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Climate change mitigation in fewer than seven words

In response to David's challenge, I decided to summarize not only the problem of global warming, but the solution, in fewer than seven words. I cheated, of course -- each word is an acronym (one stolen from David), with a phrase behind it and an accompanying elevator speech.

• XTRA-COOL: (XTRA Carbon Out Of Our Lives)
• URGE2 (Use Renewably Generated Electricity Efficiently)
• RAPID RESPONSE (Regulation And Public Investment Develops Renewable Energy, Supplies Power to Our Nation & Supports Efficiency)
• CARE (Cap & Auction, Rebate Everything)
• GROUPHUG (Greens Reach Out, Unity with Progressives Helps Us Grow)

The elevator speeches follow:

XTRA-COOL: (XTRA Carbon Out Of Our Lives)

Fossil fuels, logging, and industrial agriculture all emit carbon and other greenhouse gases, and turn the atmosphere into a garbage dump for those emissions. It turns out that we have filled up all that dump space we can use safely; the overflow is already causing disasters, and continued emissions will lead to catastrophes, including famine, flooding, diseases, and mass deaths from climate extremes. To prevent as much of this as possible, we need to stop the extra carbon emissions by phasing out the use of fossil fuels, and switching to more sustainable forestry and agriculture.

Drug cultivation in Northern California is a bad trip

Terrain magazine shows how the cozy-sounding northern California agriculture scene is drying up watersheds and poisoning the landscape, all to bring people their drug of choice. Installment one on the boom in illegal water rustling for wineries starts like this:

After one of the rainiest years on record -- when parts of the valley had been flooded -- Anderson Creek, a tributary of the Navarro River, was dry. "It was as if we were in a drought year," says Hall, a member of Friends of the Navarro River ... But it was no drought. Hall says he observed trucks filling up water from along the creek at Golden Eye and taking it into the town of Philo and other areas where Anderson Valley's growing population of vintners cultivate their grapes.

Worse, lots of these trucks have no legal right to take that water, but enforcement is proving very problematic.

As unkind as this is to the critters who live in the region's rivers, witness the landscape-wide destruction being wrought in rural areas by the illegal cultivation of marijuana, California's largest cash crop:

Lotioned-up babies have high phthalate levels, says study

Photo: iStockphoto Ways to poison your kids: It’s not just bottles, car seats, and toys anymore! Tots exposed to baby cosmetics — lotions, shampoos, powders, and the like — have high levels of toxic phthalates in their wee bodies, according to a new study published in the journal Pediatrics. Lotion exposure led to the highest […]

Me in The Nation

At the beginning of the year, progressive magazine The Nation started a new guest blog on its website: Passing Through, which "will feature postings by some of the blogosphere’s most well-read and incisive political writers." The mag is hosting one guest blogger per month. January’s was the redoubtable Jessica Valenti of Feministing. This month, the […]

Stop

This is also bouncing around the tubes, and while I can’t think of a plausible green connection, what the hell, it’s pretty cool:

Green energy projects bloom in California

Right on the heels of Tappergate, The New York Times comes out with a couple of articles exploring the economic benefits of fighting global warming. As is evident to anyone but a Taphole, the energy business is the largest business there ever is or was or will be, and therein lies not only enormous money-making opportunities but jobs, jobs, jobs. These things, we hear, are good for the economy.

So, take California, which decided to get serious about developing a solar industry. The state committed $3 billion in declining incentives over a 10-year period, and in return leveraged a lot more than that in private equity. Venture capitalists have put $625 million into California solar companies in 2007 alone. Manufacturers are feverishly commercializing new technologies, and if you can spell solar you can get a job out here.

So, how does an enterprising young state get a piece of that action? I'm glad you asked. Last Wednesday, in Denver, with Governor Ritter on hand, we released a report that we developed with the Center for American Progress titled "Developing State Photovoltaic Markets" (PDF). It's a blueprint for making a solar market work. The premise here is that the key to lowering solar's costs -- and generating good jobs while you are at it -- is creating markets. The folks at NREL have done a great job in developing the technology; photovoltaics work great. Government R&D efforts should be redoubled, but using policy to open markets will leverage orders of magnitude more in private equity and further accelerate solar's entry into the mainstream.

Secondly, without an extension of the federal investment tax credit, everything we are trying to do gets 30 percent harder -- and it's quite hard enough as it is, thank you very much. There's a great argument to be made for putting an extension in the financial stimulus package, as the Senate is currently considering. Congress, if you are reading this, won't you please consider a very easy action that will jumpstart the economy, fight global warming, and establish energy independence all at the same time? These things are popular with voters, we hear.

British military may obstruct planned wind farms due to radar fears

Echoing recent concerns of the U.S. military, the British Ministry of Defense has stepped up its opposition to some wind power projects due to concerns over turbines’ impact on radar installations. The Ministry of Defense has lately objected to at least four proposed wind farms claiming they’d cause radar troubles; wind farm proponents fear more […]

Vaporware

It’s a few days old now, but don’t miss Tyler Hamilton’s column on CCS in the Toronto Star. It focuses on Canada, but the story is basically the same: despite all the talk and hype, carbon capture and storage is a long, long way off, subject to enormous logistics problems, and uncertain to succeed even […]

Three Wall Street banks announce funding restrictions for new coal power plants

Photo: iStockphoto Three major investment banks, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley, will announce new environmental standards today that are expected to make it more difficult for large coal-fired power plants in the United States to get funding. The standards anticipate some form of cap-and-trade program becoming law in the U.S. in coming years […]

It’s alive!

A Philadelphia newspaper picks up Jake "Hack" Tapper’s Bill Clinton grotesque and makes it even more stupid. This is officially a ‘Winger Zombie. Aim for the head. (Via Horse’s Mouth)