Derailment, Federal Railroad Administration, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Positive Train Control, Rail Safety, Train braking systems

Lawmakers Press Railroad Nominee on Safety Deadline

Repost from the New York Times

Lawmakers Press Railroad Nominee on Safety Deadline

By Ron Nixon, Sept. 17, 2015
An Amtrak train traveling from Penn Station in New York to Penn Station in Newark in August. There is a Dec. 31 deadline for railroads to start using positive train control technology, which increases safety. Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s nominee to lead the Federal Railroad Administration faced tough questioning by lawmakers on Thursday about the rail industry’s contention that it cannot meet a year-end deadline to install a safety technology meant to keep trains from derailing.

Sarah Feinberg, 37, who was nominated by Mr. Obama in May, has been acting administrator of the agency for about nine months. During that time, there have been several train crashes attributed to excessive speeds, including in May, when an Amtrak passenger train derailed in Philadelphia, killing eight people and injuring 200.

Under questioning by a Senate panel weighing her confirmation, Ms. Feinberg said the railroad administration would enforce the 2008 law that set Dec. 31 of this year as the deadline to have railroads install the technology, known as positive train control.

“On Jan. 1, we will enforce the deadline and the law,” Ms. Feinberg said. She said the agency would work with the rail companies to help them with technical and financial challenges they face in trying to install the safety technology. But she emphasized, “We do not have the authority to extend the deadline.” That authority belongs to Congress.

The deadline to install positive train control, which dominated the questions at the hearing, has become a contentious issue. Some members of Congress have proposed pushing back the deadline. A Senate bill passed in July would extend it to 2018. But many safety advocates say the industry has known of the deadline for years and should be able to install the technology on time.

A report on Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that no railroad would be able to fully install the technology by the end of the year. The investigators recommended that Congress extend the deadline. Many railroad operators say they will refuse to carry crude oil or hazardous chemicals after Jan. 1 if Congress does not do so.

At the hearing, Ms. Feinberg received tough questioning from Democrats and Republicans, who asked if the agency had contingency plans if the railroad industry did not meet the deadline.

“If you know that they aren’t going to be in compliance at the end of the year, what are you going to do?” asked Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri.

Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi, said he and other panel members were frustrated by the “lack of a specific proposal concerning an extension.”

Ms. Feinberg was introduced at the hearing by Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, whom she has known since she was a child. Mr. Manchin called Ms. Feinberg “uniquely qualified to lead the agency.”

Ms. Feinberg, a former Facebook executive and White House adviser, has dealt with several high-profile rail accidents during her tenure at the railroad administration. In addition to the Amtrak wreck, a train derailment in Oxnard, Calif., killed the engineer and injured about 30 people, and an oil train derailment in West Virginia caused the evacuation of about 100 people from their homes.

During her tenure, higher domestic oil production has caused a significant increase in the amount of crude oil traveling by rail, setting off concerns about the safety of those shipments through cities and towns.

Before she became acting administrator, Ms. Feinberg’s most relevant transportation experience was the nearly 18 months she spent as chief of staff to Anthony Foxx, the transportation secretary. Mr. Foxx, whose department oversees the railroad agency, has said that Ms. Feinberg has his full confidence.

Railroad administrators without transportation experience are not unprecedented. Recent examples include Gilbert E. Carmichael, who led the agency from 1989 to 1993 and was active in Mississippi Republican politics before he became administrator. Likewise, John H. Riley, who led the Federal Railroad Administration from 1983 to 1989, worked as a Senate aide before being appointed to lead the agency by President Ronald Reagan.

During her time as acting administrator, Ms. Feinberg has issued a crude-by-rail rule that imposes significant new safety requirements and has started a partnership with Google to integrate the railroad administration’s grade crossing data into its mapping software, allowing users to receive audio and visual alerts about railroad crossings.

Carbon pricing systems, Corporate sustainability, Divestment in fossil-fuels, Socially responsible investment, Sustainability investments

Investing in socially responsible companies makes sense

Repost from the San Francisco Chronicle
[Editor:  Significant quote: “Studying the performance of over 2,000 companies in six sectors, the researchers discovered the stock price of companies that invested to improve sustainability in ways that were material to their businesses outperformed companies that did not.”  – RS]

Investing in socially responsible companies makes sense

By Tom Kiely, Lenny Mendonca and Steve Westly, September 17, 2015

What do CalPERS, and many of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds from Scandinavia to the Mideast have in common? They’re betting big on sustainability.

In May, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, a $307 billion retirement fund, said it will require its asset managers to factor environmental and social risks into their investment decisions. Norway’s giant national sovereign wealth fund, with $890 billion in assets built off its oil and gas reserves, is divesting from companies that mine or burn coal. A majority of the world’s largest institutional investors — pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds — incorporate considerations about a business’s environmental and social track record into their investment decisions.

However, too many company managers are still under the spell of the myth that shareholders are the only stakeholders who count. For decades, neo-classical economists suggested — and business schools taught — that sustainability investments unnecessarily raise a firm’s costs, creating a competitive disadvantage. Invest in anything but the bottom line, and you risk your survival we’ve been told endlessly.

Shareholder idolatry holds executives back from making the investments they should to benefit the planet and their businesses in the long-term. For every corporate leader there is a regiment of laggards.

Sure, most of the Standard & Poor’s 500 companies issue sustainability or social responsibility reports each year, but try reading those reports — they are a catalog of the tepid. Few companies integrate social and environmental factors deeply into their business strategies. U.S business organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce, have opposed government-led efforts to reduce climate risk as overly bureaucratic and costly for business, while doing little to further business-led initiatives to improve corporate sustainability.

That’s a big mistake. For instance, in one recent study, three Harvard Business School professors showed how “firms with good performance on material (our emphasis) sustainability issues significantly outperform firms with poor performance on these issues.”

When it comes to these investments, the materiality test is crucial. Companies make all kinds of investments in sustainability and in corporate social responsibility programs. But only some of these things have a material impact on performance. The researchers looked at a set of environmental, social, and governance measures that both companies and their investors deemed material and measured their impact on stock prices.

What did they find? Studying the performance of over 2,000 companies in six sectors, the researchers discovered the stock price of companies that invested to improve sustainability in ways that were material to their businesses outperformed companies that did not.

This makes sense to a growing number of investors. Smart sustainability investments allow companies to attract better employees, improve their brands to sell more or sustain a price premium.

What should be done? Companies must do a better job of compiling non-financial data on their environmental and social performance and report it to investors and other stakeholders. Fifty percent of institutional investors surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2014 said they were dissatisfied with the environmental-social-governance information companies provided.

Business leaders need to step up and champion these efforts.

Also, executives should act like leaders in policy debates. In early June, 80 companies, including U.S.-based Coca-Cola and Mars, pressed the British government to fight for strong action against climate change in international talks, and to aggressively push for a long-term low-carbon plan for the United Kingdom.

Where are U.S. business leaders on this?

Business leaders should propose a concrete plan for pricing carbon, for instance. After all, more than 150 companies already factor a carbon price into their business planning decisions, according to a recent study by CDP, a sustainability measurement organization. Executives have the public clout to elevate the debate on carbon pricing, and the experience to propose pragmatic frameworks for getting this done.

Corporate executives need to stop thinking of sustainability as a political discussion, and see it for what it is: good business.

Tom Kiely is a member of the Standards Council of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. Lenny Mendonca is a consultant to leaders in the public and social sectors. Steve Westly, a former state controller, is managing director of the venture capital firm the Westly Group.
Air Quality, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Bay Area Refineries, Cap-and-trade, Carbon emissions, Emissions caps, Greenhouse gas emissions, Local Regulation, Public Health, San Francisco Bay Area

Letter to the Bay Area Air District: require strict emissions caps on refineries

Posted with permission

Benicia Resident Marilyn Bardet’s letter to the Chair of the Board, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD)

Direct staff to require numerical emissions caps on all refinery emissons
By Marilyn Bardet, Sept 16, 2015

Dear Chair Groom,

Marilyn Bardet
Marilyn Bardet, Benicia CA

In response to the overwhelming testimony the District has received from all corners of the Bay Area, as chair of the BAAQMD board of directors, you, with your board, have the authority to direct District staff to revise DRAFT Rules 12-15 and 12-16 as currently released, to require strict numerical emissions caps on all refinery emissions, including GHG.

By all means of public testimony over a two-year period, you have heard from concerned and affected members of the public, respected regional and national organizations (including Sierra Club, NRDC, CBE, 350 Bay Area, APEN, Sunflower Alliance) and other experts in the field who have recommended and put forward well-defined revisions that would impose strict numerical emissions caps on refinery emissions tied to current emissions baselines for TAC, VOCs, heavy metals and PM2.5, including GHG.

You know that oil companies in the region aim to acquire and process the most dangerously polluting crude in the world — tar sands. Refineries processing changed crude slates whose blends have increasing amounts of heavy crude, unconventional crudes such as Bakken oil, and/or tar sands will adversely impact regional and local air quality, especially affecting front-line communities and those “downwind communities.” Allowing emissions to “go up to” long ago established permitting levels (Valero Benicia’s permit was established in 2003) is tantamount to the District “giving in” to benefit the oil industries’ profit, not public health.

The District’s mandate is to clean up the air for the benefit of public health, and, in accordance with state mandates, to protect the climate by drastically reducing GHG. Oil refining is the biggest industrial source of GHG. Carbon trading by refineries will simply send “pollution credits” elsewhere and keep toxic emissions “at home” that kill thousands of people in the Bay Area each year. GHG emissions from fossil fuel combustion threaten to destroy our global climate and way of life.

Strong refinery rules that set numerical limits on toxic emissions tied to current baselines and limit GHGs are our best chance to protect public health and protect the climate.

We need your leadership more than ever now! I am writing to ask that you make it clear to your directors that the “highest good” must be done by BAAQMD in the name of public health and climate protection, such that, until revisions to Rules 12-15 and 12-16 are adopted that set refinery emission caps at today’s levels, including for GHG, the agency will suspend permitting for refinery projects.

This is a bold request, but these are very uncertain times that require every precaution and concerted action by leadership to create policies that protect people and the planet.

Thank you for your public service, and for you attention to my comments.

Respectfully,

Marilyn Bardet
Benicia
Air Quality, Particulate pollution, Public Health

Air pollution kills 3.3 million worldwide, may double, study says

Repost from the San Francisco Chronicle
[Editor:  Significant quote: “Air pollution kills more than HIV and malaria combined.”  Also: “The United States, with 54,905 deaths in 2010 from soot and smog….”  – RS]

Air pollution kills 3.3 million worldwide, may double, study says

Associated Press, September 16, 2015
A man covers his nose during a hazy day in Singapore. A new study notes that farming plays a large role in smog and soot deaths in industrial nations. Photo: Ng Han Guan, Associated Press
A man covers his nose during a hazy day in Singapore. A new study notes that farming plays a large role in smog and soot deaths in industrial nations. Photo: Ng Han Guan, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Air pollution is killing 3.3 million people a year worldwide, according to a new study that includes this surprise: Farming plays a large role in smog and soot deaths in industrial nations.

Scientists in Germany, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia and Harvard University calculated the most detailed estimates yet of the toll of air pollution, looking at what caused it. The study also projects that if trends don’t change, the yearly death total will double to about 6.6 million by 2050.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, used health statistics and computer models. About three quarters of the deaths are from strokes and heart attacks, said lead author Jos Lelieveld at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany.

The findings are similar to other less detailed pollution death estimates, outside experts said.

“About 6 percent of all global deaths each occur prematurely due to exposure to ambient air pollution. This number is higher than most experts would have expected, say, 10 years ago,” said Jason West, a University of North Carolina environmental sciences professor who wasn’t part of the study but praised it.

Air pollution kills more than HIV and malaria combined, Lelieveld said.

With nearly 1.4 million deaths a year, China has the most air pollution fatalities, followed by India with 645,000 and Pakistan with 110,000.

The United States, with 54,905 deaths in 2010 from soot and smog, ranks seventh highest for air pollution deaths. What’s unusual is that the study says that agriculture caused 16,221 of those deaths, second only to 16,929 deaths blamed on power plants.

In the U.S. Northeast, all of Europe, Russia, Japan and South Korea, agriculture is the No. 1 cause of the soot and smog deaths, according to the study. Worldwide, agriculture is the No. 2 cause with 664,100 deaths, behind the more than 1 million deaths from in-home heating and cooking done with wood and other biofuels in developing world.

The problem with farms is ammonia from fertilizer and animal waste, Lelieveld said. That ammonia then combines with sulfates from coal-fired power plants and nitrates from car exhaust to form the soot particles that are the big air pollution killers, he said. In London, for example, the pollution from traffic takes time to be converted into soot, and then it is mixed with ammonia and transported downwind to the next city, he said.

“We were very surprised, but in the end it makes sense,” Lelieveld said. He said the scientists had assumed that traffic and power plants would be the biggest cause of deadly soot and smog.

For safe and healthy communities…