NBC recently reported on the plummeting costs of going solar in MD and DC. Check it the video below and then get started! Our friends at Clean Currents Solar can tell you all you need to know.
Everyone's talking about it…
In 11 days, thousands of people will rally in Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park for a clean, green economy that affirmatively improves the lives of all of humanity.
Now is the time to shine a spotlight on the urgent need for President Obama and Congress to take action on global warming and clean energy jobs
Landmark Op-Ed Means Climate Legislation
Cross-Posted from: here
**These are not necessarily the views of CCAN**
I knew as soon as I read the Op-Ed in the NY Times Sunday co-authored by South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham and John Kerry.
As Energy Smart Now concludes “Let us hope that that “legitimate bipartisan effort” emerges and is reality-based. If it does, again, this might well go down as the most important OPED to appear in an American newspaper in 2009 Continue reading
Sen. Cardin Deserves Our Praise
As I’m sure you’ve heard, Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA) introduced their climate bill last week. The “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act” puts the U.S. on the right path, although it doesn’t go far enough (Read CCAN’s statement here). The bill is an improvement over what the House passed in June and Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, who helped draft the bill, deserves our sincere thanks for his hard work – and encouragement for the tough fight ahead. The release of this bill was covered extensively in the media, which gives you the opportunity to respond quickly and get your letters to the editor printed in your local paper.
Please, take a moment to respond and write a letter to the editor. Here are some talking points:
1. The Boxer-Kerry Clean Energy Bill is Good for Maryland: The Boxer-Kerry Clean Energy bill, released last week, would put the U.S. on the right path toward a new clean energy economy and create millions of jobs nationwide. Recent studies have shown that such a bill would create 35,000 jobs in Maryland alone.
2. Thanks for Protecting the Clean Air Act: The Boxer-Kerry “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act” restores the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate global warming pollution from coal plants. This critical authority was threatened in the House version of the bill and we thank Senator Cardin for his leadership in helping draft a bill that allows the EPA to continue to do its job.
Sales Tax Holiday on Energy Efficient Products (this Fri-Mon)
This weekend marks Virginia’s annual sales tax holiday on energy efficient products — items like Energy Star dishwashers, clothes washers, refrigerators, air conditioners, ceiling fans, compact fluorescent light bulbs, programmable thermostats, or Water Sense rated faucets and toilets. So if you’ve been thinking about making a purchase, this weekend is the time to do it.
New Rebates for Efficiency Products
A number of new rebates for energy efficient products will also be available as part of the stimulus package –rebates on items such as insulation, window replacements, water heaters and more. In Virginia, homeowners will be eligible for rebates for 20% of the costs of eligible products (up to $2,000), and commercial consumers will be eligible for 20% of their costs (up to $4,000). The rebates will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Becoming more energy efficient is a great way to lessen your home’s impact on the environment, save money, and to reduce the need for new power plants or transmission lines in the future.
350 in Times Square
This just in from 350.org‘s Jamie Henn
(drumroll please…)
The 350.org team has just secured permission to display the 350 photos from around the world on the MASSIVE screens in the heart of New York City, with global media standing by to broadcast the story worldwide! That means that your photo can appear 30 feet tall for the world to see. We’ve always said that we want to inject this number deep into the information consciousness of the planet, and Times Square is about as close to the the mainstream as you can get.
The photos from the big day will all have the number 350 depicted in them somehow, and will act as a huge visual petition that we’ll send to world leaders. On the Monday after October 24th, the 350.org crew will be visiting UN headquarters to hand-deliver the photos to diplomats and delegates the world over.
As if you needed another reason to sign up for the blowout event in DC. Join CCAN, the Hip Hop Caucus, DC’s own go-go band “Backyard Band” and thousands of your closest friends. 350.org/dc!
Continue reading
Clean Energy: Betting on the Future
Cross-posted from: here
I have a column out in the Diamondback today about why despite the opposition of the fossil fuel industry, America needs to pass a strong Federal climate bill in order to thrive in the 21st century.
Clean energy: Betting on the future
This past June, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a landmark global warming and clean energy bill called the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Now Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is doing something exciting for a change by introducing the Senate counterpart to the House bill called the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.
Maryland Pumping the Power!
Crosspost from It’s Getting Hot in Here- Caroline Henderson, UMD-College Park
Maryland Power VoteAs a new “Terp”, I’m impressed by the accomplishments University of Maryland has made these past few years for clean energy solutions: playing host for Power Shift 2007, helping pass the carbon neutrality sustainability initiative through the University System of Maryland Board of Regents, collecting thousands of petitions for the Power Vote campaign, and rallying for the Greenhouse Gases Reduction Act (which passed!) in the Maryland legislature.
Thinking back on all the clean energy successes Maryland students have earned, these campaign victories wouldn’t have been as impressive without coordination and resource sharing among Maryland students, enabled by the Maryland Student Climate Coalition. Maryland has been a leader in statewide action and continues to set an awesome example of savvy campus organizing Continue reading
Climate, Kyoto, and Council
Cross-posted from: here
There is a very well written column in the Diamondback by a member of UMD for Clean Energy Jesse Yurow, who is also our Outreach Director. Jesse does a good job of explaining how we can’t only rely on the top down approach to make our society more sustainable, but we need to take charge at the community level. The group Jesse alludes to working with the City Council to develop a energy efficiency loan fund policy, is of course..us.
Guest column: Climate, Kyoto and council
Twelve years ago, world leaders signed the Kyoto Protocol, a global treaty that promised to develop strategies to mitigate the perils of global climate change. Epic fail. Without mechanisms of accountability and without the support of Earth’s largest polluter, the United States, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has skyrocketed to about 380 parts per million and is still rising. NASA climatologist James Hansen suggests that, in order to avoid ecological catastrophe, concentrations of carbon dioxide must be reduced and held steady at 350 parts per million (see www.350.org). People sit with their fingers crossed, awaiting climate change solutions to be handed down at the next global summit on climate change this December in Copenhagen.
Gandhi Today
Gandhi Today
“Somewhere there’s a sweet spot, that produces enough without tipping over into the hyper-individualism that drives our careening, unsatisfying economy. The mix of regulation and values that might make such self-restraint more common is, of course, as hard to create in China as in the United States; far simpler just to bless an every-man-for-himself economy and step aside. But creating those values, and the laws and customs that will slowly evolve from them, may be the key task of our time here and around the world.” Bill McKibben, Deep Economy
140 years today Mohandus Gandhi was born in Gujarat province in India. I didn’t learn this from the New York Times, CNN, or any other mainstream media source. I didn’t learn about it from progressive media outlets, although it is very possible that one or more of them publicized it and I missed it.
I learned about this as a result of being invited to speak yesterday at William Patterson University in northern New Jersey by a professor who organized a program about Gandhi’s relevance for today. Thanks to Balmurli Natrajan, Director of the Gandhian Forum for Peace and Justice, I’ve spent the last few days reflecting on this question.
When I was asked this question directly at yesterday’s forum, what came to mind is this: Gandhi is important, is of continuing relevance, because he wasn’t just a great, if imperfect, leader of India’s successful struggle for independence from colonial Britain. He is important because he understood that it was necessary for him personally, and for his people, to be about the process of personal and cultural change if they were to have a chance of truly lasting, truly revolutionary change, in the best sense of the term.
Gandhi did his best to live a life which reflected the values of justice and love which he understood were central to the teachings of all great spiritual leaders. He went on fasts that were directed not just against the British but for his own people, calling upon them to refuse to mimic English violence and repression in their struggle for independence.
The words of Gandhi that I have used most often over the years are these: “Fasting is the sincerest form of prayer.” I’ve used them as I’ve learned their truth, as I’ve learned about prayer, during long fasts that I’ve undertaken in connection with the campaign to free Leonard Peltier, against the Iraq war and for strong government action to address the climate crisis.
There’s another fast very much in the Gandhian spiritual and political tradition that will be taking place about a month from now, a Climate Justice Fast (http://www.climatejusticefast.org). This is a fast initiated by young people in Australia, Europe and elsewhere specifically directed at the leaders of the world’s governments as they move toward the Dec. 7-18 international meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark to try to come up with a stronger climate treaty than the Kyoto Protocol. As I write, things are not looking good at all that they will do what is needed.
Anna Keenan, youth climate activist and one of the initiators of this fast, wrote yesterday about Gandhi. She began with a quote of his, that “the world has enough for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed.” She went on to “share another great Gandhi quote:
