Blue Marble

Ken Salazar confers with the heads of Cape Wind, which he predicts will this year become the US's first offshore wind farm to break ground. Tim McDonnell/Climate Desk

If you aren't happy with President Obama's plan for powering the US, don't hold your breath for any changes in his second term.

Speaking today to a conference of leaders of the offshore wind industry in Boston, outgoing Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar hinted at the nation's energy future. "It's going to be very much a continuation agenda," Salazar said of Sally Jewell, Obama's pick to succeed him.

Salazar noted with pride how in Obama's first term, the equivalent of 30 fossil-fuel-fired power plants worth of renewable energy projects have been approved for public lands, a trend he's confident will continue into the future. But stashed away in his remarks was also a renewed commitment to growing fracking nationwide and oil drilling in the Alaskan arctic, two key aspects of Obama's "all-of-the-above" energy policy that have drawn fire from environmentalists, and which Salazar equated with renewables as "very important" components of America's energy plan going forward.

Salazar, making a rare public appearance without his signature Stetson hat, closed his speech with an excerpt from Obama's recent State of the Union address, wherein the president called on America to be a leader on renewables. But later, speaking to reporters, Salazar expressed ambivalence about the Keystone XL pipeline, saying only that he supported the president's review process and he trusted incoming State Secretary John Kerry, with whom the ultimate call on Keystone XL rests, to make the right decision. He also sidestepped a question about the risks of fracking, saying that "shale gas has a lot of promise for energy security in the US. We will be implementing an agenda that takes advantage of it all."

During his time in Obama's cabinet, Salazar embraced climate change as an issue, overseeing the granting of the US' first two offshore wind permits and helping to draft a regulatory structure for building solar farms, wind turbines, and other renewable energy projects on the 250 million acres of public land managed by his Bureau of Land Management. But Salazar also signed off last year on permits for Shell to drill for oil off Alaska, and has indicated that more Arctic drilling is likely, despite Shell's comedy of errors there this winter.

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Shutterstock/Tomasz Darul

Despite persisting concerns over genetically modified crops, a new industry report (PDF) shows that GMO farming is taking off around the world. In 2012, GMO crops grew on about 420 million acres of land in 28 countries worldwide, a record high according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, an industry trade group.

If all the world's GMO crop fields in 2012 were sown together, it would blanket almost all of Alaska. As the chart from the report shows, globally GMO farming has been on an uninterrupted upward trend. What's especially noteworthy is the growth of GMO farming area in developing nations (see red line), which surpassed that in industrial nations for the first time in 2012. The ISAAA's report doesn't project into the future, but we may see this upward trend continue as "a considerable quantity and variety" of GMO products may be commercialized in developing countries within the next five years, according to a recent UN Food and Agriculture Organisation forum (PDF).

Clive James/ISAAA

The ISAAA says the area of land devoted to genetically modified crops has ballooned by 100 times since farmers first started growing the crop commercially in 1996. Over the past 17 years, millions of farmers in 28 countries have planted and replanted GMO crop seeds on a cumulative 3.7 billion acres of land—an area 50 percent larger than the total land mass of the United States, the group adds.

"This makes biotech crops the fastest adopted crop technology in recent history," ISAAA chair Clive James states in the report. "The reason—it delivers benefits."

What kinds of benefits? According to the ISAAA, GMO farming has reduced use of pesticides, saved on fossil fuels, decreased carbon dioxide emissions, and "made a significant contribution to the income of < 15 million small resource-poor farmers" in developing countries. These small-scale farmers now make up over 90 percent of all farmers growing GMO crops, the group states.

But just looking at the United States—consistently the biggest GMO crop producer in the world by a long shot—there is much reason to doubt on some of ISAAA's claimed benefits. (More after the chart.)

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For most people affected by Superstorm Sandy, the damage was plain to see: Devastated homes, impossible traffic, even lost lives. But for Bruce Brownawell, the storm's biggest consequences are buried under several meters of seawater. Brownawell is a marine scientist at SUNY-Stony Brook who has spent the last several years becoming intimately acquainted with the chemical makeup of mud on the floor of various bays, harbors, and inlets in the New York City area.

When Sandy hit, several local scientists saw opportunity: For Bruce, it was a chance to return to these areas and investigate how strong storm tides shifted mud around—particularly in areas close to several low-lying sewage treatment plants that were knocked out during the storm and dumped raw sewage into the water for days. To do that, he and colleague Jessica Dutton of Adelphi University strapped on mud-proof waders and headed out to Hempstead Bay off the south shore of Long Island. Climate Desk crammed onto the boat for the inside dirt. 

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Climate villains.

 "The best that can be said about this session of the 112th Congress is that it's over," League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski said this week.

The sentiment comes in reaction to the League's 2012 Congressional Scorecard, released on Wednesday, which showed that in a year that saw record breaking heat waves, drought, wildfires, Hurricane Sandy, and other climate-change fueled disasters, the Republican-led House of Representatives came out with the worst environmental record ever.

The League tallies its scores by looking at each member of congress' votes on laws that have major environmental implications. Last year, the House put forth more than 100 bills, riders, and amendments related to the environment and public health, mostly with harmful effects. On top of that, House Republicans' proposals sought to trample on virtually every area related to the environment, from rolling back EPA safeguards for waterways and wildlife that stand in the way of the pursuit of coal, to limiting the president's power to preserve land as National Monuments. Not even the sea turtles were safe. Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.) offered an amendment to a bill that would prohibit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from enforcing a rule that prohibits fishermen from snaring the endangered reptiles in their nets. (The amendment was later dropped.)

The league credited the Senate and the Obama Administration for batting down many of the most appalling affronts to the environment, but a few slipped through. What is striking in the data is how starkly the scores fell along party lines. House Democrats had an average score of 82, while their Senate counterparts scored 89. House Republicans had a score of 10, while GOP Senators' average was 17.

The divide is also reflected in the scores of party leadership. Democrats Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Majority Whip Dick Durbin were both deemed environmental champions by LCV with perfect scores of 100, while Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Whip Jon Kyl both had dismal scores of 7, only voting for two eco-friendly measures that also concerned subsidies for farmers.

In the House, Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi scored 94 and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer scored 91 for their attempts to stem the deluge of environmentally corrosive laws. Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor scored 3, voting against or abstaining on everything except flood insurance reform, and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy scored 6, voting against the protection of the water supply in his home state of California. (Speaker of the House John Boehner got a pass because the speaker votes at his own discretion.)

"These issues have traditionally been bipartisan," Jeff Gohringer, spokesperson for the League, said. "Now members of Congress are standing up for the polluter agenda over the desires of their constituents. It's been taken to a whole new level in terms of the extreme leadership in the Republican Party in the House. They've cemented their position as the worst House ever in the face of historic extreme weather all across the country."

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