The mid-term elections continue to dominate the August congressional recess. Members of Congress will go on campaigning for two more weeks before returning to Washington, D.C. in mid-September. 1Sky and our allies, including 350 and Energy Action Coalition, continue to hammer members of Congress to protect the Clean Air Act and work to address our addiction to fossil fuels and the climate crisis. See coverage in the New York Times.
Congressional Timeline:
9/13: Congress returns from recess
10/8: Target adjournment for House
11/2: Election Day
Key Primary Results
In the Alaska Republican Primary, tea party candidate Joe Miller is on pace to defeat Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) with a 1,900-vote lead with only a few thousand absentee ballots still being counted. Miller is a climate denier who consistently accuses Senator Murkowski of being too moderate on energy issues. This close defeat brings the political effectiveness of Senator Murkowski's attacks on the Clean Air Act into question. Senator Murkowski moved to the right on the issue of Clean Air Act regulations, but was still attacked as a more liberal candidate on energy in general. In the process, Senator Murkowski suffered in-state public criticism for her actions, which certainly didn't help her in such a tight race.
The Anchorage Daily News honed in on the fact that lobbyists helped write Senator Murkowsk's Dirty Air Act. Meanwhile, the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) ran TV ads attacking Senator Murkowski for prioritizing out-of-state polluters over the people of Alaska:
Friends of the Earth ran Alaska radio ads (.mp3) highlighting her contributions from corporate polluters and their lobbyists, and Greenpeace's PolluterHarmony mocked her close ties to former Bush administration officials working on behalf of utilities and coal companies to gut the Clean Air Act:
By 1Sky blogger Nick Santos. See his bio at the end of this post.-- Luis
Take a good look at this graph from the Stern Review (data from McKinsey & Company). It's a graph of potential sources of CO2 reductions in Gigatons of CO2 equivalent per year (Abatement Gt CO2e/year) sorted by the cost of abatement in Euros per ton of CO2 equivalent reduced (Cost of abatement EUR/tCO2e). So, the height of a box shows the cost of that reduction, with negative costs being profits, and the width of the box shows the potential amount of CO2 we can reduce with it per year. The total area of a box is the total cost if we reduce the amount of CO2 in the box.
More than 90 people have signed up through 1Sky and our partners 350.org and Energy Action Coalition to be involved with shadowing Colorado’s senators during the August/September recess. And thanks to the primary elections in Colorado on August 10th, opportunities for shadowing around our beautiful mountain state over the last week have been numerous, and we’ve turned out supporters for at least five events.
Colorado Senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennet have proven they care about the climate crisis and understand the benefits of transitioning to clean energy. Both voted to protect Clean Air Act authority to regulate carbon emissions (i.e., opposed Sen. Murkowski’s 'Dirty Air Act' resolution) and both expressed their disappointment in written statements for the Senate's failure to pass a comprehensive climate and clean energy bill. Sen. Udall was also pushing hard for inclusion of a national Renewable Energy Standard (RES) through an online petition that garnered over 2,500 signatures. So we’re giving them our thanks for these actions and encouraging them to be even stronger leaders on these issues when they’re back in Washington.
Volunteers (including my daughters pictured below) showed up for a kick-off rally for Sen. Bennet’s 24-hour Colorado tour with signs thanking him for being a climate and clean energy champion and urging him to keep fighting for a real climate bill. As Sen. Bennet emerged from his tour bus, he made a bee line straight for my little ones, gave them hugs, read our signs (we were the only ones there with signs other than the standard campaign signs), and then nodded his acknowledgment.
Environmental and climate groups (1Sky included) are gearing up to push for climate action during the congressional recess, even if it means showing up at the office doors of senators who have failed to respond to climate change. Also, advocates will put the pressure on lawmakers to defend the EPA's efforts under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases. Climate advocates are currently battling Senator Jay Rockefeller and his "Dirty Air Act pt2" which will cripple the EPA's ability to regulate pollution for two years. 1Sky is mentioned in the New York Times for our shadowing events.
Russia Feels the Effects of Global Warming
Russia is feeling the burn this summer with temperatures topping 100° Fahrenheit for the first time. When I think about Russia, I think about blizzards and Russian snow hats. However, Russians are actually undergoing such an extreme heat wave that even President Dmitry Medvedev is convinced of climate change. His epiphany was spurred by an extreme heat wave which is blazing into its second month, a drought that has ruined a third of Russia's crops and wildfires that have blanketed half of European Russia. The Prime Minister has even banned grain exports from August 15 to December 31. Even more, numbers of deaths per day in Moscow has doubled to 700 due to this heat wave. I would say that Russians are now pretty convinced. The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that Russia could experience a doubling of disastrous droughts, see catastrophic fires and suffer large crop loss in this century. I would say they were pretty accurate in 2007.
Our country has not experienced such a heat wave in the last 50 or even 100 years... Everyone is talking about climate change now... Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past. This means that we need to change the way we work, change the methods that we used in the past." -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
Michigan called for a "State of Emergency" because of the largest oil spill in Midwest history. The pipeline, owned by Enbridge Liquids Pipelines and the largest transporter of oil from western Canada, leaked 840,000 gallons into the Kalamazoo River Monday morning devastating Calhoun County. The pipeline has been shut down but the damage is already done. And to think, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich was on the fence about the climate and energy bill that was recently proposed then put on the back burner.
The horrific pictures coming in of the oil spill in Calhoun County area underscore just how imperative it is for Michigan to move toward clean, safe energy sources like wind and solar instead of relying on outdated fuels like oil," Clean Water Action Michigan Director Cyndi Roper.
By Genevieve Raymond is a full time mom and part-time founding member of Climb Against Coal. -- Luis
We were moms on a mission. We woke up at midnight Saturday morning to attempt the 14,411 ft summit of Mount Rainier. We had a message for Governor Gregoire: close Washington’s largest toxic polluter and point source of deadly carbon — the TransAlta coal-fired power plant in Centralia.
We are not experienced mountaineers, but six months ago, when we brainstormed this crazy idea, we determined to meet an urgent challenge with radical action. We each have children between the ages of 3 and 6, and our kids have taught us to be loud and persistent in our demands. The Governor’s plan to burn dirty coal for fifteen more years is unacceptable. The time to transition to clean energy is now.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been three months since the blowout of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. That's three months of seeing pictures of oil-soaked birds, hearing about failed attempts to stop the spill, and reading stories of people’s lives being devastated by oil reaching their shoreline and crippling their livelihoods.
To commemorate the three month anniversary of the spill, volunteers from many environmental groups, including 1Sky, gathered in front of the Capitol for a rally on July 20. We listened to many speakers, including residents of the Gulf who had come to lobby their senators to pass a climate and energy bill. With signs and chants, we called for an end to dirty energy money in politics, an end to offshore drilling, and a shift to clean, renewable energy sources. Many people covered their hands in oil-like substances to illustrate the devastation in the Gulf and to represent the oily hands of the politicians who accept donations from dirty energy companies. After the rally, many volunteers visited the offices of the ten members of Congress who have received the most campaign contributions from BP and demanded that they give this money to relief efforts in the Gulf. Here's a slideshow of images from yesterday's event:
Solar power is all over the news this week. President Obama announced a major influx of federal money into the solar industry, while Bill McKibben announced a campaign to get world leaders (including Obama) to lead by example on clean energy.
All we’ve heard about this week here at 1Sky are fantastic stories of the 50-plus Hands Across the Sand events from this Saturday. The creativity and dedication that went into these events is truly impressive. Our folks in the field really went all out! It’s no wonder that Hands Across the Sand, as an international effort, was a success. Here's a slideshow with some picture we've been receiving from events all over the country:
Earlier this week, legendary West Virginia Senator Robert C. Byrd passed away. It is unlikely that an environmental organization would have written positively about a pro-coal senator, but in recent years the late Senator Byrd realized the toll that the coal industry was taking on the environment and his beloved West Virginia. Robert C. Byrd, who once fought hard for coal mining and against regulating it in his early years, had an epiphany:
The industry of coal must also respect the land that yields the coal, as well as the people who live on the land. If the process of mining destroys nearby wells and foundations, if blasting and digging and relocating streams unearths harmful elements and releases them into the environment causing illness and death, that process should be halted and the resulting hazards to the community abated.
