It’s Getting Hot In Here

On May 26 Shell goes on trial in New York for their complicity in the death and abuses of Ogoni people. Check out photos of a protest happening now in San Francisco!

For more information, check out Justice in Nigeria!

Building a new foundation requires a lot of heavy machinery. Bulldozers to clear the land, extractors to dig the foundation, concrete-mixers to pour the cement, and trucks to haul the raw materials. So perhaps it’s appropriate that Jim Owens, the CEO of Caterpillar will be at the White House tomorrow for the first meeting of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB). The group includes some of America’s leading thinkers, business executives, and academics, including the CEOs of GE, UBS, and Google. (full list here)

The Board was created by President Obama in February to provide an outside-the-Beltway perspective on how we can recover from the financial crisis and build a new foundation for the American economy. “New Foundation” is emerging as the catch-all phrase to describe Obama’s domestic policy agenda, similar to FDR’s “New Deal” or Johnson’s “Great Society” as a recent New York Times article points out. It’s a good term, capturing both the shaky and unsustainable foundation of our past economic growth and framing out the kind of economy we need to build for the long-term. We are well past the time for patchwork solutions. We must rebuild and we must rebuild the right way.

Obama said as much in his “New Foundation Speech” at Georgetown University on April 14th, when he named renewable energy the third of five pillars necessary to rebuild the American economy. A clean energy economy “can create millions of new jobs and new industries. We all know that the country that harnesses this energy will lead the 21st century.” However, as the President acknowledged, “we have allowed other countries to outpace us on this race to the future.”

It is no secret that the United States has fallen behind in the most importation economic competition of the 21st century. A lack of national standards, an absence of strong climate and energy policy, and never-ending subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, have hindered America’s ability to compete with other countries for top talent and investment capital. It’s gotten to the point, that “if you list today’s top 30 companies in solar, wind and advanced batteries, American companies hold only 6 spots.” As John Doerr, a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and member of PERAB, testified before Congress earlier this year, “That fact should worry us all.”

Continue reading ‘You Can’t Build a New Foundation With Dirty Energy’

Note: This is a revised version of an older essay that was never published. With recent news concerning new green government programming and the grim news coming from Chrysler and General Motors, I hope this might broaden the debate a bit beyond what the headlines and pundits will allow.

“We hope for better days; it shall rise from the ashes.” – Motto of the City of Detroit (Coined after a citywide fire in 1805)

The green dream is coming closer every day.  Green-collar jobs are becoming more and more of a household term and are moving closer to the center of the conversation about how we should recover from the current economic recession.

It’s a relief to me as a Detroiter.  It gives me hope that our city, long hit by economic hardship, unemployment and poverty, can rise again through programs that will create millions of green jobs.  In particular, more people are calling for a greening of US automakers in an attempt to halt their freefall.  A cleaning up of the auto industry could certainly help lift the city and country out of this virtual downward spiral, but after witnessing an anti-union blitzkrieg that strong-armed workers into reluctantly accepting major concessions[i] one has to wonder, “What will a green auto industry look like?”  Does our vision of a green-collar economy include autoworkers going back to factories making plug-in hybrids on subsistence wages, rolled back healthcare and poor job security?  Or will we make a shift away from the growth-centered reasoning of the dirty energy past? Continue reading ‘Protect People and the Planet: Creating a Workers’ Powershift’

When was the last time you found yourself partying because our federal government is acting on climate change? Oh right, not really ever in our lives. Well, friends, the time has come.

As you may have heard, President Obama has instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to act on the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA decision. In that watershed case, the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare according to the Clean Air Act, and that EPA must therefore regulate carbon dioxide.

EPA didn’t move on the decision until President Obama entered the White House, but now they’re moving quickly: first up, the Agency must solicit public testimony on federal climate regulation. They’ve set up hearings for all comers in two cities this week – Arlington, VA, on Monday, and Seattle on Thursday – and according to top EPA officials, public response to the hearings has already been “overwhelming.” Continue reading ‘Time to celebrate your EPA’

Compared to President Obama’s promises and the recommendations of a variety of energy experts alike, the ACES climate and clean energy bill’s investments in clean energy are an order of magnitude too small.

[Updated 5/22/09: the ACES bill now includes a $10/ton price floor for auctioned pollution permits. The analysis below has been updated to reflect that change in the legislation]

Today, the House Energy and Commerce Committee began markup of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES). The bill promises to cap and reduce carbon pollution, create clean energy jobs, and spur technology innovation. Unfortunately, as our analysis of the use of carbon pollution allowances in the ACES bill revealed, the bill is on course to invest very little of the hundreds of billions of dollars in value created by the bill’s cap-and-trade program over the coming years towards those objectives.

Most of the allowance value (74 percent) created by the ACES cap and trade program is dedicated to blunting the impact of the carbon price established by the program on industries and consumers (and securing the critical swing votes on the committee representing these entrenched energy and industry interests). In contrast, just 12 percent of the allowance value is dedicated to clean energy investments, broadly defined.

At an average allowance price of $10 to $15 dollars per ton of CO2 between 2012-2025, that would amount to clean energy investments of just $6-9 billion per year, and just $490-745 million for clean energy R&D (see our full analysis of the allowance allocations in ACES for more).

President Obama has repeatedly promised to, “Invest $150 billion over ten years in energy research and development to transition to a clean energy economy” (from WhiteHouse.gov). The President’s 2010 Budget Outline specifically dedicated $15 billion per year in new revenue generated by a cap and trade program to this purpose. Yet the bill before us, depending on the allowance value it establishes, would invest just one-twentieth to one-thirtieth of the $15 billion President Obama has pledged — and specifically requested from Congress. Furthermore, this new energy R&D spending may amount to just a ten percent increase in current federal energy R&D budgets.

Likewise, the total investments in a new clean energy economy, more broadly defined, are an order of magnitude smaller than proposals advanced by the Breakthrough Institute, Apollo Alliance and others have deemed necessary to drive clean energy innovation, create millions of new energy jobs, and jump-start a prosperous, clean energy economy.

Below the fold, you can see how the clean energy investments made by the ACES bill compare with what a range of proposals and current R&D funding levels…
Continue reading ‘Climate Bill’s Clean Energy R&D Investments May Be 30 Times Smaller than President Obama’s Budget’

The Athabasca tar sands are Canada’s largest industrial operation, and are the largest source of America’s foreign oil. From major issues of land rights, to polluted water, to impacts on climate change, the oil sands are a hot topic of controversy. Particularly since they also are a major part of Canada’s economy, and an area of development that has lead Alberta to be in current strong financial form.

Newest on the growing list of those who are taking a closer look at the tar sands, is Kairos.

Kairos is multi-denominational social justice organization, made up of leaders from the faith community in Canada – including the Anglican Church of Canada, Mennonite Central Committee, Presbyterian Church of Canada, United Church of Canada, and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (see full list here). Continue reading ‘Praying for a Change?’

The Trek to Re-Energize America officially begins today.  It’s been a long time coming and we’ve all spent far too many hours in front of the computer screen and too few on a bike.  Nine riders from five states will be leaving Seattle this morning to visit D.C., collecting stories from Americans across the country about the need for a clean energy economy, transportation solutions, sustainable agriculture and more.  We’ll be on the road for 70 days all told (and picking up another 50 riders before we arrive in D.C.) and we’d like to invite you to follow us as we ride.  We just relaunched our site with a few new ways to keep track of us as we cross the country.  Follow us on Facebook by becoming a fan of our page.  (And thanks to the 450 of you who already have) We’d love to tweet in your ear, so follow us on Twitter if you like the Trek melody. We’re so hip, we’ll even be podcasting once or twice a week, so subscribe to our iTunes feed to listen in.  And best of all, come out and see us in person as we ride through your community.  We have riders leaving from all across the country, so check out our routes page to see if we’ll be coming near you and if so, drop us a line and say hi. Thanks for the support thus far and we look forward to keeping you posted as we turn heads, warm hearts and work for a better future. 

Sincerely, the Trek Seattle crew, 

Mindyi, JP, Sarah, Chris, Tim, Hannah, Emily, Jack, and Kate 

P.S.  Feeling generous?  You can now donate directly to us online and we’d sure be appreciative.

Ever hear about “hope” and “change?”

Remember we had this guy that ran on that rhetoric last year and got elected to the presidency.

As residents of West Virginia and Kentucky are digging themselves out of a dirty muck from heavy floods exacerbated by mountaintop removal and the coal industry blows up Appalachia’s mountains with 3 million tons of explosives a day, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has said 42 out of 48 permits (87.5 percent, to be exact) to blow the tops off of Appalachian mountains “environmentally responsible.”

Does the picture above look “environmentally responsible?”  Does it look like “hope” or “change?” Continue reading ‘EPA Says 42 of 48 Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining Permits “Environmentally Responsible”’

Ours is a diverse movement, and it is important to resist environmental and social injustice with many strategies and tactics, while not condemning the strategies and tactics of others simply because you do not perceive them to be as effective as your own.

One important distinction that is important to understand is “direct action” and “indirect action.” While different individuals and groups have different concepts of what constitutes direct action and what does not, for our purposes here, I hope most people can accept the following definitions and examples:

DEFINITIONS
Direct Action – directly acting to create the change you wish to see in the world.
Indirect Action – asking someone else (often someone in a position of power) to make the change you wish to see in the world.

Continue reading ‘DIRECT ACTION AND INDIRECT ACTION IN OUR MOVEMENT’

As I rolled into Wilmington, OH this Wednesday, a small farming community in southwest Ohio and the site of the largest economic collapse I’ve ever known in this country, I daydreamed of slowly dilapidating buildings and for sale signs lining the streets. This is the story that 60 minutes and other big media have covered, but it’s not the one I went to find and it’s not the one I saw.

Wilmington hosted shipping company DHL’s national hub of operations, which began to close down last year after the economic downturn and is preparing to fully close its U.S. operations this summer. This makes for a total of 8,000 jobs lost from a 12,000 person town.

That’s where the story of Mark Rembert, Taylor Stuckert, and Energize Clinton County begins. Mark and Taylor postponed Peace Corps duties to save their hometown through community organizing and grassroots economic development. I entered their donated downtown office into a meeting with the only Clinton County energy auditor, amongst buy local banners and Green For All posters.

In the shadow of a mono-industry way of life, ECC is pioneering a new way. Mark spoke excitedly about Wilmington’s potential, saying “we’re only capitalizing on 10% of our potential, we have so much room to grow!”. However, having submitted the largest weatherization program in US history to mostly deaf ears, during a glut of money for such programs, it’s clear that their work is cut out for them.

Time shall tell whether ECC can pull Wilmington out of this crisis. The federal response is helping, but ultimately the solutions must be local. Taylor said the stimulus package is like “trying to fit a square peg through a round hole, or drinking out of a firehose”, that our organic community networks have eroded and it takes a lot of work to rebuild them. Things are about to get very interesting in Wilmington. To learn from ECC, you can check out their Energize Your Community toolkit, Energize Your Garden toolkit, and more at http://EnergizeCC.com.