Obama Calls for Ending Oil Subsidies

Perhaps I was the only person struck by President Obama's bold faced statement Weds night, calling for the end of US oil subsidies? It's not the first time he's suggested such a move 1, but in my humble estimation it's long overdue.

Obama, 1/25/12 (see full video here, 37:45 to 38:15):

"We've subsidized oil companies for a century. That's long enough. It's time to end the tax payer giveaways to an industry that rarely has been more profitable, and double down on the clean energy industry that rarely has been more promising. Pass clean energy tax credits. Create these jobs."

According to the Financial Times Global 500, 2011, an index of the world's largest publicly traded companies, America's ExxonMobil is the world's #1 most profitable company. 2 America's oil production and equipment companies are doing remarkably well during this recession. Reading down the FT Global 500, 2011 list: Chevron is #9, Schlumberger (oil equipment & services) #41, ConocoPhillips #45, Occidental Petroleum #69, Apache #152, Haliburton (oil equipment & services) #176... you get the idea. 3

For reference sake, Apple is #3 on this list for 2011, with a market cap of $321 Billion. Goldman Sachs #74, with a market cap of $82 Billion. News Corp #171 with a market cap of about $47 Billion. Kellog's #478 with a market cap of about $20 Billion. And kudos to America's oil & gas companies -- who are doing MUCH better than in 2010 and previous years. Our top three oil producer/retailers have dramatically reduced their revenues yet increased their profits.

According to the Financial Times:

ExxonMobil, Irving, TX
2010: revenue $370.1 Billion; market cap $368.7 Billion
2011: revenue $341.5 Billion; market cap $417.1 Billion

Chevron, San Ramon, CA
2010: revenue $204.9 Billion; market cap $183.6 Billion
2011: revenue $189.6 Billion; market cap $215.7 Billion

ConocoPhillips, Houston, TX
2010: revenue $198.6 Billion; market cap $100.0 Billion
2011: revenue $176.9 Billion; market cap $114.1 Billion

Global Implications
To get a quick sense of how companies around the world stack up against each other I recommend Wikipedia's historical lists of the world's highest market cap companies. I know, I know, wikipedia right? (I happen to like Wikipedia's footnoting.) These lists are taken directly from the FT Global 500 1998 thru 2011. For 2010 six of the world's top 10 largest companies are in oil & gas, 10 of the world's top 25 are in oil & gas, and twenty five are in the world's top 100. 4

Speaking of big companies, what about big profits? The largest global/annual profit reports of all time (in real US Dollars, June 2011) as of Oct 2011, show ExxonMobil claiming the top four spots. (The four most profitable years ever in the history of the world. These guys are the champs.) From an American oil & gas perspective ExxonMobil has six of the top ten most profitable years ever, seven overall. Chevron has the 19th most profitable year. From a global perspective, eighteen of the 30 most profitable years for publicly traded companies in history belong to the oil & gas industry.

Back to Obama and US Oil Subsidies. The combined value of these world record years for Exxon and Chevron, alone, is $292.22 Billion in profit. By comparison, and as shown in a previous blog, Total US Oil Subsidies 1950-2010 was $369.00B. Since 1950 US tax payers have spent 44% of their energy subsidies on oil & gas ... the world's most profitable business sector.

Not much has been written or said about cutting oil subsidies in the US since Weds night. Weird. But the chief economist of the International Energy Agency announced about a week before Obama's speech he believes cutting global fossil fuel subsidization would halve total global greenhouse gas emissions. According to that guy -- the world's coal, oil, and gas (i.e. natural gas & gasoline) companies rec'v an average over $400 Billion "assistance" from our governments every year.



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Notes
1. "It's not the first time Obama's suggested..." My quick googling shows O has been on this since at least April 2011: Obama video, Boxer support, NYTimes, etc.
2. "ExxonMobil world's most profitable (public) company..." The Financial Times 2006 list of state-owned companies, shows 9 of the top 10 to be in Oil & Gas. Saudi Aramco's market cap at that time was $781 Billion (3/4's of a Trillion $). Source
3. Here's the rest of the American oil & gas production and service companies from the 2011 largest global companies: Anadarko #192, Devon Energy #208, Marathon Oil #220, National OIl Well Varco #262, EOG Resources #275, Hess #314, Cheasepeake Energy #419.  
4. "Global Implications..." The FT Global 500 2011 list shows 50 oil & gas companies in the world's largest 500. 

China's solar goals boggle the American mind

Via SustainableBusiness.com's newsletter -- 

China recently raised its target for the amount of solar it will install by 2015, from 10 gigawatts (GW) to 15 GW, an increase of 50%. Since the government introduced a national solar feed-in tariff (FiT) in July, and then recently raised the price it would pay for solar under the program, installations are booming. The country is expected to install over 2 GW in 2011, compared to just 500 MW in 2010.

China recently reiterated its Five Year Renewable Energy Plan, which has a target of 100 GW wind by 2015, with 5 GW of that offshore. The country had originally set 5 GW as its solar target, but doubled down after the nuclear meltdown in Japan.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects China will install 180 GW of wind and solar capacity this decade (by 2020), that's equivalent to 180 nuclear plants. Currently China has 42 GW of wind and 1 GW of solar.

Obama calls for "Nation building, right here at home"

Barack Obama's complete State of the Union address, Jan. 24, 2012.

12:00 How We Got Here
16:45 Bringing Jobs Back
18:00 Corporate Tax Code
22:45 Education
34:00 Oil Reserves
35:00 Natural Gas
35:45 Fed $$ for Energy
36:15 Clean Energy
37:45 Ending Oil Subsidies
38:30 New Clean Energy Standard
39:30 Energy Efficiency
40:15 Rebuilding America's Infrastructure
43:45 Rules to Make the Free Market Work Better
45:15 Spills, Mercury & Safe Food
49:30 Pass the Payroll Tax Cut, Change the Tax Code
55:00 Limit Graft in Washington
59:00 Collaboration
1:06:30 Veteran's Job Corps

O's message: educate, regulate, and innovate for best growth and sustainability. 

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Oil & Gas Industries Add 75,000 Jobs

It's a good time to be in Oil & Gas (and a bad time for the planet it seems). "Over the last three years, we've opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration." President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, Jan. 24. 2012. President Obama continued, "Over the last three years, we've opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration. Tonight, I'm directing my administration to open more than 75% of our potential offshore oil and gas resources. Right now, American oil production is the highest that it's been in eight years. That's right — eight years..."

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Via ThinkProgress -- Oil and Gas Jobs Increase by 75,000 Under Obama — More Than Would Be Created By Keystone XL

Record Profits at ConocoPhillips

Via ThinkProgress, ConocoPhillips Announces $3.4 Billion in Q4 Profits — Bringing 2011 Profits to $12.4 Billion: "ConocoPhillips announced its 2011 fourth-quarter earnings, reporting profits of $3.4 billion — a 66 percent gain– bringing total profits in 2011 to $12.4 billion. Below is a quick look at some other facts about ConocoPhillips:

• ConocoPhillips has spent over $16 million lobbying Congress in 2011, ranking in as the fifth largest spender last year – and number one in the oil and gas industry.
  
  
• ConocoPhillips has contributed over $200,000 to federal campaigns in 2011, with 90 percent of the contributions going to Republicans."

 Read the full blog here.

Climate Change --'s worse than you think (pt. 3)

Part I of this series was an overview. Part II talks about Prof. Kevin Anderson's "carbon budget," which plots out what's required if we humans are to stay within a "safe" global warming scenario. The international community defined that safe scenario as total planetary warming of no more than 2° Celsius since the beginning of the Industrial Era (1850s) to the end of this century (2100). So far our  biosphere has warmed about 0.8°C during that period, leaving just a little more room at a time when world energy demand is growing like a weed and the fossil fuel industries are finding new ways to provide highly profitable oil, gas, and coal products (one example here).  

Former DOE Assistant Energy Secretary and renowned blogger Joe Romm has written some authoritative pieces on the beyond 2°C question. According to Joe, the International Energy Agency (IEA), a highly respected and traditionally cautious firm, released a bombshell in their annual world energy report last November. Among other things the IEA states that today's "planned policies ... will lead to irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change.” The IEA estimates current policies will lead to 6°C warming by the end of this century, and that for every $1 we don’t invest in clean energy technologies before 2020 “an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.”  In short: today’s policies = disaster and waiting to change increases the costs of change by more than 400% next decade.

Romm says, 

“The IEA is one of the few organizations in the world with a sophisticated enough global energy model to do credible (i.e non-hand-waving) projections of the cost of different emissions pathways and the costs of delaying efforts to achieve them. Those who counsel waiting for breakthrough technologies are urging us on a path that is unsustainable, irreversible, potentially catastrophic, and economically indefensible, according to the IEA.

“The IEA’s 2008 analysis of the 2°C warming pathway demonstrated that the total shift in investment needed to stabilize at 450 ppm is only about 1.1% of GDP per year — and that is not a “cost” or hit to GDP, because much of that investment goes towards saving expensive fuel."

The IEA therefore advocates that global/industrial greenhouse emissions cannot peak any later than 2017. A graph from their November report: 

Click to enlarge.

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Climate Change -- 's worse than you think (pt. 2)

My first post in this series was, “here’s the bad news.” Let me elaborate. 

“This summer is very similar to what is projected under a +2°C global mean temperature increase,” Dr. Katharine Hayhoe (August 2011), director of the Texas Tech University Climate Science Center, referring to 2011's record-breaking heat. 

Source, or toggle the U.S. Drought Monitor archive for visuals.

Calling Dr. Hayhoe's statement "measured," is an understatement. But that's one of the points of science -- to provide us with unbiased assessments based on thousands of hours of high powered research. So check this out. Based on scientific assessment, in 2009 the world's international policy-making big wigs agreed that two degrees Celsius (2°C) is the only threshold of warming human civilizations can endure. Any more than that and climate projections indicate doomsday. Note that climate science shows our planet's mean temperature has risen about 0.8°C since the Industrial Revolution began around 1850. That leaves us 1.2°C headroom over the next 90 years. 

How ’we doing? Climate / Energy scientist Kevin Anderson has been attracting some attention lately thanks to his "carbon budget" graph, which shows how soon and how rapidly our always growing global economy would have to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions to stay under the certified 2°C threshold.(1) Effectively, we're talking about: Chinese, Americans, Europeans, Indians, Russians, and Japanese (in order of biggest emitters) reducing their emissions dramatically, among others, immediately.(2)

Here's what really jumps out about Anderson's graph (below):

1) Emissions have to stop, now. According to Anderson, the peak of world emissions must be “by” 2015, “by” 2020, or “by” 2025 -- and then decline dramatically year on year (see below). Otherwise it’s too late. We have four options.

2) The longer we wait … the bigger the task. Here’s the deal. The graph shows: If we peak emissions in 2015, we have until 2060 to meet the overall reduction target. If we wait till 2020, we have to meet the overall reduction target by about 2042 (a rate of global greenhouse gas reductions equaling around 10%, year over year, for 22 years). David Roberts, "The total collapse of the USSR knocked 5 percent off its emissions. So 10 percent a year is like … well, it’s not like anything in the history of human civilization." If we wait till 2025, we have just 10 years – till 2035, to meet the global emissions reduction target.

Click to enlarge.

Does anyone think today’s efforts will get us there?

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Part III of this series tomorrow.

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1.  Hear audio and/or view slides of Mr. Anderson's  presentation, "Beyond Danger." Obviously the business people, the scientists, and the policy-making people are not talking to each other re: climate projections. Perhaps THAT should have been Gore’s strategy all along: international business development conferences, correlating economic growth and necessity to ecological projections, and developing consensus on the next step fwd. Is there still time to convene a billionaire’s U.N. on the subject of economic growth? Perhaps this could be done in the United States first? Let’s expand the values around the purpose of business -- past pure profit to include corporate and social longevity. “Is sustainability really an option in our current economic model?” might be a good name for such a conference. Comments, anyone?

2. There’s lots more to say about the mechanisms needed to achieve such a revolution. In short the options seem to be, 1) Everyone gets on board, 2) Policies are created to coerce such change, 3) The economy we know and love is shut down by internal and/or external factors.

National Research Council Recommends Waste Water

via Eric DesRoberts - 

The National Academy of Sciences, America's leading body of objective researchers, recently reported that American cities release "Approximately 12 billion gallons of municipal wastewater effluent each day to an ocean or estuary out of 32 billion gallons per day discharged nationwide." Their report, grippingly titled, Water Reuse: Potential for Expanding the Nation's Water Supply Through Reuse of Municipal Wastewater doesn't just emphasize waste water reuse, it clearly states waste water may be cleaner in some cities. From the exec. summary --

"Expanding water reuse—the use of treated wastewater for beneficial purposes including irrigation, industrial uses, and drinking water augmentation—could significantly increase the nation’s total available water resources, this new report finds. A portfolio of treatment options is available to mitigate water quality issues in reclaimed water, and new analysis suggests the risk of exposure to certain microbial and chemical contaminants from drinking reclaimed water does not appear to be any higher than the risk experienced in at least some current drinking water treatment systems and may be orders of magnitude lower. Adjustments to the federal regulatory framework could enhance public health protection for both planned and unplanned (or de facto) reuse, and increase public confidence in water reuse.

Read the full report here.

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What is Environmental Justice and Why did the EPA sing, "Free At Last"

In January of 2011 U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Civil Rights Affirmative Employment and Diversity at an event honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "I am old to enough to have witnessed and experienced the remarkable progress that’s been made since the 1960s when Dr. King, in addition to his many other achievements, helped to plant the seeds for what would become our nation’s now-thriving environmental justice movement.” 

Holder, “I want you to know that – at every level of the Justice Department, just like here at the EPA, (Environmental Justice) is a top priority -- and, for me, it is also a personal calling."

‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

According to the EPA, Environmental Justice will be achieved when "everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work." The movement against Environmental Racism began in the 1980s and was formally established as the Environmental Justice movement in 1991 when the First National People of Color delegation drafted and adopted "Principles of Environmental Justice" in Washington, D.C.  Read Principles here.

In recent years the movement has expanded its definition beyond color lines. "We are just as much concerned with inequities in Appalachia, for example, where the whites are basically dumped on because of lack of economic and political clout," says Dr. Robert Bullard, movement 'grandfather.' Likewise, the movement has grown beyond radical environmentalism to include Christian, Jewish and other communities of faith and the academic sector. In the religious domain, Environmental Justice is often referred to as "Social Justice."

Attorney Gen. Holder, “Dr. King did not have the chance to witness the impact of the movement that he began. But he left with us the creed that continues to guide our work. His enduring words, which he penned from a Birmingham jail cell, still remind us that, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Attorney General Eric Holder, 

"Environmental Justice is a Civil Rights issue."

At the EPA's 2011 event Holder cited a 2005 report showing that African Americans were nearly 80 percent more likely than white Americans to live near hazardous industrial pollution sites at that time. Holder said these issues persist, “In 2011, the burden of environmental degradation still falls disproportionately on low-income communities and communities of color, and most often on their youngest residents: our children, my children.”

“This is unacceptable.  And it is unconscionable.  But through the aggressive enforcement of federal environmental laws in every community, I believe that we can – and I know that we must – change the status quo.”

After Holder's speech the event's program closed with the EPA’s general counsel and EPA's associate director of the Water Protection performing “Free at Last” for the audience at the Ronald Reagan Building. 

Read more via CNSnews.com.

Learn about the EPA's Environmental Justice Achievement Awards.

Other sources: EcoHearth, The National Council of Churches, TaintedGreen, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Happy MLK Day, 2012, to you.

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This Guy Hates Your Government's Environmental Policies, too

Stephen Colbert on environmental regulation: "Yeah (EPA) -- stop already. When something is clean, you don't need to clean it anymore. That's why I sold my dishwasher and my bidet." See video here.

"I hate those new light bulbs." Pigtail light bulbs are for girls. (video)

We need more sugar, transfats, and salt in our kids' foods (video).

"We've already solved the global warming crisis", and the Keystone XL Pipeline will create billions of jobs. "Do you have some hybrid vehicle that runs on broken dreams?"

All this via the Grist list, see more from Grist.org here.

"1st International Carbon Label Launched"

Via Environmental Leader, “a concept full of promise and complexity...”
"First International Carbon Label Program Launched"

Gil Friend's Best of 2011

Gil Friend, probably the grandaddy of corporate sustainability strategy, keeps a great "business-case-for-sustainability" blog. This week he published his top 10 sustainability developments of 2011. My #1: 

Ecological Accounting
The domain of Ecological Accounting (aka, reality-based accounting) took a huge step forward this year when Puma (with PWC and TruCost) produced an environmental balance sheet and P+L, suggesting what their financial would look like if "nature's services" mattered. The bottom line: the ecological liability (amounted to) more than 45% of Puma's net earnings. Puma's parent company plans to extend the analysis across the rest of its companies this year...

See the rest of Gil's list here.

"Married to the jar lady"

I'm fascinated by this suburban America family actually achieving a near zero waste lifestyle without alienating their kids, dressing in burlap, or touting extremist ideals. They make it look so clean and easy. A recent People Magazine feature caught my girlfriend's eye,

"Since 2006, the Mill Valley, Calif., couple and their sons have cut down their garbage output so that they now produce only enough in a year to fill a 1-liter mason jar... Gone are styrofoam trays and plastic wrap---Bea brings glass jars to the butcher, fish and deli counters to with meat, fish and cheese... Recently Scott was the one approaching the deli counter with glass jars. When he did, the clerk asked, "Hey do you know the jar lady?""

Leo (10) on life in the school lunch room, "It isn't hard to say no to chips. They're gone in three seconds, then the bag is in the trash."

from People, pg. 78

Meet the Johnsons - mainstream America's first zero waste household. Secrets: reused clothing, knotted towel lunchboxes fot the kids, no package grocery shopping, etc., and lots of recycling. Benefits? Dad says they've reduced some household expenses by 25%. Mom says, "We set out to simplify our lives, and it turned into something good for the environment." Here's a great little video from NBC's Today Show 2011 (see another here):

Cheers to these folks!

"The Year in Biomimicry"

The notion of biomimicry fascinates me. In part because it's been in existence for millenia yet is viewed as novel, strange, ridiculous, even today. GreenBiz.com just published a story highlighting their top 10 biomimicry advancements of 2011. #1? 'Researchers finally figure out how to imitate bird flight mechanics' (my paraphrase).

"This device gains both thrust and lift from the flapping of flexible two-part wings, a concept that aeronautic engineers had abandoned in frustration long ago."

You probably remember Da Vinci spent some time on this one.

"Study of the Structure of a Wing. 1490"
(Click to enlarge.)

It's anybody's guess what 2011 flapping wing technology might lead to, but take note, as a field Biomimicry is gaining real cred. Read about how today's scientists and engineers are imitating shrimp, crickets, caterpillars and more to get ahead in business.

Texas 2011 Drought, $93 Billion in Tree Losses?

"Nobody knows the true economic value of trees." That's the first thing that popped into my head last week when I read the Texas Forest Service recently estimated up to a half billion Texas trees measuring at least five inches in diameter were lost due to the unrelenting drought of 2011.

I already knew the state had lost close to four million acres of open lands to record wildfires, suffered over five billion dollars in agricultural and livestock damages, considered shutting down parts of its electric grid to prevent rolling blackouts due to water shortages, and that the list goes on. I also knew the long-term effects of Texas's drought looked equally dismal and that all its damage didn't just hurt Texans, but seriously? Hundreds of million of trees "killed?" That sounds expensive.

Map of TX eco regions.

The economic value of trees. I did a little digging. It doesn't take much time on Google to figure out the average value of an urban tree is about $1,000.00 per tree. The range of valuations, however, is huge. I have a friend who recently paid $7,500 to have three trees "installed" in his yard. The Council of Tree and Landscape Appraisers says, "A mature tree can have an appraised value of between $1,000 and $10,000." A US Court once valued a single, mature tree at over $160,000.00. But let's go with the City of Arlington, TX's 2009 study (pdf), which appraises their urban trees at about $932.50 per tree. Since the Arlington study omits many of the intrinsic services associated with both wild and urban trees in their valuation and since Arlington's number is the lowest I could find, let's assume this is a fair and conservative tree value and use it.  Multiple the number of trees lost times the Arlington valuation, and you get:

-$93,250,320,404.72. -$93.2 Billion (in 2009 dollars). That's Arlington's $932.50 per tree x 100 Million tree losses. But wait, that's the low number. Texas Forest Service estimates "between 100 million and 500 million" trees died last year. Their high end count of nearly half a billion trees nets out a total impact of over -$466 Billion ($466,251,602,023.61 to be exact). Impressive, right? People seem to have a hard time thinking of the environment as having any economic value, perhaps that's because the environment's value dwarfs our little human-made economy. I've always suspected the "dollar" value of ecosystem services to be many orders of magnitude greater than the entire industrialized economy. How couldn't it be? How could Texas suffer around $100 Billion in ecosystem losses during a recession year and not be severely impaired? And what is the industrial economy is catching up? Perhaps events like this massive tree die off are whittling down our natural systems and there are only a few orders magnitude of greatness left in our nature. Texas Forest Service estimates from 2% to 10% of the state's 4.9 billion trees were just killed.* How many consecutive years can Texas sustain around $100 Billion in forest destruction? 49 years? 9 years? The drought is expected to continue for at least five years. If that comes to pass, its effects will likely have significantly changed much of Texas as early as 2017. Climate aficionados like me believe Austin will become more like Tucson over the next 90 years as desertification moves north. But what if that transition has already begun? What if Austin's desertification will be securely in place sometime in the next 10 years? What's Austin without trees? What happens to Austin's water cycle and summertime temperatures? Plenty of climate scientists believe Texas is indeed on a super rapid change trajectory, way ahead of schedule.

How Texas compares to the rest of the country (click to enlarge):

67.3% of the state in "extreme" drought conditions.

But nobody knows the economic value of trees. Or ecology. Or nature itself. And that's the point. Our environment should probably contain exponentially more economic value than our industrial economy. Perhaps we should start counting. And start changing. If you believe, as I tend to, that we humans are playing Russian roulette with the planet's future, changing the way society measures economic success is paramount, as is eliminating the emissions believed to be driving things like radical drought, as is preserving our trees and ecosystems. 

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"Top 10 Trends in Clean Tech 2011"

Via GigaOm.com: 

#1. Solar prices plummet: One of the most overwhelming market drivers of 2011 was the massive price drop of solar modules. Researchers have found that the price of solar dropped by 40 percent in 2011. Part of that had to do with Chinese solar manufacturers flooding the market with low cost solar, creating an oversupply and benefiting from low cost loans from the Chinese government.

#2. India set to become cleantech power house: When you think of developing countries and cleantech, you think of China. But India is creating a major market through its solar initiatives, smart grid plans and water infrastructure buildout.

Read the rest of this post here.

National Solar Parity ... in 15 Years?

Blogger John Farrell (endorsed by Yale360 here) has been attempting to plot the emergence of solar grid parity for some time. He explains his "Solar Grid Parity 101" here and shows the impacts of state market incentives on solar pricing here. His most recent post, an animated timeline of the United States, shows San Diego reaching solar parity next year and a majority of US metropolitan areas reaching parity in 2023.

(Click images to enlarge)

 Costs of solar vary according to differing incentives.

San Diego is projected to reach solar parity by 2013.
Click to see John's animated map/timeline.

But what if today's incentive structures change? Renewable energy market incentivization and subsidization is nothing if not a political battle. Independent analysts Energy Tax Savers recently published a white paper advocating extension of the U.S. Gov's 1603 "solar cash grant" program. The paper highlights Solar P.V.'s rapid growth in the U.S. and imagines the creation of 1,000,000 manufacturing, installation, and maintenance jobs if such incentivization continues:

"The United States is just beginning to achieve major year-over-year increases in commercial solar installations.  Incentives, both state and local, have pushed the U.S. solar industry as far as it has come. In particular, the 1603 cash grant program has been integral to the success of solar. Solar P.V. installations grew by 114% from 2009 to 2010... industry analysts predict these figures to increase... In sum, as of the time this article is being written, 20.3 GW of solar power is either installed, being installed or in their development phase since January 1, 2010."

Department of Energy director, Steven Chu, believes the growth trends in solar P.V. are so strong that U.S. government could discontinue incentivization within 15 years (by 2027). 

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NASA Images of 2011

Via Yale360 - "Floodwaters from Hurricane Irene slice through portions of Highway 12 on North Carolina’s Hatteras Island on Aug. 28, 2011."

 Hurricane Irene, click to enlarge.

"The Midwestern U.S. resembles a patchwork quilt in this photograph taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station. In addition to the lights of the region’s large metropolitan centers — including Chicago, St. Louis, and Minneapolis/St. Paul — the green light of the aurora borealis glows above the curvature of the Earth."

Midwest lights, click to enlarge. 

See the complete gallery here.