This week, climate activists from Washington University organized a flash mob at a coal funded “America’s Energy Future” forum. Check out the video of their extremely successful action:
At the forum there was no representation from clean energy industries and most of the panelists came from coal corporations that recently joined the board of the St. Louis Missouri university. This is what the student activists had to say:
Students wish to highlight the close relationship between the university administration and the coal industry. Students have already expressed unease that the University is “too cozy” with coal… The University has dedicated $60 million in financial resources to the creation of a Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization. The name of this consortium has sparked controversy among many students and faculty, who have argued that the industry term “clean coal” has no place in scientific research.
The students also highlighted a new report released by the National Academy of Sciences that calculated the hidden costs of coal consumptions to be over $60 billion dollars per year in health, environmental, and social costs and a report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance demonstrating that Missouri could meet its energy needs entirely through renewable energy.
But it doesn’t end there! Newsweek and the American Petroleum Institute recently partnered to launch their own forums on clean energy, despite API’s continued efforts to undermine climate legislation and deceive the general public. Petroleum companies have much to gain from the ‘clean coal’ insanity due to their expertise in drilling and their extensive pipeline infrastructure. Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn’t as Carbon Capture and Sequestration is an untested technology with no proven record and that is expected to be extremely expensive to implement even if possible.
Newsweek’s journalistic integrity is at stake when they partner with organizations who’s whole purpose is to push disinformation and halt honest conversations about the energy future of the United States. I have crashed a Newsweek energy event already and I was the only young person in the audience. We will be present and numerous at these forums, possibly borrowing some tactics by the young climate activists at Washington University.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu is an energy efficiency geek and that’s why he is loved by anyone that has a rational view on energy policy.
Today he gave us efficiency geeks another reason to gloat by writing a fantastic piece on HuffingtonPost explaining in plain words the importance of home weatherization (or ”saving money by saving energy” as he likes to say) and outlining new federal programs to help average Americans cope with the high upfront cost that comes with reducing residential energy use.
Just like Berkeley’s fantastic solar initiative, the new Department of Energy plan will make low-interest loans available for people investing in efficiency improvements in their homes. The loan will be tied to your property taxes and therefore stay with the house.
The homeowners might pay an extra $400 per year on their property tax bill but save $500 a year on their utility bill. Since the financing would be attached to the property tax bill, both the savings and the loan payments stay with the house if the owners decide to sell.
These are the type of programs that will make sustainability improvements accessible to everyday Americans and that result in saving people money, reducing harmful carbon pollution, cleaning up our air, and creating millions of new jobs.
Unfortunately, all the programs announced by the Secretary of Energy are backed by a token sum that isn’t nearly enough to rapidly and effectively reduce our emissions at the levels they need to be.
Every week, tons of groups come out with great videos about the climate crisis. Some focus on youth activism, some are just plain funny, while others are compelling more than any before. I’ll try to share the best ones with you all in a semi-weekly blog post. Happy viewing!
Fist off, legislators and the media love to say that people don’t support climate legislation even though every poll and common sense show the opposite. Check out the RepowerWall and add your voice to demonstrate the unstoppable avalanche of support for ending the climate crisis:
Can you imagine if every child in the world knew how much older generations are dragging their feet on climate? I can’t, but fortunately Moms Against Climate Change did the thinking for me, check it out:
And finally, exposing corruption. Dunno if you heard, but a bunch of coal industry lobbyists were recently caught red (green?) handed for sending fake letters to congresspeople from groups of color in opposition to the climate bill. As much as most of our reaction would be to punch them in the face, the Avaaz Action Factory one-upped them by wearing astro-turf suits and shaking the culprit’s hands. Check out these courageous fighters:
What time did you wake up yesterday morning? I woke up at 5:00 a.m. to go down to the Dirksen Senate Office Building and attend the first hearing for the new climate bill. The bill, co-sponsored by Senator Kerry (D-MA) and Senator Boxer (D-CA), is called the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act — aka CEJAPA and is similar in many ways to the recently passed American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) in the House.
Along with other 10 young people, dressed in Halloween garbs or green t-shirts , we tried to get into the hearing room to show that young people are paying attention and are ready to hold our elected officials accountable. Unfortunately, due to corporate hired linestanders, we weren’t able to get in. Linestanders you ask? Yup, here is how it works:
Hearing rooms are small, especially considering that most seats go to Senate staffers (from offices of Senators who aren’t on the committee) and press. Most hearings are held with barely any ordinary citizen in the room, but some contentious ones — like recent healthcare, defense and climate hearings – fill up pretty quick. The few spots left are open on a first-come, first-serve basis meaning that people need to make sure to get there early if they care to have a seat in clear view of the senators and the CSPAN cameras.
Just like young people desperately want legislators to see them (and we make sure they do by wearing bright green t-shirts, holding hard hats on our laps, and holding small 8.5 x 11 signs), so do the lobbyists that bring so much money to their election coffers. Thirteen line-standers for corporate lobbyists were in line ahead of us, but there were only nine seats were available in the room so we weren’t successful this time around. Young people waiting in line made a pretty big splash nonetheless by talking to Senators and press as they were making their way into the room.
After making sure that the young people who came from as far as Maryland were OK with going to the overflow room, I darted back to the office to listen to the hearing through the Committee website (more hearings are going on today and tomorrow, check them out here if you are interested).
The hearings were surprisingly interesting. For minute-to-minute summary, check out my live-blog about the opening remarks and about the testimonies. There were three things that came up during the hearing that every person concerned about the climate crisis should know:
Secretary of the Department of Energy, Stephen Chu (a hero of energy efficiency dorks like me).
11:27 ‘Today I want to focus on the Energy Opportunity’ Hurray for CAP memes making it in the hearings!
11:28 China has made the choice. they are spending billions in clean energy, transmission,… my feed froze!!
11:30 ‘Obama announces billion dollar investments in smart grid technology! Hurray for rational people in the White House!’
Secretary of Department of Transportation, Ray LaHood
11:32 Acknowledging role of transit for climate reductions. Great to see that, but doesn’t really fall under climate bill purview…
11:33 Talking about smart growth. Can you believe it?! Only 2 years ago the Department of Transportation was working to subsidize suburbia!
Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar
11:37 ‘First energy independence, Second jobs, third healthy planet and safety of our children.’ Really? Your priorities are a little off.
11:39 ‘My department is the Carbon capture department’ (and the carbon extraction one!)
11:40 ‘We drill a lot of oil in our public lands, but at the Department we are mostly excited about the new energy frontiers’ ‘ We are fast-tracking deployment of clean energy, both sun, off-shore, on-shore’
11:42 ‘Our public lands can sequester carbon just as what will happen with investments in Indonesia and Brazil in CEJAPA’
— Editorial comment: these witnesses are not as fun as senators… + they don’t talk about young people!—
** For witness statements, go to the next post, here **
Just got back from the Senate office building where young people didn’t manage to enter the committee room.
10:47 Am – Voinovich doesn’t like the bill, big surprise
10:49 – Boxer ‘Climate change won’t be waiting for who is a democrat or who is a republican.’ Would like bi-partisanship but Senate lacks a Warner-like Republican.
10:50 – Voinovich ‘Building wind turbines is approximately the same as building nuclear power plants’ – does that include cost on waste disposal?
10:51 – Boxer ‘I am not advocating for taxpayers to build windmills OR nuclear. Trying to level the playing field so technologies can compete fairly’ – There you go!
10:53 – Lautenberg ‘We are looking at number of pages of bills to identify veracity. I didn’t know people were so concerned about trees!’ Calls for young people to be in the audience!!! Asks for them to testify about why we need to fight for this! Yeea!
10:55 – Lautenberg ‘It would be equally important to hear from the fisherman, asthma victims as much as farmers. We should look into the face of children and explain in their terms. How much would Americans be willing to pay in taxes to reverse these ills!’ My new favorite senator?
10:56 – Lautenberg ‘America wake up! Your kids are in danger! Your country is in danger’
10:59 – Can I just say “Climate deniers lie” every time one speaks? It would get a little redundant to keep on transcribing all of their disinformation (Sen. Barasso is speaking now, where are the Wyoming youth? Call him and tell him to invest in clean energy jobs)
11:00 – Barasso calls fossil fuels Red White and Blue energy… I can see red, but oil is certainly not white or blue!
11:01 – Merkeley “Choice of creating jobs for Americans, or sending jobs overseas” this hearing is all about republicans saying the bill will destroy jobs, while some democrats are saying it will create jobs. Doesn’t seem like anyone is taking the time to understand where the other is coming from.
11:04 – Merkeley “Whenever I ask college students what their top issue is, they always talk about climate change” – “You could argue this bill isn’t moving fast enough!” go get them Merkeley!
No, the purpose of the trip is not to convince the Olympic committee to reconsider Chicago for the Olympic bid. I am going to Copenhagen in December because the United Nations is convening a conference to decide the fate of our climate and the next steps for the Kyoto Treaty.
Interesting fact #1: The United States is the only developed nation never to have ratified the Kyoto treaty.
Young people from throughout the world will be convening to make the case for climate justice and show the faces of the people who will be affected the most: our generation. I will join these climate activists and provide support to their efforts.
Interesting fact #2: The United States has one of the highest per-capita emissions in the world, especially when you exclude small petroleum exporting countries.
In Copenhagen I will bring the energy, enthusiasm, and ideas of the Campus Progress Network, I will be blogging on Funding Our Future to let you all know about how progress is looking on the ground, and I will be working with fellows from the Center for American Progress to try to influence the direction of the negotiations.
If you have any ideas, thoughts, or questions about the trip, please leave a comment. I will be convening a conference call for Campus Progress Network members as we get closer to my departure, hope to see you all there!
The winner of this year’s Solar Decathlon was just announced today and for the second year in a row, it’s the Germans.
If you haven’t been following this amazing event, the Solar Decathlon is amazing and probably the only fun thing that comes out of the Department of Energy (mind, I said fun, not ‘not nerdy’). Every 2 years, 20 schools from around the world challenge each other to build the most energy and water self-sufficient house. Participants build the homes in their own communities, disassemble them, and rebuild them on the Capitol Mall for the week-long event where they are judged on 10 categories:
If you are in D.C., go down to the Mall this weekend and check them out. If you aren’t you should check out the pictures and the website.
As Adam Siegel argues at Get Energy Smart Now!!!, Germans had it easy due to the impressive renewable-friendly policies* that they are subject to at home. Feed-in Tariffs especially have been responsible for rapidly increasing the market viability of solar panels (feed-in tariffs force utilities to pay a fixed rate above market price for unused power produced by renewable energy). This gave the German team an incentive to cover their house with solar panels, whereas teams from the United States had to decide whether to prioritize solar production (”Net Metering”) or cost of the house (”Market Viability”).
It is time to set up similar renewable energy incentives in the United States to promote decentralize energy production, put more money in our pockets, create millions of domestic jobs, and reduce our carbon emissions.
* Check out this map of solar energy potential in the United States and Germany. It doesn’t make any sense for Germany to be the world leader in solar energy production when we have so much more potential than they do.
The Government of the Maldives is getting antsy. While the international community is discussing CO2 reduction targets that fall way short of what’s needed, the Archipelago-State is already dealing with the first signs of sea level rise.
The current proposals on the table would allow concentrations of CO2 to rise to 450 parts per million (ppm), giving us a 50-50 chance of preventing catastrophic climate change. 50-50 doesn’t sound like good odds to gamble the future of human civilization, right? At 450 ppm, temperatures would already be high enough to doom Island Nations like the Maldives. Imagine knowing that your whole country is about to be slowly drowned by the ocean while the countries that caused the problem in the first place discuss ’solutions’ that only help themselves.
The Diver Association of the Maldives is committed to preserving their homes and coral reefs. They joined 350.org – an international movement to reduce CO2 concentrations to 350 ppm and guarantee a stable atmosphere – and shot this fantastic video. Check it out:
On October 24th, the International Day of Climate Action, President Nasheed and his whole cabinet will join the divers and hold an underwater cabinet meeting to show the Maldives’ destiny if the climate negotiations will result in a weak treaty.
Why is this relevant to Funding our Future? Island States aren’t the only places vulnerable to sea level rise. The same CO2 concentration that would doom the Maldives would have a devastating effect on Florida, New York City, New Orleans and the rest of coastal United States. A future where we have to abandon our cities isn’t the future that our generation deserves. We need more than a 50-50 chance, we need 350ppm.
I just got back from Los Angeles where I attended Gov. Schwarzenegger’s Governors’ Global Climate Summit. I must say that I was a little skeptical about how honest the conversations were going to be due to the Governor’s lack of follow-through on major environmental initiatives and the long list of fossil-happy corporate sponsors, but I was wrong in my assumption. I left the summit ecstatic, energized, full of hope, and with a large stack of business cards in my wallet received from inspiring young entrepreneurs, activists and journalists.
Funding our Future is a campaign to pass a progressive federal budget for 2010 and ensure that our nation.s key economic choices invest in our education, spark reform of our health care system, and address climate change through cap and trade and clean energy investments. Click here for more info.
As I mentioned in a 
Young people from throughout the world will be convening to make the case for climate justice and show the faces of the people who will be affected the most: our generation. I will join these climate activists and provide support to their efforts.
The winner of this year’s 
The Government of the Maldives is getting antsy. While the international community is discussing CO2 reduction targets that fall way short of what’s needed, the Archipelago-State is already dealing with the first signs of sea level rise.
