It’s Getting Hot In Here

Here it comes folks…hold your hats, brace yourself, and keep your seats. Tomorrow President Bush will be addressing the country from the rose garden to unveil his plan for reducing the emissions from the US. He is not yet outlining a specific policy, merely imagining a plan for our country. As a community we need to watch this like a hawk and keep track of the policy implications of this speech and the action that may follow.

Bush may try to use this speech to get the ball rolling to pass weak global warming legislation. We can’t have this happen, we can’t allow this to gain traction. We need strong legislation and cannot settle for anything less than the Safe Climate Act. This act is still not enough, but anything less will not do what we need. Lets keep an eye on this administration and not let them undermine our efforts to stop global warming!

Read the announcement here:

Associated Press

Fox News

This weekend, February 8-10, 2008 over 60 students from all over Maine descended on Bates College for a charged learning and action experience. Kicking it off with a keynote from State Senator Phil Bartlett the students put all of their energy towards concluding with a pathway to a campaign and network that will eventually reach all of the colleges in Maine. Senator Bartlett was instrumental in getting the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) passed in Maine, and Maine students will now build off of this legislation to achieve the goals set by the 1Sky platform:

-20% reductions by 2020 and 80% reductions by 2050

-Moratorium on new Coal power plants

-Create 5 million new green jobs

Continue reading ‘We call it: Sustain Maine!’

A new coal gassification plant is being proposed for the former site of Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. This plant would generate 700 megawatts of electricity from the gas and 9,000 barrels of diesel fuel. This is a contentious plan and last Thursday, October 11, the North End Lobster Co-op held a demonstration with 30 lobster boats and a gaggle of shore-bound supports including two state representatives. The lobster co-op opposes the new plant because of the shipping vessels that would be going in and out of lobstering grounds. The lobstermen claim that the barges delivering coal would severely decrease the areas that lobstermen could fish in. This recent demonstration is a great example of the potential for collaboration between economic interests and environmental interests. The idea for the rally came from the lobstermen who contacted the Conservation Law Foundation that helped spread the word to the media. Having grown up in Maine, I have heard many times from the fishing community “those damned environmentalists!” The local press coverage also talked about the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions which is hopefully a message that fishermen can take up along with their own specific qualms. This issue may help to bring these usually opposing sides together and help all parties realize the multiple stakeholders that are effected by new coal projects.

For Full Story:

Lobstermen: ‘Say no to coal!’

On Friday, February 9th, over 100 people gathered at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Me to hear Allison Drayton speak about the challenges of Climate Change and what it will take to solve them. Though depressing in some aspects, her words were engaging and gave a great kick-off to a very successful weekend.

Saturday was spent getting talked at by a diverse group of impressive speakers. The topics included international climate politics, urban planning, carbon sequestration using plankton and concrete, solar installations including financing options, sustainable endowments, climate science skepticism, ice core research, and the impact of food on climate change. The diversity of subjects and active engagement of participants made for a productive and exciting dialogue that lasted into the night during social hours.

Sunday was reformatted to become a work day with a kick-off address by College of the Atlantic’s president David Hales. After his inspiring and grounding words the crowd headed out side for a photo petition, or two, and then headed back in to get hands dirty. The rest of the morning was spent organizing around three ideas, and each group experienced progressive outcomes: Continue reading ‘2007 Maine State Climate Summit a Success!’

On Monday, January 22, 10 major corporations announced their statement to Congress on cutting GHG emissions in order to stabilize CO2 concentrations at 450-550 parts per million (PPM). This is a landmark statement and may do much to spur on other big emmitters. The names on the list are:

Alcoa, BP, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, DuPont, FPL Group, General Electric, LEhman Brothers, PG&E, and PNM Resources.

These companies say they are worried about nation-wide patchwork regulation and want the federal government to act now. These companies have been working together and with NGO parteners Environmental Defense, Natural Resources Defense Council, PEw Ceter on Clobal Climate Change, and the World Resources Institute to create a set of principles for legislators to follow in creating federal climate policy that will act “agressively and sustainably to slow stop and reverse the growth of green house gas emissions.”

Their partnership is called the United States Climate Action Partnership, and they seek to help congress create policy for “mandatory reductions of GHG emissions from major emitting sectors, including large stationary sources, transportation, and energy use in commercial and residential buildings.” Their desire is to have a cap and trade proram to help businesses achieve these big cuts. More than anything this signals coporation’s acknowledgement that this policy will be coming down the road at sometime oranother, and that the best thing to do is to drive it in that direction and not be blindsided when the time comes. They have even come out with a statement against new building of conventional coal power!

This signals the begining of a new era in industry, and we need to make sure that the momentum keeps going. Read the full statement at: Natural Resources Defence Council
More articles:

NYTimes

Washinton Post

At 3:09 I got a call from Damian Ryan, one of the delegates from New Zealand, in regard to setting up a meeting. We agreed to touch base tomorrow (Friday) to finalize a lunchtime meeting. At 3:30 I called him back requesting audience with the Minister Responsible for Climate Change Issues, Mr. David Parker of New Zealand. Damian said he would call back with an answer, which he did at around 4:00 as I was in a side event on the interaction of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UNFCCC. I ducked out to answer, and Damian asked if 4:40 would work…hmmm…less than 40 minutes to get a smattering of youth representation, documents printed, and a strategy meeting…SURE!

Continue reading ‘New Zeal from New Zealand!’

This morning at the Subsidiary Body for Implementation’s (SBI) contact group meeting on the adaptation fund, the draft text was accepted by the room! This document sets forward the principles and modalities of the fund, and suggests the future track for approving a final fund so that developing countries can begin accessing the resources they need to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Yesterday’s hectic schedule of cancellations and impromptu informal consultations culminated in a small group of stakeholders drafting the final language for the document. Observers are not allowed to enter these discussion, so I had to wait pensively for the verdict this morning in the contact group.

The co-chairs were joined by the Chair of SBI and the three of them implored the group to accept the text so that the fund might move forward. After a lengthy explanation of the previous evening’s process, the co-chair introduced two new paragraphs that cover the ability of institutions to submit their recommendations on how they would operationalize the fund. These two paragraphs would be removed if any party disagreed, as they were added after the rest of the text had been agreed to by the drafting group. The Chairman of SBI, Thomas Becker from Denmark, opened the floor for either a “yes” or “no” answer to the paragraphs. Gambia buzzed in and said, “Mr. Chair,” and then there was a pause, “we believe that it should be 2007….”

  Continue reading ‘Adaptation Fund Moves Forward!’

Today, I had the pleasure of coordinating the Fossil of the Day Awards given by the Climate Action Network (CAN) to the parties that did their best the to obstruct negotiations the day before. Today’s First Place in the Fossil of the Day awards went to the European Union and Canada for their insistence on including Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). This technology is premature and should not be used to credit parties involved in these projects. The Second Place went to Saudi Arabia for their efforts to try and limit the work of the ad hoc Working Group on further commitments (AWG). And Third Prize went to Kuwait for their insistence that CCAS was viable, and their threat to halt the CDM discussion until CCS had been agreed on. Continue reading ‘An Odd Sense of Hope’

The past few days I have followed the discussions of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI). Their discussions have been concerned with several issues, capacity building under the protocol, an amendment relating to compliance, the international transaction log (ITL), and several others. Perhaps the most contentious currently is the Adaptation Fund, what today’s ECO publication called a “vital instrument that can significantly assist developing countries reduce their vulnerabilities.” Continue reading ‘Adaptation!? But We Need Money!’