It’s Getting Hot In Here

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that General Motors’ bid to sell the brand to a Chinese heavy equipment manufacturing company fell through. Unless the contract is picked up quickly, no more Hummers will be manufactured.

Hummers have been notorious as environmentally unfriendly vehicles and a source of controversy ever since they were introduced to the public. The most fuel-efficient Hummer averages about 16 mpg, a frighteningly low number when considering that some hybrids get an average of upwards of 40 mpg. That’s more than double the fuel-efficiency of the Hummer.

The popularity of the Hummer brand has declined in recent years. The brand was popular soon after its release, with 71,524 Hummers sold in 2006. By December 2009, sales were down 85%.  Stock prices have continued to drop, and GM recently filed for bankruptcy.

The discontinuation of the brand is a good sign. Continue reading ‘The Hummer is history’

More than I ever thought, businesses are serious about sustainability. And I’m not talking just small businesses – I’m talking about big corporations like Disney, ESPN, and Aspen Ski Company. I know this because I recently was at the 2010 Winter X Games in Aspen, seeing behind the scenes, meeting the people responsible for environmental projects, and generally witnessing first hand through observation and conversation how serious these companies are getting about environmental stewardship.

I journeyed to the X Games this year wearing two hats: I’m an Educator with ACE (Alliance for Climate Education) and also our new National Campaigns Manager. ACE was invited to bring our sweet climate change assembly and our new Do One Thing (DOT) campaign to Aspen to support some of ESPN’s environmental initiatives. This was an amazing experience for a number of reasons! It’s easier to illuminate the experience in video – so if you’re interested, check out a short clip of some of our live reporting last week:

Here’s the scoop on what the companies I mentioned at the start are doing to lower their carbon emissions and raise their voices for a future safe from climate change: Continue reading ‘X Games Opened My Eyes’

Originally posted at WattHead.org – Energy News and Commentary

[Updated with video from press event below...]

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reversed their position on climate change policy this morning, throwing their full support behind Congressional climate legislation.

Citing overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change poses dire risks to human societies and will be unquestionably “bad for business,” the Chamber released a press statement and held a briefing at the Washington D.C. Press Club to announce the group’s new position:

“There is only one sound way to do business: that’s to support a strong climate-change bill quickly, so that this December in Copenhagen, President Obama can lead the entire business world in ensuring our long-term prosperity. … The Kerry-Boxer Bill is a good start to a strong climate bill, and the Chamber will work with Senators Kerry and Boxer to strengthen it”

Does this about face from the previously staunchly anti-climate bill Chamber sound too good to be true? It is.

Only a few minutes into the event at the Press Club, a Chamber of Commerce spokesperson showed up to confront “the Chamber of Commerce spokesperson” at the podium as a hoax. A flurry of calls to reporters later, and the Chamber had strongly reiterated the not-so-leading business group’s true position on Congressional climate policy:

“An actual Chamber spokesman, J.P. Fielder, said the group remains as staunchly opposed as ever to the climate bill,” reports a Wall Street Journal blog. Phew, good to know the Chamber remains “staunchly opposed” to any real proposals for Congressional climate legislation.

As the WSJ makes clear:

“[Chamber President Tom] Donohue has been vociferous in his opposition “cap and trade” legislation favored by the White House that would make industries pay for carbon emissions. That position has resulted in the defection of big chamber members including Exelon Corp., PNM Resources, Pacific Gas & Electric and Apple Inc. Others, including Xerox, Lockheed Martin and Caterpillar, are under pressure from environmentalists and shareholder activists to do the same.”

[Update: Here's video of the "real" Chamber of Commerce representative confronting the prankster Chamber of Commerce representative. Will the real Chamber please stand up?!]

Continue reading ‘US Chamber of Commerce: We Remain “As Staunchly Opposed As Ever” to Climate Bill’

Starting off the work week is always miserable, but we’re going to make this the worst Monday ever for the anti-climate PR machine at the US Chamber of Commerce. Actions are planned throughout the week, so let’s kick it off right for our side with a mass phone/email jam.

The Action Factory is taking the Chamber full on.  Last week we confronted the head of Shell oil about ties to the Chamber, and this week we have even more stuff planned.

The Chamber is among the largest and most powerful corporate lobbying blocs in Washington. Despite recent defections by member companies like Apple over the Chamber’s reactionary anti-science, anti-regulation agenda, the campaign to undermine progress on climate recovery and transition to a sustainable energy economy continues. The Chamber of Commerce PR machine has got to stop…
– Denying climate science; calling for a “Scopes-Monkey trial” of established climate findings.
– Amplifying the fossil fuel agenda; promoting “clean coal” and other false solutions.
– Lobbying against US climate legislation essential to global consensus in Copenhagen.

WHAT’S THE PLAN?

Who? You and yours and thousands of climate advocates across the US.

What? Call the numbers below and many times as you can and email the addresses below to demand that Chamber of Commerce PR people stop the lies and get real about climate change.
Continue reading ‘Chamber of Commerce: We’re Calling You Out’

Cross-posted from: here

The Chamber of Commerce has been fighting the regulation of carbon dioxide for a long time, and has been very intense in its opposition this year because of pending Federal legislation. Wonkroom has a great history lesson of all the shenanigans of the Chamber, most recent of which was calling for a “Scopes Monkey Trial” on global warming. Continue reading ‘Nike Leaves Chamber of Commerce Board!’

Portland General Electric is a friendly company which likes to reassure Oregonians that their local utility is concerned about the planet.  PGE will let you sign up to purchase renewable power, so the money you pay on rates goes to fund clean energy projects.  The company’s homepage highlights how PGE is helping the owners of small, sustainable businesses.  PGE’s been known to purchase advertising space on the sides of Portland’s MAX lightrail system, that read “I heart ice caps” above an image of gently turning wind turbines.  And oh, yeah – PGE also wants to lock the state of Oregon into 30 more years of coal dependence.

PGE owns Oregon’s Boardman Coal Plant – the only coal-burning plant in the state.  Fortunately, this month the company had a chance to show customers that it understood coal is over, and planned to move away from coal dependence as fast as possible.  That’s because PGE was scheduled to release a draft plan of the Integrated Resource Plan that it releases every two years, to explain how it plans to meet its energy needs for the next two decades.  PGE considered many possible scenarios, including options that would have involved phasing out dependence on Boardman.  Unfortunately, PGE decided that the best option for Oregon’s energy future is actually to increase our reliance on Boardman, keep the coal plant open at least until the year 2040, and build two new natural gas plants by 2015.

Oregon has some of the most progressive greenhouse emissions-reduction goals in the nation, and PGE’s plans are clearly at odds with state targets for cutting pollution.  It’s safe to say PGE knew this, and it’s worth speculating whether that had something to do with why the company waited until late on the Friday before Labor Day Weekend to release its report; possibly they hoped this would decrease the odds of the press taking notice.  If so, the strategy didn’t work: a pretty nice story about PGE’s draft plan made front-page headlines in the Oregonian Saturday morning.  Oops.

The truth is, Oregon is perfectly positioned to become the first state in the country to sever its reliance on coal completely.  Shutting down Boardman and replacing it with renewable energy would result in less than a 1/2 percent increase in consumer rates over the next 30 years.  Meanwhile, keeping the plant open will require PGE to spend nearly $600 million of ratepayer money to pay for pollution controls that do nothing to curb carbon dioxide pollution.  Studies show the Northwest can meet 85% of new energy demand over the next twenty years through energy efficiency measures alone.

PGE won’t get away with these coal-tinted shenanigans.  Anti-coal activists in Oregon already have some pretty cool projects in the works that will increase the pressure on PGE over the next several months, and highlight the ability of the Northwest to be a leader in renewable energy.  The public has until October 5th to comment on PGE’s draft plan, and there are lots of opportunities coming up for citizens to let the company know coal is over.  While its disappointing that PGE is trotting out 19th-century “solutions” to Oregon’s energy problems, this month’s draft report is not the final word.

The real lesson we learned this month is where PGE will stand as citizens and governments in the Northwest work to create a clean energy future for our region.  We will make that future a reality, but PGE is going to drag its feet and kick and scream every step of the way. 

At a time of great danger and immense opportunity, PGE has placed itself squarely on the wrong side of history.  And those cute wind turbines on the MAX train just aren’t going to make up for that.

Last week, the United States and China, the most prolific emitters of carbon emissions in the world, agreed on a joint energy research center, where it will focus on “coal and clean buildings and vehicles” that will seek to “create thousands of [American] jobs,” according the U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who is currently in China working on a collaborative agreement between the two giants of pollution.

This is the first step of a slowly budding partnership between the United States and China that has, to put it lightly, been struggling with compromise for the last couple of months on energy policy and emissions reductions. A month ago, at the U.N. intercessional climate meeting in Bonn, Germany (Bonn II) on curbing carbon emissions ended in a relative failure, without creating anything substantial to prepare the world for Copenhagen.

The United States and China, whom some refer to as the powerful ‘G2,’ have clashed on a number of issues regarding climate change, including the respective degrees to which carbon emissions should be cut. China continually claims that the United States’ cuts on emissions “do not go far enough,” while it firmly maintains that it will not accept caps on its emissions, indicating that it has been polluting for a much shorter length of time. China, home of the world’s largest wind energy market and the largest solar panel manufacturing industry, has poured billions and billions into their energy sector, focusing more on subsidizing government-owned projects rather then contracting with private or foreign companies. Continue reading ‘A Green Way Forward? US/China Launches Joint Energy Research Center’

There is ample reason for disappointment over the current climate bill’s public investment priorities which in Rep. Markey’s own words has “huge subsidies for clean coal—huge—much more than we have in for renewables.” However, the amount of investment and the sectors of the economy into which it goes are only part of the bigger problems regarding popular democratic control over investment  decisions and their outcomes. When the goal of technology development is economic monopoly power and profit maximization rather than maximum social benefit, certain results tend to follow be it in the field of medicine or energy.

In a recent article Mark Weisbrot spotlights some of the increasingly obvious contradictions of accumulation and imperialism surrounding investment in the private sector for the development  technologies aimed at mediating climate change:

“According to Inside U.S. Trade, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is gearing up for a fight to limit the access of developing countries to Environmentally Sound Technologies (ESTs).  They fear that international climate change negotiations, taking place under the auspices of the United Nations, will erode the position of corporations holding patents on existing and future technologies.  Developing countries such as Brazil, India, and China have indicated that if — as expected in the next few years — they are going to have to make sacrifices to reduce carbon emissions, they should be able to license some of the most efficient available technologies for doing so.

Continue reading ‘US Capitalists Organize Energy Tech Patents for Extortion of World’s Most Vulnerable’

According to the history books, the United States is no stranger to economic turmoil. One only has to flip back to the twentieth century to find the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as president during the worst financial crisis America had ever seen. By early 1933, the U.S. economy had sunk to its lowest point known as the Great Depression. More than 13 million Americans were unemployed while wages dropped to 60 percent of their previous value. Furthermore, business losses suffered a record high of $6 Billion while primary industries were operating at half their capacity.

Due to the stagnation of the economy, the American people could not receive bank loans and mortgages. These tragic conditions caused thousands of homes to be foreclosed. Thus, the American people began to lose faith in the American system of democracy itself. However, even in such a trying point, some progressives persisted with optimism. Continue reading ‘The New Green President And His New Green Deal’

“We’re living somebody else’s vision for our city.” Donele Wilkins, Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice

Detroit has a 22% unemployment rate. It is the poorest major city in the country and has the highest rate of segration out of every other city in the nation. The city counted over 45000 ecologically contaminated sites before they just simply stopped counting. The mayor, Dennis Archer, in the early 90s tried declaring the entire city a brownfield site. Detroit needs a green jobs future that will clean up Detroit’s environment and bring jobs back to the city that can lift poor residents out of poverty.

I was inspired today at a forum on bringing green jobs to Detroit at the IBEW Local 58. The event was held by the Sierra Club, AFL-CIO and Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice, but there were tons of different groups and organizations represented there from the labor, environmental and social justice movements. The three speakers covered the issues that link the environmental and labor movements together and how we can work to build a stronger “blue-green alliance.” Continue reading ‘Detroit and Labor’s Green Jobs Future’