This morning's session of Coal USA 2008 wrapped up at 12:30, and I was asked to speak again. I delivered the statement below. They tried to cut me off, but speaking evenly and quietly, I got out almost all of it, including the questions at the end, which were the critical part.

It was one of the final statements of the day.

Here is the statement text:

Thank you for the opportunity to take the floor again. The last two days have been extremely instructive in better understanding not only the challenges the coal industry faces but also how those who work in the industry see their role in coal and in the world.

It is also useful to meet the people behind the companies. It's easy to forget that companies are, at heart, just collections of people. And it's good to be reminded of that. Because ultimately it’s not companies that make good or bad decisions, it’s people. The actions companies take reflect nothing more nor less than the  collective decisions of individual people. People like you.

So, I've been pleased to find that most of the folks we've met here seem like decent, reasonable people with their own problems, their own concerns, their own families to take care of. They are citizens, neighbors, parents. Just like me. And just like me, I've found, they are concerned for the welfare of not only their own children, but children everywhere. So I would like to speak to you not just as Greenpeace, but as a parent.

There has been a significant response here to our young activists yesterday, one of whom was my daughter, Kate. Kate came here because she feels strongly about global warming and, more personally, because her grandmother – one of her closest friends – died of cancer last summer after living for years in the shadow of one of the country's dirtiest coal stations. Drew, another of the kids who came, did so because he has severe asthma himself. And he wanted you to know.

Kate and Drew and Mike were proud to be here. And they were proud of their parents for deciding to let them come.

What I would like you to consider as you leave this meeting is, are your kids proud of the decisions you make? And will they still be proud 10, 20, 30 years from now as the environmental chaos of global warming becomes an ever grimmer reality in our daily lives?

Perhaps you can tell them: "It wasn't me. It was the company that did it.”

Perhaps you can explain to your kids: "I polluted the air because my boss made me do it. I poisoned the water to increase shareholder value. I denied global warming because the board demanded it. I supported CCS because it was the industry's only hope. And I refused to believe in solutions, because I was paid to believe in coal."

Will that answer make your kids happy? Will it make them proud? Will it help them forgive you?

You can choose a better future for them. For yourself. For the world. You can make them proud. The choice is not the company's. It is yours.

I ask you to choose wisely.

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.

It's the Golden Age of Coal! Did you know that? I admit, I myself had no idea. But apparently it's true. "There has never been a better time to be in the coal business and to be an advocate for coal!" How do I know that? Fred Palmer told me. And he must know, because he's Senior Vice President for Government Relations at Peabody Coal, the world's biggest private coal company.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Politico:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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