Solar Panels to Return to White House

Finally, Obama has decided to answer thousands of petitioners' calls to place solar panels back on the White House roof.  This announcement restores at least a semblance of hope that Obama gets the importance of executive branch support for serious clean energy and climate change action.  However, this should have been done in his first year in office, or at the very least before the climate bill was put together in the Senate.  Now seems like a random time to be announcing this.  Why didn't he decide to show such visible support for clean energy in conjunction with his calls for passing a comprehensive clean energy bill last summer?!?  Seems like a huge missed opportunity to me...

The solar panels will be installed this coming spring, and it will only be for the Obamas' private quarters.  President Carter's solar panels in the 1970s powered the West Wing offices.  Can we read into the symbolism here and say that Obama doesn't want the public to take the solar panel installation as meaning that the government must be involved in clean energy deployment, but that it should be a household-by-household choice?  At least it's a move up from where George W. had his solar panels -- powering his swimming pool and a maintenance building.

Winds of Change...or not

The lack of a comprehensive clean energy and climate bill from the US Senate this year is having severe implications in the renewable energy sector.  Today, the Des Moines Register published an article that highlights the uncertainty among businesses and investors in wind energy.

There is no national long-term renewable energy mandate, which would stipulate that a certain percentage of every utility company's energy sources must come from renewable sources.  No plan exists to end subsidies to the fossil fuel industry or to institute a cap-and-trade system, both of which would place a more accurate price on the true costs of such energy.  The ability of renewable energy companies to compete and grow is being stunted by this political inaction.  "I would be reluctant to invest in more wind generation right now unless I knew I was required to do it or the market price of power was higher," said Tom Wind, an industry consultant in Iowa.

Iowa is the second leading wind energy producer in the nation, and yet zero wind projects are currently under construction.  Some say that this is because of the slow economy, but in fact, funding to subsidize new projects could have been easily provided by adopting a cap-and-trade system or transferring even a small percentage of the current fossil fuel industry subsidies to the renewable industry.

Iowa currently has 9,000 green job, many of which are in peril if the government doesn't continue to support renewables.  Most of these jobs are through small businesses that are either manufacturing wind turbines or installing/maintaining wind farms.  While the federal government, especially the Republican party, is saying they support small businesses, this is a clear example that they are in fact hurting them through their refusal to move forward with any renewable mandates.

The future world economy will be based on designing, developing, manufacturing, implementing, and maintaining renewable energy resources.  Those 9,000 jobs currently in Iowa could easily be tripled or more in the near future if we would look forward instead of clinging to the status quo.  Our inaction is severely damaging our ability to be a thriving nation in the 21st century and beyond.

Ecosystems in the Age of Cassandra

Kristen L. Marhaver, a PhD student in marine biology, has written a piece titled "Ecosystems in the Age of Cassandra" in Science Progress that urges the scientific community to change the way research findings are shared with the public and with policy makers.  Currently, major scientific research results get minimal time in the fast-paced media cycle before they are brushed aside and forgotten.  If a policy maker wants to compile the latest information on a scientific subject by going to the source instead of relying on mass media, s/he must sift through hundreds of publications, many of which are subscription based or protected by the university or lab who 'owns' the results.  Because there is no coordinated database for compiling such results, many policy makers are ill-informed of the current recommendations and warnings the scientific community is making, especially in regards to climate change and ecosystem deterioration due to human actions. 

The solution Kristen discusses is to create a comprehensive, free, open-to-the-public database of all federally-funded research.  It would also feature a search engine that policy makers could use to type in, say, "wetland habitat damage" and immediately have access to the latest information from the experts.  This would make it much easier to determine the scientific consensus as to which recommended actions would avoid said problem or threat.

The importance of getting the appropriate information to the decision makers of our country cannot be overstated.  Kristen puts it like this:

"Science produces some of the world’s most powerful information and we should be harnessing the full power of the information age to compile this knowledge and transmit it to policymakers. Otherwise we will simply be documenting, in exquisite detail but out of earshot of our decision makers, the death of planet Earth."

Really, Louisiana Senate?!?

Social and environmental justice concerns are converging in the midst of the massive oil leak/spill/volcano. Mother Jones blogger Mac McClelland's post "A Strike Against Oil Spill Lawsuits" discusses the Louisiana legislature's current project: Senate Bill 549. This bill, which the senate is holding a hearing on tomorrw, would severely limit the work of university law clinics that represent low-income clients. These clinics would be barred from filing suits against government agencies, suits seeking monetary damages, or suits that raise state constitutional challenges.

The main target is the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, where law students take on cases against industrial polluters on behalf of Louisiana's citizens. The reason for being targeted? The senate wants Louisiana to be seen by businesses as pro-industry and wants to send a message that all these pesky lawsuits are doing is hurting Louisiana's economy. What's worse still is that environmental lawsuits won't be the only suits restricted. Not only is this bill pro-business, it is pro-wealthy. Also barred will be suits by civil rights plaintiffs, domestic violence victims, and juveniles. Those who cannot afford their own lawyers and turn to such clinics to seek justice will have that resource removed. But hey, at least industries will know that they can pollute without repercussions for their irresponsible, damaging actions!

"Climate Change and the Integrity of Science"

Yesterday, 255 National Academy of Sciences members published this statement in the journal Science, standing up to the recent attacks on scientists and clearly laying out why inaction toward climate change is not an option. This is exactly what the scientific community needs to be doing, because reason and facts are on their side.

"Climate Change and the Integrity of Science"

We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.

Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modeling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial—scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That’s what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of “well-established theories” and are often spoken of as “facts.”

For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5 billion years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14 billion years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today’s organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution). Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong. Climate change now falls into this category: There is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.

Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific assessments of climate change, which involve thousands of scientists producing massive and comprehensive reports, have, quite expectedly and normally, made some mistakes. When errors are pointed out, they are corrected. But there is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change:

(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.

(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth’s climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.

(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.

(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.

Much more can be, and has been, said by the world’s scientific societies, national academies, and individuals, but these conclusions should be enough to indicate why scientists are concerned about what future generations will face from business-as-usual practices. We urge our policy-makers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the un restrained burning of fossil fuels.

We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them. Society has two choices: We can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively. The good news is that smart and effective actions are possible. But delay must not be an option.

The Gusher in the Gulf

The past few weeks have been a stark reminder of the perils of our fossil fuel addiction. So much has been written about the Gulf spill and its catastrophic damage to the ecosystems and economies in the wide area that is bound to be affected before this disaster is over. While obviously tragic, there is a great opportunity here for a reframing of the energy and climate debate. Because the Senate bill has been indefinitely postponed, this is a prime chance to demand more support for renewables and eliminate the giveaways to the oil and coal companies that are in the current bill. Barack Obama needs to clearly and strongly lay out to America and the world why the path we are on is so dangerous. He needs to connect the major catastrophies of the past few years and show that the financial industry, coal industry, and oil industry disasters were all a result of a lack of government oversight and regulation.

Limited regulation is necessary in these industries. Without it, we have seen how greed for profit trumps all thoughts of what is good for the public. The government's job is to protect the public from such tyranny. We gave corporations the chance to self-regulate through voluntary safety standards, and as a result we have seen irresponsible sub-prime mortgage lending that led to the biggest economic recession since the Great Depression, we've seen 28 coal miners killed because of negligence to enforce basic safety standards by Massey Corp, and now we're seeing a tragic, thus-far unstoppable underwater volcano of oil erupting.

If BP had complied with the voluntary safety recommendations from the US Minerals Management Service to place a remote-control shut off for the well, the well could be closed by now. For a company who made $5.6 billion in the first quarter of 2010, spending $500,000 on this technology seems like a drop in the bucket, but its absence has now led to a gusher in the Gulf.

Mr. McKibben goes to Madison

Bill McKibben, the prominent writer and environmentalist who founded 350.org, spoke at Green Day in Madison on April 17th. His presentation focused on the reasons he sees political activism as the primary route to effective change.

Mr. McKibben's first book, The End of Nature, was published in 1989 and was one of the first books to warn of the effects climate change could wreak on our world. Since then, he has written on many environmental subjects, and also started one of the largest environmental movements in history. McKibben is a professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, and with six of his students he founded 350.org. This movement is based on the report by James Hansen (top climate expert and Iowa grad!) that 350 ppm is the upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere to maintain a livable world. The first day of action for 350.org was October 24, 2009, when 5,281 sites around the world held demonstrations supporting the 350 ppm goal. Millions of people participated, making it what some called the biggest display of political activism on any subject in history. Pictures from these demonstrations are on their website and are truly inspirational.

In his presentation last week, McKibben described the overwhelming response of this movement he'd started. McKibben pointed out that if you look at all the pictures from these demonstrations around the world, it completely refutes the label put on who environmentalists are. Many say that environmentalism is a white liberal elitist issue, a classist issue, and that it's a luxury once you have your needs met to live comfortably. On the contrary, these demonstrations were attended and organized in majority by the poor, young, non-white in the world. The most moving story of that day of action in October was that of an orphanage in Indonesia. The children and their caregivers collected plastic bottles all day to spell out 350. Along with a picture of them with their bottles, they included a message in broken English: "Even though no one caring about us, we caring about the Earth."

On feelings of defeat or cynicism: "Some people say that there's a good chance it might be too late, that we've already done too much damage to our Earth, and that the chance is high that any actions we take won't be big enough or fast enough. Well, being alive right now requires that we do everything in our power to lower the percentage chance that it's too late."

On his belief that individual lifestyle changes are not enough to make the huge changes necessary, and why political activism is key: "We're not gonna do this one lightbulb at a time, or even one country at a time. If we're gonna do this, it has to be one world at a time or not at all."

What an inspirational leader.

Earth Day 40

In the forty years since the first Earth Day, much progress has been made environmentally. The open and flippant pollution by industries and individuals is no longer looked at as normal because of that first Earth Day starting the process of stigmatizing such behavior. Many governmental policies and programs, including the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, occurred in the three years following the 1970 Earth Day. The original Earth Day taught us what a group of motivated, organized, passionate, everyday people can achieve when united. It showed us that our government will respond when forced to do so by its people. While these are important strides, the amount of progress since then is dismal when compared to how far we have to go.

The achievements of the first Earth Day have had great effects in the United States, but the problem of climate change is obviously global. Therefore, it is overdue that action be taken to address the global nature of this problem. Placing a price on carbon is the first step toward doing this. The potential effects cannot be overstated. If the US adjusts the marketplace to include the externalities of carbon release, the rest of the world will likely follow. The major emitters need to be financially responsible for the effects their actions are having on the environment.

Earth Day was primarily organized as a political movement, to gain national attention and place political pressure for change. Today, we need to re-focus on the political side of environmentalism. This is a non-partisan issue. The future of human civilization is bigger than any petty partisan politics. Next week, a bipartisan energy and jobs bill will be presented in the Senate that will propose a carbon pricing system. Sponsored by Kerry (D), Graham (R), and Lieberman (I), it will be the most important piece of legislation in recent history, as it has the potential to alter our country's and our world's trajectory.

We can either sit by and wait for other countries to take the first major steps toward rescuing our future, or we can choose to continue to be the leaders of the Free World. This is the time to make your voice heard. This is the moment we must stand up and tell our elected officials what is right and what needs to be done. This bill must pass and become law. While it will not be perfect, we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need a price on carbon. Period.

The complete guide to modern day climate change

Climate Progress, the wonderfully insightful blog by Joe Romm (the former Assistant Secretary of the Department of Energy under Clinton), features a post today called The complete guide to modern day climate change. It is a great compilation of evidence, graphs, data, and summaries of the leading climate change research. Complete with all sources, it is a great primer for anyone interested in becoming more familiar with the facts of climate change. Check it out!

Biking now a "real" transportation mode!

Great news for the bicycling enthusiasts! The Obama Administration has announced that its transportation policy will give bicycling and walking the same importance as automobiles when determining federal fund allocation and planning. Ray LaHood, the Transportation Secretary, announced the policy on his blog in conjunction with an announcement by the DOT. Recommendations include clearing snow from bike paths and including biking and walking lanes on roads and bridges.

The Huffington Post has an article about the reactions to this announcement (click here).

Obviously, the biking world is very excited about this policy, catapulting LaHood to rockstar status. Certain trucking and manufacturing industry representatives and Republican lawmakers are not so pumped. One congressman, Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio), questioned if LaHood had been on drugs while writing the policy. His main problem with the policy is that it would be using the federal gas tax to fund these alternative transportation modes. This money is currently used to repair highways and rail transit systems. (Interestingly, aka hypocritically, LaTourette supported federally funded bicycle paths in his own district.)

I think this is actually the perfect way to fund clean, green transportation options. It's the equivalent of a carbon tax. The first step is getting the infrastructure in place. Then, if you choose not to use the biking/walking paths, you should be charged a small fee (in the form of the gas tax) for the carbon footprint you are leaving. On the other hand, if you choose the greener transportation option, you are being rewarded by having your lower gas use equate to lower taxation. Where else should the money come from, if not the Department of Transportation? It's all transportation. Prejudicing the system toward the "big bucks" manufacturers and industries and against the individual is not responsible governance. If we don't at least create the infrastructure and give people the option of eco-responsible transit, then the entrenched powers and habits will never change. We can't ask people to change their behavior if we don't give them the means to do so through safe and well-designed alternatives.

Something is better than nothing

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote a piece for New York Times Magazine last week on the economics of climate change solutions (see article here).

It's a very good overview of the approaches our government is debating in regards to climate change policy, i.e. cap-and-trade vs. emissions tax. He also discusses the politics of inaction and pessimism surrounding these issues, laying out the economics of action vs. inaction. I find this very important considering that opponents like to talk of the prohibitive costs of the proposed policies to the US economy without considering the deferred costs that will occur without said policies. Lastly, Krugman throws his support behind immediate action on a large and fast scale. The technology and economic analysis are all ready to go, and now political will is all we are waiting for.

In the vein of pessimism that Krugman discussed, some responses to Krugman's article criticized him for not having realistic, attainable goals and for expecting too much from our political and market-place sectors. In assessing these criticisms, political blogger Kevin Drum of Mother Jones takes a tone that I find inspiring and spot-on. It's easy to say that it's too difficult to try these recommended actions, but what other choice do we have?

"I think it's too easy to be overwhelmed by the scope of the climate change problem. It's unquestionably fantastically difficult, and any sober look at human nature, developing country growth, and capital stock inertia suggests that we're going to have a very hard time meeting our most ambitious goals. But there really are pretty feasible ways of getting a lot of the way there, and if carbon pricing and other programs motivate the next Thomas Edison to invent something remarkable a year or a decade before it might have otherwise happened, who knows? That might get us the rest of the way.

And if it doesn't? Well, look: three degrees of temperature increase is still better then five degrees. Six inches of sea rise is better than 12 inches. A hundred million dead is better than a billion dead. This stuff is worth doing even if it's not perfect. After all, what is?"

- Kevin Drum, Mother Jones

To read the rest of Kevin Drum's post, click here.

About my blog

In surveying all the issues for which I have passion, the underlying unifier is justice.  Justice means fighting for the underrepresented, the underprivileged, the underdog. Striving for justice means doing everything we can, with everything we have, to speak for those who can't speak for themselves.

This blog will be a forum for discovery and discussion of the wide range of environmental and social justice issues present in our world. Through this endeavor, I hope to gain a grasp on which actions we need to take that will lead to the pursuit of a Just Earth.

"Set yourself earnestly to discover what you are made to do, and then give yourself passionately to the doing of it."

--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.