Climate Change on The Huffington Post

Alexia Parks: Even the Taliban Supports Local Radio

2009-11-16T18:30:02Z

David Hoffman's InterNews, a $35 million organization which has helped support the development of 4,800 news outlets in 30 countries, has just opened its 42nd radio station in Afghanistan, and over lunch, Hoffman had an interesting story to tell. It was about the response from the Taliban to this form of public diplomacy.

Shortly after the station started reporting local news, says Hoffman, it received a phone call from a very polite member of the Taliban. "Could you please take the little jingle off the air?" the caller asked. "I want to listen to the news, but it starts with a jingle, and we're not allowed to listen to music." The Taliban could burn us down, says Hoffman, but they don't, because we provide an important function in Afghanistan.

In that country, as in other parts of the world where Internews has news outlets, local news trumps national news, especially in an emergency. To get started, local staff receives training in the science of program production along with broadcast equipment. They then are free to write and report on whatever they want.

Each year, Internews trains about 5,000 women in news media production and reporting. Women are an especially important target, notes Hoffman, because when you educate women, they report on what is important to them. It transforms their lives and the communities in which they live.

Today, most of the world lives in information poverty. With the rapid rise of cell phone technology and information equity, he says, the world will transform. Already 50% of people living in the developing world now have a cell phone. In less than five years, everyone will have one. Text messages sent to women micro-entrepreneurs can keep them educated.

Years ago, when Internews first launched its media training service, it sent six people to the Soviet Union. Their mission was to identify 200 people who were interested in receiving professional media training. Today, the organization hosts 600 TV stations across the country with 400 staff located in Moscow. In the Ukraine, they launched the country's first news agency, first print newspaper, and first TV and radio stations.

Currently, the organization is sending 70 reporters from around the world to the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen. In 2007, they sent 40 reporters to the UN's conference in Bali after learning that news about climate change was not making it into the local news media in their countries.

"Today," smiles Hoffman, "you can subscribe to our media feed and receive stories from around the world. They're not all in English, of course, but if you know how to read Chinese, Russian, Farsi or any of the other languages spoken by these reporters, you can follow firsthand, the transformation taking place around the world."

Giant Jellyfish Swarm Northward Due To Global Warming

2009-11-16T14:17:22Z

MICHAEL CASEY, AP Environmental Writer

KOKONOGI, Japan - A blood-orange blob the size of a small refrigerator emerged from the dark waters, its venomous tentacles trapped in a fishing net. Within minutes, hundreds more were being hauled up, a pulsating mass crowding out the catch of mackerel and sea bass.

The fishermen leaned into the nets, grunting and grumbling as they tossed the translucent jellyfish back into the bay, giants weighing up to 200 kilograms (450 pounds), marine invaders that are putting the men's livelihoods at risk.

The venom of the Nomura, the world's largest jellyfish, a creature up to 2 meters (6 feet) in diameter, can ruin a whole day's catch by tainting or killing fish stung when ensnared with them in the maze of nets here in northwest Japan's Wakasa Bay.

"Some fishermen have just stopped fishing," said Taiichiro Hamano, 67. "When you pull in the nets and see jellyfish, you get depressed."

This year's jellyfish swarm is one of the worst he has seen, Hamano said. Once considered a rarity occurring every 40 years, they are now an almost annual occurrence along several thousand kilometers (miles) of Japanese coast, and far beyond Japan.

Scientists believe climate change -- the warming of oceans -- has allowed some of the almost 2,000 jellyfish species to expand their ranges, appear earlier in the year and increase overall numbers, much as warming has helped ticks, bark beetles and other pests to spread to new latitudes.

The gelatinous seaborne creatures are blamed for decimating fishing industries in the Bering and Black seas, forcing the shutdown of seaside power and desalination plants in Japan, the Middle East and Africa, and terrorizing beachgoers worldwide, the U.S. National Science Foundation says.

A 2008 foundation study cited research estimating that people are stung 500,000 times every year -- sometimes multiple times -- in Chesapeake Bay on the U.S. East Coast, and 20 to 40 die each year in the Philippines from jellyfish stings.

In 2007, a salmon farm in Northern Ireland lost its more than 100,000 fish to an attack by the mauve stinger, a jellyfish normally known for stinging bathers in warm Mediterranean waters. Scientists cite its migration to colder Irish seas as evidence of global warming.

Increasingly polluted waters -- off China, for example -- boost growth of the microscopic plankton that "jellies" feed upon, while overfishing has eliminated many of the jellyfish's predators and cut down on competitors for plankton feed.

"These increases in jellyfish should be a warning sign that our oceans are stressed and unhealthy," said Lucas Brotz, a University of British Columbia researcher.

Here on the rocky Echizen coast, amid floodlights and the roar of generators, fishermen at Kokonogi's bustling port made quick work of the day's catch -- packaging glistening fish and squid in Styrofoam boxes for shipment to market.

In rain jackets and hip waders, they crowded around a visitor to tell how the jellyfish have upended a way of life in which men worked fishing trawlers on the high seas in their younger days and later eased toward retirement by joining one of the cooperatives operating nets set in the bay.

It was a good living, they said, until the jellyfish began inundating the bay in 2002, sometimes numbering 500 million, reducing fish catches by 30 percent and slashing prices by half over concerns about quality.

Two nets in Echizen burst last month during a typhoon because of the sheer weight of the jellyfish, and off the east coast jelly-filled nets capsized a 10-ton trawler as its crew tried to pull them up. The three fishermen were rescued.

"We have been getting rid of jellyfish. But no matter how hard we try, the jellyfish keep coming and coming," said Fumio Oma, whose crew is out of work after their net broke under the weight of thousands of jellyfish. "We need the government's help to get rid of the jellyfish."

The invasions cost the industry up to 30 billion yen ($332 million) a year, and tens of thousands of fishermen have sought government compensation, said scientist Shin-ichi Uye, Japan's leading expert on the problem.

Hearing fishermen's pleas, Uye, who had been studying zooplankton, became obsessed with the little-studied Nomura's jellyfish, scientifically known as Nemopilema nomurai, which at its biggest looks like a giant mushroom trailing dozens of noodle-like tentacles.

"No one knew their life cycle, where they came from, where they reproduced," said Uye, 59. "This jellyfish was like an alien."

He artificially bred Nomura's jellyfish in his Hiroshima University lab, learning about their life cycle, growth rates and feeding habits. He traveled by ferry between China to Japan this year to confirm they were riding currents to Japanese waters.

He concluded China's coastal waters offered a perfect breeding ground: Agricultural and sewage runoff are spurring plankton growth, and fish catches are declining. The waters of the Yellow Sea, meanwhile, have warmed as much as 1.7 degrees C (3 degrees F) over the past quarter-century.

"The jellyfish are becoming more and more dominant," said Uye, as he sliced off samples of dead jellyfish on the deck of an Echizen fishing boat. "Their growth rates are quite amazing."

The slight, bespectacled scientist is unafraid of controversy, having lobbied his government tirelessly to help the fishermen, and angered Chinese colleagues by arguing their government must help solve the problem, comparing it to the effects of acid rain that reaches Japan from China.

"The Chinese people say they will think about this after they get rich, but it might be too late by then," he said.

A U.S. marine scientist, Jennifer Purcell of Western Washington University, has found a correlation between warming and jellyfish on a much larger scale, in at least 11 locations, including the Mediterranean and North seas, and Chesapeake and Narragansett bays.

"It's hard to deny that there is an effect from warming," Purcell said. "There keeps coming up again and again examples of jellyfish populations being high when it's warmer." Some tropical species, on the other hand, appear to decline when water temperatures rise too high.

Even if populations explode, their numbers may be limited in the long term by other factors, including food and currents. In a paper last year, researchers concluded jellyfish numbers in the Bering Sea -- which by 2000 were 40 times higher than in 1982 -- declined even as temperatures have hit record highs.

"They were still well ahead of their historic averages for that region," said co-author Lorenzo Ciannelli of Oregon State University. "But clearly jellyfish populations are not merely a function of water temperature."

Addressing the surge in jellyfish blooms in most places will require long-term fixes, such as introducing fishing quotas and pollution controls, as well as capping greenhouse gas emissions to control global warming, experts said.

In the short term, governments are left with few options other than warning bathers or bailing out cash-strapped fishermen. In Japan, the government is helping finance the purchase of newly designed nets, a layered system that snares jellyfish with one kind of net, allowing fish through to be caught in another.

Some entrepreneurs, meanwhile, are trying to cash in. One Japanese company is selling giant jellyfish ice cream, and another plans a pickled plum dip with chunks of giant jellyfish. But, though a popular delicacy, jellyfish isn't likely to replace sushi or other fish dishes on Asian menus anytime soon, in view of its time-consuming processing, heavy sodium overload and unappealing image.

___

Associated Press writer Shino Yuasa contributed to this report from Tokyo.

Kumi Naidoo, New Greenpeace President, "Disappointed" In Obama

2009-11-16T11:47:39Z

The new head of Greenpeace, South African Kumi Naidoo, has told the BBC he will make human life more of a priority for the environmental group.

Mr Naidoo also criticised US President Barack Obama for failing to make the fate of the earth a priority.

Obama Hobbled By Congress In Fight Against Global Warming

2009-11-16T08:49:26Z

President Obama came into office pledging to end eight years of American inaction on climate change under President George W. Bush, and all year he has promised that the United States would lead the way toward a global agreement in Copenhagen next month to address the warming planet.

But this weekend in Singapore, Mr. Obama was forced to acknowledge that a comprehensive climate deal was beyond reach this year. Instead, he and other world leaders agreed that they would work toward a more modest interim agreement with a promise to renew work toward a binding treaty next year.

Ritt Bjerregaard: The Hopenhagen Ambassador: It Could Be You

2009-11-16T08:42:00Z

A few short weeks from now, delegates from all over the world will meet in our city Copenhagen to represent their nations at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP15. When they arrive, they will find that Copenhagen has become Hopenhagen for the month of December. We see the summit as a brilliant occasion -- and a commitment -- to involve and engage the entire population of the world in climate issues. It's not just world leaders who carry an enormous responsibility to improve the globe's climate in the future; the responsibility also weighs on individual cities and individual people. We must all realize the hope for a greener world. We name this wish Hopenhagen.

Hopenhagen is a movement of people all over the world calling on their leaders for a positive outcome at COP15 and expressing their hopes that we can create a better future. The city is showing its commitment to this cause by joining the movement and throwing our weight behind it. In order to focus on the decisive role of cities, the City of Copenhagen will hold a mayor summit meeting during the climate conference. We've invited 100 mayors from the entire world -- from Sao Paolo to Seoul to Toronto to Tokyo to New York. The motto is 'Cities Act.' Which we hope is a powerful image that should reach the entire globe. The message is that personal engagement can be linked together to make big global action.

The City of Copenhagen is glad to support the official launch of the campaign to elect a Hopenhagen Ambassador, who will represent the millions of citizens of Hopenhagen in Copenhagen in December. And it could be you!

The City of Copenhagen will officially welcome the winner to Copenhagen in December and present you with a schedule of official duties there.

See you in Hopenhagen!

Mitchell F. Stanley: What is China To Do?

2009-11-16T08:39:25Z

What is China to do? Twenty-five years ago China had little modern industry, an enormous population in poverty and was just beginning to look to the West for examples of how to bring prosperity to its hard working and thrifty people. I was there and saw this firsthand as a U.S. government official taking American industry executives to view the opportunities to bring 20th-century solutions to Chinese industries like steel, coal and manufacturing. A quarter of a century later, on the eve of Copenhagen, I serve as president of the National Center for Sustainable Development (NCSD), a national nonprofit corporation in Washington, D.C., that promotes a low-carbon economy.

This past week we posed that same question to two Chinese Ministry of Finance officials that we elected to our board and management team respectively. This question is also appropriate for the United States. As both countries approach the climate summit, it's clear: Neither country likes being told what to do by others.

What we discovered this week is remarkable. Below the surface of political posturing is the practical reality and acknowledgment that China and the United States must work together to lead the world to a low-carbon future. China has reached out to us as an NGO to help it formulate a new generation of green policies. China's nonprofit CDM Fund Management Center in Beijing manages an interagency fund that is newly formed under the authority of the State Council, supervised by the Ministry of Finance and supported by a portion of each of China's Certified Emission Reduction Certificates (CERs) under the Kyoto framework.

The CDM Fund will help direct education, policymaking and investment into enterprises that must now submit a plan for "getting green" to their regulators. This three-pronged strategy will assist the developing Chinese renewable energy market by devising specific sustainability standards and setting up a legal framework and financial mechanisms to facilitate the country's transition to a "greener" economy. This is a serious commitment. China wasn't forced to make this decision by any deadline or international legal or bi-lateral framework. The Chinese are eminently practical people and as such know it is not economically viable to continue on the same course as today. Taking a 50-year perspective they have concluded, we think, that a low-carbon future holds as much promise for jobs and sustainable development as the industrial revolution that brought prosperity to the developed world. The Chinese want to achieve broad-based prosperity without the waste, inefficiency and pollution the West suffered for 200 years.

Of course, it's hard to turn an ocean liner around. Physical laws of motion apply and cannot be changed by any Copenhagen mandate to do so. It took 200 years of polluting industrial growth to get the developed world to where it is today. China is growing very fast now but from a very low base: I was there and saw it firsthand. China is still a predominantly agricultural country with 80 percent of its people living in poverty. Certainly the coastal cities are urban and as congested as any in the West but this prosperity involves a fraction of the population.

The National Center for Sustainable Development is lucky and very well positioned. We have an unusual insight into Chinese policy at a high and strategic level. Our partner is the Finance Ministry, and it takes a practical approach. Establish policies first, evaluate practical demonstration projects in renewable and cleaner energy use (including coal) and then provide investment. This is a formula for steady progress. China wants the momentum of a successful Copenhagen conference and international cooperation at many levels such as with NCSD. The fact that China is following its own "middle way" between doing nothing and doing everything at once is a reasonable proposition -- and very Chinese.

Copenhagen Goals Scaled Back: World Leaders Put Off Climate Change Treaty

2009-11-15T17:18:01Z

Confirming doubts that had been growing for months, the world leaders in attendance at APEC -- along with Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen -- announced on Sunday morning that a legally binding deal on climate change would be impossible to achieve at the U.N. summit on global warming in Copenhagen next month.

Scott Daniels: Carbon Management: A Call to Action for the U.S. and China

2009-11-15T14:18:58Z

As President Obama prepares to set foot
on Chinese soil for the first time today, the United States and China,
the globe's leading greenhouse gas producers, are engaged in a classic
standoff over climate change. The United States wants to see China agree
to cap its accelerating level of carbon emissions before it acts. China
wants the U.S. to lead by example on climate change and share technology
and expertise to help reduce the costs of its efforts, and minimize
any impact on its growth agenda. Although many nations are taking action
on climate change, meaningful global impact will be impossible without
collaboration from the U.S. and China in advance of the United Nations
Climate Change Conference in December.

One critical path for the two nations
to pursue is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). CCS is a process
that captures greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes before
they enter the atmosphere and stores them permanently underground. CCS
technology has the potential to mitigate emissions from coal-fired power
plants and help nations to achieve the reductions in global greenhouse
gases that energy efficiency, conservation and renewable energies are
unlikely (or unable) to meet on their own. This technology has significantly
advanced over the past decade, and components have proven commercially
successful in projects around the world.

Why should the U.S. and China form an
unprecedented partnership to collaborate on this technology now? Both
countries continue to rely heavily on coal for power generation (2030
projections are 50% and 73% for the U.S. and China, respectively). And
while renewable energy sources are projected to rise in the next two
decades (almost doubling in the U.S. and more than tripling in China),
they will only provide a fraction of the power coal provides. Without
a major change in global energy policies and practices that directly
address coal, worldwide CO₂ emissions are projected to increase by 39 percent from
2006 to 2030.
And a U.S.-China partnership would help China reduce costs of abatement,
while building American expertise and positioning the U.S. as a leader
in a new job-rich carbon management industry.

To take advantage of this, the U.S. and
China must overcome considerable technological, financial, and regulatory
hurdles facing widespread commercial CCS expansion. A new report I co-authored
last week with leaders of the Asia Society and Center for American Progress, "A Roadmap for U.S.-China
Collaboration on Carbon Capture and Sequestration," identifies a feasible, three-pronged approach
which the U.S. and China could follow to achieve such an outcome.

Sequester the pure CO₂

streams on existing commercial coal-fired industrial plants in China.
Today, commercial scale sequestration is almost exclusively deployed
around enhanced oil recovery - pumping CO₂ into mature
oil wells to improve production. To meet global CO₂ emissions
objectives, broader geological storage options must be made economically
viable. China has installed more than 100 industrial coal gasifiers
that produce, as a byproduct, pure streams of CO₂ that are
vented directly into the atmosphere. Emissions from these gasifier plants
are more straightforward and less costly to capture than emissions from
combustion plants.

Invest in research and development
to retrofit older power plants.
Because existing coal-fired plants must be either shut down or retrofitted
for CCS to reduce or eliminate their CO₂ emissions, the U.S.
and China should identify plants in both countries for large-scale retrofit
demonstrations. These projects would help develop and test new capture
technologies to improve effectiveness and lower costs. To support these
efforts, the countries should open a joint R&D center for CCS technologies,
a move which already has the support of the U.S. Energy Department, which just granted $44 million
to projects to develop CCS technology .

Catalyze markets for CCS.
The U.S. and China will have to provide financial incentives for private
capital to invest in carbon capture and sequestration projects. The
U.S. should consider developing government-backed public finance structures,
such as risk insurance or guarantees of CO₂ prices for a
set amount of successfully abated carbon similar to those proposed by
the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.

All of these moves will take time and
effort. They also represent a first-generation approach to dealing with
carbon-emitting power and industrial plants. But the plants are not
going away anytime soon. We must break the cycle of inertia and start
the process of driving down the cost of compliance that stands in the
way of progress toward climate objectives. The U.S. and China have the
motivation to act now. And as environmental scientists and citizens
around the globe watch, the clock is ticking.

Scott Daniels leads the global chemicals-energy
and sustainability practices at Monitor Group

World Leaders Agree To Delay Binding Climate Deal Until After Copenhagen

2009-11-15T12:32:11Z

SINGU.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders on Sunday supported delaying a legally binding climate pact until 2010 or even later, under a compromise deal for next month's Copenhagen summit.

A. Siegel: Energy Bookshelf: Ten more worth your time than Super Freaky Crap

2009-11-14T17:16:11Z

There are many (many) serious problems around the globe.

And, there are real opportunities to be had from taking on those challenges in smart ways...

Sadly, too much attention is given to those who deceive about the challenges and distort the implications of the options before us.

It truly is a travesty. Best-seller lists, the air waves, oped pages, and blog posts have been filled with Steven Levitt's and Steven Dubner's shallow, truthiness-laden Superfreakonomics. And, there is a challenge here: do you ignore the deception in the book, so as not to give more attention to it, or challenge it directly and give it even more attention. In this case, the challenges are necessary since the authors' super(freaky)star status means that they and their travesty of a book will continue to get attention despite its non-truthful truthiness and misleading mediocrity on climate-change science and other issues. There are, essentially, innumerable works more worthy of our attention and engagement, even if we constrain ourselves simply to books also published in 2009.

We should be giving our attention elsewhere. Thus, here are ten books published this year that are more worthy of your time and money that the shallow distortions from the Super Freaky Economists of Superfreakonomics.

Policy / Science Discussions

Stephen Schneider's Science as a Contact Sport is a work that the Super Freaky Economist should have read before writing his work. Schneider's entire career, in essence, has been centered on the challenge of developing adequate models of the climate to enhance understanding of system dynamics and to enable better decision-making about future policy paths. Schneider owns up, directly, to mistakes through his career. Those mistakes and his owning up to them, as he highlights, show the very essence of the scientific process with the willingness to put out hypotheses to be tested by others, ready to learn from mistakes and errors and gaps to then be able to do work that stands up to scrutiny. Schneider has suffered from more than his share of 'he changed his mind' and 'he used to say' soundbites from global warming deniers. In this book, he provides windows on the science and the battles that have gone on without and around that science for the past 30+ years.

Schneider lays out "five easy pieces" as to why we've seen no action to avert climate catastrophe: "ignorance, greed, denial, tribalism, and short-term thinking". Each is quite simple, yet highly complex, and they combine to create serious obstacles to the necessary changes to enable a sustainable and prosperous future for humanity.

Perhaps my favorite single line is Schneider's description of what has changed through his career, that comes at the end of a paragraph outlining changes around the globe from wildfires increasing to the melting Arctic se ice

What has changed is not the basic science so much as the fact that nature is cooperating with theory.

Schneider is someone worth listening to and learning from.

James Hoggan's (and Richard Littlemore's) Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming should be, simply, required reading of every single journalism and marketing student, advertising executives and media editors. Building on the work of DeSmogBlog, they lay out details of the concerted efforts to distort the public discussion and understanding of climate change in a deliberate effort to inhibit action to mitigate climate change. As David Suzuki put it

"Climate Cover-Up documents one of the most disgusting stories ever hidden about corporate disinformation. What you'll discover in this book amounts to proof of an intergenerational crime."

Greg Craven's What's the worst that could happen? A rational response to the climate change debate is the one work here that could, legitimately, be said to be targeted at the 'rational' climate skeptic (e.g, someone who truly merits the title "skeptic" rather than those Climate Cover-Up discusses). Craven provides a structured way to consider Global Warming as a non-scientist in a way that could, quite literally, provide value throughout one's life (from buying a home to deciding what job to take to ...). In essence, Craven posits that we face four possibilities: Climate Change isn't occurring and we act as if it is or isn't; Climate change is occurring and we act as it is or isn't. Craven then walks through his path of thinking through the problem and why it is, in the end, the best bet to act as if Climate Change is occurring -- no matter what one thinks about the state of the science.

I have to give Greg a lot of credit. He is a high school science teacher and reading this book makes me hope that my children encounter teachers like him.

And, well, this is a book that would not exist without YouTube.

Keith Farnish's time's up is a challenging read. Not challenging due to his writing style, which is something to relish, but to where Keith seeks to take us. Farnish lays out a compelling case not just for the seriousness of our energy and climate challenge, but also that our entire Industrial Culture stands of the way of taking serious action to forestall utter climate catastrophe. Keith is arguing not just that the current system will collapse, but that we should work to hasten that collapse, sooner rather than later, to reduce the extent and devastation of that fall. Keith ties in science, philosophy, and a call for serious political activism. While unlikely, due to what follows, Keith's first section on "the scale of the problem" should be on the reading list for every high school and college student globally, and of merit for reading by all. Keith starts at the 1/10th millionth of a meter, with micro-organisms, and provides a compelling integration of the challenges and interconnections moving up an order of magnitude each time through 100 meters and beyond. This is a window on our problems that would be eye-opening for most. [Note: You can find Keith at Unsuitablog.)

Lester Brown's Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization should be, but sadly is not, on the desk top of every single politicians and business leader around the globe. While some might question the resources this would take, Lester lays out the seriousness of our challenge and provides a series of steps and tools that could help extricate us from the disaster we've created and are creating. While most around the globe are speaking of an 80% reduction in carbon emissions from 1990 (or, sigh, 2005) levels by 2050, Plan B lays out a rational path for achieving those reductions by 2020. That is the sort of effort and sort of timeline that might enable us to avoid climate catastrophe.

Personal stories with larger implications

Novella Carpenter's Farm City: The education of an urban farmer lays bare her experiences building a full-fledged farm environment via, in essence, squatting on a neighboring lot for an extensive garden. From the colorful description of her neighbors and neighborhood, to discussions of collecting manure which make you almost want to clean off your shoes, to the powerful sections about slaughtering various animals (rabbits, fowl, pigs), Carpenter will draw you into her life and make you wonder whether 'urban farming' is a path for you to take. Truth be told, urban farming is one of the silver BBs to help solve numerous challenges (from water runoff, to urban heat islands, and so on. Carpenter provides a window, of both wondrous (sharing the joy of that warm tomato with neighbors) and problematic (filth in the home), on the tribulations and triumphs of an aspiring farmer.

Colin Bean's No Impact Man looks at the challenge of transforming a life (actually, three lives) in the center of New York from take-out heavy and full-trash bag life-style to one having 'no impact' on the planet. The core question for the whole experience: "Can you have a good life without wasting so much?"

James Glave's Almost Green is a look at the reality of 'trying to go green' and the obstacles that stand between an individual home owner's desires to do a green extension and the realities that the infrastructure doesn't exist, for most of us, to do this easy. Having done a small renovation, with its green triumphs and failures, I saw much of myself in parts of the discussion. Often a hilarious read, Glave provides a window on social, informational, building code, and other challenges that stand between 'the average' person and doing better by the environment.

To add to your 'beach' reading, there are two works of Fiction for consideration

Eric Lotke, 2044: The Problem isn't Big Brother, It's Big Brother, INC, looks to the challenges of bringing tangible solutions to fruition in the face of (serious) competing corporate financial (and power, as if that is different) interests. This dystopian novel takes us through an engineer's discovery of a free way to desalinate water in (serioulsy) water constrained future. His willingness to sacrifice everything in an altruistic desire to improve humanity's condition slams face first into a logical, albeit terrifying, projection of current corporate powers and policies. The result is, well, not necessarily predictable.

As Eli put it in his review,

The world Eric Lotke has created in 2044 is a progressive's nightmare. Almost every exasperating trend we see today has been extrapolated to its logical extreme ...

the world of 2044 is not as nakedly dystopian as that of 1984. The corporations rule through manipulation rather than overt oppression - as long as everyone stays in their lane and does what they're supposed to, they can be perfectly happy. Where 1984 was a bleak prison camp with guards and cameras and barbed wire, 2044 is a well-manicured lawn with an invisible fence.

S Terrell French, in Operation Redwood, provides a window on the fight to protect some of the magnificent forests on the planet: the spectacular Redwood forests in California. French's novel is an engaging story of four children and the fight to save one grove from clear-cutting. A quick and amusing read which, based on the four sixth-graders who reported on it to me, has the potential to open eyes of young people about individual action and the use of media action to help turn the tide on devastation of our environment. At times, for this reader at least, the writer made me close my eyes and think.

a game his fifth-grade teacher had taught the class: He tried to imagine how the land might have looked five hundred years earlier ... It was harder than it seemed at first.

The telephone poles and buildings and fence and cows were the easiest to erase. But it was almost impossible to imagine away the highway. The road, with cars and trucks and buses racing along it at seventy miles per hour, seemed like something permanent, an eternal passageway ...

Even the trees and plants might have changed. That was the trickiest part, his teacher had said. San Francisco, for example, was covered with eucalyptus trees. But those trees came from Australia! They wouldn't have been there five hundred years ago.

Five hundred years wasn't so long. But everything had changed ...

Remember, of course, that a redwood's age can be measured in thousands of years.

FYI: This is not necessarily a 'top ten of 2009 list', but a varied list of books taken from the Energy Bookshelf that each have greater value for advancing our national discussion than distortions and deceptions from the Super Freaks of Economics profession. The list of published 2009 books that are more worthy of your attention would not go on for pages, but 100s of pages. All of the above, however, each have their values for providing a window on the challenges we face and paths to seize the opportunities from those challenges.

Mikko Alanne: Where is the real Al Gore and what have you done with him?

2009-11-14T15:43:31Z

As a left coast liberal, it pains me to say this, but someone has to: Al Gore's persistent refusal to engage in a real discussion about the impact of meat production on climate change is starting to severely hurt his credibility as a spokesman for meaningful solutions.

To me, it's almost as if the man who so bravely first fought to focus the world's attention on the urgent crisis of global warming has been kidnapped and replaced with a meeker version who no longer dares, or cares, to speak truth to power.

Case in point: Mr. Gore's recent interview with BBC Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman ahead of the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference. In the interview, Mr. Gore acknowledged that concerns over the impact of meat production are "legitimate." But in almost the same breath, the former Vice President then declared that he has no plans to become a vegetarian, a diet he characterized as a mere "personal choice."

Let's pause there. Meat production isn't only a "legitimate" contributor to global warming, it is the leading contributor. Meat is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all the transportation in the world combined, in fact 40% more. This is not a statistic from PETA, or the world's vegetarian food producers, it is from the top scientific authorities on the subject.

So what does it mean when the leading figure promoting awareness and searching for solutions to the climate crisis refuses to even acknowledge the chief cause of the problem?

Isn't such a stance rather akin to a leading lung cancer researcher lighting up at a solutions summit, calling smoking just a "personal choice." Is a choice merely personal, when it contributes to the rapid decline of the entire planet, not to mention cruelty to billions of animals suffering in factory farms?

Ironically, going vegetarian or vegan to combat climate change is often characterized as an "elitist" and difficult solution unrealistic for most people.

Really? Replacing one item -- meat -- on your lunch or dinner plate with a veggie alternative from abundant faux meats to beans to mushrooms to tofu is hard and unrealistic? Certainly not for people in the cities of the western world, where such alternatives exist everywhere and where consumer choices have the widest emissions impact.

But let's for a moment consider the steps Mr. Gore highlights in his BBC interview as steps to take to combat global warming, "walking the walk" as he calls it: Mr. Gore mentions drilling geothermal wells at his house, replacing all his windows, and covering his roof with solar panels. All commendable, serious actions, but in what universe, are they realistic for non-millionaires? Let's also consider that while taking such steps does indeed reduce your carbon footprint, it does so by a mere fraction of what a simple change in your diet could do -- with no added cost.

All that's needed is the will to change. Just a bit.

It's long grated on my nerves that the leaders of our green movement seem to promote driving hybrid cars and replacing light bulbs as the most important steps Americans can take to help curb global warming.

Let me offer two inconvenient truths: 1) Most people in America cannot afford a hybrid car. 2) Changing your light bulbs has virtually no impact on climate change when factored among the real steps you could be taking.

Does this mean that if you cannot do everything, you should do nothing? That if you cannot give up meat entirely, you shouldn't even reduce the amount you eat? Of course not. We should all do all that we can.

But our leaders should challenge us to do our most, not our least.

That's where I miss the old Al Gore. I hope he returns. As a vegetarian.

Carl Pope: The First Green Veterans Day

2009-11-13T21:32:11Z

Veterans Day had always been a day-off from environmentalism for me, but this year Veterans week was different. The Sierra Club was really, for the first time, a full participant -- a story that has been building slowly

Several years ago, the Sierra Club published a book by Jonathan Trouern-Trend, an Iraq war veteran about his experiences bird-watching while on active duty -- Birding in Babylon. (It just came out in German!) Then, as an extension of our long-standing effort to get every American child an outdoor experience, the Club began to help support the National Military Family Organization's Operation Purple Camp. We discovered that, after an active-duty tour, military families were eager to reunite in the wilderness, and we partnered with the Armed Services YMCA. We also linked up with Outward Bound to help support their work with Veterans Expeditions.

We thought we had a fairly robust suite of activities in our Military Families Outdoors portfolio, when we heard about Homes for our Troops, a wonderful organization helping build housing for disabled veterans. The Sierra Club agreed to provide the necessary additional funding for these homes to be built using the latest green technology, so this week Sierra Club Foundation President Bob McKinney and Executive Director Peter Martin had the opportunity be present when Marine Corporal Visnu Gonzalez, a paralyzed veteran, received the keys to his new LEED-platinum home in Hillsdale, New Jersey.

And on Veterans Day itself, Sierra Club President Allison Chin and Military Families Outdoor direct Martin Le Blanc joined First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden for ServiceNation's Mission Serve initiative kickoff in Washington, D.C. The purpose of Mission Serve: Forging a Continuum of Service is to unite the worlds of military and civilian service, tapping the energy, wisdom and experience of the millions of citizens --in uniform and out -- who are dedicated to strengthening America.

Our next challenge? We're looking at how we can make sure veterans have a fair shot at getting green jobs!

People are often very surprised when I explain to them that the Sierra Club now proudly counts among its friends and partners a whole host of veterans organizations -- as well as military families themselves. And certainly the Club had -- and still has -- a lot to learn from these new relationships. But is this really such a new thing? We too often forget that the first protectors of our national parks were soldiers. To remind us, the Club has just published Gloryland, a novel based on the story of the African-American "Buffalo Soldiers" who were the first rangers at Yosemite -- written by Shelton Johnson, the inspirational ranger many of us just watched on Ken Burns's series, The National Parks, America's Best Idea. As John Muir told us, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find that it is hitched to everything in the universe."

Todd Wilkinson: Will Climate Talks Give Trees the Brush Off?

2009-11-13T14:52:38Z

As the Great White North, at its highest latitudes, continues to thaw over time, scientists are hoping that world leaders meeting next month in Copenhagen will look upon the same region with a different shade of color in mind.

Calling it the planet's "Great Green Carbon Sink," they believe the rugged boreal forest should be factored into strategies for slowing climate change and put on a par with attention being paid to forests in the tropics.

In a report just released by the Canadian Boreal Initiative, titled "The Carbon The World Forgot," a trio of conservation biologists suggests the vast belt of forest and bogs enwrapping Canada, Scandinavia and Russia has largely been overlooked as important catchments for Earth-warming carbon dioxide.

"They're vital natural tools that can be employed to help solve a human problem," says Steve Kallick with the International Boreal Conservation Campaign, which has won the support of 1,500 scientists endorsing added protection.

When ecologists started poring over field research and peer-reviewed literature pertaining to the circumboreal region, they made a startling discovery, Mr. Kallick explains.

This portion of the globe that covers 11 percent of the Earth's land surface actually stores twice as much carbon as lush forests in the tropics.

Astoundingly, over 208 billion tons of carbon are estimated to be stored in forests and peat bogs of the north--equivalent to 26 years worth of the world's total carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning.

For a while, the value of boreal forests has been treated as an afterthought, with emphasis given to tropical swaths in Latin America, Africa and Asia because of their rich biological diversity and the rate of logging and burning taking place to make way for agricultural crops. Changes in land use, which includes removing or burning of plant material, contributes to 20 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions.

In the tropics, ongoing fragmentation is linked to increased desertification and loss of species. Warming is only expected to exacerbate those trends in the coming decades.

Those issues are important, Kallick says, but within the context of climate change, protecting the boreal makes good economic sense when set against an expensive backdrop of necessary action. In addition, it, too, is a region where conservation can be directly linked to empowering people left behind in the global economy.

A significant percentage of boreal Canada resides on homelands for aboriginal First Nation bands whose stewardship practices have huge implications for the environment beyond climate.

Wildlife such as caribou, wolves, bears and moose thrive in the boreal wilderness. Of continental significance is that more than five billion migratory birds, covering 300 species including huntable waterfowl, breed and nest there. Those avians are shared with Americans as they fly across the U.S. between summer and winter ranges.

Scientists say huge dividends in carbon storage can be achieved simply by leaving the boreal alone and allowing nature to do its job.

But in exchange for asking native peoples to refrain from felling forests for timber or draining peat swamps, many believe they should be compensated in whatever carbon cap or trade system is discussed in Denmark.

"As people in some countries sit on top of vast oil reserves and are compensated well for developing them, the people of the north are sitting on top of sequestered carbon and should be compensated for not developing it," Kallick says.

"They are doing the world a great service by stewarding the carbon. Comparable to the indigenous peoples in the tropics, they too live in poverty without the economic benefits of resource development."

Surprisingly, perhaps, that premise has met with relatively little organized resistance so far.

Although Canada--and, in particular, the western province of Alberta--has taken a beating for tar sands oil production that has caused massive landscape destruction and air pollution, this report praises the efforts of some Canadian province premiers.

The top elected leaders in both Ontario and Quebec, Dalton McGuinty and Jean Charest, recently stepped forward with unprecedented landscape protection plans, embraced by members of resource extraction industry and First Nations communities.

Some 400 million acres--a land area four times the size of California or equivalent to 200 Yellowstones-- are targeted for conservation in Canada with over half of it being placed off limits to development.

There's a reason why the boreal forest is synonymous with moose, which thrive in moist, swampy habitats. The boreal region is filled with peat bogs where vegetation accumulates when it dies and slowly decomposes in the colder conditions. The amount of carbon contained in soil, submerged underwater in bogs, and sequestered in tree roots dwarfs the amount found above ground in tree trunks and branches.

The only things likely to cause release of the carbon is drying and burning of both bogs and forests by fire.

As Kallick notes, the more unbroken stretches of habitat that exist, the better the chances of species survival. In the event of large beetle kill or fire, animals that dwell in affected areas can simply move to an adjacent area. However, when only patchworks of habitat remain in the aftermath of industrial logging, the probability of species persistence drops dramatically.
The bigger the size of protected areas, the more resilient an ecosystem is to swift and severe impacts of warming.

Kallick and his colleagues don't expect the boreal to become a main topic of discussion at the climate talks, though Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said that forest-related sequestration should be on the table as a bargaining chip even for industrial nations.

In the U.S., a program approved by Congress and launched through the U.S. Department of Agriculture this year is looking at ways that public and private forests will figure into carbon regulation. Natural carbon sequestration will be incorporated, one climate expert said, after nations first address greenhouse gas emissions from human industrial facilities and autos.

One myth, the report suggests, is that clearcutting northern forests enhances carbon dioxide absorption through a proliferation of new seedling growth, but the research indicates that older trees actually take in and hold more carbon.

The Boreal Forest Initiative, which receives funding from the U.S.-based Pew Charitable Trusts, is considered timely not only within the context of finding cost-effective strategies for reducing human-made carbon, for it has implications for the next generation of forestry.

The global economic downturn has left behind a hobbled home construction industry and a glut of lumber, dramatically slowing demand in the U.S. for cheaper wood products coming across the border from Canada.

Moreover, circulation challenges besetting print media and pressure placed by conservation groups on companies producing mail order catalogs to switch to recycled paper, have also slowed the tree felling for pulp.

If, and when, an economic turnaround begins, conservationists say it is foolhardy to return to the timber practices of old that have caused massive habitat loss for wildlife, a prominent casualty being woodland caribou in lower Canada. The boreal carbon assessment, the report says, lends credence to that argument.

"The world's largest intact forest is, at most, a two-day drive away for most North Americans. Think about it: We live near the northern forest equivalent of the Amazon rainforest and yet we rarely give it a second thought," Kallick says, adding that the boreal isn't only an oxygen engine and a shelter for many species that pass through our lives. "It is a carbon warehouse," he notes, "that our kids, 50 years from now, will be lucky to have."

The report, 33 pages long, can be downloaded by clicking here.

Journalist Todd Wilkinson is writing a book about media mogul turned bison rancher and environmental humanitarian Ted Turner.

Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson: Enough With the Global Warming Graphics, Get to the Choices

2009-11-12T14:41:25Z

Those who want the U.S. to act decisively on climate change seem to be losing the battle of public opinion lately. Only 30 percent of Americans say global warming should be a top priority for Congress and the President, behind the economy, terrorism, Social Security, health care, immigration and even that most tedious of all issues, trade policy. More than half, 55 percent have heard nothing at all about the cap and trade legislation in Congress (and that doesn't even count the otherwise honest people who don't want to admit to a telephone survey taker that they don't pay attention to the news).

We're even losing ground on the home front, according to a recent survey. Just one year ago, consumers said that more energy efficient windows and furnaces would top their list if they got a $10,000 renovation windfall. This year, most have their eyes on a new bathroom or kitchen and new flooring. The survey actually has even more alarming news for anyone who has pinned his or her hopes on individual Americans taking the lead in the energy efficiency department. Most consumers said that their energy bills would need to rise 70 percent before they would "feel forced" to make energy efficient improvements to their homes.

That last bit has to be especially galling for environmentalists. People seem to go crazy at the mere mention of a few extra dollars on their electricity bills to support renewables, yet they won't put in a new furnace until their bills go up 70 percent!

This really is not good, because improving efficiency is supposed to be the easy part of the energy debate. After all, there are juicy tax incentives for many of these improvements. Most save money on utility bills and pay for themselves in just a few years. Of course, people do have to front the money themselves, which may be tough in this economy. Then there's the whole chore of actually doing it. Either they have to roll up their own sleeves or find someone else to do it and go through the mess, noise, and the "But you said you would come yesterday" song and dance that often involves. It's right up there in root canal territory for a lot of us. We really have to find some better ways to make these kinds of "easy" changes happen.

But back to the bigger picture on energy and global warming. One major problem with continually ringing the global warming bell (other than it doesn't actually seem to be working) is that a lot of the Americans who agree it's a problem don't really understand what the country needs to do about. That makes it a lot scarier and more confusing than it needs to be. And rather then actually explain the problem, more than a few advocates are clinging to the hope that they can buy public cooperation with a few tax credits and slip cap and trade through without anybody much noticing.

It may work for the near term, but sometime soon, we need to tell the American people what the whole thing really means: the United States has to start reducing its reliance on fossil fuels like coal and oil. That means rethinking how we generate electricity and how we move ourselves and our products around. This is not something you do with one piece of legislation, and it's certainly not something you can do without telling anybody. Right now, four in ten Americans can't even name a fossil fuel and more than half think reducing smog means you're making good progress on reducing global warming. Most of what legislators, environmentalists and energy mavens are talking about is just sailing right over the public's head.

There are some hints that the public is not entirely unreachable. In a Public Agenda survey, 73 percent of Americans disagreed with the statement that "if we get gas prices to drop and stay low, we don't need to be worried about finding alternative sources of energy," and more than half "strongly disagreed."

Moreover, despite partisan debate, Americans find common ground on many measures to address the nation's energy problems. At least ten major energy proposals that would support alternative energy, encourage efficiency and reduce gasoline usage have widespread support, including one requiring developers to build more energy efficient homes, even if it makes them more expensive. At least three-quarters of Americans think that's worth pursuing.

The people who have worked so hard to make climate change an issue in the United States deserve enormous credit. This is a crucial issue that humanity can't afford to ignore any longer. But another clever graphic showing how carbon emissions get trapped in the atmosphere probably isn't going to make much difference to most people.

We have to get down to the business of helping Americans understand the choices for getting electricity and driving their cars. Americans need to understand their options, and they deserve to know what their leaders are really talking about.

Frances Beinecke: Obama's Trip to China: a New Interest in Clean Energy and a New Spirit of Cooperation

2009-11-12T14:21:45Z

As President Obama heads to China, it is important to recognize just how much has changed in the past year. For the first time ever, an American president is traveling to Beijing with the issue of climate change at the top of his agenda. This kind of focus would have been unthinkable during the Bush administration, but in the past 10 months, Obama has directed federal agencies and urged Congress to take real action on climate.

But that is only half of the story. The long-held belief that China isn’t doing much to confront climate change has now become on old news too.

Under the leadership of President Hu Jintao, China has taken bold steps to reduce its energy use. Yet one of the most interesting threads in this new China narrative is rarely told on this side of the Pacific: China’s private sector is as eager to make these changes as China’s government.

I saw it for myself when I went to China in September. Clean energy innovation was at the center of every conversation I had with Chinese business executives and the media, not to mention government officials (including China's lead climate negotiator, Minisiter Xie).

While I was in Shanghai, I attended a clean tech conference. It was co-sponsored by the local American Chamber of Commerce, so about two-thirds of the participants were Westerners, and the rest were Chinese. At the end, someone asked me, “Did you notice that the Chinese business people were here at the beginning of the conference, but they didn’t stay? They are more focused on action than on talking.”

The reason is obvious: there is enormous market potential here. A recent report estimated that the potential clean technology market in China in 2013 could be between $500 billion to $1 trillion. Meanwhile, China is set to become the world’s leading manufacturer of wind turbines this year, and is already the top producer of photovoltaic cells for solar energy.

This explosive private growth is no doubt inspired by government policy. China has set renewables targets of 10 percent for 2010 and 15 percent by 2020. It is also reportedly preparing plans to invest between $440 billion and $660 billion in the next 10 years on alternative energy development in what could be the largest government renewables program in the world--part of its effort to boost China’s clean energy industry.

America can no longer say we are waiting for China to move first before we act on climate solutions. The train has already left the station.

We need to set our own clean energy innovators in motion now if we want to keep the pace. We need to put our own clean energy policies in place, such as the climate legislation now before the Senate. As I explain in my new book, Clean Energy Common Sense, this will not only put us at the forefront of a global market, but it will also put millions of Americans to work.

Yet the truth is if China and America both work to expand clean energy technologies, this isn’t a competition. This is an opportunity where we can all win.

We will all benefit from making clean tech advances--whether they are Chinese or American--and from bringing cost downs for these new technologies. And of course, the whole planet will benefit from these two major polluters reducing their carbon emissions.

This is the new landscape in which President Obama and President Hu Jintao are meeting. Both nations have made their own efforts to confront climate change. Now it is time for us to work together on this global challenge.

While it is unlikely that President Obama’s visit will generate new commitments to cut emissions, Obama and Hu Jintao will probably agree to work together on a variety of efforts, including expanding energy efficiency, developing electric vehicles, building capacity to measure and report emissions, and even opening a joint clean energy research center that would employee both Chinese and American engineers.

This kind of tangible bi-lateral progress will help clear the way toward significant progress in Copenhagen and beyond. And that is what we need to see--momentum that will carry us over the long-term.

For as welcome as both China and America’s climate actions have been in the past year, they are only the beginning. Truly combating global warming will take sustained commitments from both of the world’s biggest polluters, and these efforts will be far more effective if they are done cooperatively.

This post originally appeared on NRDC’s Switchboard blog.

Brendan Smith: Will Climate Protection Legislation Protect Workers Too?

2009-11-12T10:35:28Z

One great fear is blocking public support for climate protection: The fear that protecting the planet will destroy millions of jobs.

Without a bold program to protect workers from the effects of climate protection, the struggle against global warming can all too easily come to be perceived as a struggle against American workers.

Climate protection advocates have often addressed the threat of possible job losses by pointing out that a transition to green energy would create far more jobs than it would eliminate. While that may be true, it also misses the point. The fact that some people get new jobs provides little solace for the individuals and communities who have lost theirs. They must be protected.

The Great Fear

Fear of job loss is the centerpiece of the campaign against climate protection legislation.

According to the website of the anti-climate protection coalition Energy Citizens, "This legislation will cost more than two million American jobs -- hurting millions of Americans who work in or depend on trucking, farming, manufacturing, mining, small business and energy production--or use their cars to commute to work." The US Chamber of Commerce, Senator Sam Brownback, and local "tea party" protests have similarly made job loss the central argument against climate legislation.

Unless climate protection advocates effectively address these fears, both they and the legislation the support risk a devastating backlash from American afraid of losing their jobs.

Recognizing Reality: Some Jobs Will Be Lost

Studies indicate that over the long run, climate protection will have limited effect on the total number of jobs in the United States: Jobs gained will more or less compensate for jobs lost. Some studies indicate that overall jobs will actually be gained because green jobs are more labor intensive than those they replace. For example, an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that 185,000 new jobs would be created by 2020 if utilities generate an average of 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources.

While the employment effects of climate protection legislation are likely to be neutral or positive, they may be considerably greater in industries that make or use products with high carbon footprints. As the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of the House climate bill, for example, says it will probably have "only a small effect on total employment in the long run." However, "The small effect on overall employment would mask a significant shift in the composition of employment over time."

A cap-and-trade program for carbon dioxide emissions would reduce the number of jobs in industries that produce carbon-based energy, use energy in their production process, or produce products whose use involves energy consumption, because those industries would experience the greatest increases in costs and declines in sales.

Studies vary regarding how many jobs might shift as a result of climate change legislation from hundreds of thousands to several million jobs depending on the year. While this is a small proportion of American jobs, the CBO notes that, "The process of shifting employment can have substantial costs for the workers, families, and communities involved." Of workers who were unemployed during 2003, almost half left the labor force altogether rather than finding another job. Even those who eventually find new jobs may lose twenty percent of their lifetime income. Such effects are likely to be far greater in today's high-unemployment economy.

What's Wrong With Proposed Legislation?

Proposed climate legislation includes provisions that are designed to ameliorate the negative employment effects of climate protection. These programs are to be paid for from the auction of carbon emission allowances.

Industry subsidies: Much of the strategy for such amelioration lies in providing subsidies to particular industries -- notably petroleum refiners and trade-exposed, energy-intensive industries. In its summary of the bill, the Senate Committee maintains that the Act "doesn't just create jobs for the future -- it also protects existing jobs in the manufacturing sector as our economy transforms" by providing "support for energy-intensive, trade-exposed industries like chemicals to ensure that U.S. manufacturing remains competitive in the new energy economy."

As the CBO points out, this "dampens the reallocation of output and employment to industries that produce fewer carbon emissions," counteracting the bill's basic purpose of carbon reduction.

This approach has another problem. There is no guarantee that the subsidies will actually be used to maintain or increase employment in such firms. On the contrary, the availability of funds for investment is often used to introduce new employment-reducing technology or to close facilities and relocate production elsewhere in other cities, states, or countries. The legislation provides no guarantees against such results. It represents a highly uncertain "trickle down" approach to protecting workers' livelihoods and economic security.

Transition assistance: The proposed legislation also provides "transition assistance" to individual workers displaced by climate protection policies.

The House bill, for example, establishes a Climate Change Worker Adjustment Assistance program which provides eligible impacted workers 70% of average weekly wages for 156 weeks, 80 percent of monthly health care premiums, job training assistance, up to $1,500 for job search assistance, up to $1,500 for moving assistance, and employment services. The Senate "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act" contains similar provisions.

This approach to transition assistance is largely based on the Trade Adjustment Act (TAA) worker assistance model. It provides a small supplement to unemployment and funding for modest job retraining. But many workers and unions despise that approach. In practice it strings individuals and communities along in marginality without helping them to establish a new, decent life. It typically provides training for jobs that don't exist in communities that have already been devastated by economic change. TAA-style programs are also notorious for long strings of fine print that end up excluding a large proportion of workers affected by change from the benefits they seem to offer.

The Solution: Fix Climate Legislation To Protect Workers

Protecting and restoring individuals: Workers who lose their jobs because of climate protection policies should receive full wages and benefits for at least three years. They should be eligible for up to four years education or training including tuition and living expenses. Those unable to take advantage of such a program because of age or other reasons should be guaranteed decent pensions with healthcare. The opportunity for individuals to access higher education and advanced training will also mesh with the need for the region to develop new labor force capabilities for the new green economy.

Protecting and restoring communities: The long- term effects of climate protection require compensation not just for individuals but for hard-hit communities. Surprisingly, a useful model here comes from John McCain's 1988 tobacco bill. It established a Community Revitalization Trust Fund which would provide economic development grants over a twenty-five year period for

business development and employment-creating activities "to provide a more viable economic base and enhance opportunities for improved incomes, living standards and contributions by rural individuals to the economic and social development communities"

activities that "expand existing infrastructure, facilities, and services to capitalize on opportunities to diversify economies in tobacco communities that support the development of new industries or commercial ventures,"

initiatives designed to "create or expand locally owned value-added processing and marketing operations in tobacco communities," and technical assistance.

A move to protect communities potentially threatened by cutbacks in coal production can serve as a way to jumpstart the transition away from coal and other carbon-intensive industries. Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and the rest of the Appalachian coalfield can be made a model of job-positive transition from coal to renewable energy and conservation. Green jobs can be specifically targeted to the communities that will be affected by coal production to preemptively create local jobs that will provide an alternative source of employment.

Protecting and Restoring Regions

During the Great Depression, a regional economic development program, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), transformed one of America's poorest regions by means of massive energy development. While 75 years later the TVA itself has become a target of environmental criticism, the principle of regional economic development through development of a new energy source is highly applicable to the Appalachian coalfields today. While the TVA by no means provides a model to follow slavishly today, it does provide an instructive example of a transformative use of new forms of energy as the basis for the construction of a new economy.

A regional economic development program could make synergistic many aspects of a new green economy. For example, renewable energy production and distribution could provide employment, a secure power supply, and an economic base for many local communities. And they could also provide stable demand for products that could be manufactured in those communities, thereby providing additional jobs.

A pioneering program to build a new economy in Appalachia based on renewable energy and the economic development it supports can provide an image of the new economy we need to build nationally.

Protecting and restoring retirees: It is outrageous that an American worker can have worked hard all their life only to discover that their pension and retirement health benefits are threatened due to their employers' economic adversity or strategy. Climate legislation should guarantee that no worker will lose pension benefits as a result of climate protection measures.

Steps to strengthen worker protections in climate legislation are already under discussion. For example, on November 5, 2009 Senator Bob Casey introduced S. 2742, the American Worker and Community Assistance Act. Co-sponsored by Senator Sherrod Brown, the bill would establish a Climate Change Worker Transition and Community Assistance program to provide targeted help to workers who may be adversely affected by climate legislation. Under it communities and groups of communities could receive funding to develop a strategic plan for diversifying employment opportunities, environmental remediation projects, and conversion of underutilized facilities for more productive uses. Communities could then apply for grants to implement the plan. Communities with low per capita incomes, high unemployment, and loss of traditional sources of employment would be given preference for support. Commenting on the bill, AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka said, "It is essential that workers and communities impacted by climate change policy be provided with the tools to transition into the new clean energy economy and the millions of new jobs that stand to be created."

Green and Fair

Protecting the climate and protecting workers are not alternatives. Neither will happen without the other.

It is a basic principle of fairness that the burden of policies that are necessary for society - like protecting the earth's climate -- shouldn't be borne by a small minority who happen to be victimized by their side effects. Unless workers and communities are protected against the unintended effects of climate protection, there is likely to be a backlash that threatens the whole effort to save the planet. The challenge for the architects of climate protection is to craft and implement policies to give such workers confidence that they will be protected as America goes green.

Advocates can use a worker-friendly climate protection policy to take the offensive to turn around the public debate: Not only will the legislation create millions of new green jobs, it will also honor and protect those workers and retirees who have contributed their working lives to meeting our nation's economic and energy needs.

The alternative -- failure to act in time to save our earth's climate -- will lead not only to natural but to economic devastation for our country and the world.

[cross-posted with the Labor Network For Sustainability Blog and drafted with Jeremy Brecher]