The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, in Osage County, along the Kansas border, got a visit this month from a group of Colombian activists, according to this story.
The Tulsa World writes:
The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, near Pawhuska, is the world’s largest remaining tract of tallgrass prairie. Since 1989, the Oklahoma chapter of the Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s leading conservation organizations, has maintained the 39,000-acre protected area, encouraging a return to its natural state. The Conservancy hopes to similarly protect an area known as the Orinoco River Valley in Colombia.
I was talking a couple of weeks ago with a coworker about how I’ve never been to the preserve, and would like to visit. She said the best time of year to go is the spring. That’s when the wildflowers are out, when you’ll get to see the most buffalo and when you can catch the prairie chickens in their strange mating rituals. That section of land is among the only pieces of prairie in the world that’s never been plowed up for farming, which is rather amazing when you think about it. On a recent reporting trip, I drove across Osage County from west to east, late at night. The county is enormous and the drive seemed to take forever, but it had a certain magic to it. A big moon sat on the horizon, and there are almost no lights around on the side of the highway — none of the billboards and things you see everywhere else. That drive left a big impression on me, and I definitely want to go back to explore in the daylight.
Millions of chickens raised in two counties on the Oklahoma-Arkansas border create more manure in a single year than all of the people in Oklahoma City, according to figures from a government report issued Wednesday.The 14.3 million chickens in that area, and large-scale animal farms nationwide, may pose a threat to human health and the environment, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report. However, federal agencies don’t monitor air and water quality well enough to assess nationwide trends and possible threats posed by industrial-scale animal farming, the GAO report concludes.
The report says large animal farms may pose greater threats to the environment and human health when they are concentrated in small geographic areas. The report specifically mentions the Arkansas-Oklahoma border. The chickens in the two northwest Arkansas counties produce a total of 471,000 tons of manure per year, according to the document. That’s more than 1½ times the amount of feces that people in Oklahoma City produced in the 2007 fiscal year. The report says the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should develop a comprehensive air quality monitoring program for animal farms, and should keep a national database on the industry.
The GAO report says efforts by farmers to store waste and limit the manure they put on their land is helpful but should be supplemented with more thorough government pollution monitoring.
The rise in large-scale farms
Between 1982 and 2002, the number of large farms increased 234 percent in the United States, from 3,594 to 11,995, a government report found. The number of large broiler-chicken farms increased 1,187 percent to 2,227.
A greater percentage of animals are being raised on industrial-size farms. In 1982, 43 percent of animals were raised on large farms; that number jumped to 55 percent by 2002. Some individual farms produce more waste than large cities such as Philadelphia.
Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office
Background
The issue of chicken-farm pollution is the subject of a 2005 lawsuit filed by state Attorney General Drew Edmondson against several poultry companies.
The Los Angeles Times has a story this morning on the 1,000 acre switchgrass field in the Oklahoma Panhandle. A reporter talked with the gentleman who’s growing the biofuels crop, which is native to this state and the Great Plains, and can be grown on marginal land:
Curtis Raines describes himself as “just a dumb old farmer” who’s not afraid to ask an obvious question: Why grow corn for fuel when it could be used to feed hungry people?
“That just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” Raines said.
State leaders are banking on that kind of common sense, and have invested in grass-based biofuels research. As I reported in The Oklahoman, the issue rests on the ability of industry to transform the grasses into fuel. That hasn’t been done on commercial scales, and is the focus of much of the state-funded research:
About one-fifth of the corn crop in the United States is converted into ethanol, a fuel that can be mixed with gasoline and then used in standard automobile engines.
Ethanol once was seen as a silver bullet in the nation’s battle for energy independence, and, to some extent, the battle against global warming.
But corn ethanol started drawing heated criticism late last year as food prices jumped around the world, putting basic nutrition out of the hands of many of the world’s poor. Jean Ziegler, the U.N.’s independent expert on the right to food, called food-to-fuel schemes a “crime against humanity.”
Officials say Oklahoma is free from any of that blame because it is not much of a corn-producing state. The 2008 corn crop here is expected to cover 330,000 acres, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s about 5 percent of the state’s total crop acreage.
Researchers and officials say switchgrass, which is native to the state and the Great Plains, will do better here. It will grow on marginal land not suitable for food crops. If managed properly, it wouldn’t contribute to food shortages.
“It’s important that we not latch onto a crop like switchgrass as a panacea, because we could start harvesting corn fields and planting them with switchgrass and cause the same amount of complications — and reduce the amount of food available — as we do now,” Greene said.
“I don’t think any technology is inherently evil, or inherently the solution,” he added.
You’ve probably heard about disputes and controversy over proposed water sales from southeast Oklahoma to Texas. What about northeast Oklahoma to Missouri? The Joplin Globe has this story about the Tri-State Water Resource Coalition, which is trying to address water issues affecting Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas. It’s another reminder that water issues don’t necessarily respect political or state boundaries:
The coalition has been exploring an additional water source for Southwest Missouri in the wake of a 2002 study that determined the area could face a water shortage during a drought if demand for water continues to increase. That study estimated such a shortage might be only 15 years away.
The coalition also has approached the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about conducting a study on reallocating water from Stockton and Table Rock lakes, although the corps has limited funding for such a study. An engineering firm hired by the coalition also is to narrow the list of potential sites for a reservoir by the end of the year.
The coalition also has looked into tapping Grand Lake in Northeast Oklahoma, although the state has a moratorium on out-of-state water sales.
Researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey say Norman’s closed landfill is the most studied landfill in the world. They’ve got it hooked up to thousands of monitors so they can draw a 3-D picture of the plume of pollutants that leaches out of the bottom of the landfill — and they can use that information to draw conclusions about landfills all over the United States.
An oil drilling project on site could jeopardize the work, or bring new opportunities, depending on who you ask. Check out my story in today’s Oklahoman.
States are wrestling with how best to dispose of e-waste, or consumer electronic products that aren’t useful anymore and can be toxic.
Some states prohibit landfills from accepting the waste, which contains several toxic parts including lead in computer monitors and television screens. The electronics are more difficult to recycle and more expensive to recycle than some other materials, particularly because toxic chemicals can be released during the recycling process if they’re not handled properly. Because it’s so expensive and dangerous, some of America and Europe’s e-waste winds up at landfills and recycling plants in developing countries, like those in West Africa, where workers can be exposed to the hazardous wastes.
The Oklahoma Legislature made a move to address the issue by passing a law last session will require computer companies in Oklahoma to take back and recycle worn-out computers. The law, which goes into effect Jan.1, will encourage the development of companies that can recycle e-waste in Oklahoma, said Fenton Rood, of the state Department of Environmental Quality (see video above). The law only applies to household computers, not those in office buildings, and it doesn’t cover other e-waste, like cell phones and televisions.
Before the law goes into effect, people in Oklahoma City can take their old computers and electronics to the city’s hazardous waste center. There’s only one other permanent hazardous waste collection center in the state, in Midwest City. Towns and cities in rural Oklahoma hold recycling events from time to time. Rood said the law is designed so that it hopefully will be more convenient for people to recycle their computers in the future.
The state Department of Environmental Quality is already discussing ways to implement the new law. Rood, who works in the department’s land protection division, said the new law lets the DEQ pay for its efforts by charging fees to computer companies, but that the department is not allowed to hire a person to run that program. Unless that piece of the law is changed, it will be impossible to make the required changes, he said.
By John SutterNew York Times columnist Thomas Friedman joked that he felt somewhat out of place giving a lecture on the coming “green revolution” in an oil and gas state like Oklahoma.
In a speech in downtown Oklahoma City today, the Pulitzer Prize winner said that America won’t know that the environmental revolution has come until “you see bodies by the side of the road.” Those will be the bodies of oil and gas companies, which may not be able to adapt to the clean energy era, he said.
Friedman’s overall message, though, was one of optimism. He laid out a number of crises facing the world — climate change, biodiversity loss, overpopulation — and said that the United States and Oklahoma are amply equipped to tackle the problems with the right support from the state and federal governments. The country and state’s success in doing so will decide who controls global politics and succeeds in the world economy this century, he said.
“You can see these as problems or you can see them as the bird of the demand for a whole new industry,” he said. “Our country, the United States of America, has to lead this industry.”
The goal of this new world order? “Who can invent a source of abundant, cheap, clean, reliable electrons.”
Friedman, who is promoting his new book, “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” said all sectors of the economy, including energy companies, can be part of the change. But he said current efforts to green the economy are more of a self-aggrandizing party than a genuine revolution. He referenced a litany of “green” self-help books with tips on saving the planet and products as obscure as “vegan condoms and solar-powered vibrators,” which are supposed to denote a new era of environmental thinking.
Forces of environmental change are bubbling up from the bottom of America, he said, but “brain-dead” politicians in Washington D.C. have not acted in a proportional manner.
He advocated for a tax on carbon, which he said would put a true cost on the pollution, health risks, climate change, biodiversity loss, loss of national security and lessened respect in the world that fossil fuels create for the United States and around the world.
Friedman likened this energy and environment revolution to the Internet and technology movement of the 1990s. The difference, he said, is that clean energy offers no functional benefit over dirty energy — your lights work the same whether coal or wind powered them. Computer groups offered new products with entirely new functions. As such, energy deserves a push from the government to get started, he said, adding that he has more faith in the power of American innovation and capitalism than government forces to make the changes necessary. Both revolutions will have to operate by a “change or die” philosophy, he said.
He railed against politicians, including John McCain, who are preaching drilling for more oil as the solution to the energy crisis. That is analogous to companies at the dawn of the computer revolution calling for more typewriters and better carbon-copy paper, he said. (See video at top of post for more on that)
The foreign affairs columnist referenced the fact that Oklahoma biofuels and agriculture can play a part in the “green revolution.” He also mentioned U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, by name on several occasions. Inhofe has become known nationally for saying global warming is a “hoax.” Friedman said Inhofe is wrong on that point, but, whatever you believe about global warming, America needs to become more efficient to tackle environmental problems and to ensure it has a top spot in the global economy.
He listed several major problems facing the world. All can be dealt with through innocation and market forces, with a government push, he said.
I’ll list some below:
1. Climate change: The weather is becoming “weirder,” not necessarily hotter, he said. Places that are hot are getting hotter, places that are dry are getting drier, places that are wet are getting wetter, and hurricanes are getting stronger, he said. He also said climate models are becoming more and more troublesome over time. For instance, it recently was thought that ice in the Arctic Circle would disappear by 2050. Current projections say that’s more likely to happen in 2012, he said.
2. Biodiversity: According to Conservation International, a new species goes extinct every 20 minutes. “We are the first generation that is going to have to think like Noah, and save the last two pairs” of animals of each species, he said.
3. Petropolitics: The U.S. spends $700 billion supporting some of the worst regimes on earth, he said. That’s because we have to buy their oil. “We’re in a war on terrorism and we’re funding both sides,” he said.
4. Energy and Natural Resources: Friedman said there are “too many American carbon copies” in the world, meaning that more people in developing countries want to live like Americans — they want to have big houses, drives cars over long distances and use lots of electricity. There aren’t enough resources around for that to happen, he said, and new America-like places are sprouting up all the time.
“If we don’t redefine what it means to be an American in resource terms, you’re going to see resource demand go through the roof,” he said.
5. Population Growth: There will be a billion more people on earth by 2020, and not enough resources to go around.
Some basics: Friedman’s speech was sponsored by the business school at Oklahoma State University as part of a lecture series. Tickets were $75, and the talk mostly was attended by older people who were wearing suits. A number of students also came.
Friedman is not the final word on these subjects, of course, although he is a well-known authority on globalization and global politics. Student groups have protested his talks in the past, saying that his support for military intervention in the Middle East and his usually hands-off global economic policies, which some say hurt the world’s poor. Students from Brown University reportedly threw a pie in his face recently (the clip is on youtube).
I’d love to hear what you all think about his talk. People in the audience seemed to give a mixed response, with most standing to applaud at the end, but no crazy cheers or anything like that. Nearly 900 people registered for the event.
I’m a fan of an analogy in the New York Times’ recent story about how wind power’s “dirty little secret” is the fact that there’s no energy transmission infrastructure to get wind power from the Great Plains (ie here) out to the coasts. An official tells the paper we need a “superhighway” system to truck all this power around the United States:
The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.
While the United States today gets barely 1 percent of its electricity from wind turbines, many experts are starting to think that figure could hit 20 percent.
Achieving that would require moving large amounts of power over long distances, from the windy, lightly populated plains in the middle of the country to the coasts where many people live. Builders are also contemplating immense solar-power stations in the nation’s deserts that would pose the same transmission problems.
Scientists can say the earth is warming with great certainty, but when it comes to climate change in Oklahoma, or Oklahoma City, they’re essentially making guesses.
As my guest on this week’s Environment Podcast says, that could change, if the government would make an investment in super computers and monitoring sites that would be needed to make local-level climate predictions.
Such predictions are important for Oklahoma farmers, who need to know when to plant their crops, he said. It’s important for state leaders who are trying to come up with a water plan. It’s important for all of us, in a sense, because warmer temperatures could mean more diseases, including those only seen now in the tropics.
Listen to my conversation with Dr. John Snow, dean of the OU college of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences, to learn more about how climate change could affect you here in Oklahoma — and what he says would be needed to properly advance the field of climatology.
Here are details of the proposal for increased funding of climate science. It was submitted to Congress by eight weather groups, and calls for nearly a doubling of investment in such research — a $9 billion increase over the next five years.
Also read the Oklahoma Climatological Survey’sstatement on climate change in Oklahoma. They expect more frequent and severe droughts, longer summer seasons and possibly more severe weather. Those predictions would get much more specific and certain with further study, Snow says.
The New York Times has a story about the natural gas boom and how some are saying it’s good for the environment. Others question whether or not the boom will last. The story quotes Aubrey McClendon, chairman and CEO of Oklahoma City’s Chesapeake Energy Corp.:
“It’s almost divine intervention,” said Aubrey K. McClendon, chairman and chief executive of the Chesapeake Energy Corporation, one of the nation’s largest natural gas producers. “Right at the time oil prices are skyrocketing, we’re struggling with the economy, we’re concerned about global warming, and national security threats remain intense, we wake up and we’ve got this abundance of natural gas around us.”
Senior Democrats in Congress are getting behind natural gas, portraying it as an alternative fuel for transportation that can serve as a stopgap until renewable sources of energy, like solar and wind power, become economical on a broad scale.
“You can have a transition with natural gas that is cheap, abundant and clean,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, said Sunday on “Meet the Press” on NBC.
