Infrastructure and carbon footprints

The proposal to construct a new freight airport in the northeastern corner of Pennsylvania apparently is still alive. Mind boggling, yes. And a boondoggle as well. But there are serious issues at play here, such as the carbon footprint of such big fossil fuel-intensive projects. Even the U.S. Air Force is experimenting with synthetic jet fuels as a way of reducing the future cost of petroleum-based jet fuel (known as JP-4) while reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Here’s my latest newspaper column on this issue.

For many reasons – sprawl, noise pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and the fragmentation and outright destruction of fish and wildlife habitat – now is not a good time to building a new airport.

Consider the fish and wildlife habitat that would be destroyed, degraded or fragmented by the infrastructure and its associated road network. And the tainted stormwater runoff from hundreds upon hundreds of paved-over acres. But consider, as well, the “carbon footprint” of the finished facility.

What’s a “carbon footprint”? On an individual basis, this is the amount of carbon dioxide a person emits into the atmosphere through his or her daily activities. Carbon dioxide is the principle greenhouse gas causing climate change, also referred to as global warming. While motoring to the grocery store in a car that’s powered by an internal combustion engine burning gasoline, a fossil fuel refined from the fossil known as petroleum, my car will emit a bunch of carbon dioxide into the air. It’s same thing with my gasoline-fueled lawn mower, a machine that also emits other air pollutants and is a prime source of “noise pollution.”

Having been around more than a few Air Force bases – in the U.S. and overseas – during my career in that service, I’m absolutely certain that these large industrial facilities have equally large carbon footprints. When the commander of Robins Air Force Base in central Georgia was forced to shutter the base after a freakish snowstorm (all of an inch or so fell to the ground) in 1981, thousands upon thousands of civilian employees were sent home. The resulting carbon footprint must have been astounding (had scientific instruments been set up to measure the rise in carbon dioxide levels.

Civilian airports are not much different in the big scheme: passengers coming and going in private automobiles’ diesel-powered tankers carting jet fuel to waiting aircraft; gasoline-powered luggage trucks moving about, etc. An even bigger source of greenhouse gas emissions, though, comes from the burning of the fossil fuel coal in order to make electricity. The burning of coal has a whole range of other environmental impacts. These include the release of the toxic metal mercury into the air, smog-producing emissions, acid precipitation, the destruction of Appalachian forests through the mining technique known as mountaintop removal, and the strip mining of coal in Wyoming’s Powder River basin.

A few progressively-managed airports are looking for ways tof reduce their carbon footprint.

A Google search turned up a newspaper article regarding Denver International Airport.

From the Rocky Mountain News: “Feeling guilty about the amount of carbon dioxide your upcoming flight will pump into the atmosphere? Soon you might be able to fork over some extra cash at Denver International Airport to invest in projects intended to help negate your share of the environmental damage caused by air travel.

“DIA is looking to become one of the first airports in the nation to offer passengers the ability to buy carbon offsets in its concourses. The offsets would pay for renewable energy and power-saving projects that help cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.”

You can read the entire 2006 article at http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jan/18/dia-passengers-could-pay-erase-carbon-footprint/

Sadly, the airport later called a halt to the carbon-offset program.

Here’s another tidbit from the article (the Rocky Mountain News, by the way, is no longer published, a victim of our slumping national economy): “Airports and airlines are under more and more scrutiny regarding greenhouse gas emissions and how they can offset climate change,” said Janell Barrilleaux, DIA’s director of environmental programs. “This offers a small step in the right direction to raise awareness and let people know that airports want to do the right thing.”

Individuals can figure out their own carbon footprint – the amount of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, they emit into the atmosphere in the course of their daily lives – through several good Internet sources. I found one offered by The Nature Conservancy at http://www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/calculator/

To learn more about how our changing climate is, and will, affect future generation’s fish and wildlife resources, check out the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s climate change Web site at http://www.fws.gov/home/climatechange/

This site includes a well done video presentation that includes footage from Florida, a state whose coastlines – now just a few feet above sea level, stand to be inundated by rising sea levels. The latest edition of the journal “Conservation,” published by the Society for Conservation Biology, features color maps showing how much of Florida stands to be lost to the seas with accelerating climate change. You can read the journal’s accompanying article at http://www.conservationmagazine.org/articles/volume-10-number-2/between-the-devil-and-the-deep-blue-sea/

And you can discover more federal government information about our changing climate from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: http://www.noaa.gov/

The new “The Philadelphia Area Weather Book,” co-authored by Penn State University meteorology professor Jon Nese, formerly of the university’s Hazleton campus, The Weather Channel and the Franklin Institute in Philly, contains a wealth of information regarding our changing climate.

A final word: Big infrastructure like airports tends to feed the suburban sprawl machine. And sprawl developments are built with cars in mind, not walking or other non-polluting forms of transportation.