Tidwell's last radio show

In case you missed the live broadcast Tuesday, you can listen at www.EarthbeatRadio.org. It’s been a great 7.5 years as co-host. But it’s time to move on. I’m especially proud of the last 20 minutes of this show as I talk about how my wonderful son, Sasha, keeps me going as a climate activist. See full summary of the last show below.

Ebert, Romm and More

Listen at www.EarthbeatRadio.org

Host Mike Tidwell reviews the highlights of seven years of hosting Earthbeat. Including a conversation with famed film critic Roger Ebert on the significance of Al Gore’s movie,

This just in: Restaurant Nora to Cater "Artists for the Climate" Reception

I am thrilled to announce that Restaurant Nora — one of DC’s most famous eateries and America’s first certified organic restaurant — will cater a special reception from 6-7 PM as part of CCAN’s Artists for the Climate event.

Their participation was just finalized and you’re the first to find out about it.

Owner Nora Pouillon will prepare a range of delectable appetizers and refreshing organic beverages to help honor authors Bill McKibben, Jeff Biggers, and Mike Tidwell.

For a donation of $150 dollars, you will enjoy some of the city’s absolute best food and have the opportunity to personally meet the authors. In addition, you will receive your choice of two free, autographed books from the featured writers.

Forty front row seats will be set aside for our reception guests. Space is limited to 40 guests so get your tickets now!

To really save the planet, stop going green

Here’s some food for thought: Like civil rights, we need statutes not gestures. And all domestic statutes and international talks should aim for one unmovable number: 350 ppm carbon in the atmosphere. It’s the only number that matters.

As President Obama heads to Copenhagen next week for global warming talks, there’s one simple step Americans back home can take to help out: Stop “going green.” Just stop it. No more compact fluorescent light bulbs. No more green wedding planning. No more organic toothpicks for holiday hors d’oeuvres.

December should be national Green-Free Month. Instead of continuing our faddish and counterproductive emphasis on small, voluntary actions, we should follow the example of Americans during past moral crises and work toward large-scale change. The country’s last real moral and social revolution was set in motion by the civil rights movement. And in the 1960s, civil rights activists didn’t ask bigoted Southern governors and sheriffs to consider “10 Ways to Go Integrated” at their convenience.

Green gestures we have in abundance in America. Green political action, not so much. And the gestures (“Look honey, another Vanity Fair Green Issue!”) lure us into believing that broad change is happening when the data shows that it isn’t. Despite all our talk about washing clothes in cold water, we aren’t making much of a difference.

For eight years, George W. Bush promoted voluntary action as the nation’s primary response to global warming — and for eight years, aggregate greenhouse gas emissions remained unchanged. Even today, only 10 percent of our household light bulbs are compact fluorescents. Hybrids account for only 2.5 percent of U.S. auto sales. One can almost imagine the big energy companies secretly applauding each time we distract ourselves from the big picture with a hectoring list of “5 Easy Ways to Green Your Office.” Continue reading

Tomorrow is not an option

My Op-Ed below, which previews the Copenhagen climate talks, first ran in the Baltimore Sun and on Grist. As many of you know, I will be attending the climate talks next month from December 13-18 on behalf of CCAN and Earthbeat Radio. I will personally be there to record the voices of passionate, inspiring leaders and to add my own voice to the global chorus demanding faster, better results from our world leaders. Starting December 13th, check out the daily video and audio feeds I’ll be posting to this blog.

Climate change reset needed
Let the EPA crack down on carbon emissions, and switch from ‘cap and trade’ to ‘cap and rebate’

By Mike Tidwell
Baltimore Sun
November 27, 2009

Tomorrow is not an option.

Those ought to be the words coming from the White House right now on global warming. Never again can we tolerate a year like 2009, when attempts to cap carbon pollution go nowhere. Already this month, President Barack Obama has confirmed two painful truths. First: Congress will not complete work on a global warming bill in 2009. And second, the corollary blow: There will be no international climate deal in Denmark next month, dashing years of international hopes.

So Mr. Obama should move quickly from explaining failure to achieving real success. He should travel to the Copenhagen climate conference in December and guarantee drastic action from the U.S. in 2010, even if it means blowing everything up in Congress and starting over. If a “cap and trade” bill won’t fly in the Senate in 2010, then let the Environmental Protection Agency explore maximum-strength carbon regulations while, legislatively, we switch back to Mr. Obama’s original presidential campaign plan: “cap and rebate.”

Apologists, of course, are rushing to defend the president, explaining away the now-official climate failures of 2009. There was never enough time, they say, to fix in a few months all the global warming harm George W. Bush created in eight long years.

Maybe so. But we can’t blame Mr. Bush forever. What’s the plan for 2010? The only strategy the Democrats seem to have is borrowed from 2009: Get the Senate to finally pass the cap and trade bill. That would be the 1,400-page bill narrowly approved by the House in June and loaded with subsidies for “clean coal” and likely big profits for Wall Street traders. It’s been stagnating in the Senate for most of the autumn.

Centrist Democrat Jim Webb of Virginia – a vitally important vote – all but condemned the cap and trade bill last week in a news conference. What if the bill simply never passes? What will Mr. Obama take to the international treaty talks in Germany in June 2010 or in Mexico next December? Continue reading

Maldives underwater? Maryland's Smith Island will go first!

Yes I’m very concerned about the drowning nations of the South Pacific and Indian Ocean. But Maryland’s Smith Island — population 300, eighty miles from the White House — will be totally gone before any of these island nations disappear. See below my op-ed in today’s Baltimore Sun and watch a quick video about how global warming is ALREADY drowning AMERICAN islands right now.

Please join me and hundreds of thousands of other human beings worldwide this Saturday for the “International Day of Climate Action.” Visit www.350.org for an event near you, including a big one at Meridian Hill Park in Washington, DC from noon-5pm.

Rising seas, rising awareness
Climate change threatens to drown Maryland’s coasts and islands, but it’s not too late to act

By Mike Tidwell
Baltimore Sun
October 22, 2009

Here’s an idea: Why don’t the residents of Smith Island – at the fragile center of the Chesapeake Bay – rent a few scuba-diving suits and hold a town hall meeting under water?

Scientists say a huge part of the Chesapeake region could be below water in a few decades due to rapid global warming. So why not practice up? Just grab a few wetsuits and goggles and rehearse for the aquatic life to come.

A similar rehearsal took place last week in another island area: the archipelago nation of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. Sitting at underwater tables, atop underwater chairs with fish darting about, the country’s president and Cabinet ministers held a “global warming summit” to ask the world to stop the rising seas that could eventually submerge their entire country.

But as TV networks broadcast this bizarre meeting back to the U.S., you could almost hear the “tsk, tsk.” We comfortable Americans tend to view really big catastrophes – things like famines and tsunamis – as far-away matters involving people usually too poor or under-educated to plan better.

This mindset helped blind us to the pre-Hurricane Katrina dangers of New Orleans. And it’s blinding us today to the shared threat of climate change in places like Smith Island, not to mention Manhattan Island and most of south Florida. Continue reading