This was a bang up week of action and recognition for students across Maryland.
Tomorrow is not an option
My Op-Ed below, which previews the Copenhagen climate talks, first ran in the Baltimore Sun and on Grist. As many of you know, I will be attending the climate talks next month from December 13-18 on behalf of CCAN and Earthbeat Radio. I will personally be there to record the voices of passionate, inspiring leaders and to add my own voice to the global chorus demanding faster, better results from our world leaders. Starting December 13th, check out the daily video and audio feeds I’ll be posting to this blog.
Climate change reset needed
Let the EPA crack down on carbon emissions, and switch from ‘cap and trade’ to ‘cap and rebate’By Mike Tidwell
Baltimore Sun
November 27, 2009Tomorrow is not an option.
Those ought to be the words coming from the White House right now on global warming. Never again can we tolerate a year like 2009, when attempts to cap carbon pollution go nowhere. Already this month, President Barack Obama has confirmed two painful truths. First: Congress will not complete work on a global warming bill in 2009. And second, the corollary blow: There will be no international climate deal in Denmark next month, dashing years of international hopes.
So Mr. Obama should move quickly from explaining failure to achieving real success. He should travel to the Copenhagen climate conference in December and guarantee drastic action from the U.S. in 2010, even if it means blowing everything up in Congress and starting over. If a “cap and trade” bill won’t fly in the Senate in 2010, then let the Environmental Protection Agency explore maximum-strength carbon regulations while, legislatively, we switch back to Mr. Obama’s original presidential campaign plan: “cap and rebate.”
Apologists, of course, are rushing to defend the president, explaining away the now-official climate failures of 2009. There was never enough time, they say, to fix in a few months all the global warming harm George W. Bush created in eight long years.
Maybe so. But we can’t blame Mr. Bush forever. What’s the plan for 2010? The only strategy the Democrats seem to have is borrowed from 2009: Get the Senate to finally pass the cap and trade bill. That would be the 1,400-page bill narrowly approved by the House in June and loaded with subsidies for “clean coal” and likely big profits for Wall Street traders. It’s been stagnating in the Senate for most of the autumn.
Centrist Democrat Jim Webb of Virginia – a vitally important vote – all but condemned the cap and trade bill last week in a news conference. What if the bill simply never passes? What will Mr. Obama take to the international treaty talks in Germany in June 2010 or in Mexico next December? Continue reading
Copenhagen and Climate: Going all-in
I have a column out today in the UMD newspaper The Diamondback about the upcoming Copenhagen negotiations, along with a call for the US to do more. It’s difficult to write about Copenhagen in only 550 words given the complexities, along with the reality that the readers don’t know a lot about the issue. A few of the takeaway points I wanted to hit on were
1. The planet is warming.
2. China is not an excuse for inaction.
3. We need to do more than we’re doing, and show leadership. Continue reading
The Story of Cap and Trade
Posted using ShareThis
Climate & Consumption
November 30th, 2009, cross posted from story of stuff blog
If you’re like me, an increasing amount of your worries these days focus on the rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and the resulting potential for devastating climate chaos.
Years ago, when I first heard about climate change, I figured someone else would work all that out while I kept plodding away with my work on consumption, pollution and waste. Well, guess what? They didn’t work it out; in fact, the climate situation is far worse today than even recent scientific predictions. And guess what else? It turns out that climate and consumption are actually the same issue.
You see, most of the greenhouse gases countries emit come from our materials economy: the way we make, use, transport, and throw away all the stuff in our lives. As Boston College professor (and one of my favorite authors) Juliet Schor said “Global consumerism devours resources like there’s no tomorrow. And unless we address how much we consume, we won’t succeed in averting disastrous climate change.”
A majority of scientists now say we need to significantly reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere if we want the planet to resemble something close to what it is like today, supporting the kind of life that it does today. To do this, we simply have to use less Stuff
Stopping Coal-Powered Transmission Lines
This is my second post on the need for the Maryland Public Service Commission to reject transmission lines that would take coal burned in West Virginia, and transfer it into my state of Maryland as a source of power. You can find part 1 here. Today I have a column out in the Diamondback making the case against MAPP and PATH, and for offshore wind power. I also want to be sure to plug the rally against the power lines on December 1st at 1pm in Baltimore. You can find out additional information about the MAPP and PATH issue on the Maryland Sierra Club’s website.
MAPP and PATH: Time to draw the line
By Matt Dernoga
I have a minor suggestion for the utility companies. If you’re going to try to portray your attempts to build gigantic interstate transmission lines as a way to transfer renewable energy, don’t connect them to coal plants. Continue reading
UMD for Clean Energy Makes Waves on City Council
UMD for Clean Energy, student group I’m Campaign Director of, has another article out about us in The Diamondback about our efforts during the College Park City Council elections, which culminated in a march to the polls, and got some pretty positive reaction. This new article also chronicles our presentation at a city council work session, where we put forth a proposal about tax breaks for green businesses.
UMD for Clean Energy makes waves on city council
By Brady Holt
Many of College Park’s longtime residents paint the university’s student body as a group that doesn’t care about the city.
But those residents may be surprised at where their city council is getting some innovative environmental policy ideas: the UMD for Clean Energy student group. Continue reading
Coal's Dirty Little Secret: Toxic Coal Ash in Prince George's County.
Today, coal’s dirty little secret is revealed in a pretty rural portion of Prince George’s County, Maryland.
Picture(s) of the Week
This week, two pictures made it into most inspiring picture of the week category, although I can only show you one on this blog. The first is from Avaaz Climate Action Factory, which pulls together some of the most creative and timely actions in my opinion.
Tuesday evening, while President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, dozens of activists with Avaaz.org released a hundred Chinese flying lanterns and a floating balloon banner just south of the White House.
According to Morgan at Avaaz’s Climate Action Factory in DC:
Chinese flying lanterns are a symbol of hope traditionally released to celebrate the new year. The Avaaz action highlighted China’s proactive domestic climate commitments as a source of inspiration for the UN climate summit in Copenhagen this December.
The other picture I can’t find online unfortunately. But if you check out B2 of today’s Washington Post, you’ll see a picture of Matt Means and Ed Bush busy installing what will be the largest solar-energy system in the Washington area at Catholic University. More than 1,000 panels will be installed on four buildings this fall.
Save Ice Hockey. Enough with the Nukes, eh!
Last week I had a blast at a Washington Capitol’s ice hockey game in DC. I was just enjoying a nice break from a busy week of climate activism when I see something on the wall behind the goalie-box that almost ruined my night. A billboard advertisement for nuclear energy that read: “Nuclear: The Clean Air Energy” solution. Come on! You would think a sport like ice hockey that will literally not exist if we allow global warming to accelerate wouldn’t be so quick to take money from a false solution like the nuclear industry. *Sigh*
Then on Monday Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Sen. Webb (D-VA) released a new bill that would be a huge give-away of $20 billion taxpayer dollars to the nuclear industry. It’s no surprise that this money will come from the government because Wall Street won’t touch nuclear power with a ten foot pole. Plain and simple: it’s a BAD INVESTMENT. Conservatives are irked about the expansion of federal government spending and yet their brilliant solution to the energy crisis? Sink billions into the expensive, unsafe nuclear power. (Read more at CCAN member, Matt Dernoga’s excellent Letter to Editor).
Every new nuclear power plant built would be a step backwards when it comes to solving global warming. Investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency is a safer, faster and less expensive alternative to nuclear energy. Tapping into Maryland’s abundant renewable energy sources would create far more jobs for far less money than investing in unsafe nuclear energy. That’s why yesterday I was pleased to join our friends at Environment Maryland to release a new report: “Generating Failure: How Building Nuclear Power Plants Would Set America Back in the Race Against Global Warming”. You can read the full report here.
Here an excerpt about the press conference that was printed in the Annapolis Capitol:
“Maryland has charted a course to put us on the stage of national leadership” when it comes to combating climate change, said Ethan Nuss, Maryland campaign coordinator with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. And with good reason. Maryland is incredibly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, Nuss said. Sea level rise would affect the state’s natural resources and fishing and tourism economy. “We owe it to our children and grandchildren to act in the most decisive manner to solve the climate crisis,” said Nuss. “Nuclear power is not that solution.”
At the end of the day there is a litany of reasons to oppose nuclear power. But the thing that I can’t get over is the wasteful complexity of the entire nuclear fuel cycle. From when uranium is mined on Native American lands, then refined-processesed, put through a complicated atom-splitting reactor, to heat water, to generate steam, which turns a turbine
Nuclear energy: Don't believe the sticker price
I have an op-ed column out today that attacks the threat of a nuclear power plant in Maryland by looking at recent fruitless attempts to build plants, and the cost born by ratepayers.
Nuclear energy: Don’t believe the sticker price
By Matt Dernoga
A common perception of nuclear power is that it’s an affordable, carbon-free energy source that could meet a lot of America’s demand for electricity, if only those darn environmentalists would get out of the way. Unfortunately for nuclear power advocates and Maryland ratepayers, this statement crumbles upon contact with reality. Continue reading