This guest post by Deborah Phelan brings food to the table — where it should be — for discussion.
In ranking climate change last month as the highest risk facing the World in 2011, the WEF glitterati meeting at Davos also connected the proverbial dots between climate change and economic disparity (ranked 3), extreme weather events (ranked 5), extreme energy price volatility (ranked 6), geopolitical conflict (ranked 7), flooding and water security.
The concensus emerged that the entire world is in deep and desperate trouble.
Yet even as analysts cite food shortages and rapidly accelerating wheat prices as an underlying cause of the unrest sweeping throughout the Middle East, no one has succeeded in putting a human face behind this grim, devastating reality.
While discussions are replete with talk of the swelling power of social networking and its role in the people’s revolt against archaic, often externally-imposed dictatorial rule, no one is really concerned with what’s going to happen when the streets clear. What happens when and if the world’s most poor and repressed, most vulnerable achieve freedom? Nobody seems to be answering the question. How and what will they eat?
Lets be clear: Food insecurity Is NOT a past or future threat, its here. Now. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) last month reported that world food prices hit a “historic peak,’ the highest in the 20 odd years since they first began the index.The reasons? The FAO cites greedy speculators, rising demand, increased population, extreme weather, and faulty futures markets.
In fact, as much as 115 million acres of farmland around the world — the bulk of it in Africa — are leased to foreign investors. Its commonplace for African farmers to have little more left after harvest than a bag of corn, some nuts and melons.
With the introduced HR-1, the proposed continuing resolution for the remainder of the U.S. government’s Fiscal Year 2011, the House Republicans seek to defang (via defunding) program and program that work to protect Americans via monitoring and studying risks and threats that require response and to put the breaks on government investment in research and programs that help set the stage for setting the stage for a more prosperous and secure American economy. As put on the table, HR-1 would have devastating — potentially crippling — impact on America and Americans.
Cuts to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) would put us at greater risks to events like an Avian Flu outbreak and undermine our ability to track disease outbreaks via, for example, tainted food.
Cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would cripple abilities to track (and control) pollutants from factories and mines and eviscerate our ability to enhance our understanding of Global Warming and the risks it is creating for America’s security and Americans’ prosperity.
Cuts to the Department of Energy would hamper efforts to foster a 21st century energy industry and system in the United States leaving us (the U.S. and all of us) at greater risks for blackouts like those in Texas recently (and the resulting natural gas problems in New Mexico) and undermining hopes for being able to compete with the Chinese in the clean-energy technology market that is growing like gang busters throughout the world
Evidently, it seems, fossil-foolish interests are dissatisfied with simply crippling the government’s ability to protect Americans’ health and promote America’s future prosperity and security. Rather than seeking to profit through moving toward 21st century systems, they evidently seek to take America back toward darker 19th century days of ever-more polluting energy and ever-lessening government regulation and oversight of industry to protect Americans’ health and foster greater prosperity. This dissatisfaction rears its head with the litany of proposed amendments to HR-1 that would raise from devastation outright destruction on program after program that promote and protect Americans and America’s future.
Of the over 400 amendments offered on the House government-funding measure, the 2011 Continuing Resolution (H.R. 1), dozens are focused on climate change, energy policy, and environmental protection. The existing language in the budget bill is already designed to deny global warming,slash and burn public health and green jobs, but the amendments would take even more radical steps to reward polluters who are killing our children’s future. Republican amendments, if fully enacted, would:
Eliminate the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Special Envoy for Climate Change, the Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, the NOAA Climate Service, the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E, National Science Foundation K-12 funding
Block US funding for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Global Environment Facility
Suspend enforcement of fisheries laws and construction and conservation acquisition programs of the National Parks and Department of the Interior
Block rules for cement plant pollution, coal ash, industrial boiler pollution, water quality, climate change pollution, climate change adaptation, energy-efficient lighting, mountaintop removal, atrazine, and water conservation
Most of these amendments are budget neutral, not lowering the deficit one cent. Several defund extremely effective jobs programs that cost only a few million dollars. The goal of these amendments is not fiscal responsibility or jobs creation, but polluter protection, even though the pollution is poisoning babies, causing the elderly to suffer, and destroying America’s natural bounty.
“Budget neutral” is actually a generous way to describe many of these as, for example, fostering less-polluting emissions from factories and power plants leads to reduced asthma cases which lowers insurance bills — a high percentage of which get paid via the Federal budget. Fostering energy-efficient lighting leads to reduced polluting but also fosters profitability and household savings which leads to increased economic activity which results in, voila, increased tax revenues and reduced expenditures on things like unemployment compensation. Fisheries enforcement helps maintain enough fishing stocks to keep law-abiding fishermen in business and paying taxes. Etc, etc, etc …
On the other hand, Representative Ed Markey, for example, has offered an Amendment to reduce the excessive subsidies given to the oil industry — an industry, while we pay over $3 per gallon (heading back over $4, all too soon, it seems), continues to have extremely high profits and certainly don’t need government assistance to assure their executives luxurious office suites and annual multi-million dollar bonuses (on which they pay far less tax than they would have under the tax policies of Republican deity President Ronald Reagan). That amendment wouldn’t cost a job and would, contrary to the Republican desires, actually do something to help reduce the deficit.
Representative Jay Inslee has offered an amendment to transfer $66 million in fossil-foolish research to helping accelerate clean-energy research. Budget neutral today but budget positive tomorrow because this will help foster technology and options for boosting the economy tomorrow which will result in higher federal tax revenues.
The House Republicans seek to put nails in the coffin on hopes for a more prosperous, secure, and climate-friendly future for all Americans while the Democratic amendments offer reasoned steps for incremental moves toward a 21st century economy.
No. 407: Ralph Hall’s amendment to require the National Academy of Sciences to perform a “comprehensive review” (including economic data) on EPA’s potential regs on non-mercury hazardous air pollutants emitted from industrial boilers.
No. 495: Hall’s proposal to block funds from being used to establish or run a NOAA Climate Service.
No. 528: John Carter’s bid to eliminate funding for a number of administration positions, including top White House posts focused on climate, the auto industry, Great Lakes restoration and green jobs.
No. 521: Bruce Braley’s amendment to prevent anything in the CR from blocking EPA’s renewable fuels program.
No. 477: Lou Barletta’s proposal to cut $42.6 million from the U.S. Institute of Peace and add it to LIHEAP. ME WASN’T THE ONLY ONE WORKING LATE LAST NIGHT – House lawmakers kept the lights on in the lower chamber past midnight as they continue to work through the avalanche of CR amendments. Among those debated on the floor while ME hopes you were sleeping:
Bob Latta’s effort to cut $70 million from the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program; Paul Tonko’s proposal to strike language prohibiting funding for the Weatherization and State Energy program; Jay Inslee’s amendment to boost ARPA-E funding by $20 million (and to offset it by cutting the same amount from the Fossil Energy account); Judy Biggert’s effort to cut ARPA-E funding by $50 million. Recorded votes on those four amendments – along with scores of others – have not yet been scheduled. House adjourned at 1:13 a.m. They’re back at it today at 10 a.m.
FAILED – Mike Pompeo’s amendment (#86) to cut $115.5 million for DOD alternative energy projects, 109-320.
This guest from dsteffen is an enthralling read providing a substantive window on a story that includes deliberate scientific learning, industrial problem solving, industrial efforts to undermine science through aggressive promotion of falsehoods, and how government regulation provided payoffs many times even exaggerated definitions of the cost of implementation. It is a story that has left us all healthier … and knowing this should leave us all wiser as well.
I enjoyed reading this … and learned from it. May you as well.
It’s been so long since I paid any attention, so long since it made any difference, so many years since I had any choice, that I didn’t know, and had to run out the garage to check. On my 1995 Ford Ranger, it’s still there; on my wife’s 2005 Honda Accord, it’s not. In that difference, as they say, lies a tale.
The Administration says this lowers LIHEAP assistance to where it was in 2008. But that was before an economic crisis and an increase in poverty. Simply put, more people need this service now. They also intimate this is a subsidy for dirty energy companies, as most heating gets derived from coal-fired power plants. This is a bizarre kind of statement, which assumes that there’s no way to move away from coal and make sure Americans don’t freeze in their homes at the same time.
Well, this evening, I joined a number of bloggers in a call with several White House officials (audio available there), Congressional Budget Office spokesman Ken Baer and White House adviser David Plouffe. While discomfitted by much of what I heard and about issues for which I wished to ask questions but didn’t have the opportunity, something came up that inadvertently might have revealed something quite concerning about White House thinking. It is unlikely that this was a satisfying call for anyone (including Baer and Plouffe). As Susie Madrak put it:
It wasn’t likely that bloggers would be happy with the conversation, since once we got into the details of arguing different cuts, it looked as though we were buying into the White House frame that the cuts were urgently needed in the first place, and most of us don’t believe that’s true.
Baer’s opening remarks focused on “shared sacrifice.” Some bloggers weren’t buying it. I know I didn’t.
Many questions challenged the imbalance, with marginal costs for the richest one percent and significant cuts to the most vulnerable among U.S. Not surprisingly, the cut to LIHEAP was raised, whether it was appropriate to cut assistance to poor people amid our economic troubles.
Ken Baer repeated the explanations that were swirling around well prior to the budget’s release:
LiHEAP skyrocketed in 2008 with oil prices and didn’t get cut that much as oil prices fell.
This is, therefore, simply recovering the increase that occurred during that period of very high oil prices.
Sounds reasonable, no …? We had a spike of oil prices and, well, we won’t have it again so we can go ahead and cut these excess funds.
What is the terrifying implication of the Baer’s discussion of the LIHEAP cuts? This sort of thinking that the past spike was abnormal suggests that Peak Oil simply isn’t part of the White House discussion.
The risks of Peak Oil for the U.S. economy and national security are hard to exaggerate. In short, Peak Oil refers to a physical reality that ‘cheap and easy oil production’ will inevidently peak out and start an inexorable decline. While alternative fuel supplies might emerge, they will almost certainly have worse EROEI (energy return on energy invested) ratios and our oil (liquid fuel) supplies will almost certainly trail (fall short) of desired global demand. We are burning 10s of (nearly 100) fossil fuel calories for every calorie of food that makes it to our table. What happens when oil prices spike and, well, might not even be available? As oil peaks and production declines even as demand increases, the 2008 price spike and collapse might look like a mild event in retrospective. The most critical tool to dealing with this challenge: openly recognizing that it exists and taking demand destruction steps (efficiency) so that we might keep aggregate demand within the production capability of the global oil system.
Baer’s comments suggest that a core assumption in the budget preparation is that LIHEAP can be cut because the 2008 oil price rise was something unusual rather a presage of what we are likely to see with ever-increasing frequency with ever greater severity.
When looking to the House Republicans anti-science rejection of reality, we would hope to turn to the White House for reality-based sanity. Baer’s few words makes me wonder whether the White House has a sanity-based realistic perspective about Peak Oil.
Simply put, Architecture 2030 (Ed Mazria) is among my favorite organizations. Architecture 2030 has been developing and promoting well-thought through and practical concepts for shifting America’s built architecture toward a sustainable path. Concepts that have an impact on many, from aspiring architecture students to policy-makers to businessmen creating more energy efficient products.
Not until today, with their release of The 2030 Challenge for Products did I realize one of the fundamental reasons that Ed’s work so appeals to me.
“The 2030 Challenge for Products is remarkable for using life cycle science to measure the progress of buildings. We know what gets measured, gets done. A commitment to using LCA means that the measurements will be the right ones. I look forward to working with the building industry in support of the Challenge.”
Known by many terms (total ownership cost, total cost of ownership, life-cycle costs), taking serious the need to understand costs and benefits throughout a lifecycle is critical to well-informed and more robust decision-making. Sadly, in American society, we have a very strong focus on Cost to Buy (CtB, that $0.99 price at Wal-Mart that leads too many to buy energy inefficient incandescents because they’re cheaper to buy at the cash register than more efficient options) versus a reasoned understanding of the true Cost to Own (CtO — which lays out, starkly, how those more efficient lighting options payback that additional upfront cost multiple times over, with the first payback time measured in weeks — even without calculating larger societal benefits). Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on a personal, organizational, national level is a way to move from CtB to CtO facilitating making the right choice not just the easy choice, but the preferred choice. Architecture 2030’s work (and the resulting policy concepts/proposals) is strongly based on developing a robust understanding of the costs of action (and costs of inaction) and the full range of value streams that would result from action. A true emphasis on robust total ownership cost, cost-to-own, life-cycle assessment that is so often absent from American policy discussions.
And, time-after-time, Architecture 2030 has come forward with proposals that show tremendous benefits for the United States based on substantive CtO/TOC/LCA analysis — even before we consider the enormous value to the reduced risk of climate catastrophe that would result from adopting these concepts. (On previous proposals see, for example, Architecture 2030 Plan to Revive the Economy and A W4 Solution: Insulate America from Economic and Climate Devastation.)
the Building Sector is currently responsible for almost half of the energy –consumption (49%) and GHG emissions (47%) in the U.S. While the majority of the energy consumption, and their associated emissions, come from building operations (such as heating, cooling, and lighting), the embodied energy and emissions of building products are also becoming increasingly significant. Approximately 5% to 8% of total annual U.S. energy consumption and associated emissions is for building products and construction. When including all products for the built environment (furniture, movable equipment, appliances, etc.), the percentage is even greater.
The 2030 Challenge for Products specifically asks the global architecture, planning, design, and building community to specify, design, and manufacture products for new developments, buildings, and renovations to meet a maximum carbon-equivalent footprint of 30% below the product category average through 2014. The embodied carbon-equivalent footprint reduction will be increased to 35% in 2015, 40% in 2020, 45% in 2025, and 50% by 2030. A two-year period, from 2011 to 2013, has been established for the development of industry standards and product averages, and for product – manufacturers to move to meet the 30% reduction based on a Life Cycle Assessment.
These are achievable targets. And, if achieved, will have a meaningful impact. We must combine efficiency with expanded clean energy production and redefined consumption patterns/choices to achieve a mitigation path to reduce the risk of catastrophic climate chaos and provide a path toward sustainable prosperity for our children and future generations (thinking out, at least, seven generations).
If you are a builder, manufacturer, product designer, architect, merchandiser, or major consumer, take the time to learn about the 2030 Challenge for Products and see how you fit into moving this initiative forward.
For all, I recommend learning about — and promoting — Architecture 2030 who are providing meaningful paths toward securing a prosperous and climate-friendly future.
February 14th, 2011 · Comments Off on Making a ‘national HSR plan’ into a National Network+*
Yet another valuable guest post from BruceMcF, whose thoughts re rails valuable role in fostering a robust, prosperous, climate-friendly future for America merit attention.
That article is accompanied by the map reproduced here ~ and I stress that the map if Yonah Freemark’s work, not a map presented by the White House ~ of what a HSR system that rises to the “80% of Americans” target would look like.
And one reaction to that map is the same as the reaction to the designated DoT HSR corridors: how is that a national network? Its just bits and pieces.
How to fix this image problem, while also providing a substantial upgrade to the program, below the fold.
A simple truth, anti-science suffering haters of a livable economic system have hindered action to address our mounting resource challenges of our overuse and overabuse of depletable resources. These include oil (Peak Oil), water (depleting fossil acquifers), top soil (with increasingly serious dust storms in many parts of the world hastening creation of new deserts), and too many others (want to talk about overfishing?). The most serious abuse of our natural resources, of true global commons, is the unceasing pumping of pollutants — most seriously greenhouse gases — into the atmosphere.
While legitimate excuses existed several decades ago for not putting this high on the policy agenda due to uncertain science, those excuses have long ago evaporated in the face of ever-more solid scientific research and ever-mounting real-world evidence of a warming world with ever-increasingly severe tangible implications of climate catastrophe staring us in the face through record heat temperatures, crop damage, melting ice, species going extinct, changing animal ranges, and … The situation has moved from uncertainty, to need to have this on the policy agenda, to a situation where not having climate change mitigation on the top of the policy agenda (in an integrated 3E (economics, energy, environmental) agenda) will doom us (and the U.S.) to the real world harshly forcing it to the top of agenda and, ever more viciously as time passes, reducing our ability to deal with its devastating impacts.
These anti-science Climate Cranks and Climate Zombies (too often incorrectly called ‘skeptics’) have already damaged our prosperity and health while undermining our future economic prospects and security. Their deliberate efforts to undermine the public’s understanding of science and the government’s appropriate use of science to inform public policy has already doomed us to serious climate challenges in a situation where the young are most appropriately to be called ‘The Hot Generation’ (and, no, not meaning ‘sexy’) as they are preordained to live through a hotter climate period than humanity has ever experienced in the creation of modern civilization. These Climate Cranks and Climate Zombies are working hard to assure that The Hot Generation will have to live through ever hotter conditions than necessary.
The most powerful voice, still, when it comes to mounting a serious and concerted global effort to mitigate climate change and to foster adaptation for the hotter decades (and centuries …) to come rests with the U.S. government and its actions … or inaction. Sadly, the 2010 elections brought to positions of power too many people who embrace the rejection of knowledge, demean expertise, and have disdain for science and scientists who do not conveniently provide information that supports their ideological agenda. As a tangible sign of this, the House Republicans proposed continuing resolution represents a slash and burn attack on the core U.S. capabilities to assess the risk and implications of Global Warming. Putting Climate Cranks and Climate Zombies into positions of power will have quite real consequences … adverse consequences.
The American media bears a serious responsibility as aiders and abetters of this reckless endangerment of America and Americans due their inability (refusal? failure? abject irresponsibility in refusal?) to report honestly, accurately, and truthfully on how these Climate Cranks are so at odds with the world’s scientists and are enraptured with fossil-foolish nonsense that puts our (and our children’s and their children’s) prosperity, health, and security at ever increasing risk.
Reminiscent of Network‘s screaming outrage, “I’m mad as hell and I won’t take it anymore,” a journalist has declared that he has en0ugh of his colleagues and is seeking paths to force the nation’s media to pay more attention to these issues.
On Tuesday, February 15, Mark and supporters will head to Capitol Hill, the Fox TV bureau, the Chamber of Commerce and other hotbeds of climate denial. The goal? Put the climate cranks on the spot and make them explain—on camera and in front of kids—why they have condemned the young people of “Generation Hot” to spending the rest of their lives coping with the hottest climate in human history.
Visit the Facebook page for Generation Hot. Post your suggestions for which cranks to target, what questions to ask and how to use this action to transform the climate conversation in this country.
Post your questions and crank suggestions via Twitter, using the hashtag #climatecranks.
This is Step 1 … of a long and difficult and, well, unending journey. We have a choice — do we set out on the journey, and calmly acquiesce to policy recklessly disregarding our future or will we commit to this step and the next and the … It will be a long, tough, painful journey but an absolutely necessary one.
The only thing that can stop them is you. More specifically, you once you’ve decided to educate yourself and reject the propaganda shoved at you by a small number of very large and wealthy special interests. Or, you could take the easy route, play with your new Kindle or iPad/iPod or Android device or computer game or sit in front of your TV and watch NASCAR or let yourself be consumed by whatever form of distraction you prefer. That’s much less work, even if the price for your mindless leisure today is an environmental catastrophe decades from now.
This guest post from Michael Conrad provides thoughts from a self-proclaimed “far from expert” perspective on how to tackle engaging with climate change denial.
The Koch Brothers’ retreat, combined with the GOP going all out to block any environmentally responsible action has done a good job of reminding progressives of urgent need for campaign finance reform. Hopefully it will also overwhelm any remaining reluctance to admit that the people funding the conservative/Tea Party movement are as serious as it gets about furthering the most depraved and destructive parts of their agenda. There is practically no limit the amount of damage they are willing to cause.
Congressman Issa’s words are prophetic — evidently he and his colleagues consider themselves to be the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ since they are taking steps with the newly introduced Continuing Resolution to kill off as many canaries in the coal mine to protect Americans from environmental, safety, and other risks. For example, the proposal includes a 22 percent reduction in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, massive cuts in basic science research, budgets slashing seeking to essentially eliminate U.S. government research on climate change, … a true anti-science syndrome agenda.
Life for an actual canary in a coal mine could be described in three words – short but meaningful. Early coal mines did not feature ventilation systems, so miners would routinely bring a caged canary into new coal seams. Canaries are especially sensitive to methane and carbon monoxide, which made them ideal for detecting any dangerous gas build-ups. As long as the canary in a coal mine kept singing, the miners knew their air supply was safe. A dead canary in a coal mine signalled an immediate evacuation.
Even as gas detection technology improved, some mining companies still relied on the ‘canary in a coal mine’ method well into the 20th century. Other animals were used occasionally, but only the canary had the ability to detect small concentrations of gas and react instinctively.
“A dead canary … signalled [a need for] immediate” action to avoid serious consequences.
A simple tool to avoid having to take action to avoid having to take measures that could disrupt mining? Simply not have canaries in the mine. Not a responsible action in terms of miner safety but if you have an utter disregard for their lives (the consequences of disaster) this is a money saving measure since there isn’t that pesky problem of paying for canaries.
And, this is the path the Republican House members are taking: killing off the canaries that help to protect Americans and American security through learning about environmental risks like coal ash pollution of waterways, Greenhouse Gas emissions and climate change, Global Warming developments and impacts on Americans, ‘Fracking’ chemicals impact on human health, … The Republicans proposed Continuing Resolution would eliminate many canaries.
It is a rather simple, blunt, and reckless result of ideological anti-science attitudes. Have a religious belief that the global scientific community is some form of massive conspiracy to deceive the public? Well, eliminate any funding for climate science research and, evidently, you won’t have to deal with inconvenient truths warning of imminent risks that signal a need for immediate reaction.
Today’s political reality is that Global Warming simply doesn’t exist for House Republicans. Sadly, political reality doesn’t always conform to physical reality; Global Warming is having ever more serious impacts on the rest of U.S. and the Republican efforts to remove the canaries from the coal mine won’t change this reality.
Reactions to the Continuing Resolution / Republican budget plans:
Jeremy Symons, Sneak Attack on Clean Water and Clean Air Acts, National Wildlife Federation: “Republican leaders of the House Appropriations Committee have instead decided to exploit the budget crisis to pursue a hidden agenda long sought by some of the nation’s biggest polluters.”
the GOP position starts with the premise that climate change is a hoax, and then falls back to a secondary line of defense contending that even if the earth is warming it’s too expensive to do anything about it. Failing all else, we should just let the market take care of things. Republicans have even introduced legislation that would overturn the scientific finding that greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to human health. As for the rising price of oil? Who cares? Again, let the market be the arbiter.
As the world gets hotter, and scientific evidence supporting the theory of human-caused climate change accumulates, Republican politicians have become more united and more adamant in their refusal to accept that we should be making an effort to meet what will probably be the greatest challenge to human welfare since we climbed down from trees and started walking upright on the savannah. It’s an amazing and impressive display, and has no parallel anywhere else in the world.
what Republicans in Congress want for Americans — we can be the canaries in the coal mine who die because they’ve rolled back so many regulations put in place to assure air that’s safe to breathe, water that’s safe to drink, food that’s safe to eat, banks that don’t steal your money and workplaces that don’t kill and maim workers.
The Solar Decathlon, threatened with exile from The National Mall, had a major footprint at the International Builders Show (IBS) for the first time ever. This presence expose their ideas and approaches to a huge array of building professionals while also giving the competitors access to potential suppliers and contributors.
is among my favorite organizations. Architecture 2030 has been developing and promoting well-thought through and practical concepts for shifting America’s built architecture toward a sustainable path. Concepts that have an impact on many, from aspiring architecture students to policy-makers to businessmen creating more energy efficient products.
Way back before the Super Bowl, the White House had a series of exciting announcements, covered at 
consider themselves to be the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ since they are taking steps with the newly introduced Continuing Resolution to kill off as many canaries in the coal mine to protect Americans from environmental, safety, and other risks. For example, the proposal includes a