The Climate Minute – Brother, can you spare $350 million?

Good morning everybody and welcome to the MCAN Climate Minute.  This morning Ted and Rob talk climate action far and near, while ambient noise levels at the pink and orange coffeehouse reach epic proportions.  Oh, and Rob drops his laptop and makes loud angry squeaks moving his chair.  NPR we are not this morning, folks…

Let’s start off with a little fun.  Tomorrow night’s Powerball prize is projected to be $550 million, which is about $350 million in the cash option (there’s that magic number again!).  Let’s ignore the taxes for a minute (Wait, that’s how they got Al Capone, isn’t it?) and do a little fantasizing.  How would you spend $350 million to address climate change?

Name(required)

I would spend $300 to fix the climate by...(required)

New Field

Whichever entry we deem best, based on a completely arbitrary decision on our part of which idea sounds the “neatest,” will get two complimentary admissions to the New England Grassroots Environment Fund Rootskills event on  Saturday, June 8th (Friday night event not included, although I’m sure you could sign up for that separately).  Listen to the podcast for our ideas, or you can check out the Grist story that got Ted and I thinking about this.  Please include your email if you want to be considered for the prize, if not feel free to leave that field blank.

Okay, on to the other things we covered this week:

In Keystone news, unnamed Administration sources have told Reuters that a White House decision on Keystone is unlikely until this fall at the earliest, and maybe not even until 2014.  Depending on your level of cynicism you either applaud this as the President giving thoughtful consideration to the project, or wonder if he’s just waiting for Congress to take the decision away from him entirely…

Local climate hero Wen Stephenson (quitting your job and putting your professional future in doubt because of your belief in the media’s lack of serious attention to climate change rates in my book as heroism) has piece in The Nation again discussing the need for parallels between the abolition movement and the climate movement, particularly the need to become the radicals  strong enough to support a revolution, not a simple change.

Interestingly enough, a couple of local activists embodied that spirit earlier this week when they anchored their (relatively small) boat in the path of (somewhat gigantic) freighter bringing a coal shipment to the Brayton Point powerplant.  Jay O’Hara and Ken Ward blocked the freighter for hours before finally moving on at the behest of the Coast Guard.  Check out the Globe story here.  My favorite line?  Brayton spokesperson called the powerplant “one of the cleanest electricity generators of its kind,” which is kind of like, oh, I dunno, calling Hurricane Katrina one of the least damaging superstorms of its kind, as it didn’t cause as much monetary damage as Superstorm Sandy…

Here’s our previous blogpost on the movement to bar “do gooders” from filming agricultural industry violations which is likely to be used against those recording fracking problems in Pennsylvania.

The Falmouth town election which will decide the fate of the two turbines at the wastewater treatment plant will take place this Tuesday.  Here’s an informative and thought provoking article from the perspective of a turbine supporter.  If you’d like to give the pro-turbine folks a little love you could visit their Facebook page.

The UNESCO document which discusses the “Ethical Principles and Responsibilities for Climate Change Policies” can be found here.  It’s a long read, but a valuable filter to apply as you pursue your local climate action.

Big week for climate related stories on WBUR.  For more on the Boston Greenovate program, go here.  You can also listen to a the BUR report about Millennials forsaking the car, or  read their discussion of how energy efficiency is working in the Northeast to lower energy demand during the summer.  (For those of you really into this kind of thing, feel free to peruse the Energy Efficiency market reports put out by the Division of Energy Resources in the early 2000′s — we were noticing the beneificial economic impacts of efficiency way back then.  Here’s the 2000 report.

Good luck to Gina McCarthy as her nomination progresses to the floor of the Senate.  If there is a more capable and effective choice for EPA, I don’t know who that would be.

For the local events we mentioned, including the Green Needham Collaborative discussion with officials from the City of Boston about their climate action plan this Monday, check out our Climate Action Calendar.

We’d also love to see you at our Climate Education Meeting on the state Clean Energy and Climate Plan and Green Communities Program on Wednesday, May 29th, at 8pm in the Arlington Senior Center.

As always, it’s been a pleasure sharing climate news and views with you.  You know, you can subscribe to our iTunes feed and get our podcasts automatically here.  Feel free to give us your thoughts on our Facebook page, or through old-fashioned email.

You can donate and support the Climate Minute and all of MCAN’s other climate change fighting activities by hitting that “donate now” button, or going to www.massclimateaction.net/donate. Remember, for climate activities near you check out our MCAN climate action calendar.  You can enter events as well as browse for interesting things to do. As always — remember, for these reasons we have discussed, the United States must place a price on carbon. 

Deny Climate Deniers Some Business!

Reblogged from It's Getting Hot In Here:

Hi All,

This new app is making the rounds on social media, but here's a blog from my friend Connor Gibson at Greenpeace explaining how YOU can avoid buying products from the Koch Brothers!

Avoid buying Koch Industries products with new phone app!

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Connor Gibson

Here’s a cool new toy. A popular article on Forbes…

Read more… 218 more words

Oooo.... here's something neat to help you put your money where your heart is.

So, are you the best local activist you can be?

Being a local energy and climate activist can be tough.  Each town is different, with unique needs and a specific set of challenges, and there’s no real manual that lays out exactly how to be successful in your town.  And then if you are effective you’ll attract some attention you’d rather live without — like being called a tree-hugger at Town Meeting, and if you have a couple of setbacks all too often malaise and burnout starts to set in in your group.

Boy, that’s depressing.

So how about a weekend of training and networking and basic inspiring fellowship?  Thank goodness for the New England Grassroots Environment Fund.

Root Skills is a project of NEGEF, which provides a day of training for local activists at a very reasonable price in a lovely setting in Camp Yavneh in Northwood, New Hampshire.  It takes place June seventh and eighth, with a dinner on Friday and day of workshops and activities on Saturday.

Workshop tracks include Community Building, Group Development, and Personal Leadership.  The Friday portion of the event is optional with a lovely dinner and a discussion with former NEGEF grantees which would be interested in anyone trying to figure out how a grant might help your organization, and Saturday will run until 4:30pm.

(And not for nothing, NEGEF is the premier funder for small local groups, even those who have not yet gotten a 501c3 designation.  Attending is a great way to get a leg up on how to write a compelling grant application for one of NEGEF’s grant programs, and get to know the NEGEF staff who make decisions on those programs.)

The cost is $65 for the whole weekend, and $25 for Saturday only.  NEGEF has decades of experience with local action and nuturing local groups; their staff has been local activists themselves and know the challenges, opportunities, joys and dread of working toward positive change on the local level.

For more information about Root Skills, check out NEGEF’s page here.  Registration is open until May 31st.

Free Fracking Fotoers!

(okay, that was weak)

During our podcast a couple of weeks ago Ted spoke about agricultural companies’ efforts to punish animal welfare activists who have been going undercover and recording abuses and illegal activities at factory slaughterhouses.  As Ted noted at the time, climate activists share not only a concern for a better future with these “ag activists”, but we also challenge entrenched authority opening us up for similar attacks.

Well, apparently fracking-hotbed Pennsylvania is getting into the action.  An “ag-gag” (as these anti-activist bills are generally called) proposal in the Keystone State could have consequences for activists trying to expose the environmental damage done by fracking.

As this story in Grist discusses, a generous portion of the fracking sites in the state are located on agricultural lands.  The legislation could be drafted expansively enough to cover all activities on agricultural lands, be they farming related or not.

What exactly is the public purpose served by these restrictions?  Well — there are none, obviously.  As Melissa Toutman, an activist with the Mountain Watershed Association says, “If you’re not doing anything wrong, there’s nothing to hide. So why is there a need for this bill?”

Well put…

Check out this video of methane and hydrocarbon gases being emitted from natural gas well sites — including those in state forests and other public lands.  Thank goodness Congress exempted these facilities from Clean Air and Clean Water laws!

Venting methane from natural gas drilling facilities is actually quite common, it happens when the pressure is too high for the facility.  Most commonly the vents are flared, which turns the methane into CO2, which is less dangerous to the climate than the raw methane — but which is visible and would invite more criticism than this undercover venting which is only discovered by this third party activist with an infrared camera.  It’s examples like this that show the good which would be extinguished by these anti-activist laws.

The MCAN Climate Minute – news from Hotlanta, DC, and Boston.

Good morning everybody and welcome to the MCAN Climate Minute(s).  (Old friend Susan suggested we’re being misleading by calling this the Climate Minute, when in fact it’s pretty close to the Climate Half-Hour.  We’ll, that just doesn’t have the zip of “Climate Minute,” so we’ll stick with that and thank you for sparing the time for our ramblings.)

So Ted’s back in New England after a few days in Atlanta at the USCAN annual meeting.  He’s filled with new ideas and interesting tidbits, here are a few links to things we mentioned in the coversation:

To find the Climate Reality Project’s videos, go here.  They’re YouTube videos and easily embedable and shareable, perfect to send to that Uncle Joe who just doesn’t quite get it yet…

We’ve also found definitions for solastalgia, and petcoke - one is the after-product of distilling dilbit and burned as coal would be, but 5-10% more carbon intensive, while the former is the psychological distress people feel about climate change and environmental destruction.   For extra credit, there’s metallurgical coal, which is the stuff you need for steel — which we will still need even if we move off coal power.

Ted picked up a couple of new catchphrases in Atlanta, for instance: “Keystone Pipeline is a pipeline through the US, not to the US,” and “Stop making electricity by burning stuff,” and finally “We need a FAB treaty; Fair, Ambitious  and Binding” at the next Conference of the Parties meeting in Poland in 2013.

For more information about the European airlines emission trading process, check this out.

Vice President Biden spilled the beans on his opposition to the Keystone pipeline, telling an activist he was personally opposed but in a minority in the administration.  Recalling when the Veep jumped the gun and supported gay marriage before the President did, is this another Biden “gaffe” which will turn out for the best?

Meanwhile, at home in Massachusetts the Boston City Council adopted a building energy labeling ordinance this week which will require commercial building owners to assess their energy use which will be publicly rated.  Building owners will get assistance in increasing their efficiency and tenants will get information that will help them make educated decisions about where they would locate.  For a good write-up of the benefits of such a program, look here.

Old friend (perhaps we should say “long term friend”) Gina McCarthy, the President’s nominee for EPA administrator, had her nomination vote delayed when the republicans “took their ball and went home” and boycotted the committee vote to move her to full Senate consideration.  The nomination will move ahead (the threshold quorum is 10 votes, which is the number of democrats, but one was traveling), but this is just another example of the troubling polarization of congress.

For the local events we mentioned, including the Somerville Depaving party this Sunday, check out our Climate Action Calendar.

We’ve rescheduled our Climate Education Meeting on the state Clean Energy and Climate Plan and Green Communities Program for Wednesday, May 29th, at 8pm in the Arlington Senior Center.

As always, it’s been a pleasure sharing climate news and views with you.  You know, you can subscribe to our iTunes feed and get our podcasts automatically here.  Feel free to give us your thoughts on our Facebook page, or through old-fashioned email.

You can donate and support the Climate Minute and all of MCAN’s other climate change fighting activities by hitting that “donate now” button, or going to www.massclimateaction.net/donate. Remember, for climate activities near you check out our MCAN climate action calendar.  You can enter events as well as browse for interesting things to do. As always — remember, for these reasons we have discussed, the United States must place a price on carbon. 

The MCAN Climate Minute – you can’t manage what you don’t measure…

Good morning everybody and welcome to the MCAN Climate Minute. We come to you this week via the wonders of Skype, but we’ve got our homebrew in the pot and we’re sufficiently caffeinated to bring you this week’s Climate Minute.

Big week in Massachusetts, as announcements and good news abound. First, the state was able to announce that they have met their solar power goals ahead of schedule, as over 250MW of installed capacity has gone online since setting the goals in 2007. That figure should reach 400MW this year or early next, and the Governor has announced a new goal of 1,600MW by 2020.

For a map of renewable energy sites in the Commonwealth, check out the Museum of Science’s interactive map here.  (Note though: it’s not complete, there’s a certain 1.6MW facility in my town that doesn’t seem to be on the map…)

The state’s new goal would be easily met if every community was like Dartmouth, Mass, which leads the state in 9.28MW of capacity, beating out every other town in the state.

In other good news the state unveiled their Greenhouse Gas Dashboard.  The site provides interesting and valuable data about the state’s emissions profiles and good historical comparisons of the various drivers of ghg emissions.  The site provides useful information to policy makers as they make sure the state’s Clean Energy and Climate Plan is working to accomplish the strict requirements of the Global Warming Solutions Act.

On the national front, a new poll out suggests that over half (58%) of Americans link extreme weather to climate change.

It’s got a reputation as the originator of “McNews,” but USA Today has a fairly in-depth series on climate change and particularly its impact on rain extreme weather that’s a good read for newbies to climate change.  Check it out here.

You may recall us talking about the Keeling Curve and the Mauna Loa observatory several weeks ago.  Well, it’s on our radar screen again as news comes out that we’re very close to hitting a new milestone.  In the next month it’s expected that the observatory will being getting sustained readings of over 400ppm of CO2.  This is just another sobering milestone on the planet’s climate journey.

This being the 2010′s, the observatory has a twitter feed of daily numbers, follow it here. For charts on any scale from the last week to the last 50 years, you can check out UC San Diego’s Scripps Insitution of Oceanography’s site here.

We reflect on some larger issues in today’s podcast, including a discussion of a perpetual carbon future.  This was inspired by an article in The Atlantic that looks at a world that never moves beyond petroleum.

Of course we know that’s not going to happen, and climate change will force further restrictions on fossil fuels.  That has it’s own set of consequences, including the considerable threat to traditional fossil fuel companies whose values are currently based on petroleum, gas, and coal reserves that (we hope) can never be exploited.

Two big things to think about: who actually owns fossil fuel stocks? (Answer: if you’ve got a pension or a mutual fund — probably you.)  And, what’s going to happen when those restrictions on fossil fuels we’re all working toward are actually put in place?  Here’s an interesting (and sobering) article on the potential coming carbon bubble.

(Of course you can get out of fossils entirely through divestment and socially responsible investing.  Our good friend Eric Packer at Progressive Asset Management specializes in these kinds of investments.)

So, what’s going on locally?

The authors of the proposed carbon tax for Massachusetts, State Representative Tom Conroy (Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury) and State Senator Mike Barrett (Lexington, Bedford, Concord etc.) will be at Cary Memorial Library tomorrow, Saturday, May 4th, along with an experts in the field (including Kerry Emmanuel of MIT) who will provide background on the issue including how it works and the economic impact. Tom and Mike will provide more information on their proposal. State Senator Will Brownsberger and State Representative Dave Rogers will also be part of the panel discussion.

Saturday night is also Earth Night, a great event put on each year by the Environmental League of Massachusetts.  The evening starts at 8pm at the Back Bay Events Center.  Here’s their website for more information.

Finally, we’ve rescheduled our Climate Education Meeting on the state Clean Energy and Climate Plan and Green Communities Program for Wednesday, May 29th.  We will be announcing the location next week, hope to see you there!

As always, it’s been a pleasure sharing climate news and views with you.  You know, you can subscribe to our iTunes feed and get our podcasts automatically here.  Feel free to give us your thoughts on our Facebook page, or through old-fashioned email.

You can donate and support the Climate Minute and all of MCAN’s other climate change fighting activities by hitting that “donate now” button, or going to www.massclimateaction.net/donate. Remember, for climate activities near you check out our MCAN climate action calendar.  You can enter events as well as browse for interesting things to do. As always — remember, for these reasons we have discussed, the United States must place a price on carbon. 

Mass Doings

It’s been an interesting week in Massachusetts on a number of fronts.  Here’s a little taste of climate action throughout the Commonwealth as spring makes its first sustained appearance of the year.

On the Town Meeting front, the voters of West Newbury voted to make their town the 125th in the state to opt-in to the Stretch Energy Building Code.  (For newbies, the Stretch Code is an optional addition to the regular state building code which increases the energy efficiency of both new construction and renovation.)

Meanwhile, Governor Patrick announced this week that the state has met its solar installation goal of 250MW ahead of schedule.  Massachusetts has been able to attain that amount of solar through a very aggressive incentive program, a special RPS-within-an-RPS called the solar carve-out.  The carve-out program is currently being redesigned as the state nears the carve-outs target of 400mw installed capacity (which should occur within the next year).

The wind target of 2,000MW is still a ways away, as there’s only about 100MW in the ground — although there is about 450MW of off-shore wind which should go online within the next couple of years.  The complicated saga of on-shore wind siting puts this target severely in doubt — particularly when the big town meeting action this year was whether or not several existing turbines would be put out of commission, never mind adding new ones!

In very good news the state released its Greenhouse Gas Dashboard (thanks for the link Loie!).  The website provides interesting and valuable data about the state’s emissions profiles and good historical comparisons of the various drivers of ghg emissions.
Hopefully the site will be updated every year so we can make sure the state’s Clean Energy and Climate Plan is working to accomplish the strict requirements of the Global Warming Solutions Act.

What’s going on in your neck of the world?