Creating Clean Energy Jobs: Helping People Helping the Environment

Tuesday, June 23, 2009, 11:00 a.m.

Congressman Tom Perriello
Homeowner Ingrid Feggans
Homeowner Chad Thorne
Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris
Albemarle County Supervisor Ann Mallek
Worker Michael Stewart
Chair of White House Council on Environmental Quality Nancy Sutley
Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise, and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality Van Jones (hovering but not speaking)

Backstory: Admirable, if insufficient, as this event was, there is an unpleasant context. The week before this event, Congressman Tom Perriello voted for $100 billion for wars (which he was happy to do) combined with $100 billion in loans to eastern European banksters through the International Monetary Fund (which he will likely be hammered for in television ads a year from now, and which he claims to have opposed even while voting for). The White House and Democratic Party leaders made a lot of promises and threats to pass the bill in a very close vote. The day before this event House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer came to Charlottesville for an event with Perriello. Now Van Jones and Nancy Sutley came. Who will be next? My money is on a south district event with a military big whig. You read it here first.

OPEN FOR VIDEOS

http://pdamerica.org

Whether or not the rumors of fast-tracking the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACESA), HR 2454, sponsored by Reps. Waxman and Markey, prove to be true, one thing is certain--the bill as written is very flawed.

Tell Congress to overhaul or scrap ACESA!

Today, PDA sent a letter to PDA board members Reps. Raul Grijalva and Lynn Woolsey, co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Barbara Lee, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, outlining our objections to the legislation. Read it here.

Send an email to your representative asking him or her to vote NO on the ACESA if the objections are not addressed in the bill.

Just as single-payer was left off the table, other effective mechanisms for addressing carbon emissions—the revenue-neutral carbon tax and cap-and-dividend--have not yet been debated by Congress.

Take Action at Progressive Democrats of America.

Letter circulated by Reps. Keith Ellison and Chellie Pingree:

June ___, 2009
Dear
Thank you for your continued commitment to strengthen our economy and
protect our environment. As you know, H.R. 2454, The American Clean
Energy and Security Act, offers our country the most important
opportunity in generations to jumpstart our economy, create millions
of new, well-paying jobs and set the stage for America to compete and
win in a 21st century economy while reducing global warming
pollution. A strong clean energy jobs bill will benefit small
businesses and set us on the pathway back to economic prosperity.
H.R. 2454 in its current form represents a great effort put forward by
the Committee on Energy and Commerce. We commend the work that has
already been done and look forward to working with you to strengthen

Hi-Res Photos, B-roll and Video will be available, www.mountainaction.org.

Activists Risk Arrest to Stop Mountaintop Removal

Scale 20-storey tall machinery to call attention to nation’s worst form of coal mining; This is the first time a dragline has been scaled on a mountaintop removal site

White House Climate Change Report Issues Dire Warning On Worsening Situation
Seth Borenstein | Huffington Post

Rising sea levels, sweltering temperatures, deeper droughts, and heavier downpours _ global warming's serious effects are already here and getting worse, the Obama administration warned on Tuesday in the grimmest, most urgent language on climate change ever to come out of any White House.

But amid the warnings, scientists and government officials seemed to go out of their way to soften the message. It is still not too late to prevent some of the worst consequences, they said, by acting aggressively to reduce world emissions of heat-trapping gases, primarily carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

The new report differs from a similar draft issued with little fanfare or context by George W. Bush's administration last year. It is paradoxically more dire about what's happening and more optimistic about what can be done.

The Obama administration is backing a bill in Congress that would limit heat-trapping pollution from power plants, refineries and factories. A key player on a climate bill in the Senate, California Democrat Barbara Boxer, said the report adds "urgency to the growing momentum in Congress" for passing a law. Read more.

Agent Orange Continues to Poison Vietnam
By Marjorie Cohn | MarjorieCohn.com

Last week, the Bureau of the IADL, meeting in Hanoi, presented President Nguyen Minh Triet of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam with the final decision of the Tribunal. The judges found the U.S. government and the chemical companies guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ecocide during the illegal U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam. We recommended that the Agent Orange Commission be established in Vietnam to assess the damages suffered by the people and destruction of the environment, and that the U.S. government and the chemical companies provide compensation for the damage and destruction.

This is NOT from the Onion.

Settlement Reached in Human Rights Cases Against Royal Dutch/Shell | Press Release
On Eve of Trial, Settlement Agreements Provide $15.5 Million for Compensation to Nigerian Human Rights Activists and to Establish Trust Fund

New York, June 8, 2009 — Today, the parties in Wiwa v. Shell agreed to settle human rights claims charging the Royal Dutch/Shell company, its Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC or Shell Nigeria), and the former head of its Nigerian operation, Brian Anderson, with complicity in the torture, killing, and other abuses of Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and other non-violent Nigerian activists in the mid-1990s in the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta.

The settlement, whose terms are public, provides a total of $15.5 million. These funds will compensate the 10 plaintiffs, who include family members of the deceased victims; establish a Trust intended to benefit the Ogoni people; and cover a portion of plaintiffs’ legal fees and costs. The settlement is only on behalf of the individual plaintiffs for their individual claims. It does not resolve outstanding issues between Shell and the Ogoni people, and the plaintiffs did not negotiate on behalf of the Ogoni people.

The Nature Conservancy: Forest offsets more important than emissions reduction targets
By Chris Lang | REDD-Monitor

We know what The Nature Conservancy thinks about forest offsets. It loves them. It loves them so much that it has got into bed with the biggest coal-burner in the US, American Electric Power. Meanwhile, TNC has developed a “global mechanism proposal”, which includes a goal of 3 billion tons of “emissions reductions from REDD” by 2020. These would be “fully fungible with emissions reductions from other sectors”. This is precisely what carbon traders, the timber industry and polluting companies like AEP want: forest carbon offsets.

At a side event at the UN Climate negotiations in Bonn earlier this week, TNC’s Greg Fishbein (whose job title, incidentally, is “Managing Director of Forest Carbon”) said, “We recognise that a goal like this needs to be combined with strict Annex I targets to ensure that these emissions reductions are in fact in addition to a contribution to overall emissions reductions and not just replacing emissions reductions that are taking place some place else.”

But when TNC talks about “strict Annex I targets”, what do they actually mean?

During the questions after the presentations, TNC inadvertently let slip that meaningful emissions reduction targets are not so important to them after all. Read more.

Controversial deal between US-based conservation NGOs and polluting industry slammed
By Chris Lang | REDD-Monitor

Last week, an organisation called Avoided Deforestation Partners launched what they blandly describe as “an agreement on policies aimed at protecting the world’s tropical forests”. Under this agreement, “companies would be eligible to receive credit for reducing climate pollution by financing conservation of tropical forests”. It is a loophole allowing industry to write a cheque and continue to pollute. This is another nightmare vision of REDD, similar to that recently proposed by the Australian government. Another similarity with Australia is the support received from what is at first glance a surprising source: big international conservation NGOs.

REDD-Monitor received the following anonymous contribution about the agreement. We reproduce it in full in the hope of generating further discussion about this liaison between conservation NGOs and polluting industry.

The following organisations signed the agreement: American Electric Power, Conservation International, Duke Energy, Environmental Defense Fund, El Paso Corporation, National Wildlife Federation, Marriott International, Mercy Corps, Natural Resources Defense Council, PG&E Corporation, Sierra Club, Starbucks Coffee Company, The Nature Conservancy, Union of Concerned Scientists, The Walt Disney Company, Wildlife Conservation Society, and the Woods Hole Research Center. Read more.

Obama Administration Targets Environmental and Animal Rights Activists as Eco-Terrorists
By Stephen Lendman

What began under George Bush continues under Barack Obama - targeting dedicated activists with "one of today's most serious domestic terrorism threats," according former FBI Deputy Assistant Director of Counterterrorism John Lewis before a Senate panel in May 2005. Called "eco-terrorism," it grew out of the 2001 USA Patriot Act that created the federal crime of "domestic terrorism" and applied it to US citizens as well as aliens.

In his February 2002 testimony before the House Resources Committee, Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, the FBI's Domestic Terrorism Section Chief, Counterterrorism Division, James Jarboe defined eco-terrorism as:

WE DON'T NEED THE GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION
by Mike Ferner

Times are anxious indeed, but simultaneously we are face-to-face with an extremely rare chance to replace our transportation system with something we can literally live with.

To take advantage of this uncommon opportunity we will have to do something far more profound, yet less costly, than a government bailout or an act of Congress. We will have to, as Paul Newman said in Cool Hand Luke, "get our minds right" on one simple fact: what we need is reliable, sustainable transportation. That does not mean we need General Motors Corporation or even cars. Contemplate the freedom implied in that statement for just a moment: we do not need General Motors Corporation.

By Dave Lindorff

Just imagine for a moment that you are a retired contractor, struggling to get by on your pathetically shriveled 401(k). when your ne-er-do-well child suddenly comes to you saying he’s got this idea to start buying derelict homes and rehabbing them for resale. He asks you to stake him with a $100,000 loan (about half of what you’ve got left in your retirement fund), promising to repay you when he sells his first couple of houses. You know the kid’s flat busted and has been laid off from his job as a dishwasher, so you want to help, but you’ve also seen his carpentry skills: The doghouse he build in high school fell apart on a windy day, and his own house has a leaking roof, needs repainting, and all the plumbing leaks. You’ve also seen his business skills: He plays the Lotto excessively, hasn’t saved a penny, and buys most of his supplies at the local 7-Eleven.

Would you front this kid half your money?

Oil Economy Driving Growth of Controversial Tar Sands
By Chris Arsenault | IPS

A report from one of the world’s top energy consultancies says oil production in Canada’s tar sands could see a five-fold increase by 2035.

"The oil sands have moved from the fringe to the center of energy supply," notes the report "Growth in the Canadian Oil Sands: Finding a New Balance" released by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) on May 18.

Environmentalists and some aboriginal groups want the oil sands to stay on the fringes because extracting heavy oil produces more greenhouse gas emissions than convention crude.

Meanwhile, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) issued a report titled "The Canadian Oil Sands: Energy Security vs Climate Change" on May 22 arguing that both the negative environmental impacts and benefits to U.S. energy security from Canada’s tar sands are overstated.

"Smart regulation can place a fair and reasonable price on the oil sands’ greenhouse gas emissions, providing the right incentive to reduce them," said Michael Levi, an author of the CFR report.

Levi told IPS that lifecycle green house gas emmissions from the tar sands are 17 percent worse than conventional U.S. oil imports. Environmentalists dispute this claim, stating oil production from the tar sands is at least three times worse than conventional oil.

"The development of Canadian oil sands encapsulates the complexities that the world faces on energy, environment and security," said IHS CERA chairman Daniel Yergin in a statement. Read more.

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The first comprehensive report into the human cost of climate change warns the world is in the throes of a "silent crisis" that is killing 300,000 people each year.

Greenland ice could fuel severe U.S. sea level rise | Reuters | Yahoo!

New York, Boston and other cities on North America's northeast coast could face a rise in sea level this century that would exceed forecasts for the rest of the planet if Greenland's ice sheet keeps melting as fast as it is now, researchers said on Wednesday.

Sea levels off the northeast coast of North America could rise by 12 to 20 inches more than other coastal areas if the Greenland glacier-melt continues to accelerate at its present pace, the researchers reported.

This is because the current rate of ice-melting in Greenland could send so much fresh water into the salty north Atlantic Ocean that it could change the vast ocean circulation pattern sometimes called the conveyor belt. Scientists call this pattern the meridional overturning circulation.

Requiem for the Last American Soldier to Die in Iraq
By Brian Turner | Network of Spiritual Progressives

If you’re watching this then it means I’m not around anymore. I imagine you’re probably in your late teens now. Maybe Mt. Kilimanjaro no longer has snow on its peak. Maybe the ice shelves on the northern coasts of Alaska have melted back and polar bears are dwindling in number. I always wanted to get up there and see Alaska. Maybe you’ll make it up there one day yourself. I wonder if it’s somehow possible for you to buy a plane ticket to Baghdad, to visit Iraq as a tourist. Will you visit the places where I’ve been? Will you talk to the people there? Will you tell them my name?

At some point in the future, soldiers will pack up their rucks, equipment will be loaded into huge shipping containers, C-130s will rise wheels-up off the tarmac, and Navy transport ships will cross the high seas to return home once again. At some point — the timing of which I don’t have the slightest guess at — the war in Iraq will end. And I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately — I’ve been thinking about the last American soldier to die in Iraq.

Tonight, at 3 a.m., a hunter’s moon shines down into the misty ravines of Vermont’s Green Mountains. I’m standing out on the back deck of a friend’s house, listening to the quiet of the woods. At the Fairbanks Museum in nearby St. Johnsbury, the lights have been turned off for hours and all is dark inside the glass display cases, filled with Civil War memorabilia. The checkerboard of Jefferson Davis. Smoothbore rifles. Canteens. Reading glasses. Letters written home. Read more.

US Army gets eco-conscious, preps mega solar plant
By Austin Modine | The Register

You know the "go green" push is reaching a zenith when the fuel-slurping US Army wants to get serious about having a daintier environmental footprint.

The Army said it's enlisting several big new energy projects to promote less energy waste in local and overseas bases. Among its ambitions are rolling out a fleet of electric vehicles, establishing biomass fuel demonstrations at select Army posts, and constructing what could be one of the most powerful solar power plants in the world.

"We spend over $3bn every year on energy and the majority of it is spent on our installations. We can significantly reduce our energy consumption by partnering within government and with the private sector to capitalize on the great strides in proven technology that have been developed and implemented across the country," said Secretary of the Army Pete Geren. Read more.

It's opposed by Public Citizen, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace, and ...

NASA Warming Scientist James Hansen Hopes Congressional Climate Bill Fails!
By Marc Morano, Climate Depot

Washington, DC - NASA scientist James Hansen, perhaps the most vocal voice in the U.S. warning of a man-made global warming crisis, has declared he hopes Congressional efforts to pass a cap-and-trade climate bill fail. "I hope cap and trade doesn't pass, because we need a much more effective approach,” Hansen said during a keynote lecture at Columbia University's climate conference on May 2, 2009.

And the Repubs haven't even gotten their own claws into it yet...

With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?...

READ THE REST AT BRADBLOG.

Meanwhile: Obama Nominates Superfund Polluter Lawyer to Run DOJ Environment Division

See: OpEdNews and ThinkProgress.

Two Fridays ago on the first day of its release, I went to an early afternoon screening of the film The Soloist. I'd been eager to see it since it focuses on the real life relationship between Los Angeles Times journalist Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a homeless member of Los Angeles' Skid Row community suffering from debilitating mental illness. In the story, as told in Lopez' columns in the LA Times, in his book, and in the screenplay by Susannah Grant, Lopez first meets middle-aged Nathaniel Ayers in downtown Los Angeles in front of a statue of Beethoven where Ayers is playing a two string violin. In that serendipitous meeting Lopez discovers that as a youth Ayers had been a gifted student at Juilliard, New York's prestigious school for the performing arts. This revelation leads Lopez on a personal mission to rehabilitate the troubled man - a mission Lopez is still on today, four years after their first encounter.

My intense desire to see this film had been predicated, foolishly as I have since come to learn, on the romantic notion that viewers would see The Soloist and be moved to help the homeless. But the film I saw, with its cartoon-like unsympathetic portrayal of the people of Skid Row, that displayed none of their individuality, humanity or humor, would never provoke such action. Instead of showing the hearts of the inhabitants and telling a few of their tales, the film portrayed them as a Fellini-esque monolith - a tainted Gomorrah teeming with decadence and dereliction.

By Norman Solomon

In the Arctic, sea ice is melting. In the United States, houses are foreclosing.

And in Washington, the Senate is becoming a real-life Bermuda Triangle for progressive agendas.

Proposals for major limits on carbon emissions aren’t getting far in the Senate, where the corporate war on the environment has an abundance of powerful allies.

As for class war, it continues to rage from the top down. Last week, a dozen Democratic senators teamed up with Republicans to defeat a bill that would have allowed judges to reduce mortgages in bankruptcy courts.

President Obama supported that bill. But as the Associated Press reported, he was “facing stiff opposition from banks” and “did little to pressure lawmakers” on behalf of the measure. The Senate “defeated a plan to spare hundreds of thousands of homeowners from foreclosure through bankruptcy.”

By Dave Lindorff

For almost a generation, the Democrats in Congress have been able to pretend to be the party of ordinary working people, the party of progressives, and the inheritor of the mantel of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, all the while doing little of substance and catering primarily to the interests of Wall Street and the nation’s corporate interests.

The Democrats managed this sleight of hand for so long by claiming that while they had the best of intentions, reality, in the form of their inability to pass legislation, even when they were in the majority in both houses of Congress, that could avoid being filibustered to death by a Republican minority.

That situation has continued to this day, with the party currently having 58 seats in the Senate.

More Than 100 Arrested in Series of Protests
By Theola Labbé-DeBose and John Wagner | Washington Post

More than 100 people were arrested during a series of demonstrations in Washington yesterday, including five members of Congress who were part of a group that gathered outside the Sudanese Embassy to condemn the expulsion of aid agencies from Darfur.

All told, police squared off with demonstrators at three unrelated protests that began in the morning and continued into the afternoon. Eight people were arrested outside the embassy, seven Greenpeace activists were arrested near the State Department, and 91 others were arrested during a demonstration by disability rights advocates outside the White House.

The activities followed a weekend of other protests connected to the meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Yesterday began with a show of civil disobedience that snarled rush-hour traffic as seven Greenpeace activists scaled a construction crane at 23rd Street and Constitution Avenue NW, near the State Department, and unfurled a huge banner to call attention to global warming. The crane was on the site of a future institute for peace.

Van Jones: The Face of Green Jobs
Meet Obama’s environmental evangelist. By Chadwick Matlin | The Big Money

Years before it was announced that Van Jones, the premier green-jobs advocate in the country, was headed to the White House, it was clear that Van Jones was headed to the White House. Thomas Friedman devoted an entire 2007 column to Jones, writing of his lofty goals, "I would not underestimate him." Jones muscled his way through Congress to get a Green Jobs Act passed in 2007 and then lavished praise on Nancy Pelosi and now-Labor Secretary, then-Rep. Hilda Solis. Pelosi returned the favor with a rave book blurb for Jones' 2008 best-seller The Green Collar Economy, writing that Jones possessed "sparkling intelligence, powerful vision, and deep empathy." When he wasn't running his fix-poverty, fix-the-planet nonprofit in Oakland, Calif., he was seeding Obama's transition team with ideas for an all-encompassing environmental/labor/energy/economic plan that would push the country toward a green future. After The New Yorker ran a glowing yet thorough profile of Jones in January, his ascendancy was complete. By the time the green-jobs-heavy stimulus bill passed, Jones may as well have been in the White House, since his philosophy had infected the place.

Tomgram: Chip Ward, Let's Not Recover | TomDispatch.com

It's natural, whether as a website or an individual, to get caught up in issues that are immediate and urgent. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have been the focus of so many TomDispatch columns are happening right now. People are dying now. The economy is melting down now. The foreclosed and homeless are waking up now in ever-growing numbers. Unemployment lines are getting longer as you read this. Children are hungry this very minute, and the anxiety of a middle-class in freefall is palpable right now almost anywhere you go.

But now and then, it's also useful to take a step back and ask some longer term questions. Even if we could stop the wars, put people back to work (and back into their homes), even if we could get consumers spending again, there's always the "what-for" question. What have we accomplished if all we've done is reset the clock on the next war, the next bubble, the next bust... and if, all the while, the ice is melting and the globe warming?

Chip Ward, a TomDispatch contributor since 2003, spent 16 years confronting corporations that pollute and run, leaving sickness and suffering in their wake. He was focused on urgent and immediate tasks that made a difference right away (and, while he was at it, running a library system in Salt Lake City that was slowly filling up with homeless people). Recently, he took a break and retreated to the remote canyons of southern Utah where he's been reflecting on that bigger picture and, as it happens, on the nature of bigness itself at a moment when "too big to fail" is the phrase du jour. Tom

Too Big to Fail
Ecological Ignorance and Economic Collapse
By Chip Ward

"Too big to fail." It's been the mantra of our economic meltdown. Although meant to emphasize the overwhelming importance of this bank or that corporation, the phrase also unwittingly expresses a shared delusion that may be at the root of our current crises -- both economic and ecological.

In nature, nothing is too big to fail. In fact, big is bound to fail. To understand why that's so means stepping away from a prevailing set of beliefs that holds us in its sway, especially the deep conviction that we operate apart from nature's limits and rules.

Here's the heart of the matter: We are ecologically illiterate -- not just unfamiliar with the necessary scientific vocabulary and concepts, but spectacularly, catastrophically, tragically dumb. Oh yes, some of us now understand that draining those wetlands, clear-cutting the rainforests, and pumping all that CO2 into the atmosphere are self-destructively idiotic behaviors. But when it comes down to how nature itself behaves, we remain remarkably clueless.