Pueblo of Laguna Resident Receives National Community Involvement Award (NM)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized Amy Garcia of the Pueblo of Laguna as the winner of the national 2013 Citizen Excellence in Community Involvement Award. This annual award recognizes outstanding achievements in environmental protection and community-involvement leadership during Superfund cleanups. Superfund is the federal program created by Congress to address the country’s abandoned, uncontrolled hazardous waste sites.

“Superfund cleanups can be long and complex, and the process can take a toll on the surrounding area,” said EPA Regional Administrator Ron Curry. “Residents like Ms. Garcia who understand the community are indispensible in keeping residents informed and engaged during the process. Ms. Garcia’s dedication to the Pueblo of Laguna exemplifies the spirit of community leadership we seek to honor with this award.”

Ms. Garcia’s leadership has greatly helped EPA’s cleanup of the Grants Mining District, an area about 70 miles west of Albuquerque where contamination from former uranium mining is common. The affected area includes not only former mines but many private homes as well. In order to clean up these homes, EPA needed to obtain access agreements from residents.

Ms. Garcia was instrumental in helping EPA obtain access to start cleaning up the contamination on more than 500 residential properties in the Pueblo of Laguna villages. She ensured EPA and its contractors worked in a manner consistent with tribal customs, protocols and procedures. Her role as a liaison between EPA and the Pueblo greatly improved the success of EPA’s cleanup by keeping tribal members and homeowners informed during every step of the assessment and cleanup process.

Mathy Stanislaus, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, presented the award to Ms. Garcia during the annual Tribal Lands and Environment Forum in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico.

More information on Superfund community involvement:
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/community/

More information on EPA Region 6:
http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-region-6-south-central

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MIT researchers win Pyke Johnson Award

Valerie Karplus PhD ’11, research scientist, and Sergey Paltsev, assistant director for economic research, both of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, were awarded the 2012 Pyke Johnson Award for their study on vehicle efficiency standards. The award, presented to the co-authors last night at the national Transportation Research Board’s (TRB) annual meeting, recognizes the best paper in the area of planning and the environment.

Published in November in the journal Transportation Research Record, their study looks into the new vehicle efficiency standards. The standards are considered one of the landmark environmental achievements of President Obama’s first term: They have been touted as a way to save consumers more than $1.7 trillion at the pump and cut vehicle emissions in half. Karplus looks behind the numbers to understand the full energy and economic impacts.  

“Common thinking in Washington holds that any policy that seems to advance technology without creating new taxes must be a no brainer for the country. That misses the broader economic impact,” Karplus says. “As my colleague says, you may see more money in your front pocket at the pump, but you’re financing the policy out of your back pocket through your tax dollars and at the point of your vehicle purchase.”

University of Maine environmental economist Jonathan Rubin, chair of the TBR Transportation Energy Committee who was not part of the study, says, “The research of Dr. Karplus on the energy and climate impacts of the nation’s fuel economy standards for our cars and trucks makes an important contribution to policy-making based on science.”

The new fuel standards require automakers to install pollution-control technology to improve the fuel efficiency of cars by 5 percent and light trucks by 3.5 percent with each new model year starting in 2017. Karplus and her colleagues simulated the proposed standards, and found that while drivers of these more efficient vehicles will no doubt save at the pump, they could spend several thousands of dollars more when buying their new car. Even more troubling, diverting efforts toward improved vehicle efficiency distracts attention away from policies, such as carbon tax, that would target the broader economy and reduce fuel use or emissions more cost effectively.

Estimates of how costly the policy would be — in terms of both direct costs to consumers and the larger rippling costs to the economy — hinge on the relative cost of the technology available to improve efficiency. The shorter the time frame automakers are given to develop the technology and produce more efficient vehicles, the less time there will be for technological progress and other factors to drive down costs and the more consumers will need to pay upfront. Emissions and oil imports will drop — both due to increased fuel efficiency and as the higher vehicle costs weighs on consumer budgets — but will be offset as consumers face lower costs per mile traveled, incentivizing more driving.

Karplus hopes her results will help policymakers make more informed decisions going forward. She credits that goal to the innovative method she used, which weaves engineering and technology constraints into a broad economic framework and allows researchers to test the cost and other impacts of a policy at different levels of stringency. This method inherently takes account of life-cycle emissions, as well as impacts that transmit across fuel markets by affecting prices. For example, a policy might only consider gasoline use by plug-in electric hybrids, but that “tailpipe measure” doesn’t take into account the emissions created from building, transporting and recharging those batteries. Her approach does.

“There are a lot of hidden costs to a policy like this,” Karplus says. “This model doesn’t allow you to ignore other important aspects of the economy and energy systems. It requires you to be explicit about your technology and cost assumptions. It provides a framework that allows lawmakers to look at all the available information on costs and the state of the technology and decide how to best create or update policies. 

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Susan Solomon wins international climate award

The fifth BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the climate change category has been awarded to MIT's Susan Solomon for her work on determining how human action alters the composition of the atmosphere and how, in turn, these changes affect Earth's climate. The award citation states that Solomon "has contributed, through her research and leadership, to the safeguarding of our planet."

Solomon's work over 30 years has succeeded in establishing and drawing together links between three key climate change variables: human activity, a profound and comprehensive understanding of the behavior of atmospheric gases, and the alteration of climate patterns globally.

According to the award citation, "her early research, fundamental to the understanding of stratospheric chemistry, led to the strengthening of the Montreal Protocol to curb the use of ozone-destroying substances." In recent years, the citation adds, "her contributions and leadership within the IPCC and other forums is a role model of science for the public good."

In the words of Bjorn Stevens, the BBVA jury chairman: "Her research has really shown how basic science can shape policy decisions and social actions. She is not an activist; she is very much a basic scientist, but she has this knack of picking up topics and developing new understanding which then influences the public debate. Probably there is no other scientist in the field whose results have had such a big impact on one of the key social questions of our time."

Carlos Duarte, the jury secretary and director of the Oceans Institute at the University of Western Australia, added during the announcement event that Solomon "has formulated a general theory of climate system response to perturbations in atmospheric composition."

On receiving news of the award, Solomon, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science, declared herself "thrilled. It is a fantastic award and also a great honor to join these very distinguished past recipients."

A precocious scientist and a vital discovery

Solomon was won over to science at an early age by watching TV nature programs such as The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. Her passion for atmospheric chemistry was already apparent in high school, where she won a prize with a project measuring the amount of oxygen in gas mixtures.

After earning her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, with an atmospheric chemistry project alongside future Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, Solomon started work in the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). It was the early 1980s, and news was coming in of a drastic reduction in the ozone layer over Antarctica. Although the ozone-destroying power of the gases known as CFCs — chlorofluorocarbons, used in refrigeration and aerosols — was already known to science, the hunt was still on to find the causes of the hole opening up in the Antarctic ozone layer.

Why a hole over Antarctica, so far from where CFCs were in regular use? And, why was depletion happening so fast? Susan Solomon solved the mystery by elucidating the chemical reactions that take place on the surface of the ice crystals present in the stratosphere over both poles. But not content with constructing an explanatory model, she was determined to test her theory on the ground. In 1986 and 1987, Solomon led two expeditions during the Antarctic winter — with its permanent nights and temperatures as low as -50 degrees C — to gather data on atmospheric composition at the time and place when the hole was forming. The evidence obtained would vindicate her theory.

Science had already established that a lack of ozone led to an increase in the ultraviolet radiation reaching Earth, but it was Solomon who proved, in later research, that these changes in stratospheric composition also impacted on climate. In particular, the ozone hole has a clear effect on wind and rain patterns in the Southern Hemisphere.

This was the first time a link had been found between the ozone hole and climate. As Solomon explains: "the ozone hole is such an incredible perturbation of the entire atmosphere, it just rocks the planet."

Her research has produced such tangible results as the ban on CFC gases in the Montreal Protocol, signed in 1987. "What's encouraging about the ozone hole is that it shows that people can understand that we can change our global environment in ways that are not safe, but we can also make choices to decide that we don't want to do that," Solomon says. "And is it not amazing that virtually every country in the world has signed the Montreal Protocol?"

Combating climate change

Another of Solomon's findings highlights the slowness with which the atmosphere recovers. Despite this, Solomon insists, "it is important to know that it's not too late to stop turning up the thermostat."

"My discovery really increases the importance of making good choices about how much more carbon dioxide we want to put into the atmosphere, because we need to understand that what we are doing cannot be easily undone," she says.

Solomon has no doubt that innovation is one of the best ways to combat climate change. "There is a tremendous amount of technical work and engineering to find alternative ways to produce energy, or to get the carbon back in the ground," she says. "I am a strong believer in technology, and I see tremendous and encouraging changes happening."

In 2002, she joined the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where she co-chaired Group One, tasked with writing the watershed climate report published in 2007.

"What is really great about scientists is that you can have 10 scientist in the room and it doesn't matter if their native languages are different," Solomon says. "They look at the data and are able to talk to each other in a very constructive way. That's truly incredible and it's also the reason I love being a scientist."

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards, spanning eight prize categories, recognize research and creative work of excellence as embedded in theoretical advances, technological developments, or innovative artistic works and styles, as well as fundamental contributions in addressing key challenges of the 21st century. 

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