The coal ash spill in Harriman, TN is way worse than previously reported. It now appears that some 5.4 million cubic yards – over one billion gallons – of the toxic sludge was spilled, more than twice the amount quoted in initial reports.

MSNBC has a fantastic piece up about how the clean coal campaign has been given a “black eye” by the spill, and how many people are now questioning “coal’s supposed green credentials” as a result. It features our very own Rick Hind, toxics campaign director. Check it out:

Here’s hoping that this “black eye” is more of a body blow to the disingenuous “Clean Coal” marketing campaign. It will be if we keep the pressure on and continue to raise awareness about the benefits of renewables and the dangers of coal. Want to help? Post the above pic anywhere you can -- on your website, your blog, your Myspace or Facebook profile. Click the image for a larger version. Or you can grab the embed code to this video and put that on your site/profile. Let's make sure everyone knows just how dirty coal is.

There are lots more images of the coal ash spill, taken by a photographer we sent out to TN, on this slideshow.

The New York Times recently published an editorial, entitled "A New Respect for Science," lauding Pres-elect Obama’s choice of Jane Lubchenco and John Holdren for two sub-cabinet positions:

Like Mr. Obama’s earlier appointments — in particular Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, to run the Department of Energy — these choices [of Jane Lubchenco to run the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and John Holdren as his science advisor] affirm Mr. Obama’s commitment to aggressively address the challenges of energy independence and global warming.

I asked a couple of my colleagues if they agreed with the NYT’s assessment. Here’s what Kate Smolski, our legislative analyst on the global warming campaign team, had to say:

As the last line of the editorial says, knowing about the problem and solving it are two different things. I think these appointments show Obama's continued commitment to dealing with global warming, which is great. But we have to keep encouraging him to move forward with policies based on the latest climate science: emissions must be cut to at least 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 (for developed nations) and at least 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.

And here’s John Hocevar, our Oceans Campaign Director, on the appointment of Lubchenco in particular:

It's a fantastic adviser appointment and cause for celebration among oceans lovers.

This is a strong signal that Obama plans to stick to his commitment to ensuring that policy is guided by science, not politics or short-term commercial interests. Dr. Lubchenko is an exemplary scientist with strong conservation credentials and an ecosystem perspective.

She was one of the lead scientists on a climate initiative organized by [outgoing Greenpeace USA executive director] John Passacantando back when he was with Ozone Action, and she has continued to be a strong voice on climate issues ever since.

But NOAA's primary role is to provide the science – it will be up to Obama and Congress to act accordingly.

Like Kate said, it will be up to us to keep encouraging Obama and the new Congress to establish effective, science-based measures for dealing with the environmental problems the Bush Administration has been ignoring or even denying for eight years now. Electing Obama was only half the battle. We’ve definitely got a lot of work to do in 2009 – but thankfully we now have concerned, compassionate allies at the federal level!

This is just heartbreaking, outrageous, and downright scary: Early in the morning of Dec. 22nd, there was a massive spill of coal ash in Harriman, TN at the Kingston steam plant. Reportedly, as much as 2.6 million cubic yards, or nearly 500 million gallons, of ash and slurry spilled into a tributary of the Tennessee River when an earthen retaining wall was breached at the Tennesee Valley Authority’s coal-fired plant.

According to one local news account: “Officials say up to 400 acres of land adjacent to the plant are under 4 to 6 feet of material.” A local resident says of the land: "It's changed forever, I don't see how this can be brought back." Here's aerial footage of the affected areas:

 
Coal ash is highly toxic, containing mercury and other heavy metals like lead and arsenic. Needless to say, the ecosystem of the Tennessee River is in peril, and perhaps will never be the same again. And who knows what this will mean for the people who rely on the Tennessee River – the water supply for Chattanooga, TN and millions of people living downstream in Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky – in the long term. In the short term, this spill has caused 15 homes to be evacuated and another home to be pushed as much as 30 feet onto a roadway, wrecked a train, and sent at least one person to the hospital.

Yet this spill is only a tiny taste of the damage coal causes. Coal burning power plants are the number one emitters of global warming pollution in the country. Global warming threatens America and the world with more frequent and more severe storms, new outbreaks of diseases and crop pests, and massive coastal flooding. The good news is that these disasters are preventable, but only if we complete the switch to truly clean energy like wind and solar power as rapidly as possible. We can’t afford to wait.

Our hearts go out to everyone affected by this tragic – and avoidable – spill. Hopefully this shows that coal can never be clean, and exposes "Clean Coal" as the sham marketing ploy that it is.

Greenpeace is one of the organizations planning a massive act of civil disobedience at the Capitol Power Plant – a coal-fired power plant close to Capitol Hill – on March 2, 2009. The time has come for us to either put up or shut up. We don’t have a lot of time left if we are going to address the causes of global warming and avert its worst effects. We have to start taking action.

If you want to get involved, click that handy button to the right.

Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben sent the following letter out last week. It is an eloquent and impassioned appeal for civil disobedience in these crucial times we’re living in:

Dear Friends,

There are moments in a nation's—and a planet's—history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push for its correction. We think such a time has arrived, and we are writing to say that we hope some of you will join us in Washington D.C. on Monday March 2 in order to take part in a civil act of civil disobedience outside a coal-fired power plant near Capitol Hill.

We will be there to make several points:

• Coal-fired power is driving climate change. Our foremost climatologist, NASA's James Hansen, has demonstrated that our only hope of getting our atmosphere back to a safe level—below 350 parts per million co2—lies in stopping the use of coal to generate electricity.
• Even if climate change were not the urgent crisis that it is, we would still be burning our fossil fuels too fast, wasting too much energy and releasing too much poison into the air and water. We would still need to slow down, and to restore thrift to its old place as an economic virtue.
• Coal is filthy at its source. Much of the coal used in this country comes from West Virginia and Kentucky, where companies engage in "mountaintop removal" to get at the stuff; they leave behind a leveled wasteland, and impoverished human communities. No technology better exemplifies the out-of-control relationship between humans and the rest of creation.
• Coal smoke makes children sick. Asthma rates in urban areas near coal-fired power plants are high. Air pollution from burning coal is harmful to the health of grown-ups too, and to the health of everything that breathes, including forests.

The industry claim that there is something called "clean coal" is, put simply, a lie. But it's a lie told with tens of millions of dollars, which we do not have. We have our bodies, and we are willing to use them to make our point. We don't come to such a step lightly. We have written and testified and organized politically to make this point for many years, and while in recent months there has been real progress against new coal-fired power plants, the daily business of providing half our electricity from coal continues unabated. It's time to make clear that we can't safely run this planet on coal at all. So we feel the time has come to do more--we hear President Barack Obama's call for a movement for change that continues past election day, and we hear Nobel Laureate Al Gore's call for creative non-violence outside coal plants. As part of the international negotiations now underway on global warming, our nation will be asking China, India, and others to limit their use of coal in the future to help save the planet's atmosphere. This is a hard thing to ask, because it's their cheapest fuel. Part of our witness in March will be to say that we're willing to make some sacrifices ourselves, even if it's only a trip to the jail.

With any luck, this will be the largest such protest yet, large enough that it may provide a real spark. If you want to participate with us, you need to go through a short course of non-violence training. This will be, to the extent it depends on us, an entirely peaceful demonstration, carried out in a spirit of hope and not rancor. We will be there in our dress clothes, and ask the same of you. There will be young people, people from faith communities, people from the coal fields of Appalachia, and from the neighborhoods in Washington that get to breathe the smoke from the plant.

We will cross the legal boundary of the power plant, and we expect to be arrested. After that we have no certainty what will happen, but lawyers and such will be on hand. Our goal is not to shut the plant down for the day—it is but  one of many, and anyway its operation for a day is not the point. The worldwide daily reliance on coal is the danger; this is one small step to raise awareness of that ruinous habit and hence help to break it.

Needless to say, we're not handling the logistics of this day. All the credit goes to a variety of groups, especially the Energy Action Coalition (which is bringing thousands of young people to Washington that weekend), Greenpeace, the Ruckus Society, and the Rainforest Action Network.


Thank you,


Wendell Berry, Bill McKibben

P.S.—This is important: Please forward this letter to anyone and everyone you think might be interested.

You can read more about the action on March 2nd here, and RSVP for the action here.

Last week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appointed eight new members to the Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce and five new members to the Committee on Ways and Means. The new appointees have records that clearly demonstrate their understanding of the severity of global warming and the need for real solutions – and we’ve compiled some research to prove it.

Below you will find the LCV scores of the new members of the two committees, as well as whether or not they have signed on to the Waxman-Markey-Inslee Statement of Principles letter, which lays out the critical pieces of any effective plan to stop global warming. Of the 13 new appointments, 11 are on the Principles. The average LCV score is 89%. This shows that the House is serious about passing legislation in 2009 that will deal with the global warming crisis.

Lifetime LCV scores and Statement of Principles notation for new members of the Ways and Means Committee:

• Congressman Danny Davis (D-IL): 93%, On Principles
• Congressman Bob Etheridge (D-NC): 77%, Not on Principles
• Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ): 95%, On Principles
• Congressman Brian Higgins (D-NY): 92%, On Principles
• Congressman John Yarmuth (D-KY): 100%, On Principles

Lifetime LCV scores Statement of Principles notation for new members of the Energy and Commerce Committee:

• Congressman Bruce Braley (D-IA): 88%, On Principles
• Congresswoman Donna Christensen (D-Virgin Islands): N/A, On Principles
• Congresswoman Kathy Castor (D-FL): 91%, On Principles
• Congressman John Sarbanes (D-MD): 91%, On Principles
• Congressman Chris Murphy (D-CT): 100%, On Principles
• Congressman Zack Space (D-OH): 70%, Not on Principles
• Congressman Jerry McNerney (D-CA): 85%, On Principles
• Congresswoman Betty Sutton (D-OH): 88%, On Principles

Greenpeace is looking forward to working with the new and old members of these committees, as well as new Energy and Commerce chairman Henry Waxman, to stop global warming in 2009.

While we were holding our Day of Action events here in America to tell the world leaders in Poland that we support global warming solutions, our campaigners on the ground at the UN Climate Conference were holding an event of their own. You can read about it in Eva's post below, and you can check out the video right here:


>
In other news, another homeless polar bear has been sighted on the streets of Poznan:



This polar bear had a sign that reads "Carbon addiction ruined my life.

Stay tuned right here for more updates, and check out the Greenpeace International Climate Rescue Blog for even more updates.

Word is, the homeless polar bear epidemic has hit Poland -- just in time for the climate talks in Poznan! How fortuitous...

Lots of good news for the climate this week, from Obama renewing his commitment to send a representative to the climate talks in Poland to Alaska Senator, convicted felon, and generally regressive policy booster Ted Stevens losing his bid for reelection. But perhaps the best news we heard was that Rep. Henry Waxman (D–CA) had successfully challenged Rep. John Dingell (D–MI) for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. This is a game-changer.

Obama may have signaled his clear intent to join with the rest of the world in implementing the most effective policies for tackling global warming, but he will need an equally committed Congress to help craft all the policy that will be necessary. And the House Energy and Commerce Committee will be key to getting that done. There are two reasons why Waxman ousting Dingell is most welcome news.

For one thing, Dingell has acted as little more than a lobbyist for the auto industry even while he was in a powerful position from which he could have affected real change. Says the New York Times: “Mr. Dingell, who represents a suburban Detroit district, has been the industry’s most stalwart defender in Congress, having slowed or blocked many safety and environmental standards that the auto companies argued they could not meet.” Those environmental standards, by the way, might have been tough to implement, but in the long run they would have kept the automakers solvent in today’s energy-conscious marketplace while also helping lower emissions from vehicles and therefore our national carbon footprint. It’s a textbook example of failed leadership.

And for another thing, Waxman is one of, if not the, biggest champions of global warming legislation in Congress. He wrote the Safe Climate Act, the best global warming bill to come out of either house of the 110th Congress, and he got 152 of his fellow House Representatives to sign onto his open-letter Global Warming Statement of Principles. Greenpeace USA’s deputy director of campaigns, Carroll Muffett, puts it well in this press release:

Rep. Waxman was a key figure in passing some of the country’s most important environmental and public health legislation. We applaud his appointment as Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. From the Community Right to Know Act to the Clean Air Act to the Safe Drinking Water Act, he has been a leading voice for the public interest and one of the country’s most effective legislators.

Rep. Waxman has shown the same dedication to solving global warming, the biggest environmental and public health crisis of our time, by demanding strong, science-based solutions and building support for action in Congress.

Tackling the global warming crisis demands the full commitment of our government, and with Rep. Waxman’s leadership 152 members of Congress have already taken an important step by outlining a blueprint for success. Now we need Congress and the new presidential administration to come together and turn these ideas into action by passing comprehensive, science-based legislation as soon as possible.

Under his leadership, we are confident the Energy and Commerce Committee can move quickly to turn that blueprint into a workable, effective bill to solve the climate crisis. We urge Congressional leaders and our new president to work with Chairman Waxman to turn that bill into law in 2009.

Finally, leadership we can believe in.

Not even two weeks have gone by since the presidential election in which Americans voted decisively for change. Incredibly, despite a national mood rife with hope and optimism, our "leaders" are already lowering expectations on what we can accomplish:

WASHINGTON: Congress will not act until 2010 on a bill to limit the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming despite President-elect Obama's declaration that he will move quickly to address climate change, the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee predicted Wednesday.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said that while every effort should be made to cap greenhouse gases, the economic crisis, the transition to a new administration and the complexity of setting up a nationwide market for carbon pollution permits preclude acting in 2009.

We've said it several times over the past couple weeks: The election results may bode well for our cause, but the real work has only just begun. We're gonna have to stay on top of these people in a big way if we want to really tackle global warming before it's too late.

Many, many disastrous policies were put in place by the Bush administration. But none will have more far-reaching an impact than those policies that were adopted as a means of delaying serious action on global warming.

Choosing how to go about rolling back all of Bush’s harmful policies is a monumental task, to be sure. Luckily, according to the Washington Post, Obama already has a team working on it:

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

Obama has signaled his desire to undo one of the least rational of Bush’s policies:

The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration's decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. "Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer," Obama said in January.

California had sought permission from the Environmental Protection Agency to require that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles be cut by 30 percent between 2009 and 2016, effectively mandating that cars achieve a fuel economy standard of at least 36 miles per gallon within eight years.

California arrived at these regulations in a very bipartisan way. Such prominent Republicans as Arnold Schwarzenegger were the most vocal supporters of California’s auto emissions standards. Bush's opposition is an example of his extreme anti-environmentalism even in the face of overwhelming evidence that we must impose just such regulations on emissions in order to effectively combat global warming.

If Obama does in fact reverse this decision it will be a welcome change. And it will make a real difference: 17 other states had committed to following California’s lead on auto emissions, for instance. All told, these 18 states represent nearly half of the U.S. automobile market. Aside from their obvious impact on our total greenhouse gas emissions, bold, proggressive standards like California’s will help spur innovation that could reshape the entire auto industry in America.

The WaPo article also notes that Obama has said he “favors declaring that carbon dioxide emissions are endangering human welfare, following an EPA task force recommendation last December that Bush and his aides shunned in order to protect the utility and auto industries.” Take a look at sales by foreign companies like Toyota and Honda, who offer a variety of hybrid and other fuel-efficient models, versus the Big 3 American auto manufacturers, who proudly brought us the Hummer, and you will realize Bush in fact was not doing them any favors.

We cannot adequately address global warming by trying to pretend the problem doesn’t exist. We need fresh ideas and a new era of innovation to combat the enormity of the problem, and for that we need real leadership. Judging from early reports like this WaPo piece, the Obama administration appears poised to provide that leadership. It comes none too soon: we wasted the last eight years, and time is running out.

We recently put out a new edition of our Energy [R]evolution plan (here's the full report, and here's the executive summary) and the timing could not have been better. We are faced with two major crises right now: global warming and the economic meltdown. Investing in renewable energy can solve both of these crises, and the Energy [R]evolution shows how.

The report provides a practical blueprint for rapidly cutting energy-related CO2 emissions in order to help ensure that greenhouse gas emissions peak and then fall by 2015. A major means of reaching this goal would be to aggressively invest in renewable energy. According to the report, renewable energy could more than double its share of the world’s energy supply – reaching up to 30% by 2030 – given the proper leadership to promote the large-scale deployment of existing technologies. Meanwhile, the total fuel cost savings for the global energy industry would reach $18.7 trillion by 2030, or $750 billion of annual savings that could be passed on to consumers.

The technologies exist to make an energy revolution a reality. What we’re lacking is the political will to get it done. Thankfully, there is a growing body of evidence that supports the basic assertion of the Energy [R]evolution that we can solve both the climate crisis and the economic crisis at the same time.

I wrote a post a couple weeks back about a UC-Berkeley report that found that California’s green policies have created 1.5 million jobs over the past three decades, and now there is even more evidence that solving global warming by investing in the clean energy sources of the future will create jobs and revitalize our ailing economy. This time the evidence is more anecdotal than scientific or data-driven, but it is nonetheless convincing. On Nov. 1 the New York Times published a lengthy piece entitled “A Splash of Green for the Rust Belt” that examined the phenomenon of the renewable energy industry breathing new life into factory towns that had been left for dead when manufacturers closed down their operations and moved out of town:

From the faded steel enclaves of Pennsylvania to the reeling auto towns of Michigan and Ohio, state and local governments are aggressively courting manufacturing companies that supply wind energy farms, solar electricity plants and factories that turn crops into diesel fuel.

This courtship has less to do with the loftiest aims of renewable energy proponents — curbing greenhouse gas emissions and lessening American dependence on foreign oil — and more to do with paychecks. In the face of rising unemployment, renewable energy has become a crucial source of good jobs, particularly for laid-off Rust Belt workers.

Investing in renewable energy can revitalize a stagnant economy! And also, it's pretty inspiring to read about the sense of patriotism and purpose that comes from working in renewables; one guy quoted in the NYT article said, "For 35 years, I pounded my body to the ground. Now, I feel like I’m doing something beneficial for mankind and the United States," while another said, "I feel I’m doing something to improve our country, rather than just building a washing machine." But it’s one thing for small municipalities to recognize how good renewables are for our country and our planet, and a whole other thing for us to realize this on a national scale. We need leadership on this issue. Here’s hoping that whatever the results, tomorrow’s elections will, at last, provide America with that leadership…

This just makes me sad...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 29 (UPI) -- Two-thirds of the plants writer Henry David Thoreau chronicled at Walden Pond in Massachusetts have disappeared due to global warming, a U.S. study contends. The Harvard University report said some of the hardest-hit plants include lilies, orchids, violets, roses and dogwoods. Plants that have thrived in the warmer temperatures include mustards, knotweeds and various non-native species.

"Some plants around Walden Pond have been quite resilient in the face of climate change, while others have fared far worse. Closely related species that are not able to adjust their flowering times in the face of rising temperatures are decreasing in abundance," Charles C. Davis, assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said Monday in a news release.

The report said about 27 percent of all species Thoreau recorded in the 1850s around Walden Pond in Concord, Mass., are now locally extinct and another 36 percent are so sparse extinction may be imminent.

One of the arguments most frequently employed by those who want to delay action to stop global warming – whatever their ultimate motives may be for arguing against solving the most urgent environmental crisis of our time – is that implementing the solutions will cost too much money. As gas prices soared higher and higher this argument resonated with a lot of folks, hence there was broad support for opening our coasts to more drilling – even after offshore drilling had been thoroughly discredited as a means for making us more energy independent or lowering gas prices.

The reality is that we can’t afford not to implement solutions like much higher fuel efficiency standards, strict caps on emissions, and drastically increased investment in renewable energy. These are real solutions that will be good for the whole planet, not dangerous distractions that are only good for oil companies’ bottom lines. But given the tough economic times we're living in, the "it will cost too much" argument might gain even more traction -- except that it's completely untrue. And there is new data to prove it:

California’s energy-efficiency policies created nearly 1.5 million jobs from 1977 to 2007, while eliminating fewer than 25,000, according to a study to be released Monday.

The study, conducted by David Roland-Holst, an economist at the Center for Energy, Resources and Economic Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley, found that while the state’s policies lowered employee compensation in the electric power industry by an estimated $1.6 billion over that period, it improved compensation in the state over all by $44.6 billion.

We must do away with business as usual, and start building the green economy of the future. If we have any future as a species, this transition isn’t just necessary but downright inevitable. We simply can’t drill or mine or dig our way to a sustainable future. Sure, that means that a lot of companies that are making a killing now will either have to change their business model or become obsolete in the marketplace as the cost for them to do business outstrips what people are willing to pay for their goods and services. But it will also mean a healthy planet for future generations and a healthy, sustainable economy as well.

After all, the market turmoil we’ve experienced recently points up the drastic need for a new economic model in this country, and green has always been Wall St.’s favorite color…

The Wall St. bailout plan has consumed a lot of our nation’s attention recently, as well it should. But in the meantime, H.R. 6049, the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008, which was passed by the Senate last week, is on the verge of dying a quiet death.

H.R. 6049 would extend existing tax credits for investment in renewable energy past the end of this year, when they’re currently set to expire. It is vital that Congress pass a bill renewing these credits to ensure that we keep moving towards a renewable energy future and away from the dirty fossil fuels of the past. Equally vital at this point in time is the economic stimulus these tax credits would provide – foreign investment and thousands of new jobs are just what our ailing economy desperately needs rigtht now.

As Van Jones put it this past weekend:

"We can't drill and burn our way out of this economic crisis. We can -- and must -- invest and invent our way out. 600,000 jobs have been lost this year alone. We need to free ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil, and instead invest in jobs in sustainable industries -- wind and solar, among others. Only then will we be able to fight poverty and pollution at the same time."

Unfortunately, the odds of the two houses of the current Congress getting it together and passing this bill are looking slimmer by the day. The House has passed several versions of H.R. 6049, and while it was encouraging to see the Senate vote in its favor last week, it was returned to the House bearing several unwelcome, regressive additions. Specifically, the Senate added provisions that would allow tax credits to promote high-carbon liquid fuels from oil shale, tar sands, and liquid coal. Greenpeace is calling on both the House and the Senate to reach agreement on a bill that does not include these provisions – we don’t need more investment in fuels that would contribute to global warming. We need real solutions, and we need them now!

(There are various sticking points between the House of Representatiaves and the Senate that are preventing passage of a final bill, but I'll spare you the wonky minutiae.)

The economic crisis we’re facing is a dire one, so the 110th Congress will likely stay in the Capitol until they get a bailout package passed. If only they felt such urgency about addressing the global warming crisis. It’s not likely the House will take up H.R. 6049 before adjourning for the Fall, which means the only hope of its passage before the renewable energy tax credits expire on Dec. 31st is a lame duck session after the November elections. It’s not impossible, but neither is it terribly likely. If there is no lame duck session, the credits will definitely expire, as our federal legislators won’t be back at work until the 111th Congress is sworn in next year.

We’ll keep following this story, and we’ll keep you updated.

Yesterday, the Senate passed H.R. 6049 by a decisive 93 to 2 vote. This is great news, because H.R. 6049 will extend the renewable energy tax credits that were set to expire on December 31st of this year. The bill provides $17 billion as tax incentives for investment in renewable energy.

Senator Jeff Bingaman (D – NM), chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, said in a press statement, “These incentives will play a critical role in promoting clean, renewable energy and energy efficiency, and in turn reducing our reliance on conventional fuels, promoting a more secure energy supply and combating global warming. Equally important, these tax credits will create high-paying jobs and reduce energy costs for all Americans.”

Unfortunately, the bill also includes provisions for oil shale, tar sands, and coal-to-liquids development, which of course are fossil fuels and will therefore contribute to global warming while delaying our conversion to a renewable energy society. But let’s look on the bright side: at least all those renewable energy projects that were officially stalled because of the threat of the tax incentives expiring will hopefully now be back on track.

The Tax Extenders bill must still go back to the House (who passed a similar bill in May) and then be signed into law by the President. The White House, for its part, appears to have already come out in support of the bill. According to Senator Bingaman, “We’ve been trying for nearly two years to prevent these [renewable energy] incentives from lapsing, and I believe we finally have the bipartisan, bicameral support to finally get the job done. And I’m very pleased that the White House said today that it supports passage of this legislation.”

But passing the Senate version of the bill through the House will apparently not be the easiest sell, so there is still considerable room for doubt that the bill will actually land on Bush’s desk before Congress closes up shop for the year. Stay tuned…

One of our Greenpeace colleagues across the pond at GPI recently posted a blog that asked "How much renewable energy could you buy for the 700 billion US dollars about to be spent bailing out failed banks?"

A lot, as it turns out.

We have created a Flash slideshow featuring some good shots of the global warming refugee polar bear street art installations we rolled out this past week. (Embed code is below the slideshow.)

Check it out:




<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" width="420" height="500" id="bear" align="middle"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="movie" value="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/assets/flashes/polar-bear-slide-show.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /><embed src="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/assets/flashes/polar-bear-slide-show.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="420" height="500" name="bear" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /> </object>

Day Two of the Polar Bear’s protest at the US Capitol has dawned bright and clear. The Polar Bear is still standing firm, bearing witness. He hasn't sat down or taken a break since starting this vigil over 21 hours ago. He hasn't even eaten or had anything to drink, either. Still, he’s lookin' good, if a bit skinny for a bear his size.

Greenpeace’s activists have been there from the start – strictly playing a supporting role, of course, since this is the Bear’s protest. Activists have been working in shifts to keep him company; several shifts have come and gone throughout the night. We’re keeping vigil with the Bear to ask the Senate not to vote for more offshore drilling, which will only hasten the complete devastation of the Polar Bear’s Arctic sea ice home as it exacerbates global warming.

Happily, we were joined by the folks from Oil Change for a while! They set up just across the reflecting pool from us with a bed on wheels and some street theater calling out Congress for being “in bed with Big Oil.” If you missed their demonstration, no worries. You can head over to their website and check out this really cool tool they have up that lets you print a “petro-dollar” with your Rep. or Senator’s face on it in a denomination equal to how much money they take from Big Oil.

We took a short break this morning from updating the Twitter feed (posted below) because the Rolling Sunlight had to clear out during rush hour. But we’re now back up and running and will be updating in real time as long as parking is allowed outside the Capitol building. Not only does the truck feed us free and clean solar power but it provides our wireless signal as well. We’ll be using it to keep updating the slideshow you can find here.

Lots of folks have come by to meet the bear and have their picture taken, and overwhelmingly they agree with the Bear—the world needs more ice, not more oil. It’s fantastic to see that folks from all walks of life know about the issue of Global Warming, care about it deeply, and agree with the Bear and his message.

Meanwhile, we’re reaching out to more friends from around the area to come join our polar bear support team. If you’re in the DC area, come on down and show your support! If you’re not in the area, you can still take action and tell the Senate to vote NO on more drilling off our coasts!

Global warming refugees have been pouring into Washington, DC. Several homeless polar bears have been spotted around the capitol city in recent days, all of them asking desperately for change (in global warming policy). Today one of the bears took his plea for change directly to the US Capitol, and Greenpeace activists are currently on the scene to provide whatever support the protesting bear may need.

“We’re here to help this bear get his message to the Senate as they consider energy legislation this week,” says Nathan Santry, one of the Greenpeace activists on the ground at the Capitol building. “The Park Police were leary at first, but they’ve told us the bear can stay so long as someone hangs around to vouch for him. The polar bear shows no sign of leaving yet, so we’re sticking it out right along with him. The only catch? We have to stay within three feet of him at all times. Gonna be fun.”

The solar power-equipped Greenpeace truck “Rolling Sunlight” has just arrived to join the fun and is providing free, clean renewable energy to the team. That means that they’ll be updating us on their vigil every step of the way via the Twitter feed embedded below (also on our homepage). The slideshow you can find here will be updated with photos all night long as well.

Today’s polar bear protest is the latest in a series of street art installations Greenpeace has created in collaboration with renowned artist Mark Jenkins to call attention to the plight of the Arctic polar bear and help people understand in human terms what it means for the bears to lose their homes. Our intent with this project is to communicate how global warming is affecting the polar bear and to highlight the very real connection between the polar bear’s fate and our own.

As with any species down on its luck, the polar bears appealed to the federal government for relief (under the Endangered Species Act), but government action has been way too little and way too late. And rather than stepping in, Congress is piling on. Even as the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that Arctic sea ice has reached its second lowest annual level ever recorded, the Senate is poised to vote on a bill that would open more of our coasts to offshore oil drilling, which will only prolong our dependence on fossil fuels and make global warming even worse. 

Rather than siding with Big Oil at the expense of the entire planet once again, Congress should focus on passing legislation that cuts tax breaks for Big Oil and returns that money to taxpayers to help offset rising fuel costs; doubles the average fuel efficiency of automobiles to at least 50 miles per gallon; invests in public transportation; and provides incentives for renewable energy investment to help transition us to a clean energy future.

Just as we have delayed action to protect the polar bear, we have delayed action to protect our own species from the threat of global warming for far too long. The window for action is closing rapidly. We hope the polar bear’s protest will help people draw a deeper and more immediate connection to that reality. Click here for more pictures, video, and to read more about the project.

*Update
As of 12:46AM EST, protest is still going strong. That Polar Bear is out to prove something, by god. We'll be with him til the end. Keep watching the Twitter badge below for updates!

**Update
Heading into day two. Tweets will stop for a bit while the Rolling Sunlight has to clear out because there is no parking during rush hour, but our activists will be back up and running in an hour or two. Look for another full update blog post soon.

 

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) recently announced that the national electricity generation capacity from wind has surpassed 20,000 megawatts (MW). That’s enough electricity to power 5.3 million homes, the equivalent of 28.7 million tons of coal or 90 million barrels of oil, according to the AWEA’s press release.

Better yet:

“Wind energy installations are well ahead of the curve for contributing 20% of the U.S. electric power supply by 2030 as envisioned by the U.S. Department of Energy,” said AWEA Executive Director Randall Swisher.

This is certainly good news, but there may not be too much cause for celebration just yet. Though the numbers announced by the AWEA sound impressive, here’s a little bit of perspective: even at 20,000 MW of installed capacity, wind power still only makes up 1.5% of America’s energy mix.

And there is a very real danger that the rapid pace of wind power expansion could be drastically scaled back in the near future. If the federal renewable energy production tax credit is allowed to expire, as it’s currently set to do in just 4 months, it would more than likely chill investments in wind energy considerably.

So what are our “leaders” doing about it? Nothing. For instance, six times the renewal of the tax credits for renewable energy investment has come before the Senate, and six times it has been defeated.

The AWEA has an action online to contact Congress and urge them to renew the renewable energy production tax credit. I urge you to take action.

The Arctic is in the news a lot these days, especially in connection with global warming. That’s due in large part to the fact that the Arctic is the canary in the coal mine that is our planet: as global warming worsens and temperatures rise, melting Arctic sea ice is one of the most stark indicators of the havoc global warming is already wreaking on our planet.

That’s why this recent news report was so alarming (to say the least):

WASHINGTON -- More ominous signs Wednesday have scientists saying that a global warming "tipping point" in the Arctic seems to be happening before their eyes: Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is at its second lowest level in about 30 years.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that sea ice in the Arctic now covers about 2.03 million square miles. The lowest point since satellite measurements began in 1979 was 1.65 million square miles set last September.

With about three weeks left in the Arctic summer, this year could wind up breaking that previous record, scientists said.

Until late last year, scientists predicted that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in the summers as soon as 2030 if we don’t act in time to stop global warming. But new data has led some scientists to predict ice-free summers in the Arctic Ocean within the next 5 to 10 years.

But melting Arctic ice is more than an indicator of a “tipping point” in the climate crisis. In fact, it also serves as a catalyst for even more global warming.

Ice is white, and therefore reflects sunlight, helping keep temperatures down. Darker ocean water, on the other hand, soaks up the sun’s rays, which leads to more warming. As more and more Arctic sea ice melts, more dark ocean waters underneath it are exposed, which causes more warming. It’s a vicious feedback mechanism that scientists have dubbed “Arctic amplification.”

And it’s not the only feedback mechanism at work in the Arcitc. Scientists recently reported that global warming has caused large amounts of methane to be released from the seabed underneath the Arctic Ocean. Methane is a much more powerful global warming pollutant than carbon dioxide. Huge releases of methane into the atmosphere from a warming Arctic will serve to further catalyze not just the vicious cycle of Arctic warming but global warming as well.

As the Arctic sea ice reaches its second lowest level ever -- just one year after the lowest level on record was reached -- the species most in the news these days is the polar bear. The polar bear depends on the Arctic sea ice for every aspect of its life cycle – from breeding to raising its young to hunting and travel. In short, as the sea ice disappears, so will the polar bear. It’s no surprise that recent overflights above Alaska’s Chukchi Sea found nine polar bears swimming hundreds of miles from their ice edge home. What’s ironic is that the overflights were conducted in connection with the push for oil exploration in the Chukchi Sea. Oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea not only threatens polar bears through oil spills and other environmental ills that are a routine part of oil drilling, it also threatens the bears because eventually that oil will be burned, which in turn exacerbates global warming and leads to further melting of their sea ice habitat.

The fact that the Arctic has experienced the lowest and second lowest sea ice melts over the past two years, and polar bears have been spotted swimming hundreds of miles from the sea ice, demonstrates a clear and disturbing trend. Global warming is no longer a concern for the future – it is drastically affecting our planet right now, and we, along with our elected officials, must do something about it.

*Update: The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has just released it's latest Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis report. It's looking less likely that this year will break last year's record. But, according to the report:

Following a record rate of ice loss through the month of August, Arctic sea ice extent already stands as the second-lowest on record, further reinforcing conclusions that the Arctic sea ice cover is in a long-term state of decline. With approximately two weeks left in the melt season, the possibility of setting a new record annual minimum in September remains open.

 

All too often these days, the mainstream media reports on an issue with a tragically skewed sense of “fairness:” they report what both sides say about an issue equally, and shy away from reporting any actual facts or independent research that might refute or bolster either claim. Tired of allegations that they are too liberal, many, many reporters have all but abandoned their role as watchdogs and investigators.

On no issue is this more evident than global warming.

Despite overwhelming consensus within the scientific community that mankind’s actions are warming the planet and changing the global climate for the worse, the mainstream media continues to report the views of misguided global warming deniers as if they have equal merit. A recent AP story is a good case in point:

Global warming has probably made Hurricane Gustav a bit stronger and wetter, some top scientists said Sunday, but the specific connection between climate change and stronger hurricanes remains an issue of debate.

To be fair, this is actually overall a pretty decent article about the effect global warming is having on hurricanes. While it’s true that no single storm can be attrributed to global warming, it is quite clear that hurricanes are getting bigger and more destructive thanks to global warming. The IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report makes this assertion, and so does a report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration earlier this year. But you won’t find references to either of those reports in the article, though together they represent the findings of literally thousands of climate scientists.

Instead, the reporter chose to find a few scientists quibbling about just how much global warming is actually contributing to the size and strength of hurricanes, like this guy: “'We have a real effect due to climate change,' Willoughby said. 'But the dominant effect in my mind is just bad luck.'” In the end, the article doesn’t directly challenge the idea that global warming is making hurricanes more destructive, but it does create the sense that there are several equally viable theories about the effect global warming has on hurricanes. The risk, obviously, is that this will in turn give the unitiated the impression that they needn’t worry about global warming making weather more extreme because everyone is just guessing anyway.

But to those who read the entire article, the numbers quoted in the last line pretty much speak for themselves:

From 1975 to 1990, about 17 percent of all hurricanes around the world were Category 4 and 5. From 1990 to 2004, that jumped to 35 percent. And from 2003 through last year it was up to 41 percent -- not including this year's Gustav.

While many of our politicians are busy debating false solutions like drilling the OCS, nuclear energy, and carbon capture and sequestration, global warming is already wreaking havoc on planet Earth. For instance, five infectious diseases that have been virtually eradicated in the developed world are thriving as temperatures rise across the globe.

Our federal politicians may be delaying action, but several state governments and businesses are moving forward on their own. Here are some of the most promising developments from just the past couple weeks:

• Construction has begun on New Mexico’s first geothermal power plant, which is expected to be generating 10 megawatts of power by next year.
• Two California businesses announced they are building the world’s largest solar power arrays, which will be capable of producing up to 800 megawatts on a sunny day. This is not only a boon to California’s energy mix but also “the latest indication that solar energy is starting to achieve a significant scale,” according to the New York Times.
• Google announced it was investing $10 million in a “breakthrough” geothermal technology as part of its plan to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into sustainable energy development.
• Even global warming-denying federal legislators may soon be treading on recycled carpet when they report to work in our nation’s capitol thanks to new legislation that would make Washington D.C. the first major American city to require new construction projects to follow the standards of the U.S. Green Building Council.
• In Colorado, a local power company met their goal of providing 10% of the state’s power through sustainable sources eight years ahead of schedule, prompting them to double the target to 20%. In the past 18 months alone, Colorado’s wind energy capacity has quadrupled.

A frequent argument against making the switch to sustainable energy sources is that the technology is not there yet, or that it would be prohibitively expensive to make the switch. Not only do they greatly underestimate the engenuity and industriousness of the American people, but these arguments are just plain wrong, as these projects demonstrate. Renewable energy technologies are ready to go, and citizens and industry leaders alike are ready to start seriously combating global warming. All that’s lacking is the political will in Washington.

Some really great news out of Indonesia:

AMSTERDAM – The Indonesian province of Riau has pledged to halt the destruction of its forests and peatlands; a move that will prevent billions of tonnes of carbon from entering the atmosphere.

At a ceremony in the provincial capital Pekanbaru, Riau Governor Wan Abu Bakar announced the temporary ban, which will remain in place until a law is agreed. The move follows Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s pledge at the G-8 Summit in July to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation by 50 percent by 2009.

Indonesia is the world’s 3rd largest global warming polluter, mostly due to deforestation. In many cases, the forests of Indonesia are being cut down illegally to make way for palm plantations. Forest fires in Indonesia have been called the single largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.

Aside from the direct impact a ban on deforestation in Indonesia will have on the amount of pollution being dumped into our atmosphere, it’s just nice to see that some of the world’s leaders actually made meaningful commitments to combatting global warming at the G8 summit. Other commitments made at that summit were not close to being ambitious enough to really tackle the enormity of the climate crisis we’re facing. It’s just nice to see some progress.

In an epic bid to test the veracity of the old adage that repeating a lie often enough makes it true, several of our politicians, ostensibly our “leaders,” are still calling for drilling the OCS as a means to alleviate high gas prices and lead America toward energy independence.

We should be extra careful not to help validate their claims by saying things like, “It won’t lower gas prices for 10 years.” By accepting the idea that gas prices will be lowered at all, you just help perpetuate the myth that we should start drilling as soon as possible. Drilling will not lower gas prices because, as the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell recently said, “easy-to-produce oil and gas [will] likely peak in the next 10 years.” Drilling costs will skyrocket as we tap these harder-to-reach oilfields, offsetting any possible benefit of increased oil production, meaning that drilling the OCS will have a thoroughly negligible impact on gas prices no matter when we start drilling.

But all of the claims made by the Drill Now chorus have been thoroughly debunked, of course. Here’s a factsheet on the topic that compiles research done by independent parties, or in some cases done by federal agencies. (Ah, the irony: Bush is one of the loudest voices calling for drilling the OCS, and it is his federal agencies that have debunked many of his claims.)

For instance, we have 3% of the world’s oil reserves, but consume 24% of the world’s oil (Energy Information Administration, "U.S. Crude Oil, Natural Gas and Natural Gas Liquid Resources, 1999 Annual Report," DOE/EIA-0216 (99) (December 2000)). Clearly, the path to energy independence does not lead down an oil well.

The only real way out of this mess we’re in is to invest in renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Instead of making bogus claims about drilling the OCS, our federal legislators should be passing tax credits and other incentives for investment in renewable energy. Unfortunately, as Thomas Friedman recently pointed out in a scathing op-ed, the Senate has failed on eight separate occasions to renew tax credits for solar and wind investment that are set to expire in December. This has scared off many potential investors, in America and abroad.

Our “leaders” want us to open more land to drilling by oil companies that are already making a killing, but they can’t muster the political will to give tax credits to the folks who are working to implement real solutions. It’s ridiculous.

If you’re as pissed as me about this, tell Congress not to give in to the call to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. They should be concentrating on real solutions.

Biomimicry is the art of using the natural world as a basis for man-made designs. Wikpedia puts it better: “Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a relatively new science that studies nature, its models, systems, processes and elements and then imitates or takes creative inspiration from them to solve human problems sustainably.”

Real world examples include emulating the passive cooling of termite mounds in office buildings, applying the water repellant properties of lotus plants in fabric finishes, and adapting the echolocation abilities of bats for use in walking canes for the blind.

To me this is just a very cool idea: observing how nature has solved various problems, like overheating in Saharan termite mounds, then applying those lessons to human endeavors. The Earth is the ultimate sustainable resource, so it would seem obvious that we should learn everything we can about engineering and design from the natural world if we’re going to learn how to live as a part of the planet rather than living off of the planet – by which I mean, if we’re going to learn to live sustainably rather than continuing to live by raping and pillaging the Earth for all its resources.

Turns out some researchers at MIT have used biomimicry to make a potentially huge breakthrough in developing next-gen solar energy systems:

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

This is obviously a long way from being commercially available, but it’s nice to know this is on the horizon. This could be one of the breakthroughs that totally reshapes our energy industries: “Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.”

That last line, of course, points out the biggest barrier to implementation of solar energy – it’s not the pace of technological development holding us back, but the companies who are making a killing off of supplying us all with power. You see, they are a centralized power source, a monopoly, an entity from whom you have to purchase your power. If everyone is able to make power at their home, we’ll have a decentralized energy grid where everyone is an independent energy producer. This is the way of the future, make no mistake – but that doesn’t mean plenty of industry players and their paid hacks won’t be vociferously protesting the deployment of these technologies.

I recently wrote a post about an action we carried out that targeted a Kimberly-Clark (KC) Kleenex manufacturing facility. A few people wrote in the comments that they would like to know more about the company’s practices and why we’re targeting them. Tons of relevant information can be found in our report, Cut & Run, which we had on-hand at the action to pass out to KC employees and anyone else who wanted to know why we were there. The report documents KC’s complicity in the destruction of the Kenogami Forest, a Boreal forest in northern Ontario, Canada that was once directly managed by KC and still serves as a primary source of tree pulp for the company today.

Clearcuts currently stretch across nearly 27,000 acres of the Kenogami Forest thanks to KC’s logging practices. Worse, the company’s plans for the next few years include the logging of forests that are as much as two centuries old – to make products that are generally used once and then thrown away.

The commenters were specifically wondering about the company’s recycling practices. I pulled some salient info out of the report:

Amount of virgin tree pulp used annually: 3.1 million metric tonnes (3.4 million tons)

Percent of total fibre used in Kimberly-Clark products sold in North America that comes from recycled sources: 18

Percent of total fibre used in Kimberly-Clark consumer brands sold in North America that comes from recycled sources: Less than 1

You read right: less than 1% of all the Kleenex, Scott, and Cottonelle people buy from the store every day is made from recycled content. That’s inconscionable, especially considering that the company isn’t sourcing its virgin fiber responsibly, to boot. Obviously, if the company had a high standard for using recycled content in its products, they wouldn’t have to cut down so much old-growth Boreal forest. But even when it’s necessary for them to use virgin pulp, they could be sourcing it much more susatinably. As the report states:

If the company increased its use of recycled fibre across its entire range of products, it could dramatically reduce its reliance on virgin tree pulp. And if it adopted a more rigorous and credible policy, one that prohibited the use of fibre from Endangered Forests (including intact forests and threatened species habitat) and made a meaningful commitment to wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, Kimberly-Clark could ensure that virgin fibre it did use in its products came from well-managed forests.

Inexplicably, the company has resisted implementing these simple and seemingly commonsense standards. Plus, I haven't even mentioned the social justice issues this raises: the First Nations peoples who have lived in and off of the Kenogami Forest for generation after generation who weren't consulted whatsoever about KC's plans to destroy their homeland, for instance. Needless to say, KC can do better, and we aren’t letting them off the hook until they do.

Representative John Barrow, a Democrat representing Georgia's 12th Congressional district, has created a 2-question survey on his web page to find out how people think we should be dealing with high gas prices.

Click here to tell Rep. Barrow the obvious: Renewable energy is the future!

Update: Greenpeace and  Kimberly-Clark have announced the successful resolution of the Kleercut campaign as the maker of Kleenex has established a new sustainability policy focused on protecting Endangered Forests. Go to www.greenpeace.org/kleercut to find out more!

In our latest effort to call attention to Kimberly-Clark’s unsustainable business practices, several Greenpeace activists locked down the Kleenex facility at Fullerton, CA yesterday (check out the slideshow). I was lucky enough to ride along.

It was quite a thrill to watch as the activists leapt from their vans and proceeded to lock down the main entrance of the facility by chaining themselves to toilets with fake trees in them. Around the corner, on a busy boulevard bordering the facility, another group of activists were unfurling a 40 foot banner that read “Stop flushing forests.”

Local Fullertonians (Fullertonites?) were receptive to the message, too. People honked wildly as they passed the banner and the activists in “Forest Crimes Unit” t-shirts – there were so many honks, in fact, that surely the big-wigs in the administrative office could hear them. Nearly all of the teamsters who passed by tooted their horns. Even one of the policemen on the scene gave our activists a thumbs-up.

It was just a quiet Thursday morning for most of the people commuting to work, but as they drove by and saw our activists their heads turned, their eyes lit up, curiosity got the better of them. And that was the point. The people who live and work there drive by the KC facility every day, but many are (or were) probably unaware of the degradation KC’s products have wrought on Canada’s ancient forests. Our ancient forests. But they know now.

Most people, when they learn of what goes into KC’s disposable paper products, are immediately ready to swear off of Kleenex, Scott, and Cottonelle altogether. We brought thousands of petitions and postcards from people pledging to do just that until KC starts using as much recycled content in their products as they can, and agrees to only source what virgin fiber it still needs from sustainably managed forests instead of vitally important ancient growth Boreal forests. Think they read them? Think they paid any mind to the honking outside their office?

We’ll see. In the meantime, we’ll keep the pressure on. And we won’t be buying any Kleenex.

Now that's more like it:

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Al Gore said on Thursday that Americans must abandon electricity generated by fossil fuels within a decade and rely on the sun, the winds and other environmentally friendly sources of power, or risk losing their national security as well as their creature comforts.

“The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk,” Mr. Gore said in a speech to an energy conference here. “The future of human civilization is at stake.”

Mr. Gore called for the kind of concerted national effort that enabled Americans to walk on the moon 39 years ago this month, just eight years after President John F. Kennedy famously embraced that goal. He said the goal of producing all of the nation’s electricity from “renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources” within 10 years is not some farfetched vision, although he said it would require fundamental changes in political thinking and personal expectations.

“This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative,” Mr. Gore said in his remarks at the conference. “It represents a challenge to all Americans, in every walk of life — to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.”

This Alternet article delivers the goods:
As Facts Emerge, the False Promise of Offshore Drilling Becomes Clear

From a Bush Admin spokesperson admitting offshore drilling won’t make a short-term impact on energy prices to an informed citizen challenging McCain’s shortsighted new policy proposal at a campaign stop, it’s all there.

The article also exposes the inadequacies of the last refuge of offshore drilling proponents. As the facts of this terrible proposal become common knowledge, Bush, McCain, and Gingrich have been ducking for cover behind a recent Rasmussen poll that found that “two-thirds of Americans want to see the offshore ban rescinded.” Problem is that the poll is completely bogus:

But the Rasmussen poll asked (emphasis added) "In order to reduce the price of gas, should drilling be allowed in offshore oil wells off the coasts of California, Florida, and other states?"

After being misinformed that drilling would lower the price of gas, it's not surprising that voters would express support.

But what do you think the results would be if an accurate question was offered, such as: should drilling be allowed off the coasts of California, Florida and other states, even though it would NOT lower the price of gas in the next several years?

The mistake that politicians in support of the gas tax holiday made was taking comfort in polls that did not factor in what would happen after all the facts were laid out.

The facts on coastal drilling are coming out. Poll-driven politicians, beware.

President Bush gave a highly-partisan speech today in which he announced that he was lifting the presidential moratorium on drilling the outer continental shelf for oil. There are a whole slew of reasons why this is a terrible idea that would not work whatsoever. Maybe that's why the speech is more about taking pot-shots at the Democratic Congress than any real, substantive explanation of why he thinks this is the right solution to high gas prices. Put simply, it's not a solution to rising energy costs, period. It's a way for Bush to throw his pals in the oil industry one last giant bone before he leaves office -- or I guess I should say another bone, in addition to his decision not to deal with global warming.

The Natural Resources Defense Council put together a video on Omnisio that details all of the distortions and mistruths contained in Bush's speech. Check it out: The Truth about drilling, gas prices and OCS.

Please oh PLEASE let the Democratic Congress have the guts and the savvy to effectively neutralize this ridiculously partisan election year stunt. Bush has been screwing up this great country of ours for almost 8 years, we can't let him continue to lie to and manipulate the public so that his chosen successor can extend his policies. Bush's disastrous tenure must end at precisely 12:00 noon, January 20th, 2009.

A day after President Bush flippantly excused himself from a G8 summit that failed miserably to establish new policies for addressing global warming by saying "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter," this should surprise no one:

EPA Won't Act on Emissions This Year
Instead of New Rules, More Comment Sought

The Bush administration has decided not to take any new steps to regulate greenhouse gas emissions before the president leaves office, despite pressure from the Supreme Court and broad accord among senior federal officials that new regulation is appropriate now.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce today that it will seek months of further public comment on the threat posed by global warming to human health and welfare -- a matter that federal climate experts and international scientists have repeatedly said should be urgently addressed.

The entire article by the Washington Post is well worth the read, as it details the games the administration has been playing in order to avoid dealing with the looming global climate crisis. A Supreme Court ruling last year ordered the EPA to determine whether or not global warming is a threat to human health and welfare, but the inevitable results -- there is really only one concolusion they can reach, after all -- would have required the EPA to set federal standards to remedy the problem. Rather than provide real leadership on this dire issue, the administration has shamefully pulled every trick they could think of to delay and stall, including censoring their own scientists, suppressing official reports they themselves commissioned, and deliberately fudging data provided to them by their own experts.

Nontheless, I think there are two positives we can take away from this: 1) Even the Bush Administration can't outright deny global warming any more (as much as they'd probably like to), and the call for solutions has grown so loud that they can't ignore it, either; and 2) We're so close to the end of the disastrous Bush Administration that they can choose to run out the clock rather than deal with global warming.

This is very, very cool (h/t Idealog):

On July 7, 2008, the Ecuador Constitutional Assembly – composed of one hundred and thirty (130) delegates elected countrywide to rewrite the country’s Constitution – voted to approve articles for the new constitution recognizing rights for nature and ecosystems. “If adopted in the final constitution by the people, Ecuador would become the first country in the world to codify a new system of environmental protection based on rights,” stated Thomas Linzey, Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. (Read the entire Rights of Nature Language Approved by the Ecuador Constitutional Assembly doc on CELDF’s website.)

The environmental movement in the US has always been a voice for the voiceless – the wildlife, the ecosystems, all of the inhabitants of the Earth that have a right to life every bit as much as humans do but that can’t speak up for themselves. Rarely do enviros organize around the idea that those rights should be made law. And yet look at all of the great movements in American history: abolition, women’s suffrage, civil rights – all rights-based movements. Perhaps it is time to rethink our strategies if we are to effect lasting protections for the natural world. All too often we’ve discovered that it’s not enough to get a species listed as endangered or to stop a dam project from going forward. Our opponents will simply regroup and redeploy with new tactics and new ways to spin the facts. If we codify the rights of the natural world to exist, not only do we have lasting protections for the environment but powerful new tools to stop the polluters and robber-barons who are befouling and plundering the Earth for their own gain.

Recently, our own Carroll Muffett wrote some excellent blogs about his experience attending a coal industry conference and how many of the people working in the industry feel that it is the corporation that is damaging the world, not them. This idea is fostered by the legal rights we’ve afforded to corporations as entities in and of themselves, as if they are people who should enjoy equal rights under the law. This is a misguided notion, to be sure, and the laws that established corporate personhood are “illegitimately” based on Constitutional law, according to Richard Grossman, co-founder of Programs on Corporations, Law and Democracy (read more). Given that corporations are responsible not just for a huge amount of the pollution dumped on our planet but also for obstructing most progressive, environmental causes like global warming legislation, emissions standards, etc., opposing legal corporate personhood should probably be a part of any rights-based environmental movement. We need to assert the rights of the Earth over the rights of the corporations that have been pillaging the Earth.

The world “leaders” attending the G8 summit in Japan issued a statement on global warming today committing their nations to doing pretty much nothing. They boldly declared they would half emissions by 2050 but set no binding targets, no interim targets of any kind, and didn’t even set a base year off of which the 50% reduction would be measured.

World leaders embraced for the first time on Tuesday an ambitious but nonbinding goal of slashing greenhouse-gas emissions in half by midcentury to stave off global warming. Unimpressed environmentalists called the effort too slow and too uncertain.

Leaders of some of the world's richest nations praised the agreement, which endorsed President Bush's insistence that fast-developing countries like China and India join in the effort. But one environmental critic suggested that by 2050 those leaders would be forgotten and "the world will be cooked."

Details were scant in the statement issued by the Group of Eight. Some could become clearer Wednesday when China, India and six other fast-developing nations sit down with the Group of Eight industrial nations — the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, Germany, Russia, Italy and Canada — to discuss climate change strategies.

The G-8 did not specify a base year for its proposed 50 percent cut, and the actual emissions reductions and the effect on the environment could vary hugely depending on what is eventually decided. Reductions from 2005 levels, for instance, would be far less than from 1990 levels, as in the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

It would appear the rest of the 8 “leaders” are prepared to follow Bush into hell and high water, whining about India and China all the way and paying no mind to the moral responsibility of the developed world – which created the problem in the first place – to lead on this global issue. They could perhaps amend this statement after Wednesday’s meeting when they meet with China and India and other developing nations, but developing nations are far more worried about providing basic necessities to their people than global warming. If “the world’s richest nations” won’t commit to really addressing this crisis, why should they? It’s disappointing that the European leaders at the summit, most of whose countries have been far more aggressive about global warming than the US, caved to Bush’s obstructionist tactics. The growing global climate crisis will almost surely be looked upon as yet another massive failure by the Bush administration.

Drill here, Drill Now. That’s the name of Newt Gingrich’s new petition to open oil drilling off of America’s coastlines.

Build 45 new nuclear plants by 2030 – that’s McCain’s plan to combat global warming.

They sound like simple solutions, right? In fact, they’re deceptively simple. And they’re not solutions at all.

No offshore drilling

What does drilling off America’s coastlines really mean? Will it help skyrocketing gas prices? The economy? You?

No.

According to predictions made by The U.S. Energy Information Administration last year: “Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017” if the moratorium on offshore drilling were lifted. The agency also estimated that U.S. oil production would increase by a mere 7 percent - about 200,000 barrels a day - by 2030, which would have an "insignificant" impact on oil prices.

So what will drilling do? It will:

• Expose whales and dolphins to potentially lethal seismic testing
• Open the possibility of oil spills on our beaches
• Line the pocketbooks of big oil companies, who are already sitting on top of 68 million acres of leased land that they aren’t drilling on at all, despite their “concern” about high oil prices

No more nuclear plants

McCain says that building 45 new nuclear plants by 2030 is a course of action “as difficult as it is necessary.” Well, he is right in one regard: It will be difficult. It takes billions of dollars and at least 10 years to bring a new nuclear reactor online.

But necessary? Hardly.

In fact, we don’t have 10 years to wait for clean energy to come online. Not that nuclear is all that clean: you still have to mine the uranium used in the reactors – and mining is a dirty, polluting process – and you have to store the nuclear waste somewhere – waste that can be around for centuries, sitting in a storage facility somewhere, susceptible to leaks. Meanwhile, we have solar and wind technologies, and several other renewable technologies, that are ready to be implemented on a large scale right now.

Which brings me to my next point: nuclear reactors cost so much, the utilities aren’t likely to build new plants unless they are heavily subsidized by the federal government. That’s billions upon billions of dollars that we could and should be investing in clean, renewable technologies – the real solutions to global warming and the true path to America’s energy independence.

So what am I asking of YOU? Well that’s actually plain old simple. Newt Gingrich has convinced more than a million people to sign his petition in support of offshore drilling. So I’m asking you to digg here, digg now. Then send a letter to McCain letting him know you're AGAINST false solutions. And if you really want to stop these false solutions from leading us astray, don’t stop there. Tell your friends about this action, send them this blog, ask them to get involved too.

Tell McCain, tell Gingrich, tell Congress: Don’t you dare drill here, don’t you dare drill here ever. And no new nukes! We demand real solutions to global warming!

While we wait for Cape Wind to clear all of the legal hurdles still preventing it from becoming a reality, the title of “America’s First Offshore Wind Farm” might just be claimed by another project:

(CNN) -- A contract to build what is being called the nation's first offshore field of wind turbines was announced Monday by a Delaware utility and a firm that will build the generators off the Atlantic coast.

Officials from Delmarva Power and Bluewater Wind announced details of their agreement in Newark, Delaware. Bluewater spokesman Jim Lanard said the power company will get about 16 percent of its electricity from a field of 150 wind turbines, anchored in the seafloor about a dozen miles off Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.…

The offshore site is expected to be operational within four years, but the timing depends on how quickly regulatory agencies can review and approve the construction project.

Using electricity generated by the wind, " Delmarva Power will be able to light about 50,000 homes a year, every year" for the duration of the 25-year contract, Lanard said, with first power expected by 2012.

To me, the most important takeaway from the article is that an offshore wind project that has just been announced could be producing energy and helping stabilize the market as soon as 2012, assuming there are no significant legal challenges to the plan. Compare that with offshore drilling, which experts tell us will not produce any oil or gas for sale on the market until 2017. Just another reason why clean, renewable energy sources are by far the better investment.

So I’ve been wondering lately if maybe we should start referring to man-made climate change as something other than “global warming.” While a rise in average global temperatures is the main effect of the unprecedented amount of greenhouse gases we are dumping into our atmosphere, and higher global temperatures are in turn the root cause of many of the drastic impacts we will experience, “global warming” as a premise is too easily attacked in the minds of the average public citizen.

For instance, as weather patterns change, some regions experienced higher than average snowfall last winter. In the minds of the general public – people who aren’t scientists and don’t follow global warming science and news closely – this can automatically debunk “global warming.” Yet, according to James Hansen (via ClimateProgress.org), there are many reasons why we might experience short-term cooling, including a volcanic eruption or ocean dynamics like the Southern Oscillation (more commonly known as the El Niño - La Niña cycle).

I’m not proposing that the environmental movement should cater our entire message to people who are willing to discount something as massively urgent as global warming just because they got a few extra inches in their yard. What I am saying is that there is perhaps an even more powerful and unassailable framework we could be employing, something everyone can recognize and identify with.

I have a friend who works during winters as a snowboarding instructor, and she says that in the snow sports industry it is referred to as “global weirding” when the weather acts all crazy. And the weather has certainly been acting crazy lately:

We’ve all come to know the words “extreme weather.” Wildfires rage across California, and a state of emergency is declared in several counties. Torrential rain in the Midwest and historic levels of flooding from Iowa to Missouri. At least six people are killed by tornadoes in Iowa and Kansas. A heat wave on the East coast has claimed the lives of a number of people. In China, people have barely had time to recover from the recent earthquake. Flooding and rain have killed over sixty and left over a million people homeless. Meanwhile, record drought in many parts of the United States and Australia continue.

The words “extreme weather” are rarely associated in the mainstream media with another two words: “global warming.” But scientists argue these extreme weather events are consistent with changes they have long predicted would accompany global warming. (Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!)

I kinda like the term Global Weirding because it points up the fact that the global ecosystem has been thrown out of whack. But it doesn’t quite convey the severity of the situation. Anyone got any good suggestions?

Bush has been pushing for offshore drilling the whole time he’s been in office, but what else can you expect? He's an oilman. He's just using the power of his office to make his friends even more disgustingly wealthy. Now John McCain wants to help Bush's buddies get rich too! That's right, he's pandering to the lowest common denominator in American politics and calling for opening up all of America's coastlines to oil drilling.

Lots of others are jumping on the bandwagon, as well – including Florida governor (and potential McCain running mate) Charlie Crist and Newt Gingrich, who has started a petition in support of the proposal that claims to have 750,000 signatures.

All of these politicians are trying to exploit the insecurity people feel due to $4+ gas prices to score political points and make their friends in the oil business even richer. And yet opening up our nation’s coastline to drilling is an absolutely ludicrous proposal.

Not only will it pollute the shoreline and harm marine life, but it won’t really do a thing to lower today’s hyper-inflated energy costs – the gas from those oilfields wouldn’t even be on the market until 2017 at the earliest. And there’s not enough oil reserves off our coasts to even make a significant impact on our energy security in the long run. It’s estimated that only about 3% of the world’s oil reserves lie on or off the coast of America – yet we consume 24% of the world’s oil.

The only real, long-term solution to our energy problems is to move toward renewable energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, etc.

Thankfully, the coastal states that will be most affected are not staying quiet about this proposal. For instance, Florida Today has a really excellent piece up about how “utterly reckless” it would be to open Florida’s coastline to drilling. It’s well worth the read.

And Greenpeace has launched its own online action to counteract the call for offshore drilling. Hit it up and help us tell McCain that this is not the proposal he should be running on.

 

The current administration has been woefully inadequate in a number of ways, and the environment – especially with regards to addressing global warming – is definitely one of its chief inadequacies. Many environmental organizations are already looking to the next administration for leadership on global warming, and it appears no matter who gets elected, they will be stronger on the environment than Bush & Co.

McCain, rightly, felt it was important to distance himself from the President on the environment, and has recently begun airing an ad in which a narrator declares: “John McCain stood up to the President and sounded the alarm on global warming five years ago. Today, he has a realistic plan that will curb greenhouse gas emissions” (via CNN).

Well, the timing of this ad could not be more perfect: “The ad is being released the same day McCain is set to give a speech on energy policy in Houston. During the address, McCain will propose lifting the federal moratorium on offshore drilling for oil” (also via CNN). And yes, he does support drilling for oil in ANWR. Way to stand up against Bush there, buddy.

McCain has yet to release an energy policy, so it’s troubling at best that when he finally addresses the topic, he’s coming out in favor of drilling for oil all over our coastline rather than promoting the renewable energy technologies that will propel us towards a sustainable future. In fact, this has become a troubling pattern of McCain’s campaign: spinning away in the media to pander to voters, while pursuing a dubious agenda in reality.

That’s why I dig the “Searching for McCain” action created by Chris Bowers over at Open Left. Here’s how he describes it: “The utilization of simultaneous, widespread embedded hyperlinks in order to connect voters looking for information on John McCain to nine revealing, important news articles on John McCain.” Similar to Bowers’ “Googlebomb the Elections” campaign back in the ’06 election cycle, this is an effort to boost the Google search ranking of 9 news articles on John McCain that provide the real dirt on his voting record and policies – in other words, what you won’t get by simply listening to the man or his representatives in the media.

If you have a blog or website, you should head over to Open Left and link to one or some or all of the articles listed there. To explain how it works very quickly: Google uses links to websites to “contextualize” the content of that website and decide which search terms apply to it; the more links to the site it finds, the higher it is ranked and hence the higher it shows up in search results.

None of the articles pertain to McCain’s energy or environmental policies – or anything that Greenpeace works on directly, actually – so I’m not going to link to them here. It’s a shame, I would love to have participated in the Googlebombing of an article about McCain’s doublespeak on energy and environmental issues.

Well then, guess I just have to get it started: “McCain Touts Green Policies At Wind Energy Firm – But He Opposed Their Key Legislation” (via HuffPo).

If you don't know about RealClimate.org, you should definitely check it out. "Climate science from climate scientists" is their tagline, and that is exactly what you get: real, informed scientific discourse about global warming. Sometimes the posts are hard to read if you're not a climate scientists yourself, but they're always fascinating, well-written, and damned informative.

If you like your climate science news and opinion to be on the useful side, go the RealClimate.org Index page and scroll down to "Responses to Common Contrarian arguments." This section of the site rules. An example is this post, which discusses what real "scepticism" actually entails and why many global warming deniers are not in fact practicing true scepticism at all, but what might be "more accurately described as contrarianism, or 'la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you'-ism."

RealClimate recently dissected the shortcomings of an article in WIRED. You might already know which article I'm talking about, because it had this teaser boldly splashed across the cover: "Attention Environmentalists: Keep your SUV. Forget organics. Go nuclear. Screw the spotted owl." Yeah, a bit melodramatic.

And according to RealClimate, not even close to a fair and accurate assessment. About a section called "A/C is OK," RealClimate wrote: "WIRED got the story egregiously
wrong, and not just because they did the arithmetic wrong. In their rush to be cute, they didn't even make a half-baked attempt to do the arithmetic." If you, like me, were dismayed by this article, the full post by RealClimate, "WIRED Magazine's Incoherent Truths," might also be a good place for you to start digging into the site.

Earth: The Sequel is pretty heavy on the numbers – tons of pollution, millions of dollars in venture capital, megawatts, gigawatts , and so on – but if you can get through the wonkiness, it is a very thought-provoking and inspiring book. Its overall theme is summed up thusly on the final page:

The question is no longer just how to avert the catastrophic impacts of climate change, but which nations will produce—and export—the green technologies of the twenty-first century. A cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide will mean billions of dollars for the innovators who figure out how to save the planet, and provide the opportunity to mobilize virtually every realm of economic activity.

In explaining the “Sequel” bit in the title, the website has this to say:

Earth: The Sequel is the riveting story of the next new thing that none of us can afford to miss: how the multi-trillion dollar energy sector is being transformed — right now — by the American entrepreneurial spirit.

Fred Krupp, author of the book and president of the Environmental Defense Fund, and his co-writer Miriam Horn make a compelling case for a cap-and-trade system as a necessary measure to spur the energy revolution this country needs. Cap-and-trade will level the energy playing field, they argue, giving fledgling renewable energy sources a fighting chance in today’s market. In making their case, Krupp and Horn provide intriguing snapshots of the most promising renewable energy technologies out there – solar, biofuels, ocean/tidal, geothermal, and more – the companies developing them, and the people behind the companies. Earth, The Sequel does a fantastic job of juggling its human interest angles with its business and technology reportage.

The technology I found most interesting: reengineering “the metabolism of yeast to ferment sugar into a pure hydrocarbon fuel.” Now that’s resourceful.

What I found most thought-provoking about the book, however, was a subject only mentioned in passing: the social justice issues that can get entangled with renewable energy development. For example, the Makah tribe have lived off the bounty of Makah Bay in Washington state for thousands of years, and now they’re using the relentless waves of the bay to generate electricity for their homes. The basic mechanics are this: three miles out from shore, a company called AquaEnergy Group has placed pistons that are connected to a buoy on the surface and anchored to the ocean floor. As waves wash past the buoys, the pistons are driven up and down, and they are designed so that they pump water into a turbine, generating electricity. The Makah and AquaEnergy are generating 14 megawatts with the so-called AquaBuOY’s they have installed so far.

The Makah chose to pursue renewable energy over fossil fuels, going so far as to help create the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary when the U.S. Minerals Management Service was proposing to reactivate leases for gas and oil development off the coast of Makah Bay. Now, that very same marine sanctuary the Makah helped create is the single largest impediment to developing their ocean energy project to commercial scale. Tribal councilman Micah McCarty sums up his view of the situation this way:

We are an ancient society that still has a living relationship with our ancestral fishing and hunting grounds. By continuing to sustain ourselves from these resources, we keep the breath of our ancestors alive. It has spiritual meaning. But we repeatedly run up against a belief that nature should be viewed without touching it, kept pristine. I understand where that view derives—it comes from people who live in a wholly altered environment, see a devastating human impact, and overcompensate for that devastation. But it winds up disenfranchising the people who depend on the land.

Marine sanctuaries are definitely a good and necessary thing, and no doubt performing an environmental impact assessment before installing dozens of AquaBuOYs is necessary. The technology is so new there is no previously compiled data for the stewards of the marine sanctuary to refer to. But how can we decide to deny a people their right to live off of their land however they see fit – especially a people who have been so violently denied their right to self-determination in the past as have the Makah tribe? There are two societal views of nature at odds in Makah Bay – the Makah tribe’s, which views nature as something to live with harmoniously while drawing life and sustenance at the same time; and mainstream American society’s, which has traditionally viewed nature as an inanimate resource we can use and abuse however we want, to the point that we have so severely depleted and degraded our natural resources that we now must atone for our sins by setting certain portions off-limits.

It’s a thorny and complex issue, one with no easy answers. Hopefully some compromise can be reached. Earth, the Sequel does not speculate on what the outcome might be for the Makah tribe, but in raising the issue at all the book provides a considerably hearty meal of food for thought. Definitely worth a read if you’re interested in the energy future of our society and the myriad issues we are facing.

Project Hot Seat got a couple good mentions in the national media this past week:

Politico:

Greenpeace is ... expanding Project Hot Seat, the nonpartisan, grass-roots global warming campaign that focuses solely on House districts.

Since 2006, Project Hot Seat’s presence has grown from six congressional districts to about 50, with several offices set to receive a new round of staffers.

“We need real leadership next year,” said Kate Smolski, Greenpeace’s legislative global warming coordinator. “We’re talking to incumbents and challengers in all districts. It doesn’t matter what party gets elected, as long as the party that gets elected gets the next bill right.”

The Nation (though they call it "Global Hot Seat," for some reason; but hey, they got the link right):

As the catastrophic consequences of inaction seep into the public onsciousness people everywhere are starting to take steps to fight global warming. But it's not enough to change light-bulbs and dispense with plastic bags -- we need bold, fundamental, and rapid action on climate change -- action as outlined at 1sky.org, CoolCities.us and Greenpeace's Global Hotseat. 

So I realized that, since my contention in my original post on Radiohead's green tour was that Radiohead is pioneering new ways of addressing global warming by using new tools that we have at our disposal, it would have been good of me to actually demonstrate that in action.

Not everyone lives in a city as small as San Francisco that is simultaneously big enough to have Radiohead come play there, so not everyone will be able to ride their bike to a Radiohead show. The cool thing about the carbon calculator they have up on their tour blog is that you can compare various methods of travel. I went ahead and calculated the carbon emissions for driving a car and taking the bus to the show. Check it out:

 

As you can see, if I took the bus, I’d be responsible for 1.06 kgC02, versus 1.85 kgC02 if I drove.

Before embarking on their current world tour, Radiohead commissioned a study of the environmental tolls of their past two trips across the pond (the band hails from the UK). In an effort to reduce their tour’s eco-footprint, they now transport their equipment by ship rather than air-freight, use LEDs in stage lighting, and had two complete stage sets built – one for Europe and one for America – to cut down on carbon emissions from transporting gear even further. They also work with venues to make special parking available for fans who carpool to the show.

This last measure might be the most important. According to a recent Rolling Stone article, the report Radiohead commissioned found that:

97 percent of the environmental damage done by the group’s 2003 tour – nearly 10,000 tons of C02, the equivalent of 4,000 trans-Atlantic flights – was fan-related. The conclusion was so demoralizing that the group considered scrapping the tour altogether.

Thank god they didn’t cancel the tour! (I’ll be catching them when they play the Outside Lands Festival here in San Francisco!) But that doesn’t mean that they just decided it was out of their hands and to hell with the environmental cost. For instance, the carpooler parking lots they’ve negotiated can reduce the number of cars driven to shows by as much as 10%, according to the Rolling Stone article. And even cooler, Radiohead launched a whole website about the carbon footprint of their tour, where the band discusses the complexities of trying to run a green tour. There's even a carbon calculator that fans can use to determine the most environmentally friendly means of traveling to the show they plan on attending.

The Outside Lands Festival is happening in Golden Gate Park, so I’ll be riding my bike. Which makes me not the best test case for the carbon calculator, but I thought I’d share my results with you anyway:



This is the kind of creativity it’s going to take to stop global warming. We need to rethink everything we do as a society. Luckily, as Radiohead has demonstrated, there is no shortage of tools that we can use.

This is a very cool tool, courtesy of the Drexel University College Democrats, for keeping the pressure on McCain to release his energy policy. In 2000, Bush issued his own energy policy barely a month before the general election, leaving very little time for scrutiny of his proposals. Is McCain trying to pull a similar trick? Given that most of McCain's policies amount to a continuation of the Bush presidency, and Bush's policies have brought us the horribly unstable energy market we have today, it certainly would seem McCain is attempting to use a similar tactic to avoid scrutiny, given that, as of this posting, he has been running for more than 411 days.

John McCain has now been officially running for president this cycle for more than a year, and he has yet to put forward any concrete or specific policy proposals regarding America's energy challenges. I first noticed this some months ago, reading his issues pages and realizing that nowhere does he address energy issues. There is an environment page which is entirely devoid of policy proposals, and several places he refers to the importance of reducing reliance on foreign oil, usually in a national security context. But nowhere does he have any proposals to do that.

You can post the widget to your webpage/blog by visiting the above link and copying the embed code. While there, you can also check out the detailed breakdown of the energy policies laid out by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that the Drexel Dems have compiled.

When I read in the NYT that there were reports being published in the prestigious journal Science showing that biofuels were actually creating more global warming pollution than conventional fuels, I was disappointed but not shocked. A lot of businesses had bought into biofuels, converting commuter, transport, and other vehicle fleets to run on biofuels, so it was disappointing to see that their efforts might have been wasted – or worse, anti-productive. But when you really think about it, adding a small percentage of (what was thought to be) more sustainably produced fuel to regular old fossil fuel is a pretty weak remedy for global warming in the first place.

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) is based on an even more ludicrous premise: keep burning coal, the dirtiest energy source around, but take all of the pollution and bury it underground?!? It almost sounds like a bad joke.

Both of these technologies have the same obvious liability: they allow business as usual to commence rather than fostering the energy revolution our society and global ecology desperately need.

Sadly, the idea of CCS has gained traction as coal industry lobbyists have pressed hard on lawmakers in an attempt to cast CCS as a remedy for global warming, a ploy ultimately aimed at winning more federal subsidies for their clients. But, as a new Greenpeace report shows, there’s no way CCS can be functioning on a large scale soon enough to play a role in mitigating the climate crisis. And even if it was ready to go right now, there’s always the danger that our storage methods could be compromised. All it would take is a small leak to reverse the benefits of storing all that carbon underground.

That’s why we need to tell Congress not to throw our money at this unproven and risky technology.

To play devil’s advocate for a moment: Perhaps the best and only viable argument for developing CCS is that it could be a useful “bridging technology.” In their book The Hot Topic, Gabrielle Walker and Sir David King explain what that means thusly:

[CCS] has the great advantage that it can remove emissions from traditional fossil-fuel plants, thus buying the world some time to develop new low-carbon alternatives. CCS is likely to be especially important for countries like India and China, which are currently exploiting their vast coal reserves at an increasing rate to fuel extremely rapid economic growth.

It is true that China and India are currently developing several new coal plants, and will therefore get substantial amounts of their energy from coal for at least the next several decades. And if the emissions from those plants could somehow be captured and safely stored where they will do no harm, that would be a good thing. But CCS is still in very early stages of development, and there’s absolutely no guarantee that it will ever be a viable technology. It is certain, however, that it won’t help us stop global warming, which is why it is nothing more than a distraction from the real solutions. Our government should not be subsidizing its development with taxpayer dollars.

We have totally clean, renewable, and proven sources of energy available to us right now, like wind and solar. Every dollar our government spends on CCS is a dollar not spent on the truly clean technologies that will fuel the energy revolution, and we should not accept that.

We all know that corporate America has a history of using some incredibly dirty tricks to protect its profits, but it's not often that details of corporate espionage are dragged out into the light of day. Thanks to Mother Jones, that venerable publication of progressive news and investigative journalism, we have new documented evidence of just how low they will go. MJ has just published an exclusive exposé about a private firm that ran Black Ops on Green Groups. The firm, originally known as Beckett Brown International but later called S2i, apparently was hired to target Greenpeace on more than one occasion. 

Because of the work we do, Greenpeace has been targeted by various companies in the past. We've had spies pose as students seeking internships, we've been burgled -- we've seen our share. But apparently in the mid- to late-90s, we were the target of an extensive campaign orchestrated by S2i, which employed former Secret Service agents and active duty police officers who weren't afraid to dumpster dive in the hopes of uncovering something their clients could use. The companies that employed S2i included: Allied Waste, the Carlyle Group, Wal-Mart, Halliburton, Dow Chemicals, Kraft and Monsanto. MJ has the internal S2i documents detailing the intelligence gathered on Greenpeace available for viewing  online, if you're interested.

According to the MJ article:

Greenpeace was the target of one of BBI's more elaborate—and cinematic—intelligence-gathering efforts, according to company documents and an interview with an eyewitness. Jennifer Trapnell, who was dating Ward in the late 1990s, recalls an evening when she accompanied Ward on a job in Washington D.C. "He said they were trying to get some stuff on Greenpeace," she says. Ward wore black clothes and had told her to dress all in black, too: "It was Mission Impossible-like."

In Washington, Ward parked his truck in an alley, she remembers, and told her to stay in the truck and keep a lookout. In the alley, he met a couple of other men, whose faces Trapnell did not see clearly. Ward was talking on a walkie-talkie with others, and they all walked off. About an hour later, the men came back and placed two trash bags in Ward's car. Trapnell says she didn't know what they did with the bags—and Ward never explained. In addition to Ward's work, on several occasions in 2000, Jim Daron, the Washington cop who also worked for BBI, submitted reports to BBI for surveillance of Greenpeace's offices.

BBI gathered numerous internal Greenpeace documents, including financial reports. It also obtained the instructions for using the security system at Greenpeace's offices. And the Greenpeace files at BBI included a handwritten document that appears to record attempts to crack the security codes on entry doors with notations such as "codes do not match" and "open."

BBI prepared reports on Greenpeace—based on "confidential sources"—for Ketchum. In at least one case, according to Rick Hind, legislative director for Greenpeace (who reviewed these reports at Mother Jones' request), a BBI report written for Ketchum contained information tightly held within the group about planned upcoming events. And a December 2, 1999 BBI report (which does not mention Ketchum) noted that Greenpeace had chosen Kellogg's, Kraft, and Quaker as "their main targets in the GE campaign," that it was developing a campaign tactic called "Food-Aid Expose" (which would highlight the export of genetically-modified foods to other countries), and that it was helping a Wall Street Journal reporter track food companies involved in the debate over genetically-engineered foods.

We were, of course, not alone in being targeted. Check out the whole article, it's pretty fascinating in a morbidly bizarre kind of way. The upshot of it all, of course, being that while BBI/S2i has gone out of business, its various chief officers and operatives may still be out there. So be careful. And shred sensitive documents before you throw them away. Greenpeace does.

John Javna’s original 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth, released in 1990, was a breakout bestseller. The book contained 50 eco-tips that were a revelation to many people who were just beginning to understand the severity of global warming and waking up to the environmental cause. But, according to Javna, the book ultimately might have been responsible for creating a certain sense of complacency about the problems we face:

Eco-tips alone can never have a significant impact on “saving the earth.” They’re baby steps—and if they don’t lead to something bigger, then we’re in a world of trouble. Literally.

The problem, as Javna saw it when he set out to remedy the situation in the 21st Century edition, which has just been released, was that the original 50 Simple Things “didn’t really educate people about the nature and extent of the environmental problems themselves.” Such a charge will never be leveled at this new edition of the book.

Javna partnered with 50 leading environmental organizations to create mini-primers on 50 of the most pressing environmental issues facing us today. He suggests that you don’t read the book straight through, but instead pick an issue you think you might be interested in working on and start there. The new 50 Simple Things lays out each problem, introduces you to the partner organization for that problem, and provides a basic road-map for action. (I just went ahead and read the book straight through anyway, because I really found it quite horrifying to read about all the problems we face and quite inspiring to read about all the dedicated groups working towards solutions. It was a good read.)

The new 50 Simple Things is still based on a pretty simple idea, and the book is easy to use. There’s really nothing simple about most of the solutions, of course, as the problems are fairly large and complex. And most of the solutions certainly won’t be easy to accomplish. But if even half the people who were inspired by the original 50 Simple Things are galvanized to action by the 21st Century edition, it could be a significant boon to the myriad organizations that make up the environmental movement today.

1Sky partnered with Javna to stop global warming.

Greenpeace partnered with Javna on the issue of pollution in our oceans:

The United Nations estimates that there are 46,000 pieces of plastic per square mile in the world’s oceans. Plastic bags in oceans kill a million seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals a year.

Visit www.50simplethings.com/ocean to learn more about the issue and how you can get involved with Greenpeace.

Help us protect our oceans!

I’ll be guest-blogging on the 50SimpleThings.com site very soon. I’ve also been promised a link to a site where Greenpeace members can get a discount on the book. To tide you over, check out the Greenpeace page on the 50 Simple Things site: “The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” And check out all the other fantastic organizations and causes as well. Like John Javna says: “Just pick a spot and jump in.”

If you’re concerned about global warming and want to do something about it, Joseph Romm’s Hell and High Water: Global Warming – the Solution and the Politics – and What We Should Do (HarperCollins, 2007), is a fantastic primer.

Romm starts off by discussing what the best scientific models predict will happen to our planet if global warming goes unchecked for the remainder of the 21st century – hence the title, Hell and High Water, since we’ll probably see rising sea levels and recording flooding coupled with record droughts and uncontrollable wildfires.

The second half of the book discusses global warming solutions. Romm clearly and concisely details the technologies and policies we need to adopt to avoid the worst consequences of global warming and, along the way, dissects the rhetoric used by Republicans and conservatives to continually deny global warming is a serious problem (and somehow still be taken seriously) in order to delay any kind of meaningful action.

Rather than rehash Romm’s arguments, since you can read them for yourself, I’d like to share a few ideas I had while reading the book. I found the chapters on global warming rhetoric to be the most interesting.

Even Republican messaging guru Frank Luntz admitted, in a 2002 memo, that “The scientific debate is closing” against the Republican position on global warming. Since they can’t possibly prove the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is wrong, they have to rely on obfuscating and creating doubt around the issue. As long as the public has any doubt left in their minds, they are going to be okay with delaying action.

Here are some ideas for reframing the global warming debate that were suggested to me by Hell and High Water:

•    Skeptics = Deniers

“Skeptics” is a term that makes it sound as if the viewpoint that global warming is not caused by humans and/or is not a serious problem is actually legitimate. Romm prefers to call them Delayers and Denyers, which implies they are denying reality and delaying the inevitable, and I think that is a very valuable tactic. (Minor quibble: I would personally rather spell it Deniers; not sure if Romm’s spelling is the British version or what, but “deniers” is actually a word, whereas “denyers” isn’t.)

•    Climate Change = Global Warming

Luntz encourages his devotees to always use the phrase “Climate Change” because it “sounds less frightening than global warming.” Well, it is in fact a frightening situation. I’m not saying we should use fear to persuade the public – that is another Republican tactic – but Global Warming does indeed connote the severity of the situation. It denotes that something is being done to the planet, whereas Climate Change is more passive and sounds like something that would probably be happening anyway.

•    Sound Science = Politicized Science or Science Fiction

Republicans like to use the term “Sound Science” as often as possible in order to give the impression that that is what they are basing their views on. But there is no reason to deny the existence of global warming except for political or monetary gain. The arguments the Deniers are peddling are not based on science at all, they are pure fiction.

•    More research/New technological breakthroughs are needed = We can’t afford to wait

As far back as 2001, Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science, said: “Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic [Global Warming] is rare in science.” There has been exhaustive research done on the causes and effects of Global Warming, and the overwhelming consensus is that humans are heating the planet and that this will have extremely dire repercussions for the planet and all of the creatures living on it. What’s more, we have the technology needed to begin drastically lowering the amount of greenhouse gases we are releasing into the atmosphere. What’s really needed is the political will to implement progressive emissions standards and clean technologies, because we can not afford to wait any longer before taking bold and decisive action. The truth is that if we don't implement some sort of emissions caps and cleaner energy standards now, far more restrictive and onerous regulations will be required in the future when the situation has become more dire.

The scientific community has been identifying the causes and predicting the effects of Global Warming for decades now. Those predictions have been consistently reliable. There is no longer any room for doubt and, unfortunately, no time left for debate.

According to an article in the NYT today:

California regulators cut by 70 percent the number of emission-free vehicles that automobile manufacturers must sell in California in the three years beginning in 2012. At the same time, the regulators effectively required, for the first time, that tens of thousands of plug-in hybrid vehicles be sold in those years.

According to the NYT's reporter, Felicity Barringer, this was an action that "dismayed some environmentalists," though these same unnamed environmentalists were supposedly mollified by the potential for this action to lead to new research into hybrid vehicle technology.

Now, hybrids are definitely a step in the right direction and all, but they still create at least some pollution. No matter how you spin it, this is a drastic scaling back of the very progressive campaign originally launched by CA in the early 90s to get fossil fuel-burning vehicles off CA roads. Basically, it would seem the California Air Resources Board ( CARB ), the regulatory body that made this decision, caved to the automobile industry.

Granted, this isn't as big a scale-back as the 90% cut in "pure" zero emissions vehicles that had been proposed to the board -- a proposal that prompted the Union of Concerned Scientists to post an internet action alert. It's obviously too late to "Save California's Electric Vehicle Program," but, hell, why not go ahead and keeping letting CARB know how you feel: the action alert is, as of my writing this, still up. 

Or you can just contact them directly:

California Air Resources Board
Headquarters Building
1001 "I" Street
P.O. Box 2815
Sacramento, CA  95812

Phone: (916) 322-2990 or (800) 242-4450 or FAX: (916) 445-5025