Green Jobs in College Park

Green Collar Jobs
Green Collar Jobs

Cross-Posted from: HERE

So I have a column out today instead of Tuesday because of some complications. This was as much as i could fit into 550 words worth of space. I like how they threw in a disclaimer at the end about my dad.

Crime: Get to the root of it – and green it up

Matt Dernoga

Issue date: 4/10/09

I’ve been hearing about safety issues ever since I arrived on the campus. The Student Government Association and the university have had plenty of ideas to address off-campus safety, but they don’t get to the root of the problem: Why is there crime? I’ve seen enough e-mails from University Police to realize most incidents involve robbery. People in the surrounding community are stealing from students because they don’t have money or jobs.

Crime is always going to be high if you don’t address poverty. The best way to reduce off-campus crime would be to revitalize the College Park community and make this area of Prince George’s County better off. Easier said than done.

I’m going to use bringing green jobs to College Park as an example. The SGA has as much authority as the Queen of England, but it does have the standing to build coalitions – and they should make a list of stakeholders to bring green jobs and less crime to College Park. We’ve got students, business leaders, the city council, the county council, our state representatives, religious leaders, non-profits, the university administration and people who live in the community.

Reach out to all these stakeholders as best you can and collaborate with them. It’s a transformative process that doesn’t happen overnight. Local groups such as Progressive Cheverly and Green DMV are already working on bringing green jobs to low-income areas and would welcome student involvement; Annapolis matters, but the state legislature isn’t the only decision-maker out there. Some Prince George’s County politicians tried to get the state to use hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds to bring a D.C. United soccer stadium to the county. Fail.

How about asking for a Maryland Clean Energy Center similar to the one Montgomery County just got? The center will provide technology commercialization, business incubation and workforce development and training. It’s there to help meet the state’s goal of creating at least 100,000 green jobs by 2015. Wouldn’t it help us if some of those were created here? Or how about pushing for the development of a low-interest energy-efficiency loan fund by the city or county? This can be used to give low-income residents the means to retrofit their home and lower the energy bill while providing jobs to others in the community.

I just got an e-mail that the university is holding an open forum Tuesday called “Moving Diversity Forward.” That’s the best you can come up with? Nothing worthwhile is easy. A way to get diverse groups to work together is give them an issue to address that everyone has a stake in. Bringing green jobs to College Park to address poverty would allow the SGA to combine the ideas, effort and ingenuity from a broad spectrum of groups on the campus. Green, social justice, cultural and religious groups would be inclined to get involved. The university would be wise to provide resources to this kind of an initiative not only to actually back up their diversity talk, but also because spending a little money to reduce crime would lessen the financial strain security costs our school every year.

The SGA and university administration should think outside the box next semester for ways to address on-campus problems such as diversity and safety. Green jobs to College Park is just one tool in the bag.

Matt Dernoga is a junior government and politics major whose father serves on the Prince George’s County Council. He can be reached at mdernoga@umd.edu.

An Analysis of "The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009" discussion draft

The House Energy and Commerce Committee discussion draft, “The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” released on March 31st is very robust, a 648 page document. Based upon one reading of this document, these seem to be most of the significant provisions:

-It would establish a cap-and-trade system which sets mandatory and declining limits on greenhouse gas emissions (ghg) over the next 40 years. Emissions credits would be allocated to accomplish this, but the draft is silent on how many of those credits would be given away or auctioned, or perhaps distributed in some other way. This remains to be negotiated.

-It appears that the cap is more “downstream” than “upstream.” The summary of the document says that it “establishes a market-based program for reducing global warming pollution from electric utilities, oil companies, large industrial sources, and other covered entities that collectively are responsible for 85% of U.S. global warming emissions.” At several points throughout the document it describes a “covered entity” as one which emits at least 25,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually.

-The draft projects a 20% reduction in ghg’s from 2005 levels via the cap, which is about a 7% reduction below the 1990 baseline year. There is another 10% reduction projected via investments in prevention of deforestation outside the U.S., and there is another 0-6% projected via offsets.
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Earth Hour


Blog cross-posted from: HERE

For those of you who don’t know, tonight from 8:30 to 9:30 people people from all around the globe are going to be turning off their lights in a symbolic gesture. There are also going to be many businesses, cities, and countries turning off the lights in the buildings and facilities they control to send a message. I even heard McDonalds is going to be dimming all of its M signs. This is supposed to represent a message that people want there to be action on the issue of climate change. While Earth Hour was of a decent size last year, this year it appears that there’s going to be a massive upswing in participation, which is a good thing considering the distractions going on around us right now like the economy.
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ICC Action Alert!

Breathe the Air!
Breathe the Air!

Cross-Posted from: Here

If you live in Maryland(or if you know someone in Maryland who would be interested) this post is for you!

The bill being considered in the State Senate and House of Delegates right now would strip the Inter County Connector, a monstrous 18 mile highway being built in Maryland, of its 4 billion dollars worth of funding. The environmental implications of this road are far-reaching, and killing it would be a huge victory. Just related to global warming, the ICC is going to increase driving by 750 million miles a year by 2030, making it very difficult to reduce transportation emissions. At the same time it will deplete state funds that could go to mass transit.

Here are a couple of columns myself and a friend wrote on the ICC in case you want more info: column 1, column 2

I’m pleading with you to take 5-10 minutes of your time and e-mail or call all 3 of your delegates, and your state senator asking them to support to bill to defund the ICC. These are 4 calls/e-mails anyone who wants to stop global warming and protect the environment should be making. The action alert is below. Thanks so much.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————
ACT: Please call 1-800-492-7122 Ask your Senator and Delegates to vote FOR
House Bill 27 / Senate Bill 753 to defund the Inter County Connector highway.

FIND: your Representatives at http://www.mdelect.net/electedofficials/ or http://www.congress.org/
or call the General Assembly switchboard at 1-800-492-7122
State Senator’s emails are firstname.lastname@senate.state.md.us

STATUS: Soon, the bill to defund the $4 billion dollar 20 mile long toll ICC highway will be heard in the House Appropriations & the Senate Budget & Taxation committees.

Opponents will try to kill the bill in committee, because if the bill gets to the floor of the full House or Senate, it becomes very difficult for legislators to oppose such a common-sense measure in such difficult economic times. We need your support to get this bill out of committee with a favorable committee report.

This is a good time to contact your representatives in Annapolis to let them know you want them to reduce wasteful spending and take a stand against this environmentally destructive project.

DESCRIPTION: There is debate on the amount of money that would be saved overall by not building the ICC since money has been spent already, however, let’s not throw good money after bad. The negative effects of building it (increased traffic congestion, global warming gas emissions) are too great.
Text of the bill http://mlis.state.md.us/2009rs/billfile/hb0027.htm
More information: http://maryland.sierraclub.org/action/p0157.asp

Please join us AND write your legislators to ask them to vote FOR HB27/SB753 to come out of committee and onto the floor. Thank you!

Shell-Shocked

This has been cross posted from: here

It’s a shame that after a couple of posts involving businesses making the right decisions in the renewable energy market and taking action on climate change, I end up having to break the news that Shell has eliminated all investment in renewables besides biodiesel. It’s not as though Shell was doing very much anyways, they have invested 1.7 billion dollars over the past 5 years in renewables. In comparison, they spend 32 billion total on investments in 2008 alone. Still, this is a sign that Shell is moving in the opposite direction of a lot of businesses and corporations. While we’re seeing an increase in renewable energy output and investment amongst companies, Shell is taking theirs away.

Obviously I’m not one of the “experts” in Shell making these kinds of multi-billion dollar decisions, but I have to wonder what is going through their minds. Let’s assume the obvious, which is that Shell has no moral conscience at all when it comes to climate change or environmental protection. Their bottom line is more important than the public good. I got it, they’re a business. Unfortunately expecting a moral conscience of some corporations is expecting too much.

But even if you’re only thinking of your bottom line, how do you come to this conclusion that no only will we not invest much money in renewables, but we won’t invest ANYTHING. I can see how this would’ve been a good move in 2000 when we had oilmen coming into the Whitehouse. There were lots of calls for increased drilling, removal of environmental protections, and no action on climate change. At this point, putting all the eggs in the oil basket might make sense. But let’s look at what the state of things are now with the next 8 years in mind, as opposed to the last 8 years.

We’ve got an anti-drilling Democratically controlled Congress and Whitehouse. Environmental regulations are going to be popping up all over the place. If you look at the stimulus, the overwhelming majority of the money relating to energy was clean energy. There was also a record amount of money invested in mass transit. Whatever tax breaks the oil companies got during the last 8 years are likely going to be removed. There are now new and far reaching tax breaks at the Federal level for solar, wind, geothermal, biodiesel, and plug-in hybrid-electric cars. These kinds of credits are also showing up all over the states. My own state of Maryland has a 10k credit for solar, similar incentives for other alternatives, and my county Prince Georges County has a 5,000 dollar property tax credit. General Motors and Toyota are coming out with plug-in hybrids within the next few years. Other auto companies are taking a stronger look at it them, and are introducing more hybrids. Oh, and the US and other countries around the world either have passed or are about to pass climate change cap and trade policy that will inevitably drive up the price of gas and decrease consumption.

I could go on. Hopefully you get the point. What are you thinking Shell? The problem I see with this when you’re purely looking at a bottom line is that the trends are moving in the opposite direction of Shell’s actions. It’s not smart investment to put none of the $$$ into renewables when you consider the trends I listed above. I predict that Shell is going to find itself at a big competitive disadvantage a few years from now when they suddenly realize they “want in” on this clean energy economy, but other companies beat them to the investment, research, and start-up and have achieved greater economies of scale and efficiency. At this point, entry into the clean energy market will hurt Shell, and they will look back on their decision in 2009 to cease renewable energy investment as poor planning.

Clean Coal was Never Being Developed by Bush Admin!

This is cross-posted from: here

I’ve documented plenty of reasons why coal use needs to be phased out, and “clean coal” is a joke. In case you need a recap…..The coal industry has gotten a lot of much deserved negative press ever since the coal slurry dam disaster that happened a few months ago. This brought to light that, maybe we should regulate our coal ash. Of course, no amount of regulation will ever make Continue reading

Powering Past Coal

It was tremendous to be part of the crowd of thousands of people demonstrating last Monday, March 2nd at the coal-fired Capitol Power Plant on Capitol Hill. But I wonder how many of those who have heard about this action or who even took part are aware of the role that the Power Past Coal campaign played in making it a success.

power past coal

In mid-November, 2008 I traveled to Charleston, West Virginia for the first national climate meeting following the election of our nation’s first African American President. Representatives were there from two dozen groups, many of them Appalachian-based, others national groups like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Energy Action, 1Sky and Rainforest Action Network. Over the course of a day and a half we came up with a plan for “100 Days of Action to Power Past Coal.” This campaign began on the day after Barack Obama’s inauguration.
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Energy: A tar-nished reputation

This is a crosspost from this blog: http://madrad2002.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/tar-sands-column/

So I have a column in the Diamondback today. I want to correct a couple of small things that the editors changed. I put “tar sands” everytime I discussed them, but they were changed to “oil sands” for some reason. Other thing is when I mention natural gas is being used to extract the oil from the sands, I say I would rather us be using that natural gas to replace coal plants because it is cleaner than coal. For the record I do recognize natural gas is not clean and not what we should be pursuing, I just would rather us burn it to replace coal rather than burn it to extract tar sands oil.

http://media.www.diamondbackonline.com/media/storage/paper873/news/2009/03/03/Opinion/Energy.A.TarNished.Reputation-3656037.shtml

Energy: A tar-nished reputation

Matt Dernoga

Issue date: 3/3/09 Section: Opinion

Last week, President Barack Obama met with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss energy. The United States and Canada share the largest energy trade partnership in the world, with Canada supplying the United States with more oil and natural gas than any other country. A major point of interest has been the Canadian oil sands, from which Canada is extracting increasing amounts of oil to export to the U.S. Continue reading

Prayer Vigil for Capitol Climate Action

ghandiOn March 2, a mass action will occur at the coal-fired power plant that brings energy to Capitol Hill, bringing attention to coal’s contribution to the climate crisis and its threat to the health of future generations. The Capitol Climate Action, www.capitolclimateaction.org, represents the beginning of a mass mobilization for climate justice and energy solutions.

Participants engaging in civil disobedience at the coal plant are committing themselves to practice the nonviolence principles of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Just as the civil rights movement was rooted in nonviolence, much was inspired and sustained by the faith community. In keeping with this tradition the Capitol Climate Action will be preceded by a prayer vigil offering an opportunity for people of various faiths to offer prayers for the success of this action and calling upon their spiritual resources to ground them in this important work for a cleaner, brighter, future for all of creation, in what Dr. King would call “the fierce urgency of now.”

The Prayer Vigil will occur at the staging area for the action, at Spirit of Justice Park (about three blocks from the coal plant), C St. SE & New Jersey Ave. SE (two blocks west of Capitol South Metro), from 12:30 to 1 pm, on Monday March 2. Banners from worship communities are welcome.

  • Opening: Lakota prayer to the 4 directions/Chant –Rose Khalsa 5 mins.
  • Prayer: Muslim –Ibrahim Ramey 3 mins.
  • Song: Bright Morning Star– Rev. Fred Small 3 mins.
  • Prayer: Rabbi Arthur Waskow 3 mins.
  • Singing: Emma’s Revolution “Peace, Salaam, Shalom” 3 mins.
  • Prayer: Rev. Graylan Hagler 3 mins.
  • Reflection: Rabbi David Saperstein 3 mins.
  • Testimonial: Pete Ramey (Appalachian Mountain Stewards) 4 mins.
  • Mountain Prayer- Kolya 1 min.
  • Song: Luci Murphy “The Tree of Life” 3 mins