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MIT researchers, Massachusetts officials highlight strategies to adapt to climate change.

Just days after President Obama called for action on climate change in his second inaugural address, members of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s administration joined energy and environment researchers at MIT to discuss strategies for adapting to climate change. The panel discussion on Jan. 23 fostered a continued partnership between MIT and the Commonwealth to advance energy and environment innovation.

“We are so pleased to have the opportunity to utilize one of the Commonwealth’s greatest intellectual resources — MIT — to tackle this global challenge,” said Massachusetts Undersecretary for Energy Barbara Kates-Garnick, the moderator of the panel.

MIT professors Kerry Emanuel and Michael Greenstone kicked off the event with a discussion on the clear realities of climate change.

“When we’re talking about global climate change, no one really cares if the temperature goes up a few degrees. On a day like today it would seem to be a good thing,” said Emanuel, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science. “What we really care about … is the side effects of that global warming.”

Side effects include increases in sea levels of as much as three feet by the end of the century, increased incidence of heat waves and drought, and more intense rain and snow storms and hurricanes.

When asked by MIT Energy Initiative Director Ernest Moniz how long we have to prepare, Emanuel said the time scale is negative. But he pointed out that part of the problem is policies that encourage people to live and build in risky places. “People are moving into hurricane-prone regions, including right here in Massachusetts,” Emanuel said. “For these people, this is bad news.”

Emanuel's colleague, Greenstone, then laid out some of the ways to confront the challenges of climate change.

Mitigation — i.e., reducing greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the severity of climate change effects — is one course of action. But, Greenstone noted, a comprehensive mitigation strategy hasn’t generated much enthusiasm around the world. “I say that as someone who listened to the president’s inaugural and thought, ‘This is fantastic. The president is making a big effort on this,’” said Greenstone, the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics. “Unfortunately, I’m not sure everyone in the country agrees with the president, and the politics have proven to be a little harrowing.”

Like President Obama, Greenstone believes the United States should be a leader, encouraging other countries to also confront climate change. Acting through adaptation measures can complement both mitigation initiatives and funding of basic research and development for low-carbon energy sources in the United States and abroad.

Greenstone said that in addition to contributing to the science of climate change, researchers can partner with policymakers and planners to try to find successful adaptation strategies. This collaboration is important because “the playbook of successful adaptation strategies I think is rather small,” Greenstone said.

Fortunately, Massachusetts is playing a key role in developing that playbook. Two years ago, the Commonwealth released the Massachusetts Climate Change Adaptation Report, which lays out strategies to help prepare for and respond to the impacts of climate change. Stephen Estes-Smargiassi, director of planning for the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA), and the Department of Agricultural Resources Commissioner Gregory Watson spoke about some of their efforts.

Estes-Smargiassi used the Deer Island treatment plant as one example of their work to make adaptation part of their long-term strategy.

When the department began designing the plant in the 1990s, its engineers realized that if sea level rose, the plant's capacity would be compromised. To ensure they would have the capacity needed for the future, the MWRA decided to raise the design of the plant almost two feet. Estes-Smargiassi called this move the first significant and concrete effort at climate adaptation nationwide.

“When we’re making a renovation, we’re going to make sure climate change is a part of it. It’s built into our thinking,” Estes-Smargiassi said.

The department is also taking steps to be more efficient. Just this week, the MWRA was nationally recognized by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy and the Alliance for Water Efficiency for its exceptional efforts to save both energy and water. The MWRA’s work contributes to the Commonwealth’s overall effort to reduce emissions by 25 percent by 2020 and by at least 80 percent by 2050 below statewide 1990 emissions. Mandated by the Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act of 2008, these emission reduction targets are the most ambitious in the nation.

With a third of global greenhouse gas emissions coming from the food system, Watson spoke on his department’s work. Calling large commodity-based agriculture “a thing of the past,” Watson said his department is turning to new, more sustainable techniques: composting, enriching soils with nutrients, increasing fertility with biochar (charcoal substitute made from organic material) and encouraging "grow local" campaigns.

“We’re creating a sustainable agricultural economy in Massachusetts,” Watson said. And that’s “the direction agriculture in this country is headed.”

While there are substantial efforts underway in Massachusetts, Kates-Garnick concluded the discussion by highlighting the need for continued work.

“We have a piecemeal approach. One administration leaves, another comes in. And while we may all be committed … what we really have to do now is put in place long-term consistent solutions ... I think we’re really focused on doing this in our administration,” Kates-Garnick said.

MIT researchers and Massachusetts officials will come together again next week to learn about cutting-edge strategies students are developing.

Watch the video of the event

Big deal, little fanfare over global pact on mercury controls

By Carol J. Williams

January 23, 2013

It’s a highly toxic element that travels the world in mysterious ways, respects neither manmade nor natural boundaries and rapidly accumulates in people and the food they eat.

Mercury’s risks for human and environmental health have slowly but steadily come to light over the centuries, leading to ad hoc phase-outs of mercury-filled thermometers, dental amalgam and the felt-hat-shaping compound that caused brain damage in 19th century milliners, giving rise to the term “mad as a hatter.”

U.S. and European governments have invoked strict regulations in recent decades to reduce mercury emissions. But fresh research by the United Nations Environmental Program and U.S. and European scientists has documented a concurrent rise in mercury emissions in Asia, Africa and the Arctic Ocean region, underscoring that mercury is a global problem in need of a collaborative solution.

A legally binding agreement to reduce emissions that was reached this past weekend at U.N.-sponsored talks in Geneva drew little notice or fanfare, probably  because it still faces the rigors of ratification in 140-plus countries that will take another two to four years.

Still, getting so many states with competing economic agendas and disparate means to commit to the plan was no small feat--and not a minute too soon, in the view of environmental advocates spooked by mounting evidence of mercury’s dangers.

A European Union-coordinated study of 4,000 residents in 17 countries over the last two years found mercury levels in one-third of the test group to be above the amount considered safe, suggesting a causal link with brain damage in newborns.

“Mercury has been known as a toxin and a hazard for centuries, but today we have many of the alternative technologies and processes needed to reduce the risks for tens of millions of people, including pregnant mothers and their babies,” said Achim Steiner, the U.N. Environment Program chief, in heralding the successful conclusion of the decade-long International Negotiating Committee on Mercury.

Studies released by the U.N. agency ahead of the culminating negotiations lent urgency to the forum’s mission. In the world body’s "Global Mercury Assessment 2013," emissions of toxic metals from artisanal gold mining were shown to have doubled since 2005. Researchers attributed some of the rise to more thorough reporting from developing nations, but blamed more of it on the lure of record prices commanded for the precious metal.

A separate U.N. study said coal burning was responsible for about 24% of mercury emissions globally each year, with a heavy concentration in Asia, where smokestacks lack the emissions-scrubbing equipment widely used in North America and Europe.

Franz Perrez, international affairs division chief for Switzerland’s environmental office, attributed the unusual unity of purpose that secured the mercury pact in Geneva to a forum less subject to the rich-poor divides bedeviling the world body’s pursuit of a climate change treaty.

“There are some differences over financing and burden-sharing and over the compliance mechanism, but these are typical,” said Perrez, adding that he heard nothing to suggest ratification would be a problem.

Horse-trading remains to be done on helping developing countries switch to technologies that capture mercury emissions at the source and phase out antiquated and dangerous mining practices, said Noelle Selin, a professor of engineering systems and atmospheric chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mercury controls have been practiced on a voluntary basis by leading industrial countries in recent years, but “the advantage of having a treaty is that it is a strong legal statement that mercury is a problem and sets guidelines and timelines for reducing its major sources,” Selin said in a phone interview from the Geneva forum.

Selin and Harvard University colleague Elsie Sunderland published an appeal in the journal Environmental Health this month for aggressive emissions reductions and pointed to the European Union study showing as many as 2 million children born on the Continent each year with mercury-induced IQ deficiencies. The study calculated that the mental health damage costs European society $12 billion a year in lost income.

How mercury that has accumulated in the environment for millennia migrates the globe and transforms as it mixes with air, soil and water isn’t well understood, said James Hurley, director of the University of Wisconsin Aquatic Sciences Center. But an experiment  he conducted over the last seven years found that new emissions from industrial activities and mercury released from melting Arctic ice and thawing permafrost were far more hazardous to the food chain than deposits in the ground.

Mercury released from coal-fired plants that falls into lakes or watersheds converts to methylmercury in water and is absorbed first by plankton, then by the fish that feed on it. To determine how quickly the element enters the food chain, Hurley put about three times the amount of mercury into one of Canada’s Experimental Lakes as would naturally make its way into the water body from rainfall and adjacent wetlands.

“We got a rapid response to new mercury added to the lake,” Hurley said. “More and more of the stable isotope kept accumulating in predator fish.”

Even more significant, he said, was the finding that as soon as researchers ceased adding mercury to the lake, absorption of it in fish responded with a parallel decline.

“By eliminating the amount of mercury in the atmosphere, we hopefully will be seeing improvement in mercury levels in fish,” Hurley said, predicting what passes for rapid rewards in environmental recovery if the global compact on mercury regulations moves ahead. 

A foreign correspondent for 25 years, Carol J. Williams traveled to and reported from more than 80 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

Paint Pigment, Violent Raccoons and Other Surprising Mercury Trivia

January 18, 2013
By: Jenny Marder

Delegates gathered in Geneva this week to negotiate for a global treaty to regulate the toxic chemical mercury.

I want to call your attention to a blog on "issues relevant to mercury pollution," run collectively by a group of MIT graduate students. They have been attending the United Nations talks on mercury in Geneva, Switzerland, which are due to wrap up today. Their posts are clever, funny and packed with interesting facts.

For example, did you know that the use of mercury dates as far back as 5,000 B.C.? In Spain, the Romans relied on slave labor to mine mercury, which they used as pigment in their paint. In fact, mercury-laden paint was found in homes "buried by the volcanic ash of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.," the post reads. Cool, huh?

In the blog, the students document mercury's presence in popular culture, with a nod to a 1979 horror film called "Prophecy" in which "mercury waste from a logging company creates violent raccoons, salmon large enough to eat a duck and, worst of all, a giant bear-monster that may also be a reincarnated, evil forest spirit." Here's a clip.

They write of the not-so-subtle music choices -- namely Queen's "Under Pressure," which has been broadcast repeatedly over the conference loudspeaker. After noting the Freddie Mercury connection, they suggest a more appropriate playlist, which includes "Running out of Time" by Hot Hot Heat and "Mercury Poisoning" by Graham Parker and the Rumour.

And there's this gem, written from the perspective of a mercury atom floating in a delegate's water bottle.

And most importantly, they address how little people know about mercury and the risks it poses to the environment and human health. Neurological problems, memory loss and kidney, thyroid and pulmonary system problems can occur as a result of exposure to high concentrations. Vaporized mercury can easily pass from your lungs into your blood stream and damage tissues, according to this post. A growing body of evidence, this post notes, indicates a causal relationship between methylmercury and cardiovascular disease, such as heart attacks and increased blood pressure. People working in mercury mining and refining, thermometer production, dentistry, and in the production of mercury-based chemicals are at increased risk.

Plus, here's mercury in seafood, explained.

In brief, mercury is methylated to methylmercury (CH3HgX) by bacteria in the ocean and then accumulates in fish and marine mammals. Long-lived predatory fish at the top of the food-chain, such as swordfish, tilefish, shark, and tuna, can accumulate dangerously high concentrations of mercury. The US EPA lists guidelines for safe consumption of fish. Women who are pregnant or who could become pregnant should be especially careful about eating mercury contaminated fish because the mercury can be harmful to the developing fetus.

By Brian Bienkowski and Environmental Health News
January 18, 2013
As United Nations delegates end their mercury treaty talks today, scientists warn that ongoing emissions are more of a threat to food webs than the mercury already in the environment.

At the same time, climate change is likely to alter food webs and patterns of mercury transport in places such as the Arctic, which will further complicate efforts to keep the contaminant out of people and their food.

University of Wisconsin researchers recently found that mercury added to a lake reached top predators faster than the mercury that already existed in their environment.

“It was amazing how fast the mercury got into the fish,” said James Hurley, project researcher and director of the university’s Water Resources Institute in Madison.

And this was no lab experiment – researchers put mercury into Lake 658, part of the Experimental Lakes area in Ontario, Canada. Over a year, they put about three times the amount normally received through rainfall and nearby wetlands.

For mercury to show up in top lake predators, it has to be converted to methylmercury – mercury’s toxic form -- by organisms. Then it has to move up through the food web. 

At Lake 658, this happened within months.

“We started seeing the isotope we added in June accumulate in yellow perch by early fall,” Hurley said. “By the start of the second year, we were clearly seeing it even in predatory fish.”

Before this study, researchers didn’t have any idea about how long it took for mercury to move through the environment, said David Krabbenhoft, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Wisconsin Water Science Center.

Once researchers stopped adding mercury, the concentrations in fish dropped quickly.

The discovery that new mercury seems to be more of a threat than old mercury could add impetus for reducing global emissions. Critics of mercury rules often say that because mercury is an element that recirculates, new emissions have minimal impact compared with historic and natural ones.

The United Nations today adjourns a meeting in Geneva where governments of about 130 nations have been debating a mercury reduction treaty.

Asia is by far the largest source of new mercury emissions, and coal-burning power plants are the top contributor. Small-scale gold production and residential heating from other fossil fuels are other major sources.

Exposure to high levels of mercury, often from consumption of fish and other seafood, can damage developing brains, reducing children’s IQs. It also has been linked to cardiovascular effects in some adults and children.

The UN released a report leading up to the conference that showed the amount of mercury in the world’s oceans has doubled in the past century.

And global emissions are rising. An increase equivalent to about one-quarter of the 2005 human-caused mercury emissions, or about 500 tons per year, is expected by 2020 if there are no major changes in economic trends or emissions, according to a 2011 report by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme.

Climate change complicates transport
Human-driven emissions of another kind – carbon – are expected to further complicate how mercury makes its way around the planet, especially in the Arctic.

Since 1979, average Arctic sea ice has declined about 7.5 percent per decade. Loss of ice would mean more mercury in the air would land directly on water, instead of bouncing back as a gas. Conversely, the waters may purge more mercury as a gas. The net effect of these two factors is unknown.

“Thawing permafrost is already releasing significant masses of largely inorganic mercury to lakes and the Arctic Ocean,” wrote the authors of a 2011 study from Canada’s Freshwater Institute.

Warmer water coupled with the increased nutrients from permafrost and soil runoff could bolster aquatic life. More bacteria would hasten mercury turning into its dangerous form.

Harvard researchers found that twice as much of the mercury in the Arctic Ocean originates from the rivers as from the atmosphere, according to a 2012 study.

"At this point we can only speculate as to how the mercury enters the river systems, but it appears that climate change may play a large role," said Daniel Jacob, a co-author of the study, in a prepared statement. "As global temperatures rise, we begin to see areas of permafrost thawing and releasing mercury that was locked in the soil.”

Climate could alter the feeding habits of ocean creatures. A longer food chain for top predators such as polar bears, belugas and walruses means they would be more highly exposed to mercury, since it magnifies each step up.

For some fish, temperature change would bolster growth rates, decreasing mercury accumulation. For other cold-loving fish, such as char and lake trout, growth could be stunted, increasing their mercury concentrations.

Persistent in food webs, people
Living in a region that acts as a sink for global pollutants and relying on wildlife for their diet, Arctic people have long been exposed to some of the highest levels of mercury.

Inuit pregnant women, mothers and women of childbearing age had about seven times more mercury in their blood than what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says will cause health problems for their children, according to a 2011 study. In some parts of Greenland, about 90 percent of women of childbearing age had blood mercury levels over the EPA’s limit.

Mercury has been linked to attention problems, reduced IQs and altered heart rates in children living in the Arctic and sub-Arctic.

But it’s not just a problem in the far north.

Between 1.5 and 2 million European children are born each year with mercury exposures above what the World Health Organization considers safe, according to a study in this month’s Environmental Health journal. Human health impacts are the reason an emissions treaty is so vital, experts say.

“For ocean fish and people eating them, it may take decades to see the benefits,” said Noelle Selin, an engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But without a treaty, things are only going to get worse.”

David Streets, a senior scientist who studies historic mercury emissions at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, said mercury emissions have gone down in the United States and Europe, but a rush in coal use in some fast-growing countries like China, and a resurgence of artisanal gold mining in places like Africa, is offsetting the reductions.

In 2005, the top emitter of human-caused mercury was Asia, at 65 percent of global emissions. Next highest was North America at 8.3 percent, according to U.N. data.

“This stuff cycles around so much, comes to the ground, goes back into the air, gets in people,” Streets said. “A treaty is a good start.”

Using available control technologies for coal, global mercury emissions could be reduced by up to 60 percent by 2020 compared with today’s practices, according to the 2011 Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme report.

Despite climate question marks, Hurley points to his recent research as evidence of what decreasing emissions could do.

“Global reductions would mean less mercury in fish, lakes and people,” Hurley said. “And, as we demonstrated, it would happen pretty quickly.”

By Juliet Eilperin

As winter begins to tighten its grip on much of the United States, air conditioning doesn’t seem like much of a survival strategy. But a new study has found that home air conditioning played a key role in reducing American death rates over the past half-century, by keeping people cool on extremely hot days.

The installation of air conditioning in American homes is the reason why the chances of dying on an extremely hot day fell 80 percent over the past half-century, according to an analysis by a team of American researchers.

The findings, based on a comprehensive analysis of U.S. mortality records dating from 1900, suggests the spread of air conditioning in the developing world could play a major role in preventing future heat-related deaths linked to climate change. Very few U.S. homes had air conditioning before 1960; by 2004, that figure had climbed to 85 percent.

A team of researchers from Tulane University, Carnegie Mellon University, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined patterns in heat-related deaths between 1900 and 2004. The group found that days on which temperatures rose above 90 degrees Fahrenheit accounted for about 600 premature deaths annually between 1960 and 2004, one-sixth as many as would have occurred under pre-1960 conditions.

“It’s all due to air conditioning,” said MIT environmental economics professor Michael Greenstone, one of the paper’s co-authors, adding that factors including increased electrification and health-care access did not affect heat-related mortality.

The likelihood of a premature death on an extremely hot day between 1929 and 1959 was 2.5 percent, the academics found, dropping to less than 0.5 percent after 1960. The paper, which is under review at an academic journal, compared days on which temperatures exceeded 90 degrees Fahrenheit with days when they ranged between 60 and 69 degrees Fahrenheit.

Matthew E. Kahn, an economics and public policy professor at UCLA’s Institute of Environment, called the study “a very strong paper” that could show one strategy for adapting to increasingly frequent bouts of warmer weather. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report this year linking the increase in heat waves to human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, predicting the frequency of these events will increase in the coming decades.

“We have to begin to wake up to the new normal,” Kahn said. “Rational people have to learn how to duck and take action so we don’t get rolled by Mother Nature.”

The study’s results could be particularly important for nations such as India, where only a small portion of the population has residential air conditioning. The typical person in India experiences 33 days per year where the temperature rises above 90 degrees Fahrenheit; that could increase by as much as 100 days by the end of the century, according to some climate projections.

Anand Patwardhan, a visiting professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland in College Park, said he expects home air conditioning to become more common in India, but not as a conscious response to global warming.

“While it is certainly the case that residential air-conditioning helps in reducing mortality due to temperature extremes, the rapid growth of air-conditioning in the past is perhaps more due to rising incomes and increasing affordability of air-conditioning,” he wrote in an e-mail.

The spread of air conditioning has one obvious problem, Greenstone noted, since many of these units will likely be powered by fossil fuels and will therefore increase the world’s carbon output.

“The painful part of that is the solution involves more energy consumption,” he said. “And that is going to exacerbate the problem of increased temperatures.”

Andrew Steer, president of the World Resources Institute, said that although there is no question about “air conditioning growing in leaps and bounds in developing countries with rising temperatures,” policymakers also need to explore “ecological” adaptation strategies that yield environmental benefits instead.

Indian Institute of Technology professor Ambuj Sagar wrote in an e-mail that the world should focus on improving appliance efficiency in the face of warmer weather.

“To me, if there is any policy relevance of this study, it is that the developing countries, in their drive for a comfortable life (which will also help adapt to hotter temperatures) are following the same pathway that their industrialized-country counterparts because they don’t have any other pathway available,” Sagar wrote.

By Justin Gillis

I would guess a few Green readers had the experience, over the holidays, of arguing yet again about global warming with a parent or brother-in-law who thinks it’s all a big hoax. Maybe there’s some undiscovered substance in roast turkey that makes people want to pick fights around the dinner table. 

Fortunately, the M.I.T. climate scientist Kerry Emanuel has provided us with a solution to this problem: an updated edition of “What We Know About Climate Change,” his 2007 book explaining the science of global warming.

I’m happy to report that the new edition of this slender volume is an improvement — perhaps even the single best thing written about climate change for a general audience. It is a little longer than the first edition, 93 pages instead of 85, but it’s still an easy read — most people will get through it in a single sitting.

The new version updates the science to the latest numbers, of course, but it also adds a couple of chapters about the potential solutions to climate change and the bizarre politics that have cropped up around it in recent years.

The book is dead accurate, not only presenting scientifically what we know, but also leveling with readers about what we don’t. It conveys the risks posed by that ignorance. Yet Dr. Emanuel manages to keep the language so taut and simple that nobody is likely to be intimidated by the book or to feel put out at being asked to read it.

The point, he said in an interview, is to give people some ammunition when they encounter the kind of contrarianism about climate change that has become pervasive in the United States.

“Young adults who are disputing this problem with their own parents or an uncle or something — they can hand the book to them and say, ‘Will you at least read this?’ ” Dr. Emanuel said. “One at a time, you might change minds.”

The book is officially scheduled for publication on Tuesday, by M.I.T. Press, but it has long since moved into retail channels and is widely available in hardcover for $11. At Dr. Emanuel’s behest, the publisher set an especially low price, $7.50, for the digital edition.

He does not talk much about this in the book, but for anybody who plans to give it to a political conservative, it might be worth pointing out to them that Dr. Emanuel spent most of his adult life as a registered Republican. He changed his registration to independent recently, but he told me that his convictions have not shifted much — he was driven out of the Republican Party by its embrace of global warming skepticism, among other recent positions.

“I came of age in the 1960s and ’70s,” Dr. Emanuel said. “A lot of what was actually going wrong in the country was because of rigid ideology, and a lot of what I considered rigid ideology was on the left. Now I think it’s the right that’s guilty of that, that’s really gone off on this ideological tangent.”

Conservatives will find a few points in the book that especially resonate. For instance, while Dr. Emanuel assails the irrationality of dismissing an entire branch of science as some kind of elaborate hoax — many Republicans have done lately — as he also takes green groups to task on certain points, including their skepticism about nuclear power.

He sees nuclear energy as one of the few ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming, on a large scale. And he is doubtful that renewable energy sources like wind and solar power can be ramped up fast enough to meet the challenge.

If Dr. Emanuel has been talking about his politics more lately, so have some of his colleagues, like Richard Alley of Penn State, one of the country’s most notable explainers of climate science, who describes himself as a churchgoing Republican.

These scientists are hoping that their conservative credentials will help open some otherwise closed minds, but their ultimate point is that the science itself has nothing to do with politics — and everything to do with physics.

Karplus, Paltsev recieve award for study on the impacts of vehicle efficieny stanards

Valerie Karplus, Research Scientist, and Sergey Paltsev, Assistant Director for Economic Research with MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, were awarded the 2012 Pyke Johnson Award at a ceremony last night during the annual meeting for the National Research Council's Transportation Research Board. The Pyke Johnson Award recognizes the best paper in the area of planning and the environment.

Published in November in the journal Transportation Research Record, the study looks into the new vehicle efficiency standards. The standards are considered one of the landmark environmental achievements of President Obama’s first term, and have been touted as a way to save consumers more than $1.7 trillion at the pump and cut vehicle emissions in half. Karplus and Paltsev look behind the numbers to understand the full energy and economic impacts.  

“Common thinking in Washington holds that any policy that seems to advance technology without creating new taxes must be a no brainer for the country. That misses the broader economic impact,” says Karplus. “As my colleague says, you may see more money in your front pocket at the pump, but you’re financing the policy out of your back pocket through your tax dollars and at the point of your vehicle purchase.”

Of the research, University of Maine environmental economist Jonathan Rubin, chair of the Transportation Energy Committee of the Transportation Research Board, says, “The research of Dr. Karplus on the energy and climate impacts of the nation’s fuel economy standards for our cars and trucks makes an important contribution to policy-making based on science.”

The new fuel standards require automakers to install pollution-control technology to improve the fuel efficiency of cars by 5 percent and light trucks by 3.5 percent with each new model year starting in 2017.  Karplus and her colleague simulated the proposed standards, and found that while drivers of these more efficient vehicles will no doubt save at the pump, they could spend several thousands of dollars more when buying their new car. Even more troubling, diverting efforts toward improved vehicle efficiency distracts attention away from policies that would target the broader economy and reduce fuel use or emissions more cost effectively, such as a carbon tax.

Estimates of how costly the policy would be – in terms of both direct costs to consumers and the larger rippling costs to the economy – hinge on the relative cost of the technology available to improve efficiency. The shorter the time frame automakers are given to develop the technology and produce more efficient vehicles, the less time there will be for technological progress and other factors to drive down costs  and the more consumers will need to pay upfront. Emissions and oil imports will drop – both due to increased fuel efficiency and as the higher vehicle costs weighs on consumer budgets – but will be offset as consumers face lower costs per mile traveled, incentivizing more driving.

Karplus hopes her results will help policymakers make more informed decisions going forward. She credits that to the innovative method she used, which weaves engineering and technology constraints into a broad economic framework and allows researchers to test the cost and other impacts of a policy at different levels of stringency. This method inherently takes account of life-cycle emissions, as well as impacts that transmit across fuel markets by affecting prices. For example, a policy might only consider gasoline use by plug-in electric hybrids, but that “tailpipe measure” doesn’t take into account the emissions created from building, transporting and recharging those batteries. Her approach does.

“There are a lot of hidden costs to a policy like this,” Karplus says. “This model doesn’t allow you to ignore other important aspects of the economy and energy systems. It requires you to be explicit about your technology and cost assumptions.  It provides a framework that allows lawmakers to look at all the available information on costs and the state of the technology and decide how to best create or update policies.”

A Win for Energy and America

By John Reilly

THE NEW - STILL DIVIDED - CONGRESS reconvenes this month, and its first order of business is the looming federal deficit. The president made his desires clear in his victory speech: "We want our children to live in an America that isn't burdened by debt . that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet." Meanwhile, congressional leaders recognize the need for compromise.

Some suggest that closing the deficit would require both budget cuts and increased revenue. The riddle in any tax reform is the need to reduce the tax burdens on wage earners and investors, while generating revenue for essential government services. A carbon tax might answer this riddle. It could help avoid some tax hikes and spending cuts, while stimulating the economy, securing America's energy future, and giving utilities and energy companies greater certainty.

The Congressional Budget Office found that a tax on carbon dioxide, starting at $20 per ton, could raise $1.25 trillion over the next decade. Our research puts those numbers higher - at $1.5 trillion - while cutting emissions by more than 20 percent by 2050. With the money raised, Congress could maintain income tax cuts and avoid serious cuts to social programs.

Lowering taxes and maintaining funding for social programs would give Americans more money to spend, boosting the economy. This is particularly true in the short term, if tax cuts and spending are skewed toward lower income households, which spend more of their income, stimulating weak consumer demand. On the other hand, cutting these programs and raising other taxes would drag down our economy, so much so that the loss would more than offset the cost of a carbon tax.

When it comes to the pure economics, a carbon tax makes the most sense. But what is a win for our economy is also a win for the energy industry. For years, many in the industry have called for a clear, market-based approach to secure America's energy future. Instead, they've received mixed signals and patchwork regulations. Meanwhile, narrow tax incentives have allowed the government - not the market -to choose winners and losers. This approach has been inefficient and ineffective.

A carbon tax, if part of broad tax reform, could bring an end to this approach, providing certainty to utilities and energy companies and allowing these businesses to make the investments needed to usher in America's clean, prosperous and secure energy future. A carbon tax would provide a clear market signal for U.S. businesses and consumers, giving them the flexibility to choose technologies that save energy and money, boosting sales of more fuel-efficient cars and other goods. With greater efficiency, fuel and energy costs could actually go down - not up - as the U.S. economy turns from spending and borrowing to saving and investing in our future.

Partisan gridlock and the political fear of anything labeled a "tax" may make this sensible solution seem impossible. But because it makes the most economic sense, it is receiving support from both sides of the aisle.

As the chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, Greg Mankiw, has said, "Economists have long understood that the key to smart environmental policy is aligning private incentives with true social costs and benefits. That means putting a price on carbon emissions, so households and firms will have good reason to reduce their use of fossil fuels and to develop alternative energy sources." There are usually hefty trade-offs and hard-set winners and losers in politics. This time, that doesn't have to be the case.
 

Get the inside scoop and follow LIVE reports from Geneva by twitter and blog.

Ten MIT students are having an experience of a lifetime as they join officials from around the world for the fifth and final meeting to address global controls on mercury – taking place January 13-18 in Geneva, Switzerland. It is expected that a global treaty on mercury will be finalized during the talks.

Funded through part of a U.S. National Science Foundation grant, the students hope to help negotiators by presenting the latest scientific results (See more).

The students will be reporting on the progress of the talks and their experiences on their blog. Keep updated on the day-to-day action: mit.edu/mercurypolicy.

They’ll also be tweeting LIVE from Geneva. Follow them @MITMercury, #MITMercury.

They are joined by their instructor Noelle Selin, an assistant professor of engineering systems and atmospheric chemistry. Of the experience, Selin says: “Knowledge about the policy-making process is a critical skill for the next generation of scientists. This is a unique opportunity for science students to see treaty-making firsthand, at the history-making session that is expected to finalize a global mercury treaty.”

Student Leah Stokes, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Environmental Policy and Planning program says, "Attending the mercury treaty negotiations is a rare chance to see international environmental policy-making in action and learn how scientists and policymakers work together to produce results.”

Fellow student Julie van der Hoop, who is getting her doctorate in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography, adds, "As a doctoral student who studies human interactions with marine mammals, I’m excited to observe the role of scientists at these negotiations to learn how to best share my own research in the future.  It's forums like this where I hope my work will have an impact someday. “

The other students attending include: Alice Alpert, PhD student in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography; Ellen Czaika, PhD candidate in the Engineering Systems Division; Bethanie Edwards, PhD student in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography; Amanda Giang, SM candidate in the Technology and Policy Program; Danya Rumore, PhD student in Environmental Policy and Planning; Rebecca Saari, PhD Candidate in Engineering Systems; Mark Staples, SM candidate in the Technology and Policy Program; and Philip Wolfe, PhD Candidate in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Learn more about the students and their instructor Noelle Selin Here.

Learn about the latest mercury research out of MIT: Strategies to Reduce Mercury Revealed Ahead of International Talks.

Harvard, MIT researchers map future trends of mercury and ways to reduce it on eve of international negotiations.



International negotiators will come together next week in Geneva, Switzerland for the fifth and final meeting to address global controls on mercury. Ahead of the negotiations, researchers from MIT and Harvard University are calling for aggressive emissions reductions and clear public health advice to reduce the risks of mercury.

The researchers’ commentary, published this week in the journal Environmental Health, is in response to a study on the costs associated with mercury pollution in Europe. That study showed that as many as two million children in European Union nations are born each year with long-term IQ deficits due to unsafe levels of mercury exposure. These lower IQs can have spiraling effects on the earning potential of those impacted down the road, resulting in as much as 9,000 million euros in lost revenue a year.

But the authors of the commentary, Elsie Sunderland of Harvard and Noelle Selin of MIT, say mercury’s impact — and that of its toxic form methylmercury — extends far beyond the EU.

“Mitigating the harm caused by methylmercury requires global-scale cooperation on policies and source reductions,” Sunderland says.

Fish and other species, such as polar bears, can be harmed by mercury exposure. Once entered into the food chain, this exposure harms humans. In the near term, the public health community can advise changes in seafood consumption to control the risks, the researchers say. The critical action, however, comes in making significant progress in reducing mercury emissions to prevent an even greater increase in cycling “legacy” emissions.

“Most analyses forecasting mercury levels underestimate the severity of the situation because they don’t take the entire picture into account when looking at future mercury levels,” says Selin, an assistant professor of engineering systems and atmospheric chemistry.

Selin and Sunderland explain in their commentary that most mercury exposure comes from eating fish. Coal-fired power plants and other sources such as industrial activities emit mercury to the atmosphere. This mercury eventually rains down to the land and sea. In the ocean, mercury can convert to toxic methylmercury, and accumulate in the marine food chain. Mercury pollution settles deep within the ocean and circulates for decades and even centuries, continuously posing dangers to humans and the environment.

When considering future emissions, these “legacy” emissions are often not taken into account, but should be, the researchers say, because they make up a substantial amount of future emissions and could make already-dangerous levels of mercury even more threatening.

For example, mercury in the North Pacific Ocean — a large player in the global seafood market — is expected to double by 2050, from 1995 levels, due to new emissions. With the substantial “legacy” emissions that will circle back into the atmosphere, that amount is much greater. This increase in mercury could have dire impacts on fish from the Pacific Ocean.

“Not only will we see these ‘legacy’ emissions circle back up,” Selin says. “But with energy demands growing worldwide, we’ll see more new mercury entering the atmosphere, unless we act now to control this mercury at its source — and that’s largely coal-fired power plants.”

Sunderland and Selin say the United Nations Environment Program’s negotiations represent a sure step in the right direction. The question is: Will the talks produce real results?

In an interview with MIT News just prior to the first negotiating session in 2010, Selin said U.S. domestic politics would likely be a challenge to international cooperation on mercury. But last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that require coal-fired power plants to install scrubbing technology that will cut 90 percent of their mercury emissions by 2015. With these standards — now the most stringent mercury standards of their kind in the world — Selin says the country has proven its leadership and provided some hope.

“These standards show that the U.S. is taking leadership at home to address a widespread and substantial global problem,” Selin says.

Selin, along with ten MIT graduate students, will present recent scientific results to negotiators in Geneva next week.

By: Vicki Ekstrom

MIT researchers enhance model to assess the risks of water stress.

A conflict over water management has intensified along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Downstream states argue water should be released from the Missouri’s upstream reservoirs into the Mississippi to allow shipping to continue in the record low-level waters. Upstream states are fighting to keep the water to irrigate their crops and prevent the drought from getting even worse next year. To add to the tension, still others want to move a portion of the Missouri River Basin’s water to the Colorado Basin—which will see demand outstrip supply in the coming decades, according to a federal study released last week. 

These are the stakes in the conflict over water, and the impacts could be profound and widespread. Agriculture, river navigation, energy and other industries all stand to lose as populations increase and the possible side effects of climate change emerge. To measure future changes on water resources, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have enhanced their global model to include a new tool that assesses the risks of water stress.

“As fresh water sources throughout the world experience considerable stress because of an increasing population, economic growth, and droughts, floods and other climate effects, this tool will provide valuable insights to industries and communities competing for water,” says Ken Strzepek, a researcher at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, who helped design the tool.

Strzepek and his colleagues Adam Schlosser and Élodie Blanc take population, GDP and other socio-economic factors and combine them with hydro-climatic information such as precipitation and runoff from their earth system model. They then combine this information to estimate changes in demand across sectors such as public and private water use, agricultural use and thermoelectric cooling used in energy production. The result is an expanded model that can forecast if and where there could be stresses within water basins, along with the risks surrounding those changes.

“Globally, the tool is helping us see where the hot spots for water stress are and where might that stress increase in the future due to human growth and climate change—two factors that are coming together and exacerbating the problem of water management,” says Schlosser, the assistant director of science research at the Joint Program on Global Change.

While the new model paints the picture globally, it can also be applied at a regional and even local scale to help communities make important decisions about their future energy investments, infrastructure plans and adaptation strategies. Uniquely, by incorporating risk and uncertainty, the model helps policymakers evaluate the question: What investments do we need to make to be better prepared?

“When looking at different climate models, not only do they show different results, they show different directions—one shows a positive change where another might show a negative change,” Schlosser says. “However, our technique allows us to quantify this uncertainty as risk to help decision makers formulate more robust investment plans.”

The researchers have already begun to apply their model to the U.S. While their findings are still being written, the researchers agree that critical water management issues will arise—and in some areas are already emerging. They are finding that the areas that will see the greatest stress going forward are the same places where very rigid water management laws already exist, such as around the Missouri, Mississippi and Colorado rivers.

“Our model framework is able to account for water management and allocation policies,” Schlosser says. “This allows us to take a situation like transferring water from the Missouri to the Colorado Basin and assess the impacts to both basins going forward.”

Drawing from this measure of risk, the researchers warn that decision makers in developing countries should make their adaptation plans both flexible and efficient.

“If we don’t know how much water will come down the river, we should design dams to be constructed in stages. For example, we should make provisions to add hydropower generation capacity easily and accordingly. ” Strzepek says. “We need to have flexible designs, and also efficient designs, so we’re building in a way that the structure will perform well under a variety of climates.”

Read more about the new tool here.