US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu spoke at Stanford University last week on clean energy , climate change science, innovation and education. It’s a science and solutions oriented talk so it’s valuable for everyone. Secretary Chu met with students before the talk for a student round table discussion on energy. The event was followed in the evening by a panel called “Educating the Energy Generation,” focused on how the U.S. can build a competitive clean energy workforce as quickly as possible. See here for an article about Secretary Chu’s visit to Stanford, “The Biggest Speaker of the Year,” and why his perspective is important. On the DoE website, Chu asks,
What are the steps we must take as a nation to create new, clean energy jobs and ensure America’s long-term competitiveness? What are the consequences for our climate of inaction? How can science and technology offer us new and better choices – and how can America’s young people make a difference?
I recently returned to Stanford University, where I spent many years as a professor, to discuss these and many other issues with a great group of students. I’d like to invite you to watch a replay of my speech here, and then share your thoughts afterward on my personal Facebook page (www.facebook.com/stevenchu) to continue the conversation.
During the speech he said something to take notice of: “Humans are altering the destiny of the planet. . . . [but] it’s not too late.” He also repeated the quote Obama has used frequently on the “fierce urgency of now” and repeated that there is such a thing as being “too late”.
The message was clear — the U.S. has to act on the climate crisis as soon as possible. Not next year, this year.
Chu used the phrase climate crisis, which is strong language coming from the Secretary of Energy.
Emergildo Criollo attempted to deliver letters to Chevron CEO John Watson on March 2nd 2010.
Exposed: Chevron’s Cover-up of Gross Environmental Abuses in Ecuador
We need to save what is left of the rainforests and replenish what has been lost. Can people do this in time to prevent runaway climate change? An area the size of Greece has been cleared away already in the Amazon. This can’t continue. And the Amazon has additional problems. Industrial wastewater is being dumped into the Amazon and there is a lot of contamination from oil drilling and spills and open oil pits. It never fails to amaze me what people will do to the environment all in the name of making some money.
Alternet — Chevron claims it’s not responsible for dumping 18 billion gallons of industrial wastewater into the Amazon. A local leader says otherwise. A recent lawsuit has been brought by Ecuadorian indigenous groups against the U.S. oil giant, Chevron, for environmental destruction it allegedly wrought as Texaco in the Amazon rainforest of eastern Ecuador. The suit asks Chevron (which acquired Texaco in 2001) to pay for the environmental cleanup of an area three times the size of Manhattan, pocked with open oil pits and steeped in 18 billion gallons of dumped industrial wastewater. The damages in the case — calculated by a court-appointed expert at a record $27 billion — would also establish a health fund to pay for the estimated 1,400 cases of cancer caused by the pollution — a number that will likely continue to grow until the site is cleaned up. The rest of the damages fall into the catchall category, “compensation.”
The rainforests need more respect and protection than turning them over to the highest fossil fuel bidder. They are the lungs of the planet, along with the oceans (something else human CO2 emissions are gravely harming). The Rainforest Action Network gives us the story of Emergildo Criollo, the Indigenous leader from Ecuador. From RAN’s story.
Criollo met with California legislators and asked for their support in the 16+ year campaign to demand Chevron remediate massive oil contamination affecting over 30,000 people. Along with supporters from Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network, Criollo spoke with lawmakers about the impact of California’s largest company in Ecuador, and what they can do to support his community’s call for environmental cleanup and action to prevent such tragedies in the future. . . . .
. . . . At the reception, Criollo shared his story. He told the lawmakers about how he was only 6 years old when Chevron (then Texaco) began oil drilling in his community. He spoke of how his family was forced to relocate because of the contamination. About he had to part centimeters of oil off of the river to drink the water. About how he has lost two sons and nursed a wife through uterine cancer because of the contamination. His family drank, bathed, and fished in water that was poisoned by oil dumping.
This beautiful video about oceans and the threat to them is from NRDC Flix. “This groundbreaking NRDC documentary explores the startling phenomenon of ocean acidification, which may soon challenge marine life on a scale not seen for tens of millions of years.”
The oceans regulate climate and provide most of the oxygen for us to survive, but humans are destroying it with our CO2 emissions. This week, an EPA spokeswoman said the agency “is interested in learning more about how to protect our ocean and coastal waters from acidification.” That’s good, because the EPA just settled a lawsuit that should lead to greenhouse gas emission reductions using the Clean Water Act. An article quoted below from Climatewire describes the lawsuit and the outcome. In another updated story later, Climatewire** reported some updates to the story:
“U.S. EPA settled a lawsuit yesterday by agreeing to use the Clean Water Act to address ocean acidification, a move that some see as opening a side door to federal curbs on greenhouse gases that scientists link to problems in the marine environment. The settlement with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity directly addresses EPA’s failure to require Washington state to list its marine waters as impaired by rising acidity.
I don’t believe that the Obama EPA fought the Center’s lawsuit very hard, because this outcome is probably what they wanted to do anyway. In any case, this settlement gives the EPA another legal backing for regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
Unfortunately, some politicians in Washington have an anti-environmental agenda. We can only hope that all the members of Congress and the governors who seem to not value the environment (and apparently also hate our ability to survive on this planet) will be unsuccessful in their recent attempts to stop the EPA from regulating greehouse gases and protecting clean air and water. Republican politicians are scrambling to beat each other in denouncing the EPA’s attempts to protect us from pollution and global warming. In addition, Governors of several U.S. states also recently wrote a letter requesting that Congress to stop the EPA from regulating harmful pollution. From the WSJ:
“The governors, led by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, made their request in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and their Republican counterparts. The letter was also signed by Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican who has been cited as a possible contender in the 2012 presidential election.”
“Major environmental groups are coming under criticism from within their own ranks for taking positions that some say are antithetical to their stated missions of saving the planet. In the latest issue of The Nation magazine, the British journalist Johann Hari writes, “As we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world’s worst polluters—and burying science-based environmentalism in return…In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate.”
(From Democracy Now) There is money in any issue in Washington, and global warming is no exception. No wonder climate change legislation has morphed into “green jobs and energy” legislation. John Kerry and others are working hard to pass a bill that will (likely) allow coal use to thrive and new oil to be drilled and lots of natural gas to be extracted and burned, at a very toxic cost. Our Congress just doesn’t get it. There should be a moratorium on taking any money from any fossil fuel industries, given what we are facing with global warming. (Yet Nancy Pelosi herself is a big investor in natural gas, for example). Climate change and global warming are the biggest issues humanity has ever faced, and governments are dropping the ball. However, it’s not just governments being corrupted by corporate cash — it’s also the very “Green” groups we depend on for climate action and Congressional pressure!
Consider what we are facing already, according to Johann Hari, a columnist who wrote for The Nation — ‘The Wrong Kind of Green’:
“I have spent the past few years reporting on how global warming is remaking the map of the world. I have stood in half-dead villages on the coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean and say, “Do you see that chimney sticking up? That’s where my house was… I had to [abandon it] six months ago.” I have stood on the edges of the Arctic and watched glaciers that have existed for millenniums crash into the sea. I have stood on the borders of dried-out Darfur and heard refugees explain, “The water dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left.”
Flooding in Bangladesh
People don’t realize that flooding and other effects of climate change are already happening. That’s because the narrative, and the media, is focusing on human errors made in a few emails about some bad scientific practices at a little, obscure university that no one depends on for climate data anyway. We have other places where climate data is stored and gathered, including NASA, NOAA and places in Japan and Canada. Who needs East Anglia. The IPCC is now reviewing its practices of collecting data). The real Climategate is that big fossil fuel companies continues to foul the process of coming up with a real way to stop global warming by infusing environmental groups and scientific groups with their influential money. As Hari writes,
“. . . . the addiction to corporate cash has changed the green groups at their core . . . . . . . This pattern was bad enough when it affected only a lousy household cleaning spray, or a single rare forest. But today, the stakes are unimaginably higher. We are living through a brief window of time in which we can still prevent runaway global warming.”
If you are not someone who believes it is too late already to stop global warming, then you know we need to act very fast to stop the planet from further heating. However, even groups like the Sierra Club have been compromised by corporate cash.
But wait, you say, why depend on environmental groups anyway — Democrats control most of our government. That’s true, but as green groups stop pressuring Congress as much as in the past, the people need to do it even more. If you haven’t already noticed, the Democrats get sidetracked by $$$ very quickly themselves. We need to convince them that we support strong action on climate change, because they don’t seem to know that.
Oh YIKES. Kerry and the Gang hold humanity's future in their political hands.
U.S. Senators now hold a large portion of humanity’s future survival prospects in their hands.
I’m very grateful for political climate news from ClimateWire. (A subscription-only service that recently bestowed on me a trial subscription.) There is a very welcome push by the Obama administration lately to get some climate legislation passed this year, but what President Obama means by “climate legislation” is not necessarily what many people would define it as. But if it doesn’t do a lot of harm with giveaways to coal and oil (like many people fear it will) then maybe, possibly, like the health care bill, it’s best to get something passed, crack the door open and later it can be amended and strengthened. But what John Kerry and Lindsey Graham are working on reportedly has a lot of allowances in it for coal, oil and other undesirable energy. Here is some of the latest.
Partisan gridlock has largely kept the Senate climate and energy bill on ice, with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) trying to find a sweet spot on a plan that would limit carbon dioxide pollution from power plants and other major industrial sectors. [This group is not necessarily going to do what is necessary, but at least they are pushing something forward].
The Senate trio is trying to get a draft bill out before the end of the month, but they face resistance from moderate Democrats and Republicans who are urging a slower, “energy only” approach. . . . .
Among those expected at the closed-door meeting in the Cabinet Room were Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), George LeMieux (R-Fla.), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska.). Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) also got an invitation but said he could not go because of a meeting on health care with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Heading into the meeting, several of the Republicans showed little interest in tackling such a sweeping proposal.”
SCIENCE: Man’s climate fingerprints clear — U.K. Met Office (03/05/2010)
The possibility that human activity is not the prime cause of climate change is becoming “increasingly remote,” according to a major review of climate science released by Britain’s national weather service, the Met Office.
The study used computer models of different possible climate change drivers — including solar output, volcanic eruptions, El Niño and the release of greenhouse gases — matched against tangible climate changes over the past decades to air and sea temperature and Arctic sea ice. This technique, called “optimal detection,” showed clear fingerprints of man-caused warming, said Peter Stott, who led the project.
“This wealth of evidence shows that there is an increasingly remote possibility that climate change is being dominated by natural factors rather than human factors,” he said.
According to NASA, average atmospheric temperatures have risen by 0.8 degrees centigrade since 1880. But much of the recent warming trends have been found instead in the world’s oceans, Stott said.
“Over 80 percent of the heat that’s trapped in the climate system as a result of the greenhouse gases is exported into the ocean, and we can see that happening,” Stott said.
One possibility frequently cited by critics of global warming is that warming could be driven by increased activity from the sun. However, if that was the case, the Earth’s atmosphere would have warmed more evenly and temperatures would have increased early in the 20th century, rather than later.
“There hasn’t been an increase in solar output for the last 50 years,” Stott said. “And solar output would not have caused cooling of the higher atmosphere and the warming of the lower atmosphere that we have seen.”
The review was published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change (Alok Jha, London Guardian, March 5). – PV
Today the EPA approved a permit for surface coal mining in Ohio. This is a big blow to the environment, to future generations of Americans, and to the natural resources of the United States. This is our country, but it seems that Big Coal and other polluters feel they own it, and can ruin our country however they wish.
Read more about this ruling and listen to Lisa Jackson speak at the National Press Club at Climate Files Radio.
EPA Approves Ohio Surface Coal Mine — “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has concluded its review of a Clean Water Act permit application for Oxford Mining Company’s proposed Kaiser Mathias mine in Tuscarawas County, Ohio and has approved the project.”
This is the EPA not relying on science for its decisions. This is the EPA stalling a real decision on surface coal mining, while global warming continues to escalate and the government officials spin their wheels in Washington. Lisa Jackson claims the EPA cannot regulate coal mining. That’s not ‘Yes We Can’, that’s a weak excuse to allow coal lobbyists to continue their choke-hold over the federal government. They are selling out future generations for more coal profits.
It’s time we take our country — literally — back from the polluters.
“We need to acknowledge that there is nothing more important than
preserving the viability of planet Earth. Nothing.”
Photo: Regis Duvignau | An aerial view shows flooded houses and streets in L'aiguillon sur Mer, southwestern France, southwestern France, March 1, 2010, following a major storm named Xynthia.
The Earth has its own set of rules
Our view of nature is based on our human desire for more, and that economic model is broken.
March 02, 2010|By B.E. Mahall and F.H. Bormann
Early in our history it didn’t make any difference how we viewed our environment. We could change it, and if we didn’t like what we did to it, we could move and natural processes would soon obliterate whatever we had done. Over the years, models of our relationship to the environment have been based on religious views, with the world provided for us to dominate and subdue as described in Genesis, and philosophical views, seeing wisdom and virtue in nature as described by Thoreau.
But by far our most prevalent view of nature derives from a rudimentary human desire for more. This is the basis of the economic model that currently directs our relationships with one another and with our environment. It has produced stupendous human population growth and dramatic, deleterious effects on nature. Recognizing these effects, efforts have been marshaled to change the self-serving economic model with notions of Earth “stewardship,” eloquently advanced decades ago by then-Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, and, most recently, to infiltrate the economic model with “ecosystem services” by assigning monetary values to functions performed by the Earth that are beneficial to people.
All of these views are fundamentally and dangerously flawed, because all are anthropocentric. They begin and end with humans. This isn’t the way the Earth works.
For anyone who still thinks renewable and clean energy is “too expensive” to implement, it might shock them to find out that ignoring climate change and the ensuing ice melt will be much, much more expensive. And as the Arctic ice melts, it speeds up global warming. Less heat from the sun is reflected off the earth as the ice disappears, and more heat is retained by our climate and planet. This will cause increasing heat waves, droughts, and unpredictable weather, not to mention flooding of coastlines from all that melting ice . . . yet we can still do something about it. But time is running out.
The Arctic Ice is melting and it will cost trillions before it stops.
WASHINGTON – Reuters – Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a report released on Friday.
“Everybody around the world is going to bear these costs,” said Eban Goodstein, a resource economist at Bard College in New York state who co-authored the report, called “Arctic Treasure, Global Assets Melting Away.”
He said the report, reviewed by more than a dozen scientists and economists and funded by the Pew Environment Group, an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts, provides a first attempt to monetize the cost of the loss of one of the world’s great weather makers.
“The Arctic is the planet’s air conditioner and it’s starting to break down,” he said.
The loss of Arctic Sea ice and snow cover is already costing the world about $61 billion to $371 billion annually from costs associated with heat waves, flooding and other factors, the report said.
Anti-government Republicans, lobbyists for Big Coal, Big Oil and others attack the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to keep our air safe and our water clean for everyone . . . . despite these attacks, the EPA’s Endangerment Finding Appears Safe for Now. It is the EPA’s job to keep us safe from pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, just like it’s the government’s job to keep us “safe from terrorism”. Burning coal and forcing other pollution on us is terrorism. Unregulated greenhouse gas emissions are weapons of mass destruction. It’s the government’s job to keep these things from killing us.
Article below is from Solve Climate.
“Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson faced questions today from senators about her agency’s fiscal year 2011 budget request. Although representing only a small portion of the $10 billion total request, the ongoing battles regarding the EPA’s aim to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases from some sources took center stage.
The agency seems to be under attack from all angles when it comes to greenhouse gas regulation — House members seeking to overturn its authority to regulate greenhouse gases, senators calling for delays on regulation, states and industry groups attempting to sue. These maneuvers are drawing national attention and dividing Democrats in Congress. However, the chances of permanently preventing the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases appear slim.
“It has been three years since the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that EPA has a legal responsibility under the Clean Air Act to determine whether greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare,” Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) said at the hearing.
She noted that some of her colleagues on Capitol Hill are now trying to subvert the authority of that court finding. “I think this is the wrong approach,” she said. “Legislation overturning the endangerment finding countermands the Supreme Court’s landmark decision.” As directed by that court decision, the EPA found last year that greenhouse gases do endanger public health, making them eligible for regulation under the Clean Air Act.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) joined the hearing late and repeated many of the same assertions she has made in recent months that greenhouse gas regulation would be better done by Congress than by an appointed agency.
CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas to worry about. According to Lisa Jackson of the EPA, the ‘methane expo’ (that ended today) will help us mitigate climate change by finding ways to capture and use it. A ‘methane partnership’ between several countries has been in existence since 2004 and has already been capturing methane (according to the EPA) for years.
Methane comes from a lot of sources. It’s coming up from the melting ocean beds, it’s emitted right now from the melting permafrost, mostly in Siberia and Canada, and global warming is going to make this situation worse. This excerpt is from the Atlantic, today:
“Unexpectedly huge quantities of Siberian methane are being released into the atmosphere, according to a new study. The resulting feedback loop could dramatically outpace the climate models that scientists and policy makers have been using as they attempt to roll back emissions.
When it comes to climate change, methane is bad news: It is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide in causing increased atmospheric temperatures. A National Science Foundation study in today’s issue of Science found that melting permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is causing an annual release of nearly 8 million tons of methane. Eight million tons is a relative a pittance compared to the 80 million metric tons produced by livestock around the world each year.”
That’s a lot of methane! It’s true that cows produce a lot of CO2 and methane (they emit both) and there is a fear that some day cows will become illegal to raise for food. I doubt that will ever happen completely, but it’s true that if people stopped eating beef and other mammals the CO2 and methane levels would decrease a lot. There is no need at all for humans to eat other mammals, and mammals bred for meat are responsible for a surprising amount of greenhouse emissions. Many of these emissions could be eliminated by eliminating these animals as a food source, which would decrease their populations, and decrease the pollution commercial animal farms produce too.
In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reported that livestock accounted for 18% of greenhouse gases, making livestock emissions “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems.” However recently, Worldwatch Institute, a Washington D.C. environmental think-tank, reported that livestock emissions actually account for 51% of greenhouse gases. Source.
It’s very clear that we need less cattle in the world raised for food. Also see this from today: Huge methane leak in Arctic Ocean. More on the methane expo after the break . . .
The United States educational system is in trouble. When I read the story linked below, I thought of an old 1950’s car bumping down a rocky hill and crashing into a boulder-strewn riverbed. That’s public school science policy in the U.S. We are not just not making progress on climate change legislation and public awareness here in the U.S., we are going backwards fast. It’s now been reported that the legislatures of 15 states have passed resolutions pushed together by the fossil fuel companies to deny climate change. Lobbying is not limited to the U.S. Congress. These companies are pouring cash into local campaigns and using their new-found money power because of the recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision to buy or threaten state and municipal elected officials as well as federal officials. (Info from the Thom Hartmann show.)
One of these states is South Dakota. They have joined the states that want to pass laws to make it legal and even desirable to teach children propaganda against science, or a variation of religion, rather than teaching real science in schools. Of course, parents can already teach their children all the propaganda or lies or whatever they want at home on their own time, but the disturbing trend is for laws to be passed to make that alternate world-view mandatory in public schools, which are funded by taxpayers. Regular people will now be paying for anti-science, political propaganda in these states.
It’s the conservative states pushing this, of course. Their arguments against global warming are now being tied to abortion and religion for purely political reasons. No, the Waxman-Markey bill is not great legislation, but it won’t lead to a rise in abortions or eugenics or end hetero marriage, as many people seem to think. Here’s what happened, according to the New York Times:
In South Dakota, a resolution calling for the “balanced teaching of global warming in public schools” passed the Legislature this week.
“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant,” the resolution said, “but rather a highly beneficial ingredient for all plant life.”
How much of your city is concrete and parking lots? It’s probably about 25% which is the ratio in many cities. My city is no exception. There are so many parking lots that stand empty and vast expanses of pavement that it seems ridiculous. The problem is that many cities were never actually planned — they were just cobbled together as populations grew, businesses sprouted up and zoning changed. Business zoning means large parking lots. Many of them are not landscaped with “greenery” in mind at all.
One major American city is taking on the parking lots and installing mini-parks or “parklets” for people to enjoy. This adds trees and other carbon sinks to cities that badly need them, and it puts some of the land back to use as nature intended. It’s a true cliche that the earth was never intended to be paved over. Nature abhors a vacuum, and there is no vacuum like a huge parking lot. (Just look at any crack in a parking lot and you will see weeds or grass trying to poke through and grow.) Let’s take our cities back from the pavement lovers and re-introduce some nature with micro-parks, like they are doing in San Francisco (and have done in parts of New York). A greener city is a healthier city too.
Unpaving Paradise . . .
In San Francisco, a handful of parking spaces and public right-of-ways are being remade into mini parks and plazas. Some are lined with trees sprouting from old dumpsters, others are buffered from traffic with large, discarded pipes; inside the improvised borders, tables, small patches of grass and concrete slabs are arranged for seating.
These ‘parklets’ and plazas are part of San Francisco’s new Pavement to Parks initiative, an attempt to transfer some of San Francisco’s public space back to pedestrians.
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s greening director Astrid Haryati recently told the San Francisco Chronicle, nearly 25 percent of San Francisco’s surface is pavement. The Pavement to Parks program aims to change how much of that area is devoted to cars.
This is a fascinating development in the evolution of thought around city streets and who gets to use them. In 2009, New York City took on a similar (yet larger) project — transforming Broadway to be far more pedestrian friendly. . . .
My power went out this afternoon unexpectedly for several hours. I know other people in some countries go through this or worse all the time, but it threw off my entire day. I went to a nearby coffee shop to use my smartphone to at least read online, but then discovered my phone was quickly running out of power too. It made me realize how much we depend on our electricity and how easy it is to become completely disrupted when power is turned off for a few hours.
The coffee shop had free wi-fi and was packed with people working on laptops. It got me to thinking that we need more reliable power than we have. If this had been January, people would have been freezing in their homes. The U.S. power grid is overtaxed and meant for an earlier era, not 2010 where so much is demanded of it. It was meant for 50 or 100 million people, not 300 million, who are using it more than ever. And we need uninterrupted power. Anyone who thinks we could transition to living more simply, without electricity, without power, is dreaming. Our brains and work habits are now wired for the internet and the increased use of it will take more power, not less. That means that we will have a difficult time conserving energy in the future. There are more appliances and heating systems in use in the United States by far than 20 years ago and it increases every year. Add a few million electric cars to that and the amount of power needed will grow even more.
We don’t have to have a future of less power. Why conserve solar power or wind power if there is an abundance of it. If we start using renewable power all the time, conservation won’t be an issue. The sun and wind and geothermal power are sources that are free and infinite (at least as far into the future as we can imagine). We need to jump start renewable power and a better more reliable way of transporting power to people. If we don’t, power outages and brownouts will become common everywhere.
We need more power in the world — but not coal. There is good news about the rebellion against the coal industry, from Ted Nace, originator of Coal Swarm. He has a new book out called Climate Hope, and was recently interviewed by Alternet.
Discussing his books Gangs of America and Climate Hope, Coalswarm founder Ted Nace talks about the rise of corporations and Big Coal, the growing network of grassroots movements against coal, and why, despite the non-binding resolution coming out of Copenhagen, we should have hope.
Christine Shearer:Especially since in that 1886 case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, “corporate personhood” came not from the actual judicial decision but from the court reporter’s notes on the case.
Climate change deniers and skeptics are still out there, but now there are great resources (besides the scientific organizations) such as Skeptical Science and the Climate Crock of the Week videos. One of the latest videos is above, but there are many more, and you can see them all here.
Now you can win any skeptic or denier climate change debate with the 3 resources in this post. Skeptical Science has put together an answer for the 242 skeptic claims it has amassed so far. It’s an amazing and impressive list and you can see the claims and the answers to all with links here. I included many of the arguments from scientists in a podcast on the climate science recently, and you can listen to it at Climate Files Radio.
US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu spoke at Stanford University last week on clean energy , climate change science, innovation and education. It’s a science and solutions oriented talk so it’s valuable for everyone. Secretary Chu met with students before the talk for a student round table discussion on energy. The event was followed in the evening by a panel called “Educating the Energy Generation,” focused on how the U.S. can build a competitive clean energy workforce as quickly as possible. See here for an article about Secretary Chu’s visit to Stanford, “The Biggest Speaker of the Year,” and why his perspective is important. On the DoE website, Chu asks,
Join me at 
Recent Comments