privacy of your own apartment bedroom is ok - just as long as you don't smoke when you do it. This creeping Bay Area nanny state should worry us all, not just smokers.

Smoking causes cancer. Smokers assume the risks. But, proponents of the nanny state claim we have to stop them because smokers impose great costs on society through increased health care costs and other expenses. Reason magazine's Jacob Sullum, author of For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade shows otherwise: smokers don't fleece us by bleeding Medicaid and Social Security because they die sooner than nonsmokers.

Fine, but we still have to ban smoking because secondhand smoke will kill innocent bystanders, according to ban proponents. But here the science is extremely murky.

Sullum writes, "The studies that link secondhand smoke to these illnesses [cancer, heart attacks] involve intense, long-term exposure, typically among people who have lived with smokers for decades. Even in these studies, it's difficult to demonstrate an effect, precisely because the doses of toxins and carcinogens bystanders passively absorb are much smaller than the doses absorbed by smokers."

In toxicology, the dose makes the poison. How much smoke are you getting sitting a quarter-mile away from a smoker in the same Belmont apartment complex? You'll get struck by lightning before that level of smoke kills you.

We've gone from banning smoking in restaurants and bars to banning smoking everywhere.

What's next? The food police will ban trans fat and then slink on to popular fast foods. Proposed restrictions on the use of cell phones and iPods are in the news nationally. The list goes on and on. You may not smoke, but sooner or later the nanny police will surely target something you do care about.

Does the Bay Area really want government to dictate what we can do in our own homes and apartments? You may think smoking is disgusting, but unless you think the same of personal freedom, we should all stand up against the prohibitionists on this one.

Skaidra Smith-Heisters lives in Santa Rosa and is a policy analyst at Reason Foundation. An archive of her work is here. Reason's California research and commentary is here.

Prop. 1E's Blank Check Primed for Pork, Not Flood Control

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST

Even though we aren't in hurricane country the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina is being used to sell voters on Proposition 1E, the initiative that would borrow $4.1 billion for flood control.

Here in California, the big fear is an earthquake destroying levees or old-age causing them to give it out in the not-too-distant future.

The areas at biggest risk are the Central Valley and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region. If a major flood were to occur in the Delta, all of the state's taxpayers would be liable for the damages. That's a huge liability, and it only grows bigger every year, as valley soils sink, 100-year-old levees erode, and population and development of Central Valley floodplains below sea level continue to increase.

But that doesn't mean Proposition 1E is up to the task of completing the necessary repair, or is the right tool for the job.

Prioritization is also what's missing in Proposition 1E. The bond doesn't describe what projects it will fund. State Assembly Budget Chairman John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) explained this lack of detail by saying, "Some of us would have liked to have seen many other decisions taken in tandem with this, but many lawmakers felt it was more important to get the bond out there on the ballot and take advantage of a rare window of public awareness because of the Katrina disaster."

Taxpayers should be worried about handing Sacramento a $4.1 billion blank check. It's likely that this after-the-fact budgeting will favor politicians' pet projects and not the state's most pressing infrastructure needs�after all, we've approved over $11 billion in water and resources bonds in California in the last 10 years, and clearly very little of it has gone to strengthen our levees or water supply.

The anticipation that Proposition 1E funds will be divvied up to reward favorite constituencies is so great that political leaders have reportedly advised voters in Yuba and Sutter counties that if they don't vote for Proposition 1E, the counties won't get a piece of the pie if the measure passes.

Yuba County Supervisor Dan Logue wants his region's voters to pass 1E because if they don't, he's worried Sacramento will say, "Didn't you guys just tell us to go to hell?"

Playing favorites is no way to rebuild critical infrastructure. And bond financing, the most expensive way to fund projects, isn't the way to pay for it. The bonds will cost taxpayers nearly $2 for every $1 borrowed, meaning 1E's total price tag will be around $8 billion. That might be enough to repair the entire levee system, according to the Department of Water Resources, which has estimated costs between $7 billion and $12 billion. Unfortunately, because $4 billion of those Proposition 1E funds go directly to bond tradesmen and investors in the form of interest, and another approximately one billion dollars are earmarked for assorted projects outside of the Delta flood control system, taxpayers will surely be asked for more funds for levee repair decades before this bond is paid off.

After Hurricane Katrina, plans for the rebuilding of New Orleans emphasized the need to decrease reliance on levees as a primary protection for lives and property. When it comes to Prop. 1E, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to "rebuild" California is trapped in a pre-Katrina mindset. We don't need to rebuild the Central Valley flood and water infrastructure, along with its rich history of backroom deals and political power grabs. We need to reinvent it, with strong local measures that spend money based on need and priorities, provide backup drinking water sources and put a stop to the subsidization of poor development choices that spring from voters continually handing state lawmakers more bond money.

Skaidra Smith-Heisters is a policy analyst at Reason Foundation and author of a report on Proposition 1E, Funding the State's Water and Flood Control Infrastructure. She can be reached at Skaidra@Reason.org.

Smoke and Mirrors

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST

A new ordinance banning smoking on all city-owned land and in outdoor eating and drinking areas goes into effect in Santa Rosa on Dec. 1. While that's obviously bad news for smokers — the non-smoking majority should be troubled too. The process by which the ban was approved represents a scary trend towards a government that too often limits individual freedom, dispenses with due process, and rejects science.

When Santa Rosans first learned about the proposed ban, members of the city council appeared genuinely surprised by the strength of opposition. Councilmember Lee Pierce, a proponent of the ban, responded to concerns by convening an ad hoc committee tasked with proposing amendments to the ordinance. Unfortunately, Pierce stacked the committee with public employees and members of anti-tobacco organizations like the Coalition for a Tobacco-Free Sonoma County—some of them not even Santa Rosa residents—and then required them to reach a consensus with representatives of downtown businesses about any amendments. Of course, that was impossible. The draconian ban slid through the counsel without meaningful amendments.

Some claim this ordinance is essential to protect public health. But while a whiff of someone else's cigarette smoke outdoors might be a nuisance, it is insignificant in the context of health risks we assume every day.

Today state law declares "encouraging all persons to quit tobacco use shall be the highest priority in disease prevention for the State of California"—and seemingly any method to achieve this goal is considered fair. The state has even tried to outlaw the purchase of cigarettes by adults, with legislation to raise the smoking age to 21. Incidentally, the principal proponent of that measure in 2002 was Dr. Leonard Klay, a Santa Rosa obstetrician and gynecologist who served on the committee to address opponent's concerns with Santa Rosa's proposed ban.

Is the single-minded pursuit of smoking cessation warranted? Key risk factors that contribute to the costs of disease prevention and treatment in California include tobacco use, physical inactivity, poor nutrition, and being overweight or obese. Tobacco use is the smallest of these categories, at 15 percent of Californians—compared to 23 percent who report they have "no leisure time physical activity," 73 percent who don't eat enough fruits and vegetables, 37 percent who are overweight and 22 percent who are obese—and the number of Californians that smoke is the only category getting smaller every year.

Ironically, because it is easier to tax smokers than it is to tax couch potatoes, Proposition 86 on November's ballot will increase the tobacco tax to a level that amounts to $1,400 per year for a pack-a-day smoker. The largest portion of the funds generated would be used to pay for hospital emergency care, but some would go to causes as wide-ranging as obesity treatment.

When hospitals went looking for another revenue source in 2004, they proposed a phone tax that county voters rejected as unfair. Now that the proposed tax is on smokers instead of phone-users, proponents hope local voters won't care if it is fair or not.

Law enforcement statistics show that our drug laws are racist, ageist, and classist—and our tobacco laws also abuse those in our society who have the least political power. In Santa Rosa , our smoking policy is one that gives clear preference to the already privileged: Pierce has said more than once that he thinks it is reasonable to allow people at the public golf course to smoke cigars�but apparently not to let people smoke a cigarette while waiting for the bus.

Good public policy balances the benefits of mandates with the costs of curtailing private rights and liberties. Often, citizens work out ways to accommodate diverse preferences, despite their government's efforts to impose control, such as when smoking was banned in California restaurants and bars and proprietors opened up patio and other outdoor seating where their smoking clientele were still welcome. Now, less than 10 years later, Santa Rosa has prohibited even that smidgen of tolerance, without a fair and open process.

If the goal is to get people to stop smoking, then why don't we dedicate all of the tobacco tax funds (instead of just 1 percent from Prop. 86) to programs that help smokers quit?

As smokers are increasingly pushed out of our downtown and the public process, the stink of the cigarette is being replaced by the suffocating stench of ever-more invasive and unaccountable government.

Skaidra Smith-Heisters lives in Santa Rosa and is a policy analyst at Reason Foundation, a free market think tank.

Schwarzenegger Vetoes Industrial Hemp

skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the much-publicized Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 and then vetoed a law that actually provides "solutions" to reduce emissions and not just new mandates.

The California Industrial Hemp Farming Act, a bipartisan effort co-authored by Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and Chuck Devore (R-Irvine), would have lifted the ban on industrial hemp, creating a licensing procedure for researchers and farmers that would allow one of the world's most useful agricultural crops back in California.

The return of industrial hemp farming and research cannot come soon enough, especially in light of the Schwarzenegger's ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the state.

Though decades of hemp prohibition have certainly set back industrial hemp technologies, industry is familiar with the benefits. Biofuels like ethanol were the "fuel of the future" back in the 1920s when Henry Ford engineered a light-weight passenger car utilizing plant-based plastics instead of costly steel for the body of the vehicle. Hemp was a key ingredient in both the plastics and the fuel for Ford's "futuristic" car, and it was more than just a public relations stunt. Ethanol derived from plant cellulose in crops like hemp or wheat (even as a secondary product, after the seed or grain is harvested) has advantages over traditional sources like corn; advocates claim this cellulosic ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below those of gasoline as compared to only a 20 to 30 percent reduction from corn-based ethanol.

Today, millions of cars on the road in this country have components, such as interior panels, made of hemp composites which are lighter and cheaper than their fiberglass or petroleum-based alternatives. Other hemp composites are being used in tree-free building materials, such as pressed boards and concrete, utilizing hemp's light weight and strength.

Hemp industry representatives estimate the current U.S. hemp market at more than $270 million in annual retail sales. But all of the hemp fiber, oil, and sterile seed that goes into U.S. products must be imported from Canada, China, Romania�or virtually any other industrialized nation besides our own.

California has some of the most fertile agricultural land in the world, and irrigating that land is not only the state's single largest water commitment, it also accounts for 5 percent of our energy use. Replacing some of our water-intensive California crops like cotton, rice and alfalfa with industrial hemp would make more competitive use of our water and energy resources, lowering greenhouse gas emissions in the process.

You won't read about hemp in the U.S. Department of Energy's reports on agricultural feedstocks for the biofuels industry, nor will you hear of any promising new cultivars or cropping techniques developed in the University of California's top agricultural science programs, because the federal Drug Enforcement Administration currently maintains the same controls over hemp as it does over the physically and chemically dissimilar drug, marijuana.

Industrial hemp doesn't have the delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) to appeal to smokers any more than the California poppy contains opium. In North Dakota, where similar hemp legislation is in the works, the state's agricultural commissioner recently explained, ''It [industrial hemp] would take a joint the size of a telephone pole to have an impact."

Nevertheless, Schwarzenegger said he vetoed the hemp bill because it would violate federal law. But California Industrial Hemp Farming Act would not have changed the DEA's jurisdiction over drugs and the bill would have actually required farmers to have their crops tested to prove the hemp they were growing was non-hallucinogenic.

We won't fully understand the unique potential of industrial hemp in California for use in textiles, as a feedstock for biofuels and plastics or in use with other applications without putting it on the market. As the state faces climbing energy costs and increasingly strict environmental regulation, low-input carbon-sequestering crops like hemp—which requires less water, herbicide, and fertilizer than many of the crops grown in the state—will be a valuable option.

The Governor's team insists that their new greenhouse gas emission law will produce economic opportunity and environmental benefits in California, despite the significant cost to business�so why not give the green light to industrial hemp, which would have done that but cost nothing?

Skaidra Smith-Heisters is an environmental policy analyst at the Reason Foundation. An archive of her work is here and Reason's California research and commentary is here.

A Bad Idea Gone Too Far

info@reason.org (Geoffrey Segal) skaidra@reason.org (Skaidra Smith-Heisters) — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Executive Summary

Proposition 86 seeks to expand California’s health care services and medical research funds by approximately $2 billion annually, initially through an excessive 300 percent increase in the state’s tax on tobacco products.

The largest single spending items in Proposition 86 would pay for uninsured hospital and emergency trauma care costs ($756 million annually) and children’s health coverage ($367 million), including expanding health coverage to children from families with incomes between 250 and 300 percent of the federal poverty line, or from $50,000 to $60,000 for a family of four. The proposal would make cigarette smokers pay part of the medical bills for obesity and people with diseases like diabetes, while less than 1 percent of the revenues generated by the new tax would actually go toward helping smokers quit. Less than 10 percent of the proposed tax funds would be spent on anti-smoking advertising and tobacco control and enforcement programs in total.

Fewer than 15 percent of California adults are smokers—the second lowest rate in the nation—but tobacco consumers constitute a relatively captive tax base, from which politicians can draw funds for a variety of programs, regardless of merit, without fear of meaningful political backlash. The tax itself and programs funded by these measures often have far-reaching consequences—such as increased tax fraud, smuggling, and diversion and waste of state funds—that are not fully appreciated by voters at the ballot box.

The proposed tobacco tax increase of $2.60 per pack of cigarettes would make California’s the highest tobacco tax ($3.47) in the country by more than $1.00—3.5 times the national average— and create an unprecedented incentive for legal and illegal tax avoidance. Neighboring states have far lower cigarette and sales tax rates, and there will be greater incentives to purchase cigarettes through the Internet, by mail order, and other sales avenues. As illustrated by the nation's experience with alcohol prohibition, these types of regulations also provide unique opportunities for organized crime, which is why numerous law enforcement associations have come out against Proposition 86, including the Association of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, Deputy Sheriffs Association of San Diego County, San Francisco Police Officers Association, Peace Officers Research Association of California, and the Los Angeles Police Protective League.

Tobacco tax revenues will initially cover the costs of new programs and expansion of health care benefits, but as tobacco sales continue to decline, programs founded on California’s tobacco consumers will be left stranded with budgetary needs far above the dedicated revenue stream.

Meanwhile, many health care programs outlined in Proposition 86 are already funded by the state budget. Rapid growth in the state’s general fund allowed for $1.2 billion increased spending for Health and Human Services in 2006-07, bringing the total to $73.1 billion. Last year California earned the highest grade in the nation for the State of Emergency Medicine according to the American College of Emergency Physicians. California already has one of the most generous health benefit systems for children. While there is still room for health care reforms that would lower costs and improve quality of care in California, Proposition 86 doesn’t address those concerns—it only adds 38 pages of mandates, new programs, and activities that over time will develop their own bureaucracies and become long-term liabilities for the state.

Propositions 1E and 84

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Executive Summary

While both Propositions 1E and 84 are being sold as necessary to improve vital infrastructure, there is actually very little infrastructure support included. Rather, the bonds offer token funds for real infrastructure projects and represent a grab-bag of funding for environmental programs, parks and recreation facilities, and non-infrastructure-related water programs.

Proposition 1E authorizes $4.1 billion in new General Obligation debt with annual debt service payments of $266 million and a total cost to taxpayers of $8 billion. These monies would be used for California’s aging system of levees, overflow weirs, and channels. Approximately $3 billion of this total would be dedicated to the state Central Valley Flood Control System. Of monies from the bond measure, 73 percent or more of the fund is for as-yet unidentified projects in the Sacramento- San Joaquin Delta, and 93 percent of the fund is available to projects without any requirement for federal and/or local matching funds.

Since 1996, California voters have authorized $11 billion in General Obligation bonds for water and resource-related purposes. Approximately $1.4 billion of this funding remains available. Proposition 84 would authorize another $5.4 billion in General Obligation debt with annual debt service costs of $350 million and a total cost to taxpayers of $10.5 billion over the life of the bond. While the title of the measure suggests that water quality, safety and supply (as in drinking water) are the primary aims of the bond, this is quite misleading. The funds from the bond would go to a range of purposes, including:

$1.5 billion for water quality projects (mostly through grants to local agencies)
$928 million for projects to protect rivers, lakes, and streams
$800 million in additional funding beyond Proposition 1E for flood control projects
$580 million to fund “sustainable communities” and “climate change reduction”
$1.5 billion for planning and feasibility studies concerning water supply and flood control

While there is a clear state interest in preserving the water supply which flows through the Delta, General Obligation debt is a poor and indirect method of funding these improvements. There is no guarantee that the funds will be used to address priority flood control and levee projects that increase the state’s long-term water infrastructure and financial security. In fact, the opposite is likely as the system does a poor job of prioritizing needs and pork barrel projects vie for a share of the funds. Why should California taxpayers take on another $10.5 billion in costs to fund more of the same system that hasn’t fixed our water and resource issues in the past? In recent years we have approved $11 billion in bonds for these purposes and little went to actual infrastructure. Instead, it is mostly comprised of funding for unrelated purposes, such as land conservancy purchases, protection of water quality for non-potable uses, funding for parks and nature education facilities like museums and aquariums, and programs for “sustainable communities” and “climate change reduction.”

Policymakers should adopt appropriate user-fees within drinking water rates, upon land-users that are protected by flood-control facilities, and upon users of recreational facilities. Adopting this “user pays” system would not only fund needed infrastructure improvements but would also encourage sensible land use in and around flood plains. Asking taxpayers to shoulder this obligation encourages inappropriate land-use within flood plains, worsening the potential impact of future flooding, and allows the legislature to avoid responsible budgeting for ongoing water and resource needs and instead rely on future generations to pay for their commitments through debt.