How did your Rep. vote on GWSA?

The Maryland Global Warming Solutions Act was voted down by the House Economic Matters Committee Tuesday night by a margin of 18-2. The bill, which would have required a 25 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, had earlier passed the Senate.

It is important to note that the senate version had a “poison pill” amendment that would have rolled back the regulatory authority of the Maryland Department of the Environment and required multiple future votes by the General Assembly before the state agency could take any steps to reduce pollution.

Among those voting last night to kill the weakened Senate version of the bill were leading Democrats, including Del. Dereck Davis, chairman of the economic matters committee, and Del. Brian McHale of Baltimore, a strong union supporter.

Below is a list of delegates and how they voted. Since the bill had been weakened in the Senate, so much so that the Maryland League of Conservation Voters opposed the final version, it is not possible with just this information to determine whether the legislators voted against the bill because the didn’t want it at all or because they didn’t want the weakened version.

We will be compiling more information on why legislators voted they way they did but while we do that, why not ask them yourself? Below is a list of how your legislator voted, with email addresses: Continue reading

Lawmakers, Steelworkers Kill Global Warming Bill

Other environmental bills survive, with multiple victories for the climate

Maryland lawmakers killed a bill last night that would have required major cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. The bill was a victim of the crush of work and lack of time that usually plagues the last day of the session.

For environmental lobbyists, the defeat stung. The global warming bill was one of the top priorities of a coalition of environmental and conservation groups.

“The legislature really dropped the ball,” said Claire Douglass of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Cindy Schwartz, director of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters, attributed the defeat of the bill in part to fear-mongering. She said the threat of losing jobs due to the bill – even though that’s only conjecture – is a tried-and-true way to kill a bill.

“It’s very powerful to say to someone if this bill passes, they’ll lose their jobs. It’s not a new tactic,” she said in an interview with the Annapolis Capital.

Despite the defeat, there were multiple victories for the climate:

Strategic Energy Investment Program: Create funds to decrease energy demand and increase energy supply.
Energy Efficiency: Set goal of a 15% reduction in per capita electricity consumption by 2015.
Renewable Energy Portfolio: Boost to 20% portion of state energy portfolio derived from wind, solar and other renewable sources.
Energy-efficient buildings: Require new or renovated state buildings and schools to meet standards of efficiency.
Solar Energy Grant Program: Increase amounts of grants available.

For more depth on this session’s climate victories, visit the Maryland League of Conservation Voter’s 2008 Environmental Legislative wrap-up.

CCAN, the Alliance for Global Warming Solutions, and everyone else working on this bill are not giving up. The fight for comprehensive global warming legislation in Maryland goes on.

Yogis heart CCAN!

When you start doing yoga, it just makes you feel good. It feels like you’re body has been worked out, you’re tired, and you feel like you’ve done something good for yourself. It like when you change your first light bulb Continue reading

WAPO: "Power Plant Approval Could Lead to Higher Rates"

Great article by Tim Craig at the Washington Post today about the Wise County coal plant. Read the full article below. Emphasis is mine.

Kaine Says Coal-Burning Power Plant Is Necessary
Support for Wise County Facility, Which Could Lead to Higher Utility Rates, Angers Environmentalists

RICHMOND — Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has been battered by criticism from environmentalists over his support of a new coal-fired power plant for southwest Virginia, which Dominion Virginia Power says is essential to the state’s energy needs but which could also lead to higher utility rates for consumers statewide.

The controversy pits Kaine (D), who has made environmental protection a top priority, against a sizable chunk of his political base, even though the governor said he is powerless to stop the project even if he wanted to. The State Corporation Commission and other regulatory agencies issue the construction permits.
Continue reading

Bad amendment pushes GWSA vote back

A bad amendment was introduced and passed by Sen. Exum today that would make the Maryland Department of Environment get approval from the legislature when we start trying to implement measures that reduce our global warming pollution under GWSA. This is one of three amendments that we knew that was coming, and which we have to fight to make GWSA as strong as it needs to be.

This is the usual back and forth that we see on the floor, so we’re not worried. Continue reading

Dominion Admits – "Clean Coal" plant not actually clean

Great post from TheGreenMiles. http://www.raisingkaine.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=13300

——————————–Dominion Comes Clean on Coal, Admits Carbon Capture Nowhere in Sight (+)

As recently as five weeks ago, Dominion was hyping carbon capture and storage in connection with its proposed coal-fired power plant in Wise County. But in a new deal with the SCC, Dominion has finally admitted CCS is nothing more than pie in the sky:

Major provisions of the agreement include a reduction in the profit Dominion Virginia Power had wanted to earn on its investment in the plant and a settlement of the dispute concerning whether the plant can be considered capable of capturing greenhouse gas emissions.The proposed profit does not include a bonus credit that state law provides utilities for building cleaner-burning coal plants compatible with technology to capture carbon-dioxide emissions. Carbon dioxide is considered a greenhouse gas.

The agreement says the proposed plant falls under state and federal definitions for a clean-coal plant but adds that whether the plant is compatible with carbon-dioxide capture is “unresolved at this time.”

I’m glad Dominion has finally admitted the obvious: When it comes to global warming, there’s no such thing as clean cloal.

Virginians Vs. the Dominion of Coal

Video by Jay Tomlinson

People of Virginia rise up in a democratic fervor to oppose the coal-fired power plant proposed by Dominion Power. This plant would be extremely destructive to the local environment, not to mention the regional and international impacts that coal has because of its contribution to global warming.

All's quiet on the DEQ front

I am writing from the lobby of the Marriot Hotel in Innsbrook, just outside Richmond. Its still three hours before the final hearing of the Department of Env. Quality on the Wise County Power Plant. There’s free wireless, and I’m in good company with CCAN’s campus organizer Tom Owens. But why am I here 4 hours before the hearing anyway? Paranoia!

For the last two hearings (before the State Corporation Commission and Department of Env. Quality), opponents to the power plant have arrived early in an attempt to sign up to speak, only to wait 2-5 hours to testify. Most recently in St. Paul, opponents to the power plant did not get called to speak until after 11:00 PM, despite signing up early. Now, there may be logical explanations in both cases. For the SCC, maybe there was an advanced sign-up we didn’t know about. For the DEQ hearing, Dominion beat us to the punch, getting supporters there early with the lure of a hospitality suite.

I’ve been assured by Cindy Bernt at DEQ that sign-up won’t start until 4:45, but I figure, better safe than sorry. And so we wait. And wait. More to come in a few hours. Continue reading

NYT: Climate Concerns in Suburbia

The following piece ran in the New York Times on Sunday, Feb. 10th and features CCAN director Mike Tidwell. The reporter was most interested in the corn stove co-op he founded. See CCAN’s website for more on the Save Our Sky Home-Heating Cooperative

Suburbs

Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You

By ALEX WILLIAMS
The New York Times
Published: February 10, 2008

AS a suburban environmentalist, Mike Tidwell, 45, of Takoma Park, Md., always felt like a walking contradiction.

Though he had quit his job as a journalist to work for environmental nonprofit organizations, Mr. Tidwell viewed suburbs (his own hometown is just outside of Washington) as places built “to defy nature,” he said, giving everyone “their own little kingdom of grass and space” Continue reading