Second of a three-part series. Click here for the first part.

RAINIER, Ore. -- The grainy photograph hanging on the wall of the Ol' Pastime Tavern here recalls a time when lumber still defined the economy of the Northwest. It was taken in 1924. The tavern -- at that time still a hotel and saloon -- is perched in the foreground, flanked by smaller clapboard buildings on either side. Railroad tracks run down the main street amid piles of logs waiting for the next train.

Nine decades later, those tracks still cut through the heart of town, passing the Ol' Pastime and a dozen other Rainier businesses as they skirt the southern bank of the Columbia River. Soon, they could put Rainier squarely in the path of some 30 million annual tons of coal, mined from Montana and Wyoming and bound for the Pacific and Asia.

SPECIAL SERIES

A series on communities, climate change and the U.S. coal industry's long push to export more coal by hauling it to Northwestern seaports where it can be shipped to Asian buyers.

The town is one of a score of communities that lie between the Powder River Basin, home to 40 percent of U.S. coal reserves, and five proposed export terminals in Oregon and Washington. While none of those projects has yet entered the construction phase, Kinder Morgan's Port Westward project would send 12 coal-packed trains per day through here. It has yet to complete its due diligence process, but the prospect has already generated fierce opposition at both state and local levels.

"It'd essentially put us out of business," said Sloan Nelson, owner of the Ol' Pastime Tavern and a Rainier city councilman. "The proposal they're asking for at Port Westward is 1,400 train cars a day through the center of town. The businesses we have here are service businesses. People aren't going to be coming here for services if they've got to wait for a milelong train to go by first."

The proposal put to the town by Oregon state officials and Kinder Morgan includes raising the track bed and installing an iron fence around it, he said. While it is currently possible to walk across the tracks at any point, the new infrastructure would limit pedestrians and motorists to three crossings, closed any time a train was passing.

Similar complaints can be heard up and down the proposed routes. In St. Helens, half an hour south of Rainier, increased train traffic could cut off a local school from the rest of the town. As far back along the lines as Missoula, Mont., city councils are complaining about increased traffic congestion, noise pollution and coal dust.

"Right now with our current volume of train traffic, the noise alone is a significant quality of life issue," said Missoula City Councilman Dave Strohmaier. "The trains are required to blow their horns through partially controlled intersections. They already pass through several times a day -- what would it mean for us if there's a train coming through every hour?"

Some hope for economic gains

The terminals have some local champions as well. One is the city of Clatskanie, Ore., a 10-minute drive north of Rainier and the closest town to Port Westward.

As with many towns in the region, Clatskanie's fortunes rose and fell with the lumber industry. Unemployment for the county stands at 10.6 percent, nearly 3 percentage points higher than the national average. One of Clatskanie's most iconic buildings, the Humps Restaurant, was recently forced to close down when its owners were unable to sell the property.

"That was a real heartbreak for us," said Robert Keyser, president of the Port of St. Helens Commission and a resident of Clatskanie. "It'd been a cornerstone for the community."

Main Street in Rainier, Ore. Can it handle 12 coal trains a day? Photo by Nathanael Massey.

To many residents of Clatskanie, the proposed terminal at Port Westward offers a chance to revitalize the flagging economy.

"It would mean a great deal of funds coming to the county through property taxes. It might not benefit the city directly, but it would mean more money coming into our school district, which is in chaos financially," said Clatskanie Mayor Diane Pohl. "And of course it would benefit Clatskanie in a peripheral way because people would be moving here, buying homes and shopping in stores."

Kinder Morgan estimates that the terminal will require between $150 million and $200 million in capital investment for construction and development. According to Keyser, the port would add 50 well-paid jobs to the local economy.

Taken together, the five terminal projects would require more than $1.5 billion in investments and provide more than $20 million a year in taxes to Oregon and Washington. Even after construction ended, they would employ several hundred people for daily operations.

But Rainier's Nelson cautioned that those benefits would have their own costs. "The terminal at Port Westward is supposed to create 50 jobs," he said. "Between our businesses here in Rainier, my wife and I employ 15 people. I can't tell you exactly what's going to happen, but I can tell you we won't be employing 15 people if the train goes through."

Not on our river

Coal producer Ambre Energy Ltd. has proposed an alternative route to Port Westward, one that would spare Rainier and many other towns along the way. Ambre's proposal would carry coal by rail to the Port of Morrow, near Boardman, Ore., where it would be loaded onto barges and floated down the Columbia River. At Port Westward, the coal would be transloaded directly from the barges onto oceangoing freight vessels.

But even Ambre's more modest proposal of 8 million tons per year has hit a strong current of opposition, this time from Northwest tribes concerned with the impact of increased traffic on their ancestral fishing rights over the Columbia River. Most vocal in opposition has been the Yakama Nation, whose members have subsisted for generations off salmon, steelhead and sturgeon from the Columbia and its tributaries.

"We see it as incompatible use," said Emily Washines, spokeswoman for Yakama Tribal Fisheries. "Our leadership and legal counsel have an ongoing review of activities and options. Right now we're primarily monitoring the Army Corps of Engineers [environmental assessment of the Port of Morrow], but once we've reviewed their response to our concerns, we'll decide where to go from there."

The tribes may, in fact, have more power to oppose the terminals than towns like Rainier or even cities like Missoula. While towns along the tracks have little influence over the cargo sent through their communities, the tribes of the Northwest have legally binding treaty rights that guarantee them the right to fish, unimpeded, in their ancestral waters.

"There's been many fishing rights cases that have reaffirmed the tribes' treaty rights to access fish along historical tributaries," said Washines. "These are high-profile cases, and by now the precedent is pretty solid."

"What makes it difficult for us is the amount of different proposals, all of which would send coal along the Columbia at some stage or other," she added.

The Yakama Nation is one of a number of entities -- including U.S. EPA, the governors of Oregon and Washington, and several city councils -- that have called on the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a comprehensive environmental impact statement. Rather than site-specific evaluations of the various terminals themselves, a comprehensive EIS would look at the combined effects of all five terminals on the Northwest.

Next: A narrow scope of review?

Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing, who helped lead the United States at the U.N. global warming talks for the past four years, will step down.

In an email to colleagues last night, obtained by ClimateWire, Pershing announced he will be the Department of Energy's new deputy assistant secretary for climate.

"I believe we have, collectively, made strides toward a cleaner world -- and one a bit less likely to be catastrophically damaged by climate because of our efforts," Pershing wrote in the email.

"Obviously, there is considerably more work to be done. While I leave with sadness at the idea of no longer being an active part of the international negotiations, I also leave with the confidence the effort will see continued success and lead to a more climate friendly world."

Pershing's move comes at a major transition time at the State Department. Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to step down later this month, and confirmation hearings for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who has been nominated as her successor, have been scheduled for Jan. 24. Observers of the climate talks say they are unsure what shape Kerry might want his climate team to take.

Pershing joined the State Department in March of 2009 under Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern as part of what would be a new global warming ambassadorship under the Obama administration.

Tackling the government's biggest emitter

The two spearheaded and pushed the idea of a voluntary, "bottom up" approach to take the place of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which dictated emissions cuts to various countries. As part of that, they pushed consistently and largely successfully to ensure that China and other emerging countries made legally binding carbon commitments.

In doing so, the team, and Pershing in particular, became a lighting rod for many environmental activists who felt the United States was not doing enough domestically or making enough promises internationally. In the United States, though, he is widely praised for making sure any new agreement doesn't fall into the same pitfalls that Kyoto, which was rejected by the Senate, faced.

"Jonathan Pershing will serve the president and American people well at DOE. He is far more than a U.N. negotiator," said Nigel Purvis, president of Climate Advisers and a former Kyoto negotiator.

"Having directed climate and energy work at the International Energy Agency and the World Resources Institute previously, he has an excellent command of how energy policy can accelerate the transition to low-carbon energy," Purvis said.

"Jonathan played an important role in helping push the international negotiations to focus squarely on the need for real action, not theoretical action," said Jake Schmidt, international policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Pershing in his email described his new portfolio as more focused on domestic climate policy and on "making a contribution to the ongoing US effort to reduce emissions from a critical sector."

Before joining the State Department, Pershing served as director of the World Resources Institute think tank's climate and energy program. He also directed the environment program at the International Energy Agency, spending almost a decade before that in the State Department as a senior climate official working on the Kyoto Protocol.

Energy efficiency spending on utility customers could rise to $9.5 billion by 2025, offsetting most of the expected energy demand growth in the United States over the coming decade, according to a report released yesterday.

The projection is almost double the $4.8 billion spent in 2010, according to the report, prepared by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It also represents the middle efficiency growth projection highlighted in the study. The low scenario, roughly representing an efficiency plateau, projects an increase to $6.5 billion, and the high scenario, which hinges on strong policies and wide-scale implementation, projects $15.6 billion in efficiency measures.

The programs, from home insulation upgrades to guiding consumers to more energy-efficient behavior, could offset between 70 to 80 percent of energy load increases over the next 12 years, researchers said.

Charles Goldman, a co-author and head of the energy analysis department at Berkeley Lab, said the findings provide critical information about how efficiency measures can change the energy landscape in the United States.

"There are other studies out there that summarize existing and current budgets for energy efficiency programs, but there is no other study out there that tries to forecast future spending and savings trends with an analytical framework," he said.

Using current state efficiency incentives and declared ambitions, the researchers calculated how initiatives to make homes, businesses and industry use energy more effectively would pan out based on three models of how aggressively states would pursue them.

"One of the contributions of our study was to translate [energy] savings goals into spending projections," Goldman said, explaining that the researchers tabulated how much new standards or certain programs would cost.

From the coasts to the Midwest

The researchers also found that efficiency investment would likely spread more evenly throughout the country.

"Historically, different regions of the country adopted different approaches to meeting their electric-sector needs," said Goldman. He observed that coastal states with high electricity costs have traditionally pursued energy efficiency as an alternative to building new transmission lines or generators.

But the Midwest and South also have to contend with growing gas and electricity demand, so these states are getting into the efficiency game, as well.

"Because of legislation, if folks carry out what they're projecting, the distribution of spending across the country will change," he said.

"In some states, energy efficiency is becoming a very large portion of the resource mix. It's not just a percent here and there," added Ian Hoffman, a senior research associate and another co-author.

The efficiency programs include home energy audits and upgrades, in which an auditor examines a house for leaky windows, porous walls and poor insulation. When the auditor adds up all the gaps and leaks in a typical home, "you end up, in aggregate, with a hole the size of a basketball," Hoffman said.

Utilities can also make efficiency gains in urban homes and businesses. "In a high-rise, a lot of these buildings were built by somebody who is not necessarily going to be paying the electric and gas bill," Hoffman said. Improvements like caulk, weather stripping and motion-sensitive lighting can dramatically reduce the energy footprint of these buildings.

A 'hedging strategy' against uncertainty

Other efficiency programs include giving customers bills that track their energy consumption relative to their neighbors, applying subtle peer pressure to get people to switch off lights and turn down the heat.

Some states also target industrial facilities, like metal forges and assembly plants, which devour electrons and British thermal units and thus make attractive targets.

"Where you have a factory, the program will send out trained engineers and contractors who will go out and do a very top-to-bottom assessment of the structures and the processes that are used and identify areas where there is waste," Hoffman said. Factories in turn can find out if it's cost-effective to upgrade to better motors, capture waste heat or install low-energy lighting.

Funding these programs will fall to end-users who may end up paying higher energy rates. However, efficiency gains can more than counter these increases, leading to lower bills overall for most energy consumers, according to Goldman. He projected that rates would increase by 1 percent, but consumption would decrease by 3 to 5 percent, depending on the state, the utility and the energy market.

In addition, previous studies indicate that rebound effects from greater energy efficiency -- people using more because it costs less -- are modest (ClimateWire, Aug. 8, 2012).

Though policies are not set in stone, pursuing energy efficiency still makes sense to most energy utilities.

"It's a good hedging strategy -- against fuel prices and regulatory uncertainty," said Goldman, noting that pushing customers to use less helps energy companies defer big decisions, like whether to build a new power plant, until energy markets stabilize or government officials decide on new environmental regulations.

Goldman acknowledged that increasing energy rates to fund greater efficiency would draw scrutiny from the industry, utility customers and the government, but noted that when it comes to dealing with the country's growing hunger for energy, "efficiency is attractive economically compared to many supply-side options."

Warm, rainy winters cause the populations of several animal species at a remote Norwegian Arctic outpost to drop at the same time, a new study finds.

The work, published yesterday in Science, is one of the first analyses to document the influence of climate change on a single community of intertwined species.

The Arctic fox. Photo courtesy of Brage Bremset Hansen.

Researchers working in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, a chain of islands above the Arctic Circle, found that winter rains caused populations of three plant-eating animals to plunge in unison. That is followed the next year by declines in the population of Arctic foxes, which feast on the carcasses of those plant-eaters.

The study provides "clear community-level climate signals in a simple system," said lead author Brage Bremset Hansen, an ecologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.

Because just a few animal species spend their winters in Svalbard, and the winter weather there varies greatly from year to year, it was easier for scientists to track the community's response to a changing climate, he added.

The cycle of dramatic population declines kicks off when rain falls on snow. That creates an icy crust that makes it difficult for Svalbard's plant eaters -- reindeer, rock ptarmigans and sibling voles -- to eat grasses and other plants that cover the Arctic tundra.

So populations of those three animals decline, creating a feast for scavenging Arctic foxes. Their population balloons, but it's a short-lived gain.

The next year, the number of foxes declines dramatically because there are fewer reindeer carcasses and other carrion for the increased number of foxes to feed on.

"In some areas of Svalbard where you have heavy rainfall, it is not uncommon to have a [4-to-8-inch-thick] solid ice layer on the ground" after rains, Hansen said. That buries most tundra plants, which are generally no taller than 2 inches high.

Scientists are concerned because warm, rainy, icy winters are becoming increasingly common in Svalbard and other parts of the Arctic. That could give Svalbard's reindeer, ptarmigans, voles and foxes less time to recover from population drops caused by rainy winters.

California is looking beyond its borders for green power as it reaches to meet the country's highest renewable energy mandate.

The Golden State's grid manager has just linked with a Nevada power group and is studying whether to team up with a second electricity authority in the adjoining state.

Merging forces with Nevada would allow its solar, wind and geothermal electricity to count toward California's green energy goal, Nevada officials said. It also would avoid the need to build duplicate power lines and would provide an incentive to fund transmission upgrades in the years ahead.

"California really wants to meet its climate change goals," said Edward Burgess with Kris Mayes Law Firm, which studied transmission planning for the Western Governors' Association. "Having a varied regional approach is going to be necessary."

California's renewable portfolio standard (RPS) requires that one-third of all power come from clean sources by 2020. The state's demand for green energy accounts for two-thirds of all renewable energy thirst in the Western Interconnection, which includes 11 states, some of Texas, and parts of Canada and Mexico.

Nevada said that it has plenty of power to share, especially solar and geothermal power resources, said Stacy Crowley, director of Nevada's Office of Energy.

Solar in Nevada could be developed to juice as many as 25 million California homes and geothermal to power as many as 3 million households, according to estimates Crowley gave.

"We've got a lot of resources; we just don't have the load or the need for it in the state," Crowley said. "We've got a lot to provide to the West if it's done in a cost competitive way."

Nevada's top power provider -- NV Energy Inc. -- is looking at a number of different ways it could link to the California Independent System Operator (Cal ISO). The analysis is due back this spring.

California doesn't need Nevada power to hit the 33 percent RPS. The Golden State's biggest utilities have projected that they can do that with existing contracts, which mostly are for in-state power. But green electricity isn't available if clouds are out or the wind is not blowing, said Ethan Elkind, a climate research fellow at the University of California.

"It helps to balance it out if you have a lot of different resources to compensate," Elkind said. "At some point, the state's going to have to go in that direction, where we start to bring in renewable resources from all across the Western region."

California currently uses natural gas-fired power plants to back up intermittent renewable sources, but "that hurts our overall effort at decarbonizing the electricity grid," Elkind said.

Study on Nev. link under way

The first merger with Nevada took place earlier this month. The Pahrump, Nev.-based Valley Electric Association became a participating transmission owner in the California ISO.

There is a swath of land with the potential for solar power along the eastern edge of Inyo County, Calif., which is located west of Las Vegas. California utilities have already agreed to buy some of the power from projects in the region.

The best way to deliver that power to Golden State customers is via an interconnection with VEA's lines, Cal ISO said.

"The new partnership creates a cost-effective means of getting both California and Nevada renewables to market," Cal ISO said in a statement. "Several proposed solar projects worth nearly one and a half gigawatts are in VEA's backyard."

Cal ISO now is looking at a second tie to the Silver State. California's grid manager and NV Energy are studying whether they should officially link.

NV Energy is the biggest authority in the state, with its subsidiaries providing power to 85 percent of Nevada. An official tie with California would provide an incentive for development of more renewable power, Crowley said.

Rules set up by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) restrict what can count toward the state's RPS. In general, three-fourths of green power must start with a California Balancing Authority (CBA), an agency that controls regional generation and transmission.

Cal ISO is a CBA, so if a power manager joins, renewable projects within its borders should count toward the Golden State's green mandate, said Steve Weissman], a former administrative law judge at the CPUC. He now serves as director of the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Law, Energy and the Environment.

"The extent to which you expand the ISO's control area, you're also expanding the ability to have a first point of interconnection between renewable energy projects and the ISO's grid," Weissman said.

That makes it more appealing for companies to develop green projects, Crowley said. Geothermal energy plants, she noted, are expensive to build, so businesses want to make sure they have a utility lined up to buy power.

"It would provide a little more incentive for California utilities to consider purchasing Nevada renewables because it would be considered part of their system," Crowley said. "So that would be an attractive option for developers in Nevada, if they could provide a direct connect into the California market to meet their RPS."

There also would be opportunities to ship California power to Nevada, she said. The Silver State has a renewable energy mandate of 25 percent by 2025.

Several benefits

There are several options for a link between Cal ISO and NV Energy, up to and including the Nevada authority becoming a participating transmission owner. Renewable power from the state might qualify for California's RPS under a variety of scenarios, said Mark Rothleder, Cal ISO's vice president of market quality and renewable integration.

Linking with Nevada wouldn't be a way of working around the RPS rules, said Elkind with University of California.

"Even if it's generated out of state, I don't see the problem with that," Elkin said, adding, "Politically, it could encourage [Nevada] to develop higher targets for renewable power in their own state."

It could also reduce costs for electricity ratepayers, Weissman said. While there are always unforeseen variables, he said, bringing more developers and projects in means competition that should drive down prices.

Linking systems would also mean planning for transmission in a more efficient way, said Stephanie McCorkle, a Cal ISO spokeswoman.

Nevada's Valley Electric Association joined California's grid manager, she said, and the two systems merged their interconnection queue, a list of prospective projects asking to be studied for their impact on the grid.

"In general, hopefully, when you've got a larger area that you're doing the planning for, you are going to avoid redundancies," McCorkle said. "That, in the long term, will plan the system more efficiently and reduce costs."

Traffic congestion threatens to drive up emissions and cripple economies unless global leaders act on sustainable transportation solutions, a group of experts warned yesterday.

Rapid urbanization, particularly in the developing world, is driving the need to address sustainable transportation, said Holger Dalkmann, director of the World Resources Institute's EMBARQ program on financially and environmentally sustainable transportation.

"For the first time, last year, we had more people living in cities than in rural areas. In China, in particular, we now have more people living in cities than urban areas, and India will get there by 2040," he said yesterday at the Transforming Transportation 2013 conference. "So how we develop cities now will heavily influence the footprint of the city, but also how people will move and their quality of life."

The way a city grows could lock in a dependence on cars, as in sprawling Los Angeles, or stimulate the use of alternative, low-carbon modes of transportation, like the bus rapid transit system on the arterial streets of Curitiba, Brazil.

Experts say the urgency to address sustainable transportation is underscored by a new pace of economic development, which in many places is causing cars to outpace population growth.

Nikolay Asaul, Russian deputy minister for transport, said yesterday that the population of Russia is increasing by 1 percent per year, while the number of vehicles is increasing at 2.5 percent per year. In Quito, Ecuador, the number of inhabitants is growing by 2 percent, while the number of cars is increasing by 8 percent, said Mayor Augusto Barrera.

"We need to accept that there's an incredible aspirational issue here," said Rakesh Mohan, chairman of India's National Transport Development Policy Committee. "People that are just getting into income levels where they can afford personalized transport are going to have it."

Drawing the masses toward alternative transportation requires overcoming cultural, political and financial barriers, but momentum is starting to grow.

Ten years ago, transport was nowhere to be found on the sustainability agenda. Last year, it was one of the most important topics discussed at the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, or Rio+20, where eight of the world's largest multilateral development banks made an unprecedented commitment of $175 billion toward sustainable transportation over the next decade.

Defining 'sustainable'

Yesterday, EMBARQ and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group launched a partnership to tackle greenhouse gas emissions from urban transportation through sustainable urban planning, bus rapid transit systems and nonmotorized transit initiatives.

"This new partnership with EMBARQ and its global network of transportation expertise will accelerate the work cities are doing to implement more efficient and effective transit systems," New York City Mayor and C40 Chairman Michael Bloomberg said in a statement. "By combining the forces of two organizations that know how to get things done we will help provide greater transit options that will help us build a more sustainable planet."

But what exactly is sustainable transportation? For starters, it's about more than roads and buses and rail cars, and has also to do with energy security, climate change and poverty, said Jose Luis Irigoyen, director of transport, water and information and communications technologies at the World Bank.

"For us it means safe, clean and affordable transport that produces development, and this development is what we're seeing now through the framework of 'inclusive green growth,'" he said in an interview at the EMBARQ conference. "It has to be development that is inclusive, that brings people together, that addresses poverty and avoids fragmentation in society, and at the same time that balances the consequences our interventions today will have in the future."

How an institution defines sustainable transportation could have a significant impact on how it's addressed, said Robert Guild, director of the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) Transport, Energy and Natural Resources Division.

To the ADB, a sustainable transportation project is accessible, affordable, efficient, environmentally sustainable and safe. But whether or not all of those criteria must apply for the bank to make an investment is unclear.

"Can you have something that is safe and affordable but increases emissions, and does that still count? Maybe," said Guild. "Coming to convergence on the definitions and requiring those as part of strategies is, I think, part of this policy dialogue we have to have with our client governments."

Representatives of the Inter-American Development Bank and Corporación Andina de Fomento echoed their support for sustainable transportation projects, but also highlighted the need to work with all levels of government and nongovernmental groups to drive support for their investments.

Making cities competitive, clean

Sustainable transportation projects often hit a roadblock if they are seen to come in conflict with the speed or efficiency of city operations, which would cause economic damage. Investing in roads and highways would seem to get people to work faster, but experts asserted yesterday the opposite is true.

"I would argue that there is a strong win-win situation," said EMBARQ's Dalkmann on the relationship between sustainable transportation and economic growth.

"On the one hand, it's not just about moving people, but making cities attractive so that they retain people," he said. "The most competitive cities in the world are where people want to go, and where business is thriving is also in cities where there is a high quality of life through sustainable urban planning and transport."

"In the city context, it is very clear that there is no conflict," said the World Bank's Irigoyen on the introduction of sustainable transportation solutions. "We see congestion, for example, stopping a city. So we know that the solution to that problem will also be good from an economic perspective and a climate perspective."

The transportation sector as a whole accounts for roughly 13 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, panelists at yesterday's conference made the case for transportation projects to receive support from sources such as the Green Climate Fund.

The $100-billion-per-year investment to the fund would only go a short distance toward solving the world's transportation issues, even if none of it went to other climate-related sectors such as energy and water. But climate finance can help leverage other funds that could have a huge cumulative impact, said Dalkmann.

If the world is to effectively tackle the risks of climate change, embracing sustainable transportation needs to happen sooner than later, he added. "We simply can't afford to wait; we can't also afford to progress slowly," he said.

From kudzu-eating bugs to flax lilies, everywhere we look we are bombarded with news of newly introduced species thriving in U.S. soil, often at the expense of the locals. But as climate change and other factors continue to favor invaders, the country also grows more vulnerable to diseases that might be carried by them. So researchers are using computer models to predict the potential spread.

Feeding time for the Asian tiger mosquito. Photo courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a study published in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, scholar Diego Ruiz Moreno, of the Arturo Jauretche National University in Argentina, developed a computer model to see what would happen in the face of tropical virus Chikungunya reaching U.S. shores.

Using quantified information based on mosquito surveillance programs, as well as population and temperature data for the three major U.S. ports of entry -- New York, Miami and Atlanta -- the researchers ran a model to determine the potential risk of a Chikungunya outbreak brought on by an unaware infected traveler.

"In the event of an introduction and establishment of Chikungunya in the U.S., endemic and epidemic regions would emerge initially, primarily defined by the environmental factors controlling annual mosquito population cycles," the model showed.

Anthology of a disease

Like malaria and dengue, Chikungunya is a mosquito-borne disease, piggybacking on the yellow fever mosquito -- also vehicle of choice of the dengue virus. More recently, it has been riding on the Asian tiger mosquito. Chikungunya causes denguelike symptoms such as fever and severe joint pains that could last months or, in rare cases, years.

What's peculiar about this virus, however, is the way it has expanded its range in recent years.

Everything points to Chikungunya originating in central and east Africa. But since 2004, cases of Chikungunya have been reported in Kenya, the Indian Ocean's La Reunion Island, India, Southeast Asia and finally Italy.

"It is clear this disease is moving -- and moving very fast -- and it's not a question of if but when it's going to arrive to the New World," Ruiz Moreno said.

Mosquitoes, and the viruses that grow in them, are susceptible to climate conditions. In general, the higher the temperature, the faster they grow. According to Ruiz Moreno, one of the main threats is that climate change is affecting the seasons, not only the seasonal variation of temperature and rainfall but also the cyclic oscillations of vectors, hosts and other parts of the ecosystem.

How these changes will affect the dynamic of infectious diseases, however, is hard to predict.

Risky business

As with the kudzu bug and the flax lily, the Asian tiger mosquito has also found its way into the United States. Since its introduction in the mid-1980s, it has established itself in more than 26 states. Its broad presence, added to the constant influx of travelers from around the world, makes the threat of a Chikungunya outbreak in the United States all the more real.

"The movement of pathogens is a documented risk, and it's something we take very seriously," said Roger Nasci, chief of the Arboviral Diseases Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A couple of years ago, there was a small dengue outbreak in Key West, Fla., that persisted for almost two years. Back then, fingers also pointed at travelers.

"The example is there, it's not something that is a hypothetical," Nasci said. And because people can't be prevented from traveling, it comes down to being prepared and making sure that people have the proper information and tools to detect quickly and respond effectively, he added.

In the latest Atlas of Health and Climate -- a collaboration between the World Health Organization and the World Meteorological Organization -- officials state that one of the main challenges when dealing with infectious diseases and climate change is to understand and try to project their geographical distribution in time to prepare.

According to Nasci, that's where some of these models come into play.

"Though [models] are not experiments and are based on assumptions about complex interactions that will occur, they provide some potential scenarios," he said.

Green groups and oil industry advocates continued the battle over the Keystone XL pipeline yesterday with a flurry of competing reports about the proposed TransCanada line.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall joined 10 U.S. Republican governors yesterday in urging the Obama administration to approve the northern segment of Keystone XL, which would run 1,179 miles from Canada to Nebraska for linkage into the Gulf Coast if constructed.

In the letter, the government officials said the proposed oil conduit is needed to enhance energy security and generate jobs and tax revenue along the pipeline route.

"The Keystone XL pipeline could also provide the critical infrastructure required to transport growing U.S. domestic production from the Bakken shale region to market," the letter states. It was signed by the governors of Arizona, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming.

Keystone XL would carry oil sands crude from Alberta, but more than 10 percent of the pipeline's space could be used for Bakken oil. The Bakken formation could provide royalty and tax revenue for Saskatchewan from the oil patch, which stretches into North Dakota and Montana.

In a second statement yesterday, the Saskatchewan government said that Keystone XL was important for "easing pipeline capacity for all jurisdictions" in growing production in the Bakken.

The letter is the latest volley between pipeline supporters and environmentalists as the State Department weighs an environmental impact statement for the northern segment of Keystone XL. The Obama administration denied a permit for the original Keystone XL pipeline in 2011, citing concerns about its path through an ecologically sensitive area of Nebraska (ClimateWire, Nov. 11, 2011).

Battle over jobs numbers and GHG emissions

Yesterday, the pro-oil-sands Consumer Energy Alliance released a report stating that the pipeline could create more than 5,000 jobs in Nebraska.

Environmentalists attacked the figure, while industry said it showed the pipeline's economic significance. The dispute highlights the pressure facing Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman (R), who must decide by early February on the adequacy of a reroute of the pipeline in his state.

Pipeline supporters say Keystone XL will not increase greenhouse gas emissions beyond business-as-usual scenarios. Citing the State Department's original environmental analysis in 2011, they say that the oil in Canada will be extracted regardless of Keystone XL, because of proposed alternative pipelines, such as Enbridge's Northern Gateway proposal to Canada's west coast.

Yesterday, environmental groups and scientists challenged that argument with the release of two reports on the climate impact of the TransCanada project, including an analysis of its ability to increase carbon dioxide emissions by producing petroleum coke in the refining process (ClimateWire, Jan. 17).

The Pembina Institute, a Canadian-based environmental think tank, released the second report, concluding that Keystone XL could boost oil sands production by 36 percent -- an amount that would increase emissions by the equivalent of six coal plants.

Green groups say opposition to pipelines such as Northern Gateway in Canada signals that oil sands growth is not inevitable. Northern Gateway is facing opposition from many First Nations groups (ClimateWire, Oct. 22, 2012).

Because Keystone XL is larger than other pipeline proposals and further along in the permitting process, it is the key to whether oil sands production flattens or nearly triples by 2030, they say.

"The tar sands expansion is unlikely to occur without Keystone XL," said Danielle Droitsch, Canada project director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The drought that has gripped the central United States for the past two years is holding on tight, federal forecasters said yesterday.

Almost 59 percent of the contiguous United States is experiencing drought, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor update, with the worst conditions concentrated in the Great Plains and Western states.

That is not expected to change much over the next three months, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its three-month outlook for February, March and April.

The agency's forecasters say they expect a relatively dry spring in drought-stricken areas, which could cause conditions to stay the same or even worsen in some parts of the central United States.

"Most of the central and southern Plains look like they will continue to have significant drought-related problems," said Anthony Artusa, a meteorologist at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center. "The best chance for some relief, at least during the early months of the growing season, is in the Northern Plains and the upper, and perhaps middle, portions of the Mississippi Valley."

That gloomy forecast comes after a wet December, when the national rainfall total was 0.51 inch above average. Precipitation was above normal in much of the country, with the exception of Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri, which were slightly drier than average for December.

December was also unusually warm in much of the eastern half of the country, NOAA said. Twenty states recorded top 10 warmest December temperatures.

The warmth will continue over the next three months, but its nexus will shift from the eastern United States to a broad band stretching from Southern California to Mississippi and up into the central Plains. That area is also likely to be drier than normal.

New England is also in line for unusual warmth, the agency said, while southern Alaska; the Pacific Northwest; and northern Idaho, Montana and North Dakota are likely to be colder than normal.

Federal forecasters predict that the Great Lakes will be wetter than normal.

Despite opposition from Poland, a European Union plan to decrease the oversupply of carbon emissions allowances and restore faith in the Emissions Trading System could move forward with backing from Germany, E.U. Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said Wednesday.

The European Commission has proposed removing some permits during the 2013-2015 carbon market, which would drive the cost up from the current record low of less than €6 ($8). Before the economic recession, prices were closer to €30.

Other member states are "undecided, with a few exceptions," said a source from the E.U. presidency, now held by Ireland.

Elections in Germany on Sunday will determine the country's economy minister. The current minister, Philipp Rösler, has opposed the backloading plan, but if he is voted out of office the plan could move forward, Hedegaard said.

"I think it is urgent, and I think that those member states that haven't internally made up their mind yet must realize that industry and investors need to know what they can count on," she said.

The Irish presidency and the European Commission are also trying to forge ties with Australia's carbon trading market.

"It is just one part of the bigger vision that in the end -- not tomorrow, not next year, not in the very foreseeable future -- but in the end, the aim should be to have a global price on carbon," Hedegaard said (Daniel Fineren, Reuters, Jan. 16). -- EH

French President Francois Hollande called for more investment in clean energy projects this week.

At the opening of the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Hollande warned about the consequences of not pumping enough money into renewable energy production. He predicted that failure to spend on developing renewable energy will increase demand for fossil energy -- hiking up prices -- and increase the risks of global warming.

Around $257 billion was spent on renewable energy projects around the world in 2011, summit organizers said. This year, according to estimates, more than $300 billion in investments will be needed. Hollande, citing current economic crises, said all countries need to contribute.

"Responsibility lies on all, but not in equal shares. ... Developed nations' contributions must be much higher," said Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, adding that Latin America and the Caribbean are responsible for only 5 percent of harmful emissions.

On Monday, the Abu Dhabi-based International Renewable Energy Agency launched a plan to double clean energy production by 2030 -- raising the share of clean renewable energy sources to 30 percent of the global energy mix (Omar Hasan, Agence France-Presse, Jan. 16). -- IP

Earlier this week, researchers gave Minnesota legislators the start of a dissertation on the climate change problems facing their state.

The hearing was designed to provide lawmakers with the big perspective "at a graduate level" on the connections between climate change and the way Minnesotans use their natural resources through agriculture, water demand and forestry, said Rep. Jean Wagenius, chairwoman of the House Environment Committee.

The point, according to Wagenius and Rep. Alice Hausman, is for the House, controlled by the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party, to base new laws and policy decisions on research rather than ideology.

It was the first of five scheduled committee meetings on looming environmental issues.

That same day, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced 2012 was the warmest year on record in the contiguous United States and third-warmest for Minnesota.

Some still questioned the premise, but these challenges must be faced, according to Rep. Kim Norton.

"Can we handle the whole of climate change? No," she said. "But we can take factual research and move on that. We'd be irresponsible if we didn't" (Marcotty/McAuliffe, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Jan. 16). -- IP