Forget Humpty-Dumpty, Move Forward with CLEAR Bill

Rabbi Arthur Waskow and the Shalom Center recently announced their support of the CLEAR Act. Here’s a piece he recently wrote about the legislation:

Even if Senators Kerry and Lieberman can put Humpty-Dumpty back together again after losing Senator Graham’s support for what used to be the KGL (Kugel) bill for climate control, far better is the CLEAR bill introduced by Senators Maria Cantwell (Democrat) of Washington State and Susan Collins (Republican) of Maine. It is often named “cap and dividend” because it prevents any Wall Street trades in carbon credits, and returns 75% of the money gathered from auctioning rights to emit CO2 to the American people: dividends of about $1,000 a year to every legal resident of the US. The other 25% will go to research on renewable energy sources.

It is now the only climate bill with bipartisan support, and could attract grassroots support because it gives most of the money to the people, not big corporations or the government.

Those dividends to the people will offset the cost of higher fuel prices for the poor and the middle class, and will build a Main Street rather than Wall Street political constituency for CO2 controls. CLEAR

A BIG Victory!

Wow. Today is a great day for the climate movement and our nation as a whole. After months of hearing rumors about the possible dreadful components of the Senate climate bill and President Obama’s announcement to open our coasts for offshore drilling, with Virginia at the top of that list, we finally have a victory to celebrate. This afternoon, Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar announced his agency’s approval of the Cape Wind project. This project, nine years in the making, will meet 75% of the area’s electricity needs with clean, renewable energy. Finally, the US is moving toward a clean energy future.

This announcement is incredibly personal for me because I spent almost 4 years trying to make this project a reality. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to see it through to the end but the victory is just as sweet from a distance. Now I am using my experience and knowledge to push offshore wind for Virginia, which hopefully won’t take another decade to come to fruition. Just yesterday I was appointed to DEQs offshore wind Regulator Advisory Panel to flesh out the permitting and siting guidelines for projects off our coasts. This is going to be a daunting task but I look forward to the adventure.

And on a side note, the DMME opened up the appliance rebate program for Virginia residents today so if you are thinking of buying a new energy star appliance check their website first! Hurry up though because these funds will run out quickly!

40 Day Earth Day Video Contest

Friends at Solar Energy World forwarded me this press release, which I wanted to pass along. Seems like a great opportunity to win a pretty significant prize for your favorite nonprofit.

40 Day Earth Day Video Contest Extends Earth Day Celebrations, Encourages Children, Teens to Promote Environmental Awareness
Two $2,500 Prize Donations for Best Videos to Be Awarded

Jessup, Md. (April 22, 2010)

Mother Earth Day in Cochabamba

With the poor people of the earth
I want to share my fate
The brook of the mountains
Gives me more pleasure than the sea

-the last verse of the song, “Guantanamera,” by Jose Marti

Riding in a taxi yesterday early in the morning of the last day of the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, my driver told me, as we passed the big stadium in Cochabamba where the concluding event was being held later that afternoon, that the stadium held 30,000 people. If he was right, then there were 30,000 people celebrating the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, Mother Earth Day, in Cochabamba yesterday.

I’d be surprised if there was a bigger Earth Day event anywhere in the world. And it sure would be a nice surprise to find out that this likely reality was reported in the mainstream news sources of the USA. After all, just like the 117 nations at Copenhagen that supported 350 parts per million as the objective that the world needs to get to as far as carbon in the atmosphere, those 30,000 people, and the many like them around the world, just don

Bag tax: Local action, global import

The Washington Post

By Mike Tidwell

On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, what environmental legislation should we celebrate most? What bill has really stood tall for our fragile planet? The Endangered Species Act of 1973? The Clean Air Act of 1990? Or … the District of Columbia’s plastic bag tax of 2010?

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The Bolivian Government: "Mother Earth or barbarism"

I missed President Evo Morales’ speech on Tuesday at the official opening of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. Asking several friends who were there how it was, they all were surprised by its relative mildness, for Morales. The main things he called upon people to do, my friends said, were to use clay dishes, stop drinking coca-cola and stop eating industrial agriculture-raised chickens.

Perhaps President Morales was holding his powder to allow his Vice President, Alvaro Garcia Linera, to give the rousing speech. This is what he did that afternoon at a major plenary session on the Univalle Campus in Tiquipaya. It was a comprehensive overview of what is happening because of climate change (dried up rivers, melting glaciers, desertification, forest destruction and more) and the cause of it (the economic system of capitalism which turns people and nature into commodities for private gain no matter who and what gets hurt). “Capitalism is ready to destroy nature,” he said.

Linara made clear his government’s belief that we are at the beginning of a certain worldwide catastrophe if humanity does not get serious right now. He used the figures of 260 million people who have been affected already by climate change and 200 million who have emigrated because of it.

Linara went on to put forward a very different solution than many in the United States, including many environmentalists, believe is the solution. For Linara, it’s not new technology that is going to save the world. What will save it, he said, is when “we take the Bolivian Indigenous, the Bolivian peasant model and make it universal. We need a new civilization that’s not about consumerism but about meeting basic needs. Humans must recognize that Mother Earth has rights and we have obligations to respect them. Our new model must be consensus-based, dialogical and rooted in personal relationships with nature. We need new forms of production, and we need new ethics.”

He referenced Rosa Luxemburg, a socialist leader from over 100 years ago, when he called, not for “socialism or barbarism,” her call, but for “Mother Earth or barbarism,” and he put forward five things that we must do:
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Video: Artists for the Climate compilation

CCAN’s 4th annual “Artists for the Climate” event last Thursday, April 15th was a smashing success. Jeff Biggers, Mike Tidwell and Bill McKibben all gave rousing speeches and were joined by the extremely talented bluegrass performer, Lissy Rosemont.

View a short compilation video from the event below. You can also watch the entire program on google video.

Video by Lauren Glickman

Day Two of the Cochabamba Conference

The daily culture of the World Conference on climate change in Cochabamba, Bolivia is an experience that many present will never forget.The work of the conference is taking place in three ways:

  1. via 17 working groups putting together proposals as to what should go into an overall document coming out of the conference;
  2. a series of large plenary sessions with panels of speakers addressing a range of subjects related to the overall theme of the conference; and
  3. dozens of self-organized events by organizations which are here on a wide range of subjects, also related to the overall theme.

But as significant as this work, this addressing of issues and planning for the future, is the amazing daily culture of the World Conference, as it has unfolded like a beautiful flower over the last two days.

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Walking on Two Legs

At the end of my third day in Cochabamba and after the first day of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, it has become very clear that “walking on two legs” is very much what is taking place and will be taking place.

This is the case as people have been walking from venue to venue in the part of Cochabamba where this historic conference of many thousands is taking place. I must have walked at least 3-4 miles today, but it was a joy to be doing so, exploring this town and seeing all my companeros and companeras doing the same thing, all of us, seemingly, in high spirits, glad to be here standing up for Mother Earth and all its life forms.

I was reminded today of the experience I had at the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta, Georgia in 2007: many thousands of people, a hot climate, a large majority of people of color (in this case, primarily Latino and Indigenous peoples of Bolivia and other South American countries), a palpable feeling of solidarity and interconnection, and realistic hope that this gathering will advance the climate justice movement.

But there’s another way that people who are here will have to be “walking on two feet.” Continue reading