Photo by Nick Humphries.

A version of this post originally appeared on Climate Progress.

Big polluters and their congressional allies have created a new straw man to knock down with the invention of the so-called “war on coal.” It is a multimillion-dollar disinformation campaign funded by Big Coal polluters to protect their profits and distract Americans from the deadly effects of air pollution on public health.

However, with the number of coal jobs in key coal states actually on the rise since 2009, it’s more like peacetime prosperity than war in coal country. The War on Coal is nothing more than a new shiny object, designed by big polluters to distract Americans from the real war — the polluters’ attacks on their health — and the truth.

Coal companies and dirty utilities claim that long-overdue requirements to reduce mercury, arsenic, smog, acid rain, and carbon pollution from power plants will kill jobs. In West Virginia, however, coal mining employment was higher in 2011 than at any time over the last 17 years. Federal jobs statistics also show modest coal mining job growth in coal states like Virginia and Pennsylvania.

In West Virginia, a recent report from the nonpartisan West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy showed coal mining jobs are actually rising, with 1,500 new coal jobs added since 2009. In Pennsylvania, Energy Information Administration (EIA) data shows a 2.3 percent increase in coal-related jobs. And in Virginia, EIA data shows a 6.7 percent increase in coal mining employment from 2009 to 2010.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has promulgated or proposed new clean air standards for smog, acid rain, mercury, air toxics, and carbon pollution that will save lives, create jobs, and protect public health. For example, the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard [PDF] alone could prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths, 130,000 asthma incidents, and 540,000 lost work days every year. This would provide at least $59 billion in economic benefits.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) projects that the mercury standard will actually have a “positive net impact on overall employment — likely leading to the net creation of 84,500 jobs between now and 2015.” The jobs created by the standard, however, would not just be limited to certain industrial sectors. EPI’s study projects that “8,000 jobs would be gained in the utility industry itself,” along with the over 80,500 jobs that would be created to build pollution control equipment. While dirty coal companies claim that the mercury standard will cause massive unemployment, EPI notes that “only 10,600 jobs would be displaced due to higher energy costs.” Richard Morgenstern, a former Reagan and Clinton EPA official, predicts that the new standard will have “no net impact” on employment.

EPA predicts that its proposed carbon pollution standard [PDF] for new power plants will have no impact on employment or existing coal plants. In fact, the standard simply complements existing market factors, as the EPA points out:

Because this standard is in line with current industry investment patterns, this proposed standard is not expected to have notable costs and is not projected to impact electricity prices or reliability.

So what is happening to King Coal? The real culprit is the low price for natural gas. A February 2012 analysis of coal plant retirements by the Analysis Group [PDF] found that coal plant declines resulted from basic changes in market forces:

 The sharp decline in natural gas prices, the rising cost of coal, and reduced demand for electricity are all contributing factors in the decisions to retire some … coal-fired generating units. These trends started well before EPA issued its new air pollution standards.

Coal industry executives themselves say that low natural gas prices, a warm winter, and a sluggish economy are the primary reasons for coal mining worker layoffs. The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) noted [PDF] that industry-commissioned doomsday projections of economic losses from EPA standards are vastly exaggerated by including unrelated regulations and worst-case scenarios. BPC found that “several investment analysts were conducted prior to EPA’s [rule] proposal and made worst case estimates about what EPA was likely to require.”

Coal-generated electricity is relatively inexpensive because the public pays for the external costs from burning coal. These expensive harms include premature deaths, asthma attacks, respiratory ailments, lost productivity, and the impacts of climate change. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that burning coal costs $62 billion annually due to premature deaths, more respiratory ailments, and lost work days.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity — a front group for coal companies and dirty utilities — plans to spend at least $40 million in ads and lobbying to convince Congress to block these vital public health standards. Fortunately, voters won’t be fooled by this attempt to distract them from the real public health impacts of dangerous air pollution. We understand that this isn’t a war on coal. It’s a war on us.

Bill McKibben at 350.org’s recent Rally to End Fossil Fuel Subsidies. (Photo by 350.org.)

In just a few weeks, world leaders are converging on Rio for a landmark “Earth Summit” to talk about sustainability issues — but it’s time for them to stop talking and start doing. And we know where they can begin.

This year our governments will hand nearly hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies to the coal, gas, and oil industries. Instead, they should cut them off.

Cutting fossil fuel subsidies could actually take a giant step towards solving the climate crisis: Phasing out these subsidies would prevent gigatonnes of carbon emissions and help make clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels.

And here’s the thing: This demand is completely reasonable — so reasonable that the leaders of the big countries have already agreed to it. The G20 promised in 2009 that fossil fuel subsidies would be phased out in the “medium term.” But the political power of the corporate polluters scares them, and so no nation has yet followed through.

If we want real action to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, we need to give world leaders a people-powered push as the Rio Summit approaches — and that push starts now with this global call to action.

Why focus on subsidies? Well, remember those pictures we took all over the world a few weeks ago, the ones where hundreds of thousands of people rallied in places wrecked by the drought, flood, fire, and melt that come with climate change? The billions in fossil fuel subsidies handed out to the fossil fuel industry are driving those climate disasters, and it’s time for us, and our political leaders, to connect the dots. Those billions should be spent investing in the world we want — in renewable energy, in efficiency, in public health and education — not sent to the corporate polluters who are super-heating our planet and threatening our future.

How are we going to ensure world leaders make good on their commitment to end fossil fuel subsidies? With a huge global groundswell of citizen pressure. Our friends at Avaaz, the planetary network for social good, are helping to lead this fight — already there are over half a million people signed on. In the U.S., hundreds of thousands of activists are pushing for landmark legislation to remove $113 billion in American fossil fuel subsidies over the next 10 years. But now we need a truly international effort in the lead-up to the Rio Earth Summit — which means enlisting you, and your friends.

Click here to sign on and spread the word.

After you sign on, please share the campaign with anyone you know who cares about the future. Or, for that matter, anyone who cares about not wasting their tax money by sending it to the richest industry on earth.

We’ll deliver the signatures on June 18, when world leaders arrive for the Earth Summit — in fact, we’ve got big plans brewing for some exciting ways to make sure our message in Rio is unignorable. But first we need you on the list, so please sign on today.

They’re undermining us again?

Earlier this week, I wrote about the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee voting through a provision that would kill the U.S. military’s ambitious biofuels program. Last night, the Senate Armed Services Committee did the same, and worse. It voted not only to block purchase of any fuel more expensive than fossil fuels, but to “prohibit the construction of a biofuels refinery or any other facility or infrastructure used to refine biofuels unless the requirement is specifically authorized by law.” Congress micromanaging military energy strategy: What could go wrong?

“But David,” you’re saying, “Democrats have a majority in the Senate. The committee has 14 Democrats and only 12 Republicans. How could this happen?”

Jim Webb (D-Va.)

Check out the list of Dems on the committee. It’s a Who’s Who of cravens, warmongers, and preening faux centrists — some of the most reliably disappointing Dems in the Senate. But last night, only two of them voted against energy security and the best judgment of U.S. military leaders. (It goes without saying that every Republican voted against innovation; it’s now reflexive for them.) The two Dems flipped the final vote [PDF] 13-12 in favor of overriding the military.

Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)

What ostensible Democrats had the vindictiveness, myopia, and dishonor necessary? Why, Jim Webb (Va.) and Joe Manchin (W.Va.), of course. Webb has long been a big booster of oil and coal, but voting to constrain military strategy in the name of preventing competitors to fossil fuels is low even for him. Manchin is, by all accounts, just dumb as a box of hair. His close election in 2010 convinced him that to survive he has to lunge right at every opportunity, so he lunges with abandon. He’d probably shoot a pool of algae with a rifle if his brain trust told him to. Above all, he is a servant of the coal industry, which needs to block biofuels as way to bully the military into using expensive and polluting coal-to-liquid fuels.

James Inhofe (R-Okla.)

Webb and Manchin, self-serving jerk and belligerent dunce, find their mirror image in the leaders of this backroom Republican insurgency against U.S. military policy: Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.). Inhofe’s against clean energy because ARGLE BARGLE. McCain, though, used to be in favor. He used to talk about climate change quite a bit. Proposed a bill or two on the subject, as I recall. But ever since he lost to Obama, he has been increasingly bitter.

John McCain (R-Ariz.)

Now he says, “Adopting a ‘green agenda’ for national defense of course is a terrible misplacement of priorities” and “the president doesn’t understand national security.” National security, to an overcompensating narcissist like John McCain, means war, threatening war, or doing something “tough” to show the world we’re ready for war. He doesn’t see how using less oil fits into that.

It is an unbelievable rebuke and insult to military leaders for Republicans in Congress to do this, but then again, Republicans in Congress have always had more fealty to fossil fuels than the military. Just imagine what will happen after November 2012!

The bill — the Pentagon budget for next year — still has to pass on the floor of the House and Senate, and then go to conference committee, and then to the president’s desk. At any of those junctures, these amendments could be stripped out. But things aren’t looking good so far.

Photo by eric lynch.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of our Ask Umbra advice column, and to celebrate, we’re pulling a favorite gem of eco-advice out of the archives each week. With Memorial Day weekend approaching, we thought it was time to revisit how to be properly patriotic. From Seattle reader Anne B.:

“Like any proud American, I want to fly our flag 24 hours a day to show my reverence for this awesome country. I am torn, though, because section 6a of the Flag Code requires the flag to be lit up during hours of darkness and this conflicts with my desire to cut back on my energy use. Can this rule be ignored in the name of the environment?”

Umbra reads Anne’s flag its rights, wonders if Seattle’s gloomy weather rains on Anne’s parade more than the night sky, and ceremoniously suggests a solution that will keep her flag basking in glory as long anyone is looking. Read on for the full Umbra answer.

Find more of Umbra’s pearls of wisdom here.

A version of this post originally appeared on Climate Progress.

“I don’t appreciate being called a terrorist,” the woman said firmly.

I was standing outside the Hilton Chicago hotel talking to Jim Lakely, the director of communications for the Heartland Institute, when an elderly woman approached us on the street. Dressed in a business suit, she was loading her luggage into a taxi when she noticed Lakely’s Heartland name badge and interrupted our conversation.

“We can have a civil discussion. But I really don’t like being labeled a terrorist,” she said, referencing a billboard posted by Heartland equating people who believe in global warming to the Unabomber. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Well, I appreciate you telling me that,” said Lakely, who was taking a break from managing Heartland’s conference to watch the 60 or so people protesting the event outside the hotel.

The woman, who was wearing a badge for a different conference, got into her taxi and drove away. There was a brief moment of awkward silence between Lakely and me.

The exchange perfectly encapsulated the public-relations disaster the Heartland Institute has created for itself over the last few weeks. The downfall started with an offensive billboard campaign on May 3, and ended with 11 companies pulling support for the organization — stripping 35 percent its of corporate funds overnight and leaving its financial future uncertain.

The dramatic drop in support was facilitated by the advocacy organization Forecast the Facts, which collected more than 150,000 signatures from people calling on corporate donors to end their relationship with Heartland. Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, Verizon, Wisconsin Insurance Alliance, and the Credit Union National Association are the latest to announce that they will not fund the Heartland Institute, bringing the total number of defecting companies to 15.

This series of events built on an earlier incident in which Peter Gleick, a scientist with the Pacific Institute, faked his identity to acquire internal documents from the Heartland Institute. Those documents showed that the organization planned to secretly develop school curriculum to spread doubt about the causes of climate change. It also opened up a window to the organization’s donors, which were forced to make a decision about whether or not they wanted to be associated with Heartland’s tactics.

And then yesterday, the other shoe dropped. In his closing speech, Heartland President Joseph Bast announced that the organization does not have the money to continue putting on its hallmark climate conference — an event that had become a rallying point for an insulated group of climate disinformers.

“I hope to see you at a future conference, but at this point we have no plans to do another [International Conference on Climate Change],” said Bast, explaining that Heartland was struggling to meet expenses.

The cancellation marks the end of an era — albeit a short era — for the oddball world of organized climate change denial.

The event was started in 2008 as a way to organize libertarians — many of whom believe that taking action on climate change would create a one-world government dominated by the United Nations.

Heartland tried hard to label the event a “science” conference. But the presentations were almost always political, peppered with anti-government rhetoric and conspiracy theories.

“We’re in a war. We’re in a war against our standard of living,” said Walt Cunningham, a former NASA astronaut, speaking in a morning session on Tuesday.

“There’s not a lot of science here,” said Scott Denning, an atmospheric scientist from Colorado State University who attended the event last year to present the so-called “warmist” case. Neither Denning nor any of the other 97 percent of climate scientists who say human activity is warming the planet presented at this year’s conference.

In fact, none of this year’s top speakers had any background in climate science. Instead, they spoke about the issues in highly conspiratorial terms.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, a former economist who gave the keynote address on Monday, called environmentalism “identical to communism — identical, not similar.”

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the featured keynote speaker for Tuesday, asked if we “need to put catalytic converters on our noses” by addressing heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.

And following Sensenbrenner’s nonsensical remarks, Heartland brought up “special mystery guest” Lord Christopher Monckton, who admitted at the beginning of his speech that he has “no scientific qualification” to challenge climate science. He then performed a comedy routine in which he questioned the legitimacy of President Obama’s citizenship — a joke that brought the room to full applause.

These fringe views made even Heartland senior staffers very nervous. After the billboard debacle, the leader of Heartland’s Washington, D.C., office, Eli Lehrer, left the organization and brought six staff members with him, saying the campaign “didn’t reflect the seriousness which I want to bring to public policy.”

But Heartland’s leadership twisted the knife into their self-inflicted wound with a decision to keep repeating their extreme rhetoric in the lead-up to the conference — later calling Bill McKibben and Michael Mann “Madmen.”

The rapid unraveling of Heartland forced it to scale down the conference, and seemingly kept attendees away. This year, only around 300 people showed up — a decrease from the 500 people at its first conference in 2008.

Despite the subdued mood, Rep. Sensenbrenner tried to rally the remaining troops during his Tuesday speech.

“Things are a lot better now than they were three years ago,” he said, referencing the failure to pass a carbon cap-and-trade bill and potential expiration of the Kyoto Protocol.

Things certainly weren’t better for Heartland. The following afternoon, the organization announced its decision to abandon the entire conference due to lack of funds and a backlash from corporate donors.

But Sensenbrenner was right about one thing: The public dialogue has moved dramatically backward in the last three years, driven largely by the aggressive disinformation tactics of the climate denial community — and enabled by the Obama administration’s decision to stop talking about the issue and the media’s decision to sharply curtail coverage.

While the dissolution of Heartland’s conference may be considered a “win” for those concerned about the spread of junk science and disinformation, there are still plenty of allies in industry and the halls of Congress willing to take up the denial cause.

Fill ‘er up — with biofuels? (Photo by U.S. Army Africa)

The U.S. military’s “going green” is not a singular phenomenon. There are several different things going on under that rubric, with different rationales and different effects. Some of them make such obvious strategic, economic, and environmental sense that no one really can, or does, oppose them. But one in particular — the biofuels initiative — is much less clear-cut. Before discussing that, though, let’s try to pick apart and categorize the green initiatives underway at the Department of Defense.

First off, there are attempts to reduce fossil-fuel use in the theater of war, mainly Iraq and Afghanistan, through more efficiency (insulated tents, LED lights) and the use of distributed renewables. These efforts directly enhance battlefield effectiveness. They make fighting units lighter and faster. They reduce the need for fuel convoys, saving lives and money. They are unimpeachable — even Republicans in Congress will hesitate to second-guess the military’s tactical logistics decisions.

Second, there are attempts to make U.S. military bases more independent of civilian power grids, which are vulnerable to accidents, blackouts, or attacks. In part this is being done by generating power on-site. Solar power for bases has become far more affordable, thanks to plummeting solar-panel prices, but there are also experiments underway with wind, geothermal, and biomass. Bases are also increasing energy and waste efficiency and experimenting with smart microgrids. These efforts seem somewhat more vulnerable to political attack, but I’ve not yet heard of any.

Third, there are efforts to find new liquid fuels for the military’s vast land, air, and water fleets. This one is the biggie, from the standpoint of sheer quantities of energy and money. It’s the most difficult. And it’s also the most controversial, in terms of Republican opposition and environmental risk.

There’s been work on hybrid military ground vehicles, but as far as I know, there’s no prospect of electricity substantially powering ships, planes, and tanks. There’s also very little being done on natural-gas vehicles for the military, at least that I’ve been able to find.

So that means biofuels. A lot of biofuels. Mind-boggling amounts.

Thus far, the military has been careful to avoid biofuel crops that compete with food crops, which are, as all good Grist readers know, a bane — and, climate-wise, not much better than gasoline. Instead, it is trying to stimulate markets in biofuel alternatives like cooking oil, algae, animal fats, and camelina.

It’s a fascinating and laudable effort, but there are two potential problems. First, all these alternatives are wildly expensive. (The algae fuel is $424 a gallon!) That’s to be expected — they’re all experimental. The military’s theory is that it represents a big enough customer to single-handedly create a market sufficient to drive down the cost to competitive levels.

That’s not entirely crazy. The military is the country’s biggest energy consumer: “In fiscal year 2009, the DOD consumed 932 trillion Btu of site delivered energy at a cost of 13.3 billion dollars.” Roughly three-quarters of that went to “mobility fuels” for the fleets. That’s close to $10 billion a year, or, put another way, 360,000 barrels of oil a day. That’s not enormous on a global level — only about 2 percent of U.S. consumption — but it seems large enough to provide biofuels with a serious kickstart. Innovation is never certain, but the military is going about it in a smart way, from labs to field tests.

Still, fuel costs are squeezing DOD’s budget today (see this new briefing from Third Way). Driving down the costs of biofuel alternatives fast enough, at a large enough scale, would be a stunning and, as far as I know, unprecedented achievement.

Which brings up the other possible problem, which is, what if the effort succeeds? It’s one thing to brew a few hundred thousand gallons of algae fuel. It’s another entirely to brew several billion gallons every year. Is there enough cooking oil in all the world’s McDonalds for that much fuel? Enough space to grow that much camelina? These fuels appear benign in their current small-batch phase, but if they were to scale up that much, that fast, it’s hard to say what kind of environmental or social problems might crop up.

Also, the main problem with oil, from a military strategic standpoint, is not so much anything about oil itself, but just the fact that it so dominates the fuel mix. The military is dependent on a single, volatile supply chain over which it has little control. The best move from a strategic standpoint is to diversify. But what if, at the end of all this, the military just ends up dependent on one or two forms of biofuel, with volatile supply chains of their own?

Even if those fuel supply chains are domestic — even if, by some miracle, enough non-food biofuel can be produced within the U.S. to fuel the military — is it really healthy to have the military so dependent on one or two domestic industries? Those would become industries that, for national-security reasons, can’t be allowed to fail or even substantially shrink. They’d be one more addition to the military-industrial complex, one more advocate for military expansion. It’s a recipe for corruption.

None of this is to say that congressional Republicans are right and DOD should just scrap the whole thing. But it is to say that the biofuels initiative is different from the other military “greening” initiatives, more economically and environmentally fraught. Getting lighter and faster on the battlefield saves money and lives; it is self-justifying. Making military bases more self-sufficient is self-evidently a smart strategic move. But shifting from oil to biofuels on a grand scale is a huge, audacious, expensive, and extremely risky gamble. It absolutely warrants close oversight and public discussion.

Thousands of Americans have already spoken out via email in support of these standards to protect our health and clean our air, and now hundreds more will do it in person at these hearings.

This morning I spoke at the Washington, DC, hearing. I want to share that testimony with you and encourage you to follow along with the hearings online to both voice your support and to see the support from Americans nationwide.

(Also, looks like the coal industry is still paying people to say they support coal – look at how they paid people to wear pro-coal shirts to the Chicago hearing)

Here’s what I said to the EPA this morning:

Good morning. My name is Mary Anne Hitt. I’m a mother, a concerned citizen, and the director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. I live in West Virginia with my family, and because my husband is traveling on business this week, I am joined today by my two-year-old daughter, Hazel. Hopefully, her patience will match the length of my remarks this morning. We will see.

I’m here today to voice my full support for the EPA’s proposed carbon pollution standard.

A decade ago, there were over 200 proposed coal-fired power plants on the drawing board nationwide. Fast forward to today, ten years later, and only a handful of those plants have been built. Why?

Some were rejected by moms, dads, small business owners, and other local residents who feared a major new industrial polluter in their backyard would harm their children’s health, destroy their property values, and trap them in a town or neighborhood condemned to a downward spiral of pollution and poverty.

Some were rejected by governors, who wanted their states to be clean energy leaders in the 21^st century, and thought major new investments in coal would take their state in exactly the wrong direction.

Some were rejected by state regulators, who feared that ratepayers would pay dearly on their electric bills if their state became locked into high carbon energy for the next fifty plus years.

And some were rejected by financial backers, who realized that these projects were an increasingly bad bet, because they simply could not compete with the rapidly dropping prices of cleaner sources of energy.

As a result, only one new coal-fired power plant has broken ground in the US since 2008, and the permit for that project was recently struck down in a unanimous decision by the Mississippi Supreme Court.

During this same decade, in 2009, the EPA issued its finding that carbon pollution endangers public health and welfare. As I just noted, Americans of all walks of life were simultaneously reaching the same conclusion – from financiers to governors, from state regulators to local moms and dads.

In issuing this proposed carbon pollution standard, the EPA has taken an important step to safeguard our health and our families.   As I’m sure you will hear many times today, carbon pollution has been linked by scientists to increasing temperatures and increasing levels of smog, which triggers asthma attacks and other life-threatening health problems.

But carbon pollution doesn’t just threaten our children’s health today. As the main cause of climate disruption, carbon pollution casts a dark shadow over every aspect of their future, a future menaced by the threat of increasing droughts, wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, and rising sea levels, not to mention the resulting political instability around the world.

My daughter Hazel is the light of my life. She is learning to sing, she never wants to come inside, and one of her favorite things is wandering around the alleys of our small town looking for cats. She is also an 11^th generation West Virginian, through her father. With our deep Appalachian roots, we understand all too well the challenges that the clean energy future poses to some parts of our country. But I believe we have the ingenuity and know-how to tackle those challenges. Here is how the largest newspaper in West Virginia, the Charleston Gazette, put it in their editorial this past Sunday:

This topic [climate change] has special resonance in West Virginia, a fossil fuel treasure trove. And what happens here has a special impact on the future of the planet. Pollution controls seeking to reduce global warming are sure to impose tighter restrictions on coal and natural gas. West Virginia’s energy should not be squandered on a shortsighted attempt to protect the status quo, or to discredit science in the public’s eyes, or to vilify the Obama administration’s very reasonable proposal that new coal-fired power plants be required to limit their greenhouse gas emissions.

The EPA’s proposed carbon pollution standard is a common-sense step towards addressing a very real threat to this nation, and to the future that my daughter, and all our children, will inherit. If anything, the EPA is arriving late in the game, following in the footsteps of community leaders, governors, state regulators, and financiers who all realized, in the past decade, that new power plants in this country must deal with their carbon pollution. I support the proposed standard, and I encourage you to finalize it with all due haste. Thank you.

Photo by Chiot’s Run.

If you’ve noticed more carrot-crunching, more orange-peeling, and an abundance of leafy green salads lately, it’s probably not a coincidence. As The Washington Post reported earlier this week, Americans eat more fresh foods than they did five years ago.

The WaPo story was based on a national phone survey conducted by the Kellogg Foundation, which found that the majority of Americans are trying to eat more fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, are shopping at farmers markets at least on occasion, and say they know “a lot or a little about where their fresh fruits and vegetables come from.” These findings are interesting — and they speak to the success of a whole array of efforts to get more of us cooking, examining what we eat, and honing in on the place where healthy and truly delicious foods intersect.

Less visible in the media landscape is the fact that the Kellogg Foundation survey also suggests that all this healthy eating has Americans looking outside themselves.

For one, they’re considering the environment — 64 percent say it’s “very important” that produce be grown in an “environmentally friendly way.” And the same number of people say it’s “very important” or “somewhat important” that produce be organic.

And nearly all — 93 percent — of those surveyed say they think it’s at least “somewhat important” to “make sure all Americans have equal access to fresh fruits and vegetables.” And three-quarters of the respondents said they support the idea of a national program that would double Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or “food stamps”) benefits at farmers markets. (Of course, this is more than an idea. As we reported recently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is currently expanding the number of farmers markets around the nation that are equipped to accept EBT cards.)

Beyond these basic humanitarian instincts — and despite the apparent popularity of Tea Party politics — the survey also suggests that Americans look to our public institutions to play a part in ensuring healthy food access:

• 81 percent strongly or partly agree that Washington, D.C., needs to do more to increase access to locally produced fresh food in communities throughout the country.

• 86 percent strongly or partly agree that state and local officials should play a role in ensuring local fresh food is accessible to local residents.

• 89 percent strongly or partly agree that the community should play a role in ensuring local fresh food is accessible to local residents.

• 83 percent strongly or partly agree that Washington, D.C., should shift its support more toward smaller, local fruit and vegetable farmers and away from large farm businesses.

• 83 percent strongly or partly agree that Washington, D.C., should provide more incentives to encourage the creation of new businesses that sell, process, and distribute locally produced healthy food.

It may be too late for this data to influence the current Farm Bill process — which has taxpayers slated to support those “large farm businesses” with tens of billions in subsidies while offering a few million here and there for “smaller, local fruit and vegetable farmers.” And that’s the best-case scenario put forth by the Senate; the worst case (the House of Representatives’ version) would also involve tens of billions in cuts to SNAP — the very program that is proving crucial to fresh produce access.

Either way, it raises the question: Is this data a snapshot of a trend that has peaked and will now begin to reverse? Or are we seeing the early signs of a larger shift toward a saner, and — yes — a crunchier, leafier food system?

As I mentioned earlier this week, we do still have some choice in the matter.

Four key themes are critical to watch the remainder of this year that are essential ingredients for progress on international global warming action: (1) the actions countries take at home right now; (2) the actions countries commit to implement at Rio+20; (3) how much progress is made in closing the “mitigation gap”; and (4) what stage is set this year for the international legal agreement that is to be reached in 2015.

[This is a four-part post.  Part 1—this post— focuses on the actions at that are happening at home in key countries and a couple of key issues to watch in these countries through the rest of this year.  Part 2 considers the actions at Rio+20 that are essential for moving forward on global warming action.  Part 3 discusses key actions to “close the mitigation gap” that are at critical turning points in 2012.  Part 4 outlines some key debates this year that are important to “lay the groundwork for future action”.] 

ACTING AT HOME RIGHT NOW

No global political signal or agreement is sufficient if countries don’t act at home to pass laws, adopt regulations, or support incentives which spur the necessary actions.  As a result, what happens in key countries around the world is essential for putting the world on a safer path.  So here are some key actions to watch in some of the key countries the rest of this year.

Some important countries have taken additional action at home this year.  Mexico has adopted a national law which establishes in domestic law the country’s target to reduce its emissions 30 percent below business-as-usual emissions by 2020 and 50 percent below 2000 levels by 2050.  The law sets in place the foundation for even greater action by Mexico under future Administrations.

The South Korean Government approved a mandatory carbon trading program for its biggest polluters. The legislation is set to go into effect in 2015 and would cap the carbon pollution from power plants, steel plants, ship makers, and large universities.  The final details are still to be worked out sometime this year so stay tuned.

South Africa announced that it will introduce a rising price on carbon pollution from major sources starting in 2013.  The proposal is to implement the carbon tax at a level of $16 per ton in 2013, with annual increases of 10 percent through 2019.  Final details could come later this year.

The European Union program to reduce the carbon pollution from aviation has gone into effect.  Starting this January all aircraft that choose to use European airports have to reduce their carbon pollution that is causing global warming.  It is a common-sense approach which helps to slow the growth of pollution from aviation – which is set to almost double by 2025 if left uncontrolled.  Unfortunately this program is under constant attack by the “coalition of the inaction”, but to date the E.U. has shown no signs that it is willing to let these attacks undermine its law. 

The U.S. has proposed some new rules for the carbon pollution from power plants and methane from natural gas.  More than one million citizens have submitted comments in support of the power plant rules—the most in the history of any environmental rule in the U.S.  In addition, the U.S. government has finalized important standards for major appliances that will significantly reduce how much energy they use (e.g., clothes washing machines and microwaves).  Later this year we also expect that the final standards for the global warming pollution from new passenger vehicles will be extended through 2025.

Clean energy continues to soar. In 2011, new clean energy investments rose to a record $263 billion – a 6.5 percent increase from last year. So while many policymakers and commentators still perceive renewable energy as something that can be done only if you have lots of extra money for incentives, the reality is quite different.  For example, one new study from Bloomberg New Energy Finance concluded that: “power generated from solar photovoltaic (PV) panels is much closer to competitiveness with conventional electricity generation than many policy-makers and commentators have realized.”

The Brazilian decision on changes to the forest law – will reductions in deforestation slow? In recent years Brazil has shown remarkable progress in reducing the rate of deforestation and the associated global warming pollution thanks to some policies the government adopted.  But just as Brazil is about to host a critically important high-level Summit – Rio+20—President Dilma Rousseff is being confronted with a law that changes the Brazilian Forest Law in a way that would dramatically increase deforestation in the coming years. Will she veto this law as more than 1.8 million people have now demanded or will Rio+20 be chopped down by deforestation?

ACTING NOW: WHAT OTHER ACTIONS WILL COME THIS YEAR?

Over the remainder of this year it will be critical that the countries that made commitments at Copenhagen, Cancun, and Durban follow through with even more action as their existing action isn’t sufficient to meet their commitments or fully address global warming.  In addition, it will be critical that the remaining big polluters step up to the plate and make commitments as there is a “missing 20%” of the world’s global warming pollution that have yet to outline their commitments.

Will further steps be taken this year by the key countries and will new countries come forward with commitments?  Rio+20 and the climate negotiations in Doha provide a prime opportunity for these actions to materialize (see the next posts for more details).

This piece was originally published at NRDC’s Switchboard.

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Photo: Courtesy of chucksta420, under the Creative Commons License.

Photo by the U.S. Army.

The U.S. military recognizes that dependence on fossil fuels is a threat to U.S. strategic influence and its own operational effectiveness. With that in mind, it’s trying to make itself lighter and leaner, reducing energy consumption at bases and on the battlefield while working to develop fuel alternatives for its ship and plane fleets. Republicans have been quietly grumbling about this for a while; now they are openly opposing it. The GOP wastes no opportunity to boast of “supporting the troops,” but that support apparently ends where Big Oil contributions begin.

Let’s look at a few examples, shall we?

GOP tries to block use of cleaner fuels

Last week, the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee proposed a new Pentagon budget. Tucked away inside it was a provision that would prohibit the Department of Defense from buying any alternative fuels that cost more than conventional fossil fuels. TPM has the story.

Slate’s Fred Kaplan laments that this provision would kill the $12 million “Green Strike Group” program the Navy is running, which would field a strike group running entirely on biofuels (and a nuclear-powered carrier) for a naval exercise in June. The Navy hopes to have an entire “Great Green Fleet” in the water by 2016.

But the language is far broader than that. It would effectively prohibit military field-testing of any non-fossil fuel. After all, if alternatives were already cheaper than fossil fuels, they wouldn’t be alternatives. The Air Force couldn’t experiment with fuel blends for its jets. The Army couldn’t fuel its “Green Warrior Convoy.” This provision would explicitly ban the military from being an instrument of energy innovation.

GOP tries to push use of dirtier fuel

But wait! There is one expensive alternative fuel that congressional Republicans support. You see, Section 526 of 2007′s Energy Independence and Security Act prohibits the military from buying fuel that is more carbon-intensive than crude oil. Earlier this month, Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas) offered an amendment to an appropriations bill, later passed by the House, that would bar the military from enforcing Sec. 526.

Why, you ask? “Placing limits on federal agencies’ fuel choices,” says Flores, “is an unacceptable precedent to set in regard to America’s energy policy and independence.”

Yes, I’ll let that irony sink in a moment.

Why are Republicans so keen to get rid of Sec. 526? Are there dirtier-but-cheaper fuels the military could be using?

Well, no. Instead, Republicans have seized on the idea of using the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert coal to liquid fuel (a technology made famous by Hitler — don’t tell the Heartland Institute). Building a plant to do this requires enormous capital investment, running one requires enormous operational and maintenance investments, and the result is … fuel more expensive than oil. This is to say nothing of the fact that it requires mining and transporting coal on the front end and releases up to 2.5 times as much CO2 as oil when burned.

So, let’s pause and review. The Republican position on military fuel choices is as follows: Congressional restrictions are an “unacceptable precedent” when they prohibit dirtier fuels, but necessary when they prohibit cleaner fuels. Also, it is unacceptable for the military to pay more for cleaner fuels, but necessary for it to pay more for dirtier fuel.

If you were cynical, you’d almost think that the issue had nothing to do with Congress’s relationship with the military, or with costs. You’d almost think Republicans just support fossil fuels and oppose clean energy, no matter the context.