I think the administration may be winning, based on some press lately, with their goal to: lower popular expectations significantly and make Copenhagen appear a success even if it violates what the international community agreed to accomplish by Copenhagen.

Recently, President Obama and President Hu of China jointly declared that they "agree on the importance" of carrying through on the Bali Action Plan (BAP). The BAP set all parties on 2-year path to a real agreement with real numbers. Those two years are up in Copenhagen. However, Obama has recently stated his support for delaying an agreement in Copenhagen.

Now we hear from Capitol Hill not just that ‘US Congress may not finish by Copenhagen,’ but that the 'Senate will punt until the Spring' and 'Kerry says climate comes after [not just] health care, [but now] financial reform.' For many reasons, such as that 2010 is going to be a tough election year, this translates to... the US Congress very likely will not pass a climate bill before 2011, by the next scheduled climate meeting in Mexico.

If Obama is waiting for Congress, will his international climate strategy be the same next year? Will he try to lower expectations for Mexico, so it doesn't seem like the US contributed to its failure? Answers to these questions, of course, rely on the president's willingness to invest his time and energy in achieving effective climate policy. But not knowing if that will happen, the question for Copenhagen is how to get a result that prevents a repeat of this US procrastination strategy.

I am starting to wonder if Obama will engage in a serious public campaign on climate before 2011, if even then. We should have seen some hint of this by now. His stated goal for US emissions reductions was actually worse than what the Congress is considering. He has supported a 2020 deadline of getting the US back to 1990 levels of emissions, when the world started to seriously discuss climate change. From the perspective of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this goal by Obama is to do nothing. We should be reducing about 40% from 1990, not 0%.

In the joint declaration by Obama and Hu, it was sadly apparent which delegation drafted which sentences on carbon sequestration and on nuclear energy. The few public comments from Obama have included endorsement of both of these non-solutions.  We hope President Obama will listen to President Hu and abandon efforts that benefit industry instead of renewable energy solutions that harmonize with goals for a healthy economy and environment.

If we cannot get the BAP fulfilled with any poignance, maybe we can get a pre-launch type of agreement that counts down to a lift-off no later than Mexico. And somehow the US should be given a spanking for not doing its chores (corporal punishment is still normal in many parts of the US). Perhaps that involves a second commitment period for Kyoto, in other words the rest of the world moves forward while the US is an outsider. But the spanking must include thwarting any notion that the US has been a wise and moral leader on climate policy.

Click on some relevant articles below from the last week:

Obama calls for climate pact with 'immediate' effect

Obama must be more engaged on climate change: Greenpeace

U.S. weighs backing interim international climate agreement

 

Serious climate issues are often shrouded in complicated and arcane scientific and political language.  This makes it easy for corporate polluters to disguise their agenda and intentions when talking about climate and energy policy.  Below is a letter polluters sent to decision-makers this week urging them to increase the number of international offsets in climate legislation.  I’ve taken the liberty of translating it for you.  Read on to see what they’re really saying.

Also note the list of companies signing the letter.  Among them are many huge polluters such as Duke Energy, Dominion, Exelon and American Electric Power – the company that was a focus in the recent Greenpeace Carbon Scam report.

But also on the list is Intel, a company that strives to associate its brand with innovation and the future.  Why are they associating themselves with some of the biggest, most backwards polluters in the country?  Good question.  You can read more about how Intel stacks up against other tech companies on our Cool IT Challenge campaign site.

Anyway, read on…

=============

Re: The Importance of International Offsets for U.S. Climate Change Mitigation Efforts

Dear Senator Kerry, Senator Graham, and Senator Lieberman:

We, the undersigned, are companies that employ hundreds of thousands of American workers, and serve hundreds of millions of American consumers. We expect that our companies would be affected significantly by any greenhouse gas regulatory program. We write today to communicate our firm belief that in order for any such program to be both environmentally effective and economically sound it should be market-based and incorporate both domestic and international offsets. To this end, we are concerned about the further restrictions on use of international offset credits in S. 1733, reported last week by the Environment and Public Works Committee.

TRANSLATION: We are some of the biggest, richest polluters in the world and we have a lot invested in dirty business.  If you pass climate legislation without huge loopholes for us, we’re going to be very upset.  One of the most important loopholes we want are carbon offsets – cheap vouchers that allow us to side-step cutting our pollution with the rationale that someone else, somewhere else, will cut pollution instead.  Sure, the legislation in Congress already has massive subsidies for us and billions of tons of offsets in it, but we are still not happy.  We always want more.

The cost containment provided by international offsets is dramatic and critical. Every major study of greenhouse gas regulation has reached this conclusion. The Environmental Protection Agency’s analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill found that the costs of the cap-and-trade program would increase by 89% without international offsets. By cutting the costs of a cap-and-trade program almost in half, international offsets preserve U.S. jobs and U.S. competitiveness.

TRANSLATION: Outsourcing jobs saves us a lot of money.  Likewise, we want to outsource investments in green jobs and cleaner skies we would otherwise have to make to cut our own pollution.  It’s just so much cheaper for us to do it overseas.  If we have to do it here in the U.S., it will cut into our giant profits too much.  For example, the last American Electric Power quarterly profits rose 18% over last year to $443 million due to “higher rates charged its utility customers” despite lower demand for electricity.  We don’t need investments in green jobs and cleaner skies eating into that.  We want to keep our pockets well lined, thank you very much.

Until low-carbon technologies are widely available, U.S. companies need to have the ability to pay for low-cost, readily-available reductions wherever they may be found, which includes other countries. Put another way, allowing U.S. companies to invest in at least some reductions abroad, makes it possible to continue production here, allowing for a gradual transition of the U.S. economy to a low-carbon future. At the same time, international offsets give U.S. companies new export markets for low-carbon technologies made in this country.

TRANSLATION: We already have the technologies needed to dramatically reduce climate pollution, but we don’t want to pay for them.  We’d rather pretend that some miracle technology like “carbon capture and sequestration” will magically become effective and affordable in the future…and that we can’t take real action to clean up our acts until then.  Allowing U.S. polluters to buy their way out with cheap international offsets will allow us to slash investments in green jobs in the U.S. and continue to pollute American skies.  We want to avoid climate action as long as possible, so we can pass the buck to future generations of Americans.

International offset policies also offer an opportunity to address the serious problem of tropical deforestation, which causes 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions annually and threatens the survival of more than half of the world’s plant, insect, and animal species. International offsets therefore offer a win-win situation; they make it possible for the U.S. to address critical global environmental issues, while saving jobs here.

TRANSLATION: By taking credit for “avoided deforestation” projects, we can really side-step American green job/clean tech investments.  That’s because avoided deforestation offsets would be among the cheapest and most abundant in the world.  Why build windmills and invest green jobs in the American Heartland if we could – for much less – pay to keep trees standing in, say, Bolivia?  It’s super cheap, we get to keep polluting, and we’ll have money left over to run TV commercials showing pretty rainforest animals we’ll claim to be saving.  This is the ultimate greenwash, and if you’re lucky Senators, we’ll let you in on it.

It is important that any international offsets are as environmentally rigorous as domestic offsets, which means that offsets from other countries should be subject to review by the relevant agencies. International offset credits subject to such review should not be subject to any arbitrary discounts or other barriers, which can only diminish their cost containment potential.

TRANSLATION: For years, evidence has mounted showing offsets often don’t deliver what they’re supposed to.  So, we have to pretend to be really concerned about the quality of offsets.  But, what we really want is universal green stamp of approval that will make people believe our offsets are 100% reliable so we can trade them in carbon markets and make buckets of money.  Don’t set up standards that are too tough -- just tough (and confusing) enough for people to believe in them.  Carbon markets could be worth trillions of dollars in coming years!  We want our carbon cake and want to trade it too!

Finally, we believe that well-designed international offset policies can play a vital role in encouraging other countries to adopt appropriate limits on their emissions, which will further limit the competitiveness impacts of climate legislation on the U.S. economy. International offsets are a necessary component of our diplomatic efforts.

TRANSLATION: Polluters in developing countries don’t want to change their ways either.  By counting offsets as a replacement for real U.S. pollution cuts AND counting them as cuts in developing countries, we really game the system.  It’s called “double-counting.”  Nothing like a little creative accounting to confuse the situation and make it look like we’re doing more than we are to address global warming.  And, if anyone asks you, just tell them you’re doing this to “protect American competitiveness.”  That always works.

For these reasons, we strongly urge you, as you consider cap-and-trade legislation, to ensure that the program protects the vital cost-containment role of international offsets, and avoids any arbitrary barriers to the use of such credits.

TRANSLATION: We’re watching you.  And the 2010 elections are right around the corner.  We’re making our campaign contribution list right now.  Don’t mess this one up for us, or there will be hell to pay!

Sincerely,

Alpha Natural Resources, American Electric Power, DTE Energy, Dominion, The Dow Chemical Company, Duke Energy, DuPont, El Paso Corporation, Exelon, Southern Company, FPL Group, Intel, International Paper Company, NRG Energy, National Grid, PG&E Corporation, PNM Resources, Rio Tinto

One year ago President Obama was elected and my hopes for a clean energy future soared.  However, just two weeks ago, that hope began to be blown away in West Virginia when Massey Energy began dynamiting Coal River Mountain—the site of a proposed 328-megawatt wind farm—to prepare for a massive mountaintop removal coal mining operation.

 

But today, organizations from across the country are coming together to demand that President Obama’s Administration be a leader for both clean energy and communities and stop the blasting on Coal River Mountain. In fact, it’s the biggest online action to stop mountain top removal coal mining in history.

Can you take a moment right now to tell the Obama Administration to not blast away our clean energy future?

Here’s what’s at stake:

-The homes, healthy air, streams and ecosystems of the local residents of Coal River Mountain.

-A Coal River Mountain wind farm that would provide 85,000 households with electricity, 700 long-term green jobs, give back $1.7 million in annual county taxes and stand as a model for clean energy across the region.

-The health of the climate as when burning the coal pumps tons upon tons of carbon into the atmosphere of an already dangerously warming planet.

The EPA has the power to either protect the climate and the communities of Coal River Mountain, or it can allow the creation of a 6,000-acre dirty energy wasteland.

You can make a difference today by taking one minute right now to tell the Obama Administration to support clean energy and save Coal River Mountain.

With your help, we can make the clean energy revolution a reality. As my colleague from Rainforest Action Network, Scott Parkin, says

“Coal River Mountain must become our line in the sand. We can no longer allow fossil fuel interests to build more pipelines, belch out more pollution, and destroy more mountains that could become clean energy wind farms. If we can stop the blasting on Coal River Mountain we can stop talking about a clean energy future and start living in a clean energy present.”

 

Sorry, folks, the Supreme Court must have been wrong about CO2 being an air pollutant.  I stumbled upon the Truth in the form of this half-page ad in Monday’s Washington Post:

Not only is there no scientific evidence that CO2 is a pollutant, higher CO2 concentrations actually help ecosystems support more plant and animal life… Higher levels of CO2 result in more plant growth as well as less water being required for plants to grow faster and larger.  In fact, we all exhale CO2 and enjoy it in our carbonated beverages.

This blows my mind.  I don’t even know how to categorize this latest piece of big-oil-funded misdirection. Junk science? Botany for third graders? Blatant untruthiness? 

CO2isgreen, Inc., the non-profit “with questionable parentage” that funded the ad, has already been called out twice in the blogosphere - once by Grist.org and again by Scienceblogs.com.  Miles Grant correctly points out H. Leighton Steward’s position as an honorary director at the American Petroleum Institute, recently in the news for staging astroturf campaigns, as well as his connection to numerous big oil companies:

He’s also a director at EOG Resources, an oil and gas company, a position in which he earned a whopping $617,151 last year. Steward is formerly head of Burlington Resources, now a part of ConocoPhillips) and former Chairman of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association and the Natural Gas Supply Association. Not a word about any of that in his bio on the site.

The one connection that Grant missed is that Steward is currently Chairman of the Board of The Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at SMU, which has received $76,500 since 1998 from everybody’s favorite greenhouse gangster, ExxonMobil.

James Hrynyshyn paints a softer picture of Steward after talking to him on the phone, describing him as “earnest,” and insisting:

…he's not a dupe of Big Oil trying to pull the wool over our eyes. At least, not consciously… He simply doesn’t doesn't accept the mountains of evidence that carbon dioxide is a significant greenhouse gas, and that small changes in its atmospheric concentration can have a big impact on climate.

Forgive my cynicism, but if it looks like big oil, works for big oil and gets paid by big oil, then it must be an earnest Joe with a penchant for taking out half-page ads in major news publications.

If we are going to base our science on experiments carried out by 8-year-olds, let us discuss these carbonated beverages that we so much enjoy.  It has long been known that carbonated beverages rot your teeth, due primarily to the carbonic acid, which forms when CO2 is dissolved in water. More CO2 in the air means more CO2 in the water.  The resulting acidification is rotting our oceans:

Almost half of all the carbon dioxide emitted since industrialization has been absorbed by the ocean. [Acidification] deprives animals like hard corals and certain mollusks and plankton of the raw material for their calcium carbonate shells and skeletons. This may ultimately cause the world’s oceans to become corrosive to such animals, and coral reefs to dissolve.

The science of our carbon burden is clear.  What is unclear is whether world leaders gathered in New York for a UN summit on climate change can be convinced to act in the interest of the many and the future rather than the few and the now.

This week, Planet Green's Focus Earth program airs an episode on greenwash. In the episode Bob Woodruff interviews environmental and corporate watchdog expert Kenny Bruno, author of Greenwash and Corporate Environmentalism, and myself from Greenpeace, to answer the question: are corporate green efforts for show only, or can they actually make amends for decades of un-sustainable, even downright harmful, business choices? Woodfuff also gets up close with leaders from Royal Dutch Shell, Ford Motor Company and Duke Energy to examine their environmental statements and actions. 

Watch clips from the show and find airtimes here.

A few months back, I was lucky enough to enter our archives.  The temperature controlled room, deep in the heart of the office, is a highly organized system housing every imaginable artifact of Greenpeace US history.  From crew members' photos aboard the Phyllis Cormack to the latest newsletter, the archives tell the story of how a few brave activists setting sail for Amchitka in 1971 grew to be the leading independent environmental organization today. 

I could spend days upon days browsing the immense collection of records, and scratching my head: fanny packs? visors?

but not having endless time to hang out in the archives and ponder some Greenpeace attire, I sat down with our archivist Nikolas.

Describe your role as archivist:

• My job as GP archivist is to preserve and document GP's history and historical documents and artifacts, and maintain the organization's institutional memory.  As an organization with a 40 year history, it's important to preserve our history because our foundation is a critical part of who we are and shows that we have long-standing expertise and credibility on environmental issues.  When people talk about saving whales, we can show that we essentially started the movement.  When people debate global warming, we can prove that we've been on the right side since the 1970s.  We've exposed scams, lies and crimes for decades and the archives is the record of those successes.

Do you have a favorite record?

• Telexes from the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior.  When French agents bombed the ship in 1985 in New Zealand, messages were sent from Auckland to other offices, giving a minute-by-minute account of the aftermath of the attack and the realization and shock of losing one of our crewmembers.  Oh, and I like buttons.

Many thanks to Nikolas for keeping the archives in top shape!  If you ever come across an old Greenpeace article and have a question about it, you can bet Nikolas will be able to tell you more about it!  For example, when I forwarded an e-mail that read: At a cafe in Porstmouth, NH I saw a poster in the men's room entitled, Stepping Lightly on the Earth: a Minimum Impact Guide to the Home, Nik appeared leaflet in hand within the hour.

In addition,  we have a bare bulletin board over here that could really benefit from some supporter pictures!  Whether wearing a vintage tee, personal photos from a volunteer action, or even an old article found way back in the kitchen drawer, we'd love to see it!  You can e-mail us attachments at info@wdc.greenpeace.org or mail them to the below address.  I mean, how cute is Zoe in her Mom's childhood "Save the Seals" tee?!

 

Watch Greenpeace Research Director Kert Davies on Democracy Now. Kert explains how the leaked memo reveals that the American Petroleum Institute is asking oil companies to recruit employees, retirees, and contractors to take part in rallies against climate change legislation.

Watch now >>

We all remember BP's many attempts to look like a green company - for example changing its name from "British Petroleum" to "Beyond Petroleum", and running numerous greenwash ads like the one to the right. But it looks like BP may finally be officially moving away from its "green" pledge.

The company's new CEO recently announced that its new first priority will be safety.

As the BBC reports:

Greenpeace said the oil giant had a lot to gain by dropping its promise to be green.

Charlie Kronick, Greenpeace's senior climate change adviser, suggested that the pledge was the only thing holding it back from making further cuts to its green credentials.

"Now that BP is blissfully released from its pledge to invest in clean energy, it has a carte blanche to sell off its unprofitable green energy arm," he told the BBC.

"It can get back to doing what it does best: being a 100% fossil fuels train wreck," Mr Kronick added.

"This is classic smoke and mirrors."

It's no surprise really, BP has been investing in dirty tar sands and cutting investments in renewables for a long time. Let's just hope that with the new CEO comes a new advertising policy, one that doesn't include spending a fortune on greenwash.

In response to the 60 Minutes report about contamination of the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador, Chevron apparently hired its own reporter to create its own version of the report.  According to the New York Times:

Both videos start with a correspondent appearing on camera and calling it a “bitter” dispute. But from there, they diverge. The “60 Minutes” report visits the rain forest, talks to the Ecuadorean judge and interviews a Chevron manager. The Chevron video interviews the same Chevron manager, as well as five professors who are consultants to the oil company, but none of the plaintiffs.

The Chevron video never directly claims to be journalism. But a casual viewer could be swayed by the description — “Gene Randall reporting” — and the journalistic devices used, including file footage of the rain forest and over-the-shoulder interviews with experts. Chevron declined to answer questions about the video.

Chevron also bought Google ads so that its own website about the lawsuit, which includes the video, appear as the top link when anyone googles "Chevron in Ecuador".

It's unclear how much Chevron spent on the video and website, but it seems that money would have been better spent actually cleaning up oil wells in Ecuador. Surely that would have done more to improve Chevron's image than this bit of greenwash.

Mr Peabody Coal and Mr. Massey Ferguson were walking down a winding country road in the Mountains of Appalachia. The kind of road John Denver sang about in "Country Road, Take Me Home." They were talking about which of the surrounding mountaintops they would remove next, when one of them kicked at what looked like a can in the tall lush grass of the roadside. It was heavier than he thought it would be and hurt his toe a little bit and scuffed his Gucci boot.

They both bent over and discovered it was an antique lantern with a spout. Mr. Peabody rubbed at the surface to see if there was a logo or anything to identify it when a genie appeared out of it in a puff of smoke. They were astonished to see such a thing in the middle of a forest in the middle of the day, but before they could recover enough to accuse the genie of trespass on their land, which was everything as far as the eye could see and a bird can fly, the genie offered to grant them three wishes.

They could hardly believe their luck. First they asked for CCS technology, the here-to-for holy grail of the industry. The genie promised that all the CO2 from now on would disappear underground. Rubbing their hands with glee, the coaligarchs carefully considered their second wish, after some minutes in animated conference they turned to the genie and asked that the trillions of acres of toxic fly ash accumulating around their coal power plants could disappear removing the threat of devastating flooding from thousands of miles of watersheds.

The genie nodded his head with some gravity and assented to their wish that this threat to water and land vanish immediately and poof, the ponds were gone. The two megabillionaires thumped each other on the back and lit big cigars in celebration. They thought long and hard and threw out ideas about they could ask for next, maybe get the means to turn coal into gasoline, or to burn in streetlights or right in the engines of automobiles, but then they both focused on what was most on their minds, what they had spent so many millions to advertise and together they turned to the genie and asked them with one voice,  "make coal clean."

The genie looked at them intently for many minutes with a look that shook the exuberance off their bravado and slowly he shook his head. As he did so they were effortlessly transported into the future they had planned for this very part of the lush eastern forest. Their eyes stung in the heat and the dust as giant excavators devastated the dense old growth forest and ripped into the ancient stone of the million year old landscape. Around them the cries of millions of creatures obliterated in the waste of the mountainsides and spoil of the mining operation filling the lush dark valley below. After the quick glimpse of the change from life sustaining forest to toxic desert the genie said "alas, you have wasted your last wish, for not even magic can produce such a thing as "clean coal."