Latest Articles
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New book from McKibben & co. aids grassroots action
Tuesday marks the release (yes, on recycled paper) of Fight Global Warming Now, the Step It Up 2007 team's handbook for grassroots action on climate (and most other issues) in our communities. It's a blueprint for success based on their own experiences.
Step It Up 2: Who's a Leader is just around the corner (Nov. 3), and there is an increasing corps of leaders committing to turn up at the events: eight members of Congress and two presidential candidates: go here to find an event in your neighborhood to support. If you find your choices lacking (hello, North Dakota?) organize one of your own: like coal, it's easy, cheap, and high-impact.
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Big Green savages Dingell’s carbon tax
"Man always kills the thing he loves," wrote naturalist Aldo Leopold in the environmentalist bible, A Sand County Almanac. Leopold was referring to Americans' destruction of the wilderness, but he could have been describing the green establishment's hostile reaction to the "hybrid carbon tax" proposed by Michigan Rep. John Dingell last month.
Dingell's tax package, combining a carbon-busting tax on fossil fuels, a surtax on gasoline and jet fuel, and a phase-out of subsidies for sprawl homes, should have been greeted by environmentalists like the Second Coming. Extrapolated to 2025, the carbon tax alone would cut annual CO2 emissions by 1.3 billion metric tons (a sixth of current emissions) and curb U.S. oil usage by 2.8 millions barrels a day (mbd). With Dingell's petrol surcharge, the savings swell to nearly 1.6 billion metric tons of CO2 and 4.5 mbd, more than the entire oil output of Iran.
Further savings would come from abolishing the tax-deductibility of mortgage interest on houses larger than 4,200 square feet, a loophole that has underwritten millions of McMansions on America's SUV-crazed exurban fringe. (Smaller houses down to 3,000 square feet would also lose some deductions, on a sliding scale.) Taken as a whole, Dingell's proposal would be a giant step toward what Friends of the Earth terms "decarbonizing the tax code." It would also embody the cardinal sustainability precept that keeps Europe's carbon footprint at half of ours: energy prices must tell the truth, even if it requires taxing fuels.
Alas, with the lone exception of FoE, leading Big Green groups have gone after Dingell's proposed bill like a clear-cutter on crank.
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Umbra on carbon offsets
Dear Umbra, I’ve been reading the whole back-and-forth about carbon offsets, and it seems strange to me that most (all?) of the ones I’ve seen fund projects that, while worthwhile, may or may not result in the promised emissions reduction. It seems that a simple way around this problem would be to buy actual emissions […]
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Blog Action Day
Happy Blog Action Day! To honor this occasion, we here at Gristmill are going to spend all day blogging about the environment.
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From black to white: An argument for green-collar jobs
"Spiritually fulfilling, ecologically sustainable, and socially just" is the title of a recent speech by Van Jones, who has been appearing in strategic places for a few years now. As cofounder of the Ella Baker Center in Oakland, he has been attempting to fight environmental pollution that has been poisoning the residents of inner-city areas in Oakland and all over the country. As such, he is in a unique position to bridge a rather wide chasm: the African-American community and the environmental community.
In my previous post, I put forward a utopian realist agenda that, I hypothesized, would solve many of our global environmental problems -- that was the realist part -- but that was completely utopian politically. But another definition of utopian is envisioning a better place -- and I want to pursue the possibility in this post that such an agenda would create a basis for a widespread coalition, of the sort that Van Jones has been pursuing.
For instance, he has been lobbying for green-collar jobs legislation that could be used to increase employment in poor areas while helping to decrease greenhouse-gas emissions. Jones shows up in another interesting place: in a critical section of Nordhaus and Shellenberger's essay, "The Death of Environmentalism" (p.26):
Van Jones, the up-and-coming civil rights leader and co-founder of the California Apollo Project, likens [labor unions, civil rights groups, businesses, and environmentalists] ] to the four wheels on the car needed to make "an ecological U-turn." Van has extended the metaphor elegantly: "We need all four wheels to be turning at the same time and at the same speed. Otherwise the car won't go anywhere."
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California OKs bill to ban phthalates in kids’ products, and more
Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: The Thrill of It, Al Planet of the AEP Strike Up the Banned Report Barred Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Tancredo on the Record Sow What? Directed Buy Into the Wild
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Reaper on the Prius
CW has a new show called Reaper, about a slacker whose parents sold his soul to the devil, who he now has to work for. It’s genial enough, funny in bits. I like to keep an eye on how Priuses and hybrids are used in television, and this one was amusing:
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California OKs bills to ban phthalates in kids’ products, and lead bullets in condor country
In an orgy of legislative activity, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) signed and vetoed a bunch of environmental bills this weekend. Among the most significant bills that got the Governator’s OK is one banning the chemicals phthalates in toys and other products intended for children 3 years old and younger. “These chemicals threaten the health […]
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Two enviro groups endorse their faves for U.S. president in ’08
Two prominent environmental groups announced their official picks in the race to the White House in 2008. Friends of the Earth Action, the politically overt arm of Friends of the Earth, put its weight behind Democrat John Edwards, praising his early support for strict climate legislation, and for being the only top-tier Dem to just […]
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