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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.
A recent report report by the Center for American Progress estimates that investing just $100 billion in the green economy (one-seventh the amount contemplated in the administration's proposed Wall Street bailout) would create 2 million new jobs, with a significant percentage of those coming in the struggling manufacturing and construction sectors. In contrast, investing that much money in the financial services sector would generate just 1.1 million jobs, according to an analysis conducted by the study's authors, Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier of the University of Massachusetts. In other words, Wall Street's offering about half the jobs for the same money: hardly a smart bet for the taxpayer.
A green investment on the level of the Wall Street bailout could create growth on a much larger scale, almost entirely eliminating unemployment and significantly raising middle-class incomes. Instead of golden parachutes for CEOs, the government could finance America's transition from an oil- and fossil-fuel-dependent economy into one run completely on clean energy. Instead of buying up bad McMansion mortgages, we could pay people to retrofit their houses with high-efficiency appliances and green roofs.
The green stimulus could reach far beyond the energy sector to provide income and employment for rural America as well. It could finance the conservation of tens or hundreds of millions of acres of wildlands, providing income to farmers and other landowners--and make possible a whole new generation of national parks. (Many of those lands are now under threat exactly because of too-easy credit: without limits on lending, it's been all too easy for real estate developers to find the cash to pave over back-country wilderness for sprawl and ranchettes).
The time has come to take a hard look at where we are in this nation and where we want to go. This weekend will be a chance to reflect on the possibilities before us and the consequences of our choices. The question is this: Do we want to leave the next generation in debt and in crisis from a dangerous climate or do we want to take the initiative and start the inevitable conversion to a green economy? To me the answer is obvious. What's less clear is what Congress will do. Make your voice heard at www.projecthotseat.org.
Ths week, Al Gore called on young people to practice civil disobedience on any new coal plant that is not CCS ready. Seeing that CCS is 20 years off, at the very least, perhaps Mr. Gore meant for action on all new coal plants. In any case, I've got a Greenpeace jumpsuit with your name on it, Mr. Vice President.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published an excoriating op-ed today in the LA Times takking Exxon to task for funding phony front groups that are designed to confuse the American public about global warming. Kennedy says that after a 1998 meeting, Exxon executives decided to create information so that "recognition of uncertainties become part of the conventional wisdom" and that "those promoting the Kyoto treaty ... appear to be out of touch with reality."
Kennedy goes on:
"Since that meeting, Exxon has funneled $23 million into the climate-denial industry, according to Greenpeace, which combs the company's annual report each year. Since 2006, Exxon has cut off some of the worst offenders, but 28 climate-denial groups will still get funding this year."
You can read more about Exxon's deceptive and dangerous business practices over at Exxon Secrets.
At a campaign stop last week in Maumee, OH, Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) talked to a young 1Sky campaigner about energy policy. The question was about the Obama/Biden ticket's position on coal. Biden answered by defending his record of support for renewable energy, and then he said this:
"No coal plants here in America. Build them, if they’re going to build them over there make ‘em clean because they’re killing you."
The "over there" he's referring to is China. That's a remarkable statement from the potential veep and one that begs for further explanation. Biden has been mum since he said this, but allow me take a stab at what he likely meant.
On their Web site, Obama/Biden say this about coal:
"Obama’s Department of Energy will enter into public private partnerships to develop five “first-of-a-kind” commercial scale coal-fired plants with clean carbon capture and sequestration technology."
That policy position is at odds with Biden's statement. Presumably, Biden is saying no new coal plants here, period, CCS-ready or not. China, he seems to be saying, can't be stopped from building new coal fired power plants so what we ought to do is develop the technology to make them run cleaner.
This logic is inline with what Thomas Friedman has been saying: The next revolution will be energy technology, so we need to own the innovation and then export it. That's the way to help the American economy and lead by example.
Friedman and Biden certainly are right about the need for innovation. The question is why the focus on coal, which we know will never be clean? Those who say that it can be tout Carbon, Capture and Storage (CCS), a plan to capture carbon emissions from power stations and bury them underground. The technology won’t be ready for at least another twenty years, too late to save the climate. Yet the vague promises of CCS are being used to justify building new coal-fired plants. These plants will spew out enormous amounts of CO2 pollution for at least the next twenty years and probably during their whole 40-year lifetime. In short, any new coal fired power plant will contribute massively to the climate crisis.
Hopefully, this topic will come up in the veep debate, scheduled for Oct. 2. But don't count on it. According to Media Matters, the progressive media watchdog group, only four percent of the questions asked during the primary debates were on energy and the environment. Only three questions touched on renewable resources and conservation, including one asking if candidates used compact fluorescent bulbs. Seriously.
Given America's energy problems and the threats from global climate change, the inclusion of conversation about coal's future and what Biden exactly meant should be part of the upcoming debate. You can email your Congressional representative here and tell them what you think of coal.
Yet another beautiful sunrise over the Capitol greeted our steadfast polar bear and his support team this morning as the bear entered Day 3 of his vigil in front of Congress. At 8:00 a.m., our early morning crew got a fresh infusion of company and energy when the dayshift arrived with donuts, bananas, new games to play, and just someone new to talk to. The bear was, as ever, friendly but reserved. Very much the strong, silent type.
The morning also brought news: the US Minerals Management Service revealed that 49 offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico were destroyed by Hurricane Ike. Even a week after the storm, most of the remaining 3,800 oil rigs already in the Gulf remain shut down — by which we mean, of course, that they aren’t producing oil. If you recall, most offshore oil rigs in the Gulf were shut down way back in August before Hurricane Gustav (remember Hurricane Gustav? Time flies doesn’t it.) That’s three weeks and counting that more than 90% of our country's oil production has been offline as a result of hurricanes.
It’s ironic but important news as the Senate considers the nation’s energy future, because hurricanes have been getting more frequent over the last decade. The best science tells us that storms like Gustav and Ike have been getting more intense, almost certainly as a result of global warming. Which leads to a very important question that Congress has seemed reluctant to consider:
If a single hurricane can destroy dozens of offshore oil rigs — or more than a hundred, in the case of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita — and virtually shut down energy production across 600,000 square miles of ocean; and if both the number and intensity of hurricanes is increasing; and if the best science tells us these storms will get even worse as a result of global warming; then how, exactly, does building more offshore oil rigs increase our energy security?
The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t. Opening more of our oceans to oil drilling won’t make us more secure, just more dependent on oil, and more vulnerable to the next big storm. And the next one after that. And the one after that. We can’t solve either global warming or the energy crisis by drilling more, but only by using less. We agree with the bear, the world needs more ice, not more oil.
The last few days have brought out lots of other people who agree as well — as evidenced by all the “I’m with the Bear” photos accumulating on the website. Our coolest group of visitors so far today has been a bunch of military photographers on assignment for a class at a local military installation. They were all snapping away happily at the bear, and had lots of great comments about it. None of them wanted their own picture taken because it might cause them trouble with the military brass. Still, it was great to meet them all.
What’s been even better is all the people who stop by having already heard about the homeless bears. For instance, a guy who had just arrived yesterday from California told us his professor had talked about in an art class. Another guy had read about it in his hometown paper in Australia. It’s been great to see word of this spread so widely, and generate so much excitement. And so much awareness of the polar bears and their plight.
To read more, view photos and video, follow the entire story on the blogs, and view our Twitter feed, which our activists were updating in real time during the protest, click here!
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.
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.”
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.
From the NY Times:
WASHINGTON — As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.
In three reports delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest sources of revenue other than taxes.
“A culture of ethical failure” besets the agency, Mr. Devaney wrote in a cover memo.
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.
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.
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.
Earlier this summer, the Department of Interior stopped dragging its feet when it came to protecting the polar bear. After three years of obfuscation, they finally listed the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This might seem like a victory, but there are enough holes in this listing to leave the polar bear unprotected against its biggest threat, global warming.
Those holes may now be widening with the Bush administration's latest attack on the planet--an underhanded and dangerous attempt to weaken the Endangered Species Act. How? By making it more difficult for a species to gain protection by scaling back the "foreseeable future" timeframe in which to determine whether a species is likely to become extinct or not. For species like whales and grizzly bears, who enjoy long lives, that could spell disaster. If these changes take effect, regulators will be able to look into the "forseeble future" only 20 generations or 10 years, whichever they decide. The shortened timeframe could make responsbile decision making on threatened species a thing of the past.
All of this may seem like legal mumbo-jumbo until you come across an article like this that reminds you what's at stake. Here's another reminder: there's only 75 days to the election. Vote smart.
There’s a secret that Kimberly-Clark does not want you to know: Every Kleenex tissue is made from ancient forests. In fact, the tissues contain no recycled fiber at all. None. Instead, Kleenex is made from trees up to 180 years old cut from ancient forests that are up to 10,000 years old. These forests are home to eagles, bears, foxes and endangered caribou that are losing more habitat with every box of Kleenex bought.
Despite mounting pressure Kleenex’s parent company, the Kimberly-Clark Corporation, has been unwilling to improve its practices, continuing to rely on paper and pulp made from clearcut Endangered forest, including North America's Boreal Forest. Kimberly-Clark clears these ancient forests, essential in fighting climate change and providing home to wildlife like caribou, wolves, eagles and bears, to make products that are flushed down the toilet or thrown away.
We made an animation with famous artist Mark Fiore to show just how ridiculous Kimberly-Clark's new partnership with Pixar is. They're making Kleenex boxes with Wall-E on the side, nevermind that the film was about destroying the earth. Enjoy!
So, although we cannot be certain global warming intensified Katrina per se, it clearly has created circumstances under which powerful storms are more likely to occur at this point in history (and in the future) than they were in the past. Moreover, it would be scientifically unsound to conclude that Katrina was not intensified by global warming. A reasonable assessment of the science suggests that we will face similar events again and that powerful storms are likely to happen more often than we have been accustomed to in the past.The thing about global warming though (and what gives me cause for optimism in the fight to outfox it) is that it exposes so many of our other environmental and social problems. Even if Katrina wasn't directly fueled by a warming climate, it was made worse by wetland loss, deforestation and a large concentrated population of poor people. Those are problems that must be dealt with to fix the climate, and those are problems Bush should address when he speaks to New Orleans’ recovery. This is about more than rebuilding buildings and streets, much like lowering gas prices is about more than the price at the pump. The problems are systemic and need systemic solutions. Brownie is gone. Chertoff is offstage. Only Bush remains. Can he make the connection? Judging by his remarks, no.
Think the Bush Adminstration is connected to Big Oil? This is real, by the way.
Barack Obama’s campaign has announced that the Democratic nominee will unveil his Veep pick this week. No one outside Obama’s inner circle knows for sure who the pick will be, but all signs point to a small number of possible picks. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine has been mentioned, as has Indiana Senator Evan Bayh. But do their pro-coal stances undercut Obama’s commitments on climate change?
Kaine supported a new coal-burning power plant in Wise County, Virginia, and hasn’t backed away from his support. Bayh, Indiana’s junior senator, has stiff resistance from antiwar advocates after his 2003 vote authorizing the Iraq war, enough opposition that a Facebook group was started to reverse draft him from Obama's short list. How’s Bayh on coal? Not much better than Kaine. Here’s a 2006 quote from the senator applauding the IRS’s decision to award a tax credit to Duke Energy for a new Indiana coal plant.
"The most effective way to ensure that Hoosiers will continue to have access to clean, affordable energy is to invest in new technologies that use our own resources like coal, which is abundant in Indiana," Senator Bayh said. "This tax credit will add gasified coal power to other sources of homegrown energy, like biodiesel and ethanol, that provide good jobs for Hoosier workers while protecting America's air and water."
I’m confident that there are other possibilities for Veep that haven’t been touted in public yet. Kaine and Bayh, however, are sure to raise the hackles of those who want firm commitments from Obama on coal and climate. Selecting either would make it difficult for Vice President Al Gore to campaign for Obama as well. After all, Gore famously called for a moratorium on the production of new coal plants. Stay tuned.
--DJK
– Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI): "This is the people's House. This is not Pelosi's politiburo."
– Rep. John Boehner (R-OH): "She's gonna bring us back and not deal with it? The American people are gonna hang her."
– Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC): "When the people of France were starving, they went to the queen and said, 'The people have no bread.' The queen's answer was, 'Let them eat cake.' That is not the kind of answer we expect from the leader of the people's house in the United States of America."
– Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ): "There's going to be a change in this policy, Nancy Pelosi notwithstanding. She can't repress us forever."
– Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO): "I can't answer why she's acting like a dictator."
– Rep. Denny Rehlberg (R-MT): "Nancy Pelosi should not hold the American people hostage."
– Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX): "In your mind, do you believe America is a democracy or a dictatorship?"
Got it? Since Pelosi won't yield to the House GOP's calls for a gimmick vote on drilling, she's an American-style represser, dictator, or out-of-touch aristocrat. I wonder what that makes the Department of Energy, who says that driling won't have a substantial impact on record gas prices? You can email all of these folks making these grandiose (and flat out wrong) statements about Pelosi at www.projecthotset.org. Tell them they should spend less time trying to paint the Speaker as a facist and more time switching our economy to one that runs on clean and green technologies instead of dirty fuels.
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.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.
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.
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.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.”
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.
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!
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.”
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.
EPA Won't Act on Emissions This YearThe 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.
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.
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.
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.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.
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's the beginning of Day 2 here at Coal USA. We weren't completely sure they'd let us in this morning. We've played very nice by our standards. None of us have rappelled from the ceiling or chained ourselves to any of the speakers or taken more than our share of muffins from the muffin table.
But we learned from a reporter yesterday afternoon that the coal industry guys were really angry about our young activists (Drew, Mike and Kate) giving out asthma inhalers. Apparently, the coalies said it's unconscionable for us to exploit children like that. (Even if both the kids and their parents think it's something worth doing.) Now me, I think it's unconscionable to build a toxic sludge pond on a hill right above a school house. Or to sell a product that puts thousands of kids in the hospital each year with asthma attacks--kids like Drew, who has severe asthma. Or to burn a fuel that afflicts thousands more with brain defects, neurological disorders and autism. But I can see how reasonable minds could differ on these things.
What's interesting, of course, is when we talk face to face, many of the people here ARE reasonable. Most are also polite. And a few are even friendly. I look me and, with a few significant exceptions, I don't see a room full of evil, mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash impersonators. I see a room full of (mostly) normal people. People, no doubt, with their own problems and their own families and their own kids to worry about.
It makes me wonder how so many seemingly reasonable and decent people could be so heedless about the harm they cause to other families and, for that matter, an entire planet. How can a reasonable, decent person feel okay about poisoning a town's drinking water? Or think that wrecking an entire mountain is nothing anyone should complain about? Or look at a quickly melting Arctic Ocean and think "That's nothing to do with me."
I could get all wonky, and talk about Cognitive Dissonance, and how people rationalize away the bad things they do. All of us do this, in fact; it's just that some have to do it more than others. A lot more.
But maybe Paul Vining, the President of Magnum Coal, put it more simply: "It's about serving shareholders." Perhaps the folks in the coal industry, like folks in other industries, just say to themselves: "It's not me doing it; it's the company. I just do what I'm told." Or, if you run the company, you tell yourself: "I have to do this because the shareholders want profits." And if you own the company: "If we don't do it, somebody else will." It's easy to do anything if you do it for a company, because then the company can be evil for you, while you just go on being a normal, decent person. But what we easily forget is that a company, at heart, is simply a collection of people. Companies aren't real in a human sense--they aren't alive; they don't have souls. A company can't choose to be evil any more than it can be good. Only the people within it, individually and together, can make that choice.
So, I think that will be my last contribution to the meeting here. To remind. the people assembled here that they aren't coal companies. They are parents. They are neighbors. They are friends. They are human beings. And like all human beings should be, they are free to make their own choices. And they are morally responsible if they make them badly.
While their many colleagues in the coal industry may empathize that, together, they had no choice but to wreck the planet. They should ask themselves whether the children left with that wrecked planet, including their own, may have a harder time with forgiveness.
Carroll Muffett
It's the second day in the trenches, facing off with the idea of the enemy as they file through the foyer on their way to hear and talk about "Supplying coking coal to the world: East Coast," and "Central Appalachia: Land of Opportunity and Challenges."
I wish that I were allowed in the conference room with the rest of the conference to try and attain a better understanding of what these people are thinking when they call one of the countries regions that is most raped and pillaged by coal a land of "opportunity and challenges," but alas, I have been relegated to the the foyer by the security guard with the bald head and the menacing looking tatoo that peaks up behind his white collar. Is he really on their side? Does he even begin to think about it in terms of us and them?
Those of us that are not allowed in the conference itself sit behind our well laid booth. We busy ourselves by taking pictures, trying to engage passersby as their eyes flitter over the schwag on our booth, and putting the last of the stickers that say "The Institute for Energy Solutions is a joke. So is clean coal," on the back of the last of our business cards.
Speaking of business cards, someone from "Catapillar Global Mining" just gave us his and asked with a face that, to me, spoke of a newly birthed concern, for Bill Muffett (our companies Director) to send him an email. Perhaps the enemy is beginning to see the light? He tells us that he whitenessed "Bill's" speech yesterday where our beloved Deputy Campaigns Director called them all out, and asked them to look twice at their misdirected concept that the mining of coal may somehow lie outside of concerns for the environment.
I call them "the idea" of the enemy, because in talking with these industry-minded, market-obsessed people I do not really see an enemy. What I see is a group of people who have not yet come to realize that they are part of something much larger than the company they work for, or the industry they somehow feel compelled to defend, as if it were a friend or a family member that they, for some reason, seem to want to stand in solidarity with as if they owed them something. Why do people in America speak of industry as if it were anything more than a raft that took us from point A to point B? Why are people so reluctant to admit that now their raft has a hole in it, and it's time to go about the business of building another . . .
What these people don't yet realize is that they are a part of something that is far greater, stronger, more compelling and enduring than the industry they currently dedicate themselves to. They are part of humanity, they are part of the our world, this earth, this planet, this present and future and past. They are beings that feed into and take from the circle of the eco-system, and what I fear is that they will hold out on understanding these things until one day, even if they do not understand completely, they will be forced to see by something wholly unpleasant that everything they do affects not just their pockets or the economy, but people. And not just the lower classes or the uneducated or coal miners or those whose houses happen to lie just a little bit too close to a coal field, but their own land, air, and water. And from that their own families, as well as themselves.
I tried to tell a few of the people yesterday, as we argued about the direction of the market and the history of industry, and what that meant for a different kind of tomorrow, that Greenpeace is not just asking for an alternative to coal, but a safer and cleaner planet for us all. That we are asking for these things because we care about them and their families and all of our future's.
In pondering how long it will take the people in these rooms and hallways that promote and run one of the dirtiest and most destructive industries in America as well as on earth, I take some comfort in reminding myself that this idea of being a part of something larger than what man has made is actually, as far as I can see, inherent in being human, and that even if they do not recognize it now, something in them knows this despite themselves. Somewhere down the line, we will be forced to find our equilibrium. And Greenpeace will try everything it can to make sure it is not found too late.
-- Amanda
Today we morphed into an organization no one had ever heard of -- The Institute for Energy Solutions -- and gained entrance to Coal USA 2008, an industry conference that we would never have been welcomed to otherwise. We managed to place ourselves directly in the center of the discussions and activities of over 300 executives and investors in the coal industry. We gained this access covertly, by becoming an official "sponsor" of their conference, and taking on the airs of an industry player they could relate to.
To enforce our legitimacy we created all the things that a real company would need: a logo, a website, information sheets, business cards, email addresses, and more. Then, once we had all the appropriate materials, we plugged them into our offer of sponsorship and moved to create the platform we needed.
I am sitting here now behind our booth, in the foyer to the conference room where all the heavy hitters are talking about the future of coal. Behind me is a large color banner printed with our company name and logo. In front of me is our table, which is covered in Greenpeace campaign materials that talk about the false hope of carbon capture, the possibilities of wind power, the problem of the polar bear, and on and on.
To my right is a flower vase filled with coal from which orange gerber flowers are peeking out from the top. In front of them is a container filled with black pencils that have our website URL printed on them in white lettering. This website once led to information about our "company," but now leads to a site talking all about the dirt and lies of coal.
Next to them are our keychains, which bear the slogan: "Global Warming? Coal is the key." People pick them up as they go by, read the slogan, and drop them back down into the bowl, often with a look of disdain. Of course, every once in a while someone will keep the keychain, hide it in the fold of their hand, and happily walk away.
Next to the keychains are the asthma inhalers we collected from people with asthma; some of which were donated by an orgnization on the West Coast that collects different types of "trash." On the inhalers are the labels made especially by us that say: Coal takes our breath away.
Earlier today, we had three young children standing outside the conference as it let out for lunch, handing out these inhalers to the mix of suprised, outraged, excited, desparate, and appreciative faces. Some took them and walked away looking at them, or discussing them with the person at their side, while others cursed our names or threw them back into the bowl.
Perhaps the booth decoration that I am the most proud of, however, is the water samples to my left. They were taken from a stream made of runnoff from the abandoned Gallentine Mine in Fayette Pennsylvania that empties into Indian Creek, which then flows into the Mill River Reservoir, which is used for emergency public drinking water. We have affixed the bottles with our own labels that describe where the water is from, punctuating it with a green puking face. Of course the bottles have black tops and have been glued shut, just in case someone might be stupid enough to try to drink out of one of them.
The business cards that we created, each of which proudly declares our company's name on the front -- The Institute for Energy Solutions -- also have stickers on the back that say: "The Institute for energy Solutions is a joke. So is clean coal."
People are both intrigued and repelled by our booth, and I'm loving every second of it. We can only hope that they will carry home some of what we talked about and some of the materials we gave them, and mull it all over in their minds. And from there we can only hope upon hope that they will come to some different conclusions than what they walked in here with today. Regardless, we will not stop trying.
Now, you must be asking yourself, why on earth would Fred confide that sort of thing to Greenpeace? I suspect that right about now, Fred is asking himself the same question. As are any number of other speakers at Coal USA 2008, which, according to its sponsors, is "the 'must attend' event on the Coal industry calendar."
Maybe because we sponsored their conference! With the biggest wigs from 170 energy companies sitting in a single room and sharing their profit-fueled dreams for a coal-powered future, it seemed like just the sort of place we should be. So, we filled in a form, wrote 'em a check, and got ourselves four bright, shiny invitations to attend the conference.
Of course, coal people aren't the biggest fans of "those Greenpeace f**kers," as one delegate politely put it today. So, we took a play from the coal industry's own playbook, and created an organization they'd be more comfortable with. It's our own version of "astroturf," the fake environmental organizations the coal industry helped perfect decades ago (like the now defunct "Greening Earth Society," which argued that global warming was a good thing because all that extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would make the world greener).
So, we created "Tomorrow's Energy Today," an upbeat if remarkably ambiguous website about the many virtues of coal. ("It's America's most abundant fossil fuel!"...Hard to argue with that.) And Tomorrow's Energy Today sponsored the conference.
Lesson for the future: if you've got a few grand to spare, I highly recommend that you sponsor a coal industry conference. It's an amazing bargain! They put our logo and URL all over everything. On the conference website. On signs in the hall. On people's presentations. And on every single page of the glossy conference brochure. They even gave us a booth! Now that's value for your money.
And we put it to good use. As a service to coal industry insiders, who seem a little blind to coal's many downsides, we redirected the URL www.tomorrowsenergytoday.org to take them right to the best information currently available on coal: the Coal is Dirty website.
We decorated the booth with precisely the sort of give-aways you should expect at a coal industry conference: to educate coal execs about coal's role in America's asthma epidemic, we're giving away asthma inhalers with the label "Coal -- takes my breath away!" To help them understand how coal mining poisons streams and rivers, we brought water bottles filled with mine discharge. And to remind them that burning coal is the biggest single cause of global warming, we're giving away keychains that say "Global Warming? Coal is the key."
In turn, we're learning alot from our new coal industry friends. For instance, did you know that Alaska is now a target for new coal mines? ("Shhh. It's our secret", said the coal traders.) Or that you can expect your home energy costs to go through the roof because coal companies are finding it much more profitable to export "excess supply" to foreign markets than to sell it here at home? Or that the only thing the coal industry hates more than environmentalists is the natural gas industry?
Or that "the United States is a developing country." That one from Fred Palmer again. I could listen to that guy talk all day. He's like a Crazy Quote Machine. According to Fred, using MORE coal is in the public interest because "Coal is Life itself (through the medium of electricity)." Wow! Who knew? See, I told you we were learning stuff!
Although the industry guys weren't expecting our presence, they adapted pretty quickly, and at the end of the morning they asked me to speak. (I think they were worried I would stand up on a chair and yell if they didn't give me a mic.) The morning's presenters had talked about how this was a conference about coal, and not about the environment. I told them that for Greenpeace, and other environmentalists across the country, any conversation about coal is a conversation about the environment. When you mine coal, it wrecks the local environment. When you burn coal, the emissions affect the health of communities where it's burned. Acid rain and mercury pollution affect the environment and human health hundreds of miles away. And carbon dioxide from coal burning power plants is the biggest contributor to global warming. In light of these facts, I said, any discussion about coal is a discussion about the environment.
I told them it was nice to hear coal industry execs admitting the reality of global warming after decades of denying it. It was also nice to hear them no longer arguing (a la The Greening Earth Society) that global warming could be a good thing. But it seems pretty ironic that, after so long denying the problem of global warming, the coal industry is now arguing that it's part of the solution. We can keep burning coal, they all said, we just need to dump the carbon dioxide into the ocean or into the ground. It'll all be fine! Our friend Fred Palmer certainly made that argument.
He gave a presentation on how Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology would allow us to go on using coal for decades while helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Fred called CCS an "Enabling Technology." I couldn't agree more.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, an "enabler" is someone or something that "enables another to persist in self-destructive behavior (as substance abuse) by providing excuses or by making it possible to avoid the consequences of such behavior." And that's precisely what CCS does: its a dangerous myth that provides America with a convenient excuse to keep burning coal and pumping carbon dioxide into the air, rather than confronting its fossil fuel addiction and taking real action to stop global warming. You don't get more self-destructive than that. Like Greenpeace noted in its recent report, which we've shared widely at the conference, Carbon Capture is a False Hope and a dangerous distraction from real climate solutions.
As the meeting broke for lunch, the meeting delegates were greeted by 3 unexpected activists. Kate, Drew and Mike, aged 9, 10 and 11, respectively, stood at the door handing out asthma inhalers to everyone who passed. A few people took them and said "Thank You." Others looked away uncomfortably. And one of them summoned two burly security guards to escort the kids out of the room. "They were really big, scary guys," said Kate.
And the kids laughed. Because they were proud to be brave. And to stand up for what's right. Even against those really big, scary guys.
-Carroll Muffett
(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.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.
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.
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.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?
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!)
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.
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
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.
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.
Project Hot Seat got a couple good mentions in the national media this past week:
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.
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.
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.
[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.
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.
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
I live in Anchorage, Alaska, and this morning, during my morning ritual of stoking the wood stove and reading the Anchorage Daily News, I was struck by the convergence of so many issues that have to do with oil.
On the front page of this morning’s newspaper is an article about a remote village in northwest Alaska, Kivalina, that is suing Exxon and other big oil companies because of global warming >> http://www.adn.com/front/story/327607.html Kivalina is one of many villages on the coast of arctic Alaska that is protected from winter storms by sea ice. Sea ice tamps down waves and prevents them from pummeling the shoreline. Global warming now means the sea ice forms later in the year, melts earlier, and as a result, villages such as Kivalina are being ravaged by winter storms that threaten their very existence. Villages will have to relocate, but relocation will cost hundreds of millions of dollar per village, and where is the money going to come from? And even if a village is re-located, how will the community handle being moved from its traditional hunting and fishing grounds? Kivalina believes Exxon and its oil industry allies have engaged in a decades-long conspiracy to undermine climate science and block real action to stop global warming.
There is also a story about how today, almost 19 years after the Exxon Valdez ran aground and spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s pristine Prince William Sound, the Supreme Court will hear a case about whether Exxon Mobil should have to pay punitive damages to the people who suffered and are still suffering the effects of that spill >> http://www.adn.com/front/story/327804.html Almost two decades since the Valdez disaster—two decades that have witnessed the highest profits ever earned by any company anywhere-- and Exxon’s still fighting to avoid responsibility. One of the key questions the Supreme Court will consider is if Exxon Mobil should be held accountable for the actions of its Captain, Joseph Hazelwood, who was drunk when the supertanker ran aground. As far as I’m concerned, the spill had nothing to do with Joseph Hazelwood’s addiction, it was caused by this country’s addiction to oil. Yes, Exxon Mobil should be held accountable, finally and should have to pay through the nose for what it did. However, I am dismayed to hear little or nothing about how the country’s oil addiction has only worsened since the Exxon Valdez ran aground on March 24, 1989. Big oil is making record profits for a reason. We have met the enemy, and he is us. We’re not doing enough to curb our addiction to oil, and there is certainly more that we can do to pressure our elected officials to wake up and smell the petroleum.
And at the same time, the Chukchi Lease Sale is in the news. The Chukchi Sea is shared between Alaska and Russia. It is remote, hostile, and home to half the US population of polar bears. The Chukchi Sea is also in the cross hairs of the federal government that wants to open it up to oil drilling. Oil companies have been salivating for decades at the prospect of oil drilling this vast, untouched part of the Alaska coast. Up until now, it’s been too costly to seriously consider oil drilling in the Chukchi. But now that Alaska crude oil has reached the milestone of $100 per barrel >> http://www.adn.com/money/story/327647.html, drilling in the Chukchi is a reality.
Our federal government sold off tracts in the Chukchi Sea in early February, the tracts closest to the shore are 25 miles away, meaning risky sub-sea pipeline technology will be used to transport oil from drilling platforms in an area that is covered by ice for much of the year. The government estimates about a 40 percent chance – just slightly better than 50/50-- of a major oil spill from these leases. There is little possibility of any effective spill response in this part of the world given it is covered by solid or broken ice for much of the year. And while the oil industry says it can safely drill offshore, its record debunks that assertion as hogwash, to put it mildly. Several spills from offshore platforms have been as large or larger than the Exxon Valdez spill -- the Ekofisk in the North Sea, Ixtoc in the Gulf of Mexico, Funiwa No. 5 off Nigeria, among many other offshore disasters.
Last, as I prepare myself for my day at the Greenpeace office, I wonder if today will be the day when the federal government finally releases its decision about listing the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act? The federal government missed its self-imposed decision deadline of January 9, which is suspiciously convenient given the Chukchi Lease sale took place on February 6. The Department of Interior probably figured out that it could not list the polar bear as threatened in January and then sell of its habitat for oil and gas leasing less than a month later.
I’m doing all I can to take responsibility for global warming. I heat my home with wood, I walk everywhere, and I put a lot of effort into reducing my own carbon footprint. I just wish the oil companies and federal government would follow my lead. I don’t like to think what Alaska will look like in another ten or twenty years. I don’t want to pick up the morning newspaper and read about coastal villages being swept out to sea creating a new wave of environmental refugees, polar bears drowning and cannibalizing each other in even greater numbers, the sea ice disappearing completely in summer, and oil spills in the pristine waters of the Chukchi Sea. I want to read about windfarms, wave power and geothermal energy replacing dirty fossil fuels. Those are the headlines I look forward to reading.
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