Published Feb. 27


Pension fund managers representing public employees in Connecticut, New York, Maine and New York City said yesterday that they had filed shareholder resolutions calling on 10 North American oil companies to report to investors on their plans to deal with the potential impact of global warming and related climate change on their businesses.


The resolutions added the heft of some of the nation's largest investors to the ranks of shareholder activists who have been using resolutions to confront the petroleum industry on climate change issues. The resolutions also took aim at a broader range of companies, including midsize oil companies like Anadarko Petroleum, Devon Energy and Valero Energy that previously had flown below the radar of the activists.


"This is the first climate change-related resolution we have filed," said Alan G. Hevesi, the New York State comptroller, who as the sole fiduciary of the New York Common Retirement Fund, manages the second-largest public pension fund in the nation after the California fund. "I believe it's going to become a major issue for institutional investors."


Andrew Logan, the oil industry analyst at the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies, said the inclusion of smaller companies, which focus on exploration and production of oil and gas, reflected the sense that they could be more vulnerable than the more diversified giants like Exxon Mobil and ChevronTexaco to regulatory changes and taxes on greenhouse gas emissions.


The coalition is an umbrella group of environmental organizations and businesses that has been coordinating the shareholder efforts along with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of 275 religious institutional investors.


Many oil companies have asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to rule that there is no need to present the resolutions to shareholders at their annual meetings. "We feel we have already been responsive to these queries in a number of forums, most recently in our energy trends report posted on our Web site early this month," a spokeswoman for Exxon Mobil, Lauren Kerr, said.


A spokeswoman for Anadarko, Teresa Wong, said the company expected to put the resolution to a shareholder vote but would urge investors to oppose the requested study as a waste of money. She said that the company, which is based in The Woodlands, a Houston suburb, had taken steps to address the climate change issue. One project in Wyoming, for example, uses a process that injects carbon dioxide into the ground to increase production at a century-old oil field while keeping the gas out of the atmosphere where it could contribute to global warming.


Over all, shareholders have filed 51 resolutions so far this year calling on various companies to respond to energy and environmental issues, according to the Investor Responsibility Research Center, a company in Washington that tracks such activity. The resolutions address diverse concerns like waste from nuclear power plants, toxic emissions from chemical companies and recycling, but about half deal with climate change, which has emerged in the last three years as the most widespread concern, said Meg Voorhes, director of the research center's social responsibility service.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/business/27green.html?ex=1078886299&ei=1&en=04d50533b78e9a4b

Published Feb. 24, 2004


Forecast of Rising Oil Demand Challenges Tired Saudi Fields


When visitors tour the headquarters of Saudi Arabia's oil empire — a sleek glass building rising from the desert in Dhahran near the Persian Gulf — they are reminded of its mission in a film projected on a giant screen. "We supply what the world demands every day," it declares.


For decades, that has largely been true. Ever since its rich reserves were discovered more than a half-century ago, Saudi Arabia has pumped the oil needed to keep pace with rising needs, becoming the mainstay of the global energy markets.


But the country's oil fields now are in decline, prompting industry and government officials to raise serious questions about whether the kingdom will be able to satisfy the world's thirst for oil in coming years.


Energy forecasts call for Saudi Arabia to almost double its output in the next decade and after. Oil executives and government officials in the United States and Saudi Arabia, however, say capacity will probably stall near current levels, potentially creating a significant gap in the global energy supply.


An internal Saudi Aramco plan, the experts said, estimates total production capacity in 2011 at 10.15 million barrels a day, about the current capacity. But to meet expected world demand, the United States Department of Energy's research arm says Saudi Arabia will need to produce 13.6 million barrels a day by 2010 and 19.5 million barrels a day by 2020.


"In the past, the world has counted on Saudi Arabia," one senior Saudi oil executive said. "Now I don't see how long it can be maintained."


Saudi Arabia, the leading exporter for three decades, is not running out of oil. Industry officials are finding, however, that it is becoming more difficult or expensive to extract it. Today, the country produces about eight million barrels a day, roughly one-tenth of the world's needs. It is the top foreign supplier to the United States, the world's leading energy consumer.


Fears of a future energy gap could, of course, turn out to be unfounded. Predictions of oil market behavior have often proved wrong.


But if Saudi production falls short, industry experts say the consequences could be significant. Other large producers, like Russia and Iraq, do not have Saudi Aramco's huge reserves or excess oil capacity to export, and promising new fields elsewhere are not expected to deliver enough oil to make up the difference.


As a result, supplies could tighten and oil prices could increase. The global economy could feel the ripples; previous spikes in oil prices have helped cause recessions, though high oil prices in the last year or so have not slowed strong growth.


For complete article go to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/business/24OIL.html?pagewanted=3&ei=1&en=d607531d790810d0&ex=1078627553

Printed February 22, 2004


The United Automobile Workers and the Sierra Club teamed up the other day in an Op-Ed piece for The Times blasting an administration proposal that would further weaken the already inadequate standards governing fuel economy for the nation's cars and light trucks. This odd alliance suggests that America's ravenous appetite for gasoline could become an important issue this election year, with the situation in the Middle East serving as a daily reminder of our servitude to foreign oil.


There are other straws in the wind. John Dingell, a smart and influential Michigan congressman, recently warned the car manufacturers whose interests he has long defended that they should start making significant improvements in fuel economy before Washington forces changes upon them. Shortly thereafter came the coincidental yet revealing news that Ford and G.M. were hustling to get fuel-efficient S.U.V.'s into the showrooms to compete with the Japanese.


All this does not amount to a revolution; good intentions and a few fuel-efficient S.U.V.'s will not make a real dent in oil consumption or in the greenhouse gases that flow from automobile tailpipes. The tax incentives for buyers of gasoline-and-battery-powered hybrid cars contained in the pending energy bill are minuscule. And while the administration recently ordered up a small increase in fuel economy for light trucks — including S.U.V.'s and minivans — it has done nothing to close old loopholes, including a largely meaningless credit for ethanol-powered vehicles, that will effectively cancel the gains from the new efficiency standards.


The issue clearly needs someone to give it a shove. John Kerry, the Democratic front-runner, ought to have an incentive to do that. In addition to his broad environmental credentials, he has (with Ernest Hollings and John McCain) proposed legislation that would raise fleetwide fuel economy to 35 miles per gallon — a significant jump that could save millions of barrels of oil every day. Yet bold ideas have a way of disappearing in the heat of a campaign. Environmentalists recall that in 1992 Bill Clinton, prodded by Al Gore, promised to raise fuel economy to 45 miles per gallon and then backed away when President Bush's father accused him of jeopardizing millions of American jobs.


The present occupant of the White House, who tends to frame every environmental issue in terms of jobs, is almost certain to raise the same fears. And he'll have an audience. The auto workers have not yet signed on to major increases in fuel economy standards. They just don't want Mr. Bush to go backward.


Anyone who adopts this issue will therefore have to be creative as well as brave. There is no shortage of good ideas about how to get from here to there — bigger tax credits for consumers who buy fuel-efficient cars, for example, as well as significant production tax credits for manufacturers to help them convert from the comfortably profitable S.U.V. world to a riskier universe of fuel-efficient hybrids. The trick will be getting these ideas onto the election-year agenda.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/22/opinion/22SUN2.html?ex=1078460657&ei=1&en=a64142a99a9a4787

Published in the Feb. 9, 2004 edition. Posted online Jan. 26. at www.fortune.com.


Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face it, most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it.


The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade—like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies—thereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power.


Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russia—it's easy to see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt climate change.


Climate researchers began getting seriously concerned about it a decade ago, after studying temperature indicators embedded in ancient layers of Arctic ice. The data show that a number of dramatic shifts in average temperature took place in the past with shocking speed—in some cases, just a few years.


The case for angst was buttressed by a theory regarded as the most likely explanation for the abrupt changes. The eastern U.S. and northern Europe, it seems, are warmed by a huge Atlantic Ocean current that flows north from the tropics—that's why Britain, at Labrador's latitude, is relatively temperate. Pumping out warm, moist air, this "great conveyor" current gets cooler and denser as it moves north. That causes the current to sink in the North Atlantic, where it heads south again in the ocean depths. The sinking process draws more water from the south, keeping the roughly circular current on the go.


But when the climate warms, according to the theory, fresh water from melting Arctic glaciers flows into the North Atlantic, lowering the current's salinity—and its density and tendency to sink. A warmer climate also increases rainfall and runoff into the current, further lowering its saltiness. As a result, the conveyor loses its main motive force and can rapidly collapse, turning off the huge heat pump and altering the climate over much of the Northern Hemisphere.


Scientists aren't sure what caused the warming that triggered such collapses in the remote past. (Clearly it wasn't humans and their factories.) But the data from Arctic ice and other sources suggest the atmospheric changes that preceded earlier collapses were dismayingly similar to today's global warming. As the Ice Age began drawing to a close about 13,000 years ago, for example, temperatures in Greenland rose to levels near those of recent decades. Then they abruptly plunged as the conveyor apparently shut down, ushering in the "Younger Dryas" period, a 1,300-year reversion to ice-age conditions. (A dryas is an Arctic flower that flourished in Europe at the time.)


Though Mother Nature caused past abrupt climate changes, the one that may be shaping up today probably has more to do with us. In 2001 an international panel of climate experts concluded that there is increasingly strong evidence that most of the global warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities—mainly the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which release heat-trapping carbon dioxide. Indicators of the warming include shrinking Arctic ice, melting alpine glaciers, and markedly earlier springs at northerly latitudes. A few years ago such changes seemed signs of possible trouble for our kids or grandkids. Today they seem portents of a cataclysm that may not conveniently wait until we're history.


Accordingly, the spotlight in climate research is shifting from gradual to rapid change. In 2002 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report concluding that human activities could trigger abrupt change. Last year the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, included a session at which Robert Gagosian, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, urged policymakers to consider the implications of possible abrupt climate change within two decades.


Such jeremiads are beginning to reverberate more widely. Billionaire Gary Comer, founder of Lands' End, has adopted abrupt climate change as a philanthropic cause. Hollywood has also discovered the issue—next summer 20th Century Fox is expected to release The Day After Tomorrow, a big-budget disaster movie starring Dennis Quaid as a scientist trying to save the world from an ice age precipitated by global warming.


Fox's flick will doubtless be apocalyptically edifying. But what would abrupt climate change really be like?


Scientists generally refuse to say much about that, citing a data deficit. But recently, renowned Department of Defense planner Andrew Marshall sponsored a groundbreaking effort to come to grips with the question. A Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82, is known as the Defense Department's "Yoda"—a balding, bespectacled sage whose pronouncements on looming risks have long had an outsized influence on defense policy. Since 1973 he has headed a secretive think tank whose role is to envision future threats to national security. The Department of Defense's push on ballistic-missile defense is known as his brainchild. Three years ago Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld picked him to lead a sweeping review on military "transformation," the shift toward nimble forces and smart weapons.


When scientists' work on abrupt climate change popped onto his radar screen, Marshall tapped another eminent visionary, Peter Schwartz, to write a report on the national-security implications of the threat. Schwartz formerly headed planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group and has since consulted with organizations ranging from the CIA to DreamWorks—he helped create futuristic scenarios for Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report. Schwartz and co-author Doug Randall at the Monitor Group's Global Business Network, a scenario-planning think tank in Emeryville, Calif., contacted top climate experts and pushed them to talk about what-ifs that they usually shy away from—at least in public.


The result is an unclassified report, completed late last year, that the Pentagon has agreed to share with FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a forecast. Rather, it sketches a dramatic but plausible scenario to help planners think about coping strategies. Here is an abridged version:


A total shutdown of the ocean conveyor might lead to a big chill like the Younger Dryas, when icebergs appeared as far south as the coast of Portugal. Or the conveyor might only temporarily slow down, potentially causing an era like the "Little Ice Age," a time of hard winters, violent storms, and droughts between 1300 and 1850. That period's weather extremes caused horrific famines, but it was mild compared with the Younger Dryas.


For planning purposes, it makes sense to focus on a midrange case of abrupt change. A century of cold, dry, windy weather across the Northern Hemisphere that suddenly came on 8,200 years ago fits the bill—its severity fell between that of the Younger Dryas and the Little Ice Age. The event is thought to have been triggered by a conveyor collapse after a time of rising temperatures not unlike today's global warming. Suppose it recurred, beginning in 2010. Here are some of the things that might happen by 2020:


At first the changes are easily mistaken for normal weather variation—allowing skeptics to dismiss them as a "blip" of little importance and leaving policymakers and the public paralyzed with uncertainty. But by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is happening. The average temperature has fallen by up to five degrees Fahrenheit in some regions of North America and Asia and up to six degrees in parts of Europe. (By comparison, the average temperature over the North Atlantic during the last ice age was ten to 15 degrees lower than it is today.) Massive droughts have begun in key agricultural regions. The average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly 30% in northern Europe, and its climate has become more like Siberia's.


Violent storms are increasingly common as the conveyor becomes wobbly on its way to collapse. A particularly severe storm causes the ocean to break through levees in the Netherlands, making coastal cities such as the Hague unlivable. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento River area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to south.


Megadroughts afflict the U.S., especially in the southern states, along with winds that are 15% stronger on average than they are now, causing widespread dust storms and soil loss. The U.S. is better positioned to cope than most nations, however, thanks to its diverse growing climates, wealth, technology, and abundant resources. That has a downside, though: It magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and fosters bellicose finger-pointing at America.


Turning inward, the U.S. effectively seeks to build a fortress around itself to preserve resources. Borders are strengthened to hold back starving immigrants from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean islands—waves of boat people pose especially grim problems. Tension between the U.S. and Mexico rises as the U.S. reneges on a 1944 treaty that guarantees water flow from the Colorado River into Mexico. America is forced to meet its rising energy demand with options that are costly both economically and politically, including nuclear power and onerous Middle Eastern contracts. Yet it survives without catastrophic losses.


Europe, hardest hit by its temperature drop, struggles to deal with immigrants from Scandinavia seeking warmer climes to the south. Southern Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa and elsewhere. But Western Europe's wealth helps buffer it from catastrophe.


Australia's size and resources help it cope, as does its location—the conveyor shutdown mainly affects the Northern Hemisphere. Japan has fewer resources but is able to draw on its social cohesion to cope—its government is able to induce population-wide behavior changes to conserve resources.


China's huge population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable. It is hit by increasingly unpredictable monsoon rains, which cause devastating floods in drought-denuded areas. Other parts of Asia and East Africa are similarly stressed. Much of Bangladesh becomes nearly uninhabitable because of a rising sea level, which contaminates inland water supplies. Countries whose diversity already produces conflict, such as India and Indonesia, are hard-pressed to maintain internal order while coping with the unfolding changes.


As the decade progresses, pressures to act become irresistible—history shows that whenever humans have faced a choice between starving or raiding, they raid. Imagine Eastern European countries, struggling to feed their populations, invading Russia—which is weakened by a population that is already in decline—for access to its minerals and energy supplies. Or picture Japan eyeing nearby Russian oil and gas reserves to power desalination plants and energy-intensive farming. Envision nuclear-armed Pakistan, India, and China skirmishing at their borders over refugees, access to shared rivers, and arable land. Or Spain and Portugal fighting over fishing rights—fisheries are disrupted around the world as water temperatures change, causing fish to migrate to new habitats.


Growing tensions engender novel alliances. Canada joins fortress America in a North American bloc. (Alternatively, Canada may seek to keep its abundant hydropower for itself, straining its ties with the energy-hungry U.S.) North and South Korea align to create a technically savvy, nuclear-armed entity. Europe forms a truly unified bloc to curb its immigration problems and protect against aggressors. Russia, threatened by impoverished neighbors in dire straits, may join the European bloc.


Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Oil supplies are stretched thin as climate cooling drives up demand. Many countries seek to shore up their energy supplies with nuclear energy, accelerating nuclear proliferation. Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do Iran, Egypt, and North Korea. Israel, China, India, and Pakistan also are poised to use the bomb.


The changes relentlessly hammer the world's "carrying capacity"—the natural resources, social organizations, and economic networks that support the population. Technological progress and market forces, which have long helped boost Earth's carrying capacity, can do little to offset the crisis—it is too widespread and unfolds too fast.


As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern reemerges: the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies. As Harvard archeologist Steven LeBlanc has noted, wars over resources were the norm until about three centuries ago. When such conflicts broke out, 25% of a population's adult males usually died. As abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come to define human life.


Over the past decade, data have accumulated suggesting that the plausibility of abrupt climate change is higher than most of the scientific community, and perhaps all of the political community, are prepared to accept. In light of such findings, we should be asking when abrupt change will happen, what the impacts will be, and how we can prepare—not whether it will really happen. In fact, the climate record suggests that abrupt change is inevitable at some point, regardless of human activity. Among other things, we should:


• Speed research on the forces that can trigger abrupt climate change, how it unfolds, and how we'll know it's occurring.


• Sponsor studies on the scenarios that might play out, including ecological, social, economic, and political fallout on key food-producing regions.


• Identify "no regrets" strategies to ensure reliable access to food and water and to ensure our national security.


• Form teams to prepare responses to possible massive migration, and food and water shortages.


• Explore ways to offset abrupt cooling—today it appears easier to warm than to cool the climate via human activities, so there may be "geo-engineering" options available to prevent a catastrophic temperature drop.


In sum, the risk of abrupt climate change remains uncertain, and it is quite possibly small. But given its dire consequences, it should be elevated beyond a scientific debate. Action now matters, because we may be able to reduce its likelihood of happening, and we can certainly be better prepared if it does. It is time to recognize it as a national security concern.


The Pentagon's reaction to this sobering report isn't known—in keeping with his reputation for reticence, Andy Marshall declined to be interviewed. But the fact that he's concerned may signal a sea change in the debate about global warming. At least some federal thought leaders may be starting to perceive climate change less as a political annoyance and more as an issue demanding action.


If so, the case for acting now to address climate change, long a hard sell in Washington, may be gaining influential support, if only behind the scenes. Policymakers may even be emboldened to take steps such as tightening fuel-economy standards for new passenger vehicles, a measure that would simultaneously lower emissions of greenhouse gases, reduce America's perilous reliance on OPEC oil, cut its trade deficit, and put money in consumers' pockets. Oh, yes—and give the Pentagon's fretful Yoda a little less to worry about.


http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,582584,00.html

Published February 16, 2004, page A1.


Can the sport utility vehicle, the bête noire of environmental advocates, be reinvented as a green machine?


This year, Ford and Toyota plan to sell the first two hybrid sport utility vehicles. With carlike mileage expected, the advent of the hybrid S.U.V. may change the uniformly visceral antipathy to sport utility vehicles among environmental advocates, even if automakers are unlikely to sell enough hybrids to significantly reduce fuel consumption or pollution any time soon.


"I would definitely encourage people who need four-wheel-drive vehicles to look at these," said the Rev. Jim Ball, the president of the Evangelical Environmental Network, a small group that sponsored a widely publicized grass-roots campaign called "What Would Jesus Drive?"


"These vehicles are one small step," he added, "but we've got a long way to go here."


The Toyota and Ford hybrids, which will be 2005 models, supplement the internal combustion engine with an electric motor that takes over at slow speeds and at stoplights, a switch that they say can help S.U.V.'s get 27 to 40 miles a gallon.


The Ford Motor Company is scheduled to introduce the first of the hybrids, a version of its Escape sport utility, by the end of summer. In November or December, Toyota will follow with a hybrid version of its Lexus RX330 sport utility, the RX400h; it plans to introduce early next year a hybrid version of its Highlander S.U.V. The hybrid versions will be more expensive than the conventional models, though neither company has yet said by how much.


From a consumer's perspective, hybrids are not much different from conventional cars. They run on regular gasoline, and the batteries for their electric motors are recharged as they drive, so they do not need to be plugged in. One consideration is that battery, which would be costly to replace if it were to fail; most, however, are under warranty for at least eight years.


Because the biggest gas savings occur at slow speeds, hybrids sometimes disappoint customers who spend much of their time on highways. That is borne out in Ford's projections for the Escape hybrid: the front-wheel-drive version will average 35 to 40 m.p.g. in the city, about twice the 19 m.p.g. for the Escape that runs on gasoline only. In highway driving, however, the Escape hybrid will get 29 to 31 m.p.g., about 20 percent better than the 25 m.p.g. for the gasoline version.


Environmental advocates frustrated by the long-swelling appetite for gas have embraced hybrids. Booming sales of sport utility vehicles and big pickup trucks, coupled with increasing horsepower for vehicles big and small, have stalled advances in overall fuel efficiency.


In the 2002 model year, the fuel economy of the average new light-duty vehicle sold in the United States sank to its lowest point in more than two decades, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Cars averaged 24.4 m.p.g. and S.U.V.'s 17.3 m.p.g. And that data understates the mileage gap, because the heaviest sport utilities with the worst fuel economy, like Hummers and Ford Excursions, are not counted. They are so big that they do not fit the definition of a passenger vehicle.


S.U.V.'s have also been widely criticized as unsafe. Because they are heavy and have high ground clearance, they are typically less stable and can inflict more damage on passenger cars in collisions than other cars do. These problems are being addressed to varying degrees by the industry; the Lexus S.U.V., for example, comes with electronic suspension-control technology that is intended to reduce rollover risk.


"We fight S.U.V.'s because it is irresponsible to make vehicles that guzzle, pollute and are unsafe," said Dan Becker, a global warming specialist at the Sierra Club. "But the auto companies have the technology to fix these problems, and if they do, acceptance of S.U.V.'s will improve."


So far, hybrids have not made much of a dent in fuel economy trends. For several years, Toyota and Honda have been the only automakers selling hybrids, and they sell just tens of thousands in the United States, a country with annual sales of 17 million vehicles. Toyota, however, has said it plans to be selling two million hybrids a year, worldwide, in a decade. The company now sells only the Prius in the United States.


By 2015, 60 percent of the vehicles sold nationwide would have to be hybrids just to stop the growth of automotive global warming emissions beyond levels expected at the end of this decade. That is according to a projection by David Friedman, research director for the clean vehicles program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental research and advocacy group in Cambridge, Mass.


Financial analysts have estimated that hybrids are more likely to account for as much as 10 percent to 15 percent of the market over the next decade or so.


"If hybrids just end up as a niche vehicle," Mr. Friedman said, "they really won't have an impact on the environment and global warming. Millions of these vehicles have to be sold every year."


But he says he thinks less ambitious technologies would also be a good option. He recently collaborated on "a blueprint for a better S.U.V.," a report that laid out a design for a more fuel-efficient and less rollover-prone vehicle that used less-expensive technologies than hybrid systems. Many skeptics view hybrid power as an inherently profit-sapping technology because it involves two drive systems instead of one, though Toyota insists its hybrids are already profitable.


"I'm just not a blind monk of hybrid technology," the chief executive of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, said last month. Nissan will offer a hybrid version of its Altima sedan in 2006.


The industry is struggling to decide which of three technologies has the most potential to cut fuel consumption: hybrids, advanced diesels or hydrogen fuel cells. The two vehicles to be introduced this year will present hybrid S.U.V.'s in different packages: the Escape is a basic, no-frills sport utility that starts around $20,000 with a conventional engine, about $15,000 less than a conventionally powered Lexus, a luxury vehicle. Hybrids have, in the past, cost a few thousand dollars more than similar cars, though the new midsize Toyota Prius starts at about the same price as the midsize Toyota Camry. Fuel savings can make up for the high purchase price over time; there are modest tax deductions and Congress appears close to offering more.


One feature of the Toyota Prius is a screen with a video readout that charts fuel economy as driving conditions shift. Ford will offer a similar feature as an option. The Lexus will make it a standard feature, as it is on the Prius, and will also use the screen to display the view from a rear-facing camera to make backing up easier.


Toyota, which has years of experience in the hybrid game, will pitch the Lexus RX400h as a combination of virtue and muscle. Its V-6 engine (the Escape is a four-cylinder) has 270 horsepower, 20 percent more than the Lexus RX330.


"Lexus buyers wanted a hybrid, but they didn't want to be in a vehicle that was recognized as such," a Lexus spokesman, Bill Ussery, said. He said about 1,500 people had already put down deposits.


Ford, as the world's third automaker to sell a hybrid, hopes to carve out a spot between Toyota and Honda and the rest of the industry. The Escape also offers a very visible vehicle to begin to deliver on the desire of William Clay Ford Jr., chairman and chief executive, to be seen as both an environmentalist and an industrialist.


And the company hopes to capture some of Toyota and Honda's green buzz. Ford executives said more than 21,000 people have signed up to receive a quarterly e-mail newsletter about the vehicle. Corey Holter, the marketing manager for the Escape, said that "77 percent are non-Ford drivers."


"That's a great story for us, because it shows we really are attracting incremental business," Mr. Holter said. "It will provide a halo to the entire Ford division."


The Escape hybrid has been talked about for several years, and has been previously delayed, but the company has been emphatic that it will be on the road this summer.


Jeff Young of Chicago was one of the 21,000 people who signed up for Ford's e-mail newsletter. He is a co-owner of a business that makes hand carts used for gardening. Since he bought a Chrysler in the mid-1980's, Mr. Young, 40, has not owned an American car.


"The parts don't fit right. The materials are cheaper. They tend to break down more and generally the styling lags behind the imports," he said. But he sent an e-mail message to Ford in 2002 because he had heard that the Escape hybrid would be coming in 2003, as was originally planned. When it did not materialize, he leased a Honda Element S.U.V. instead. But his lease is up in 2006, and he said he would consider a hybrid S.U.V. then.


"I'm not to the far extreme of either side," he said. "But if you can do something like this hybrid technology, where there's not much compromise, then it can do a lot to help."


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/16/business/16SUV.html

Published Feb. 11, 2004, page B1


Fish in the Anacostia River have cancerous tumor rates that are as high as ever documented in an American river, and a U.S. government-led study to be published next month links the tumors to pollution caused by vehicle emissions and runoff.


Fifty to 68 percent of mature brown bullhead catfish collected in 2001 from three parts of the river in the city had liver tumors, most of which were cancerous, according to the study led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In addition to the liver tumors, 13 to 23 percent of the bullheads had skin tumors, scientists found.


"It says that there are serious problems with the health of the fish and that it's a highly polluted system that needs a lot of work," said Fred Pinkney, co-author of the study and a scientist in the Chesapeake Bay field office of the Fish and Wildlife Service.


The study, scheduled for publication in the March issue of the scientific journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, links the liver tumors to changes in the DNA of the fish. Those DNA changes were, in turn, linked to polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) -- contaminants that often come from fossil fuels, most commonly in the form of settled vehicle emissions and runoff.


Bullhead catfish have been analyzed by scientists as an indicator of the health of river systems for decades, mainly because the fish are bottom-feeders and burrow into the mud during the winter, increasing their exposure to sediment pollution. According to the study, scientists' rule of thumb is that liver tumor rates exceeding 5 percent qualify an area as "highly contaminated."


This isn't the first time the tumor rates in the Anacostia have been surveyed, and it's not the first time the results have been the cause for concern. A 1996 study of Anacostia fish, also organized by Pinkney, cited liver tumor rates ranging from 50 to 60 percent. After that study was published, the environmental advocacy group American Rivers deemed the Anacostia the nation's most polluted river.


The study comes at a time when many people have high hopes for the Anacostia. The river, with tributaries beginning in Maryland, flows into the Potomac River and empties into the Chesapeake Bay. An estimated 90 percent of its banks are developed, which means rainwater often runs over concrete and into the river without being filtered by soft ground or vegetation. Many types of PAH contaminants, therefore, can end up in the river -- vehicle emissions that have settled on the ground, engine oil, even carcinogenic particles contained in asphalt.


"The Anacostia is kind of like a sink for what people throw in the street," said Nick DiNardo, an Environmental Protection Agency manager who oversees projects for the Anacostia Watershed Toxics Alliance, a partnership of 28 agencies and jurisdictions formed in 1999 to spearhead restoration efforts.


And the fish study suggests that sink is one of the dirtiest in the nation. John C. Harshbarger, a pathologist with George Washington University Medical Center who analyzed the tumors, said the slightly higher numbers found in the recent study suggest that the liver tumor prevalence in the Anacostia is equal to that in Ohio's Black River in the early 1980s, a river that was considered highly polluted by a coal coking plant. The Black River rates, which averaged roughly 60 percent, have been considered the highest ever found, Harshbarger said.


"When they closed the coking plant on the Black River in 1982, five years later, the PAH levels in the sediment plummeted, and fish cancer rates really dropped, too," he said. "In the Anacostia, there hasn't been one source you can point to to close down and let the river remediate itself. I'd say whatever was causing the tumors in 1996 is still there."


State and federal groups have targeted the river for cleanup efforts for years. The Anacostia Watershed Toxics Alliance has identified more than 700 projects, including efforts to restore wetlands, reduce sewage overflow and retrofit stormwater systems.


Plans to reduce sewage emissions have received a lot of attention, partly because such efforts are expensive. Much of the D.C. sewer system uses the same pipes for sewage and stormwater, which can dump sewage into the river during heavy rainstorms. The city has a plan to replace those lines at an estimated cost of $1.35 billion, though it has been only partially funded.


The city wants the Anacostia riverfront to become a model of urban redevelopment, and it recently announced an $8 billion plan to upgrade the riverfront. The plan includes an environmental overhaul involving the creation of more wetlands and riverfront parkland, which could help stop polluted runoff from flowing into the river, according to Uwe Brandes, a project manager for the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative with the D.C. Office of Planning.


"What's unusual about the revitalization of the river in this case is that there are a number of sites along the river that today impact it in a negative way," Brandes said. "The redevelopment of those areas will help rebuild the public infrastructure there that's needed to control storm runoff."


The EPA's DiNardo warned that the tumor study should not be considered the sole indicator of the river's health. He said the Anacostia Watershed Toxics Alliance is working to collect data that will help determine the progress made through ongoing projects.


"We need to establish a base line so we can gauge whether things are getting better or not based on a wide range of indicators," he said. "That hasn't been done yet."


But some said the tumor study, which was provided to The Washington Post by the nonprofit group Natural Resources News Service, indicates that the ongoing efforts, such as sewage overflow reductions, aren't enough. Robert Boone, who founded the Anacostia Watershed Society in 1989, said the link to fossil fuel pollution suggests that current cleanup efforts might be overlooking the primary source of the problem.


"We're slated to get another million people in the area in the next decade, and they'll all need a car," he said. Stopping sewage overflows and creating new wetlands "is a noble effort and needs to be done, but it's a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage. The problem is pollution from vehicles," he added.


The D.C. Department of Health has discouraged anything other than catch-and-release fishing in the Anacostia since the late 1980s and advises people not to eat bottom-dwelling fish.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30229-2004Feb10.html

Published Feb. 6, 2004


Widespread use of diesel engines, often thought of as 'greener' than the gasoline alternatives, would make the air smoggier, according to new research.


Diesels typically emit less carbon dioxide than gasoline vehicles, reducing their contribution to global warming. But that doesn't necessarily make diesel an environmentally friendly alternative, says Mark Jacobson, who models atmospheric pollution at Stanford University in California. Diesels produce a larger amount of nitrogen oxides than petrol-engined cars, he points out. And that can contribute to smog.


Smog is a complex soup of pollutants formed in the atmosphere from chemical reactions triggered by sunlight. Its main constituent is ground-level ozone, which is produced when hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides from vehicle fumes react together. In the upper atmosphere, ozone shields us from harmful ultraviolet rays. But ground-level ozone is bad news.


"If you're pushing nitrogen oxides out of the tailpipe, you might as well be pushing out ozone," says Jacobson.


The increase in smog could contribute to health problems. "Smog is not good for humans," says Roy Harrison of Birmingham University, a UK government adviser on air pollution. "It reduces lung function, increases mortality rates, and increases hospital admissions for repiratory diseases."


Jacobson used a computer model of atmosphere quality to see what would happen if every vehicle in the United States ran on diesel. He found that smog levels increased significantly over most of the country. In most areas, it was enough to push air quality from "moderate" to "very unhealthy", according to standards defined by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The southeast United States was the region hardest hit, probably because the air in this area is rich in hydrocarbons produced by plant life. That extra dose of hydrocarbons can mix with nitrogen oxides from diesel cars, making for worse smog, says Jacobson.


Diesel use caused a decrease in smog in only a few areas - mostly where there aren't any trees. Ironically, this includes Los Angeles, currently one of the smoggiest cities in the United States.


Diesel engines also produce more particulate matter than gas-fuelled cars. These particles of soot can exacerbate health problems such as asthma and can contribute to global warming.


New diesel car tailpipes are fitted with filters that trap both particulate matter and nitrogen oxide fumes. But these don't necessarily cure the problem, says Jacobson. "You have a trade-off - a particle trap reduces the efficiency of the nitrogen oxide filter, and vice versa," he says. According to Jacobson, cars fitted with filters still emit more nitrogen oxide than petrol vehicles.


Other technological fixes are being developed to reduce smog, including a paint that absorbs nitrogen oxides that is about to go on sale in Europe. The material, called Ecopaint, locks nitrogen oxides up as calcium nitrate, preventing it from reacting with hydrocarbons in the air.


But Jacobson argues that until such fixes can be put in place, current policies in the United States wrongly favour diesel as an environmentally friendly choice. "The latest energy bill gives diesels the same status as 'green' cars in terms of financial incentives," he points out.


While Jacobson admits that no one is seriously considering converting all the cars in the United States to diesel, he says that his model helps to prove a point - that diesel isn't necessarily a better option for the environment.


http://www.nature.com/nsu/040202/040202-13.html

Published Friday, Feb. 6, 2004


Ford Chairman and CEO Bill Ford Jr., once a favorite of environmentalists, has become their prime target in an increasingly vitriolic campaign against gas-guzzling vehicles.


In full-page national newspaper ads that began appearing Wednesday, the groups depicted Bill Ford with a growing nose, with the banner: “Bill Ford Jr. or Pinocchio? Don’t Buy His Environmental Rhetoric. Don’t Buy His Cars.”


Russell Long, director of the California-based Blue Water Network, which is spearheading the campaign, said the ads were in response to Ford’s broken pledge to improve SUV fuel economy.


Ford pledged in July 2000 that the company would improve the fuel economy of its SUVs by 25 percent over five years. General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG made similar pledges soon afterward.


But last year, Ford executives said it would no longer be possible to meet the goal, citing an unfavorable business climate and technological challenges.


“Ford has certainly been up front about the problem of global warming and the need to tackle greenhouse gas emissions,” Long said. “But when push comes to shove, they are unwilling to do what’s necessary to confront the issue in a meaningful way. There’s a consequence in the real world to breaking one’s commitments.”


The ads were originally slated to run last summer, Long said, when he traveled to Dearborn to speak at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in June. Instead, the group delayed to meet with company officials to discuss steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Long met with Ford officials in Dearborn in September.


Long said he asked the company to support a California law to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and back national legislation to raise the fuel economy average of light trucks to 40 miles per gallon. The decision to run the ads came when he concluded the company would not make any specific pledge on fuel economy, Long said.


Ford officials said Bill Ford had reaffirmed the company’s belief that it needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to help combat global warming at the shareholders meeting.


They described the talks with Blue Water Network as a “dialogue,” not a negotiation.


“The Bluewater Network ad does not reflect the reality of Ford Motor Co.’s environmental commitments,” said Ford spokeswoman Carolyn Brown.


Bill Ford has described himself as a life-long environmentalist and was initially embraced by activists after he became chairman of Ford Motor in 1999. But he has said recently that environmentalists are taking advantage of his high profile to draw headlines.


Brown cited Ford’s marketing of extremely clean “partial zero emissions” versions of its Focus sedan, wagon and hatchback, a forthcoming gas-electric hybrid version of the Escape SUV and the company’s commitment to fuel-cell research.


The fuel economy of Ford’s light truck lineup was 20.3 mpg for the 2002 model year, the last year for which the government has published complete data. Under federal regulations, an automaker’s fleet of light trucks must average 20.7 mpg in the 2004 model year. That requirement will rise to 22.2 mpg by 2007. Cars must average 27.5 mpg.


Go To: http://www.detnews.com/2004/autosinsider/0402/06/c01-57178.htm

President Bush's plan for cars running on clean, efficient hydrogen fuel cells is decades away from commercial reality, according to a report by the National Academy of Sciences.


Promoting the technology in his State of the Union address a year ago, Mr. Bush said a hydrogen car might be available as the first vehicle for a child born in 2003. On Monday, the Energy Department included $318 million for both fuel cells and hydrogen production in its 2005 budget. "Hydrogen is the next frontier; a hydrogen economy is where the world is headed," said Spencer Abraham, the secretary of energy.


The Bush administration anticipates mass production of hydrogen cars by 2020. But the academy study, released Wednesday, said some of the Energy Department's goals were "unrealistically aggressive."


Fuel cells produce electricity by putting hydrogen through a chemical process, rather than burning, and their exhaust consists solely of water and heat. Some scientists think they have great promise, not only because they are clean, but also because the hydrogen can be produced from solar or wind power, thus reducing oil imports and the emission of gases that cause global warming.


But the least-expensive methods of hydrogen production use fuels like coal or natural gas, and those create pollution, experts say. Hydrogen is also difficult to ship and store. In addition, power from fuel cells is far more costly than the same amount of power from a gasoline engine.


"Real revolutions have to occur before this is going to become a large-scale reality," said one of the report's authors, Dr. Antonia V. Herzog, a staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It very possibly could happen, but it's not a sure thing."


The report said battery-powered cars or hybrid cars, which use gasoline and electric motors, could turn out to be better choices. And over the next 25 years, the effects of hydrogen cars on oil imports and global-warming gas emissions "are likely to be minor," the report said.


A second pessimistic assessment came from Joseph J. Romm, the chief Energy Department official in charge of conservation and alternative energy in the Clinton administration. His book "The Hype About Hydrogen" will be published this spring.


"Fuel-cell cars will not be environmentally desirable for decades, because there are better uses for the fuels you can make the hydrogen out of," Mr. Romm said in a telephone interview.


Most hydrogen produced today is made from natural gas, he said, and using that gas to make electricity, and thus replace coal-based electric plants, would do more for the environment than using the gas to make hydrogen to replace gasoline. He said society would get more energy from a cubic foot of natural gas burned in a modern gas-powered electric plant than if it was converted to hydrogen.


Mr. Romm also said there is currently no way to deliver the hydrogen to vehicles. "People who want to build `hydrogen highways' and drive a hydrogen car in 10 or 15 years on a mass scale, are just kidding themselves," he said.


The Bush administration has shifted emphasis from a Clinton-era program to develop hybrid cars into a far more ambitious, long-term project to commercialize fuel cells.


Mr. Abraham, the energy secretary, said he had recently been host of a meeting of energy ministers from around the world, and they agreed that fuel cells offered promise for reducing pollution and dependence on imported energy. "I see it as not only a wise investment for America," Mr. Abraham said, "but really where the world is heading."


Go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/politics/06HYDR.html