Archive - 2009

Cross-posted from Huffington Post.

I didn't even notice my heart pounding until after turning the corner from W 44th street onto Broadway. Displayed on four giant screens -- the hallmark of Times Square -- were the very photos we had just been sorting through and tagging in a dingy, overcrowded campaign office downtown not even an hour earlier. And now they were flashing before thousands of people in Times Square, while Jay-Z's new Empire State of Mind blanketed us in what seemed like a real-life music video.

As the old saying goes, adversity is the mother of invention. With the planet and we who live on it facing some of the greatest adversity ever, it's the perfect time to put the potential of human invention to the test. 1Sky ally Brighter Planet is putting money on the line to get great green ideas going.

Over the last several weeks, we have seen a great deal of coverage within the green community of major national and international corporations leaving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of their stated position on climate change. PG&E, Exelon, and Apple (among others) all left the Chamber and Nike left the board. The Chamber's response? A few companies leaving doesn't change anything. The Yes Men held a fake news conference forcing them to restate their opposition to strong climate legislation. Result? The Chamber sues the Yes Men and uses them to raise money. But now it seems that all this pressure has had an effect after all.

In case you're experiencing from 350 eye candy withdrawal, here's a Flickr slideshow of images from events organized all over the country by 1Sky volunteers. Use the button on the bottom right-hand corner to play the slideshow in full-screen mode. We're still adding images so you may want to check it again soon. Set phasers to "Awwww!"

After its introduction nearly a month ago, the Boxer-Kerry “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act” (S.1733) is moving through the Senate Environment and Public Work (EPW) Committee. Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) released her Chairman’s Mark of the bill on Friday, Oct. 23rd. The new 925-page revised legislation filled in many of the blank spaces included in the bill as introduced, most notably how valuable emissions allowances will be distributed. 1Sky’s analysis of the chairman’s mark including graphs reflecting the allocations will be available by tomorrow. In the meantime, we have national calls to action underway driving communications to the Senate and President Obama at http://www.1sky.org/act-now

This week's big news was the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearings on the new Senate climate bill, S. 1733 (PDF). Ben Wessel of our policy team wrote a great post on the top five moments of the first day. This week's climate news continues from there with Senator Inhofe as the lone flat-earther and reflections on the great indirect benefits of the bill. Also this week, the AP came out with a rigorous study disproving the "global cooling" fallacy, California is allowing solar users to get paid for their power, and the 350.org crew put out an amazing video wrapping up the international actions from October 24.

Guest blog by Victoria Bembibre, New Media / Communications Coordinator at Global Observatory.

Dealing with climate change is not just an environmental matter, but also an economical issue. In order to stop or reduce global warming we need to think – governments and businesses must – about investment in development of new technologies and renewable energies, international trade and competitiveness, jobs, growth, new industries, etc. And in times of world economic crisis and key climate change challenges, both these issues need to be addressed at a global level.

I know that many of us are mainly focused on climate action (almost to the point of obsession). But you would have to be living under a rock to avoid realizing that right now a large number of citizens, media, and politicians are entirely focused on health care reform. Personally, I think that is an important issue; in fact I worked on it back in 1992 and early 1993. But right now the climate movement has a lesson to learn from the recent developments on health care reform.

Last Saturday was a fantastic day for climate change awareness, but it wasn't the end of the race for the 350 parts per million CO₂ goal – it was just the starting pistol. As we hoped, some members of Congress agree and have joined the race with us.

Post written by Ben Wessel of the 1Sky Policy Team

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held their first hearings on the Kerry-Boxer climate bill this morning and it was a doozy! The Senate is proud of its reputation of being the world's greatest deliberative body and this morning's hearings were no exception to the rule. Two of the most important provisions in the Kerry-Boxer bill -- the 2020 pollution reduction targets and the EPA's ability to regulate dirty coal -- were called into question numerous times.

Luckily, climate advocates have a bunch of champs on the EPW committee who stood up for what they believed in and wouldn't be bullied by the obstructionist tactics or oppositional name-calling of clean energy opponents. Here's a Top 5 list of the most strong, hard-hitting, and all-around awesome moments from this morning's hearing: