Get Energy Smart! NOW!

This Saturday, there is a nation-wide showdown between, quite literally, forces for light and forces for darkness. (Excellent video …)

This Saturday, September 27th, is a national action day for Green Jobs Now, with actions and events already planned for all 50 states (and DC and …). Green Jobs Now offers a positive vision for the future, a path toward a prosperous, climate friendly future and a path toward improving economic and environmental equity and justice in the society.

The same day, Newt Gingrich will be working to promote his Contract on the Earth and the lies of Drill Here! Drill Now! Pay Less! (for debunking talking points, see: Vote Grand Oil Party: Multi-layered deception coming to a street corner near you and lies to an ugly future and …).

Newt Gingrich is selling a path toward ever-worse economic devastation and ever worsening global environmental degradation and destruction. He is selling a path toward an ever darker and dirtier world.

Time to ask yourself and others:

Ask yourself …

And ACT!!!

Green Jobs Now!

News of the week, of course, is Secretary Paulson’s and the Bush Administration’s blackmail efforts for a rushed $700 billion bailout subsidy to Wall Street. If done poorly, this could sabotage any efforts to tackle energy and global warming issues. So far, at least two leaders of “Green” organizations have spoken out strongly on this issue: Brent Blackwelder of Friends of the Earth and Carl Pope of Sierra Club.

When it comes to the bailout, Brent has some strong words:

“This financial crisis has exposed the right-wing’s anti-regulation philosophy as an abject failure. This hands-off approach to managing the economy has resulted in greedy corporate titans getting rich on the backs of working people. This same philosophy is causing irreparable harm to the planet. And now we face a trillion-dollar taxpayer-funded bailout. Enough is enough.

“Friends of the Earth opposes the Bush administration’s proposed blank-check bailout for these wealthy financiers.

Forget a “blank-check bailout” without serious reform, the “blank check” will result in a renewed (reinforced) blank check for devastating the planet.

Carl has some serious questions with serious implications:

People are losing their houses in part because their mortgages are too high. But they also can’t afford their utility bill and the cost of driving. If we massively retrofitted homes and offices to reduce energy waste and lower utility bills, and aggressively improved vehicle fuel efficiency, might the return on those investments be higher than what Secretary Paulson is talking about?

The amount being talked about — $700 billion — is roughly equal to this year’s bill for imported oil. So if we really took ending our addiction to oil seriously, we could repay the Treasury for the bailout — and it’s hard to see any other pot of money lying around big enough.

Okay, sustainable energy independence vs money in the pockets of Wall Street financiers. Why is there a question here? Which would you want to move forward with?

Somewhat disappointedly, despite the the massive implications for the environment of a badly executed bailout, other “Green” group leaders seem to be silent on the issue.

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Matt Simmons must be rated as highly energy literate. Founder/Head of Simmons & Company, he supported George W Bush for President. He is a Texas oilman and author of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. Here is what Matt has to say about John McCain and energy:

“John McCain is energy illiterate,” Simmons is saying. “He’s just witless about this stuff. As a lifelong Republican, I’m supporting Obama.” A dozen oil and gas men sitting around a conference table in Lafayette, La., chuckle nervously as he continues. “McCain says, ‘Oh, we’re going to wean ourselves off foreign oil in four years and build 45 nuclear plants by 2030.’ He doesn’t have a clue.”

Let us review, according to Matt Simmons, “John McCain is

Nuff said?

Evidently not:

… McCain’s midsummer move to begin campaigning on a platform of more offshore drilling has only hardened Simmons’s position. “What a hypocrite… Here’s a man who for at least the past 15 years has strenuously, I mean strenuously, opposed offshore drilling. And now it’s ‘drill, drill, drill.’ And he doesn’t have any idea that we don’t have any drilling rigs. Or that we don’t have any idea of exactly where to drill.” (As for McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, Simmons says: “She’s a very colorful person, but I don’t think there’s a scrap of evidence that she knows anything about energy.”)

Now, how comes Americans at large don’t understand McCain’s “energy illiteracy”?

One poll doesn’t say everything. One question in one poll doesn’t provide “truth” (“ground truth”). But, at times, one question, one poll can provide a shock value. According to Diageo / The Hotline, McCain is judged better than Obama for “managing America’s energy policies”. In a poll which places “the economy” as the top issue, with Obama having the slimest, dwindling, and statistically insignificant lead of just one percent,

In terms of perceived performance on other issues, McCain maintains his new lead over Obama on managing America’s energy policies, (44% – 42%),

How, in the face of disastrous Republican economic policies, being played out in plummeting stock values (remember, we are now — not even counting inflation — behind where we began the Bush Administration on what media reporting (sadly) uses as the standard bearer for economic news: the Dow Jones index)?

On energy, again this is just one poll and one question, my opening supposition: deception, truthiness, and lies are working when it comes to energy issues.

This is a clear sign that those who actually know about energy issues, that those who care about creating paths toward a sustainable and prosperous future are failing to communicate effectively enough.

Shameless deception is winning out over truth.

It is time to shout louder. To revisit messages. To communicate the realities of what we face, our options, and our opportunities.

A Palin-McCain Administration would drill the holes deeper and foster an ever dirtier and blacker future. They do not offer hope when it comes to “managing America’s energy policies”.

America and Americans tend to fixate on the cost to buy (Wal-Mart’s price focus) rather than the cost to own (buying quality products that last). Sadly, this focus runs from buying light bulbs to decisions on constructing buildings and more. When it comes to renewable power, this has been a serious challenge. Solar power, pv especially, is nearly 100 percent up front cost with close to zero operating cost. And, with the current relatively low demand and other reasons, even at “operating cost” for a decade plus, the cost competitiveness just isn’t there in most situations.

Berkeley, California, decided to seek an alternative path to this challenge, to create bonds that would fund solar power on people’s rooftops. The cost of the panels would be paid back over an extended period through tax-deductible additional real-estate taxes on that specific property. This moves the up-front cost to buy into a long-term, clearly defined “cost to own” one’s own electrical generating capacity. This truly is a path to make the right choice, the easy choice when it comes to putting renewable power on the rooftop.

There are a number of genius elements to this path. One is that the city government will be able to achieve lower cost financing that, by definition, will lower the long-term cost of each installation. And, the City’s commitment will foster educated inspectors (a real issue), a concentration of installers, knowledge in the community, etc, capacity for executing installations. The increasing number of installations (along with lower hassles for installers, like inspectors who know what they’re doing) will also drive down costs as quantity of installations mount.

Last week, the Berkeley proposal took a big step forward as the City Council approved, unanimously, the first step of the program, an initial $1.5 million bond that home owners can apply to have access to with a 20 year repayment schedule.
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Global Warming, it is said, offers perhaps both the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced and perhaps the greatest opportunity we’ve ever had. Either we will figure out how to transform society, to a prosperous and sustainable path, or we will fail to do so with dire consequences.

When it comes to Global Warming and moving forward, one of the greatest challenges has been from those fearful, dismissive, disdainful of “large” government. Yet, to deal with Global Warming will require not just individual action, not just local communities, not just ‘business’ and market activity, but serious government engagement as well — policy, financing, research support, and otherwise.

So, a question that has to be faced: Is Wall Street’s meltdown going to worsen or improve the prospects for navigating the Perfect Storm of Peak Oil and Global Warming? And, the answer is likely: both. It is both challenge and opportunity.

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During the Republican primaries, John McCain fell in Michigan, in part because he was living in reality when it came to Global Warming rhetoric, a reality uncomfortable for the flat-earth, reality-denying wing of the Republican party. Come this November, McCain doesn’t plan to make the same mistake. The Palin-McCain campaign’s latest ad is, not surprisingly, dishonest on multiple levels and offers ugly prospects for the future. The Palin-McCain Lying Ad is, well, despicable. 

This ad is about “jobs” for Michigan, a state under great (and continuing) pressure. The ad deceptively links McCain to Obama theme like “reform” and “change”. 

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This afternoon, a group worth joining, Clean Tech & Green Business Leaders for Obama, held a reception with a number of insightful and impassioned speakers including Peter Schwartz (Art of the Long View), Congressman Jay Inslee and Jason Grumet from the Obama campaign.  And, some notable clean tech and other heroes and celebrities in the room, including race-car driver Leilani Münter. Above the fold, some top-notch quotes:

John McCain thinks that when you look for energy, you look under your feet.

Barack Obama believes you look above the shoulders and between your ears. Jay Inslee

And,

These are serious problems, requiring serious people pursuing serious solutions … You can read [John McCain’s energy] Lexington Plan riding down the escalator. It isn’t a plan, it is just three pages of talking points.

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Stephen Colbert pushed GM’s Bob Lutz on his Global Warming denial views. And, he reasserted his rejection of that “CO2 theory”, citing thousands of scientists as well.

Colbert: Why not just call this the Chevy-Gore?  You don’t believe in Global Warming, do you? You’ve said that you don’t.

Lutz: I accept that the planet has heated. 

But, like many noted scientists, I don’t believe in the CO2 theory.

GM engineers, scientists, and others who believe in the scientific method and working within reality must wince every time he speaks about Global Warming.

Colbert: It’s just sunspot activity.

Lutz: In the opinion of about 32,000 of the world’s leading scientists …

Lutz is simply a global warming denier, seizing on truthiness and propaganda to fit his weltaunschuang rather than dealing with facts and giving some respect to actual science.  Let us be clear:  1:  Solar radiation is NOT a driver of Global Warming, the numbers just don’t work.   2.  The “32,000” is absurdity (to be polite, with the (vast) majority of signers only having bachelor’s degrees and no advanced studies. (On the “petition” that Lutz is referring to, see: here, here, here, etc …

To be honest, other than the GW denial, Putz held up well against the Colbert pressure and got in some good zingers.  But, he really sold the car short.  When Colbert was asking him whether the Volt would help him “get laid”, Lutz said that it would probably change the nature of the women, to ‘nicer, without makeup, environmental types …’ And, o

And, he clearly understood that his Global Warming denialism wasn’t the best thing for him to talk about when he was on The Colbert Report to talk about the Chevy Volt which has had recent big news.

However, we have to get off this subject …

Yeah, Bob, reminding people that Lutz is such a Putz perhaps isn’t the best thing for GM’s image and marketing … of a car designed to appeal to people concerned about global warming, peak oil, and a better future for America.

UPDATE: The Green Miles has the video with a recommendation for Bob Lutz:

Note to Bob for future reference – if you’re going to greenwash, it’s best not to come right out and deny the scientific consensus on global warming with a made-up number of people who believe in a kooky denial scheme. Kind of undercuts your alleged green credentials.

Global Warming, it is said, offers perhaps both the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced and perhaps the greatest opportunity we’ve ever had. Either we will figure out how to transform society, to a prosperous and sustainable path, or we will fail to do so with dire consequences.

When it comes to Global Warming and moving forward, one of the greatest challenges has been from those fearful, dismissive, disdainful of “large” government. Yet, to deal with Global Warming will require not just individual action, not just local communities, not just ‘business’ and market activity, but serious government engagement as well — policy, financing, research support, and otherwise.

So, a question that has to be faced: Is Wall Street’s meltdown going to worsen or improve the prospects for navigating the Perfect Storm of Peak Oil and Global Warming? And, the answer is likely: both. It is both challenge and opportunity.

Not entirely unforseen by concerned parties, we are now into a Trifecta (plus) of Financial Storm, Energy Supply challenges (Peak Oil), and Global Warming. The “best” answer to each might be far from optimal for the others. And, let’s face facts, the history of dealing outside stove-pipes for decisionmaking isn’t necessarily rosy. Thus, this very complexity will create serious challenges.

But … there are opportunities and benefits, such as that outlined by Richard Littlemore at DeSmogBlog. In light of the US government intervention to save AIG, Richard points out:

This is what government does: it saves us from ourselves and from disasters we cannot anticipate. Good governments try to get ahead of that curve, setting policies and regulations that prevent totally stupid or predictable crises. I think its fair to say that this event suggests that good government has, recently, been in short supply.

It is a good piece, well worth the read, discussing government policy in face of “the financial meltdown and the global climate meltdown”.

And, truth be told, one of best paths for dealing with this Trifecta Perfect Storm could very well be a Green Stimulus package … for roughly the same amount that the US government threw into AIG overnight, we could make a real serious start to turning the tide on America’s wasteful and profligate use of fossil fuels while sparking new jobs and better economic performance into the future.