I am thrilled to announce that Restaurant Nora — one of DC’s most famous eateries and America’s first certified organic restaurant — will cater a special reception from 6-7 PM as part of CCAN’s Artists for the Climate event.

Their participation was just finalized and you’re the first to find out about it.

Owner Nora Pouillon will prepare a range of delectable appetizers and refreshing organic beverages to help honor authors Bill McKibben, Jeff Biggers, and Mike Tidwell.

For a donation of $150 dollars, you will enjoy some of the city’s absolute best food and have the opportunity to personally meet the authors. In addition, you will receive your choice of two free, autographed books from the featured writers.

Forty front row seats will be set aside for our reception guests. Space is limited to 40 guests so get your tickets now!

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Last Sunday, Maryland climate activists wrapped up a series of town halls focusing on the need for comprehensive energy planning in Maryland. The hundreds of attendees strongly supported the passage of legislation intended to make this happen – specifically House Bill 522. The consensus was that such a plan is crucial to making sure the Maryland government is as smart as it can be about energy policy, and that we end up getting the best mix of clean affordable and reliable energy.

Encouragingly, that also seems to be the consensus among a lot of the government officials and agencies that have weighed in on the idea. Agencies including the Maryland Energy Administration, the Maryland Department of the Environment and the Department of Natural Resources all think the idea of having a comprehensive energy plan is great and essential to facilitating the efforts of the government around energy policy.

With such strong public and government support behind it you’d think that it would be smooth sailing for the comprehensive energy planning bill, right? Well almost, except for one little problem: money. As with just about anything worth having, the comprehensive energy bill actually comes with a price tag – one ranging anywhere from half a million to three million dollars, depending on which agency ends up writing the plan. And unfortunately, this is cause for concern for some legislators, given Maryland’s massive budget shortfall. They’re questioning whether or not it makes good fiscal sense for the government to be spending this kind of money on a comprehensive energy plan.

To answer this question, it’s important to understand the price of the plan as an investment – an investment in Maryland’s future. The value of any investment should be measured against the returns it will provide, and in the case of the comprehensive energy plan the value of the returns are beyond measure. The returns are nothing less than our long term energy security, protection from the impacts of climate change, tens of thousands of green jobs, more livable communities, cleaner air, and better public health. Aren’t these things worth 3 million dollars, or 10 million, or 100 million, or more? Indeed, you could argue it’s impossible to put a price tag on these things, that they are invaluable public goods, and that we should invest whatever it takes to secure them.

Of course we do need to spend our tax money wisely, and make sure that we shop around for the best deal for the comprehensive energy plan. But I have no doubt that many Marylanders, and probably everyone reading this post, would agree with me that at the end of the day our clean energy future is priceless, and that it’s certainly worth a mere 500,000 dollars. For our government to decide otherwise and kill this critical legislation because of a 500,000 dollar price tag would be an appalling insult to the people of Maryland, and a violation of the trust they have invested in our elected officials as stewards of the public interest.

But it won’t do us any good, and won’t do HB 522 any good to think these thoughts in private. We have to get vocal now and speak our minds to our delegates on the House Economic Matters committee before the bill comes up for a vote in the next few weeks.

To help out please click HERE to find out who your Maryland House delegates are. Then email their names to me (keith@chesapeakeclimate.org) and I’ll tell you if one of them is on the committee, and send you their number and a some talking points for your call.

Let’s let our delegates know: We can’t put a price on our clean energy future.

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Chris Llewellyn is an amazing climate activist from Williamsburg. She was our CCANer of the Month back in June of 2007, which prompted me to go back and find that archived newsletter. Just a quick side note: It’s pretty amazing how far CCAN’s e-newsletters have come.

More importantly, I wanted to share her letter to the editor of the Daily Press about the Cap-and-Dividend solution, which was published earlier this week. Check it out below:

Make it CLEAR

BY Chris Llewellyn
Daily Press
March 8, 2010

Despite what our state attorney general says, the science is clear — global warming is happening, and it does put our public welfare at risk. The Environmental Protection Agency was following a Supreme Court ruling when it classified global warming pollution as an endangerment to public health. And this classification was not done lightly. It represents years of careful and considered analysis by career scientists and medical professionals and takes tens of thousands of public comments into account.

Thankfully, we do not have to wait for the EPA to begin cutting this dangerous pollutant. There is a bipartisan climate proposal before the U.S. Senate that will help our health, our planet and our pocketbooks.

Under the proposed “CLEAR” Act, all carbon polluters must pay to emit carbon, and there are no complicating offsets. Families are protected from changing energy prices because the bill would rebate 75 percent of the revenue from the permit auctions back to the American people. The average Virginia family would actually see its incomes increase under this bill.

Sen. Jim Webb has said he likes the basic features of this approach. As a concerned Virginian, and a physician, I see the toll our dependence on dirty energy is doing to public health. With this bill, Webb has an enormous opportunity to improve the health of Virginia families and our planet.

I urge Webb to co-sponsor the CLEAR Act today.

Christine Llewellyn
Williamsburg

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Below is a blog written by Jenna Garland of the Southern Energy Network. Like her, I had conflicting thoughts after seeing Avatar (as well as a queasy stomach from the intense 3D action). I wonder if people realize that this destruction and greed is happening in our world today. Too bad Avatar didn’t win, I wonder what the director would have said about the film’s message. Joe Letteri, the Visual Effects Supervisor for Avatar, said in his acceptance speech: “To everyone watching, thank you for the great appreciation you’ve shown for our film. And just remember the world we live in is just as amazing as the one we created for you. Thank you.” Our world is amazing. Do people realize it is just as threatened as the world Avatar created?

While visiting my parents recently, my mother treated me to a 3-D showing of Avatar at a theater close to where I grew up. I went in with a fair amount of trepidation. I’ve been following the media coverage of the film, as well as conversations between friends and colleagues who had seen it in the weeks follow its premiere. I was feeling very nervous about the racial dynamics of the film, and though I’d heard many people describe the film as very pro-environment, I wondered how pro-environment a blockbuster movie could be; how much can its themes and messages really challenge the status quo of our fossil fuel-powered society?

After two and a half hours of pure visual spectacle, I left feeling a mix of emotions and with a ton of thoughts running through my mind. I felt angry. I felt very angry.

I felt angry that the Na’vi people needed an American to save them. I felt angry that the Na’vi people needed an American to save them from Americans! I felt angry for the truth at the heart of the action: the single-minded focus on profits over people and the environment, and the price indigenous people have paid for centuries.

The single most impactful moment for me was when the Head of Security, Colonel Quaritch, said ‘We’re going to blow a hole in their racial memory so deep they will never forget it.’ (I’m paraphrasing slightly.) Frankly, I was amazed that this line made it through the cutting room floor and in to the highest grossing film of all time. I can’t think of a similar line like it, and the reason it stands out to me is that I’ve never heard an acknowledgment from a figure like Colonel Quaritch that events like destroying sacred sites, environmental degradation, and violence do have a long-term impact. The consequences of such violence stay around for generations, and sometimes become deeply ingrained in a culture. Continue Reading »

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This is cross-posted from huffington post.

While the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is charged with protecting “the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the products we consume have a direct impact on the health of our families,” some of its staffers apparently feel it should also serve as a front for the devastating pollution of Big Coal.

As hundreds of citizens from ravaged coalfield areas in Appalachia and around the nation fill the corridors of Congress this week, calling on the House and Senate to pass the Clean Water Protection Act/Appalachian Restoration Act to stop the illegal dumping of toxic coal waste into our American waterways, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and his staff on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee are reportedly providing free window space for Big Coal ads in our taxpayer financed federal buildings.

Check out this photo of the Senate minority leader’s office window at the E/PW Committee, sent by concerned coalfield residents from West Virginia, who have repeatedly asked the staffers to take down the offensive T-shirt on government property:

While Sen. James Inhofe’s comments on climate change are legendary, his prairie land and plains state support for flattening Appalachia through devastating mountaintop removal mining is dangerously uniformed. Last spring, Inhofe sent a letter to EPA chief Lisa Jackson, charging her agency for delay in issuing Clean Water Act permits. Inhofe erroneously claimed:

“As you know, mountaintop mining is a vitally important economic activity. It provides a significant portion of the coal that contributes nearly 50 percent of the nation’s electricity. It also provides well-paying jobs and revenues for some of the neediest regions.”

Significant portion of coal?

Setting aside the reality that mountaintop removal’s irreversible destruction has eliminated over 500 mountains and nearly 1.2 million acres of hardwood forests in the carbon sink of America, led to the largest forced removal of American citizens since the 19th century, and jammed an estimated 2,000 miles of headwater streams and waterways with toxic coal waste, Inhofe’s distortion of the true cost of coal and his window dressing for Big Coal overlooks four main points:

1) As everyone else on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee does know–or should know– mountaintop removal mining provides less than 8 percent of all national coal production.

2) Mountaintop removal has bled the Appalachian economy and job market. As the recent study, “The Decline of Central Appalachian Coal and the Need for Economic Diversification,” makes clear:

Despite these economic benefits, coal-producing counties in Central Appalachia continue to have some of the highest poverty and unemployment rates in the region, and due to the dependence on coal for economic development, any changes in coal production will have significant impacts on local economies.

Specifically, a study last year by West Virginia University reseachers found:

The coal industry generates a little more than $8 billion a year in economic benefits for the Appalachian region. But, they put the value of premature deaths attributable to the mining industry across the Appalachian coalfields at — by a most conservative estimate — $42 billion.

And check out West Virginia blogger Clem Guttata’s analysis of the economics of mountaintop removal on the heels of Inhofe’s misinformed comments.

3) Even the most pro-coal legislators in Appalachia and on Capitol Hill recognize that Appalachian coalfields and across the country are facing a clock of peak coal, and need to shift toward a just transition for clean energy jobs and economic development.

4) Sorry Sen. Inhofe: Coal-fired plants provided only 45% of our electricity last year, and it’s declining.

You can let Sen. Inhofe and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, as well as all members of Congress, know what you think about public financing for Big Coal and misinformation here.

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As this Grist article recently stated  “Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE,  has taken off like wildfire since the concept was first introduced in Berkeley, Calif. in October ‘07. PACE allows private property owners to pay for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects through an addition to their property tax bill, overcoming the high upfront costs that prevent most property owners from investing in such retrofits.”

Numerous states around the country have adopted legislative changes that allow municipalities within them to set up these kind of clean energy loan programs that give out loans to residents and businesses, and collect the repayments over a considerable period of time through their property taxes.  My student group UMD for Clean Energy at the University of Maryland made this kind of a loan fund for energy efficiency a major election issue last fall in our local College Park city council elections.  With enthusiasm from the city council to establish such a program, we faced a setback when the state of Maryland did not adequately permit municipalities to do this.  Our focus turned to advocating for legislation in this Maryland legislative session that would allow us to create our own clean energy revolution in College Park.  An added positive is it would clear the way for other municipalities all around the state to do PACE as well. Continue Reading »

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Here’s a question: If you’re a legislator and you voted to strengthen a particular piece of legislation, and that piece of legislation later came under threat, wouldn’t you make an effort to protect it? The answer seems logical enough, but then again, as we all know, everyday logic doesn’t always apply to the world of politics.

How else would you explain Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski’s failure stand up to protect the Clean Air Act from the attacks that it’s recently come under from the likes of Lisa “Dirty Air” Murkowski? After all, as the Senate’s Legislation and Records site shows, Senator Mikulski voted for the 1990 amendments that strengthened the original 1970 Clean Air Act, ensuring that it had the teeth it needed to really bite into problems like acid rain. But now when opponents of climate action are trying to knock those same teeth out, Mikulski is standing on the sidelines. Continue Reading »

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Thanks to the constant updates via my Twitter feed, this week I discovered NASA’s Earth Observatory website. This website shows satellite images of the Earth — many tragic (arctic sea ice), some providing glimpses of hope (burn recovery in Yellowstone) and some simply bizarre (the growth of Dubai.) Perusing the images and attempting to interpret the changes from image to image was intriguing until the time lapse of mountaintop removal stopped me completely. I no longer marveled at the ability to capture such images, I was sickened at what we are doing to our mountains in Appalachia. I’ve seen mountaintop removal sites in person, but these images clearly show the scale and the permanence of the destruction.

According to the website:
“Below the densely forested slopes of southern West Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains is a layer cake of thin coal seams. To uncover this coal profitably, mining companies engineer large—sometimes very large—surface mines. This time-series of images of a surface mine in Boone County, West Virginia, illustrates why this controversial mining method is also called “mountaintop removal.”

I wanted to share some of the images, though watching the time lapse video on the website is even more compelling.

1984

1988

1995

1998

2004

2009

As you can see, despite claims that the mountains are reclaimed, the scars that mountain top removal leaves on landscape is visible decades later. The first of those mines are older than I am. My whole life the mountains have tried to recover. We cannot let this practice continue. This year, the Virginia General Assembly took the first important step to ending this destructive practice with Senator Ticer’s introduction of the Stream Saver Bill. Congress is considering similar legislation, as is the General Assembly in Kentucky.

Next week I’ll be at Week in Washington, an annual lobby week calling for the end of mountaintop removal. The following week I’ll join hundreds of youth from across Virginia and the nation in Wise County, Virginia for Mountain Justice Spring Break. These mountains have been trying to recover my whole life. It’s time I spend some of my time to help them.

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We had a great workshop in Richmond on Saturday! JR Tolbert with Environment VA kicked off the event with an update on federal climate legislation.

Next up, activists from the region learned how to lobby a legislator with our environmental hero, Senator McEachin, accompanied by lobby expert, Matt Zogby with the Virginia League of Conservation Voters.

Followed by an interactive workshop with yours truly where everyone signed postcards, made calls to Senator Webb’s office and wrote handwritten letters urging him to vote in support of clean energy legislation and against the Dirty Air Act.

After that, the attendees learned the step-by-step process to writing a letter to their editor with Sierra Club staffer, Antigone Ambrose.

Each activist walked away from the workshop learning ways to get involved and taking lots of action. It was a fun workshop to be a part of!

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This past Saturday, over 75 climate change activists in Northern Virginia came together for the Northern Virginia Climate Action Network’s Tools for Change III: Energy Efficiency, Bringing the Message Home and Skills Training. Attendees came from across NoVa, from Loudoun to Bristow, with the common goal of learning more and getting involved in the fight for federal climate change legislation.

Speakers presented on a range of topics focused on some of the federal legislation in the Senate right now, as well as more local successes and projects in the works. Elenor Hodges, Executive Director of Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment, talked about the Green Living Challenge.  Though the program is in Arlington, the model of challenging neighborhoods to be greener than the others is already spreading to additional locations, and attendees got to learn how to motivate their own communities with some good-natured competition. The Virginia Sustainable Building Network and INOVA Health Systems also presented on how businesses can be more efficient and practical results from those that have taken the initiative to utilize better technologies.

But what good is the knowledge and the passion if you can’t communicate it to others? Karen Akerlof kicked off the messaging panel explaining the Six Americas: the categories that the public can be put into based on their beliefs and concern about climate change and how motivated they are to take action. Not surprisingly, everyone in the room would probably fit in with the “Alarmed America”, making it more valuable to learn to educate and mobilize others.

In addition to the others, well-known media staff presented on what they look for in a story, a Letter to the Editor, or an event to go to. Dave Fahrenthold, the Washington Post environment reporter for the DC-metro region, described his job and how he decides the topics and events to cover. Highlights include not to call a reporter before10am, and if at first you don’t succeed, keep e-mailing him to get an event on his radar.

We rounded out the day by putting all that new knowledge to use, practicing making talking points for different audiences. The diverse views of the climate changemovement showed when people prioritized messaging about health, jobs and the economy, children and the future, and water quality – and that was just in the one group of which I was part!

The momentum doesn’t stop there; NoVa CAN will build on the knowledge and skills with follow-up lobby meetings with Senators Webb and Warner’s offices on March 12^th. E-mail me at KeithT@chesapeakeclimate.org for more info.

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