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“HEAT” asks tough questions
-- Amanda Meade -- 10/27/2008
Last week the investigative news program Frontline asked some tough questions about global warming.
“Heat” investigated and interviewed key players from government and corporations to find out what they're planning and how they are "responding to Earth's looming environmental disaster."
The piece dug deep on energy issues looking at where and how its produced, its impacts from our consumption and how our use of energy is impacting our world.
If you missed the broadcast the full episode is now online and worth watching to help explain the challenges we face. As “the world is changing faster, more dramatically than ever was anticipated” what’s being done to address this enormous issue? Find out.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/heat/
State of Mind
-- Amanda Meade -- 10/24/2008
Changing the way we think about energy and realizing we can't continue to rely on a petroleum based economy is the most important issue we face. We have to change. We have to transition to real, clean energy and not false choices that continue to enrich big oil and coal companies.
Big oil and coal only care about profits. “Clean coal” is a deliberately false choice. A misleading phrase created to keep the status quo in place and keep billions in subsidies going to fossil fuel companies instead of proven-to-work renewables, such as solar and wind.
Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) when asked why Congress is paying more attention to the energy business leaders than the legions of scientists who have been warning of climate change for years said "There's real money in that group."
Meaning the Big oil and coal lobbyist prime the campaign contribution pump and grease the wheels for favor on their kind of ‘clean energy’; the same old dirty oil, black rock of coal, and money sucking nuclear plants that cost an average of 4 billion government dollars.
We need to shift existing subsidies from big oil, dirty coal and extremely expensive toxic waste producing nuclear to real clean energy technologies of wind and solar. We can be energy independent in ten years. Drastically reducing our dependency on foreign oil and CO2 intensive coal is what we need to do to address climate change. It is a fight against industry giants to change the way we produce and use energy. The U.S. has failed to make progress because the current energy industry giants spend millions to lobby our government and protect profit rather than the common good.
Decisions, Decisions
-- Pete -- 10/22/2008
According to the news there’s a big election coming up. There are many issues to base your vote on. Unfortunately, it seems the more crises’ we face, the more immediate the need for action, the more likely the environment falls off the map as an issue. Global Warming is still considered by many as a long-term problem and not urgent.
My wife and I have two children and we have all the concerns of most families. We are keeping a close eye on the financial situation and hoping for the best but planning for the worst. We don’t have the luxury of seeing everything in terms of the environment and all other issues through that lens.
Global Warming is urgent. It may not always feel like it, but it is. When prioritizing your issues remember that many of the issues we face today, we could have dealt with in the past at a much lower cost. We are all excited that gas prices hover around $3 after topping $4 for a few months but we could have avoided a lot of pain if we had worked towards energy independence when it was first proposed- some 30 years ago.
If you live long enough you start to realize that many of the same issues come up every election cycle. They always seem so urgent but they are rarely addressed. We have a bad habit of waiting until we have a full-blown crisis before we act. When you see smoke in your house you should react while it’s just smoke and isolated. Obvious, right? Well, it’s obvious but not always easy. It requires true leadership to help people see the value in reacting while there is time.
I suppose it is human nature to put things off but now is the time to rise above our nature and act while we can make a difference. When you are deciding who to vote for look down at any little eyes that may be looking up at you; wondering if somebody is in charge and will do the right thing.
Heat and the City
-- Pete -- 10/15/2008
A report was released today that states that if we don’t do something about global warming our cities are going to overheat like a car stuck on the side of the freeway with the hood up on a mid-summer day. You don’t see that as much anymore but I remember those days. It was hot enough as it was and if you had a car that was prone to overheating you actually had to put the heat on in the car full blast to draw the heat away from the engine. In the mean time you and your passengers are hanging your heads out the window just to survive. Not fun. Our cities are like to those cars of old. In a planet that is heating up, our cities, often with populations unable to deal with the stress are susceptible to overheating and all the health problems that accompany this stress. One thing that struck me from the report is the fact that on hot days our bodies need the temperature to go down at night to recover from the heat of the day. If the cities aren’t able to cool down at night like the report warns, we will see many more heat-related deaths. We got a preview of this a few years back when tens of thousands died during a heat wave in What does this all mean? This is another example why urgent action is needed. Please do your part to fight this crisis for those, like the children in the inner cities, who cannot fight for themselves.
Spill, baby, spill
-- Amanda Meade -- 10/09/2008
"Hurricane Ike's winds and massive waves destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines. The environmental damage only now is becoming apparent: At least a half million gallons (1,892,650 liters) of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes, bayous and bays of Louisiana and Texas, according to an analysis of federal data by The Associated Press." Or here
Anyone want to rethink allowing drilling 3 miles off our coasts? The National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Greg Holland says, "The increasingly dense development along our coastlines and our dependence on oil from the Gulf of Mexico leaves our society dangerously vulnerable to hurricanes." A new study by NCAR follows two major reports, by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which found evidence for a link between global warming and increased hurricane activity.
The only offshore locations left for drilling are very expensive to explore and produce oil. Drilling in the Atlantic and other offshore locations is far more expensive and won’t result in any substantive reduction in the cost of oil, even if it does contribute a small percentage to our supply. There are no quick and easy solutions to meeting our energy needs. The one thing that we need to take seriously into consideration is the fact that we have to change. Change the way we think about energy, change the way we use energy and change the way we develop energy. Is it really worth the risk to develop oil off our shores?
All of the above is not an energy policy. I don’t like any of the above if they don’t get us where we need to be – 100% renewable.
It’s All Political? Why?
-- Pete -- 10/08/2008
I know why global warming started as a political issue but I don’t know why it should remain that way. Sure, to most of us the original messenger was a certain former Vice- President known for starring in a certain movie and getting a few awards for his work but come on, this is the planet, the only planet we have to leave to our children. It is not about us and our political views; it’s about solving a crisis for those we love the most.
If you are reading this, chances are you are one of the ones not hung up on the political aspects of climate change. If this is true, what is our responsibility? If we are committed to solving this crisis we have to try to see the world through someone else’s eyes and bring those doubters along. You are armed with sound, accepted, peer reviewed science. You are up against a lot of bias and misinformation. We have to use these tools and not disparage someone’s politics if we hope to succeed.
Do we need to fight? I believe we do but we can’t ignore half the country and expect to get where we want to go. The fact is that this challenge is bigger than any one political party and elected officials from both parties need to lead and we are seeing that happen. We need good ideas from across the political spectrum. In order to get the broad support that is needed, we need to move away from politics and towards solutions.
I know, easier said than done but we need to try and it is certainly worth the try.
Onward and upward……
Take Heart and Keep Up the Fight
-- Pete -- 10/03/2008
In the fight against global warming it is easy to get discouraged and to think that no one is doing anything to fight this scary scenario. Some would probably believe that dealing with global warming day in and day out as an organizer would be depressing. The truth is that as an organizer I get to meet and work with people from all walks of life who not only care about this issue but are doing something about it. Knowing that is encouraging.
At the University of Maryland alone there are three separate programs that are dedicated to studying and fighting climate change. These are smart and serious people and they are doing great work. There are also many individuals and citizen groups who dedicate most of their free time to fighting global warming.
Now, we need to get our elected officials on board. They are a little distracted right now but we need to keep up the good fight and support those who are fighting the good fight.
“There is no conclusive proof that cigarettes cause cancer”
-- Amanda Meade -- 10/03/2008
There is no conclusive evidence that climate change is happening"
Seems that after 50 years of fighting to prove tobacco wasn't harmful the whole industry of deniers picked up and moved camp to employ the same tactics on global warming:
" Reviewing the continued campaign by climate change skeptics, David McKnight, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales (Australia), notes that there several reasons why companies such as Exxon have had some success playing the global warming denial card. "First, the implications of the science are frightening. Shifting to renewable energy will be costly* and disruptive. Second, doubt is an easy product to sell. Climate denial tells us what we all secretly want to hear. Third, science is portrayed as political orthodoxy rather than objective knowledge, a curiously postmodern argument," he writes. While the tobacco industry is often referred to as the template for the fossil fuel industry's campaign, McKnight argues that there is an important distinction. "There are no 'smoke-free areas' on the planet. Climate denial may turn out to be the world's most deadly PR campaign" SourceWatch
With public relations created tactics continually placed alongside scientific proof, provided as ‘balance' , it's no wonder the environmental community has to fight two years to keep miserly tax credit for renewable energy while oil and coal get billions. No wonder people overwhelmingly don't trust big oil and coal companies. That's partly the reason why here in the U.S. there is such a struggle to be taken seriously while fighting for clean energy and against oil and coal's disastorous contributions to climate change. The fact that we have many problems right now is a proverbial understatement. However, ranting gets us nowhere. It's time to work harder than ever and keep fighting for change and help people understand clean energy is the solution. Its here, its cheap and it'll never runout. Why chose any other way?
*Costs have come down dramatically in the past few years thanks in part to the renewable energy tax credits.
Environmental vandalism, clean coal and climate change
-- Amanda Meade -- 09/30/2008
The Greenpeace climate change activist’s story sparked an interesting debate over tactics and sucked Al Gore into a vortex of criticism over a comment on civil disobedience last week. From a global warming and clean energy perspective, Gore is right that there is no way to operate a "clean coal" plant, and maybe the only way to get governments to wake up is civil disobedience. The resistance to addressing climate change and facing a new energy reality is strong in some corners of public opinion.
So what will it take to raise awareness and create a consensus for action to stop the status quo of building coal fired plants? How will we get clean energy into the dominant mind set for solutions?
It’s a difficult question when the coal industry and their National Mining Association lobbyists muddle the debate by convincing congress to give them tens of billions of subsidized government dollars to keep digging and polluting, and then complain that clean energy isn't competitive in the free market. They also spend a hefty amount on advertising to hypnotize Americans into believing their green washing commercials promoting “clean coal”, although no such technology exists.
There are no easy answers or shortcuts to starting the long process of transformation to clean energy. The good news is there is an opportunity along the way to revitalize the economy by creating jobs and taking action on climate change while we restructure the energy grid with geothermal, wind and solar capabilities. We need to shift our whole countries way of thinking from the fossil fuel past and focus on the clean energy future.
We especially need leaders to stand up and fight for transforming our economy out of the polluting 20th century of the coal lobby type of thinking and invest in new clean energy for the 21st. We can't wait. And if elected representatives only listen to the big energy companies who have no incentive to change, then activists must do something to get their attention. That's Al Gore's point, and that's why the UK courts let environmental vandalism go unpunished - because they were right.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Clean_Coal_Technology
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Balanced_Energy_Choices
Good for MO
-- Amanda Meade -- 09/26/2008
After a hard fought battle over signature verification in Missouri, the Clean Energy Initiative, Proposition C, is on the ballot. Congrats to all who hit the streets and help make it happen. This is a good step in the right direction as the initiative will shift 15% of electricity to renewables by 2021. The equivilant of taking 2 million cars off the road. The plan has broad support as evidenced in this editorial:
The plan has potential to save Missourians over $300 million in energy costs and create thousands of good paying local jobs. For more detailed information check out www.WorksforMissouri.org
We'll keep you posted on the outcome.
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