Senate Climate Bill Revealed: A Quick Guide

Senate Climate Bill Revealed: A Quick Guide:

The Senate climate bill, called the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, just made its debut today. There are still pieces deliberately left out of the bill that will be subject to Senate debate, and of course, time will need to be taken to properly analyze the 800-page bill (hey, at least it's shorter than Waxman-Markey's 1300-pager). But here's a first look--a rundown of its pros and cons...

One major difference in the Senate bill is it includes incentives for more nuclear power--a measure included perhaps to draw more Republicans, who've long said they want to see more nuclear power included, to the bargaining table.

Carbon offsets, one of the more dubious components of the climate bill, are now more affordable and easier to purchase, in what appears to be a concession to conservatives and heavy industry groups. There's also more faith and funding put into carbon sequestration, a technology that's still years away, but acts as a sign of good faith to the powerful coal industry.

But all the differences aren't negative--in fact, many seem to be drastic improvements:

The Senate bill leaves the EPA in the game--where the Waxman-Markey bill would remove the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases as a harmful pollutant, it's intact in Kerry-Boxer.

It also introduces a price collar on carbon, which has some climate policy experts thrilled. That basically means there's a limit to how cheap or how expensive carbon permits can be priced, which stabilizes costs and is good for industry. It also prevents the price from falling too low.

Sure some improvements but appeasing nuclear and coal industries?

What's the downside?

Kerry on Climate: "Suppose Al Gore Is Wrong":

'Suppose they're all wrong.' Sen. John Kerry, a co-sponsor of the climate bill that will hit the Senate this week, was talking about Al Gore, Jim Hanson, and other climate change worriers at a discussion last Monday, 'and we get going at [addressing carbon emissions]?' His response was almost Friedman-esque (see yesterday's column) -- but thankfully without the PR sloganeering:

What's the worst that will happen? We'll be in the ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

So the downside of going green - wait....wait....is there one?

Just too inconvenient

Cassandras of Climate by Paul Krugman

Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet. If you’ve been following climate science, you know what I mean: the sense that we’re hurtling toward catastrophe but nobody wants to hear about it or do anything to avert it.

And here’s the thing: I’m not engaging in hyperbole. These days, dire warnings aren’t the delusional raving of cranks. They’re what come out of the most widely respected climate models, devised by the leading researchers. The prognosis for the planet has gotten much, much worse in just the last few years.

What’s driving this new pessimism? Partly it’s the fact that some predicted changes, like a decline in Arctic Sea ice, are happening much faster than expected. Partly it’s growing evidence that feedback loops amplifying the effects of man-made greenhouse gas emissions are stronger than previously realized. For example, it has long been understood that global warming will cause the tundra to thaw, releasing carbon dioxide, which will cause even more warming, but new research shows far more carbon locked in the permafrost than previously thought, which means a much bigger feedback effect.

The result of all this is that climate scientists have, en masse, become Cassandras — gifted with the ability to prophesy future disasters, but cursed with the inability to get anyone to believe them.

n a rational world, then, the looming climate disaster would be our dominant political and policy concern. But it manifestly isn’t. Why not?

Part of the answer is that it’s hard to keep peoples’ attention focused. Weather fluctuates — New Yorkers may recall the heat wave that pushed the thermometer above 90 in April — and even at a global level, this is enough to cause substantial year-to-year wobbles in average temperature. As a result, any year with record heat is normally followed by a number of cooler years: According to Britain’s Met Office, 1998 was the hottest year so far, although NASA — which arguably has better data — says it was 2005. And it’s all too easy to reach the false conclusion that the danger is past.

But the larger reason we’re ignoring climate change is that Al Gore was right: This truth is just too inconvenient. Responding to climate change with the vigor that the threat deserves would not, contrary to legend, be devastating for the economy as a whole. But it would shuffle the economic deck, hurting some powerful vested interests even as it created new economic opportunities. And the industries of the past have armies of lobbyists in place right now; the industries of the future don’t.

Nor is it just a matter of vested interests. It’s also a matter of vested ideas. For three decades the dominant political ideology in America has extolled private enterprise and denigrated government, but climate change is a problem that can only be addressed through government action. And rather than concede the limits of their philosophy, many on the right have chosen to deny that the problem exists.

So here we are, with the greatest challenge facing mankind on the back burner, at best, as a policy issue. I’m not, by the way, saying that the Obama administration was wrong to push health care first. It was necessary to show voters a tangible achievement before next November. But climate change legislation had better be next.

And as I pointed out in my last column, we can afford to do this. Even as climate modelers have been reaching consensus on the view that the threat is worse than we realized, economic modelers have been reaching consensus on the view that the costs of emission control are lower than many feared.

So the time for action is now. O.K., strictly speaking it’s long past. But better late than never.

Too inconvenient. Changing the status quo. Leaving our comfort zone. A little work. Small prices to pay for a future.

Year of the Flood Tour

This Ain't Your Usual Book Launch

At every stop of the Year of the Flood tour, admission and fundraising goes to local green charities; tonight is to Nature Canada. In the States, it will go to Farm Forward, the American Bird Conservancy, Oceana and WildEarth Guardians.

Of course, this is the woman who complained about the carbon footprint of book tours, and famously invented the Long Pen so she wouldn't have to do this any more. But this is so much more than a book launch, and she works hard to make it as green as possible (besides supporting so many good charities):

• Book tours take energy, and not just that of the author. Airplanes, trains, taxis; hotels, meals, the powering of lights and heat for events and appearances - all consume.
• In an effort to keep this tour as green as possible, all those involved have agreed to make the following choices wherever possible.

• To make the events as local as possible, by using not only local talent but also local food, organic if available.
• The author is taking the VegiVows for the duration of the trip, with the exception of non-avian and non-mammalian bioforms once a week. Like the Gardeners, however, she will permit eggs, viewed as a sort of nut.
• To carbon-neutralize the travel, with the help of the calculations of ZeroFootprint ; to go by train when possible.
• To choose hotels and other sleeping places that have environmental policies, whenever available.
• To choose paper that is Ancient Forest Friendly and approved by the Forest Stewardship Council, with the help of Canopy
• To choose CD covers that are environmentally friendly, and organic cotton only for the items in our Café Press store
• To request the event venues to serve only shade-grown, organic, fair trade coffee, which is bird-friendly - unlike sun-grown and pesticide-sprayed, a huge destroyer of songbirds.

Keeping my fingers crossed that the tour hits in my area. Would love to be a part of it.

Corporate Doublespeak

Sugar Laden and Highly Processed Foods To Be Sold As “Smart Food Choices”:

General Mills and Kellogg’s want to sell sugary processed foods like Froot Loops and Lucky Charms to your kids.  This isn’t anything new.  But under the guise of the new “Smart Choices” Program, large food corporations want to proudly label sugary, highly processed foods as good nutritional food options.

The program was recently created by a conglomerate of conglomerates, including ConAgra Foods, Kellogg’s, Kraft Foods, Pepsico, Tyson Foods, and Unilever.  The participating companies list all their products that “meet a comprehensive set of nutrition criteria based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and other sources of nutrition science and authoritative dietary guidance”.  You can review the Smart Choices website for yourself.

Read more of this story »

Sugar is good - repeat after me - sugar is good. Sugary and multi-collared cereal with cartoon character mascots are good. Your Real basic food is so old-fashioned. Processed foods are the "in" foods.

Pancake patch next year?

Farmer Gene Logsdon Explains How to Make Your Own Home-Grown 'Pancake Patch':

More and more people are growing their own veggies, but what about grains?

Growing grains? According to Logsdon - if you know how to garden you know how to grow grains.

Still using Stone Age Incandescents

The L Prize: A New Look at an Old Bulb:

Image via: the8rgrl at Flickr.com

These days with CFLs (compact fluorescent lightbulbs), and LEDs (light emitting diodes) and everything else, it seems hard (or maybe just taboo) to remember a time when we used something as inefficient as the standard 60-watt incandescent lightbulb. Yet, they still make up 50% of the market share and the US Energy Department wants companies to take a new look at this old standard. For whomever can come up with a highly-efficient yet comparable alternative they win $10 million, and that's just the tip of th...read on

I am just amazed that incandescent bulbs still make up 50% of the market share. Maybe not amazed - shocked. Unless you had purchased a 10 year supply and continuing to replace your bulbs with those old incandescents, why you are continuing to but them is totally insane. With the new CFLes out there, you can't blame it on the use of dimmers, lamp shades....

Toilet paper wars

Plush Toilet Paper: Soft on Your Butt, Hard on the Environment

A recent Washington Post article tackles the tender issue of toilet paper softness. The article reported the market is glutted with super-plush toilet paper; they cited Quilted Northern Ultra Plush as emblematic of the trend toward super-softening toilet paper. But there is one big problem: the softer the toilet paper, the more likely it is made from old growth and virgin trees. But as Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the NRDC said, "We don't need old-growth forests . . . to wipe our behinds."

Old growth and virgin wood fibers are longer than recycled ones, and the longer fibers, when processed, make for an overall smoother, suppler surface. While TreeHugger has reported on blind tests that find recycled and virgin toilet paper indistinguishable, I don't find it hard to believe that the latter is softer (the Post and Consumer Reports seems to bear this out). The more important point is the use of old growth forests for something as ephemeral (and possibly inessential) as toilet paper. Toilet paper comprises 5% of US forest products, but there's little reason why it shouldn't be less. And there's little reason why the toilet paper that is used shouldn't be primarily made of post-consumer materials. In fact, according to the market analysis firm RISI Inc. about 75% of "away from home"/no-choice toilet paper is recycled. So people can and will used recycled TP when the choice is removed. Yet a mere 5% of "at home" TP sales are 100% recycled.

Many ways to take care of your bottom. The article above has some useful links. Also consider:Seventh Generation and Marcal .

After the Flood

Disease And Dystopia In Atwood's 'Flood'

In The Year of the Flood Atwood imagines a country run by a corporate elite and policed by a corporate security force (CorpsSeCorps) trained in "Internal Rendition." Genetic engineers have invented hybrid creatures, like the liobam, a lion-lamb mix, and recreational meds such as BlyssPluss, a sex drug that promises multiple orgasms with no medical risk. These scientists are working toward the ultimate goal — immortality. Meanwhile, the balance between the human and natural worlds has gone awry, with "great dead zones" in major bodies of water and many animals passing into extinction.

Atwood is close enough to recent headlines and sophisticated scientific research to make her invented universe believable. And, she reminds us, scientists are capable of terrible, Earth-changing errors.

As The Year of the Flood opens, most of the human population has been wiped out by a fast-moving airborne plague. Toby and Ren, two women associated with a nature-embracing group called God's Gardeners, are among the few still alive. The cult's founder, Adam One, has warned of doomsday by Waterless Flood, and set up a series of food storehouses dubbed "Ararats" in anticipation of disaster.

Toby is holed up in a former spa, using her Gardener skills — gardening, foraging, using herbal medicines and, if necessary, a gun — to survive in the wilderness. Ren, a trapeze dancer at a high-end sex club, has stayed alive because she's locked in quarantine while awaiting test results after a client ripped her Biofilm Bodyglove.

As Toby and Ren struggle to find others, and to fend off nightmarish predators, they tell the stories of God's Gardeners, with its Edencliff Rooftop Garden blooming in the midst of urban slums, and the increasingly repressive years leading up to the pandemic they have both survived.

Looking forward to reading this book. "God's Gardeners" sounds like my kind of group. Who wants to start a group today?

Google's Carbon Cycle Maps

An important application:

Google Earth has a new application that shows carbon dioxide in different layers of the earth's atmosphere. Tyler Erickson, a geospatial researcher at the Michigan Tech Research Institute in Ann Arbor, responded to a competition call from Google asking scientists to present research results using KML, a data format used by Google Earth. This is what he came up with - an app that illustrates for us the carbon cycle, a deeper understanding of which can impact everything from mainstream understanding of carbon emissions to environmental policy.

Erickson said, "I tried to think of a complex data set that would have public relevance." NASA reports that it lead him to work with data from NASA-funded researcher Anna Michalak of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Michalak develops complex computer models to trace carbon dioxide back in time to where it enters and leaves the atmosphere. With this information, we now have a great visual way to see and understand the carbon cycle, seeing in color where carbon dioxide is cycled into the earth through plants and water or where it hangs in the higher levels of the atmosphere.

We talk often about how mapping can make people greener thanks to the impact visuals can have on our understanding. This new layer can help scientists explain the carbon cycle to people so that habits and policies can hopefully be influenced for the better.

Making it easier to see impacts, making it easier to explain what needs to be done. Thanks Google.

About time that the Interior Dept thinks about Mother Earth

Interior Dept Sees Need for Global Warming Strategy:

Wild Fire in California Forest in Fall of 2007. Image credit:Assurance Group

We cheered earlier this week when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the first-ever department-wide coordinated strategy to address the impacts of climate change on the public lands, wildlife, coasts, and ecosystems managed by his agency.

It's a fantastic plan and a nice coincidence because it comes right before our major Sunday event: Sierra Club activists from around the country are hosting more than Read the full story on TreeHugger>

Some encouraging signs coming from DC. Maybe there is hope for some change in direction.

Pee in Your Garden

Researchers Say 'Good To Pee On Tomato Plants' - Just Don't Let The Neighbors See:

Clandestine tomato plant fertilizing device: the Bed Pan Guitar. Image credit: Photobucket, by turquoisemoleeater

Now that my tomatoes are done producing for 2009, like all the other gardeners I know, I am planning to do better in 2010. Priority #1 for next year is to order the tomato plants from a small company that does not spread tomato blight to its customers. (Reminder to self: do not buy plants from home and garden stores.) Priority #2 is balance out the added cost for plants with reduced expen...Read the full story on TreeHugger"

Okay neighbors I admit it. I have been marking my territory for a few years now.

But hey, just like a dog, it works. It keeps other gardeners out of my garden.

A great step - The Green House

A LEEDer, greener White House:

The White House isn't so pallid white anymore, in all the very best ways—and none so inspiring to us here at Super Eco as its green initiatives. President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and the first family are very much walking the talk when it comes to taking care of the hearth of the nation in an eco-friendly, sustainable way. Now, the Obamas are taking aim at LEED certification for the White House itself. As the Green Guide reports:

According to government officials familiar with greening efforts,
the Obama White House intends to be the first White House to earn LEED
certification, a system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council
(USGBC) to measure and reward buildings and communities that implement
green building design, construction, operations, and maintenance.

“LEED certification of the White House is absolutely possible and
viable,” said Rick Fedrizzi, CEO and president of USGBC, which has
offered to help advise the White House on the process. However,
Fedrizzi noted, it will not be easy because of the building’s historic
status and the security required to protect the President and his
family.

“A normal building is already a challenging assignment, and this is
something that’s a historic structure, one of [the] nation’s most
historic structures,” he says.

Here's something you may not realize: the Obamas didn't have to start from scratch to paint the White House a deeper shade of green. What the Obamas bring, though, is the interest, energy and fresh new faces it takes to color the White House and its activities a greener shade of sustainable.

• Victory for a White House garden
• The first garden: A fertile source of green ideas
• The first soil: Dirty business at the White House
• New White House chef is a lunch revolutionary
• Group urges first family to eat it (homegrown organic food, that is)

(Photo credit:The White House/Joyce N. Boghosian)

Kudos. Let us hope that it is not simply a PR tactic but one that can teach and set an example for all to follow. Simple steps to elaborate steps - bring them all to the public's attention.

SurvivaBall

In a strange way I wish this was real.