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Wednesday 04 August 2010

by: Bill McKibben  |  TomDispatch | News Analysis

Try to fit these facts together:

• According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record.

• A “staggering” new study from Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, by 40% since 1950.
• Nine nations have so far set their all-time temperature records in 2010, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the new all-time Asia record in May: a hair under 130 degrees. I can turn my oven to 130 degrees.
• And then, in late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn’t do less than they could have -- they did nothing, preserving a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action. Senate majority leader Harry Reid decided not even to schedule a vote on legislation that would have capped carbon emissions.

I wrote the first book for a general audience on global warming back in 1989, and I’ve spent the subsequent 21 years working on the issue. I’m a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Not quick to anger. So what I want to say is: this is fucked up. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy.

For many years, the lobbying fight for climate legislation on Capitol Hill has been led by a collection of the most corporate and moderate environmental groups, outfits like the Environmental Defense Fund. We owe them a great debt, and not just for their hard work. We owe them a debt because they did everything the way you’re supposed to: they wore nice clothes, lobbied tirelessly, and compromised at every turn.

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Friday 16 July 2010

by: George Lakoff, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Saving nature is the central issue. Carbon fuels destroy nature. The Gulf Death Gusher is the most visible sign. But signs are everywhere. Overall global warming increases hurricanes and floods; destroys habitats for plants, fish, birds and ground animals; spreads deserts; causes deadly waves; and destroys glaciers and our polar ice caps. The use of carbon fuels has been destroying nature. Our job now is to save it.

Interestingly, there is a short, 39-page bill before the Senate that would allow us to save nature and get paid substantially for doing it. It is the CLEAR bill, first suggested by Peter Barnes and introduced by Maria Cantwell (D-Washington and Susan Collins (R-Maine). It is simple; it works and it pays you!

The principle behind it is this: We US citizens own the air over the US equally. Carbon-fuel sellers are dumping pollution in our air, not just poisoning the air, but destroying nature. At least they should pay for permits to dump, poison and destroy and should be forced year-by-year to stop. Who should the sellers pay for permits? All of us, the citizens who live here, should be paid handsomely. And there should be predictably fewer permits every year, till the practice ends or reaches tolerable levels.

Here's how cap-and-cash works. Carbon-fuel profiteers introduce polluting fuels at only 2,000 distribution points in the US. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) already monitors how much polluting fuel each seller distributes. The CLEAR Act requires sellers to compete at auction each year to buy pollution permits to sell their poisonous fuel, with a minimum and maximum price per permit set each year. Every year, for 40 years, the number of permits is reduced, until 80 percent of the carbon pollution has been eliminated.

Who gets the permit money? You do. The money goes into a trust. Twenty-five percent goes to developing nonpolluting fuels and mitigating existing environmental disasters. Most of it - 75 percent - is distributed equally to all citizen-residents every month via electronic bank transfers. A family of four, the first year would get between $1,000 and $1,500, and the amount would go up each year. Why? The law of supply and demand. As there are fewer permits to sell fuel and as the air gets cleaner, the price rises and you get more cash.

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Sunday 20 June 2010

by: Joshua Frank, t r u t h o u t | Report

One would think that the environmental community would be united behind what is being hailed by some as the most significant and important piece of climate legislation to ever be introduced in the United States Senate.

Yet the bill, introduced on May 12 by Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, has been anything but a unifier among those in the climate change movement. If anything, the proposal of the so-called American Power Act has drawn a line in the sand - a line that some environmentalists are simply not willing to cross.

"It's not accurate to call this a climate bill," said Tyson Slocum who serves as Energy Director for Public Citizen, a Washington DC based consumer advocacy organization. "This is nuclear energy- promoting, oil drilling-championing, coal mining-boosting legislation with a weak carbon pricing mechanism thrown in."

Slocum's Public Citizen is one of only a handful of progressive organizations that believes the American Power Act isn't worth the paper it's printed upon. On the day the bill was introduced in the Senate, large, established environmental groups or "Big Greens" (dubbed Gang Green by grassroots environmentalists), including the Natural Resource Defense Council and the Sierra Club among others, signed on to a letter declaring their support for the bill.

"Today's action by Senators [Kerry and Lieberman] jump-starts the Senate debate over America's energy future," the letter read. "Their unwavering leadership has been critical to the progress made thus far. It is time for America's leaders to get serious about a comprehensive clean energy and climate policy that will reduce our oil dependence, enhance our security, revitalize our economy and protect our environment."

It's a tale too often repeated on the progressive battlefront, where well-heeled Beltway insiders bump heads with the more grassroots and independently-minded activists who don't spend the majority of their time roaming the halls of power in Washington.

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June 17, 2010

Alexander Bolton | The Hill

Liberal Democrats in the Senate are threatening to vote against energy legislation if it does not address global climate change.

After watching centrist Democrats and Republicans shrink the 2009 economic stimulus package, strip the public option from healthcare reform and slice a pending package of safety-net program extensions, liberal senators are reaching the limits of their patience.

Yet it appears that is exactly what Senate Democratic leaders plan to do.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to include provisions to address the Gulf oil spill and strengthen regulation of deepwater drilling to the energy legislation, but Reid on Thursday declined to commit to including climate change provisions in the bill.

Some of the strongest critics of offshore drilling within the Democratic Conference now warn they may not vote for it without a measure to require industry to pay for carbon pollution.

“It’s hard to imagine that I would support it,” said Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), after Democrats met Thursday to discuss energy legislation.