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!

We're well into cold and flu season by now, meaning lots of tissues are no doubt getting used and thrown away every day. We've been working for years to let folks know that they should not use Kimberly-Clark products—like Kleenex, Scott, Cottonelle, and Viva, among other brands—because the company is literally wiping away ancient forests to make their disposable products.

We've asked you to avoid K-C's brands, and now we'd like to tell you which products you can use with a guilt-free conscience. Brands like Green Forest, Seventh Generation, and 365 are made from recycled material, aren't wiping away ancient forests, and don't use toxic chlorine compounds. Find more brands that are recommended, which can do better, and which should be avoided at all costs in our Recycled Tissue and Toilet Paper Guide. Flip through it online or print it out and keep it in your wallet, purse, or fanny pack. It'll come in handy when you're at the store.

And if you want to help us get the word out, post this neat little widget anywhere you can—your Facebook or MySpace profile, your blog or website. Click the "Share" button in the lower right-hand corner to grab the embed code or to add it to your preferred social network with the click of a button. So easy!

President Obama’s selection of Steven Chu to be his Secretary of Energy was greeted with much enthusiasm by many environmentalists, including us. This interview pretty plainly spells out why:

In his first interview since taking office last month, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist offered some of the starkest comments yet on how seriously President Obama's cabinet views the threat of climate change, along with a detailed assessment of the administration's plans to combat it.

Chu warned of water shortages plaguing the West and Upper Midwest and particularly dire consequences for California, his home state, the nation's leading agricultural producer.

In a worst case, Chu said, up to 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear, all but eliminating a natural storage system for water vital to agriculture.

"I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen," he said. "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California." And, he added, "I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going" either.

Sounds dire indeed, but we have time to fix it. Precious little time, as it turns out, which is really why the Obama team is so welcome to anyone interested in the health and well-being of our planet.

As Mr. Chu pointed out in this interview, global warming is a threat to pretty much everything we know and love, yet many people choose to remain blissfully unaware of this threat. But, at long last, we have a White House that gets it. Our task now is to build the movement that will support President Obama’s attempts to stop global warming. The dirty fossil fuel industry has deep pockets, you can bet they’ll be fighing each and every measure designed to stop global warming so they can protect the cash flow they stuff those deep pockets with. Only overwhelming and undeniable popular demand for solutions will give the Obama Administration and our allies in Congress the mandate they need to override the special interests and do what’s right for the world.

To whit: if you’re anywhere near DC, or you can get there by March 2nd, you should take part in the Capitol Climate Action (if you like, RSVP here).

If you can’t make it to DC, there’s still plenty you can do to take action and show Congress that we the people support global warming solutions. The important thing is just that we all get involved and do whatever we can. Tell your friends, tell your family. Let’s make sure that the energy revolution starts right here and right now.

Indian company TATA is building a new port at Dhamra, which is dangerously close to a sea turtle nesting site at Gahirmatha, on the Orissa coast. Greenpeace India has a petition set up so you can let TATA know how you feel about their decision to imperil this guy:



Here's more about the situation from Greenpeace India:

Consider this… Olive Ridley turtles rely on an inexplicable, in-built navigation system that guides them, when it’s time for them to reproduce, back to the precise coast on which they were born.

Now consider something else… The proposed Tata port at Dhamra threatens a nesting site that is amongst the last honeymoon suites for the remaining Olive Ridleys, a highly-endangered species that swims all the way here from places as far away as Australia and the Philippines.

When you consider these two facts together, it seems only logical that Tata would reconsider its decision to build the port at Dhamra, and build it in an area that’s less ecologically sensitive. It seems especially logical when it’s Tata we’re talking about.

After all, Tata has grown from a national giant into an international player, while constantly highlighting it’s stated commitment to the principles of social upliftment, environmental justice and sustainable development. The Tata brand is ubiquitous, present in hundreds of products used by millions of Indians every day.

Help Greenpeace India tell TATA to live up to its stated principles and save the turtles!

Dr. James Hansen is an internationally-recognized climate scientist, one of the world's preeminent experts on global warming. In the video below, Dr. Hansen calls for Americans to take part in the Capitol Climate Action on March 2nd at the Capitol Power Plant in Washington DC. This plant is providing dirty energy to Congress, which is why it's the target of what's expected to be the largest display of civil disobedience against global warming in US history.

Dr. Hansen warns that unless we stop burning coal, the country's largest source of global warming pollution, young people will inherit a dramatically different world than the one we know and love today. For more info on the action, visit www.CapitolClimateAction.org. For more info on dirty coal, go here.

Susan Sarandon lent her voice to this PSA asking everyone to join us at the Capitol Climate Action in Washington, DC on March 2nd, 2009. Thousands of people will come together that day in a multi-generational act of civil disobedience at the Capitol Power Plant — a plant that powers Congress with dirty energy and symbolizes a past that cannot be our future.

Along with various other entities, we filed a federal lawsuit in 2002 to force two U.S. agencies to address the global warming implications of their financing activities abroad. We’re glad to report that the suit was settled on February 6th — more than six years after the suit was originally filed — and that the resolution of the suit establishes important legal precedents related to global warming.

We joined with Friends of the Earth and the city of Boulder, Colorado to file the suit in August 2002, and were later joined by the California cities of Arcata, Santa Monica and Oakland. Our complaint alleged that the Export-Import Bank of the United States (ExIm)and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) illegally provided more than $32 billion in financing and insurance to fossil fuel projects over 10 years without assessing whether the projects contributed to global warming or impacted the U.S. environment, as they were required to do under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The fossil fuel projects financed by the two agencies from 1990 to 2003 accounted for nearly eight percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, or nearly one third of total U.S. emissions.

In August 2005, a federal judge found that we — “the Plaintiffs” as they say in legalese — suffered economic and other damages from climate change and therefore had standing to sue under NEPA, opening up the courthouse doors for the first time to those injured by climate change. Testimony from the case, which successfully asserted that climate change is real and caused by human activities, later informed the Mass. v EPA decision, in which the Supreme Court held that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are pollutants that can be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Under the settlement agreed to on Feb. 6th, the Export-Import Bank will begin taking carbon dioxide emissions into account in evaluating fossil fuel projects and create an organization-wide carbon policy. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation will establish a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with projects it finances by 20 percent over the next ten years. Additionally, both agencies will commit to increasing financing for renewable energy.

The settlement represents an important victory in the continuing campaign to hold both agencies accountable for their contributions to climate change, and sets a valuable precedent for demanding accountability of major financial institutions on the issue of global warming in the future.

If you're into this sort of thing, you can read several legal documents related to the suit here. Reactions from all of our fellow plaintiffs can be found in this press release.

Most everyone who visits this site or reads this blog with any regularity has probably already heard about the Capitol Climate Action – a massive direct action targeting the Capitol Power Plant in Washington, D.C. This plant no longer generates electricity, but it does supply other forms of energy to the Capitol building, such as the heat that makes the Capitol building inhabitable during the winter. And it uses coal, the dirtiest fuel available, for producing that energy. It’s perfectly symbolic of the inordinate amount of influence the coal industry has on our decisionmakers.

If you want to help us send our message – “Coal out of Congress!” – but you can’t make it to D.C. on March 2nd, you can still get involved by hosting or attending a house party on February 12th. You'll be able to join a conference call with Mike Clark, interim executive director of Greenpeace USA, and Matt Leonard, Capitol Climate Action coordinator, to get the latest details on the action itself as well as find out how you can get more people from your community involved.

And you can even make sure your voice is represented in our nation’s capitol on March 2nd by creating a pinwheel with your name and a personal message on it. Activists in D.C. will use these pinwheels to set up a temporary “wind farm” on Capitol Hill on the day of the action. You’ll be helping show Congress what America’s clean energy future looks like! So get on it: Sign up to host or attend a house party on Feb. 12th.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, the wind energy industry installed “8,358 megawatts (MW) of new generating capacity (enough to serve over 2 million homes)” in 2008. To achieve this growth, the wind industry now employs 85,000 people. This is not only a 70% increase over the number of wind jobs that existed in 2007, but it also means, as this CNN article points out, that the wind industry now employs more people in the United States than coal mining. I’m not sure how big a milestone this latter point actually is — it will be a much bigger deal when the wind industry employs more people than the entire coal industry, not just coal miners — but it’s a hopeful sign nonetheless. We’re getting there.

The global economic crisis has hit renewable energy developers and financiers as hard as any other industry, however. Towards the end of 2008 development of renewable energy really took a nosedive because the money simply wasn’t there any more. Now more than ever, we need an extension of the renewable energy tax credits, which were allowed to expire last year.

Thankfully, the Obama administration and Congressional leaders are “looking at including as much as $25 billion of energy tax credits in the economic stimulus package in an effort to bolster renewable energy projects, fuel-efficient cars and biodiesel production,” according to the Washington Post. The article goes on to say that:

The main elements under consideration include a two-year, $8.6 billion extension of the production tax credit for renewable energy, an item that favors wind power projects. Obama advisers are considering a proposal from the wind and solar industry that would make those credits refundable or count them against past taxes because many financial firms that provided capital for those projects no longer have taxable income and can't use the credits.

If these provisions make it into the stimulus plan, and the plan then gets passed with these provisions more or less in tact, it would go a long way towards getting the energy revolution off the ground. There’s lots more to do, but this would be a good start.

If you want to know more about the environmental impact of the economic stimulus package, you’re in luck! We just published a report all about it (executive summary here).

Since the economy first started going sour, we’ve repeatedly made the point that we could alleviate our economic woes by implementing effective policies to kickstart an energy revolution and combat global warming. We’ve highlighted reports showing that renewable energy creates more jobs than fossil fuel energy. We’ve pointed to anecdotal evidence showing that renewable energy reinvigorates dying communities and gives the people who live in them a renewed sense of purpose and patriotism. We even put out a blueprint for how to get all this done. If done right, the economic stimulus could be the energy revolution's shot heard 'round the world.