A Contra Costa County Superior Court judge ruled Friday that an environmental impact report on Chevron's proposed upgrade to its Richmond refinery failed to disclose whether the project would enable the refinery to process heavier crude oil.
The ruling voids the environmental impact report on the refinery's Energy and Hydrogen Renewal Project, which was approved in July by a divided Richmond City Council, Jessica Tovar with Communities for a Better Environment said Monday.
The project included replacing the refinery's 1960s-era hydrogen plant and its 1930s-era power plant.
Refinery officials said that the upgrade would increase the refinery's flexibility to process a larger variety of crude oil and improve the plant's energy efficiency and reliability.
In September, three environmental justice groups filed a lawsuit challenging the city's approval of the project.
Experts at Communities for a Better Environment, Asian Pacific Environmental Network and the West County Toxics Coalition - plaintiffs in the lawsuit - said that the upgrade would allow the refinery to process heavier crude oil, which would result in increased pollution and increased risk of explosion at the plant.
Heavier crude oil can contain higher amounts of contaminants such as mercury and selenium, which can cause serious health problems, according to Communities for a Better Environment.
"Communities in Richmond, particularly low-income communities of color, already suffer from industrial pollution-related health problems, including high rates of asthma and cancer. Chevron's refinery is the largest industrial polluter in the region," plaintiffs said in a news release issued Monday.
Processing heavier crude also takes higher temperatures, which increases the likelihood of upset or explosion, Tovar said.
Tovar said that the proposed project is similar to an upgrade at a Chevron refinery in Mississippi that has allegedly enabled that plant to process heavier crude oil.
In her ruling, Superior Court Judge Barbara Zuniga wrote that under the California Environmental Quality Act, the environmental impact report should enable the public, interested parties and public agencies to weigh the proposed project against its environmental costs and consider appropriate mitigation measures.
The ruling went on to state that the environmental impact report "is unclear and inconsistent as to whether the project will or will not enable Chevron to process a heavier crude slate than it is currently processing" and therefore "fails as an informational document."
Also at issue in the lawsuit was the refinery's plan to mitigate increased greenhouse gas emissions.
Plaintiffs argued that the refinery had not submitted a plan to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions during the environmental review process, but instead deferred the mitigation plans to a later date, which excluded the public from the process.
In her ruling, Zuniga found that under state Environmental Quality Act guidelines, the formulation of mitigation measures should not be deferred to a later date. She found that the "city has improperly deferred formulation of greenhouse gas mitigation measures."
Plaintiffs also alleged that the environmental impact report failed to analyze a proposed pipeline that would transport hydrogen from the new hydrogen processing plant to the Shell refinery in Martinez and the ConocoPhillips refinery in Rodeo.
The ruling stated that because the pipeline is an integral part of the project, it should have been addressed in the environmental impact report.
Tovar said that if Chevron decides to pursue its plans to upgrade the refinery, it will have to begin the environmental review process over again and include all of the information that was missing in the current environmental impact report.
"Chevron is disappointed and believes that the Energy and Hydrogen Renewal Project was properly permitted and that the benefits of the project are identified in the thorough environmental review conducted by the city of Richmond staff and the city's environmental consultant," Chevron spokesman Brent Tippen said Monday.
Tippen said Chevron officials were reviewing the specifics of the court's decision and would be determining a course of action in consultation with the city
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
UN Environment Chief Urges Ban On Plastic Bags
Single-use plastic bags should be banned because of their degrading effects on the planet says the United Nation's top environmental official.
Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), whose office advises U.N. member states, said, "Single use plastic bags which choke marine life, should be banned or phased out rapidly everywhere. There is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere." He was quoted Monday by McClatchy Newspapers.
Although recycling bags is on the rise in the United States, an estimated 90 billion thin bags a year, most used to handle produce and groceries, still go un-recycled. In fact, they were the second most common form of litter after cigarette butts at the 2008 International Coastal Cleanup Day sponsored by the Ocean Conservancy, a marine environmental group.
The UN's anti-plastic declaration comes amid a UNEP report that labels plastic as the most common form of ocean litter, which poses hazards "because it persists so long, degrading into tinier and tinier bits that can be consumed by the smallest marine life at the base of the food web."
In the United States, only San Francisco has completely banned plastic bags, while Los Angeles is slated to do so in 2010. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C.'s city council is set to vote on a five-cent-a-bag tax later this month. Similar proposals have failed in New York and Philadelphia.
Leading plastic bag manufacturers dispute the claim that a ban on plastic would be good for the environmental and say the real goal is for companies to increase the recycled content of plastic bags to 40 percent by 2015, reducing waste by 300 million pounds a year.
"Recycling is what we see as the best approach for the U.S.," Keith Christman of the American Chemistry Council said. "Plastic is just too valuable to waste."
Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), whose office advises U.N. member states, said, "Single use plastic bags which choke marine life, should be banned or phased out rapidly everywhere. There is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere." He was quoted Monday by McClatchy Newspapers.
Although recycling bags is on the rise in the United States, an estimated 90 billion thin bags a year, most used to handle produce and groceries, still go un-recycled. In fact, they were the second most common form of litter after cigarette butts at the 2008 International Coastal Cleanup Day sponsored by the Ocean Conservancy, a marine environmental group.
The UN's anti-plastic declaration comes amid a UNEP report that labels plastic as the most common form of ocean litter, which poses hazards "because it persists so long, degrading into tinier and tinier bits that can be consumed by the smallest marine life at the base of the food web."
In the United States, only San Francisco has completely banned plastic bags, while Los Angeles is slated to do so in 2010. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C.'s city council is set to vote on a five-cent-a-bag tax later this month. Similar proposals have failed in New York and Philadelphia.
Leading plastic bag manufacturers dispute the claim that a ban on plastic would be good for the environmental and say the real goal is for companies to increase the recycled content of plastic bags to 40 percent by 2015, reducing waste by 300 million pounds a year.
"Recycling is what we see as the best approach for the U.S.," Keith Christman of the American Chemistry Council said. "Plastic is just too valuable to waste."
Plan to combat global warming? Pie in the sky
For years, Democrats, enthralled by the cargo cult of the Kennedy presidency, have used the moon landing as proof that no big government ambition is beyond our reach.
The latest example of anthropogenic-lunar empowerment is global warming. Al Gore and Barack Obama routinely cite the Apollo program as proof that we can make good on the president's messianic campaign pledge to stem the rising ocean tides and hasten the healing of the planet.
The problem with the "if we can put a man on the moon, we can certainly spend trillions on this or that" formulation is that it sees political and scientific accomplishments as interchangeable. The moon landing was a daunting but nonetheless discrete challenge. Throw in enough brainiacs and blank checks -- and heroes willing to risk their lives -- and it was almost foreordained that someone would make that small step for man and that giant leap for mankind.
But politicians see things through a political lens -- every great accomplishment looks like a political accomplishment. Kennedy cultists seem to think that JFK's pledge succeeded in part because he was eloquent and inspiring and popular. No doubt all that helped. But if Kennedy had promised that by the end of the decade America would have a fully functioning perpetual motion machine, his grand challenge would be remembered as a joke.
Recall that Kennedy's successor, with far more political capital than Kennedy had, promised to defeat poverty. Historian Steven Hayward notes that, in 1966, Lyndon Johnson's commander in the War on Poverty, Sargent Shriver, told Congress that the White House believed poverty in America would be eliminated within 10 years. "Why," Hayward wryly asks, "should social science be more difficult than rocket science?"
I don't know that one is more difficult than the other, but I do know that they are not interchangeable. Physics is good at figuring out how to split atoms. Sociology, not so much.
Obama seems to be on both sides of the lesson. The president says he wants to invest massively in scientific research, eventually spending 3% of gross domestic product on R&D on eliminating fossil fuels. Who knows? That might work.
But at the same time, the Democrats are pushing their cap-and-trade scheme -- the Waxman-Markey climate bill -- through Congress, and it surely won't work.
The Apollo engineers' motto was "Waste anything but time." Waxman-Markey seems to do that one better, promising to waste everything, including time. It's a legislative blunderbuss that fails any remotely honest cost-benefit analysis, as Jim Manzi painstakingly demonstrates in the current issue of National Review. Under the bill, the government would sell or give away waivers -- call them ration cards -- for carbon emissions, worth tens of billions of dollars. The system is destined to become politicized. Waivers will be granted to favored industries and donors in states with political clout.
If everything worked exactly according to plan, it would cost the economy trillions of dollars over the coming decades. Meanwhile, climatologist Chip Knappenberger -- administrator of the World Climate Report, an avowedly global-warming-skeptical blog -- uses standard climate models to show that the payoff would be to reduce global temperatures by about 0.1 degree Celsius by 2100. Sponsors of the legislation haven't offered a competing analysis.
"The costs would be more than 10 times the benefits," writes Manzi, "even under extremely unrealistic assumptions of low costs and high benefits." All the while, China, India and other countries are simply scoffing at the suggestion they curtail their carbon emissions.
Now, I am more skeptical about the threat of global warming than Manzi is, never mind the Al Gore chorus. But let us assume the chorus is right and it is the moral equivalent of a war for our very survival as a civilization. The question remains: Why? Why this approach? Why see global warming as an excuse to expand government regulation and taxation rather than invest in problem-solving?
The U.S. government could spend trillions on research into scrubbing carbon from the air, bioengineering organisms to eat greenhouse gases or crafting substances to reflect more heat back into space. We could establish prizes for development of long-life batteries or clean coal technologies. And if any of these investments paid off, decades from now, the benefits would still dwarf Waxman-Markey at a fraction of the cost. It hardly takes a rocket scientist to see that
The latest example of anthropogenic-lunar empowerment is global warming. Al Gore and Barack Obama routinely cite the Apollo program as proof that we can make good on the president's messianic campaign pledge to stem the rising ocean tides and hasten the healing of the planet.
The problem with the "if we can put a man on the moon, we can certainly spend trillions on this or that" formulation is that it sees political and scientific accomplishments as interchangeable. The moon landing was a daunting but nonetheless discrete challenge. Throw in enough brainiacs and blank checks -- and heroes willing to risk their lives -- and it was almost foreordained that someone would make that small step for man and that giant leap for mankind.
But politicians see things through a political lens -- every great accomplishment looks like a political accomplishment. Kennedy cultists seem to think that JFK's pledge succeeded in part because he was eloquent and inspiring and popular. No doubt all that helped. But if Kennedy had promised that by the end of the decade America would have a fully functioning perpetual motion machine, his grand challenge would be remembered as a joke.
Recall that Kennedy's successor, with far more political capital than Kennedy had, promised to defeat poverty. Historian Steven Hayward notes that, in 1966, Lyndon Johnson's commander in the War on Poverty, Sargent Shriver, told Congress that the White House believed poverty in America would be eliminated within 10 years. "Why," Hayward wryly asks, "should social science be more difficult than rocket science?"
I don't know that one is more difficult than the other, but I do know that they are not interchangeable. Physics is good at figuring out how to split atoms. Sociology, not so much.
Obama seems to be on both sides of the lesson. The president says he wants to invest massively in scientific research, eventually spending 3% of gross domestic product on R&D on eliminating fossil fuels. Who knows? That might work.
But at the same time, the Democrats are pushing their cap-and-trade scheme -- the Waxman-Markey climate bill -- through Congress, and it surely won't work.
The Apollo engineers' motto was "Waste anything but time." Waxman-Markey seems to do that one better, promising to waste everything, including time. It's a legislative blunderbuss that fails any remotely honest cost-benefit analysis, as Jim Manzi painstakingly demonstrates in the current issue of National Review. Under the bill, the government would sell or give away waivers -- call them ration cards -- for carbon emissions, worth tens of billions of dollars. The system is destined to become politicized. Waivers will be granted to favored industries and donors in states with political clout.
If everything worked exactly according to plan, it would cost the economy trillions of dollars over the coming decades. Meanwhile, climatologist Chip Knappenberger -- administrator of the World Climate Report, an avowedly global-warming-skeptical blog -- uses standard climate models to show that the payoff would be to reduce global temperatures by about 0.1 degree Celsius by 2100. Sponsors of the legislation haven't offered a competing analysis.
"The costs would be more than 10 times the benefits," writes Manzi, "even under extremely unrealistic assumptions of low costs and high benefits." All the while, China, India and other countries are simply scoffing at the suggestion they curtail their carbon emissions.
Now, I am more skeptical about the threat of global warming than Manzi is, never mind the Al Gore chorus. But let us assume the chorus is right and it is the moral equivalent of a war for our very survival as a civilization. The question remains: Why? Why this approach? Why see global warming as an excuse to expand government regulation and taxation rather than invest in problem-solving?
The U.S. government could spend trillions on research into scrubbing carbon from the air, bioengineering organisms to eat greenhouse gases or crafting substances to reflect more heat back into space. We could establish prizes for development of long-life batteries or clean coal technologies. And if any of these investments paid off, decades from now, the benefits would still dwarf Waxman-Markey at a fraction of the cost. It hardly takes a rocket scientist to see that
How a Mild Virus Might Turn Vicious
The swine flu virus is rapidly making its way around the world, but it has been relatively mild so far, causing only 139 confirmed deaths. Could it mutate into something more lethal?
Scientists looking at its genetic structure say there is no obvious pressure for it to do so — no reason for this virus to “want,” in the Darwinian sense, to kill more of its hosts.
It is already doing a near-perfect job of keeping itself alive by invading human noses and inducing humans to cough it from one to another, said Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
“A really aggressive flu that quickly kills its host” — like SARS and H5N1 avian flu — “gives itself a problem,” Dr. Lipkin said.
But flu viruses are highly mutable, and anything could happen in the next two years, the time a new strain normally takes to circle the globe. After all, Spanish influenza began as a mild strain, then turned horrifically virulent, killing 20 million to 100 million people in 1918-19.
But Dr. Peter Palese, head of microbiology at Mount Sinai Medical School and part of the team that rebuilt that virus in 2005 from fragments found in old lung tissue, said that strain was a “once-a-millennium or once-every-10-millennia event — things like it don’t happen very often.”
Nor is it clear, he added, that viruses really “want” a particular outcome.
“For me, that’s too much anthropomorphic thinking,” Dr. Palese said. “Look, I believe in Darwin. Yes, the fittest virus survives. But it’s not clear what the ultimate selection parameter is.”
A mutation that confers lethality, he explained, may confer another advantage scientists have not pinned down.
The new virus has been described as “a real mutt” by Walter R. Dowdle, the former chief of virology for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, because of its unique mix of Eurasian and American swine, human and bird genes.
Flu chromosomes are quite simple — eight short strands of RNA that issue the genetic code for a grand total of 11 proteins. They break apart in a jumble inside cells they infect, and then they reassemble, picking up random bits of other flus, which makes the results unpredictable.
The current swine flu strain lacks several genes believed to increase lethality, including those that code for two proteins known as PB1-F2 and NS-1, and one that codes for a tongue-twister called the polybasic hemagglutinin cleavage site.
PB1-F2 appears to weaken the protective membrane of the energy-producing mitochondria in an infected cell, ultimately killing the cell. Specifically, it attacks dendritic cells, the sentinels of the immune system. Its lethality could be accidental — a protein good at killing sentries might just go on killing other cells once inside the fort.
All pandemic flus, including those of the Spanish, Hong Kong and Asian flus, make PB1-F2. So does the H5N1 bird flu. The current swine strain does not.
The NS-1 protein also maims the immune response by blocking interferon, an antiviral protein made by cells.
Very lethal bird flus also have the unusual cleavage site, which allows the hemagglutinin spike on the virus’s shell to split and inject its genetic instructions into different kinds of cells, like those in the lungs and the gut.
Such an addition to the novel H1N1 would be very dangerous. But because it has been found only in avian flus, it is unlikely to become a component of a human flu, Dr. Palese said. Even the 1918 virus, which was avian in origin, lacked it.
A much more likely change, scientists have said, is that the H1N1 swine flu will become resistant to the antiviral drug Tamiflu. A gene for Tamiflu resistance is now almost universal in seasonal H1N1 flus.
If that happens, the world’s Tamiflu stockpiles will be all but worthless, and doctors may have to switch to Relenza, which is a powder used with an inhaler, which makes it more expensive and harder to take.
Depending on the mutation, older antiviral drugs like rimantidine may be useful, but so much resistance to them developed in seasonal flu that they were largely abandoned a few years ago.
Dr. Palese was asked about another notion concerning likely mutations. There has been outrage at Egypt’s decision to kill all the pigs belonging to its Coptic Christian minority. It has been depicted as misguided and motivated by religious bigotry, because the “swine flu” is really now a human flu.
But Egypt is also in an especially dangerous situation. The new swine flu reached it just last week. The H5N1 avian flu has circulated in its backyard chickens since 2006, defying all eradication efforts. In the last year, dozens of H5N1 cases have been confirmed in toddlers, almost all of whom have survived — which led some experts to speculate that those are cases of a less lethal version of H5N1 that is better adapted to humans.
In that case, might it be wise to get rid of the country’s relatively small pig population, since pigs are “mixing vessels” that can catch both human and bird flus?
“I agree with the premise, if you really could eliminate an animal reservoir,” Dr. Palese said. “But the virus is out of pigs now — and it’s more important that those poor people have something to eat.”
Scientists looking at its genetic structure say there is no obvious pressure for it to do so — no reason for this virus to “want,” in the Darwinian sense, to kill more of its hosts.
It is already doing a near-perfect job of keeping itself alive by invading human noses and inducing humans to cough it from one to another, said Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
“A really aggressive flu that quickly kills its host” — like SARS and H5N1 avian flu — “gives itself a problem,” Dr. Lipkin said.
But flu viruses are highly mutable, and anything could happen in the next two years, the time a new strain normally takes to circle the globe. After all, Spanish influenza began as a mild strain, then turned horrifically virulent, killing 20 million to 100 million people in 1918-19.
But Dr. Peter Palese, head of microbiology at Mount Sinai Medical School and part of the team that rebuilt that virus in 2005 from fragments found in old lung tissue, said that strain was a “once-a-millennium or once-every-10-millennia event — things like it don’t happen very often.”
Nor is it clear, he added, that viruses really “want” a particular outcome.
“For me, that’s too much anthropomorphic thinking,” Dr. Palese said. “Look, I believe in Darwin. Yes, the fittest virus survives. But it’s not clear what the ultimate selection parameter is.”
A mutation that confers lethality, he explained, may confer another advantage scientists have not pinned down.
The new virus has been described as “a real mutt” by Walter R. Dowdle, the former chief of virology for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, because of its unique mix of Eurasian and American swine, human and bird genes.
Flu chromosomes are quite simple — eight short strands of RNA that issue the genetic code for a grand total of 11 proteins. They break apart in a jumble inside cells they infect, and then they reassemble, picking up random bits of other flus, which makes the results unpredictable.
The current swine flu strain lacks several genes believed to increase lethality, including those that code for two proteins known as PB1-F2 and NS-1, and one that codes for a tongue-twister called the polybasic hemagglutinin cleavage site.
PB1-F2 appears to weaken the protective membrane of the energy-producing mitochondria in an infected cell, ultimately killing the cell. Specifically, it attacks dendritic cells, the sentinels of the immune system. Its lethality could be accidental — a protein good at killing sentries might just go on killing other cells once inside the fort.
All pandemic flus, including those of the Spanish, Hong Kong and Asian flus, make PB1-F2. So does the H5N1 bird flu. The current swine strain does not.
The NS-1 protein also maims the immune response by blocking interferon, an antiviral protein made by cells.
Very lethal bird flus also have the unusual cleavage site, which allows the hemagglutinin spike on the virus’s shell to split and inject its genetic instructions into different kinds of cells, like those in the lungs and the gut.
Such an addition to the novel H1N1 would be very dangerous. But because it has been found only in avian flus, it is unlikely to become a component of a human flu, Dr. Palese said. Even the 1918 virus, which was avian in origin, lacked it.
A much more likely change, scientists have said, is that the H1N1 swine flu will become resistant to the antiviral drug Tamiflu. A gene for Tamiflu resistance is now almost universal in seasonal H1N1 flus.
If that happens, the world’s Tamiflu stockpiles will be all but worthless, and doctors may have to switch to Relenza, which is a powder used with an inhaler, which makes it more expensive and harder to take.
Depending on the mutation, older antiviral drugs like rimantidine may be useful, but so much resistance to them developed in seasonal flu that they were largely abandoned a few years ago.
Dr. Palese was asked about another notion concerning likely mutations. There has been outrage at Egypt’s decision to kill all the pigs belonging to its Coptic Christian minority. It has been depicted as misguided and motivated by religious bigotry, because the “swine flu” is really now a human flu.
But Egypt is also in an especially dangerous situation. The new swine flu reached it just last week. The H5N1 avian flu has circulated in its backyard chickens since 2006, defying all eradication efforts. In the last year, dozens of H5N1 cases have been confirmed in toddlers, almost all of whom have survived — which led some experts to speculate that those are cases of a less lethal version of H5N1 that is better adapted to humans.
In that case, might it be wise to get rid of the country’s relatively small pig population, since pigs are “mixing vessels” that can catch both human and bird flus?
“I agree with the premise, if you really could eliminate an animal reservoir,” Dr. Palese said. “But the virus is out of pigs now — and it’s more important that those poor people have something to eat.”
Airlines 'must take initiative' before climate-change talks, warns BA boss
Leading airlines have warned that they could be punished at the Copenhagen climate change talks this year because the industry has failed to influence environment ministers.
Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways, urged airlines to increase their lobbying efforts after delivering a warning about the efforts of the United Nations body charged with representing airlines, the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
ICAO, which is comprised of transport ministers from UN member governments, has failed to thrash out an emissions-trading scheme for airlines and is not due to meet again until October, by which point other groups could have proposed tougher measures for airlines.
Speaking at the annual general meeting of the International Air Transport Association in Kuala Lumpur, Walsh said Iata should take the initiative before it is too late.
"I don't think ICAO has done enough and I don't think they will be able to influence decisions at Copenhagen. That is why it is important for Iata to reach a position," he said.
Walsh also echoed fears among airline executives that carriers will be singled out by politicians because they have not been included in official carbon dioxide reduction targets.
"Getting our voice heard and being represented is critical. We have got to ask ourselves who is representing the airline industry at Copenhagen. We have got to do something to get our voice heard."
Walsh admitted that airlines had made an error by focusing their lobbying efforts on transport ministers and not their colleagues at environment departments.
"We tend to spend more of our time talking to transport ministers than environment ministers," he said. "It's not going to be the transport ministers who will be at Copenhagen. We may have been talking to the wrong audience and we have to turn that around very quickly."
Tony Tyler, chief executive of Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific, said airlines still had an opportunity to state their case. "We don't want to be faced after Copenhagen with that feeling of 'oh my goodness we should have done something'."
Iata has been pushing ICAO to agree an action plan that would include a global emissions-trading scheme for airlines. However, ICAO's efforts have been stymied by a failure to reach agreement with emerging superpowers such as Brazil, India and China.
Other countries are preparing to fill the policy gap at Copenhagen while Iata stands on the sidelines. The world's poorest countries are pushing for a long-haul flight tax that would contribute $10bn (£6.2bn) towards fighting global warming and could be agreed at Copenhagen, where governments will thrash out a sequel to the Kyoto climate change agreement.
International aviation and shipping were carved out from Kyoto on the proviso that ICAO and the International Maritime Organisation came up with their own climate-change schemes – which both groups have failed to do after a decade of talks.
Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways, urged airlines to increase their lobbying efforts after delivering a warning about the efforts of the United Nations body charged with representing airlines, the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
ICAO, which is comprised of transport ministers from UN member governments, has failed to thrash out an emissions-trading scheme for airlines and is not due to meet again until October, by which point other groups could have proposed tougher measures for airlines.
Speaking at the annual general meeting of the International Air Transport Association in Kuala Lumpur, Walsh said Iata should take the initiative before it is too late.
"I don't think ICAO has done enough and I don't think they will be able to influence decisions at Copenhagen. That is why it is important for Iata to reach a position," he said.
Walsh also echoed fears among airline executives that carriers will be singled out by politicians because they have not been included in official carbon dioxide reduction targets.
"Getting our voice heard and being represented is critical. We have got to ask ourselves who is representing the airline industry at Copenhagen. We have got to do something to get our voice heard."
Walsh admitted that airlines had made an error by focusing their lobbying efforts on transport ministers and not their colleagues at environment departments.
"We tend to spend more of our time talking to transport ministers than environment ministers," he said. "It's not going to be the transport ministers who will be at Copenhagen. We may have been talking to the wrong audience and we have to turn that around very quickly."
Tony Tyler, chief executive of Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific, said airlines still had an opportunity to state their case. "We don't want to be faced after Copenhagen with that feeling of 'oh my goodness we should have done something'."
Iata has been pushing ICAO to agree an action plan that would include a global emissions-trading scheme for airlines. However, ICAO's efforts have been stymied by a failure to reach agreement with emerging superpowers such as Brazil, India and China.
Other countries are preparing to fill the policy gap at Copenhagen while Iata stands on the sidelines. The world's poorest countries are pushing for a long-haul flight tax that would contribute $10bn (£6.2bn) towards fighting global warming and could be agreed at Copenhagen, where governments will thrash out a sequel to the Kyoto climate change agreement.
International aviation and shipping were carved out from Kyoto on the proviso that ICAO and the International Maritime Organisation came up with their own climate-change schemes – which both groups have failed to do after a decade of talks.
Fuel emissions focus 'too narrow'
Policymakers must consider more than just "tailpipe" emissions when assessing the impacts of different modes of transport, say researchers.
Many analyses overlook greenhouse gases emitted in constructing and maintaining travel infrastructures, they added.
The team found that, based on passenger kilometres travelled, off-peak urban bus services were more carbon-intensive than flights by commercial aircraft.
The findings have been published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
The researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, said the importance of tackling emissions from transport meant that decisions should not be based on partial data.
"Governmental policy has historically relied on energy and emission analysis of automobiles, buses, trains and aircraft at their tailpipe," they wrote.
"[This ignores] vehicle production and maintenance, infrastructure provision and fuel production requirements to support these modes.
"To date, a comprehensive life-cycle assessment (LCA) of passenger transportation in the US has not been completed."
Hidden emissions
The team selected a range of transport to be assessed, including a saloon car, an urban bus service and a mid-sized aircraft.
They then identified ways in which energy was being used and/or gases were being emitted.
As well as assessing "operational components", such as the fuel consumption of running an engine, the team also considered the impacts of "non-operational components", such as road construction, street lighting and maintenance.
The data was then presented in terms of grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per passenger kilometre travelled (g CO2e/PKT) to allow a comparison between the different modes' carbon intensities.
Many analyses overlook greenhouse gases emitted in constructing and maintaining travel infrastructures, they added.
The team found that, based on passenger kilometres travelled, off-peak urban bus services were more carbon-intensive than flights by commercial aircraft.
The findings have been published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
The researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, said the importance of tackling emissions from transport meant that decisions should not be based on partial data.
"Governmental policy has historically relied on energy and emission analysis of automobiles, buses, trains and aircraft at their tailpipe," they wrote.
"[This ignores] vehicle production and maintenance, infrastructure provision and fuel production requirements to support these modes.
"To date, a comprehensive life-cycle assessment (LCA) of passenger transportation in the US has not been completed."
Hidden emissions
The team selected a range of transport to be assessed, including a saloon car, an urban bus service and a mid-sized aircraft.
They then identified ways in which energy was being used and/or gases were being emitted.
As well as assessing "operational components", such as the fuel consumption of running an engine, the team also considered the impacts of "non-operational components", such as road construction, street lighting and maintenance.
The data was then presented in terms of grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per passenger kilometre travelled (g CO2e/PKT) to allow a comparison between the different modes' carbon intensities.
Greenathon Impact: Lighting lives with green energy
World Earth Day is a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the earth's environment and to reduce the impact of climate change.
At NDTV, we did our bit for the environment in February with the first of its kind 24-hour telethon.
The NDTV Toyota Greenathon was a non-stop television event that raised money for TERI's Light a Billion Lives scheme that aims at solar powering villages across India.
The initiative received an overwhelming response from our viewers. So far, nine villages in Rajasthan, 16 in Orissa, 16 in West Bengal, two in Haryana, two in Assam and three in Jharkhand have benefitted from the project.
In a follow up, the NDTV team visited the Bad Gujran village in Rajasthan and found that the solar lamps had transformed life there. The village was sponsored by Qualcomm.
Not long ago, this little Rajasthan village would plunge into darkness as the sun went down. Kerosene lamps were all that the villagers had to light up their lives. But these lamps also burnt a hole in their pockets and gave out toxic fumes.
But that is not the case anymore. TERI's Light a Billion Lives initiative has brought a revolution to this village with its solar lamps- each of which costs a mere Rs 2 and lasts the entire night.
Mahavir Singh, an enterpreneur, in whose house the solar charging station has been set up, lists the benefits.
"It was difficult for children to study earlier with kerosene lamps. The wind would put off the lamps and the fumes were also harmful. With these solar lamps, children are able to study properly. It is also helping women in their household chores. Earlier with kerosene lamps we would only be able to study for an hour. But now, we are able to study for 3-4 hours," said Mahavir Singh.
Villagers say they can now work through the night and celebrate through the night. Whether at work or play, solar lamps have now become an essential part of village life.
At NDTV, we did our bit for the environment in February with the first of its kind 24-hour telethon.
The NDTV Toyota Greenathon was a non-stop television event that raised money for TERI's Light a Billion Lives scheme that aims at solar powering villages across India.
The initiative received an overwhelming response from our viewers. So far, nine villages in Rajasthan, 16 in Orissa, 16 in West Bengal, two in Haryana, two in Assam and three in Jharkhand have benefitted from the project.
In a follow up, the NDTV team visited the Bad Gujran village in Rajasthan and found that the solar lamps had transformed life there. The village was sponsored by Qualcomm.
Not long ago, this little Rajasthan village would plunge into darkness as the sun went down. Kerosene lamps were all that the villagers had to light up their lives. But these lamps also burnt a hole in their pockets and gave out toxic fumes.
But that is not the case anymore. TERI's Light a Billion Lives initiative has brought a revolution to this village with its solar lamps- each of which costs a mere Rs 2 and lasts the entire night.
Mahavir Singh, an enterpreneur, in whose house the solar charging station has been set up, lists the benefits.
"It was difficult for children to study earlier with kerosene lamps. The wind would put off the lamps and the fumes were also harmful. With these solar lamps, children are able to study properly. It is also helping women in their household chores. Earlier with kerosene lamps we would only be able to study for an hour. But now, we are able to study for 3-4 hours," said Mahavir Singh.
Villagers say they can now work through the night and celebrate through the night. Whether at work or play, solar lamps have now become an essential part of village life.
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