Green Diary Rescue & Open Thread: 350 ppm

Bill McKibben wrote at Grist:

Pachauri’s call for 350 ppm is breakthrough moment for climate movement

Rajendra Pachauri is the U.N.‘s top climate scientist. He leads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which every five years produces the authoritative assessment of climate science. Its last report, in 2007, helped set the target of 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a target that many environmental groups and national governments have adopted as their goal for Copenhagen.

As many of you know, that number is out of date. When Jim Hansen and other scientists looked at phenomena like the Arctic ice melt of the last two summers, they produced new data demonstrating that 350 ppm is the bottom line. But it’s been hard to get that news out to the powers that be. So today it comes as enormous and welcome news that Pachauri, from his New Delhi office, said that 350 was the number.

"As chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, I cannot take a position because we do not make recommendations," said Rajendra Pachauri when asked if he supported calls to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below 350 ppm.  "But as a human being I am fully supportive of that goal. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target," he told Agence France-Presse in an interview.

Many national governments (and even some environmental groups) have stuck to a 450 ppm target—it seems politically "realistic."

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The rescue beings below and continues in the jump. My inclusion of a particular diary does not necessarily indicate agreement.

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boatsie looked at True Cost Eco-economics and Degrowth: "What's the true cost behind a tin of tiger balm? That organic California  avocado you purchased yesterday for your salad in Boise, Idaho? What about those $4 generic blood pressure meds you picked up at Walgreen's which were manfacured by Raxbury Pharmaceuticals in India? The sad fact is that what we see in the store, what we put in our homes, what we use every day, all those objects, all those friendly products that we're so used to, have a hidden legacy — which has to do with their impacts on the environment, on our health, on ecosystems, on the people that made them — that starts from the moment that they start to extract the ingredients. And what if we forced the global marketplace to include 'externalities' into the price of every product in the global marketplace to tell the ecoloogical truth? Daniel Goleman. Bill Moyers Journal, May 15, 2009."

lostinky reported on the Ongoing anti-MTR action in West Virginia: "As of publish, the two ground supporters have been arrested for trespass and released. The treesitters remain. This action is one of a series of non-violent acts of civil disobedience aimed to force the coal industry to stop the destructive practice of mountaintop removal surface mining.  In MTR, massive quantities of high explosives are used to blow a mountain apart after which 20-story draglines scrape out thin seams of coal."

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wader has posted the Overnight News Digest.

Haole in Hawaii posted photos of Dolphins, Eagle Rays and Some Boobies

Lefty Coaster inquired unhappily: Why did U.S. just OK new pipeline to import Tar Sands Oil?: "Last week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed off on a  controversial pipeline project to import oil made from Canada's tar sands, in a very dirty and very carbon intensive production process. Producing oil from tar sands oil emits 3 times as much CO2 per barrel as conventional oil production techniques do. That's because they have to literally cook the oil out of the sand using steam heated with vast quantities of Natural Gas, emitting vast quantities of CO2 in the process. Large areas of forest are destroyed to create the enormous open pit mines and the huge holding ponds for toxic waste water created in the processing of tar sands into oil. The complex of toxic waste water ponds that are clustered around the tar sands processing plants are so big they can be seen from orbit. There is little realistic hope that these areas can be returned to anything close to their original state as boreal forests."

Several diarists examined "cash for clunkers," which green-tinged stimulus program that ended Monday.

kloris reported that Cash-for-Clunkers Will Save America $492M And 1.7M Metric Tons Of CO2. And The $$ Stays Here Instead: "625,000 - # of new cars due to Clunker program as of Monday; 12,500 - avg miles driven per year; 7,812,500,000 -  avg miles driven by these new cars per year; 16 - avg clunker trade's mpg; 26 - avg new car's mpg; 10 - avg mpg improvement of new car vs. clunker; 63% - avg % improvement in gas mileage ... 0.00881 - metric tons of CO2 saved per gallon of gas; 1,654,522 -metric tons of CO2 saved per year."

Paradox13 debunked dealer complaints about "Delayed" Clunker Payments: "Most companies I work with pay on a ‘net-30’ or even ‘net-60’ basis. One major corporation actually has a ‘net-90’ policy. That means they do not pay the bill until 90 days after they get it. The CARS program was put into place on July 31. It's now August 25th. That means the longest a bill could possibly be outstanding is about three weeks. I guarantee the dealerships involved have ‘net-30’ payment policies for invoices, maybe more. In response to concerns raised by Congress, among others, the government has hired more people to process claims and is extending the deadline for rebate submission (the latter in response to problems with the website dealerships are to use to submit claims). All of this has been done within the first few weeks of the program. Most private companies would be proud to move so fast. Rather than being an example of inefficiency and ineffectiveness, the CARS program has been a model of government action and solutions. Each issue that has been reported is a manifestation of a lesson learned, not a new and persistent problem."

judy5cents told the story of how they traded in "Peppy" for "Kit" inCashing In Our Clunker: "[A]fter a fair amount of online research, as well as figuring out the finances on scratch paper, my husband decided he was willing to trade in ‘Peppy,’ a red 1995 Nissan hardbody pickup truck for a black 2009 Hyundai Elantra Touring with manual transmission. ...Also, the mileage has nearly doubled. Peppy averaged about 17 miles per gallon, ‘Kit’ is getting close to 32 miles per gallon. It turned out to be a pretty good deal all around, we're saving gas and an old pickup was replaced with a modern car with all the bells and whistles."

teacherken discussed Derrick Jackson’s column in the Boston Globe: Bottled-water scam finally feels the squeeze: "According to the GAO, energy costs of delivery bottled water in Los Angeles is over 1,000 times that of tap water. Some will say bottled water is safer than tap water, right?  Except if it is simply tap water, how is that possible? And as our annual per person consumption has gone from 13.4 gallons in 1997 to 29.3 gallons ten years later, we do not even have good access to health information - the GAO found almost no information on labels about health or water quality, and often incomplete information if one went online to try to obtain it.  Meanwhile our landfills continue to feel the impact, as 3/4 of the water bottles do not get recycled, but accumulate with the rest of our garbage."

Deoliver47 undermined another dollop of poison from the right wing in Glenn Beck attacks Green For All/ColorofChange founder Van Jones: "Glenn Beck obviously doesn't think black folks, or poor folks should have a role in the green revolution. He believes only in the acrid green bile he spews of hatred, and the green of fat cat dollars that fund his campaign of venom. Those of us who are proud of the work of Green For All see things differently."