Yesterday we released a new report, “America’s Share of the Climate Crisis: A State-By-State Carbon Footprint,” to highlight the United States’ responsibility for taking the lead to solve global warming given our disproportionately large role in creating the problem. Using data from the World Resources Institute's Carbon Analysis Indicators Tool, the report examines each state's carbon dioxide emissions produced by fossil fuel combustion from 1960 to 2005 and compares those emissions to 184 other countries.

It's a pretty staggering report. For instance, my home state, Texas, would rank as the 6th biggest polluter in the world if it were its own country. There's also this fact: "The combined historic emissions of just seven states—Texas, California, Illinois, New York, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Ohio—totalled 96,517 MtCO2, more than any other country in the world, including China (92,950)."

Read more and download the report so you can check your state's emissions numbers. Congress may be blowing it with the climate legislation, but the EPA's endangerment finding gives it the ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Write the EPA now and tell them you want them to issue strong new rules to control global warming pollution.

Today we launched the “Cool IT Challenge”, a campaign to turn IT industry head honchos like Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Intel’s Paul Otellini, and Michael Dell into advocates for strong global warming policies and providers of effective global warming solutions. (The video at the bottom of this post does a good job of explaining the campaign.) There are two main reasons why this campaign is so cool:

1. A peak in global emissions by 2015 followed by a rapid decline to as close to zero emissions as possible by 2050 is crucial to protecting the climate, and the IT industry has claimed to have the potential to cut 15 percent of total emissions via tech solutions like a smart grid. Many tech leaders have already established initiatives to green their own companies, but if they then turn around and help society as a whole implement solutions to get more energy efficient while still using all the fancy new technologies we’ve come to rely on (and some new ones we haven’t even heard of yet, hopefully!), who knows how big of a contribution the IT inudustry could make to stopping global warming.
2. This campaign was just made for the web. Check out the website, it’s got lots of cool features to play with. For example, you can place bets on which IT industry leader will be leading the pack at the end of the summer when we re-evaluate them all. And more games are coming soon! Plus there’s plenty of ways to invite your friends to play with you (yeah multiplayer action!), dig into our assesment scores for each industry leader (currently in first: IBM’s Samuel Palmisano, with a paltry 29 out of 100 — come on IT big wigs, you can do better!), email these IT leaders and urge them to be climate leaders, and, if you’re a blogger, get your blog added to our featured links list by linking to our page with the most creative content!

We’ve ranked the IT leaders that are part of the challenge based on five criteria: Public Climate Speech; Political Advocacy; Climate Solutions; Own Emissions Targets; and Renewable Energy Use. Check out the site now, find out how the IT leaders are measuring up, and place your bets!

The head of our global warming campaign, Damon Moglen, sent the following update out to our supporters yesterday stating our reasons for withdrawing our support from the Waxman-Markey climate legislation, America's Clean Energy and Security Act.

Here's Damon's statement:

In these last weeks, the first piece of legislation attempting to seriously address global warming was introduced in Congress. The bill - authored and introduced by Representatives Waxman and Markey - started off as a good first step toward solving the climate crisis.

But following pressure from an all-out $45 million lobbying push by the coal, gas and oil industries, the bill looks very different today than it did two weeks ago. That's why I want to let you know where Greenpeace stands on the bill.

Unfortunately, we simply can't support this bill in its current state. Here are a few of the reasons why:

• The bill calls for reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by less than 4-7 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Even with supplemental reductions elsewhere in the bill, that's way short of the 25-40 percent cuts that leading scientists call for.
• The biggest polluters would receive hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies. This is unacceptable. Taxpayers should not foot the bill for dirty industries hoping to continue business as usual.
• Given all of the carbon "offsets" that the bill offers to dirty industries, they could avoid reducing their greenhouse gas emissions for more than a decade. By that time, it could be too late to stop the worst impacts of global warming.
• A new generation of dirty coal-fired power plants will be supported through some $10 billion in ratepayer subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration (or CCS) - an unproven technology that doesn't even exist yet.
• The bill sets a renewable electricity standard that would achieve less than states are likely to accomplish on their own.

All together, this bill simply does not do what the science says is necessary to avoid the worst effects of global warming and to rescue the climate. And for us here at Greenpeace, that has always been the bottom line.

This moment requires bold leadership from President Obama and Congress, and Greenpeace fully intends to demand just that. We'll be in touch over the coming weeks and months to let you know exactly what's needed to rescue the climate. In the meantime, I want to personally thank you for your activism and commitment to this important issue. I'm looking forward to working with you.

Sincerely,
Damon Moglen
Greenpeace Global Warming Campaign Director

Yesterday Greenpeace held a rally in Virginia outside of the first of two EPA Endangerment Hearings that will take place this week. These hearings come about a month after the EPA announced its conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels endanger human health and welfare –  which by law gives the EPA the right to regulate those emissions under the Clean Air Act. The EPA's endangerment finding is a good sign that the Obama Administration might be willing to regulate greenhouse gases should Congress fail to act. The Administration is holding these public hearings through June as part of the public input process.

We showed up to yesterday’s hearing with banners reading, "The Science is Clear,” “Rescue the Climate,” and stood outside the hearing facility for all to see. From blocks away volunteers could be heard chanting: "EPA: today is the date. Rescue the Climate before it's too late!" We got honks from cars passing by and waves and shouts from supporters on foot. It was clear we didn't go unnoticed.  

With the same industry lobbyists inside the hearing as have been inside Congressional offices this spring, it's more important than ever that we are representing the movement and always reminding the media, the public, and elected officials that there is a human face to the impacts of climate change.

The next hearing is in Seattle on Thursday. We’ll be there too. Check back for an update!

Greenpeace, along with Friends of the Earth and Public Citizen, today released a joint statement expressing deep concern with the direction the Waxman-Markey draft bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), has taken. Here is the statement in full:

We are extremely troubled by the reports coming out of the Energy and Commerce Committee last night on additional compromises to the already flawed American Clean Energy & Security Act. The world needs real leadership from Congress and the Administration to address global warming – action that will enable us to transform our economy with clean, renewable energy technology, new green jobs and show leadership internationally. If reports are true, the compromises being struck on the bill undermine these goals.

For more info, you can also read Greenpeace’s original statement on the Waxman-Markey draft bill, and read Friends of the Earth’s assessment.

One of our main criticisms from the outset was that the draft bill was largely silent on how it would allocate revenues from the sale of pollution permits within the cap and trade scheme proposed by the bill. This money should be used to build clean energy generation capacity and new infrastructure such as a smart grid. Instead the discussion draft contained giveaways and loopholes for the coal industry and its mythical “Clean Coal.”

The bill has, according to reports, become significantly worse in this respect over the past week or so. Bloomberg recently reported that Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is offering as much as an estimated $40 billion in free pollution permits to “utilities, refiners and manufacturers.”

President Obama initially called for 100% of pollution permits to be auctioned off, and his budget calls for as much as 83% of the revenues to be given back to middle class taxpayers to help pay for higher energy costs. If we give as much as 55% of the permits away for free – as is apparently being discussed – it’s unclear how Obama could afford to pay for such a middle class tax break. Such a giveaway is especially appalling given the example we have to learn from: The EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme originally gave away so many permits that pollution permits were trading for as little as 1 euro cent, providing no incentive for polluting industries to clean up their act. Now apparently the fossil fuels industries – who have spent some $45 million lobbying against the bill – are succeeding in convincing House Democrats to make the same mistake.

(UPDATE: Joe Romm over on ClimateProgress.org argues that it was not the giveaway of permits that caused the price to crash: "The EU’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) had too many total permits. That was why the price crashed, not because those permits were given away for free.  If the EU had auctioned all the tons, the price still would have crashed as soon as everybody realized there were too many in the market." I apologize for missing this nuance. It was an oversight, not an attempt to mislead. But the simple fact (and the overall point I was trying to make) still remains: Waxman-Markey was already flawed when it was first introduced as a discussion draft, and the industries creating all the pollution that will be regulated by the bill have had an inordinate amount of influence in shaping it since then.)

There are also reports that the giveaway to companies researching Carbon Capture and Sequestration, a totally unproven technology still decades away from large-scale implementation (if it even proves viable at all) and therefore a dangerous distraction from real global warming solutions, could be as much as $10 billion. And the emissions targets contained in the bill get worse and worse. The bill originally called for roughly the equivalent of what science says is necessary to avert the worst effects of global warming: 25 to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. But the baseline being used now is 2005, and the bill is said to only aim for reaching 17% by 2020.

Even worse, the conservative Democrats who have been most instrumental in watering down the bill are apparently attempting to get that target reduced even further, to 6% of 2005 levels by 2020.

Right now, these roughly 10 or 12 conservative Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, all of whom have received substantial campaign contributions from the fossil fuels industries, are standing in the way of real progress in combatting global warming. It’s absolutely inconscionable. If America doesn’t have a strong plan in place by December, the rest of the world is unlikely to be willing to commit to any kind of bold action in Copenhagen during the UN climate talks.

Who are these Dems, you ask? Check out this Guardian roundup, it has all the dirt on the Dems in bed with the dirty industries who are more worried about protecting their profits than the wellbeing of the entire planet.

Waxman expects to bring the bill before the full House Energy and Commerce Committee for markup by next Monday. There will be more info on what you can do to stand up with Greenpeace and the movement to stop global warming very soon, I promise…

We’ve launched a new iPhone app version of our Recycled Tissue and Toilet Paper Guide. The app, created for us by 3rd Whale, makes it easy to find the paper products that are easiest on the Earth. Our experts evaluated over 100 brands and only recommended those that: contain 100% overall recycled content; contain at least 50% post-consumer recycled content; and are bleached without toxic chlorine compounds. We also rank so-so products that “could do better” and warn you off products that “should be avoided.”

The app has functions that allow you to browse by product category or search by brand name, as you can see from this screen-grab to the right.

If you download the app, please be so kind as to rate it!

And I swear, recycled TP is not as bad as some companies would have us think. I’ve been using it for years, and my bum is no less sensitive than the average joe’s. No need to be harsh on your rear to be kind to the ancient forests of the world! Don’t believe me? Just check out this video where a FOX news anchor – yes, FOX – couldn’t tell the difference between recycled and regular toilet paper.

Just thought I'd share this video from our action outside the Dept. of the Interior last Friday following Sec. Salazar's announcement that he's going to just let global warming doom all polar bears.

As always, we'd greatly appreciate it if you could favorite our video on YouTube!

 

Sec. Salazar has announced he won't rescind the "polar bear special rule," which exempts global warming from protections afforded polar bears by the Endangered Species Act. If we're going to save the polar bears and stop global warming, we can't let Salazar off the hook for this travesty. Please call Sec. Salazar today and tell him how disappointed you are.

Making a call is easy, fast, and extremely effective. Simply follow the steps below:

1) Call (202) 208-7351 between the hours of 9am and 5pm ET. If you can't call then and don't speak to a person, skip step #2 and leave the message below.

2) The phone will be answered by a staff person in Secretary Salazar's office. Tell them your name and city and state you are calling from, and then tell the staffer you are calling to leave a message with Secretary Salazar about the Endangered Species Act and polar bears. You will then be asked if you would like to use the Interior Department's comment line, politely say no, and say that you would prefer leaving your comment with the staff person you are speaking with so that he/she can give that message to the secretary directly.

3) Leave your message. Here's a sample:

"Hi, My name is ______ and I am calling from ______. I am extremely disappointed that the Secretary did not take action to strike the polar bear special rule from the Endangered Species Act. This means that polar bears are not protected from global warming, which is the primary threat to their long term survival. Please give the Secretary the message that I am calling to express my disappointment that he did not take action to protect the polar bear from global warming."

4) Let us know that you made the call by clicking the button below.

We can't let Salazar continue to bend to industry pressure. Please call his office today.

I wrote earlier in the week about the Waxman-Markey draft bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), which is stalled in sub-committee. Well, there has already been a lot of activity on that bill, and on global warming legislation in general, in the past couple days. So an update is definitely in order.

ACES, of course, would create a cap-and-trade scheme to lower our emissions and spur investment in renewable energy. Cap-and-trade means capping emissions and selling, or trading, emissions permits, forcing industry to pay for their pollution. The revenue from the sale of these pollution permits could then be used to invest in renewable energy generation and infrastructure, like a new “smart” electricity grid, as well as help developing nations bypass the dirty energy economy altogether in favor of a clean energy economy. One of the main problems with the ACES bill, which I didn’t actually point out in my last post, was that the bill did not have much to say about where revenue from the cap-and-trade scheme would go.

But Rep. Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, has introduced a new bill based on a different idea that addresses the problem of where the revenues would go. His approach is being called “cap-and-dividend,” because he wants to give all of the proceeds from the sale of pollution permits directly back to tax-paying Americans, essentially as a dividend on the investment of tax-payer money into America’s energy infrastructure.

A cap-and-trade scheme would require us to ratchet down the number of pollution permits available – the point being to eliminate emissions as much as possible as quickly as possible – so it will inevitably drive up the cost of energy. These increased costs will of course be passed on to consumers. President Obama’s budget proposes to use as much as 83% of the revenues from cap-and-trade to pay for a middle class tax cut to help offset the higher energy costs. Hollen’s proposal to pay Americans back directly through dividends on the investment of tax money is an intriguing notion, perhaps easier to sell to the American people than a tax cut because of its simplicity.

Not surprisingly, there are many industries trying to get a piece of the pie as well. Even less surprisingly, there is already a shady, deliberately non-transparent industry group running radio ads in opposition to ACES in the districts of several moderates on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. (Least surprising of all? This group is affiliated with another group that gets funding from ExxonMobil.) Check out Climate Progress for all the details, insofar as they have emerged, about the American Energy Alliance, the front group running the ads and repeating the same debunked lies about the likely costs to taxpayers of a cap-and-trade scheme.

Whether or not cap-and-dividend ends up catching on as the solution, it’s important to consider all options. We need all honest, thoughtful ideas to be on the table for debate. And then we need to push our lawmakers to consider all of these proposals and decide what’s right for the world. Because our opponents are not interested in honest, thoughtful debate. The fossil fuels industries will be funding tons of PR efforts like these deliberately misleading radio ads in the coming months, and their aim is not to debate but to stop any bill aimed at reducing pollution and ushering in a new era of clean renewable energy, period. We need to step it up, speak out, and let our Reps know that we demand strong global warming legislation now, or they’re going to listen to the fossil fools and their shady front groups instead.

According to E&E Daily (subscription required, sorry), there is still some deep-seated unease among Democrats about implementing solutions to global warming:

So far, the [House Energy and Commerce] committee's Democrats have struggled to reach consensus as about a dozen moderate and conservative lawmakers from the South, Rust Belt and Intermountain West resist the aggressive path that Waxman and Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, set out in a 648-page draft proposal.

The Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee met with Obama this week, but of course not many details have been released publicly about the meeeting. It is being reported that Obama asked them to reach consensus and bring the bill out of committee by Memorial Day, so that they could turn their attention to health care.

This debate happening right now is quite possibly the most important debate we have ever had. Right now, a handful of moderate Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are all that stand between us and a full House debate on the strongest global warming bill yet. You can bet those moderates are hearing from the fossil fuels industries. We need to make sure they hear from us. Get involved and tell Congress why you care about the environment and want them to pass legislation to stop global warming.

From where I’m sitting – my desk in San Francisco – global warming is by far the biggest threat posed by our continued reliance on fossil fuels. But for many communities around the world, global warming would probably not be listed as the most pressing concern. Grave as the climate crisis may be, the pollution caused by the mining, transporting, refining, and/or burning of fossil fuels is by far the dominant concern in these communities, which skew heavily to poor, disadvantaged, and minority communities – those who will be hit hardest by global warming all the same.

For instance, tribal people in the Ecuadorian Amazon have been dealing with the fallout from what’s been described as “the largest environmental disaster of this new century” for over 4 decades now. Between 1964 and 1990, oil and gas giant Texaco dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into Amazon waterways and 916 waste pits, many of which overflow into streams. Hundreds of square miles of the Amazon rainforest have been polluted.

Texaco was bought by Chevron in 2001. Thus Chevron has inherited the mess Texaco made in the Amazon. Several of the tribes who rely on the Amazon for their livelihood brought a suit against Chevron in 1993, seeking redress for their polluted watercourses and the abnormally high cancer rates they’ve experienced, in addition to other health problems.

Chevron has tried everything to quash this suit. In 2003 they asked that the trial be moved to Ecuador, where they no doubt figured they could buy their way out of a guilty verdict. They lobbied the Bush Administration to threaten Ecuador with cutting off trade relations if the trial proceeded unfavorably for the American corporation. Amazon Watch recently caught Chevron paying off bloggers to attack the Ecuadorian courts on the company’s behalf. Chevron even went so far as to produce a fake online newscast, complete with a former CNN news correspondent, as part of a coordinated disinformation campaign.

But some times facts have a habit of being irrepressible and immutable, no matter how much PR money a company spends to bury or rewrite them. 60 Minutes did an exposé last Sunday, May 3rd about the fact that "Powering American cars with Amazon crude has left a toxic legacy”:


Watch CBS Videos Online

The Ecuadorian tribes are seeking $27 billion in damages. Of course Chevron will appeal endlessly and delay paying this money as long as they can, taking a page from Exxon’s playbook in dealing with the Valdez spill (which, by the way, was around 10.8 million gallons, far smaller than the 18 billion gallons alleged to have been spilled in Ecuador’s rainforest). But still, a ruling against the company would set a powerful precedent for fossil fuels companies being held accountable for their actions. It would be a huge victory not just for the tribal people of the Ecuadorian Amazon, but for the communites around the globe that are being poisoned and oppressed by the inordinate amount of money and power we’ve handed to unscrupled companies like Chevron because of our dependence on fossil fuels.

It’s not just developing countries where this type of thing happens. Right here in the Bay Area there are environmental justice groups battling a Chevron oil refinery expansion, which will result in more pollution in their community. And it’s not just oil companies. People in West Virginia and other Appalacian communities have seen their homes and local ecosystems destroyed by mountaintop removal, the supremely destructive coal-mining practice. New Mexicans in the Four Corners region of the state recently got some good news when the EPA canceled the permit for a new coal plant that was to be built there, but they still have to deal with the pollution from two others.

Of course there are countless other examples all over the world of people fighting for their lives and livelihoods against environmental injustice. Whether you live in one of these exploited communities or not, you have a stake in the outcome of this trial in Ecuador. We need to break our addiction to fossil fuels and build a sustainable energy economy to avert the worst affects of global warming. But unless everyone benefits from the clean energy future, there is no true sustainability. And for everyone to benefit from clean energy, we have to clean up the mess leftover from all these years of using dirty energy.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), a draft bill released by Henry Waxman and Ed Markey that is currently being debated in the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee (full text here as PDF), is not perfect. But as a comprehensive piece of climate and energy legislation, it is a cause for some hope. The bill would set science-based emissions reduction targets, ramp up renewable energy standards, and provide money to stop international deforestation, to name a few of its highlights.

However, the bill's shortcomings include some two billion tons of pollution offsets, enough that we wouldn’t have to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels whatsoever in order to meet the emissions reductions the bill calls for. And there are billions of dollars included for the coal industry, purveyors of the dirtiest fossil fuel around, whose only “green” cred is so-called Carbon Capture and Sequestration — a totally unproven technology that is really just a false hope and a dangerous distraction.

Read our full analysis of the bill here.

Of course, the fossil fuels industries are fighting tooth and nail to get even more handouts and to weaken emissions targets as much as possible so that they can coninue business as usual. Not surprisingly, they’ve got some members of Congress nervous. President Obama has made global warming a signature cause, and is reportedly headed down to Congress tomorrow to try and move things along:

President Obama puts his political chips on the line tomorrow when he meets with House Democrats wrestling with legislation to overhaul U.S. energy and global warming policy.

The bill is stuck in subcommittee because of concerns from about a dozen Democrats with strong ties to the coal and gas-and-oil industries, and many predict a push from the popular new president may shove the measure along in the legislative process.

This entire NYT piece, "Risks, rewards abound as Obama enters House climate debate," is well worth the read, as it examines the many political considerations at play in this debate.

Obama’s involvement is a good sign, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a stronger ACES is a sure thing. The only thing that will guarantee Congress does the right thing for the planet rather than for their large donors in the fossil fuels industries is you and me. We have to hold our elected representatives accountable. If you want to help, tell your Rep right now why you’re part of the movement to stop global warming.

We’ve gotten a lot of inspiring stories submitted so far. Who knows, maybe your story could be the one that inspires a member of the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee to do the right thing and support a really strong bill that will kickstart the energy revolution and stop global warming.