LTE Opportunity: The Best Holiday Gift Ever!

Come January, we’ll be working nonstop to raise awareness about global warming solutions in Maryland and Virginia. Not only that, but we’ll also be focused on working with the new Congress to make climate a priority within the first 100 days of the next administration. This spring will be THE crucial time to pass climate legislation, and we’re going to have to give it our all.

But what can I do right now, you ask? This is the moment to be setting the stage for bold climate action come January, and we can start by getting some holiday stimulus LTE’s published! With the holiday season coming up, what better gift could we ask for than a green stimulus package and a New Year’s Resolution from our elected officials for truly bold climate action in 2009.

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MD + Public Transit = Love Forever

Sometimes I feel like my organizing all centers around an abstract plane of numbers. I can’t touch a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions 90% by 2050. Of course, I still know in my gut that setting the mandate for reductions is the crucial first step to fighting climate change, and watching the news with any kind of awareness brings me back to reductions targets time and again (see Wilkins Ice Shelf for a recent and scary example) (oh, and this just in, about the Arctic melting past the point of no return). But sometimes I want to focus on something a little more concrete, like shutting down coal plants – or supporting the creation of more public transportation.

In my part of Maryland right now, it’s the Purple Line.

Rockin' around renewable energy

For folks who have been following all the drama that is Calvert Cliffs Reactor #3, here’s the latest update. Warren Buffet and Co wants to buy out Constellation Energy. Constellation Energy is closely connected with EDF, a French nuclear company. On December 23rd, Constellation shareholders are meeting to approve the merger – which means that it’s time for some holiday fun, activist style!

Over the past few months, the Chesapeake Safe Energy Coalition has been gathering signatures on a petition (sign it here if you haven’t yet!) urging Warren Buffet to sever Constellation’s ties with EDF. So we’re going to do a bit of gatecrashing, and deliver the 8,000 plus petition signatures at the shareholders’ meeting, to let them all know that Marylanders want our energy to come from truly renewable sources, not nuclear power. That $10 billion that is being proposed for a nuclear boondoggle could build more than twice as much generating capacity if it’s invested in wind power – and just think of how many buildings we could make energy efficient for the holidays with that much cash!

Want to join in on the fun? We’ll be meeting at 7:45 in the morning at Constellation HQ in Baltimore to hand out candy canes and share our holiday wishes for clean and green energy. Click here for more details on the event and location. And let us know you’re coming! RSVP here or on Facebook.

The perfect last minute gift idea

ccan gift membershipsAs 2008 comes careening to a close, the most unexpected thing happened to me: I forgot all about my holiday gift giving. If it’s the same for you, keep reading. Whether because of the good news coming out of Maryland, another coal plant for Virginia, or just some silly anthropomorphic lumps of singing coal, if you’re caught off-guard and out of ideas when you look at your holiday lists, CCAN’s got you covered.

Give the gift of climate action! CCAN Gift Memberships are thoughtful, eco-friendly, and pretty. The CCAN Gift Membership is a great way to show your climate activist you care. The gift comes with a beautiful picture of the Chesapeake Bay in winter by aerial photographer Cameron Davidson. The beauty of an icy Chesapeake Bay is worth preserving, and we hope you’ll invite your friends and family to keep that in mind this holiday season.

The membership comes with all the benefits of joining CCAN

Earthbeat Radio: Climate Year in Review

Camilla voy 2, Kitikmeot_WR 027.jpg

We are in – right now – the hottest decade in at least the last two thousand years. This year has been one for the record books for carbon dioxide, gas prices, wildfires, melting glaciers and, ironically, polar tourism. 2008 is on track to be warmer than the entire decade of the 1990s.

Host Mike Tidwell discusses the year in review with Andrew Revkin, reporter for the New York Times and author of the Times’ environment blog – Dot Earth and with Joe Romm, the author of the blog Climate Progress and a senior fellow at The Center for American Progress.

Then we dive even deeper into the automaker’s bailout with Matt Pawa, the lead lawyer representing the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense and the Sierra Club in their defense of states enacting strict auto emission standards.

Then we get a first-hand account of what it was like to stand on the desk of the very first commercial ship to sail through the ice-free Northwest Passage. Waguih Rayes is general manager of the Arctic division of the shipping company – Group Desgagnes.

Download this edition of Earthbeat.

Image used courtesy of Waguih Rayes, all rights reserved.

Coal to action: Join us March 2 as we protest a coal-fired power plant near Capitol Hill

This is a letter to colleagues from Bill McKibben, scholar in residence at Middlebury College, a director of Grist.org, and co-founder of 350.org, and Wendell Berry, farmer, critic, and prolific author.

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capitol power plant
There are moments in a nation’s — and a planet’s — history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push for its correction. We think such a time has arrived, and we are writing to say that we hope some of you will join us in Washington, D.C. on Monday, March 2, in order to take part in a civil act of civil disobedience outside a coal-fired power plant near Capitol Hill.

We will be there to make several points:

* Coal-fired power is driving climate change. Our foremost climatologist, NASA’s James Hansen, has demonstrated that our only hope of getting our atmosphere back to a safe level — below 350 parts per million CO2 — lies in stopping the use of coal to generate electricity.

* Even if climate change were not the urgent crisis that it is, we would still be burning our fossil fuels too fast, wasting too much energy, and releasing too much poison into the air and water. We would still need to slow down, and to restore thrift to its old place as an economic virtue.

* Coal is filthy at its source. Much of the coal used in this country comes from West Virginia and Kentucky, where companies engage in “mountaintop removal” to get at the stuff; they leave behind a leveled wasteland and impoverished human communities. No technology better exemplifies the out-of-control relationship between humans and the rest of creation.
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The stars are aligned…

For 2009 to be THE year to turn the tide on climate change.

Maryland has been a forerunner on fighting global warming for a while now, after passing the Healthy Air Act, the Clean Cars Act, and some great energy efficiency and renewable energy legislation – but was lagging behind on setting goals and making a long-term plan for making all the reductions that science demands. Which is why I’m SUPER-excited that the Global Warming Solutions Act is looking to be in an increasingly better position to pass into law in 2009. This is just one part of the snowballing solutions that we’re hearing more and more of. Even Virginia is starting to get on board the clean energy train.

The thing with 2009 is, good climate policy doesn’t only have to snowball up, from the state to the federal level. It’s also starting to snowball down – President-Elect Obama spoke consistently during the campaign about his desire to prioritize rebuilding America’s infrastructure with clean energy, and talks about the impending stimulus package seem to be backing up his promises. Hooray!

Of course, this doesn’t mean that all of us climate activists are out of a job quite yet. There is still a tough fight ahead. The international community may be at an impasse without a strong commitment from the US on climate action, which makes our actions (and those of Congress) during the first 100 days of the next administration all the more crucial. There are currently a round of negotiations happening in Poland. While the some EU officials are being obstructionist, leaving those most-impacted (and most-underrepresented) countries as the front-runners on calling for action, lining themselves up with huge parts of the world’s population.

Check out other reports from Poznan here. Most of them are from the awesome youth climate delegation, that is taking on obstructionist politicians head on in the fight to make 2009 the year of action.

Pigs Can Fly and "Clean Coal" Sings!

clean coal carolers

Wow! I don’t know what’s more disgusting, the lies of the clean coal industry or the the messengers they have chosen: anthropomorphic lumps of singing coal. I joke not! You can see the “Clean Coal Carolers” here in their jolly polluting glory. Really, I’m torn about what to make of these jovial Christmas turds. On one hand it is the funniest thing ever! Holy crap just listen to them! I couldn’t have created a more perfect mockery of the “clean coal” myth if I tried. Coal will be clean when pigs can fly…..or when coal starts singning. I only hope that when these coal types see the spikes in traffic to their site that they can trace most of the attention to the mockery of climate activists in the blogosphere.

But on the other hand I feel a deep sickness in my stomach to know that it’s creators truly believe that the American public is stupid enough to be won over by some festive fossils. No amount of smiling googly-eyed lumps of coal can hide the tragic devastation that coal has wrecked on our communities and our children. Unconscionable. We must continue to do everything within our power to fight this foolishness.

In the meantime, “clean coal” thanks for the laugh.