Latest Articles

Paterson taps green ally to fill Clinton's senate seat

New York Gov. David Paterson (D) today tapped upstate Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) to fill the Senate seat vacated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Now in her second term in the House, Gillibrand has a mixed record on environmental issues but has received strong support from green groups.

Gillibrand, who has represented New York's 20th district since 2007, is characterized as a centrist Democratic up-and-comer. In the past, she was endorsed by the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, as well as the National Rifle Association.

After pulling a 95 percent score from LCV in her first year in office, she earned just a 69 percent in 2008. That puts her lifetime score at 85 percent, and she got rave reviews from the League in her reelection bid last year.

"Kristin Gillibrand has been a great friend in the House and will be a powerful ally in the Senate," LCV President Gene Karpinski said in a statement Friday shortly after her selection was announced. "In her first year, she voted in favor of clean energy and environmental protection 95 percent of the time. She understands the powerful potential of clean, renewable energy to create American jobs and will be a key vote on clean energy issues."

In her first year in office, Gillibrand helped secure $35,000 from the United States Department of Agriculture's Rural Development Program for a project to install a solar energy system at a diary farm in Washington County, N.Y. She also voted for a measure to end tax breaks for oil and gas companies and fund renewable energy.

She also won praise from the New York State chapter of LCV. "Kirsten Gillibrand has proven her mettle on Capitol Hill by fighting for cleaner air, alternative energy and environmental safeguards," said Marcia Bystryn, president of the New York LCV in her endorsement last year. "Now, we urge voters in the 20th District to return her to Washington for another term, to work toward an energy-independent future that confronts the dangers of climate change while protecting New York's economy and growing jobs."

'Climate change,' 'global warming,' 'climate chaos' — what terminology fits best?

The usual scientific term for what I refer to as "climate chaos" is "climate change." Scientific preference is a strong argument in favor of using the latter term, and climate scientists prefer it to the term "global warming" because it encompasses changes besides average surface temperature, such as rising sea levels, increased floods and droughts, and stronger storms.

But in my opinion it encompasses too much. After all, denier blather about a new ice age also describes a (discredited) type of climate change. It is rather like referring to cancer as "cell change." (Cancer certainly is one kind of cell change.) Also a lot of delayers like the term "climate change" because it is emotionally neutral, and it helps them frame the debate they way they want.

What about the term "global warming"?

Nature: Antarctica has warmed significantly over past 50 years

The rest of the media is finally catching up to my post from last month.

That's because Nature published the peer-reviewed paper that was first reported at the American Geophysical Union meeting and Nature's own blog (!), "Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year" ($ub. req'd, abstract below).

Scientists know the Antarctic ice sheet is losing mass "100 years ahead of schedule."

It is really only the warming of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that you should worry about (at least for this century) because it's going to disintegrate long before the East Antarctic Ice Sheet does -- since WAIS appears to be melting from underneath (i.e. the water is warming, too), and since, as I wrote in the "high water" part of my book, the WAIS is inherently less stable:

Americans' climate change doubts aren't hard to understand

As if in response to David Roberts' point that "[t]here is nothing close to the public or political support necessary to pass the kind of sweeping policies necessary to eliminate America's emissions," Pew is out with a new poll saying just that.

Kevin Drum (via Andy Revkin) has the details:

Global warming, once again, ranks as the lowest priority from a list of 20, and the more general category of "protecting the environment" fell 15 percentage points from last year.

And as if that's not bad enough, Revkin also points to a new Rasmussen poll, which finds that 44% of U.S. voters don't believe humans are the cause of global warming, compared to only 41% who do. That's even worse than last year's results.

Somehow, those numbers don't surprise me. Leaving aside the fact that, thanks to the contingencies of history, the developed world has ended up occupying the parts of the planet likely to be affected least by climate change, the whole phenomenon is too vague and amorphous for most Americans to focus on. It just doesn't feel real to many people. After all, the weather is weird. Sometimes it's warm. Sometimes it's cold. Sometimes it rains.

In fact, I'm willing to bet the poll numbers for global warming will wax and wane in correlation with the temperature in any given year (just like a president's approval rating correlates pretty well with perceptions about the economy). Is it cold this year? Support will fall. A beastly hot summer? Up go the poll numbers.

Meanwhile, we as a society aren't particularly good with the whole science thing in general. Let's look at some numbers from a National Science Foundation poll back in 2004.

• Only 40% of Americans know that the universe began with the Big Bang.
• Fully half don't believe in evolution (with 1 in 5 entirely "unaware" of the concept at all).
• 58% of Americans think lasers focus sound waves rather than light. Lasers! Didn't these people see Star Wars?!
• And capping it all off: 29% of Americans don't know that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

What part of Americans' confusion regarding anthropogenic climate change is hard to understand? Even the concept of the scientific method is understood by only a fraction of our society. This all is why Joe Romm is running a pool on the nature of the near-term catastrophes required to turn Americans' climate change doubts into certainty.

And, tellingly, the partisan split is huge, with 59% of Democrats saying climate change is caused by humans, while only 21% of Republican agree. And why should they? Climate skepticism has been a cornerstone of Bush Republicanism for eight years -- and so far it looks like many in the GOP will continue to use it as a rallying cry.

If there's any hope in these recent climate poll numbers, it comes from a figure buried in Rasmussen's poll. They found that 64% of American voters believe climate change, whatever the cause, to be at least a "somewhat serious" problem (41% say it's "very serious"). So we may not rank the issue very high at the moment, and we may not be sure why it's happening, but a solid majority of us are ready to be persuaded.

And President Obama has left little doubt that we'll be hearing a lot about climate change in the months and years ahead. If anyone can move public opinion on the issue, it's going to be him, don't you think?

USDA deputy secretary pick a key barometer of Obama's policy direction

Whither Obama on ag policy? 

In one sense, the answer seems simple. Just go to whitehouse.gov and check out the rural agenda page. It's no revolutionary document, but there's some good stuff  there. It calls for more stringent limits on subsidies, stricter regulation on concentrated animal feedlot operations (CAFOs), and tighter enforcement of anti-trust and pro-competition rules for the highly consolidated meat industry.

All would be good first steps toward saner food and ag policy -- and the latter two would enrage one of our nation's most politically powerful and environmentally ruinous industries.

Intriguing policy document aside, Obama confused things last month by nominating former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack as USDA chief. (Vilsack has since been confirmed by the Senate.) Some critics (including me) fretted about Vilsack's strong support for ag-biotech and ethanol industries, and were less than impressed by his attempts to stand up to Big Meat as Iowa governor. But Vilsack also had supporters in the sustainable-food world -- both well-regarded Iowa activists like Denise O'Brien and Big Organic types like Whole Foods exec Walter Robb.

They argued that Vilsack would listen to the concerns of the sustainable-food world -- and, if not challenge the interests of agribusiness, at least acknowledge that other ways of food production exist and deserve support.

So the Vilsack pick doesn't really clarify where the new president intends to go on food policy. Now we've reached another crossroads: the choice of deputy secretary of USDA. According to report in Congress Daily, three names are being floated: Chuck Hassebrook of the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska; Karen Ross of California Winegrape Growers Association and executive director of the Winegrape Growers of America; and Jim Miller, chief of staff and chief economist at the National Farmers Union.

All three represent a step up from the outgoing deputy secretary, Chuck Conner, who I once deemed Archer Daniels Midland's Man at USDA. Two of the deputy candidates -- Hassebrook and Ross -- made the "sustainable dozen" list of desired USDA picks being circulated by Food Democracy Now.

From talking to sustainable-ag polic hands, by far the most inspring of the three is Hassebrook -- who has a 30-year history of sticking up for small- and mid-sized farmers in the midwest, and doesn't equate "rural development" with CAFOs and corn-processing plants.

TreePeople founder discusses his Ashoka fellowship and green infrastructure

Andy Lipkis founded one of the largest independent nonprofit environmental groups in Southern California, TreePeople, which is famous in Los Angeles for helping battle the floods of 1978 and 1980, planting a million trees in the 1980s, helping teach the city to recycle in the 1990s, and, recently, working to green its schools. Lipkis just returned from a briefing trip to Washington, which he took because he and his team at TreePeople are concerned that President Obama's vaunted economic stimulus program will go mostly towards roads, bridges, and airports -- gray infrastructure -- and prolong some of the problems caused by it, such as flooding, water shortages, and pollution.

Lipkis sees an extraordinary opportunity to invest in greening cities, adapt to climate change, reduce energy dependence, and relieve the chronic unemployment of urban youth. It's a once-in-a-lifetime deal. Yet what's interesting about Lipkis, to this observer, is the nature of his advocacy. He finds ways to make his point without demonizing or dismissing his opponents. When a Los Angeles columnist named Bill Boyarasky warned in the Los Angeles Times that environmentalists could stall Obama's reconstruction efforts, Lipkis disagreed forcefully in an op-ed, but at the same time wondered out loud if he could find a way to bring Boyarsky over to TreePeople's side.

He sat for an interview last week.

Kit Stolz: You were just honored with an Ashoka Fellowship, which is an award given to social entrepreneurs to help bring their work to greater numbers of people. How did this feel for you, and where do you want to take your work next?

Lipkis: It's encouraging. I've been in this business for 38 years, and it's a nice pat on the back. Ashoka gives a three-year, stipend-funded fellowship that's intended to lead to bigger things. It's saying we're investing in you because of your track record as an activist, and because we think you could make a bigger difference. In the application process, Ashoka asks for a five-year plan. This meant we [at TreePeople] had to think hard about the next five years. Because a group of climate scientists had announced a deadline for [acting against] climate change, which is now 94 months, I made that part of my process.

We now have 94 months to make a difference. We're facing severe weather now because of climate change. We have to radically reduce our carbon output. For me, the missing link is not just to make my city sustainable, but to work profoundly to improve all cities, to protect people from climate change. OK, I say, that's my charge. What can I do to take these innovations, which we have piloted in Los Angeles and shown to be viable, to a larger arena? How can we scale this up? We can't just move along as we have been doing -- we don't have that luxury. We have had some success, but now we have to move much more rapidly towards climate protection and adaptation. So I said, that's what I'll do. They've given me this award, now I need to make use of it.

Sue Tierney for deputy, names for under sec., and stuff I leaned at DOE, part 2

The Environmental and Clean Energy Ball may be a party, a once-in-four-years chance to wear my tux, but it is also a source of news about names. Everybody is buzzing over who is going to fill out the organization chart at the Energy Department under Secretary Chu.

Sue Tierney is widely expected to be nominated for deputy (as WaPo first reported here). Dr. Tierney would be a first rate deputy -- and I can say that with some confidence since not only is Sue a colleague and friend, but also my first job at the department in 1993 was special assistant for policy and planning to then Deputy Secretary Bill White (now mayor of Houston).

Deputy is a very demanding job. You are the DOE's chief operating officer. You have to make the trains run on time, and these are big, messy trains -- the nuclear weapons laboratories, the energy labs, the physics labs, and the "cleanup sites" like Hanford, which are the toxic legacy of the U.S. nuclear weapons program. If the secretary doesn't have prior experience as part of a senior leadership team managing a federal agency, the COO should. Dr. Tierney was assistant secretary of policy at DOE when I worked there.

Tierney has a unique set of qualifications at a time when we must redesign our entire energy system, change utility regulations to foster energy efficiency, and quickly site tens (and then hundreds) of gigawatts of renewable energy, along with a new, smart power grid to enable both the efficiency and the renewables (and plug-in hybrids):

Oregon enviro group calls not for shutdown of coal plant, but for infusion of millions of dollars

I've been trying to explain why I'm ready to quit calling myself an "environmentalist," and this latest missive from the Friends of the Columbia Gorge, calling not for the shutdown of the coal-fired power plant that is ruining this national treasure, but for hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent on it, has just about put me over the edge.

So I wrote my own version of the Friends' canned letter to reflect what should really change.

Air Force to announce the fate of a synthetic fuel plant

President Barack Obama gave a powerful call to action on energy and climate, and he has given the order to halt Bush's final rules. But if he really wants to send a quick, strong signal that he intends to preserve a livable climate, he should intervene immediately to stop the Pentagon's toxic dalliance with liquid coal.

As reported by Air Force Times on Tuesday:

The future of a synthetic fuel plant that would power fighters and cargo planes with processed coal will be announced this week.

The Air Force decided on Friday whether to move ahead with a plan to build a synthetic fuel plant at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont.

Due to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and the inauguration, Air Force spokesman Gary Strasburg said the decision will not be released until Wednesday.

(Note: I can't find any notice of this decision on Google News or Montana newspapers.)

UPDATE: My sources say the decision "has been delayed."

This is simply a terrible idea (see here), especially since clean alternatives are on the way "Boeing: Jet biofuel in three years").

Obama said in his powerful inaugural address: "we will work tirelessly to ... roll back the specter of a warming planet." That can't be done running your Air Force on liquid coal:

Senate confirms Jackson as EPA chief

President Obama's "green team" is nearly complete, as the Senate on Thursday confirmed Lisa Jackson to run the Environmental Protection Agency and Nancy Sutley to head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Senators also approved Ray LaHood as Secretary of Transportation. All three officials were confirmed by voice vote.

Jackson's appointment had been in limbo, as reports suggested that a Republican senator, John Barrasso of Wyoming, was blocking it until he received some clarity about Carol Browner's role as Obama's top adviser on climate and energy issues. Barrasso later consented to allowing the confirmation to proceed after talking to Browner, according to a spokesperson for the Environment and Public Works Committee, which was managing the confirmation. (Barrasso told TPM the same thing).

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate panel, issued a statement immediately after the confirmation praising her colleagues for approving Sutley and Jackson. "I am really pleased that the Senate has taken the first steps toward restoring the EPA and CEQ to their proper role as organizations that fight to protect the health of our families and the safety of our air, our water and our planet," said Boxer. "Lisa Jackson and Nancy Sutley are well qualified to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality, and they respect and understand that their organizations' mission is to protect public health and the environment."

The Senate has not yet acted on Obama's nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) to run the Department of Labor. Solis has said she will use her post to champion the creation of "green jobs."