Sierra Club Applauds House Passage of BP Disaster Response Legislation

Washington, D.C. - Today, in response to the tragic BP oil disaster, the House voted to pass the of the Consolidated Land, Energy, and Aquatic Resources (CLEAR) Act (H.R. 3534). The final vote count was 209-193.

A quick review of this past week's happenings in the blog world

Here's more "coulda, shoulda, whoulda." And another. You get the point.

-- Take your house plant to the museum.

Ooops. Haven't written a Lazy Organic Gardener post for more than a month.

Lazy organic writer is more like it.

(Scratch that. Given that I'm typing this on a machine that contains silicon, plastic, lead, mercury, and who knows what else, I can't honestly call myself an organic writer. Though I am working without an outline or notes. There is that.)

I haven't been doing much gardening (or writing) because it's summer, the time of the year I get to be lazy. The sun, the plants, and the drip irrigation on a timer do all the work.

There is no such thing as a truly lazy gardener. if you're lazy with a capital L, gardening is not going to be on your to-do list. At its best, it's meditative, absorbing, a feast for the senses. Sometimes there's a feeling of connecting with the sublime or a superior being.

But it is work. There are deadlines, busy periods. Certainly times when I wish I was done so I could sit down and enjoy it.

June and July are pretty easy. In June, I was in southern California, then later in Washington, D.C., and I came home from both trips to see a happy garden. No work that couldn't wait.

My drip irrigation was giving the veggies in my garden beds half an hour of water every other day, and the shrubs, trees, vines not on the drip were still sipping from the bounty of winter. I'd better give the trees a deep watering one of these days, however. It is almost August.

There were weeds to pull, always. The morning glory sneaked into the garden bed and I had to unwrap its tendrils from around the corn stalks. I tucked the branches of the unwieldy tomatoes into their cages to keep them upright.

There are zucchini and strawberries to harvest, but not much else. Lots of green tomatoes yet to ripen. (The cold foggy days don't help.)

One of these days, I'd better spread some fertilizer in the vegetable beds.

For now, though, I'm taking photos instead of working.

Here are two views from the deck.

The corn is taller than I am now. The photos below are from three weeks ago.

You can't tell from this photo, but there are two plastic chaise lounges behind this thriving lavatera in the back of my yard. (Fortunately, there are plenty of other places to sit.)

"The top ends up flatter, but we're not talking about Mount Everest. We're talking about these little knobby hills that are everywhere out here. And I've seen the reclaimed lands. One of them is 800 acres, with a sports complex on it, elk roaming, covered in grass." Most people, he continues, "would say the land is of enhanced value, because now you can build on it."

(via TPM.)

Also of concern is what would happen if a pipeline accident caused a serious spill above the Ogallala aquifer which millions of Americans in the Midwest rely on for fresh drinking water as well as irrigation [...]

"We have negatively impacted your lives and made a mess of your properties and waterways," said Patrick Daniel, Enbridge president and CEO. "We're now working around the clock to minimize the impact of that and clean up the area."

Wow -- #BP said today it plans to claim $9.9 billion in U.S. tax credits http://sc.org/9UkXGm #oilspill

By the way, there's a new oil disaster in the Gulf. Early this morning, a tow boat slammed into an abandoned well. A plume of oil is shooting about 100 feet into the air. Watch:

Gillette, Wyoming -- You might be pardoned if you thought that the Powder River Basin, in northeast Wyoming and southeast Montana, was a coal-producing region. After all, the third line of the Wikipedia entry mentions that the basin "supplies about 40 percent of coal in the United States." Most of the Google images for the basin are of coal-mining operations, or maps of coal deposits. This town lies next to the biggest coal mine in the country, the Black Thunder Mine. John McPhee devoted a major part of a book to the coal trains that snake out of the Black Thunder to Georgia Power's Plant Scherer, 1,800 miles away, just north of Macon, Georgia.

Ansel Adams. Photo by Cedric Wright; courtesy Colby Library, Sierra Club.

Talk about a gold mine. A California man recently discovered he possessed a treasure trove of Ansel Adams negatives that an art appraiser valued at more than $200 million, according to CNN. The negatives were believed to have been destroyed in a 1937 darkroom fire. But 10 years ago, they were purchased by Rick Norsigian of Fresno at a garage sale for $45. Experts and historians seem to corroborate his claim. However, there are those who doubt the authenticity, including Adams's own grandson.

"Mr. Norsigian has been claiming these negatives were made by Ansel Adams for many years," he said. "I am unaware of anyone knowledgeable agreeing with him."

About eight times a year, the Ansel Adams Gallery hears from people wondering if an image in their possession could be a long-lost piece of Adams' artwork, said Dustin Nelson, staff photographer at the Yosemite National Park gallery.

"Now and again we receive phone calls from people who say, 'I found a print in a yard sale for $10 — that kind of thing," Nelson said.

The high plains are the breadbasket of America, and the Ogallala aquifer beneath them supports nearly one-fifth of the wheat, corn, cotton, and cattle produced in the United States. The Ogallala is the single most important source of water in the High Plains region, providing nearly all the water for residential, industrial, and agricultural use.

Enter the Keystone XL pipeline, the latest proposed expansion of the largest industrial project on earth- the Alberta tar sands.

The Keystone XL will consist of 1,700 miles of pipe, cutting through farms and communities across the high plains from Alberta to refineries in the Midwest and Gulf Coast regions. The proposed route of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline traverses the deepest sections of the Ogallala Aquifer- the largest aquifer in the United States.

About 27 percent of the irrigated land in the US lies above this aquifer system. The total water storage is akin to the volume of Lake Huron.

The future economy of the High Plains depends heavily on the Ogallala Aquifer, the main source of water for all uses. The Ogallala is literally the lifeblood of the region, and must be carefully safeguarded against depletion and contamination.

Yet the State Department is considering granting permits to TransCanada, the pipeline owner, to operate the proposed pipeline at higher pressure and with thinner steel than industry standards allow.

This high-pressure pipeline would carry the world’s dirtiest oil four feet underground, when the Ogallala aquifer is already visible at depths of three feet or less. This pipeline will clearly put the entire high plains water resources at risk.

Pipelines already in place leaked 126,000 gallons in one incident alone- and more recently spewed over 800,000 gallons into a Michigan river. These pipes operate at lower volumes and pressure than the proposed Keystone XL expansion.

Local residents are expressing concern over the pipeline, and an ongoing poll in the Rapid City Journal shows strong opposition to the project.

Many are rightly wondering why we should invest in a risky, dirty source of energy when the potential exists for clean energy across the prairie states. Many states along the pipeline route, including the Dakotas, Montana and Nebraska, have some of the highest wind energy potential in the United States.

This $12 billion dollar pipeline project will lock us into reliance on the dirtiest oil in the world, when we could be investing in creating self-sufficient, clean sources of energy in the US that will never run out- like wind and solar.

The tragic gulf oil spill provides a fresh reminder of the risks inherent in our oil addiction. Piping more dirty tar sands oil through our largest freshwater aquifer is not the solution.

If we choose today to invest in self-sufficiency and clean energy to provide for the future of American prosperity, we can make oil spills an inky page in the history books.

Read more on the Ogallala aquifer and how you can help protect this vital resource.

We need you to call your Congressional Representative immediately!! Please take two minutes this morning to help stop our opponents from gaining ground in the House. You can call the House switchboard and ask to be transferred to your member's office, (202) 224-3121

Two damaging letters to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson are currently circulating in the House asking for weak coal ash regulations.

Representatives Rick Boucher (VA) and Fred Upton (MI) are circulating one letter seeking sign-on from Energy and Commerce Committee members and Representative Holden (PA) is circulating a second letter to all House members. Both letters ask EPA to issue only guidelines, maintain the inadequate status quo of weak state regulations, and refrain from establishing federally enforceable regulations!

Please call your representative in Congress and ask him/her to refrain from signing a letter that will hurt your community and lead to EPA action that fails to protect our health and environment from toxic coal ash.

Let your voice be heard and call immediately. The deadline for sign on to these letters is TODAY. The authors may extend the deadline, but only until Friday at the latest.

Also this past weekend, hundreds of Texans gathered for the Great Texas Cleanup Event in Houston, which was co-organized by the Texas Sierra Club - especially by our Texas Beyond Coal and Texas Sierra Student Coalition teams (seen in the photo to the right). The event was an outdoor music and arts festival mixed with community organizing for clean energy and clean air. This website has a great write-up and more fantastic pictures.

Last week leaders from over 20 of the world’s most developed nations met at the clean energy ministerial in Washington D.C. The Ministerial launched 11 energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives that will eliminate the need for 500 midsize power plants over the next 20 years. The production of these “negawatts” is critical for rapidly industrializing nations whose growing energy appetite is colliding with contracting fossil fuel supplies and the ever increasing impacts of climate change.

Impressive efforts at generating negawatts through lighting efficiency projects have recently been pioneered by South Asian countries India and Bangladesh. Both countries are currently pioneering large scale lighting transition projects that seek to replace millions of old inefficient incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). In India, the Bachat Lamp Yojana program has a goal of distributing 400 million CFLs by the end of 2011 – a four fold increase from 2007 sales levels. The program would be roughly equal to US annual sales in 2007 which were 397 million.

In order to achieve this ambitious goal India has created the largest source of carbon credits in the world by working with the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). One carbon credit is generated for every 10 bulbs distributed reducing the cost of each individual bulb by 85%, and reducing over 40 million tons of CO2 annually. The increased efficiency of the project will reduce demand by over 10,0000 MW. The lavish praise generated by these projects in comparison with the controversy of the recent Ex-Im financed Sasan coal fired ultra mega power project (UMPP), shows that in a carbon constrained world efficiency is king.

Perhaps even more impressive is the speed with which India’s neighbor, Bangladesh, has carried out its own CFL program. The first phase seeks to distribute 10.5 million bulbs half of which was achieved in a single day. The programs first phase will be completed by September and the second phase is set to distribute 17.5 million more bulbs in a country where 36% of the population is below the internationally defined standard of $1.25 a day.

These programs effectively cut through the false narrative that dramatically ramping up coal production is the only way to satisfy the world’s insatiable demand for electricity. What’s more important is that they have shown that even countries confronting a host of developmental dilemmas can effectively implement them at scale. With federal action on climate change dead in the US perhaps we can relearn an important lesson from our South Asian friends - change moves from the bottom up.

Sen. Murkowski tried and failed earlier this summer to disarm the agency. Now Sen. Rockefeller is going to give it another go with a proposal to suspend the EPA's regulatory ability for two years. Suffice it say this would be a bad thing. Visit the Sierra Club Action Center to get involved and keep coming back here for the latest news and political developments.

The decision to leave the well capped, which was made at the recommendation of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, means that scientists with the government and with BP think that the well is undamaged and that there is little risk it would deteriorate if kept under pressure, as it has been since valves on a new cap were closed a week ago. Reopening the valves would mean that oil, which has not flowed since they were closed, would once again pour into the gulf.

A quick review of this past week's happenings in the blog world

Here's what I've been reading this week:

-- BP was trying to Photoshop its way out of the mess.

--Climate scientist Stephen Schneider, who was in Copenhagen, passed away. Read about his interview in Sierra magazine. I saw him speak in November and wrote about it here.

-- The NYT's Lens blog has recent pics from the Himalayas and compares them to pics taken in 1921.

-- Need a smile on your face? Watch this video of the so-called cow wash that increases milk production and provides soothing massages: "The cow wash is a free-swinging brush that starts rotating when a cow rubs up against it. The cow can move around the brush as it pleases, getting rubbed wherever it wants - along its sides, back, and head."

-- The missing link between climate change and creationism.

-- Litigious coal industry execs puts EPA on the defense over Obama administration’s crackdown on mountaintop removal.

--McDonald's launches a nefarious ad campaign attacking local food purchasing.

- A broader assessment of the need for this pipeline, including a "robust analysis of options for meeting national energy and climate policy objectives";
- A more thorough investigation into the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the project, including a consideration of Canadian tar sands development (which EPA asserts is an action clearly connected to building the pipeline and must be considered);
- A lifecycle assessment of "well-to-wheel" (greenhouse gas) emissions generated from tar sands;
- A better understanding of mitigation measures that could be taken to decrease the emissions from tar sands developments;
- An assessment of the air quality impacts of refining tar sands, and a more in-depth look at the environmental justice ramifications of these air quality concerns;
- A much more thorough emergency response plan, including a consideration of the specific impacts to water bodies or a leak or spill of the chemical dilutent needed to transport heavy tar sands oil;
- A consideration of the safety waiver [the Department of Transportation] is considering granting to TransCanada, with special attention paid to the sulfur content of the fuel and how this would impact the thinner steel which would be used if the waiver were granted;
- A complete assessment of all the project's impacts to wetlands;
- A consideration of the impacts of Canadian tar sands developments on migratory birds.

This is a guest post from Chip Gaul, Intern for the Sierra Club Good Jobs Retrofit Campaign.

In April, twenty-five cities and states received “Retrofit Ramp-up”awards from the U.S. Department of Energy’s stimulus funds (a competitive grant under the Energy Efficiency and Community Block Grant Program). These grants are beefing up existing programs and new initiatives set to launch this fall and winter that allow households and building owners to improve the energy efficiency performance of their homes and businesses.

New Sierra Club ED Mike Brune recently stated that we need to do more than simply fight the status quo of dirty energy and environmental degradation: we need to promote new solutions. Improving the performance of our country's 130 million energy inefficient homes (20 percent of global warming pollution) will help curb our dependence on fossil fuels and create quality jobs in a slumping economy and construction sector.

Even though retrofits produce many benefits for building owners- reduced carbon footprint, lower utility bills, and more comfort during extreme weather days- most people are unaware of local programs that help pay for energy-saving measures. Community-based organizations and local clean energy advocates in "Ramp-up" cities can help spread the word about these new programs and help deliver real energy savings by signing up their peers and neighbors, implementing solutions envisioned in ED Brune's remarks.

For instance, in Maine, where 75% of homeowners heat their homes with oil at an average cost of $2,000 per year, Maine Partners for Cool Communities is organizing canvassing and neighborhood events to teach homeowners about the benefits of home energy upgrades through Maine's Home Energy Savings Program with Efficiency Maine. Sierra Club has joined labor unions and business partners to host Clean Energy Roadshow events across the country. The Roadshow partners create an open forum for business leaders, industry experts, public officials, and stakeholder groups to exchange best practices and form new partnerships to rapidly build new clean energy industries.

Implementing these budding "Ramp-up" programs will help communities enter a new era free of pollution from dirty energy and booming with a clean-energy economy. Read about Sierra Club campaigns in a community near you.

So how come we've just had the largest environmental disaster in decades on top of record hot temperatures in much of the country and we still can get a decent climate bill past Congress? According to Jason Zengerle in New York magazine, it's because environmentalists are too nice:

Given how unsuccessfully the environmental movement has pressed the rational case for climate-change action, some activists are wondering whether rational, dispassionate thinking is overrated. Over the last few months, they have begun to subtly (and not so subtly) shift their messaging away from scientific, or even explicitly environmental, arguments and toward more direct, emotional, and, frankly, manipulative appeals.

Given that the facts are on our side, there's no reason that rational arguments for action on climate change can't also be direct and emotional. For example, take this new study from our colleagues at the Natural Resources Defense Council showing the 1,100 U.S. counties that could be at dire risk of water shortages in the next 50 years because of global warming.

I had a chance to drive the fascinating Tesla Roadster this past weekend. In a word, it was, well, electrifying. The power and performance of a Lotus Exige, without the noise and pollution. More on this in a moment.

We were at a special "Bastille Day" event held by L.A.'s Petersen Automotive Museum in Malibu. Everybody dressed in white, great cars were everywhere, and Tesla was offering demo drives to this select group of automotive opinion leaders. In case you've not heard of Tesla, it is a Bay Area startup run by CEO Elon Musk, who made a couple hundred million by selling his previous Big Idea, PayPal. Tesla plans to build an electric car that will be affordable, but the initial product really is not. It sells for about $125K, plus extras such as the deluxe charging station, sport package upgrade, etc.

Let's evaluate the car first, not the price. It is based on the Lotus Esprit chassis, or platform as the car industry calls it. I have always loved the Lotus and confess to taking a special Lotus driving school in my previous life. As fast cars go, it is very lightweight, gets close to 30 mpg, corners like a mother, runs zero to 60 in less than five seconds and does this running a four cylinder Toyota engine. It is also very hard to get in and out of, has little storage space, poor visibility and is not very practical as a daily driver.

By contracting to purchase so much energy for so long, we’re giving the developer of the wind farm financial certainty to build additional clean energy projects. The inability of renewable energy developers to obtain financing has been a significant inhibitor to the expansion of renewable energy.

Google has a love affair with wind. In May, Google invested nearly $40 million into 169.5 MW worth of wind projects (h/t Earth2Tech). That's a lot of averted CO2. In a world of discouraging political news, this is a breath of fresh, clean air.

Speaking of wind, I had a great conversation a few months back with a wind expert on how typical homeowners can establish small wind in their yards. If wind power is something you want to bring home to the family, click here to read about it.

Barton saw his bottom line fall in part because of losses in broad-based funds that invested in companies linked to the recent Gulf Coast oil spill. His campaign reported losing more than $13,000 in the Fidelity Select Energy Service, which lists Halliburton and Transocean Inc. among the fund’s largest four holdings. Transocean is down more than 36 percent for the year, while Halliburton is down nearly 6 percent so far in 2010.
Barton also lost more than $36,000 in Fidelity Dividend Growth, which bought just more than half a million shares of BP at the end of May — after the oil spill began — according to investment analysis service Morningstar.

The Holy Grail of the dirty-energy crowd is dirty energy that isn't quite so dirty. If only we could take the carbon dioxide out of coal, they reason, problem solved! We could keep on burning coal for the next 240 years and put all those wind turbines into storage until then.

In search of this happy solution, in 2009 alone the Department of Energy budgeted $681 million toward development of "Carbon Capture and Storage" (CCS) technology, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (a.k.a. the stimulus bill) kicked in another $3.4 billion.

So how's the investment turning out? Turns out that no one really knew--so Congress asked the Government Accountability Office to check it out. Their recently released conclusion: CCS is "less mature" than readily available technologies to improve coal-plant efficiency, costs a ton to install and operate, and reduces the amount of energy a plant can produce by 15 to 32%. Short story: "Without a national carbon policy to reduce CO2 emissions, nearly all stakeholders said CCS would not be widely deployed." Yet coal-state senators have been among the most adamant opposed to including carbon pricing in the energy legislation now inching through the Senate.

If the Treasury filled helicopters with $100 bills and showered them over the nation's cities, at least it would stimulate the economy. But spending billions on CCS in the absence of putting a price on carbon is just pouring it down the coal hole.

There was a rumor recently that Telsa had converted a new model of Toyota's popular RAV4 into an EV. Toyota announced Friday that Tesla will supply the drive train for a resurrected RAV4 EV, possibly to be built at the recently purchased NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA. This is the giant 5 million sq. ft. plant that was the subject of a fascinating story on This American Life in March.

This is really good news for the EV community since the RAV EV has been the most reliable EV from the ZEV mandate days of the late 90s and early 2000s. It also gives consumers a great option if what the family needs is a reasonably sized vehicle that can haul stuff. Both the Nissan Leaf and GM Chevy Volt are great cars, but there is clearly a market for SUVs out there.

Here we are taking possession of our brand new RAV on winter solstice, 2002.



Our experience with the RAV has been nothing short of amazing. The car just works. Other than replacing the shocks at 60K miles, and consumables like tires, aux batteries and wiper blades, there has been virtually no maintenance or parts in 8 years and 84,000 miles.

Some RAV drivers have had their battery packs replaced, but they averaged about 120,000-130,000 miles before doing so.

I can't tell you how many times I've plugged my car in at a public charger and had people engage me in a long conversation about what this vehicle means to society and then express the burning desire to get one just like it. It's happened hundreds of times over the years and each time, I had to tell them, nope, can't do it, they destroyed hundreds of them, and the remaining 800 or so RAV EVs are all there would ever be.

Now I can tell them to wait a year or so and they'll not only be able to buy a RAV EV, but it'll be powered by a Tesla drive train with, we can assume, a LiIon battery pack. We don't know pricing or performance specs, all that will come in due time, but the importance of this announcement is that Toyota is getting back in the EV game. We'll have to update Plug In America's vehicle tracker page to list this popular model.

This leaves Honda as the lone hold out. They are still claiming their Clarity fuel cell vehicle is the end game of alt-fuel vehicles. But as more and more EVs are announced for delivery in the next two years, it seems as the game might end with fuel cell vehicles forever in the on-deck circle, never getting a chance to step up to the plate and bat.

One thing I noticed is, when you drive across the country, you see a lot of wind farms. But you don’t see any signage about what they’re doing. When you drive across Kansas, there’s nothing to look at. And suddenly there are 100 2-MW turbines gracefully sweeping through the air. And I want to know some real information. Give me a sign with some numbers. So we’re going to look at what it’d require to get signage, kind of like what you see on freeways, similar to those signs you see that say, "This section of highway is cleaned by the Kiwanis Club."

Using the language of climate change has become political. So anyone critical of politics is going to look at the whole conversation as a political one and not science-based. So after that we chose to stay away from that language. What resonated was talking about green jobs, especially with the oil spill. We'd talk about the potential of wind and solar.

“I don’t use that,” the Nevada Democrat replied. “Those words are not in my vocabulary. We’re going to work on pollution.” [...]

If cap-and-trade is so unpopular that its primary legislative advocates can't mention it, then it's dead.

Brian Foley mentions below the case of Senator Claire McCaskill, who was quoted in Politico as one of the "Brown Dog" Democrats who are shying away from an energy and climate bill that would put a price on carbon.

“I think it’s still a work in progress,” said Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, who worries that a cap would be a loser for Democrats in November. “You know, it took 50 years on health care.”

Here's where the Intergovernmental Panel Climate Change says we'll be in 50 years if McCaskill's position wins out. This chart

projects temperature changes (in Celsius) under a variety of policy scenarios. That McCaskill seems to be advocating--no coordinated national policy, isolated local efforts, etc.--correlates to "A2," the red line, or a planet 50 years in the future more than 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the one we know today.

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No villager alone had the ingredients to make a hearty meal for soldiers passing through their town, but each brought an ingredient and together they created a community soup. By the same token, no existing Senate energy bill has all of the needed components, but it is possible to craft a comprehensive clean energy and global warming bill that would actually achieve Reid’s four goals by combining the most effective provisions from a number of existing bills.

Meanwhile, senators are already offering curious sound bites. Sen. Claire McCaskill, in her reticence, said health care reform took 50 years to pass, so who knows how long climate legislation will take. Ugh.

The villagers in “Stone Soup” were initially too selfish to provide the visitors with anything to eat. So the soldiers boiled a giant pot of water and added stones to it. One by one, the villagers added vegetables and other ingredients. When it was ready, the soldiers removed the stones and they joined the villagers in a feast.

It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks.

A quick review of this past week's happenings in the blog world

-- Great video on cycling Copenhagen from an American perspective.

Photography is now a mature enough medium to allow it to look backward--hence the modern trend toward "rephotography," in which classic scenes are snapped again from the exact same spot. (Sorry, to see the rephotographs of Yosemite you need to dust off your print copy.) The new genre turns out to be perfectly suited to conveying the longterm enormity of climate change, especially as regards the disappearance of the world's glaciers (slideshow here).

No glaciers outside of the poles and Greenland holds as much stored water as those atop the mighty Himalaya mountains, sometimes known as "the third pole." In the latest edition of the indispensible Yale Environment 360, mountaineer and photographer David Breashears turns his lens on glaciers from the Himalayan and Tibetan plateaus, comparing them to archival photos dating back more than a century. Read it and weep.

Related to the BP oil disaster, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson was testifying again on Capitol Hill about the disaster. Her testimony is here.

Speaking of oil, Senators Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall, Tom Carper, and Michael Bennet just released the "Oil Independence for a Stronger America" act, which is all about oil savings. From the senators' news release:

The Oil Independence for a Stronger America Act will set into law the goal of achieving independence from overseas oil in the next 20 years and a specific plan for achieving it. By committing America to developing a robust clean energy economy, the legislation would create new jobs while eliminating the national security vulnerability posed by dependence on oil from overseas to run the economy.

Senators Merkley, Carper, Udall and Bennet are putting us on the right track. This bill to reduce oil dependence is absolutely the right place to start and will focus action where it is most needed. Calling on the President to use all existing authority to reduce the amount of oil we use by at least 8 million barrels a day by 2030 sets an appropriate floor for what together we can achieve. Taking these early steps in the wake of an immediate disaster is also vital to the success of our ultimate goal--an oil-free economy that works for America's middle class.

From E&E Daily:

According to a 667-page draft of their latest scaled-down effort obtained by The Hill yesterday, Kerry and Lieberman would seek to cut utilities' emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Those targets mirror the reductions required for capped sources under the "American Power Act" that Kerry and Lieberman unveiled in May.

Neither Kerry or Lieberman's office was willing to confirm the validity of the circulated draft.

The draft was the second utility-only bill to surface yesterday, following a 50-page draft from Bingaman that would also cut utilities' emissions 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels and 42 percent by 2030. Utilities that emit more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent per year would be under the cap starting in 2012, and large manufacturers could opt in to the program (Greenwire, July 13).

Meanwhile, Senator Harry Reid is pledging that any climate & energy bill that comes out will include a measure on greenhouse gas reductions. From The Hill:

Reid’s pledge, however, left major questions about the scope of the utility plan and steered clear of any details. He declined even to use the words "carbon" or "greenhouse gases," vowing instead to target "pollution."

It's getting tense on Capitol Hill with all this climate and energy legislation wrangling. Stay tuned!

The "Last Words" feature in the May/June Sierra features a picture of Alaska's Taku glacier and a striking boast from ExxonMobil forbearer Humble/Esso from 1962: "Each day Humble supplies enough energy to melt 7 million tons of glacier!" Reader Susan Sielke wonders what the glacier looks like today, 48 years later. "I suspect I am not alone in wondering how much melt has been experienced by just that one glacier alone."

The surprising answer: Not that much. A long-term study by the Juneau Icefield Research Program has tracked the "terminus behavior" of the many glaciers flowing off that vast icefield, using maps from 1948, aerial photos from 1964, and Google Earth images from 2005. "Of the 17 glaciers discussed 5 have retreated more than 500 m since 1948, 11 more than 1000 m, and one glacier, the Taku, has advanced." The Taku grew greatly from 1946 to 1988, at which point its "mass balance" became slightly negative. (All the details you could ever wish for are here.) In the past the glacier has occasionally advanced so far as to entirely block the Taku River. However, notes the JIRP, "[In the] current climate the glacier will not be able to repeat this advance."

Some of the most exciting and forward-thinking climate and sustainability initiatives are being implemented by local governments in the Southwestern and South Central United States. We've gotten on the phone with staff from many of our ICLEI local government members in this region -- Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas -- and have a compiled the progress report below. Read on to learn about Austin, TX's new renewable energy goal to Fort Collins, CO's solar belly trash compactors, and more.

If your local government has a success story to share, don't hesitate to e-mail us so we can repost on the ICLEI USA website.

• Albuquerque, NM: Nick Kuhn, City Forester for Albuquerque, NM, is working with NM State Forestry on a five-city ecological tree assessment paid for with U.S. Forest Service funds to provide a city-specific and Southwest regional model for cities to determine the ecological value of their urban forest. The cities are Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Farmington (all in NM), El Paso, TX, and Glendale, AZ.

“Let’s design an entire clean energy economy as though our life depended on it, as though our economy depended on it, as though our national security depended on it, and as though our health depended on it.”

A quick review of this past week's happenings in the blog world

the Kerry-Lieberman bill, and practically any attempt to enact an economy-wide carbon cap, has now become politically radioactive in the Senate. (Or at least, radioactive enough that it can't get 60 votes.) Fred Krupp—the president of the Environmental Defense Fund and a fierce warrior for a carbon cap—told reporters last week that Kerry-Lieberman as it stands now is unlikely to ever reach a vote, and that green groups need to be open to a less ambitious bill, such as one that only caps emissions from power utilities.

A lot of Oakland is really low ground and the entire San Jose region is hugely threatened. You can kiss Miami and Galveston goodbye, and those low-lying areas around Houston. All the Gulf cities. New Orleans, of course, is among the most endangered. I think by 2200 each of those will be in the throes of being abandoned, if not already abandoned.

-- The next time you're at this Waffle House in Georgia, check out its solar hot water collectors. Waffle-licious!

But seriously folks, some developments have surfaced today in the BP oil disaster saga. BP execs seem to think that if the conditions are right, they can cap the gash in the Gulf by the end of the month -- earlier than expected. With weather getting better in the Gulf, the White House is nudging the oil giant to act.

An oil recovery ship known as the Helix Producer, capable of capturing up to 25,000 barrels a day, has been waiting near the crippled well for more than a week, unable to connect to the well because of high winds and waves from Hurricane Alex.

The weather has also delayed deployment of a new, tighter-fitting cap for the well that not only will be able to capture more of the spewing oil but could potentially shut down all oil releases from the well. Swapping the caps requires disconnecting the well from a recovery ship, the Discoverer Enterprise, potentially increasing the flow of oil by as much as 15,000 barrels a day for two to three days.

The two operations were to have begun a week ago and take place in sequence. The administration now wants BP to move forward with both at the same time to take advantage of a period of seven or eight days of predicted calm weather.

(Visit Sierra Club Green Home.)

BOULDER, CO -- When's the last time you attended a conference and one of the keynote speakers was only 16 years old? This was but one of the thought-provoking subject matter experts we were treated to at the 14th annual LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) Conference, held at the super green St. Julien Hotel here.

Child prodigy Alec Loorz, age 16, gave us hope for the current generation as they will be the first Americans to really grow up on green. He reminded us not to be too preachy to our kids, yet in my view was a bit fatalistic in tone himself, as in, "if we don't all go green the planet will end...." Either way, a provocative presentation and thesis from a gifted young man.

Another top notch keynote came from Suzanne Shelton, a green advertising expert who was armed with relevant data. Did you realize that:

• Consumers don't go green to save the planet. They are motivated by the same things that cause them to buy "regular" products. For comfort, convenience, aesthetics and saving money -- surprise, the same reasons they buy most products and services;
• Home health is also a key driver, keeping toxins away from children and making healthy choices for the family are also highly ranked motivators;
• How do people determine if a product is green? They get their info from labels and look for third party verification;
• How do customers evaluate whether a company is truly green? First, if they recycle company-wide. Next, if they eliminate toxic chemicals from the manufacturing process. Third, if their facilities run on renewable energy;
• And finally, getting kids talking to their parents about change is powerful - 68% of adults say they have adjusted their buying habits because of their kids' encouragement.

Is the EPA's romance with coal ash over? For years the agency has partnered with the coal industry to promote coal ash--the toxic leftover from coal-fired power plants--as an ingredient in a variety of industrial, agricultural, and consumer products. (In 2008, the American Coal Ash Association celebrated the stuff's use in everything from "toothpaste to railroad ties.")

Today, however, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) reports that the EPA's Web site page on its "Coal Combustion Products Partnership" has gone dark, the only explanation being a notice that the program "is being re-evaluated." As PEER points out, given that EPA has finally undertaken to possibly regulate coal ash as hazardous waste, it doesn't look right for them to also be promoting its use. But industry doesn't want coal ash declared to be hazardous waste, because then how could they put it in your toothpaste?

You can help the EPA make the right decision by making an official public comment here.

But with the rise of EVs the company is working on modifying the design to function as vehicle charging stations. That would potentially create a harmonious renewable system (like this one) of PVs and EVs, independent of crude oil and coal power plants. And it would add a purposeful element to these empty, destitute masses of land.

And here's a look back at the non-troversey over the hacked emails late last year that only fueled the distortions of climate deniers but did nothing to reverse the scientific evidence. It did, however, result in a flurry of death threats in the email inboxes of scientists.

Even after the explosion, BP was still insisting that it had “skimming capacity of more than 171,000 barrels per day, with more available if needed.”

So far, it has managed to skim less than 900 barrels per day. Add burn-offs, and you get to just over 300,000 barrels in total, over 77 days — that’s less than 4,000 barrels per day.

BP’s reaction to being massively wrong, by a factor of over 100, is to grab onto the biggest numbers it can find — to try, in other words, to deal with the optics, rather than the reality. Take the much-vaunted super-skimmer, for instance. Some reports say that it “can collect up to half a million barrels of oil a day”, but it’s much more accurate to say that it can theoretically collect that many barrels of contaminated water, which is only about 10% oil. And, as Kindy drily notes, “thus far, it has been unable to produce those results in the gulf.”

Back in the 1970s. the search for offshore oil was so exciting that BP put out a board game on "the thrills of drilling." Better hope you don't draw a "hazard card," though: "Blow-out! Rig damaged. Oil slick clean-up costs. Pay $1 million." Present day BP wishes it could get off so cheaply; the latest estimate of its costs thus far in controlling its Macondo gusher is $3 billion. (h/t to Metro.co.uk)

In a very similar optimistic mood, the Washington Post reports that in March, BP promised federal regulators that in the event of a major spill it could skim 491,721 barrels of oil each day. In practice, skimming since the disaster began has captured only 67,143 barrels total, or 1/500th part of what BP promised for the period.

To the Editor:

The Column notes that fuel cell technology, while promising, is unlikely to be viable for decades. We have just taken possession of our new Toyota RAV4 EV, an all-electric car that we will charge with power generated from our rooftop solar panels.

Our new car will easily accelerate up to 80 miles and hour and travel 100 miles on a single charge. Installing a charger at work would give the car a traveling range of 200 miles. More than enough for most folks.

The column says we must cut our dependence on foreign oil. I strongly agree that self-sufficiency is a laudable goal. However, while auto companies go on searching for their fuel cell holy grail, we'll be cruising the streets and freeways of Southern California in a 100 percent pollution-free vehicle using technology that's been around for over a century.

Paul Scott
Zan Dubin Scott
Santa Monica, CA , Dec. 23

Within two weeks of this letter, we organized our first event drawing some 50 EV drivers to our quiet street in Santa Monica. That's when we started meeting all these other activists, some of whom had been working on the issue for a few years. In our naivete, we thought a few protests and a concerted letter writing campaign would suffice to save the EVs from destruction. Boy, were we wrong!

The crucial California Air Resources Board (CARB) meeting of March 2003 stunned us. In spite of overwhelming support by the drivers of these EVs, the Board acquiesced to the demands of the car companies to kill the battery EV in favor of this promising new kid on the block, the fuel cell.

George Bush proclaimed in his 2003 State of the Union speech, “With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen and pollution-free.”

When I heard George Bush say this, it occurred to me that a child born before the Civil War was able to drive a battery EV since that technology dominated the cars of the 1890's. Well, the kids born in 2003 are now seven years old, still a ways from driving age, but much has happened in the intervening years. Virtually all the car companies have announced plug-in vehicle programs (Honda, where are you?), and we're on the cusp of seeing thousands of Leafs and Volts on the roads.

Just this week, Tesla held a very successful IPO becoming the first electric vehicle company to do so. And on Wednesday, Zan and I were invited to see the gorgeous Fisker Karma at the local Santa Monica Fisker dealer. In this picture, newly minted Phd., Shannon Arvizu ("Miss Electric"), joins us in celebrating the moment.


So, as the oil continues to gush into the Gulf, billions of dollars continue to gush out of the country to buy oil, and our Congress continues to gush over oil companies' largess to campaign coffers, the only good news is that, with each spin of the Earth, we get closer to the day when we no longer have to participate in all of that.

You might notice that these suggestions are not anything new. But walking the talk a little at a time will go a long way. And if you're frustrated by the slow political process in Washington, click here to take action. Have a happy and safe long weekend!

• Steve Rendle, the CEO of The North Face
• Kristina Johnson on the "Freedom From Oil" campaign in which 10,000 American flags were placed in front of the Washington Monument to call for independence from oil
• Renowned artist Alan Sonfist talks about the role that the natural world plays in his art
• And Dave Rauschkolb reports on Hands Across the Sand, the largest gathering against offshore oil drilling in history

A quick review of this past week's happenings in the blog world

The argument is that although people often seem to resist science and argue back against it, they’re frequently motivated by nonscientific considerations at the core -- nonscientific considerations that scientists themselves often don’t really understand. But alas, this means that arguing with them scientifically often doesn’t yield the desired result.

Takeru Kobayashi, a six-time winner of Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest, will not compete in this year’s iconic event at Coney Island. Kobayashi, perhaps the most recognizable figure in the world of competitive eating, is currently ranked No. 3 in the world by Major League Eating, the organization that oversees the Nathan’s Famous event and dozens of other contests around the globe.

Susan Spicer did not intend to be the face of the restaurant rebellion against BP over its role in the Gulf oil spill. But that’s what can happen when you file a lawsuit.

Ms. Spicer, long a respected New Orleans chef, spent most of Monday huddled with her lawyers, trying to map out a strategy after word got out that she was suing BP and several other companies on behalf of Gulf restaurant owners and seafood suppliers.

Suburbia ain't what it used to be--or what it could be: fun, attractive, and sustainable. That's the message from Atlanta architect Ellen Dunham-Jones in this engaging TED talk (h/t to Ezra Klein). (It runs almost 20 mintues.)

"The big design and devlopment project of the next 50 years is going to be retrofitting suburbia. Whether it's redeveloping dying malls, reinhabiting dead big-box stores, or reconstructing wetlands out of parking lots, the growing number of empty and underperforming retail sites throughout suburbia give us a tremendous opportunity to take our least sustainable landscapes right now and convert them into more sustainable places."

One big challenge: "underperforming asphalt"--the huge parking lots around defunct malls. Dunham-Jones cites an example in Minnesota where a lot was torn up and restored to the wetland it once was. The result? People wanted to live nearby, sparking private investment in homes. "It restored the local ecology and the local economy at the same time."

There are going to be seven or eight sessions across the country after next week's hearing in L.A.: Florida, New York, Colorado, Nebraska, North Carolina, for example. They’ll probably run one or two a week till the end of August. The Interior, the EPA, and the Forest Service will look at the public feedback, put together a report, and base recommendations on what the public has to say. We want to augment that and put forth our vision for Resilient Habitats.

Q: Obama’s initiative is in coordination with other government agencies, like the Department of Defense, Department of Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development, among others. Why?

The Sierra Club of all the environmental groups is probably best positioned for these efforts because of our Building Bridges to the Outdoors program and getting youth outside, and our Military Families Outdoors program. The Department of Interior in particular is very eager to work with us because they see it as part of their own campaign for the Obama Administration to pursue.

Such arrogance suggests a blatant disregard for the impact of [Massey's] mining practices on our communities, residents and particularly our children. These are children's lives we are talking about.

Change has been a constant throughout the history of our coal industry. West Virginians can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it, or resist and be overrun by it. One thing is clear. The time has arrived for the people of the Mountain State to think long and hard about which course they want to choose.

To be part of any solution, one must first acknowledge a problem. To deny the mounting science of climate change is to stick our heads in the sand and say "deal me out." West Virginia would be much smarter to stay at the table.

The Murkowski "Disapproval Resolution" overturns the "endangerment finding." This in essence is like voting to assert that there is no climate change or global warming going on, and to dismiss scientific facts that already exist.

I admire the determination and dedication that Ed and Debbie Wiley have shown. The Bible teaches that if we have faith of a mustard seed, we can move mountains. I believe that the Wileys have that faith.

And if you haven't already added your flag online, you can still join the crowd -- and you won't have to go through airport security to be a part of it.