Just when I thought things couldn't get worse in Virginia…

As the rest of the nation rejects coal plant after coal plant… Virginia is building one in SW and proposing another one three times the size in the Hampton Roads area.

As our neighbors in Maryland pass the strongest state legislation to regulate carbon emissions… Virginia’s own Rick Boucher is working to water down and nullify any impact a federal climate bill could have.

It’s a tough fight here in Virginia, and I will continue to fight every single day to promote sustainable energy policy for the commonwealth.

Amidst it all, I still remember things could be worse, we could be WEST VIRGINIA!

Our friends in West Virginia just declared coal the state rock.

Cross posted from our friends at Center for American Progress’s Blog:

Gov. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has made coal the official state rock of his state. According to the West Virgina Coal Association, the teen-aged daughter of a coal company employee “got the measure placed before the state legislature this year with the help of Sen. Truman Chafin (D-Mingo) and Del. Harry Keith White (D-Mingo).” On Wednesday, Manchin signed the resolution into law:

Bituminous coal is now West Virginia’s official state rock. Gov. Joe Manchin has signed a House of Delegates resolution making the designation based primarily on coal’s contribution to the state’s economy and history.

Despite $118 million in coal-mining annual income, West Virginia has the nation’s lowest median household income, worst educational services, worst social assistance, the highest population with disabilities, and nearly a quarter of West Virginia children in poverty.

Seems to me the best way to preserve the state rock is to keep it in the GROUND! Who’s with me?

Ted delivers 100% auction message directly to Chairman Rangel

CCAN’s Policy Director Ted Glick spent some time Tuesday on Capitol Hill delivering a sign-on letter to Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and other members of the House Ways and Means Committee. The letter, circulated by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and signed by 32 religious, climate and environmental groups, calls for 100% auction of pollution permits as part of climate legislation being developed in the Housel.

Rangel is the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee which, along with the Agriculture Committee (and possibly other committees), is next in line to take up the sweeping proposal to establish a national renewable electricity standard and a cap-and-trade program to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Among other things, Ways and Means deals with trade and revenue measures, both of which will be impacted by the proposed bill.

The sign-on letter that Ted handed directly to Chairman Rangel addressed revenue measures in the climate bill. After Congressman Boucher and others in the House Energy and Committee had their say, the bill left Committee poised to give away 85% of the pollution permits. Fifty percent of those free permits would be given to the fossil fuel industry, thirty-five percent of them directly to the coal industry. All these free giveaways amount to handing our nation’s biggest polluters a check for $20.8 billion a year beginning in 2012.

Auctioning 100% of the permits to emit global warming pollution is the only fair way to cap carbon and ensure pocketbook protection for American families. Instead of Boucher’s coal-friendly bill, those who signed the letter support President Obama’s campaign pledge to auction 100 percent of the carbon permits and rebate most of the money to consumers.

Read the entire sign-on letter below the fold. Continue reading

A Common Person's Guide to the Federal Climate Bill

A Common Person’s Guide to the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009

On May 21st, following months of work, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACESA), a 932-page piece of climate legislation. There have been mixed reactions from environmental and climate groups, but most groups are in agreement that it needs to be strengthened going forward. For some groups the problems they see with the bill have led to their public withdrawal of support. These groups include Greenpeace USA, Public Citizen and Friends of the Earth. The Chesapeake Climate Action Network also does not support the bill in current form.

Below is a summary analysis of the main features of the bill.

–Cap and Trade System: The bill would establish a “cap-and-trade” system that sets mandatory and declining limits on greenhouse gas emissions over the next 40 years. By 2050 it projects reductions of 83% from 2005 levels for the United States. It does this primarily through the establishment of 1) a “cap” on emissions and the annual issuance by the government of permits to emit greenhouse gases, both of which–the cap and the emissions permits–come down steadily year after year, and 2) a tradable market to buy and sell those permits to emit global warming pollution. That’s why it’s called a “cap-and-trade” system.

–Wide-Open Buying and Selling: Significantly, this market is open to anyone, not just those entities which emit greenhouse gases. For example, Wall Street firms whose primary purpose is to make money for their investors can buy and sell pollution permits. Anyone, whether Goldman Sachs or John Q. Public, can get into this newly-created market. From page 430 of the bill: “The privilege of purchasing, holding, selling, exchanging, transferring, and requesting retirement of emission allowances, compensatory allowances, or offset credits shall not be restricted to the owners and operators of covered entities, except as otherwise provided in this title.” Especially following the sub-prime mortgage/credit/banking crisis, there is concern among many people, including some on Capitol Hill, about the potential for this system to be abused by those out to make quick and big profits.

–Goals and Targets: The document states that one of its prime objectives is to help the world “avoid atmosphere greenhouse gas concentrations above 450 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalent; and global surface temperature 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above the pre-industrial average.” However, a growing number of scientists, journalists and climate activists believe that we need to reduce emissions more deeply if we are to have a good chance of avoiding climate catastrophe.

–2020 Targets: It projects a 17% reduction in greenhouse gases (ghg) from 2005 levels by 2020. This is about 3% below U.S. ghg levels in 1990; 1990 is the baseline year used by the nations of the world. There is an additional 10% reduction of ghgs projected via investments in the prevention of deforestation outside the United States, and there could be a few percent more reductions through other means. This could add up to about a 20% reduction by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. The world’s international climate negotiators have called for industrialized countries to reduce their emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020.

Continue reading

Put A Cap On It – Song & Video

Thousands of people from Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. are calling for a science-based cap on global warming pollution in 2009.

If you love it, then you better PUT A CAP ON IT… Enjoy the video!

Video and Backup Vocals: Adiel Kaplan

Lead Vocals: Gabbi Winick

Lyrics by: Kirsten Collings

Don't Worry, "We've Got 41 Years"

“This is 2009. We’ve got 41 years in this deal, and we shouldn’t be so worried about the first 10 years.”

—Congressman Mike Doyle, Environment and Energy Daily, May 7, 2009

I had no plans yesterday morning as I woke up and turned on my computer to spend the afternoon in the D.C. office of Congressman Mike Doyle. But then I read this line in an article on the status of efforts to cobble together a piece of climate legislation in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

I remember my physical reaction as I read these words, my head shaking back and forth, some trembling and an upwelling of deep, livid anger. “This is the last straw,” I remember thinking.

And involuntarily in my head, I began singing the words to the Bob Dylan song, Masters of War.

I discovered Bob Dylan and Masters of War in the summer of 1968. I was 18 years old, home from college after my freshman year at Grinnell College. I was working on the Presidential campaign of Bobby Kennedy. I had begun doing so after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4th. Then on June 6th, Kennedy was assassinated. All summer, as I worked on the maintenance staff of a local college, the words to Masters of War kept going through my head over and over as I despaired over the state of the world, the state of my country.

“You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins.”

And that’s why I went to Mike Doyle’s office at 2 pm yesterday and told Pat Cavanaugh, his energy staff person, that I was a long-time climate activist on the 18th day of a hunger strike (www.fastingforourfuture.org) for strong climate legislation and that I wasn’t leaving until I met with Doyle.

I’ve done sit-ins before. I and two other people did one in 2002 in New Jersey when I was a Green Party candidate for the U.S. Senate. We sat in the offices of one of my opponents, Frank Lautenberg, to protest his refusal to allow myself and other “third party” candidates to be part of any debates. After nine hours, we won, and about a week later a nationally-televised C-Span debate was held that included all six candidates who had qualified for this particular race.

And in December of 2007, at the tail end of the long climate emergency fast I did that fall, 20 of us occupied the Capitol Hill office of Senator Mitch McConnell after he led the Senate Republicans in their stripping out of anything and everything having to do with renewable energy from a House-passed energy bill. Two of us, my wife Jane Califf and I, were arrested after spending the day in McConnell’s office because we refused to willingly leave at 6 pm when the office was closed.

But as I sat in Doyle’s office, no one with me, none of the press people who I called showing up to find out what was happening, thinking about what was going to happen at 6 pm, wondering if I had been too impulsive, wondering what would happen if I was arrested–because I was very clear that it was either talk with Doyle or that–wondering, wondering. . . after two hours of sitting, into the office comes Mike Doyle.

I’d never met the guy, so at first I didn’t know it had happened when he arrived. But when he sat down across from me and said something like, “I’m Mike Doyle, what’s up,” I knew it was game time. And for the next half hour I had the most intense, in-your-face, no-holds-barred discussion with an elected official I have ever had.

Doyle’s no dummy, and I have to acknowledge that he’s a strong debater. I didn’t get him to change his mind about the efforts that he and Rick Boucher have been leading to weaken the “discussion draft” of climate legislation Henry Waxman introduced on March 31st. The way Doyle described it, he was doing the bidding of Waxman, carrying water for him by going to the blue dog Democrats to find out what was necessary in order to get a bill out of committee. He also said his main thing was the 15% free emissions permits for steel, cement, aluminum and other energy-intensive industries during a 10-15 year transition period. But when I asked him why he was then supporting the idea that 40% of the permits would be given free to coal companies/utilities (local distribution companies), the best answer he could give was something like this, a very revealing answer:

“If you return money directly to the American people for them to use to pay for higher energy costs in the transition period, they’ll spend it on things like flat screen TV’s. By giving free emissions permits to utilities they can then pass on the savings directly to consumers.”

I wasn’t and am not convinced. Giving money to profit-making coal companies like Duke Power and Peabody is going to end up helping consumers? Please. All it will do is delay the urgently-needed shift from fossil fuels to renewables and efficiency.

By the end of our half-hour discussion, the decibel level had been dialed down several notches, we were agreeing that we wished President Obama was giving much stronger leadership on this issue, and he was telling me that there was some interest among Energy and Commerce committee members in what was being discussed within Ways and Means (carbon tax and/or cap and dividend approaches). As we shook hands and parted company, I thanked him for being willing to talk and he commended me for being a gentleman.

Sometimes you just have to act upon what you feel is right. And it is right to feel outrage over the power that corporate polluters in both parties have over our political process. It’s time to blow the whistle and shine the spotlight on those liars and deceivers.

Md. Climate Bill Sends Urgent Message to Congress: ACT NOW!

This morning, Governor O’Malley signed into law legislation to combat global warming and create green jobs in Maryland. The Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Act, SB 278/HB 315, mandates the strongest economy-wide reduction in global warming pollution of any climate bill in the country.

“This is a landmark moment for Maryland and sends an urgent message to the federal government,” said Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “Maryland has done all it can do, now it’s time for Congress to enact a nationwide cap on carbon.”

The bill requires the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions 25% below 2006 levels by 2020 and directs the Maryland Department of the Environment to craft a plan and a timeline to achieve that goal. With this bill, Maryland joins six states in enacting a legally binding goal for emissions reductions. Maryland’s short term target is the strongest of all the states with legislative commitments to reduce pollution.

Governor O’Malley’s signing of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Act today was the culmination of years of sustained efforts from dedicated citizens, business leaders, environmental groups, and religious and health organizations.

The diverse coalition that formed to raise awareness of Maryland’s climate bill — called the Alliance for Global Warming Solutions — included the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Environment Maryland, the Maryland Student Climate Coalition, the Chesapeake Sustainable Business Alliance, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Lutheran Office on Public Policy, Maryland League of Conservation Voters, the Maryland chapter of the Sierra Club, and other groups.

The bill signed today is similar to last year’s Global Warming Solutions Act, which did not make it out of the 2008 General Assembly session. The bill that eventually passed was a result of a series of facilitated talks between stakeholders. Leaders within the Maryland climate movement spent several months participating in talks to work out an effective, fair agreement with union and business leaders.

Van Hollen, Waxman introduce major climate bills

CCAN sent out this email to our list yesterday…

We’ve waited years for serious climate legislation from Congress, and last week we got our wish. Two major bills were introduced – and both need your quick attention. Please, take five minutes to read more below and send quick notes. This session of Congress is one of our last chances to get it right and avoid major climate change impacts for future generations.

Climate bill #1:
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) proposes historic “cap and dividend” bill

Congressman Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland environmental champion for decades, has authored the strongest “carbon cap” bill ever proposed. HR 1862 has all the right features: It’s simple, fair, and built to last. It makes polluters pay by auctioning 100 percent of carbon permits instead of giving them away, contains no controversial “carbon offsets,” and returns all carbon revenues back to the American public as a monthly dividend. Watch this short video featuring CCAN director Mike Tidwell. And learn more at www.capanddividend.org.

Here’s what author/activist Bill McKibben said last week about the Van Hollen bill: “This is the most innovative, yet obvious, piece of climate legislation in the 20 years I’ve been following this battle. Van Hollen’s bill sets out a straightforward mechanism for reducing carbon in the atmosphere in a way that will actually be popular with voters.”

TAKE ACTION: Please show your support right now. Please ask your Congressional representative to co-sponsor the Van Hollen bill. If Van Hollen is your Congressman, please thank him for his leadership.

Climate bill #2:
Waxman/Markey bill provides landmark first step but needs to be stronger

Also last week, Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) introduced a comprehensive clean energy/climate bill. The Congressmen deserve our gratitude for their years of hard work promoting climate solutions. As you would expect of a very comprehensive energy bill, there are both strong and weak provisions. The bill sets excellent statutory targets for clean energy development by increasing the requirements for renewable energy and energy efficiency. However, the bill funnels public funding into unproven carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects, allows new coal plants to be built through 2015 without proving they are CCS-compatible, and allows billions of tons of controversial carbon offsets. Read a good summary of the bill from CCAN’s Policy Director.

TAKE ACTION: Please email your Congressional representative and ask him/her to support the strong provisions in the bill and insist that the weak provisions be strengthened. With Arctic ice melting and sea level rising fast, we need a STRONG carbon cap right now.