Search Results

This essay offers a comprehensive assessment of the cost savings over the first five years of the allowance trading program. The current study has two methodological advantages over the previous ones. The first is the completeness of the data used. Like the two previous studies, this study estimates scrubber costs from costs reported in survey data, although the current study is able to use cost data from the full five years of Phase I. The data on coal prices used here are much more detailed than that in the other two studies, allowing for plant-level estimates of sulfur premia and counterfactual sulfur content. The second and more significant advantage of the current study is methodological. It employs an econometric model of the abatement choices actually made by utilities to simulate the decisions that would have been made under prescriptive regulation. Thus, abatement costs under counterfactual policies are estimated on the basis of observed behavior under actual policy regimes, rather than on the basis of engineering estimates or least-cost algorithms.

Chapter five discusses the growing pressure for an international accord on acid rain in the late 1970s. The Scandinavian governments, with the support of the Soviet Union and its allies, proposed an international treaty under the auspices of the United Nations to reduce fossil fuel pollution causing acid rain. However, Britain, France, and West Germany successfully united other members of the European Communities against the proposal, claiming that not enough research had been done on the environmental effects of acid rain to justify the economic costs involved. The US State Department eventually interceded to broker an agreement because American diplomats feared that a poor outcome from the acid rain talks could reduce US leverage in discussions with the Soviets about nuclear security and human rights. As a result of their efforts, European nations alongside the US and Soviet Union signed the 1979 UN Convention on long-range transboundary air pollution, which was the first international accord to address fossil fuel emissions. Although a remarkable achievement, the negotiations were marred by coal industry efforts to discredit environmental research on acid rain, which resulted in a commitment only to further study the problem rather than reduce pollution levels.

The two basic processes concerning pyrite in the environment are the formation of pyrite, which usually involves reduction of sulfate to sulfide, and the destruction of pyrite, which usually involves oxidation of sulfide to sulfate. On an ideal planet these two processes might be exactly balanced. But pyrite is buried in sediments sometimes for hundreds of millions of years, and the sulfur in this buried pyrite is removed from the system, so the balance is disturbed. The lack of balance between sulfide oxidation and sulfate reduction powers a global dynamic cycle for sulfur. This would be complex enough if this were the whole story. However, as we have seen, both the reduction and oxidation arms of the global cycle are essentially biological—specifically microbiological—processes. This means that there is an intrinsic link between the sulfur cycle and life on Earth. In this chapter, we examine the central role that pyrite plays, and has played, in determining the surface environment of the planet. In doing so we reveal how pyrite, the humble iron sulfide mineral, is a key component of maintaining and developing life on Earth. In Chapter 4 we concluded that Mother Nature must be particularly fond of pyrite framboids: a thousand billion of these microscopic raspberry-like spheres are formed in sediments every second. If we translate this into sulfur production, some 60 million tons of sulfur is buried as pyrite in sediments each year. But this is only a fraction of the total amount of sulfide produced every year by sulfate-reducing bacteria. In 1982 the Danish geomicrobiologist Bo Barker Jørgensen discovered that as much as 90% of the sulfide produced by sulfate-reducing bacteria was rapidly reoxidized by sulfur-oxidizing microorganisms. Sulfate-reducing microorganisms actually produce about 300 million tons of sulfur each year, but about 240 million tons is reoxidized. The magnitude of the sulfide production by sulfate-reducing bacteria can be appreciated by comparison with the sulfur produced by volcanoes. As discussed in Chapter 5, it was previously supposed that all sulfur, and thus pyrite, had a volcanic origin. In fact volcanoes produce just 10 million tons of sulfur each year.

This chapter describes the adverse effects of both outdoor air pollution and indoor air pollution. Various ambient air pollutants are described as well as their adverse health effects, including acute and chronic respiratory disorders, cardiac disorders, cerebrovascular disease, and cancer. A section deals with National Ambient Air Quality Standards of the Environmental Protection Agency for particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, ozone, oxides of nitrogen, and carbon monoxide. Another section describes exposure assessment. The chapter also describes various measures to control hazardous air pollutants and prevent disorders related to air pollution. In addition, a section features indoor air pollution, including pollution due to burning of biomass for cooking and heat.

This chapter examines the politics of scientific knowledge during two related air pollution cases that took place in Ehime Prefecture during the Meiji period: the Niihama Refinery Pollution Incident, which began in 1893, and the Shisakajima Refinery Pollution Incident, which began in 1905. In both cases, the copper refineries released sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, which oxidized into sulfuric acid, damaging crops and harming the local economy. When farmers staged violent protests and village leaders invited government experts to investigate, a series of negotiations with the company and state officials ensued, culminating in Japan's first government-monitored air pollution policy. This chapter suggests that the dispute regarding the sulfur dioxide pollution cases in Ehime was over damage to private property, caused by the reliance on the atmosphere as a commons.

This book chronicles almost five decades of efforts by the United States government to reduce the air pollution associated with burning coal, along with the often misleading political rhetoric surrounding those efforts. Given the central role that coal and its environmental consequences will play in our story, it’s helpful at the outset to understand some basic facts about the fuel. Short Answer: A combustible rock. Longer Answer: Coal is a fossil fuel—“fossil” because it’s primarily composed of the preserved remains of ancient plants and “fuel” because it can be burned to create energy. Most of the coal we use today was formed hundreds of millions of years ago when large swaths of the earth were covered in swampy forests. As plant life in these swamps died, it sank to the bottom of the water, where it was eventually buried under additional layers of sediment and slowly decomposed into a soggy, carbon-rich, soil-like substance known as peat. As still more time passed, this peat was further transformed by heat and pressure, a process known as carbonization, into the sedimentary rock we call coal. Short Answer: We mine it, mostly in Wyoming and Appalachia. Longer Answer: There are two basic methods of mining coal: underground mining and surface mining. Surface mining is typically used for shallow coal beds—those buried less than 200 feet deep. Miners access the fuel by simply removing (often with explosives) the trees and soil and rocks that sit atop it. Underground mining, by contrast, is used to extract coal that sits between 300 and 1,000 feet deep. The surface is left relatively undisturbed, and miners dig tunnels through which to enter the mine and retrieve the coal. Historically, underground mining was the more common of these two methods, but today, the majority of U.S. coal is produced at surface mines, which require far fewer workers to produce the same amount of coal. In addition to being cheaper to operate, surface mines are safer: both fatal and serious nonfatal injuries occur about three times more often in underground mines.