Gore calls for Carbon-Free Grid in the US

According to an article in the New York Times, Al Gore has called on the United States to switch to clean sources for electric power by 2020. (See excerpt of article below.)
Dot Earth: The (Annotated) Gore Climate Speech
Former Vice President Al Gore said on Thursday that Americans must abandon electricity generated by fossil fuels within a decade and rely on the sun, the winds and other environmentally friendly sources of power, or risk losing their national security as well as their creature comforts.
“The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk,” Mr. Gore said in a speech to an energy conference here. “The future of human civilization is at stake.”
Mr. Gore called for the kind of concerted national effort that enabled Americans to walk on the moon 39 years ago this month, just eight years after President John F. Kennedy famously embraced that goal. He said the goal of producing all of the nation’s electricity from “renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources” within 10 years is not some farfetched vision, although he said it would require fundamental changes in political thinking and personal expectations.
“This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative,” Mr. Gore said in his remarks at the conference. “It represents a challenge to all Americans, in every walk of life — to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.”
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
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Sierra Club Praises RI IPL

By Ted Nesi PBN Staff Writer
NORTH KINGSTOWN – An interfaith group that is working to raise awareness about climate change was spotlighted today in a Sierra Club report on faith-based environmentalism.
Rhode Island Interfaith Power & Light, founded in January 2007 by a dozen of the state’s religious leaders, describes itself as “an interfaith ministry devoted to deepening the connection between ecology and faith.”
To date, more than 60 congregations have joined in Rhode Island Interfaith Power & Light, according to the Rev. Harry Rix, chairman of the board for the North Kingstown-based organization. The local group is a state chapter of the national Interfaith Power & Light.
Rhode Island Interfaith Power & Light’s activities so far have included free screenings of the film “An Inconvenient Truth” and the distribution of free compact fluorescent light bulbs, provided by Wal-Mart, to low-income households.
The Sierra Club report – “Faith in Action: Communities of Faith Bring Hope for the Planet,” released by the Rhode Island chapter this morning at St. Theresa Catholic Church in Providence – spotlights faith-based environmental initiatives in all 50 states. According to the report, 67 percent of Americans say they care about the environment because it is “God’s creation,” and organizers are looking to tap into that feeling to boost the burgeoning “creation care” movement.
“This report demonstrates that the call to care for the earth comes no matter what one’s faith background is,” Chris Wilhite, director of the Rhode Island Sierra Club, said in a statement. “We are inspired by Rhode Island Interfaith Power & Light’s leadership in working to protect the planet, and this report is our way of saying ‘thank you’ to the many people of faith working on creation care initiatives across the country.”
In Massachusetts , the report looked at the work of the Rev. Fred Small, a Littleton pastor who in 2001 founded the organization Religious Witness for the Earth.
Small’s group has planned environmental prayer services, circulated petitions, and testified at state and federal hearings. In March 2007, Religious Witness for the Earth held what the Sierra Club report describes as the largest anti-global-warming demonstration in the country’s history.
“I wanted to explore how to apply the lessons of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., to a challenge of comparable moral urgency,” Small told the report’s authors.
Rhode Island Interfaith Power & Light, a nonprofit organization founded in 2007 to promote deeper “connection between ecology and faith,” is a state chapter of the nationwide Interfaith Power & Light. For more information, visit riipl.org.
The Rhode Island Chapter of the Sierra Club is an affiliate of the nationwide nonprofit environmental policy and research group. For more information, including the full report, visit www.sierraclub.org/ri.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Do Flatscreen TVs cause climate change?

An article in the British newspaper The Guardian warns about this new danger to the environment (see excerpt below):

The rising demand for flat-screen televisions could have a greater impact on global warming than the world's largest coal-fired power stations, a leading environmental scientist warned yesterday.
Manufacturers use a greenhouse gas called nitrogen trifluoride to make the televisions, and as the sets have become more popular, annual production of the gas has risen to about 4,000 tonnes.
As a driver of global warming, nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide, yet no one knows how much of it is being released into the atmosphere by the industry, said Michael Prather, director of the environment institute at the University of California, Irvine.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Ice-Free North Pole in '08?

The chances are greater than 50% that there will be no ice at the North Pole this summer, according to this article in The Independent (see excerpt below):

Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally ice-free North Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by huge swathes of thinner ice formed over a single year.
This one-year ice is highly vulnerable to melting during the summer months and satellite data coming in over recent weeks shows that the rate of melting is faster than last year, when there was an all-time record loss of summer sea ice at the Arctic.
"The issue is that, for the first time that I am aware of, the North Pole is covered with extensive first-year ice – ice that formed last autumn and winter. I'd say it's even-odds whether the North Pole melts out," said Dr Serreze.
Each summer the sea ice melts before reforming again during the long Arctic winter but the loss of sea ice last year was so extensive that much of the Arctic Ocean became open water, with the water-ice boundary coming just 700 miles away from the North Pole.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Seas rising and warming

According to this entry in the New York Times "Dot Earth" blog, the world's oceans are rising and getting warmer faster than expected. (See excerpt below):

The study, by Australian and American researchers, reviewed millions of measurements of ocean temperatures taken using a particular instrument on submarines and other vessels over four decades. The researchers found a subtle error that, when fixed, shows that the rate at which seas warmed and rose between 1961 and 2003 was about 50 percent greater than previous estimates.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Rhode Island Moves Toward Renewable Energy

According to this article in the Providence (Rhode Island) Journal, Rhode Island is going green. Read an excerpt below:

BY TIMOTHY C. BARMANN and KATHERINE GREGGJournal Staff Writers

State Rep. David Segal, D-Providence, answers questions from his House colleagues as his alternate-energy bill is debated.
The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch
PROVIDENCE — The Rhode Island Senate last night passed a series of energy bills designed to encourage and embrace renewable energy projects, both large and small, in order to make the state less dependent on electricity produced by traditional fossil fuels.
The House of Representatives approved one of its own and started debate on another. But in this corner of the State House, the debate escalated into allegations the bill had been stuffed “chock-full” with so many “treats” that it had been turned into the legislative equivalent of a piñata, and then rammed through a House committee without the opportunity for public comment on the potential added costs to ratepayers.
The House will resume its alternative-energy debate today, with passionate advocates on both sides.
Supporters of the legislation said it would spark development of small-scale renewable-energy projects, foster private investment in large-scale wind and solar projects, stabilize electricity prices, and at the same time spur economic development within the state.
Environmental advocates, who helped craft the bills, said enacting the laws would thrust Rhode Island into the forefront of renewable energy development in New England.
The centerpiece of the legislation is a bill that would require National Grid to enter into long-term contracts with renewable-energy developers to purchase their electricity. That requirement would give assurance to prospective developers that there would be a customer for the electricity produced by the project. Such assurance, the developers have said, is needed to borrow money to build renewable energy projects.
On the House side, some legislators were not convinced the bills were a good idea, and suggested that the General Assembly should take more time to study the potential impacts, such as how the bills might affect electricity rates.
“These are very complicated subjects which tend to be overwhelmed by emotional appeals to the ‘need to do something’ about alternative energy,” said Rep. Laurence Ehrhardt, R-North Kingstown.
The most significant energy bill, which passed the Senate yesterday, requires National Grid to enter into “commercially reasonable” long-term contracts to buy renewable energy from developers who plan to build large-scale renewable-energy projects. The company would be required to buy at least 5 percent of the power it delivers to Rhode Island, and the contracts would last 10 to 15 years, or even longer with approval by the Public Utilities Commission.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Green Energy in Middletown, CT

Landfill Gas Project Moves Forward

Middletown’s Common Council unanimously approved an agreement with business partners gathered by the Jonah Center for Earth and Art to move forward on the landfill gas project.

What are the environmental benefits of this project?

Assuming methane emissions of 150 cubic feet per minute (a reasonable estimate), flaring the gas to destroy the methane would reduce annual greenhouse gas emission equivalent to removing 2900 cars from the road. Utilizing this same methane to fuel a 350 KW generator would be equivalent to reducing annual greenhouse gas emissions from an additional 2800 passenger vehicles or powering 280 homes for one year. (Source, U.S. EPA Landfill Methane Outreach Program).

Endurant Energy LLC (Oak Terrace, IL) is the “developer;” Environmental Credit Corporation (State College, PA) will market the greenhouse gas reduction credits; William Charles Waste Companies (Rockford, IL) will determine the best location for the wells. Highland Power (Brockton, MA) will arrange for the local test well drilling. This initial phase of the project will determine the amount and quality of the gas emerging from the landfill. If there is sufficient gas, a 350 kW electricity generator will be installed to supply power to the grid.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

CT Legislature Passes Climate Bill

Both houses of the Connecticut Legislature has passed a sweeping new Climate protection bill. Governor Jody Rell has not yet signed it but is expected to do so. See the details below as reported by The Nature Conservancy:

Monday, the Connecticut State Senate, in a unanimous vote, approved Bill 5600, An Act Concerning Global Warming Solutions. Passed last week by the House, the bill will now go to the Governor's desk, and even though the recently announced state budget woes have thrown many initiatives into doubt, it appears the Governor will sign this bill.
The bill establishes a mandatory greenhouse gas emissions cap, requiring the state to reduce our emissions by 10% below 1990 levels by 2020, and by 80% by 2050. The legislation includes provisions directing state agencies to investigate and implement actions to achieve the caps.The bill also includes a provision, introduced by The Nature Conservancy, that directs the existing Governor's Steering Committee on Climate Change to establish a subcommittee, comprised of additional state agencies and outside experts, to assess the impacts of climate change on Connecticut's human infrastructure and natural communities, and to make recommendations for enabling our human and natural communities to adapt to the those impacts. Here is the link to the bill's language.If Governor Rell signs it, Connecticut will join 4 other states (California, New Jersey, Hawaii and Washington) that have established mandatory greenhouse gas emission caps, and 3 other states (Alaska, New York and Maryland) that have established state bodies to look at how to prepare for and mitigate the impacts of climate change on natural and human communities.
The emissions cap levels are in accord with the reductions that the Interplantetary Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), among others, have said are necessary globally if we are to have any chance of keeping carbon dioxide levels in the range of 450 parts per million (they're currently at about 380-390, up from about 260-280 pre-industrial). That 450 ppm level will create very serious impacts, but exceeding it will be catastrophic, according to many scientists.
The Nature Conservancy is on the Steering Committee of the coalition that introduced the legislation; the other members being Connecticut Fund for the Environment, Environment Northeast, Clean Water Action, Environment Connecticut, and Environmental Defense.
Legislators who warrant particular mention for their efforts on this bill include Representatives Pat Widlitz and Bob Godfrey and Senators Don Williams, John McKinney and Ed Meyer.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Governor's Conference on Climate at Yale

According to the Yale Daily News, Connecticut will soon be the site of a historic meeting of governors who care about climate change. Read the story below:

'Governator’ to talk climate at conference
Schwarzenegger will discuss global warming at forestry-school symposium next month
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is scheduled to visit Yale next month to deliver an address on climate change, University officials confirmed last week.
Schwarzenegger will speak at a conference of state governors at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies on April 17 and 18. The event will not be publicly announced until this week at the earliest, but officials disclosed some details about the conference in advance in response to an inquiry by the News.
The meeting will come exactly one century after President Theodore Roosevelt beckoned the nation’s governors to the White House in 1908 for an environmental conference organized by U.S. Forest Service chief and FES co-founder Gifford Pinchot 1889.
At that summit, the conservation movement was born.
“In our case, 100 years later, we are convening the governors of the United States to discuss what we consider the most challenging issue of our time, which is climate change,” said Melissa Goodall, the associate director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, which is organizing the event.
All 50 state governors, as well as their counterparts in the U.S. territories and Canada, have been invited to the conference, although administrators expect only a fraction of them to attend. State environmental-protection commissioners from around the country and at least two former administrators of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, among them former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, are also expected to make the journey to New Haven.
R.K. Pachauri, a one-time FES visiting professor who received the Nobel Peace Prize last year on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for which he serves as chairman, is also slated to attend, as is Theodore Roosevelt IV, a great-grandson of the president and an environmental activist himself.
Aside from the A-list crowd, the conference will be centered on the unveiling of a policy statement — agreed upon by governors and state environmental-protection officials from across the country — that “effectively calls for a partnership approach between the federal and state government on addressing climate change,” Goodall said.
Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Gina McCarthy will coordinate the statement. She was not immediately available for comment last week.
Schwarzenegger’s speech, as well as a roundtable discussion among the governors on the topic of climate change, is expected to be open to the public, although the time of the speech has not yet been disclosed. Reached by telephone last week, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger would not confirm the governor’s planned visit but said more details would be available as the date of the conference neared.
Schwarzenegger, a Republican, made headlines in 2006 when he signed into law the first enforceable, statewide cap on greenhouse-gas emissions. The program is among the cornerstones of his tenure as governor and drew worldwide praise at the time of its unveiling.
It also addresses an issue that has been a major focus for University President Richard Levin and FES in recent years. During a speech at the University of Copenhagen in January, he called on the world’s economic powers to take action on global warming.
“All of us would like to see the federal government step up — but short of that, the kinds of things that Gov. Schwarzenegger has been pursuing have been very positive,” Levin said Saturday. “He certainly has been a major leader in this field.”
Yale, meanwhile, is making its own effort to fend off global warming: The University is already several years ahead of schedule in its initiative to realize, by 2020, a 10-percent cut in its greenhouse-gas emissions from 1990 levels.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Presidential Candidates, Climate Change and Faith

This item comes from the national IPL Blog:

The League of Conservation Voters has pointed out a serious problem of priorities in the presidential debates thus far, to wit: out of 3201 questions asked of the candidates, only 8 have dealt with global warming.Interfaith Power and Light is doing something about that.In conjunction with Faith in Public Life and religious leaders from across the ideological spectrum, on April 13, the Rev. Canon Sally Bingham will be asking Sen. Hillary Clinton and/or Sen. Barack Obama a question on global warming! And she won't be the only one. In fact, the Compassion Forum is focused on just five important issues to folks of faith: domestic and international poverty, global AIDS, climate change, genocide in Darfur, and human rights and torture. Thus, climate change should get some due attention, and it is significant that this badly needed priority is happening in the faith context. Sen. John McCain has been invited, but not accepted yet."CNN will serve as the exclusive broadcaster of a presidential candidate forum on faith, values and other current issues at Messiah College near Harrisburg, Penn., on Sunday, April 13, at 8 p.m. (ET) CNN Election Center anchor Campbell Brown and Newsweek editor and Newsweek.com election anchor Jon Meacham will moderate what is being billed as The Compassion Forum, which will take place nine days before the Pennsylvania primary."Newsweek has an interesting article up arguing that no matter which candidate wins in November, environmental policy will be different:
The environment, which typically ranks somewhere around "regulatory reform" among voters' concerns, has emerged as a leading issue in this election cycle; last year more than three voters in 10 said they would take a candidate's green credentials into account, according to pollster John Zogby, up from just 11 percent in 2005. "It was clear starting all the way back in Iowa and New Hampshire that this campaign would be much more about the environment," says Dave Willett, a spokesman for the Sierra Club. "The questions weren't 'Do you think global warming is happening?' but 'How are you going to deal with it, what's your approach?'"

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Early Spring

Find yourself sneezing from seasonal allergies earlier than expected this year? That's because spring is coming earlier and earlier thanks to global warming, according to this AP story (read excerpt below.)

Pollen is bursting. Critters are stirring. Buds are swelling. Biologists are worrying.
"The alarm clock that all the plants and animals are listening to is running too fast," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said.
Blame global warming.
The fingerprints of man-made climate change are evident in seasonal timing changes for thousands of species on Earth, according to dozens of studies and last year's authoritative report by the Nobel Prize-winning international climate scientists. More than 30 scientists told The Associated Press how global warming is affecting plants and animals at springtime across the country, in nearly every state.
What's happening is so noticeable that scientists can track it from space. Satellites measuring when land turns green found that spring "green-up" is arriving eight hours earlier every year on average since 1982 north of the Mason-Dixon line. In much of Florida and southern Texas and Louisiana, the satellites show spring coming a tad later, and bizarrely, in a complicated way, global warming can explain that too, the scientists said.
Biological timing is called phenology. Biological spring, which this year begins at 1:48 a.m. EDT Thursday, is based on the tilt of the Earth as it circles the sun. The federal government and some university scientists are so alarmed by the changes that last fall they created a National Phenology Network at the U.S. Geological Survey to monitor these changes.
The idea, said biologist and network director Jake Weltzin, is "to better understand the changes, and more important what do they mean? How does it affect humankind?"
There are winners, losers and lots of unknowns when global warming messes with natural timing. People may appreciate the smaller heating bills from shorter winters, the longer growing season and maybe even better tasting wines from some early grape harvests. But biologists also foresee big problems.
The changes could push some species to extinction. That's because certain plants and animals are dependent on each other for food and shelter. If the plants bloom or bear fruit before animals return or surface from hibernation, the critters could starve. Also, plants that bud too early can still be whacked by a late freeze.
The young of tree swallows — which in upstate New York are laying eggs nine days earlier than in the 1960s — often starve in those last gasp cold snaps because insects stop flying in the cold, ornithologists said. University of Maryland biology professor David Inouye noticed an unusually early February robin in his neighborhood this year and noted, "Sometimes the early bird is the one that's killed by the winter storm."
The checkerspot butterfly disappeared from Stanford's Jasper Ridge preserve because shifts in rainfall patterns changed the timing of plants on which it develops. When the plant dries out too early, the caterpillars die, said Notre Dame biology professor Jessica Hellmann.
"It's an early warning sign in that it's an additional onslaught that a lot of our threatened species can't handle," Hellmann said.
It's not easy on some people either. A controlled federal field study shows that warmer temperatures and increased carbon dioxide cause earlier, longer and stronger allergy seasons.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Dems on Global Cooling

In an article in Salon, an energy expert gives a favorable review to plans Clinton and Obama have put forward for dealing with climate and energy issues, and speculates on how their leadership styles might play out on the issue. The article is short on definitive conclusions, but heartening to those who hope a Democratic administration might bring significant change on the issue. Read an excerpt below:

The gravest threat to the American way of life is posed by unrestricted greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Global warming threatens to put the Southwest into a permanent drought, raise sea levels by 6 or more inches a decade, generate hundreds of millions of environmental refugees at home and abroad, wipe out half the planet's species, and increase average temperatures in the nation's interior 10-20 degrees Fahrenheit. And these impacts would likely get steadily worse for hundreds of years or longer.
No enemy, foreign or domestic, poses a threat to us that is so devastating, so irreversible. Top climate scientists tell us the threat might be all but unstoppable if the nation and the world don't take serious steps over the next decade to restrict GHG emissions. For all the urgent crises the next president has to deal with in the middle of the night, the most important calls he or she will have to make concern how to stop global warming.
We've seen that a President McCain is not likely to be the leader this country and the world need to maintain the planet's livability for our children and the next 50 generations. What about a President Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? Both would be a giant step forward. Unlike McCain, they have both put out detailed and comprehensive plans. (Obama's is here. Clinton's is here.) Although you wouldn't know it from the media coverage, these plans are more important to the long-term health and well-being of future generations than the candidates' healthcare or Iraq plans.


Before I look in depth at them, the first thing to make clear is that no president, not even a modern-day Lincoln or FDR, could possibly stop global warming even by their second term. The increase in concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases is primarily what determines how much humans will increase the planet's temperature. To stop concentrations from rising further, the entire planet will have to reduce total annual emissions at least 60 percent or more from current levels, including carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. Absent a World War II-type mobilization, that kind of dramatic change in the planet's energy system will take a few decades.
Even when concentrations stop rising, global temperatures will continue to increase for many decades because it takes a long time for the planet's temperature to come into equilibrium with any new level of GHG concentrations. Ultimately, by 2100, we will probably need net human GHG emissions to be close to zero, if not negative, to avert catastrophe. We can't stop global warming in the next decade.
Humanity's great challenge is to stop the warming before we cross key thresholds or tipping points, in which amplifying feedbacks in the carbon cycle start to seriously kick in and overwhelm human efforts to reduce emissions. A typical feedback would be the melting of the permafrost or tundra, which currently has locked away some 1,000 gigatons of carbon -- more carbon than the atmosphere is holding today.
If the permafrost stops being perma, that would release tens of billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, much of it in the form of methane -- a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. That, in turn, would speed the temperature increase and the thaw of additional permafrost. In short, passing such a tipping point would set the planet on an all-but-unstoppable path to high concentrations of GHGs, destroying the planet's livability for centuries if not millennia, according to the latest research.
So we must sharply reduce emissions even as the population keeps growing, and do it in a way that increases, rather than hinders, economic development, particularly in undeveloped nations already wracked by poverty, disease, dirty water, hunger and other scourges.
This necessitates deploying all existing or near-term clean energy technologies today as rapidly as possibly, while shutting down or capturing the emissions of at least half of the dirty technologies. At the same time, we must accelerate the development and introduction of the next generation of clean technologies, which can ultimately take global emissions as low as possible by century's end.
A mandatory GHG control system that establishes a price for carbon dioxide emissions, such as a cap-and-trade system, is necessary. Both Clinton and Obama endorse a cap-and-trade system, requiring an 80 percent reduction in U.S. GHGs by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, much deeper than McCain has so far endorsed and close to what is currently believed necessary for our country and planet. Recently, McCain has also begun waffling about just how "mandatory" his program would be. Voluntary caps don't work and must be rejected.
Yet cap and trade is not enough. The next president has a great many important calls to make:
Appoint judges who will uphold laws to reduce emissions against challenges from the big polluters.
Appoint leaders and staff of key federal agencies who take climate change seriously and believe in the necessary solutions.
Embrace an aggressive and broad-based technology deployment strategy to keep the cost of the cap-and-trade system as low as possible.
Lead a change in utility regulations to encourage, rather than discourage, energy efficiency and clean energy.
Offer strong public advocacy to reverse the years of muzzling and misinformation of the Bush administration.
McCain is unlikely to do any of these five things. Obama and Clinton are likely to do them all. In particular, at least from my perspective as a former Energy Department official, the most important news is that both of them understand the necessity of the technology side.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

Check out the National IPL Blog.

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Our Mother Blog

Thought you might like to check out the National IPL blog. Looks great, doesn't it? Keep up the good work, IPL!

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

Check out the National IPL Blog.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

The End of Fossil Fuels?

According to an article in the Washington Post, fossil fuel emissions must drop near zero by mid-century to prevent catastrophic consequences from global warming (see excerpt below):
The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.
Their findings, published in separate journals over the past few weeks, suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide.
Using advanced computer models to factor in deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide (CO2), the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.
"The question is, what if we don't want the Earth to warm anymore?" asked Carnegie Institution senior scientist Ken Caldeira, co-author of a paper published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "The answer implies a much more radical change to our energy system than people are thinking about."
Although many nations have been pledging steps to curb emissions for nearly a decade, the world's output of carbon from human activities totals about 10 billion tons a year and has been steadily rising.
For now, at least, a goal of zero emissions appears well beyond the reach of politicians here and abroad. U.S. leaders are just beginning to grapple with setting any mandatory limit on greenhouse gases. The Senate is poised to vote in June on legislation that would reduce U.S. emissions by 70 percent by 2050; the two Democratic senators running for president, Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), back an 80 percent cut. The Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), supports a 60 percent reduction by mid-century.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is shepherding climate legislation through the Senate as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the new findings "make it clear we must act now to address global warming."
"It won't be easy, given the makeup of the Senate, but the science is compelling," she said. "It is hard for me to see how my colleagues can duck this issue and live with themselves."
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Southern Baptists Change on Climate

According to the New York Times, a group of Southern Baptist Leaders have called for action on climate change (see excerpt below):

Signaling a significant departure from the Southern Baptist Convention’s official stance on global warming, 44 Southern Baptist leaders have decided to back a declaration calling for more action on climate change, saying its previous position on the issue was “too timid.”
The largest denomination in the United States after the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, with more than 16 million members, is politically and theologically conservative.
Yet its current president, the Rev. Frank Page, signed the initiative, “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change.” Two past presidents of the convention, the Rev. Jack Graham and the Rev. James Merritt, also signed.
“We believe our current denominational engagement with these issues has often been too timid, failing to produce a unified moral voice,” the church leaders wrote in their new declaration.
A 2007 resolution passed by the convention hewed to a more skeptical view of global warming.
In contrast, the new declaration, which will be released Monday, states, “Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed.”
The document also urges ministers to preach more about the environment and for all Baptists to keep an open mind about considering environmental policy.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

John McCain's Environmental Confusion

Where does John McCain stand on environmental issues? The record is confusing, according to this article in The New Republic (excerpt below):

Trying to explain McCain's wildly erratic record on environmental issues is a maddening task. "We never know where he's going to come from," says Debbie Sease, the legislative director of the Sierra Club. "As a general rule, on land and conservation issues ... he tends to be pretty good. But he's a doctrinaire conservative on the role of government in protecting people from pollution." In his early House years, McCain was mentored by Morris Udall, an Arizona Democrat and conservationist. Soon enough, McCain was championing legislation to limit flights over the Grand Canyon and, as a freshman senator in 1990, snarling at senior Republicans to back down on local water issues.
But, when he wasn't safeguarding Arizona scenery, McCain usually held the conservative line, voting to hollow out clean-water and health protections or to expand offshore drilling. He also famously agitated for the construction of a controversial telescope atop Arizona's Mount Graham--which meant the razing of a forest containing an endangered species of red squirrel. When a Forest Service supervisor wanted to halt work on a road into the area, McCain was livid, according to a later investigation, threatening that, "if he did not cooperate on this project, he would be the shortest tenured forest supervisor in the history of the Forest Service."

In 1995, the Gingrich revolution swept into Congress and quickly set about trying to undercut the EPA. Once again, McCain stood with conservatives. But, the following year, after Bob Dole was trounced in the general election and GOP pollster Frank Luntz warned that half of all Republicans didn't trust their party on green issues, McCain penned a New York Times op-ed headlined "Nature Is Not a Liberal Plot," lambasting his fellow Republicans for their anti-environmental zeal. According to Frank Riggs, a former Republican representative who advised the senator in his 2000 campaign, McCain wasn't fundamentally at odds with the GOP goal of rolling back laws it saw as infringing on private property, but he did see a p.r. problem. "A lot of us were saying it privately, but he was one of the few willing to voice it publicly," says Riggs. "The Republicans could not be seen as anti-environment." McCain's gambit worked: The press hailed him as a kinder, gentler Republican in 1999, even as he was promising to repeal a Clinton-era ban on new roads in protected forests and skipping key votes on fuel-efficiency, wildlife, and mining bills.
The big exception to this pattern came after McCain returned to the Senate in the summer of 2000, still smarting from his primary defeat at the hands of Karl Rove. At the time, the odds of Congress acting on climate change seemed negligible: The Senate had denounced the Kyoto Protocol in a 95-0 vote, and Bush would soon renege on a campaign pledge to regulate greenhouse gases. On the trail in New Hampshire, McCain had been assailed by questions about global warming and dogged by an activist in yellow galoshes and a cape nicknamed "Captain Climate." Once back in Washington, McCain held the first balanced climate hearings in years starring real scientists (rather than industry-funded hacks). And, in private, Joe Lieberman convinced him that the United States risked losing its leadership position in the world if it didn't act. So the two senators drafted the first economy-wide cap-and-trade bill for carbon emissions and wrenched arms until the GOP leadership let it go to the floor, where, in 2003, it got 43 votes--far more than anyone had expected. "It was transformative: We went from Kyoto going down ninety-five to zero, and conventional wisdom saying nothing could ever pass, to a place where we had forty-three votes for a cap-and-trade regime," says Tim Profeta, a former Lieberman aide who helped draft the bill. Thanks in part to McCain, the political tectonics have shifted to the point where, today, a cap-and-trade bill is seen as inevitable.
But, just as McCain was becoming a celebrity in green circles--he graced the cover of OnEarth magazine in 2004, under the headline "Meet Captain Planet"--he swerved yet again. When McCain re-introduced his climate bill in 2005, he larded it with hefty nuclear subsidies, a poison pill that scared off environmental groups and lost four Democratic supporters. (Not all enviros are flatly antinuclear, but most would rather not see it heavily subsidized at the expense of other forms of clean energy.)
It's not clear why McCain sabotaged his own bill. One ex-staffer suggests that he thought he could lure Republicans like Lindsey Graham and Sam Brownback with a nuclear carrot, but miscalculated. (It didn't hurt that South Carolina, where McCain's first White House bid had foundered, is a big nuclear state.) And it's true that McCain isn't known for his deft legislative touch--one Senate staffer told me that McCain "totally screwed up the floor strategy" for a fuel-economy bill he sponsored with John Kerry in 2002.
Yet it's hard to shake the feeling that McCain may have been more interested in using global warming to burnish his maverick reputation than in passing legislation. "[T]he day-in, day-out negotiations you normally see--those weren't taking place," says Steve Cochran of Environmental Defense. Indeed, just last year, McCain refused to endorse a similar cap-and-trade bill sponsored by Lieberman and Virginia Republican John Warner--which actually has a shot at passing this year--just because it doesn't mention nuclear power. It's an absurd quibble for someone who thinks global warming is a colossal problem (the nuclear industry hardly lacks for subsidies as is) but a fine pose for someone who wants to be seen flouting conventional wisdom.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

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Where the Candidates Stand on the Environment, Part II

In an earlier blog post I wrote about the stands that the three remaining major presidential candidates have on environmental issues. This article from Slate online magazine evaluates each of their positions (excerpts below):

With all the rancorous bloviation that's infected the Democratic race of late, it's easy to forget that Obama and Clinton are essentially kinfolk when it comes to policy. Sure, there are wonky differences between their stances, particularly on health care. But there are precious few discrepancies between the front-runners' eco-plans, both of which focus primarily on energy. If you're looking for reasons to favor one over the other, you'll need to drill exceedingly deep....

Overall, Clinton's plan is a little better on nitty-gritty details. The Lantern likes her specific shout-outs to plug-in hybrid vehicles and light-emitting diodes, as well as her adoption of Al Gore's idea for a federal agency (dubbed Connie Mae) that will facilitate the development of green homes. The plan's language is also more pragmatic than Obama's, with lots of emphasis on the phrase market-based in order to appeal to laissez-fairers and a whole section dedicated to explaining how the "green economy" will reinvigorate American industry.
Obama, on the other hand, seems to regard environmentalism as more of a moral obligation than an economic opportunity. He's shorter on specifics, particularly when it comes to financial breakdowns, but he discusses some pressing big-picture concepts—for example, the environmental consequences of urban sprawl, a phenomenon that has been encouraged by misguided tax incentives. And he gets points for thinking not just about energy, but also several issues near and dear to green-minded voters: As elucidated in this supplementary fact sheet, Obama's team hopes to tackle lead poisoning, toxic runoff from livestock operations, and sustainable solutions to Western drought....

McCain hasn't released a comprehensive environmental platform. All we can go by at present is this page from his Web site, which is full of sweet platitudes but woefully short on specifics. Given the lack of crunchiness among his base, McCain generally avoids any language that might smack of "Save the Whales" do-goodism. He instead favors variations on the concept of "stewardship," a catchphrase popular among admirers of Theodore Roosevelt as well as climate change skeptics.
Based on his record in the Senate, McCain seems mildly green.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Talking with Ed

Ed Begley Jr., that is, actor, environmentalist, and star of the HGTV show "Living with Ed." The New York Times has a video of an interview with Ed Begley Jr. on its Dot Earth blog. Check it out here.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C.
Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Obama, Clinton Tops on Environment

The two remaining Democratic presidential contenders have a stronger voting record on the environment than GOP candidate John McCain, according to this article from Reuters (excerpt below.)

WASHINGTON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - All three top U.S. presidential contenders tout their environmental credentials, but Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton cast far more "green" votes in Congress than John McCain, a conservation group reported on Thursday.Sen. McCain of Arizona, the likely Republican nominee, rated a zero out of 100 for his votes on environmental issues last year, the League of Conservation Voters said in the group's national environmental scorecard.Over the course of his Senate career, his score was a 24 percent, compared to lifetime scores of 87 percent for Clinton and 86 percent for Obama, both Democrats.The Democratic candidates scored lower in 2007, with Sen. Clinton of New York scoring 73 percent for her votes and Sen. Obama of Illinois getting 67 percent, the report found.McCain has sponsored legislation to combat climate change, and is described on his campaign Web site, www.johnmccain.com, as having a "record of common sense stewardship" of the environment.However, he missed all 15 environmental votes for 2007 that were tallied in the report, including a vote on repealing billions of dollars in tax breaks for big oil companies, a measure that failed by one vote, the report said.By contrast, Obama and Clinton each missed four of the 15 key votes on the environment last year, and both were on hand to vote for a version of an energy bill that would have repealed the oil companies' tax breaks."TURNING POINT"Missing Capitol Hill votes is an occupational hazard of presidential candidates on the campaign trail, the report's authors noted.The environment has rarely been seen as a pivotal election issue in the United States, but that may be changing, said Gene Karpinski, the league's president.Pointing to results in congressional elections in 2006, Karpinski said independent voters moved in significant numbers to vote for Democrats, and "by far the single biggest reason was the issue of energy policy," which is closely linked to environmental policy."Clinton and Obama talk about global warming policy every day," Karpinski said at a briefing. "They've made this issue a priority because they know that's what voters want to hear."The report noted an apparent shift along with the change from Republican to Democratic leadership after the 2006 elections."2007 may well be remembered as a turning point for the environment, and especially for clean energy and global warming," the report's overview said.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Moms for the Earth

The New York Times featured the EcoMom Alliance over the weekend. Read an excerpt of the story here:

Move over, Tupperware. The EcoMom party has arrived, with its ever-expanding “to do” list that includes preparing waste-free school lunches; lobbying for green building codes; transforming oneself into a “locovore,” eating locally grown food; and remembering not to idle the car when picking up children from school (if one must drive). Here, the small talk is about the volatile compounds emitted by dry-erase markers at school.
Perhaps not since the days of “dishpan hands” has the household been so all-consuming. But instead of gleaming floors and sparkling dishes, the obsession is on installing compact fluorescent light bulbs, buying in bulk and using “smart” power strips that shut off electricity to the espresso machine, microwave, X-Box, VCR, coffee grinder, television and laptop when not in use.
“It’s like eating too many brownies one day and then jogging extra the next,” said Kimberly Danek Pinkson, 38, the founder of the EcoMom Alliance, speaking to the group of efforts to curb eco-guilt through carbon offsets for air travel.
Part “Hints from Heloise” and part political self-help group, the alliance, which Ms. Pinkson says has 9,000 members across the country, joins a growing subculture dedicated to the “green mom,” with blogs and Web sites like greenandcleanmom.blogspot.com and eco-chick.com. Web-based organizations like the Center for a New American Dream in Takoma Park, Md., advocate reducing consumption and offer a registry that helps brides “celebrate the less-material wedding of your dreams.”

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/