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Follow the leader, please!

-- Amanda Meade -- 03/26/2009

The choice is simple. We can either take on America's long-term challenges or just lower our heads and keep muddling through. Regardless of our decisions, the economic news is dire. One thing is certain; Federal debt will rise much faster without spending to stimulate programs and will create an even steeper hill to climb. What we need is bold action.

The President has called for addressing head on the challenges we face.  We need a massive effort to help Congress realize we want action and not the same old tired politics of the past.

We need to build a better  foundation for our future and to revive our economy. Addressing energy in this Budget will lay that foundation. Our energy needs are growing, but we can't continue our dependency on and expect more from an unstable oil market, or the dirty energy of coal. Those high gas prices that hurt so many families' budgets last summer will return, and with today's economic woes, will cause even more pocketbook pain.  

Congress must vote to support the President's budget. We can't wait any longer to solve these problems.

 

A new path forward

-- Amanda Meade -- 03/11/2009

Last November, voters chose a new direction. We realized our country was headed in the wrong direction and overwhelmingly voted for a new vision of where the country should be. Last month, President Obama started carving a new path with an historic stimulus bill. And this month, has submitted a budget that represents the shortest route to help move us from the old path to a new one.  

From his cabinet appointments to the release of his budget, in the handful of weeks he's been in office, President Obama has worked hard to fulfill his campaign promise to chart a new course for America's future.  First, he fought for and passed the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act. That bill was the single largest investment in clean, renewable energy in history.  

President Obama's budget seeks to eliminates unfair tax loopholes and subsidies that companies like Exxon have taken advantage of for years.  Last summer, high gas prices were the spark that lit our economic wildfire, but Exxon and its congressional allies continue to claim that President Obama is picking on the oil industry.  They fail to mention that in 2008, Exxon made the largest recorded profit of any company, anywhere, ever. Taxpayers will not be fooled into bailing out the most profitable companies in history, companies that have already spent decades on corporate welfare.  

It's up to each of us to follow the path that President Obama drew and to urge all of our Senators and Representatives to look beyond special interests, to look beyond self-interest, and to work instead for America's interests by passing the President's budget.

 

Aging electric grid can’t handle winter storm

-- Amanda Meade -- 01/29/2009

Over a million homes remain dark tonight from Arkansas to Michigan. Electric power is essential to modern society. Economic prosperity, national security, public health and safety all compromised by our aging electric grid; Knocked out by a winter storm. It’s time to rebuild with a new smart grid.

Communities that lack electric power, even for short periods, have trouble meeting basic needs like food, shelter, and water.

America operates about 157,000 miles of high voltage electric transmission lines. While electricity demand increased by about 25% since 1990, construction of transmission facilities decreased about 30%. There’s lots of work to rebuild and get the economy moving by creating jobs repairing, replacing and renewing with a smart grid. It will harvest a new energy economy and create whole new industries. Investing in clean energy and efficiency can create millions of jobs in every state across the country.

The policy to make the smart grid happen was passed in 2005. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) helps make the new smart grid a political priority. This plan calls for modernization, creates new federal committees, defines their roles and responsibilities, addresses accountability and provides incentives for stakeholders to invest. All it needs now is funding from the stimulus bill heading for the Senate this week.

One other point to consider: electricity is used to move oil and natural gas through the pipelines. Gas stations use electricity when pumping gasoline and homeowners often have natural gas water heaters and furnaces with electric ignition. These too are disrupted by electrical power outages from our aging grid.

Building a road to the 21st century

-- Amanda Meade -- 01/23/2009

Clean energy is the way forward. It creates jobs and helps us invest in projects that have long-term benefits in building needed infrastructure for our country’s clean energy future.  We need to let Congress know we support investing in New Energy for America.

We need to rebuild America with President Obama’s stimulus plan. This plan will put people to work repairing crumbling roads, bridges, and schools and other of well-planned, needed infrastructure projects.

Updating the way we get our electricity by building a new smart grid that will save us money, protect our power sources from blackout or attack, and deliver clean, alternative forms of energy to every corner of our nation.

 

Worldwatch identifies climate change challenges

-- Amanda Meade -- 01/14/2009

"State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World," was released yesterday by Worldwatch. The Washington D.C. based independent research organization blames political gridlock for the growing crisis of climate change and urges immediate action if we hope to stabilize carbon emissions to avoid "catastrophic disruption to the world's climate."

According to their assesments we face ten key challenges to avoiding catastrophic climate change:

1. Thinking Long-term. At the core of the climate problem is the likelihood that future generations will pay with a deteriorating global environment for the refusal of current generations to live in balance with the atmosphere. Visionary leaders will need to marshal the public to take responsibility for the impacts of today's behavior on the future and to act accordingly.


2. Innovation. The emissions shift will require technologies that break the carbon link to energy consumption with as little sacrifice of price and convenience as possible. A range of renewable technologies can produce electricity and meet heating and cooling needs. Such technologies include buildings that produce more energy than they consume and "smart grids" that use information technology to match renewably produced electricity precisely to demand.


3. Population. Rarely addressed in the context of climate change, future population trends could make the difference between success and failure in the long-term balance of human activities, atmosphere, and climate. The world's population is likely to stop growing and then gradually decline for a period when women gain the full capacity to decide for themselves whether and when to have children.


4. Changing Lifestyles. The assumption that the "good life" requires ever more individual consumption, more meat-eating, ever larger homes and vehicles, and disposable everything will need to fade. A spirit of shared and equitable material sacrifice can replace it - with no loss of what really matters, such as active good health, strong communities, and time with family.


5. Healing Land. Managed for the task, the Earth's soil and vegetation can remove billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere. Agricultural landscapes can accomplish this while improving food and fiber production and minimizing the need for artificial fertilizer and fossil-fuel-driven tilling and raising farmer incomes.


6. Strong Institutions. As with the deteriorating global economy, the global nature of climate change demands international cooperation and sound governance. The strength and effectiveness of the United Nations, multilateral banks, and major national governments are essential to addressing global climate change. These institutions - and those emerging from the hoped-for Copenhagen climate agreement in 2009 - require strong public support for their critical work.


7. The Equity Imperative. No climate agreement will succeed without support from those countries that have so far contributed little to human-induced climate change, have low per-capita emissions, and stand to face the biggest challenges in adapting to the coming changes. A pact that is fair to developing and industrialized countries alike is essential.


8. Economic Stability. With the world now fixated on the sputtering global economy, addressing climate change will demand attention to costs and the promise of improving rather than undermining long-term economic prospects. A climate agreement will have to operate effectively during anemic as well as booming economic periods, facing squarely the challenges of poverty and unemployment while continually reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.


9. Political Stability. A world beset by conflict and terrorism is far less likely to prevent dangerous climate disruption than one at peace. Security and climate must be addressed simultaneously. On the positive side, negotiating an effective and fair climate agreement offers countries a needed opportunity to practice peace and re-frame international relations along cooperative rather than competitive lines.


10. Mobilizing for Change. The way to deal with climate change we ourselves are causing is to see the opportunity for a new global economy and new ways of living in the effort to bring net greenhouse gas emissions to an end. There's no guarantee such a transition will be easy - or even possible. But a global movement to make the effort is needed now, and could yield new jobs, new opportunities for peace, and global cooperation beyond what humanity has ever achieved.

Worldwatch states in its report, "Simultaneously addressing these interlinked and challenging issues could lay the groundwork for a world that will not merely bounce back from both the economic and climate crises, but surge forward."

Find "State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World," at: http://www.worldwatch.org

A billion gallons of toxic sludge

-- Amanda Meade -- 01/07/2009

Coal ash is not classified as hazardous waste although it contains concentrated residues of arsenic, mercury, lead, and selenium. These are all classified as toxic and proven to be harmful to humans and the surrounding environment.

This is the reality of 'clean' coal.

No longer concentrated in the air from smokestacks but stored up in toxic ponds of sludge. Now, it comes at us from ground level seeping into our water through wells, rivers and lakes. Poisoning our fish and deforming wildlife. Toxic chemicals that slowly work their way into the food chain and into our bodies to cause brain damage, cancer, learning disabilities and respiratory diseases.

From the New York Times:

“Contaminants and waste products that once spewed through the coal plants’ smokestacks are increasingly captured in the form of solid waste, held in huge piles (over 1,300) in 46 states, near cities like Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Tampa, Fla., and on the shores of Lake Erie, Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River.

Numerous studies have shown that the ash can leach toxic substances that can cause cancer, birth defects and other health problems in humans, and can decimate fish, bird and frog populations in and around ash dumps, causing developmental problems like tadpoles born without teeth, or fish with severe spinal deformities. “

One cooler year “is not a sign that global warming has slowed.”

-- Amanda Meade -- 12/16/2008

The weather phenomena, La Nina, has kept the Earth cooler this year, but not cool enough. Still in the top 10 since record keeping began in the 1800's and still the overall 9th warmest, all 9 occuring since 1998.

Obama had it right when he said the "time for denial is over." Deniers tend to look at a cold spell or specific day, week or month and think that proves global warming doesn't exist. You can't fake average temperatures. Records don't lie. And there is a big difference between weather (in a constant state of flux that changes from day-to-day as the atmosphere changes) and climate (the average of patterns of weather observed over long-term periods). Two very different things.

Anyway, it is not a cooler than average year. The Earth is not in a global cooling phase.  Call it global warming or climate change, it is happening at an alarming rate. Emphasized by the fact that 2008 ranks number 9 on the warmest scale, despite the cooling effects of La Nina.

From Bloomberg:

In a separate report, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies said today that the year from Dec. 1, 2007, to Nov. 30 was the coolest since 2000, partly due to La Nina. It was also the ninth-warmest year since 1880, with all nine occurring from 1998 to 2008, said the institute, part of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“We understand why the temperatures were depressed this year, and that’s because of the La Nina effect in the Pacific,” Stott said. “Because the Pacific is such a big ocean that means that globally the temperature gets depressed by a bit.”

 

Rising global temperatures since the 1850s are blamed by scientists largely on emissions of greenhouse gases from vehicles, power plants, factories and deforestation.

Delegates from 189 nations met this month for two weeks of debate in Poznan, Poland, midway through two years of negotiations to craft a treaty to fight global warming by limiting manmade greenhouse-gas emissions.

The Met Office figures are compiled from thousands of measurements throughout the year at sea and on every continent, Stott said. The average is unlikely to change dramatically in December, Stott said.

Though 1998 was the hottest year on record, the average temperature for the 2000s is about 0.2 degree higher than the 1990s, Stott said. The past 12 years have been among the 14 warmest on record, according to Met Office figures.

Progress in Poznan

-- Amanda Meade -- 12/03/2008

The United Nations climate conference is back on in Poznan, Poland. After the dramatic Bali conference where a delegate cried, the Papua New Guinea delegate told off the U.S. in a show of courage - "If you cannot lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way,’’ - causing a dramatic reversal from the U.S., this year the conference is more subdued. 

 

Planning is contingent on next December's meeting in Copenhagen when the U.S. will have new leadership and, hopefully a new direction based on repowering, rebuilding and refueling for the future.

While looking for answers the G 77, 130 members of the developing nations, continue to argue with industrialized nations over who gets to keep on polluting as if greenhouse gas emissions were merely a playground squabble over a ball. Meanwhile, Kyoto will expire and no consensus to the next steps is in place.

“Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of a Nobel Peace Prize-winning panel of UN climate scientists, reminded the conference of the consequences of failure. That included the possible extinction of nearly one-third of the earth's species, a threatened meltdown of the Greenland or western Antarctic ice sheets that could raise sea levels by several meters and a growing lack of water for millions of people within a few decades.”

For more info:

http://unfccc.int/2860.php

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40488

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/01/healthscience/climate.php

Do you believe in mandates?

-- Amanda Meade -- 11/26/2008

I believe in mandates, especially when there actually is one.  Winning by 53% plus of the vote  is certainly a definitive percentage to claim one exists, and more importantly, to use it forcefully to enact change.  Change to invest in clean energy. Change to rebuild infrastructure that encourages mass transit and change that helps us curb global warming.

The polling data I've seen reflects the opinions of a vast majority of Americans desire for major change in our country as well. We want to be free of our oil addiction. We want choices when it comes to transportation - more hybrids, more trains.  We want our government to take global warming seriously and pass policies that help solve the problem.

The decisive win of President Elect Obama was no surprise to those of us who look at such data. In our office election pool I bet on Obama to win by a 54% margin three weeks before the election. I was off by 1%.

With this kind of unprecedented support floating around the country maybe we will finally see an aggressive climate bill pass the Congress. As well as the economic stimulus legislation that has a focus on clean energy investments. We've been falling behind and have a lot of ground to catch up on and a lot of work to do.

There is also opportunity and maybe a once in a lifetime chance to put us on the fast track to progress. Maybe it’s even mandated.

Technorati

-- Amanda Meade -- 11/13/2008

Asked me to post this on the front page to add the Heat Is On blog to their files.

<a href="http://technorati.com/claim/v8evmzhbtr" rel="me">Technorati Profile</a>

It will be removed shortly. Thanks!

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