Environmental Defense Fund

Vote today on your fave carbon cap video

Environmental Defense Action Fund is holding a video contest to "explain in 30 seconds how capping global warming pollution could help solve our oil addiction."

They've narrowed down the video submissions to the top five and are encouraging everyone to vote on a favorite by tonight. Check out two of the five videos below and vote on the best one here. The winning video producer will receive the Climate Activist's Choice Award, which comes with a $1,000 prize.

New report from Duke University pinpoints where green policies will create jobs

In his most concrete policy proposal since the November election, President-elect Barack Obama last week said his administration will “mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process.” Obama said that will “start” with a federal cap and trade system […]

EDF’s and MIT’s magical thinking on carbon caps and oil

Last week I critiqued EDF’s pointless video/graphics competition (see here). The contest is pointless because a carbon cap can’t cure our oil addiction. Indeed, under any plausible cap, U.S. oil consumption rises. Gernot Wagner, an economist at Environmental Defense Fund, responded with a post here: “‘Bizarre’? No. Tough? Yes: Joseph Romm’s critique of EDF’s contest […]

‘What is a carbon cap and how will it cure our oil addiction?’

A contest to explain something that isn’t true — what a novelty. If I were running a contest, it would be, "What is a carbon cap and why should it not cover the transportation sector?" But I digress. So I get an email from the Environmental Defense Fund asking me to direct my readers to […]

A review of Tom Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded

I have a book review in the latest issue of the American Prospect, covering three books: Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 438 pages, $27.95 Earth: The Sequel: The Race To Reinvent Energy and Stop Global […]

EDF prez says we can’t afford to wait for the ideal first step

Fred Krupp

The following is a response to this post.

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Ken Ward tracks the evolution of EDF's position on climate legislation in search of evidence that we've relented on tough global warming pollution limits since making climate change a top priority more than ten years ago. He sees our support of the Climate Security Act as a retreat from bold action, as surrender to what's merely possible in Congress. Far from it.

What shapes our advocacy and our support for that bill is not, as Ken suggests, the limits of politics-as-usual in Washington. It's shaped by the urgent need to begin reducing global warming pollution -- and the fact that as a nation we have failed to take action despite two decades of evidence that we are in deep trouble.

EDF’s support for self-cooling cans got deservedly chilly reception

Ken Ward posted an intelligent critique of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). I want to anticipate a response. EDF always says something along the lines of "We are getting the absolute best deal available. Go with us, or you will end up settling for something worse, probably nothing." Let's set the wayback machine to 1997 and look at a case where the mainstream environmental community did not go along with EDF.

Briefly: The Joseph Company wanted to market soda in a self-chilling can, cooling produced via HFC R-134a, a greenhouse gas many times more potent than CO2. The HFC in one of these cans would have produced a greenhouse forcing equivalent to driving a car 200 miles. EDF saw this as a perfect opportunity for emissions trading. This product is going to come to market regardless of what we do, they intoned solemnly. The Joseph Company is willing to offset their emissions -- a win-win situation.

Over the objections of EDF, the rest of the environmental community, including grassroots EDF members, stepped up and stopped this stupid project. Eventually a new version that uses CO2 was developed instead; this improved product is as bad as for the environment as canned soda normally is, but at least is not several thousand times worse. If EDF had succeeded in helping to push it through, they would be offering it today as an example of practical politics to win environmental goals, rather than an absolutely unnecessary cave. Read the long version at Nonprofit Watch.

EDF chief rejects oil drilling as response to energy woes

This is a response to this post.

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I had the pleasure of appearing on PBS' Charlie Rose last week for a wide-ranging conversation about climate change and how we can reinvent our energy economy with cap-and-trade. As Grist readers know, EDF has been pushing hard for a strong cap on greenhouse gases to fight global warming and help break our addiction to oil.

On Charlie Rose, EDF leader Fred Krupp endorses domestic drilling for new oil

EDF chief Fred Krupp appeared on the Charlie Rose show yesterday. For the most part, it was the usual stumping for cap-and-trade. However, Rose pushed him on the question of whether, in the short-term, we need to drill for new oil. After quite a bit of dodging and weaving, Krupp, rather startlingly, said we should […]