Over at Grist, David Roberts has published a provocative essay. I'm excerpting a long section here, but you should read the original in its entirety:
[T]he crucial fact of post-truth politics is that there are no more referees. There are only players. The right has its own media, its own facts, its own world. In that world, the climate isn't warming, domestic drilling can solve the energy crisis, and Obama is a socialist Kenyan. (Did you see Obama's birth certificate yet? If he had that much trouble convincing people he was born in the country, how did he expect to convince them he's a reasonable moderate?) Obama can back centrist policies all day, but there is no mechanism to convey that centrism to the broad voting public. There is no judge settling disputes or awarding points. His strategy — achieve political advantage through policy concessions — has failed. His approval ratings are down and the government is headed for a train wreck.
David Roberts
Yet still there seems to be this craving, in Obama and sooo many other self-styled pragmatic, post-partisan moderates, to take the politics out of politics. To have an Adult Conversation. To be Reasonable People, to draw forth other Reasonable People with the power of ideas and together transcend petty partisan squabbling and move forward with a Commonsense Agenda based on Shared Values. (Are you tingling yet?)
It's a nice idea but it's not how American politics works. There is no huge class of uncommitted independents waiting to be persuaded. There are no Reasonable People behind the curtain, pulling the strings. The selling points of the conservative agenda — small government, free markets, patriotism — have no motive force of their own. They are not binding and command no intellectual consistency (which is why the endless, tiresome charges of hypocrisy from the left are so fruitless). They are the politics, not the policy, and the two are not connected. The policy, the motive force among conservative elites, is a defense of America's oligarchic status quo and a redistribution of wealth upward. It is those voices that speak in the ears of our political class and that agenda that commands the assent of one and a half of America's two parties. It's not hard to see why: our political system is choked with veto points, vulnerable to motivated minorities, insulated from public opinion, and flooded with money.
It is genuinely difficult to say what, if anything, can rally the left's diverse constituencies into a political force capable of counterbalancing the influence of the country's oligarchy. The much-maligned greens had a pretty damn strong run at it. As I said before ...
... environmentalists pulled together a huge coalition of businesses, religious groups, military groups, unions, and social justice groups. They got a majority of U.S. citizens on their side, as polls repeatedly showed. And — here's the kicker — on the back of all that work, they got a majority of legislators in both houses of Congress on their side.
In a sane world — and in other developed democracies — that's what success looks like.
But in the U.S. political system, it wasn't enough.
I'll tell you what I don't think will work: Dems using policy concessions to try to win political fights. Somehow Andy Revkin picks through the wreckage of the climate fight and concludes that one of the culprits was "a failure on the part of the major environmental groups and their allies to compromise earlier in the legislative effort to address climate change."Of course cap-and-trade itself was born as a compromise, and at every step of the process the climate bill was compromised further and further until there was almost nothing left of it, but at no point did all that compromising change the politics a whit. It didn't move the needle at all. What does Revkin take from this? We needed even bigger compromises, even earlier! Some how, some way, those unreasonable hippies must be to blame for this.
Revkin and the Breakthrough folks would have us believe that policy differences are at the root of the failure to dethrone fossil fuels. It's just the wrong ideas, the wrong five-point plan. The climate bill that passed the House had R&D spending, consumer rebates, clean energy incentives, efficiency standards, development programs for clean cars and low-energy buildings, and a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions. But it just had the wrong mix of those policies, you see. A different mix, with more emphasis on R&D, would have brought Reasonable People out of the woodwork!
Matt Nisbet says, "We really need to get beyond power politics on climate change, where almost anything goes to win politically in the short-term."Yeah, that's the problem: the left was just too darn merciless on the climate bill, too united, too willing to spend money and primary opponents and stay on message. Too much focus on power, that's what went wrong! Again that forlorn, undying hope: that the politics can be taken out of politics.
If we do compromise more, quit talking about pollution, get rid of any penalties or limits or mandates, and just ask for some research money, Republicans will join us on that, right?
No. And not a theoretical no. Not a prediction. They have rejected those overtures before and they are rejecting them as we speak, mocking and attacking green R&D and any form of support for clean energy or low-carbon infrastructure. It's not that they disagreed with green groups about the best way to get beyond fossil fuels; they disagreed about the need to do so. That is the policy, even if the politics was "all of the above."
Yet even now, still, everyone wants to think that they could have won the climate fight if greens had only listened to their clever policy approach. If they could just get the hippies to shut up, they could show the referees how reasonable they are, and the referees would call it in their favor.
But the referees have left the building. Policy is policy. Politics is politics. First you figure out what you want — in my case, I want clean energy, dense land use, and economic justice — and then you take every chance to make progress toward those goals. Meanwhile, you wage political war with the tools of politics: money, message, organization, solidarity, and a healthy dose of ruthless opportunism. Policy concessions aren't just a poor weapon in that war; they are no weapon at all.
The Green Diary Rescue appears every Saturday afternoon. Inclusion of a particular diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement with it.
(Whatever you do, don't miss boatsie's three-diary slam of the new head of the Green Climate Fund, Trevor Manuel. Links appear immediately after the squiggle.)
Snowy egret
lineatus rose early (again) for the
Dawn Chorus: Kossacks at Pt. Reyes: "So anyway, a group of us headed out to the Jewel of the Bay Area for a day of spring birding, with a side order of wildflower admiration. he forecast called for 30% chance of showers, but we avoided rainstorms (and also avoided meta-storms here, by the looks of it). We were supposed to be a larger group, but there were a number of last-minute complications. 'Twas a bummer not to have the others with us, but the silver lining was the ease of changing plans on the fly (repeatedly)."
Climate Change
In a three-diary series, boatsie, like the planet, got a little heated discussing someone you may never have heard of. First, there was green climate fund leadership risks global bankruptcy: "South Africa’s most vocal neoliberal politician, Trevor Manuel, is apparently being seriously considered as co-chair of the Green Climate Fund. On April 28-29 in Mexico City, Manuel and other elites meet to design the world’s biggest-ever replenishing pool of aid money: a promised $100 billion of annual grants by 2020, more than the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and allied regional banks put together. The Climate Justice lobby is furious, because as a network of 90 progressive organizations wrote to the United Nations, 'The integrity and potential of a truly just and effective climate fund has already been compromised by the 2010 Cancún decisions to involve the World Bank as interim trustee.' A Friends of the Earth International study earlier this month attacked the Bank for increased coal financing, especially $3.75 billion loaned to South Africa’s Eskom a year ago."
Trevor Manuel
She followed up when he got the job with
neoliberal Trevor Manuel appointed cochair of green climate fund: "It's official. South Africa's Planning Minister Trevor Manuel will co-chair the 50-member committee to design the $100 billion Green Climate Fund! … The Climate Justice lobby is furious, because as a network of 90 progressive organizations wrote to the United Nations, 'The integrity and potential of a truly just and effective climate fund has already been compromised by the 2010 Cancún decisions to involve the World Bank as interim trustee.' A Friends of the Earth International study earlier this month attacked the Bank for increased coal financing, especially $3.75 billion loaned to South Africa’s Eskom a year ago. Manuel chaired the Bank/IMF Board of Governors in 2000, as well as the Bank’s Development Committee from 2001-05. He was one of two United Nations Special Envoys to the 2002 Monterrey Financing for Development summit, a member of Tony Blair’s 2004-05 Commission for Africa, and chair of the 2007 G-20 summit."
And again in Green Climate Fund Fraud: Another World Bank Coup.
Several diarists looked at the recent extraordinary weather and reminded us of what climate scientists have been saying for quite some time:
Steven D wrote Stormy Weather (or you can't say climate scientists didn't warn you): "'God's will' some might say (as some ignorant or simply cruel people always do). But a group of people have been warning about increased incidents of severe weather for some time now, but their predictions have often been ignored or marginalized by our national news media, which has been much more interested in publicizing attacks on their credibility and promoting the viewpoints of a few (a very, very few) critics of their work. I am speaking of course about climate scientists. So, to be fair, let's take a trip on the wayback machine to the year 2007 to see what these abused and defamed climate scientists were saying regarding their warnings and predictions of the potential for increased extreme weather events as a result of global climate change."
The Cunctator weighed in with Top Climate Scientist On Killer Tornadoes: 'It Is Irresponsible Not To Mention Climate Change': "Conservatives attack any discussion of climate policy within the context of the killer tornadoes as 'grotesque,' saying that to do so is blaming the victims. In an email interview, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, one of the world's top climate scientists, who has been exploring for years how greenhouse pollution influences extreme weather, said he believes that it is 'irresponsible not to mention climate change' in the context of these extreme tornadoes. Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, added that the scientific understanding of how polluting our atmosphere with billions of tons of greenhouse gases affects tornadic activity is still ongoing."
jamess wrote It was a dark and stormy nite ...: "But what is "the cause"of all these broken records ... all these broken lives ...Is it La Nina? Is it Climate Change kicking in? Or is it merely better monitoring of tornadic events? ... Inquiring minds should want to know ... so should Inquiring News Media ..."
And called out the propagandists in Fox Alert: Calling all Climate Skeptics: Help us Rename the 'Season of Pain': "Here at FOX, we know that when People see pictures of all the sweeping Tornado Damage, and they will be tempted to 'blame it all on Climate Change.' Now we can't have that, can we?"
A Siegel pointed to the anomalies and pondered Global Warming did not cause the tornados! Did it? (revisited): "Second, we should clearly understand, at this time, it is absolutely impossible to tie any single weather event, any specific 'abnormal' temperature, any storm to the effects of Global Warming. Thus, it is impossible to state that 'Global Warming caused the tornadoes' with any confidence ... but that is not the end of the conversation. In fact, we now face an opposite challenge. As per Bill McKibben's Eaarth, we have changed our planet such that we now in a different world than that in which modern civilization evolved. While Climate Disruption doesn't cause any weather event, no weather event occurs any longer outside the context of the changed climate."
Bmeis thought The Worst Tornado Outbreak had inklings of a broader impact, too: "I believe that it is due to climate change. Going back to 1980 atmospheric scientists have told us that climate change would bring more severe weather events. This of course is because of the steady increase in greenhouse gas emissions."
ban nock discussed Climate Change and Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge: "The Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, a Class 1 designated wilderness area of the coast of South Carolina is getting washed away due to erosion exacerbated by rising sea level. One of the largest nesting sites for the loggerhead sea turtle it is thought that this currently threatened species might well be uprated to endangered. The IUCN already rates the turtle such."
A story of a mini ecological disaster was pollwatcher's example of what global warming may be creating: "Here in the west, the pine trees are being devastated by a pine bark beetle because the winters just don't get cold enough anymore to kill them. In Alaska and northern latitudes the permafrost is melting and disrupting the lives of indigenous people who depend on frozen ground. Spring is coming early in many parts of the country and fall is coming later. Of course it's almost impossible to attribute any single weather event, or even an entire years weather events to global warming. But since this isn't an article to be published in a scientific journal, and this is a Democratic blog site, I'm going to do it anyway."
Agriculture, Gardening & Food
Bill Tchakirides provided answers to his question What do you know about Food Disparagement Laws?: "These laws currently exist in 13 states and do things like banning photographers from taking pictures of food processing plants, or writing articles protesting farms that spray their crops with Monsanto poisons, or just discussing in the public press (and no doubt in blogs like this one) the disadvantages of non-organic farming. The food disparagement movement has major corporate support (Monsanto, Dow, Buckeye Eggs and others) and haul people into court with their heavy economic advantage if the smallest criticism is raised."
Methinks They Lie declared that Tom "Monsanto"Vilsack Must Go.: "Who needs the federal agency responsible for ensuring food safety for Americans? In our brave new world we rely on the 'invisible hand' of the market place to regulate itself! So it's only natural that Vilsack would approve a program allowing companies like Monsanto to review itself. I'm sure Monsanto will do the environmental assessments and find that 'Oh My Gosh!', GMO's are perfectly safe!"
In a diary that stirred a lot of commenter objections, Jill Richardson dared us to Put Sewage Sludge In Your Mouth: "A new Washington Post piece by Darryl Fears claims sewage sludge is safe enough to put in your mouth. Specifically, the statement was made about 'Class A Biosolids,' the treated sewage sludge (renamed 'biosolids' to make it sound less unpleasant) that has regulated amounts of 10 heavy metals, salmonella, and fecal coliform."
lao hong han presented us with A Seed Catalog Must-Read on Food, Farming and Socialism: "Never mind the appeal to the senses. These catalogs have some crucial lessons for revolutionaries and socialists. Our small forces are concentrated in urban areas, our organizing efforts in workplaces, on campuses, inside communities of color, among immigrants in cities and the denser 'burbs, and, alas, within a too-often inward facing left. As Dody often and forcefully reminds me, we are dangerously blind to—or worse, dismissive of—a critical component of any serious effort to create revolutionary change in this country, the folks in rural communities across the US."
In the latest installment of Macca's Meatless Monday, beach babe in fl couldn't avoid discussing The Wedding and wrote cooking breakfast for the Queen: "BLUEBERRY PANCAKES with MANGO STARS and STRAWBERRY HEARTS
makes about 12 pancakes."
NourishingthePlanet gave us three more in her series on how people outside the States are feeding themselves. There ws Ackee: West-African Expatriate: "Ackee and saltfish is Jamaica’s national dish and a breakfast staple. Like the identity of the island itself, the dish has a blend of British (saltfish) and West African (ackee) origins. The Ackee fruit is an African native crop introduced to the Caribbean by British slave traders. The ackee tree (Blighia sapida) is indigenous to the tropical forests of West Africa. Although it is not popularly eaten there, it is cultivated in the region for several nonfood uses: Immature fruits are used to make soap; the wood from the tree is termite resistant and used for building; extracts from the poisonous seeds are taken to treat parasites and are sometimes used as a fish poison; topical ointment made from crushed ackee leaves is applied to the skin to treat headaches and ulcers. And the Ackee leaves are also good as a fodder for goats."
And Getting “More Crop Per Drop" to Strengthen Global Food Security: "Seventy percent of the world’s freshwater is used for irrigation, and global water resources are drying up as climate change takes hold and population growth continues. 60 percent of the world’s hungry people live in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa—most of them on small farms—where they do not have a reliable source of water to produce sufficient yields. Only 4 percent of the cultivated land in sub-Saharan Africa is currently equipped for irrigation. 95 percent of cropland in the region depends on rain, and climate scientists predict that rainfall on the continent will decline in the coming decades. But there is great potential to expand irrigation with small-scale solutions."
As well as Creating Farms that Produce Food and Energy: "Around 3 billion people, or half of the world’s population, rely on unsustainable biomass based energy sources, including wood, and around 1.6 billion people still lack access to electricity. With an Integrated Food Energy System (IFES), FAO believes that people will have access to sustainable and reliable energy. Farmers can incorporate IFES in two ways. The first type of IFES uses intercropping or agroforestry, where farmers utilize the same plot of land to grow food and fuel-generating crops; the second type focuses on maximizing the connection between food crops, livestock, and the production of energy by using manure and crop residues."
RLMiller explained why This one is personal: "The truck has been pulling up in my neighborhood every day now for weeks, a harbinger of a California spring as sure as any Eastern robin. She parks, puts up a wooden sign reading "Oxnard, fresh,"and the picture - no more is necessary - and sets out her wares. They're ripe, red, and fresh. If I ask her how long ago they were picked, she says 'hours' or 'this morning,' and indeed they're field-warm. I hand over six dollars for three pints, and soon the red juice runs down my chin as I ingest methyl iodide. Methyl iodide is a known neurotoxin. It disrupts thyroid function, damages developing fetuses, and has caused lung tumors in laboratory animals. And it's the fumigant of choice for strawberry fields."
Springtime, especially in Appalachia, is morel season wrote wv voice of reason in Mushroom Foraging: Morel Madness: "Morel mushrooms (Morchella spp.) are arguably the most highly prized of the springtime fungi. Morels are easily distinguished from most other mushrooms by their sponge-like caps and hollow bodies. These choice edibles are known by various local names such as Molly Moochers, sponge mushrooms, dry land fish honeycomb, and pine cone mushroom. Although there are at least 12 species in North America, we will concentrate on the two most familiar groups found in the northeastern United States."
In her latest installment of Saturday Morning Garden Blogging Vol. 7.10, Frankenoid wrote: "Denver's weather ran 5° to 10° cooler than normal for most of the week; we had lots of clouds, and a little rain during the first half of the week — we've officially gotten over an inch of moisture this month, although it's still very, very dry."
Green Policy, Green Activism & Politicians
boatsie gave us the skinny on some student activism in ExxonMobil Doesn't Speak For ME! Grads Protest "Fuelish" Commencement Speaker: "There's a storm brewing on the small campus of Worcester Polytechnic Institute over the kind of vision for the future to be imparted to graduating students at this year's commencement. Offering one vision is Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil—the largest private oil company in the world and a major funder of climate deniers. Offering the other is Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow-in-Residence at Post Carbon Institute. The two visions couldn't be further apart, nor the stakes higher. According to students at WPI, ExxonMobil has given at least $1.3 million to the school. The decision to invite Tillerson was taken without consulting the community and kept a secret for over two years. The administration has also opposed efforts to find out the exact nature of the decision making process that led to the invitation."
RLMiller urged everyone to make Public comments on tar sands in US and to hurry up about it because the deadline is approaching: "Tar sands and oil-bearing shale lurk under the surface in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming, and at least one company has plans to extract them from state-owned lands near Arches National Park. Now the Bureau of Land Management seeks to hold public meetings and solicit public comment on an expanded plan for extraction from federally owned public lands. … Urgent to America: public comments are being accepted only through May 15."
In International Energy Agency Chief Economist: We hit Peak Oil, change the Be informed us: "For the 4th time, Dennis Kucinich is introducing a bill that other Democrats have smartly supported in the past: windfall tax on oil companies. That idea is sounding better than ever as we anticipate another round of rosy profit forecasts from Big Oil."
From the campaign trail, Norman Solomon, who has filed with the Federal Election Commission as a candidate for Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey's seat if she decides not to run, wrote about an issue he has been involved with for three decades—nuclear power: "The facts all point to this 'inconvenient truth—the time has come to shut down California’s two nuclear power plants as part of a swift transition to an energy policy focused on clean and green renewable sources and conservation.
The Diablo Canyon plant near San Luis Obispo and the San Onofre plant on the southern California coast are vulnerable to meltdowns from earthquakes and threaten both residents and the environment."
myles spicer found that Bachmann mangles the facts on domestic oil production: "This week in public statements and widely published op-ed pieces -- one of which appeared in her hometown paper The Minneapolis Star Tribune on April 26 Michele Bachmann took the administration to task for failure to aggressively develop our nation's oil untapped oil reserves. We have generally become accustomed to Bachmann’s careless use of facts on a number of issues, but her analysis of these domestic reserves were beyond her normal exaggerations. Her facts, in fact, were highly distorted and unsupported by any reliable data."
TomP went after his Senator in "Shouldn't Claire McCaskill Protect The People and Not Polluters"?: "I'm sick of McCaskill's right wing actions. We not only need better Democrats, but we need just plain Democrats. We need a Democrat in the Senate from Missouri. She's not one."
Green Essays, Green Philosophy & Green Poetry
heathlander took a look at Rousseau, Voltaire and Climate Denial: "Chris Mooney has an interesting article up at Mother Jones which draws upon insights revealed by psychology and neuroscience to explain why people tend to dismiss or distort scientific evidence so as to neutralise threats to, or exaggerate the strength of, our pre-existing beliefs. The nutshell is that, as he puts it, "we apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.""
Surazeus went poetic in Brutus Petroleum: "Come and listen to my story about a man named Tony/
a rich oil baron who keeps our engines oiled.
He was drilling in our gulf when his ship went kaboom/
and up through sea mud comes a bubbling crude.
Oil that is. Black gold. Texas Tea./
A generous gift from Brutus Petroleum."
Biofuels were on Galtisalie's mind in the "BELATED EARTH DAY STATE OF THE POTTY DIALECTIC": "Truly bloody bleeding hearts seek the honest and evasive sweet spot--where world food security, health and environmental protection, sustainability, and rural development are not shuffled off in separate corners, divided and conquered. Calling on the biofuels industry to make itself more sustainable by moving to wastewater-based fertilizer, a long-time public interest environmental attorney discusses 'Peak Phosphorus' and the human side of biofuels, both internationally and domestically, in an essay originally posted at http://biofuelsdigest.com/...
His keyboard dipped in acid as usual, NNadir excoriated anti-nuclear activists in the diary Global Burden of Disease: Epidemiologists at Work.: "Where are the brainless Greenpeace types calling for banning oil? I'll tell you where, driving their cars around to "No Nukes" meetings because of a 14 meter tsunami struck a nuclear plant in someone else's country. In brainless driving around (and using up nuclear and non-nuclear electricity to post insipid web posts) the Greenpeacees are [in] effect making an argument that any life lost to nuclear causality is infinitely (and the word 'infinite' still applies since immediate radiation deaths are still zero) to millions of energy related deaths from other causes, included but not limited to air pollution."
In another installment of the series, ALifeLessFrightening wrote Living Simply: "As for living simply here in my own little corner of the world, my cold-weather veggies are on a mission to take over the world. Just a couple of weeks ago my lettuces and greens were itty-bitty, spindly-legged things in plastic flats. Well, it's amazing what some room to grow (and liberal amounts of horse poo, gifts from my 4-legged pasture potatoes, applied to the raised beds) will do!"
DaMadFiddler harkened back to a simpler time when clocks didn't need electricity, and neither did a lot of other things in Days of Future Past: "The 20th Century saw an amazingly rapid evolution of technology on all fronts, but implicit in this race forward was a bargain: we traded simplicity and durability for increased functions and a price point that ensured more universal access. In the process, we have redefined our understanding of 'better' to primarily focus on a combination of number and complexity of functions, and ease of use. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but certain other factors which used to be important—adaptability, durability, and ease of maintenance and repair—tend to get ignored. So long as it doesn't break immediately, how long an item can be made to last is only a secondary concern for most consumers."
Toxins & Hazardous Waste
Elisa sought action on dangers to kids in What I Want for Mothers Day is for Our Leaders To Stand Up for Us: "Because California de facto mandates the use of toxic or untested flame retardants in the foam of furniture and baby products such as nursing 'boppy' pillows and car seats, and manufacturers are loathe to create different product lines for different states, it is almost a guarantee that every single one of us, including our babies, have been exposed to these toxins. For Latinos, our exposure is even greater. According to a study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, Mexican-American children in California have seven times higher levels of toxic flame retardants in their blood than do children in Mexico."
Energy
Dr Teeth warned us to Stop Blaming Oil Speculation: "While I have no love for Wall Street speculators, the fact remains that they are essentially correct in their pricing a barrel of oil. Part of it is the devalued dollar, part of it is turmoil in the middle east, but the biggest factor remains a constant. We are either on or near the downslope in oil production."
mateosf reprised a diary from years back in The myth of 'oil price gouging' will hurt us all ... redux: "To start simply: American oil companies have about as much to do with the price of oil as Wall Street has to do with creating middle-class jobs. It's very simple, really: while America uses 25 percent of the world's oil, we control just 3 percent of global supply. While American oil companies may develop oil fields all over the world, they mostly only actually OWN the oil they've leased from the U.S. government (at rock-bottom prices and with massive tax subsidies, I might add)."
DWG decried the latest propaganda campaign in Toxic stupidity: Oil industry claims its profits support public employees: "The American Petroleum Institute is pulling out all the stops to protect over $100 billion in subsidies, tax breaks, and royalty 'relief' for the oil and gas industry. The latest gambit is to link oil company profits with pensions for teachers and public employees. The message is textbook toxic stupidity: support our tax cuts or your pensions will suffer."
A Siegel alerted us to something that the Speaker of the House later walked back in Boehner: Oil Companies "ought to be paying their fair share.": "Questioned about the oil industry's 'obscene' profits by ABC's Jonathan Karl, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) asserted that the oil industry doesn't require the significant (>$1 billion/year) tax subsidies of the oil depletion allowance. He said that they will 'pay their fair share of taxes.' As Boehner put it, "'I don’t think the big oil companies need to have the oil depletion allowances.'" Speaker Boehner appeared, for a moment, to have gone 25 percent of the way to meeting President Barack Obama's call to reduce the subsidies to the oil industry by $4 billion per year..."
kirbybruno like a message from the White House—End Unwarranted oil subsidies, Obama to Congressional leaders: "On the heels of Earth Day, it is nice to see our President take advantage of Boehner's statement and bring some attention to our nation's energy problems and steps that can be taken to help fix it."
Clean energy loans still at risk wrote rb137: "The Obama administration is pushing for renewables in the face of rising oil prices, and while the DOE's renewables loan guarantee program passed this year's budget, the lack of capital to green businesses—particularly small businesses—still threatens our ability to build a green economy. Why are these guaranteed loans so important? In the wake of the banking crisis, it is difficult for small businesses to get loans. In particular, high tech startups such renewables companies suffer, because the banks deem them a high risk."
barath cautioned that Alternative energy won't save us from Exxon or speculators: "The other day Talking Points Memo had a gallery of 'green tech' under the heading "Gas Prices Blues? Feast your eyes on the open vistas of clean, green alternative energy sources. Sure, why not. And with gas prices where they are, it's not surprising to hear calls to go after speculators or Exxon. There's no reason not to. But finding scapegoats is a mostly-pointless exercise. Alternative energy isn't a 'solution' in the sense we're used to, and oil companies and speculators aren't the 'problem'."
Phil Radford II Greenpeace opined on What a Chernobyl or Fukushima disaster at Indian Point would mean: "1 in 3 Americans live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant, and many plants threaten major cities. More than 17 million people live within 50 miles of New York's Indian Point, an old nuclear plant in an active seismic zone north of New York City. What would happen in New York City if an earthquake, terrorist attack, or accident led to a catastrophic release of radiation?"
gmoke lamented the lousy turnout for a Harvard Workshop on the 25th Anniversary of the Chernobyl Accident: "Went to two full presentations and part of another presentation on the history and aftermath of Chernobyl on April 26, the 25th anniversary of the accident, at Harvard. I was surprised that the room was so small. The seminar's room capacity was 17 people and 15 attended this session, the largest audience during the part of the event I attended. Guess that what happened in Chernobyl and is still happening because of it is not very important any more, even in the wake of Fukushima."
Joieau had some disturbing news in 'Station Blackout' at Browns Ferry - Update: "Yesterday's record-breaking tornados in Alabama, in addition to causing tremendous death and destruction, also caused a 'station blackout' for all three reactors at TVA's Browns Ferry station near Athens, 84 miles north of Birmingham. No, the nukes weren't actually hit by the monster twisters that ravaged Birmingham and Tuscaloosa and killed nearly 300 people in several states. The blackout occurred when the storms knocked out transmission lines providing power to the reactors. TVA now estimates offsite power will not be restored for at least three days, possibly a week."
Is the Nuclear Power Industry Melting Down? was both long-time anti-nuclear activist harveywasserman's diary and hope: "In the wake of the apocalyptic nightmare at Fukushima, the multi-trillion-dollar global nuclear power industry is looking over the abyss at a long-overdue extinction. But the issue is far from decided. Japan's horrifying catastrophe has sent the industry's spin machine into overdrive. Hell-bent on minimizing the dangers of this unprecedented disaster, we've been shown the script of what reactor-backers are willing to say and do to save themselves."
Stuart H Smith discussed what he calls a Chernobyl in the Gulf of Mexico: "Radioactive elements such as radium, thorium and uranium are known byproducts of the oil production process. These toxic elements are extracted from the ground along with the oil and gas, and are separated from the fossil fuels as part of the production process. Once the NORM is extracted, it is flushed directly back into the ocean in the waste-stream byproduct known as produced water. Their discharge into the Gulf of Mexico has been a daily reality since the 1950s – but the amount that was released into the water from the runaway Macondo Well is unprecedented."
And he also blasted BP for "research paralysis" that Make a Mockery of Time-Sensitive Environmental Studies: "As we move beyond the first-year anniversary of the Gulf oil spill, scientists are slamming BP for taking 'far too long' in allocating tens of millions in research funding to assess environmental damages tied to the disaster. In fact, some scientists say it may already be too late to ever get an accurate evaluation – and I would argue that’s got BP execs high-fiving in Houston. The immediacy of the evidence-gathering is critical, so with each passing day (that BP withholds funding), the likelihood decreases that scientists will be able to get the research done before the trail of evidence goes cold."
ekyprogressive raised an eyebrow when Coal Companies Settled Over MTR Flooding In Ky.: "I have to say, there is just so much news in this one story, I had to share it everywhere I can share, including here. Reports that MTR increases flooding is nothing new, particularly from other states, but doing studies like this in Kentucky after our legislature declared they want to make this a 'Safe Haven from the EPA' surprised me."
danps explained The high cost of fracking - and the movement against it: "Asking Chesapeake Energy if it was worthwhile to drill in an area where they had a direct financial interest seems a bit like asking Tobacco Institute scientists if smoking is linked to lung cancer, no? An increase of over 700% ought to be looked into, not blandly passed along. But either way, there's a lot of natural gas under them thar hills and it is, as the USGS helpfully notes in its summary, "an abundant, domestic energy resource that burns cleanly, and emits the lowest amount of carbon dioxide per calorie of any fossil fuel.""
A Siegel did the math on compact fluorescent bulbs vs. incandescent bulbs in Unpublished letters: "What is the long run?" and discovered that the long-run financial advantages for CFL are really obtained in the short run.
Green Communities & Sustainability
Tom Joad and his Traveling Road Show went about Rethinking Environmental Impacts in Urban Development - Part 1: "The way we think about how human activity impacts natural environment has evolved over the forty years since the first Earth Day. This is in large part thanks to advances in climate science over this period. We have moved from an environmental ethic focused on conservation to one focused on anti-pollution controls to one focused on the global climate consequences of human activity."
pollwatcher suggested a really big project in Want to retire comfortably? Build your own house!: "Where do you begin? Energy! Energy! Energy! If you're thinking of purchasing a new house, and you're not thinking energy, then you are either filthy rich, or you would like to experience what it's like to default on a mortgage. We are at Peak Oil, and all fossil fuel energy prices will be skyrocketing from here on out, except when we are in the severe recessions that the higher prices will cause. In the next 10 years, we will look back at $4.00/gal gas as the good ole days. Remember, every dollar in energy that you save, can go to paying off your mortgage
The Natural World & The Great Outdoors
Lisa Lockwood loved her time Fly Fishing the Green River~Flaming Gorge: "Lucky lucky me. My husband and our great friend (and fly fisherman extraordinaire) 'M' conspired to put me on some realllly nice trout earlier this month. Being relatively new to the sport (just started throwing flies in 2001~yes, that sounds like a long time, but fly fishing is an art that takes time, patience, and practice to perfect!) my normal catch in Trout waters is of the young and dumb (small!) variety, which are generally the only fish I can fool into sipping up one of my bug patterns. So, they decided it was time to put me on some nice, fat, large (and I mean BIG!) Browns for a change, and let me try my darndest to hoodwink 'em with my own self-tied versions of the Green River's legendary hatch of Blue-winged Olives (BWO's, a type of Mayfly that abounds during peak early Spring hatch times).And what a hatch it was! One short week of billions of small insects boiling the water's surface before emerging into flight, mating, and quickly expiring to blanket the stream with their spent bodies, literally becoming 'fish food'."
In the series, Our State Parks, Phoenix Rising introduced us to a place I have been many, many times, Colorado's Golden Gate Canyon: "In 1937, the Colorado State Legislature created a board to begin evaluating lands for a state park system, but it wasn't until 1951 that the state actually began to acquire land for the projects, leasing the recreation area surrounding the Cherry Creek Reservoir from the Army Corps of Engineers. Eight years later, in 1959, Cherry Creek State Park - located just south of Denver - was opened to the public. The next year saw the opening of Golden Gate Canyon State Park—the first mountain state park for the fledgling system. Since that time, the Colorado state park system has grown to 42 opened parks with two more in development."
The Daily Bucket series started by Front Pager Mark Sumner has taken off. This week there were entries by:
CitizenScientist: Spring Might Actually Be Here Edition: "It may really be spring here in southern Pennsylvania, with temps in the 60s today and for much of next week. We did have sun here yesterday and day among periods of rain; as I write this, it is clouding up here. I just hope we don't have 90 degree days in May like we did last year."
enhydra lutris: Cowbird Edition: "The brown headed cowbird is a brood parasite. It lays its eggs in the nests of others and then abandons them. The eggs are usually hatched by the unwitting foster parents, and because they grow faster and larger, feed them preferentially. The nest owner's own hatchlings suffer and even die as a result."
bwren: goose egg edition: "Canada Goose, week 3 on the nest. She was turning her eggs just before I took this picture."
Mark Sumner: Science Toys Edition: "I don't have a lot of observations from the road except boy has it been rainy. It seems like today was the first day of the trip that I wasn't craving a path through a deluge, and every stream or river I passed showed it. Near my own house the Meramec River is out of its banks and up to the goal-tops on a nearby soccer field. The Mississippi is over flood stage and overflowing into a creek that feeds directly into the river, turning the stream into more of a lake. It's not quite the Great Inland Sea stage that we hit in the two big floods of the 90s, but it's a whole lot of water."
Ocean, Wetlands & Water
In Century of drought for the southwest, DWG had some grim news that will probably be grimmer still since the data used are based 8-year-old climate predictions now widely known to understate the problems: "Water has always been precious in the southwest, but climate change is likely to make it worth its weight in platinum. As part of the Secure Water Act, the Department of Interior's Bureau of Reclamation has begun to explore the water management challenges posed by climate change over the 21st century. The initial report examines surface water availability for key river basins in the western United States. Across a wide range of modeled conditions, two consistent trends emerge for the coming century. Water levels will likely substantially decrease in river basins in the lower southwest and increase in the upper "
niccolo caldararo discussed Water Welfare & Farming: "The District's waste water has been increasingly poisoned with heavy metals and chemicals from farming pesticides and fertilizer since its drain to the south was never finished and a lower shunt was closed after pollution from the District was found to be adversely affecting birds."
Round-ups, Wrap-ups, Live Blogs & Summaries
Gulf Watchers #508 by Lorinda Pike: Deficiencies and Omissions = Death - BP Catastrophe.
Gulf Watchers #509 by shanesnana: Safer Dispersant and Help from Talk Radio - BP Catastrophe.
Gulf Watchers #510 by peraspera: Science the loser in the Gulf - BP Catastrophe.
Gulf Watchers #511 by Lorinda Pike: They're Baaaa-aak - BP Catastrophe.
ninkasi23: Tasty Bits v1.8: "Most Americans are so accustomed to supermarkets that are absolutely packed to the gills with massive amounts of really inexpensive food that they cannot even imagine that life could be any other way. Unfortunately, that era is ending."
possum: Science Tidbits.
ThirdandState: Third and State This Week: Zombies, Millionaire Taxes and Gas Drillers: "This week, we blogged about New Jersey's millionaire tax, taxes and Marcellus Shale drillers, zombies and much more."
State & Local Governments
DWG looked at the details of a Record clean energy spill in California: "Energy issues have dominated the recent news cycles. Much of the news has been bad. We have been treated to stories about BP's debacle in the Gulf of Mexico, the nuclear nightmare in Japan, a big fracking mess in Pennsylvania, and skyrocketing prices at the pump. Fortunately, there is some good news to report. On Friday, there was a record clean energy spill in California with solar and wind power generating 9% of the state's electricity. 'The California Energy Commission and the California Independent System Operator Corp. (ISO), which runs most of the state's transmission lines, said solar and wind producers as of Friday generated nearly 9 percent of the state's peak demand, or enough electricity to light about 2.2 million homes. With more wind and solar development in the works, the record will not last long. However, an equally important development is grid modernization which will make it easier to manage the growing renewable energy capacity.'"
mjkellett did some head-shaking and eye-rolling overMaine's Gov. LePage calling opponents of massive development “dingbats”: "At a Town Hall meeting last Friday in Topsham, Maine, Gov. Paul LePage launched the latest in a series of attacks on Maine’s social and environmental safety net. This time, he called people who use the state’s regulatory and judicial system to challenge environmental projects, 'dingbats.' LePage said, 'We should not have a system where it takes you five years to have, get, obtain a permit for a project and have some dingbat file [an] erroneous lawsuit that is not gonna go anywheres except do one thing: delay. Delay, delay, delay'."
agnostic was deftly ironic with the headline Gov. Perry is my hero!: "So, how did Gov. Secession react to the warm glow of brush fires raging across his state? By declaring a state of Prayer for three days, from Friday, April 22nd, to Sunday, the 24th. He managed to avoid any questions regarding the possible causes of the raging fires. Perry attacked Global Climate Change as late as 2007, when he scoffed at the idea that Climate Change could be dangerous to Texans"
Transportation
nthelurch gave us the green eye in My Electric ride - Week 1: "I've spent $4.35 charging my electric car in the first week of my Nissan Leaf ownership experiment. I've put 221 miles on it replacing my Honda Fit that was conservatively getting me 31mpg."
bogmanoc looked at a commercial for that car in 'Value of Zero' TV Ad Is a Ten: "The Nissan Leaf ad turns the traditional marketing focus on its head by boldly asking us to consider what 'zero' pollutants can do for the planet and the children yet to be born. (If it sounds familiar, that is the voice of 'Ironman' actor Robert Downey, Jr.) There’s a lot of subtleties going on as well, which makes the ad all that more captivating and memorable."
jamess cheered a
Recent DOE Break-Through with Hydrogen Fuel Cells, should make them Affordable: "'Researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland say catalysts made of carbon nanotubes dipped in a polymer solution can outperform traditional platinum catalysts in fuel cells at a fraction of the cost. The scientists say the new technology can remove one of the biggest roadblocks to widespread cell use: the cost of the catalysts.'"
In the series Sunday Train, BruceMcF dug into why Conventional Rail and the Steel Interstates Are Best Friends Forever: "I don't recollect that I have written very much about the benefit that the Steel Interstates offer to passenger rail elsewhere. So that's what I aim to do. Today I will look at one rail transport ideas I have talked about previously ~ Northeast Ohio Regional Rail ~ and what help it would receive from the Steel Interstates. Then sometime in the next week or two, I will look at the Columbus / WV / Atlantic Coast 'RidgeRunner,' and the benefit it would receive from the Steel Interstates."
Et Cetera
wade norris reported on how the Supreme Court dealt a setback for Environmental Activists and Refugees: "This case has been watched particularly closely by lawyers representing groups of people who are likely to become Environmental Refugees.
Even though there are hundreds to thousands of people currently being displaced by Climate Change, they do not have a defined status as a group, hence they are not really 'refugees.'
poligirl encouraged us to share Favorite Songs: Environment Edition: "Most of you probably already know, last Friday was Earth Day. So, in honor of Mother Earth, the environment is going to be the theme. Now, I know there may not be all that many "save the environment-type songs, so we're going to broaden the theme to include any song referencing anything in the environment. You know—birds, bees, flowers, trees, sunshine, rain, clouds, etc... Anything that can be even remotely tied to the environment counts, even if it is only in the title."
Fukushima Nukes
boatsie: Burners without Borders: Fukushima #53.
nathguy: Fukushima: Gunderson argues for Criticality at Rac 3: "I think Rac 4 may have had a slow critical set of flashes, and Gunderson thinks
Rac 3 may have gone prompt critical."
Adept2u: Fukushima Atmospheric Radiation Release MASSIVELY Underestimated: "Data released by the government indicates radioactive material was leaking into the atmosphere from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in early April in greater quantities than previously estimated."
jim in IA: Radiation Dosage in Sievert Units: "The reports from Japan and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have thrust many technical terms into the news. A term that is used very frequently is the sievert. What is it?"
Liberation Angel: Radioactive Strontium Found in Hilo, Hawaii Milk (Forbes today): "The fact that strontium 89 has a relatively short half life is a good indicator that it is from Fukushima (55 days). And if strontium 89 is here in the United States you can bet Strontium 90 is too (EPA says they expect it when they see radiocesium, which has been blanketing the nation for a month in rain and dry deposits)."