Want a stronger climate bill? Then pay up!

This past week, on the heels of “Climate Week” and attendant Copenhagen preliminaries in New York, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a nice article in the New Yorker in which she mused over what it would actually take for the US to show real leadership on climate change.

None of the suggestions Kolbert offered at all resembled the Senate climate bill Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry unveiled Wednesday. While an improvement over the Waxman Markey bill, overall the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act falls far short of the high bar of climate leadership the US needs to clear and reminds us that the question we should be asking right now is not what US leadership should really look like. I think we already know the answer to that. No, the question we really have to address is, what is holding US leadership back, and how do we overcome it.

In a word, I think the answer is capital. Oil and coal have deep pockets and they use them well to finance the crippling of federal climate efforts. They’ve been outspending us in the climate fight. And the truth is the only way we’re going to win is by beating them at their own game. Simply put, if we want a stronger climate bill, we’ve got to “buy” it. Continue reading

Obama to Denmark for Olympics Pitch

Cross-posted from: here

I came across an article that President Obama is going to Denmark. For crucial international negotiations in Copenhagen this December about the next global climate treaty? Not quite.

“President Barack Obama will travel to Denmark this week to support Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.”

“Obama would be the first U.S. president to take on such a direct role in lobbying for an Olympics event.”

Well, lets hope he returns this December as the first U.S. president to take on a direct role in lobbying for the most important global treaty in the history of mankind. If he doesn’t, I sense the activists will really have a field day with this one.

Gotta love those judges…

gavel Yesterday, the 2nd circuit court of appeals in New York overturned a lower court decision brought by 8 states against 5 of the largest electricity providers in the country. The court said that greenhouse gases, like traditional air pollutants, can be considered under common law as a “nuisance”. The decision provides yet another “feather” in the proverbial legal “cap” of progressive states and environmental advocates to address CO2 emissions from the biggest climate change offenders via the courts. Way to go 2nd circuit! Continue reading

Pittsburgh to Host G-20 and G-20 Protests

Today, September 22nd, is the first day of the United Nations opening session in New York City where heads of state from all over the world are speaking publicly about the climate crisis and, in some cases, what their country is doing and intends to do about it.

Two days from now, some of these same heads of state will travel west to Pittsburgh, Pa. for a summit meeting of the G-20. Part of the G-20 agenda is the climate crisis; specifically, how on-going negotiations can be advanced so that at the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in December, a new and stronger climate treaty than the Kyoto Protocol can emerge.

Climate activists and other activists will be taking part in a variety of actions outside the G-20 meeting in the streets and elsewhere. There will be a number of climate-related activities. The major one is taking place on Wednesday evening when the Alliance for Climate Protection’s Repower America campaign, the United Steelworkers and the Blue Green Alliance will conclude their Clean Energy Jobs Tour with a rally beginning at 7 pm. The Jobs Tour, a month-long campaign with more than 50 events in 22 states, highlighted how a transition to a clean energy economy will create jobs while reducing harmful carbon pollution and our dependence on foreign oil.

The Wednesday evening event will feature musical entertainment, including Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, the Pittsburgh Gospel Choir and Grammy-award winning artist Kathy Mattea. Scheduled speakers include Pa. Governor Ed Rendell, Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, Rich Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO and Rev. Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus.

The event will take place in Point State Park. Click here for more information.

Other climate-related events include a Wednesday afternoon forum on “Challenging the G20’s Agenda of Corporate Globalization, a Thursday morning breakfast with Larry Schweiger, President/CEO of the National Wildlife Federation and a Thursday afternoon Jobs and Climate Solutions Press Conference featuring youth leaders from the United States and India.
Continue reading

Drink up! It could be your last!

I personally prefer my brew with fewer hops, but apparently I may not have a choice!  Clearly polar bears drowning and glaciers melting have not been enough to motivate the world into unified action to stop climate change  But apparently our precious brew is being threatened.  Can we get behind saving our precious hops.  This article below comes from New Scientist.

In all seriousness climate change legislation is drifting away.  That’s why this week we are generating hundreds of phone calls to our Senators so they realize that life as we know it could change forever if they don’t take action now.  We are asking folks to call on Wed.  Click here for details>>>

Read on for me details on the newest victim of Climate change::  Precious HOPS!

IF THE sinking Maldives aren’t enough to galvanise action on climate change, could losing a classic beer do it? Climatologist Martin Mozny of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute and colleagues say that the quality of Saaz hops – the delicate variety used to make pilsner lager – has been decreasing in recent years. They say the culprit is climate change in the form of increased air temperature.

Mozny’s team used a high-resolution dataset of weather patterns, crop yield and hop quality to estimate the impact of climate change on Saaz hops in the Czech Republic between 1954 and 2006. Best-quality Saaz hops contain about 5 per cent alpha acid, the compound that produces the delicate, bitter taste of pilsners.

The study found that the concentration of alpha acids in Saaz hops has fallen by 0.06 per cent a year since 1954, and models of hop yields and quality under future global warming scenarios predict bigger decreases (Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2009.02.006).

It’s not just Czech hops that are at stake here, says Francesco Tubiello, a crop specialist at the European Commission and a lead author of the agriculture chapter of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. “The famous hop-growing regions of eastern Germany and central Slovakia are facing the same situation,” he says.

Is beer the final straw??  Are you ready to tell our Senators to support STRONG CLIMATE legislation?  It’s more than just our frosty beverages at stake.  Across the country this week we are generating thousands of phone calls to our Senators so they don’t forget to make climate a top priority. 

We’ve made it easy… Click here to give a call.

To College in a Catastrophe

Imagine Henry Thoreau’s mother, trying to pack him up for Harvard in 1833. “Simplify, schmimplify,” Mrs. Thoreau might have exhorted her abstemious son, “At least take a change of socks and underwear.”

No such resistance to consumption afflicts my daughter, Hannah, as we shop for college in 2009. A pile of necessities grows in her bedroom, including but not limited to a Powerbook, extra-long sheets and comforter, assorted instant soups, mugs, posters, shoes galore, and a shower caddy with a startling array of bath products. To Hannah, the collection seems an expression of delight in her imminent adventure. For me, the proliferating acquisitions are a bulwark against my insecurities. At this late date, I fear, I have failed to prepare Hannah for her future.

My defenses took a shuddering blow when the St. Mary’s College website announced Hannah’s reading assignment for freshman orientation: Field Notes from a Catastrophe, by Elizabeth Kolbert. My teenaged perusal of Walden immersed me in images of Thoreau’s experiment in the pre-industrial New England woods. Kolbert presents a much darker vision: a post-warming world of vanishing species, churning hurricanes, and shriveling ice sheets. According to the journalist’s muster of experts, the climate change crisis is neither potential nor impending but upon us. Is Hannah ready for a planet Kolbert describes succinctly as melting? Continue reading

Can We Make It?

Future Hope column, August 29, 2009

More than once over the last several years I have talked with people who understand the deep hole humankind has dug for itself because of our reliance on fossil fuels and the dominant system’s environmentally destructive model of “development.” They have difficulty seeing a way that we will ever get out of this hole. Intuitively, they see little hope that we can avoid climate catastrophe. They ask me why I’m doing what I’m doing given that likelihood.

What I say to them is, OK, let’s assume the worst. Let’s accept that it is unlikely that we will be able to overcome in enough time the power of the fossil fuel interests and those allied with them and enact a clean energy revolution in enough time. Let’s accept that throughout this century billions of people will die and the world’s population is reduced to several hundred million people, the prediction of James Lovelock. What then? What does that mean for those of us alive today who want to do the right thing with our lives? Continue reading

UMD for Clean Energy Pushes Green Platform for City Council Elections

Cross-Posted from: here

UMD(University of Maryland) for Clean Energy is the student group I’m campaign director of. I recently made a post about our position statement we delivered to Senator Ben Cardin’s office, which showed up in the Washington Post Maryland blog(scroll to bottom). Beyond weighing in on Federal legislation, we’re taking advantage of an incredible opportunity to influence College Park policy in the upcoming elections this November, the city our school resides in. We think the transition to a clean energy economy and more sustainable society needs to come from not just from the top down, but the bottom up starting in our communities. We’re going to do our best to make that a reality in ours. Continue reading