Hands in the Middle for Maryland

by Ethan Nuss

Oh yea, Power Vote‘n in MD, baby! This past weekend members of the Maryland Student Climate Coalition (MSCC) gathered to launch Power Vote in style, and set a stellar state goal of 40,000 total pledges! (Two Maryland High School students gathered 400 pledges in the 5 days after returning from the Mega Camp training in MN. Booyah!) The MSCC is also planning multiple coordinated Green Jobs Day of Action events across the state and looking to garnish some high profile media like the Washington Post. But wait it doesn’t stop there…. the MD students heard that the Governor and several of their US congresspeople will be doing a campus speaking tour the first week of September. Expect to see Maryland students there in Power Vote T-shirts, green hard hats, and waving signs, because I smell some sweet bird-dogging.

But before we get ahead of ourselves with the excitement of the Sunday gathering (see silly video). Let’s rewind to Friday when they got their first campaign victory. Maryland students and community members went to an in district meeting with Rep. Elijah Cummings. What was the result of that meeting, you ask? They got Rep. Cummings to become the second member of congress to sign onto the 1Sky platform and commit to Green Jobs, Science based carbon reductions, and a moratorium on new coal plants. Yay! Look out Maryland elected officials because the MSCC is here to Kick this country into action!

CCAN's Hiring Interns! Clean Energy Internships

Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) is accepting applications for Clean Energy fall internships.

The Chesapeake Climate Action Network is the first grassroots, nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to fighting global warming in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Our mission is to educate and mobilize citizens of this region in a way that fosters a rapid societal switch to clean energy and energy-efficient products, thus joining similar efforts worldwide to slow and perhaps halt the dangerous trend of global warming.

We are in need of 3-4 qualified and dedicated individuals to work with us in several different capacities. We are looking for interns to support our:

  • Communications/media support for our clean energy and global warming campaigns/trainings.
  • Campus Climate Challenge campaign and other campus activities
  • Federal and state policy campaigns in Virginia and Maryland, with focus on grassroots activism
  • Web Development/Online campaigns

In your cover letter, please indicate whether you would be most interested in working on the national, campus or state campaigns.

The position requires a commitment of at least 15 hours/week during Fall ’08 (September – December). Location of the internship is flexible. Dependent focus

Want to See Climate Change? Look Out Your Front Door. It's here.

Has anyone noticed that our local weather in the D.C. region has turned truly screwy? We go from one bizarre weather condition to the next with almost no pause in between for “normal” conditions. It’s too wet, too dry, too cold, too warm, too windy – nearly all the time. Hmmm? And scientists and average people all over the world, from Japan to Argentina, report similar strangeness. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times recently wrote from Kenya that the Serengeti’s April rains, so critical to that famous ecosystem, haven’t shown up this spring. And they didn’t come last year. There’s just no normal weather anymore. Anywhere.

In the D.C. region nothing illustrates this better than the annual Martin Luther King parade. Last year, tired of the cold and grayness of January, the organizers decided to move the annual parade to early April. The result? This year on January 16th (the official King holiday) it was 70 degrees in D.C. Remember all that freakish winter warmth? Outdoor barbeques broke out all over the city on backyard decks still festooned with Christmas decorations. And on Saturday, April 7th, the date of the “warmer” and more hospitable MLK parade? There was actually snow on the ground. The parade majorettes and tuba players woke up to 34 degrees and a blanket of snow on the ground, the most April snow in DC since 1924.

And yes, I know: There’s always been weird weather that occasionally defies the seasonal norms, sometimes dramatically. It’s part of the natural unpredictability of weather. And if you listen to the dismissive climate rants of the Rush Limbaugh crowd, you’ll yield to that inner voice that wants to reassuringly say: Don’t worry. It’s all normal. Everything’s okay. Continue reading

An Analysis of "Barack Obama: New Energy for America"

On August 4th the Obama campaign released a comprehensive program for reform of the U.S. energy system. This article is a critical analysis of that program.

Following an introduction, there are seven separate sections.

The Introduction

Obama frames his program as primarily a response to “our dependence on oil.” He calls this dependence “a threat to our national security, our planet and our economy.”

Comment: It is striking that in this introduction, and nowhere else in the 8-page, single-spaced document, does Obama identify our fossil fuel addiction, or the carbon pollution from the burning of oil, coal and natural gas, as the, or even a, problem.

He does say in the concluding paragraph of the introduction that “the nation (needs) to face one of the great challenges of our time: confronting our dependence on foreign oil, addressing the moral, economic and environmental challenge of global climate change, and building a clean energy future that benefits all Americans.”

He lists in a prominent box six things his program will do:

  1. Provide short-term relief to American families facing pain at the pump

  2. Help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future

  3. Within 10 years save more oil than we currently import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined

  4. Put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars Continue reading

Governor Kaine Announces Air Board Appointments

State Air Pollution Control Board


Randolph Gordon M.D. of Mechanicsville, specialist leader at Deloitte Consulting. Gordon holds a master’s degree in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University, a medical degree from the Medical College of Virginia, and fulfills the statutory recommendation that the Air Pollution Control Board have public health representation. He served as the State Health Commissioner from 1995-1998 and is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Rice Center for Environmental Life Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University, an environmental center focused on education and policy development regarding rivers.

Bernadette W. Reese of Chesapeake, senior environmental engineer and facilities manager at BASF Corporation. As senior environmental engineer, Reese has developed compliance strategies to meet federal, state and local air, water, solid and hazardous waste regulations. Reese holds a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Virginia.

Sterling E. Rives III of the City of Richmond, county attorney for Hanover County. Rives has served as Hanover’s county attorney since 1987. He is a graduate of the T.C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond. He served from 1999-2008 on the board of directors for Campaign Virginia, an environmental advocacy group focused on environmentally sound waste management policies.

Rising sea level floats all boats!

Love the Chesapeake Bay? Great! Because there will be more of it! Nearly 200 square miles on the Maryland coast alone!

A 3-foot increase in the Chesapeake water level later this century will be a boon to the oystering industry, says a new report on climate change commissioned by Maryland governor Martin O’Malley.

The report was also good news for those who will be retiring near the end of this century. There won’t be a need to relocate to Tampa for retirement, far away from grand kids and bridge buddies; Maryland’s climate should mirror that of the popular retirement destination by 2100, according to the report.

With a temperature bump of up to 9 degrees, summer-long heat waves and a projected 24 days over the 100 degree mark, happy days are on the way for ice cream truck drivers.

But as usual, some nay-sayers couldn’t help but look at the report from a bleak angle. Asked about her opinion of the report, Madeline Sampson, a local systems analyst responded, “Um, half of Annapolis is going to be underwater.”

Glass-half-empty types aside, Maryland stands to benefit immensely from the human-induced alterations to the subtly balanced equilibrium of Maryland’s natural climate and coastline.

Sales of sand, sand bags, shovels and flood insurance are expected to rise steadily over the coming years, good news in these times of economic uncertainty.

Asked for his opinion of the report, local houseboat retailer Joel Hardiman replied, “This is really great news. All those folks who get flooded out are going to want houseboats. And I’m their man.”

Marine sports enthusiasts rejoiced as well. “I live most of my life on the water, so this will make my drive to the coast shorter,” remarked Sam Masterson, a Bowie resident.

The full report is due to be released in coming weeks. While local lawmakers in the pocket of Big Dry Land may react with measures aimed at slowing the progress of the expanding Chesapeake, national legislators are thankfully expected to supersede any such measures by maintaining the status quo. Continue reading

Maryland Students Hot on the Hill

Many of us in the climate movement feel that we have the answers to the climate crisis. And why shouldn’t we? We have been doing brilliant work modeling solutions in our daily lives, on our campuses, and in our communities across the country. We know we need this localized action but also know that if we are to avoid the most devastating effects of climate chaos we need bold federal legislation to drastically bring down the dangerous levels of carbon in our atmosphere.

The real question then becomes: How many of us know exactly where our congressional elected officials stand on the issue? Do we trust them to make the right decision and vote correctly when the time comes? I know that after a decade of inaction on climate change I’m not making any assumptions. They need to hear our voices loud and clear in one unified and powerful demand for clean energy! Enter Power Vote.

To get the bold solutions we need we must engage in a new dialogue with our elected officials. For too long the conversation in congress has been dominated by the stench of the fossil fuel industry’s dirty money. It’s time to reclaim our democracy! This summer students from the Maryland Student Climate Coalition (MSCC) have begun to do just that.

Maryland students have had three constituent lobby meetings with their congressional elected officials on Capitol Hill to push for the bright vision outlined in the Power Vote platform.

The first meeting was about a month ago when several student representatives of the MSCC met with a member of US Representative Steny Hoyer’s,(D-MD) staff. Rep. Hoyer will be key player in our bid for federal climate legislation because of his influential position as House Majority leader. The main message coming out of that meeting was that Rep. Hoyer is supportive of science-based carbon reductions but isn’t hearing enough of a demand to act from his constituents. His staffer also mentioned that the other US House members’ staffs are behind on their understanding of climate legislation and what the citizenry wants them to do with the cap and trade revenue. It is clear to me that the bold demands of young people will be critical to getting us there. Continue reading

Kaine's coal plant is big controversy in Virginia

Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia is a big supporter of new coal combustion and offshore drilling. And he has done next to nothing for clean energy and efficiency. In fact, Kaine’s administration gave the final green light in June 2008 for the construction of a 585 megawatt coal plant in Wise County, Virginia that has no carbon capture capability whatsoever. Despite overwhelming opposition from all across the state, with concerned students and faith leaders and environmentalists turning out everywhere Kaine goes, the Gov. gave the thumbs up and