It’s Getting Hot In Here

Cross-posted from Dispatches from Life

Joseph Romm is one of the most respected writers on climate policy. Here is a summary of his thoughts on what is necessary to avert catastrophic warming:

We have to bring down the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to between 350-450 parts per million (ppm) to avoid the hellish worst of climate change. Economically and technologically, this is quite doable. However, it is not plausible in the current political climate. Because the alternative is unacceptable, we will get there, but to do so we must all become familiar with the best solutions, and then loudly push our political leaders toward them.

Read the specifics below the fold…
Continue reading ‘Joe Romm’s Solution to Climate Change’

Cross-posted at Dispatches from Life, Alex Krogh-Grabbe’s blog.

At Grist Magazine, they like to refer to coal as the Enemy of the Human Race. And, while that’s a bit of a rhetorical flourish, it’s true that coal is unavoidably one of the dirtiest ways possible to produce energy. If you’re interested in finding out more about the entire process of using coal for energy, I encourage you to read Big Coal, by Jeff Goodell.

But what I want to write about today is inspired by a Huffington Post article by Jesse Jenkins, of The Breakthrough Institute and It’s Getting Hot in Here. I’m generally pretty skeptical of Shellenberger & Nordhaus’ thinktank, but I met Jesse at Powershift, and this article is pretty good. Its overall message is the same as everything out of their thinktank; in order to be successful, environmental messages need to be framed around things that people care about more, like jobs and the economy. Specifically, the article runs down what it dubs the “Technology Fifteen”, i.e. fifteen “moderate” senators from the interior of the country who have banded together to have a voice on climate issues.

So, I thought I’d look a little further into specifically the geography of coal as it relates to politics. I put up a Google Docs spreadsheet with my data. All my data’s from the Energy Information Administration, the government office whose job it is to make public this sort of stuff. For my findings, see below the fold. Continue reading ‘Technology Fifteen vs. Coal State Fifteen’

This morning in Richmond, Virginia, twelve activists from Blue Ridge Earth First! were arrested while participating in a blockade of the Dominion property on Tredegar Street. The blockade was to protest the development of Dominion’s coal-fired power plant in Wise County, VA and the construction of new reactors at the Lake Anna nuclear facility. If you want to see what went down, here are photographs of the action.

Protesters called for conservation, efficiency and investment in renewable sources of energy rather than in coal and nuclear investments. All involved in the blockade and ground support were arrested and are being held by Richmond City Police. They are in need of contributions to release those being held. If you feel able to contribute funds to aid in bailing out these young activists, you can donate via PayPal (send donation to Drumplaya112@yahoo.com), or you can send checks to:

BREF! Care of Hannah Morgan
1226 Stonegate Way Crozet, Virginia 22932

Below is the press release sent to local media:

Early this morning activists with Blue Ridge Earth First! (BREF!) and Mountain Justice (MJ) blockaded the entrance to Dominion’s corporate headquarters on Tredegar St. in Downtown Richmond. They are protesting Dominion’s promotion of new coal and nuclear facilities as solutions to climate change. The blockade consists of four activists locked to a weighted barrel and a fifth suspended above the road. Continue reading ‘Breaking: Young VA Activists Blockade Dominion HQ’

Even for those of us who are passionate about solving environmental problems, sometimes it’s hard to figure out how to get involved in a meaningful way. We feel like we don’t know enough or are too nervous to talk to people about the issues we care about. But there are plenty of ways we can overcome these fears and make a difference.

Last Wednesday I took the train from home in western Massachusetts down to Richmond, Virginia, to work with the Back Porch Initiatives. Back Porch was founded one year ago by six recent college graduates, five from William & Mary and one from Connecticut College. Their goal was to travel around the southeast helping out community groups with sustainability-related projects. After eight months of working on projects and traveling throughout the southeast on a truck fueled by waste-vegetable oil, they have set up an office in Richmond, where they continue to work with countless community and environmental initiatives throughout the southeast, while also working on local initiatives in Richmond. I’ve been impressed by the professionalism and focus of these young organizers (whose average age is somewhere between 23 and 24). Just on Monday they helped out at a local community garden, ran a discussion forum in a coffeeshop about corporate sustainability, and put the finishing touches on the three sessions of the Summer Youth Campaign Schools they’re running. Of course, this blog is full of projects organized by young folks, but seeing such an organization in action is really encouraging.

Continue reading ‘Inspiration from Two Southeast Youth-driven Movements’

I was inspired by this post by David Roberts on Gristmill, so I’m going to put off my final paper for a few more minutes to write about the Energy Bill.

In the past two weeks or so, I’ve been doing as much as I can to call and write all my congressmen and get as many other people to do the same as possible. We were telling them that dropping strong provisions of the Energy Bill was unacceptable, and that to reduce the bill’s substance at all would make it insufficient.

Now, though, they passed the bill, and they did so by eliminating some of the really wonderful parts of it (cutting dirty fuel’s subsidies, for one). But they passed it. They passed a bill that has numerous amazing requirements. Roberts reminds us that, “Of course this bill is not enough….But it’s a victory, and you know what people like? People like winning. They like being on the winning team.”

So let’s not fret that this bill is not enough; let’s not slip to the opinion that the 2007 Energy Bill is bad. Let’s applaud loudly our achievements, and the achievements of the politicians who pushed this through. And of course we can’t stop there: keep demanding more. This bill is indeed an astounding victory, but let’s push our leaders to do more. The more positive and solution-achieving we are, the more people will join us.

After the speakers on Saturday night at PowerShift, we were all totally jazzed and empowered, though completely exhausted. Unable to muster the energy to go to the Rainforest Action Network’s dance party, my friends and I decided to go back to where we were staying. We got on the shuttle bus to the metro station, and it was packed, wall to wall, window to window, with PowerShift participants in the same mood as us. We had to squish back 3 or 4 times, until it really was impossible to fit another adrenaline-filled body on the bus. It was kind of uncomfortable, but at the same time, we all felt such commonality with each other, felt in such good company, that it was all right. In fact, when we started chanting green protest chants, it was better than all right; it was one of the most exhilarating events of the conference. These are our peers. Who knows what we’re capable of.

Hillary Clinton made a speech today in which she released her new (and improved) climate and energy plan. David Roberts has a great summary of it on Gristmill. Now all three Democratic presidential frontrunners are committed to 80% reductions by 2050. All we need now (such a small task) is to keep them to their word, and we’re fairly golden.

Continue reading ‘A Time of Hope, But Work to be Done’

Power Shift on Saturday was so incredible and so draining. Echoing the words of other bloggers here in the past day or so, I have never met so many intelligent, environmentally-conscious youth leaders in one place. I’m not sure I’ve met this many environmental activists ever. Literally, you walk around the University of Maryland campus, and most conversations you hear are about the same important issues you think about. It’s so awesome.

A few thoughts from the day:

• I went to the panel called “Breaking the Rules: Climate Communications for a Planet in Chaos”, and met Blogmaster Richard for the first time in person (seems to be a theme). It was an absolutely phenomenal panel, with lots of amazing information on how to effectively frame climate communications. Richard already wrote a little about it, but I’d like to offer up a few more tidbits. The most important question I heard all day was asked during the Q&A session: “How can we make environmental action sexy?” Continue reading ‘Power Shift Saturday: A Message of Optimism’