One thing you can say about the politics of climate change — people are getting hotter about it.

As we approach the Copenhagen world conference (Dec. 6 – 18), those close to the negotiating progress are becoming more frustrated with the plodding pace of official change.

This week in Barcelona, where negotiators met for pre-talks, activists and leaders of African nations demonstrated to try to win more concessions from industrial nations.

Student activists staged a sit-in at the doors to the conference to press for greater reductions in greenhouse gas targets, beyond even the 30 percent reduction by 2020 proposed by the European Union. What this portends for the US, which hasn’t yet put numbers on the table, is anyone’s guess.

The African group pleaded for wealthier nations to commit more money to helping poor countries fight global warming. Their disgust was evident; their vulnerabilities well known: Africa stands to suffer drought, increased water shortages and increased disease if global warming is left unchecked.

“There is no progress whatsoever being made in these negotiations, there is no need to continue like this,” said Gambian chief delegate Pa Ousman Jarju, at a news conference after African leaders walked out in protest, shutting down several planned meetings.

While emotions flared in Barcelona, the US also felt the heat. In Boston, students announced they’ll continue sleeping out on Boston Common to press the state government to commit to running Massachusetts on 100 percent clean energy by 2020.

In DC, people were protesting too, but it was like stepping into a time warp, with several lawmakers fuming over whether we need to take any action on climate change — a debate many would say was settled in the early 1990s.

A handful of Republican senators chose to boycott Senate committee hearings on the Kerry-Boxer climate action and jobs security bill. But instead of boycotting for a change to the status quo, the usual course of boycotts, this one was about maintaining the status quo (or maybe that’s a quid-pro-quo, considering all the oil and coal money greasing this debate).

These senators see no need for action, or at least significant action or expenditures, on this problem.

Tragic. No, earth shattering.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Dr. James Hansen, the NASA scientist known for sounding an early alarm about climate change, will join student protesters at a “sleep out” in Boston this weekend.

The students, from Boston-area and other Massachusetts colleges, have been sleeping out on Boston Common and at various campuses to push the state to pass a law committing to clean energy. Their target goal: Have Massachusetts pledge to be using 100 percent clean energy by 2020.

They’ve asked Gov. Deval Patrick, already known for signing the Global Warming Solutions Act, to again put the state at the forefront of combatting climate change by introducing clean energy  legislation before the legislature adjourns later this month. The students have won a meeting with the governor on Nov. 17.

The sleep outs began two weeks ago, with the overnight campouts followed by lobbying with legislators on Monday mornings. Four Last week, police ticketed the campers for trespassing, student leaders said.

This weekend the group expects at least 100 student activists to meet with Dr. Hansen (whose Phd is in Physics from the University of Iowa) at a 4 p.m. Sunday rally, followed by the camp out. Dr. Hansen is scheduled to hold a press conference at 9:30 a.m. Monday morning (Nov. 9).

In June, Dr. Hansen, along with actress and environmental activists Daryl Hannah, was arrested for civil disobedience for blocking a road at a coal plant protest in West Virginia. The pair, along with several local residents, were protesting mountaintop removal.

Known for his testimony to Congress in 1988, alerting leaders to the dangers of greenhouse gases, Hansen has said that the world needs to move away from burning coal to create electricity.

The student sleep out was inspired by the idea that protesters would not rely on the “dirty energy” heating their homes and dorms until lawmakers pledged to move in a new direction.

By now you’ve heard the dire predictions for how sea level rise would affect Miami. Basically this city, already imperiled by worsening hurricanes, is in the bulls-eye for rising oceans too.

But did you realize that a one meter sea level increase — now believed by many scientists to be a likely outcome of global warming by 2100 — would put Philadelphia underwater?

Greenland Ice Flow (Photo: NASA)

Yes, the city of Brotherly Love would be among the large family of coastal cities potentially devastated by coastline changes. And not in the too-distance future either.

According to glacier and ice shelf expert Dr. Gordon Hamilton, Philadelphia could experience troubles decades before that 2100 benchmark if storm surges pushed rising oceans inland.

In other words, there is no magic threshold when the seas, warmed by the atmosphere and swelled by melting ice sheets, will spill over their old boundaries. There is a steady creep occurring now. But flooding, hastened by storms, could happen well before the ocean’s reach the 1 meter increase (absent any serious human action to slow the current progression).

Hamilton, a research professor at the University of Maine who studies melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica , and Dr. Asa Rennermalm, a Rutgers University professor who studies Arctic and Greenland ice sheets,  are kicking off a lecture tour today to spread this news about how the oceans are rising even faster than projected just a couple years ago.

The first talk was this morning at the Wagner Free Institute in Philadelphia followed by a demonstration at the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, N.J. Subsequent engagements will take the pair to Miami; Washington, New York City and several other cities. The tour, dubbed the “hip boot tour” to emphasize the reality of the coming floods, is sponsored by Clean Air-Cool Planet, a non-profit dedicated to fighting global warming.

None of these cities where the scientists will be speaking will be spared by rising sea levels. Just as most mega-cities around the globe will be affected, because so many population centers sit on the coast or on rivers that lead directly to the coast. Cities like Paris. And Philadelphia.

Talking to Hamilton is a bit like previewing one of those apocalyptic movies where the world suffers from monster storms, vast floods, temperature changes and incredible destruction of infrastructure.

At a one-meter rise, for instance, the subway entrances in Manhattan would be at the water level, which means the subways would be inundated, permanently, said Dr. Hamilton, whose degree is in geophysics.

One doesn’t need a degree in geophysics to understand the consequences of the nation’s financial capital being underwater. Having St. Louis and Chicago on dry ground would not ameliorate the devastation to humans and world trade.

In Philadelphia, a 1 meter increase would flood the downtown district and areas along the river. Harbor trade would be shut down and on the east side, Camden, N.J., would be inundated. Across New Jersey, aquifers would likely be contaminated with sea water.

Neighborhoods at higher elevations, north and west of Philadelphia would remain dry.

Parts of Florida at 33 feet above sea level and below are shown flooded (Image: NASA.)

In Miami, nothing would be unaffected. A 1 meter sea level rise would put most of the city underwater, and it wouldn’t be alone. “Most of Florida’s big cities would be severely affected,” Hamilton said. Models overlaid on satellite images show Miami, the Keys, St. Petersburg and Tampa under water. The everglades would become a saltwater marsh and aquifers in the state would become brackish or completely salinated.

Hamilton says he shows people how their city’s coastline would change, but also tries to get local audiences to see the global nature of the problem.  “Not only are you flooding downtown DC, but hundreds of millions of people in Southeast Asia like Bangladesh, ” he said.

The key point of the tour is not just to demonstrate impending devastation, but to explain that the threat is more imminent than was predicted by the Interplanetary Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just two years ago.

In 2007, the IPCC warned that the sea levels would rise a little more than half a meter and possibly more. Even at that less drastic increase, the “the impacts are virtually certain to be overwhelmingly negative,” scientists wrote.

That prediction was based on the best available science.

What didn’t make the report, Dr. Hamilton said, was that in 2005, geophysicists studying the freshwater ice sheets in Greenland and changes in Antarctica had witnessed an alarming quickening in the speed of some glaciers as they carried ice toward the ocean.

In Greenland, some of these rivers of ice “were doing these crazy things,” he said. Some were moving 45 meters in a day — about the distance of one half a football field. In glacial terms, they were moving very fast. You could hear the ice cracking, he said.

“Almost over night, in the course of 9 to 10 months, they started moving about three times faster than they had been,” Dr. Hamilton said.

Scientists know the changes were prompted by global warming, and that the ice melts can grow exponentially, with water in crevasses contributing to the problem. But they still don’t understand what it all means. Some glaciers later slowed, but others sped up, Hamilton said. The net effect is likely to be a faster melt, with more water raising the ocean levels worldwide.

“Our talks right now are to emphasize that the picture has changed dramatically. If you were to take a consensus among my colleagues who work in Greenland and Antarctica, everybody is likely to say that it (sea rise) is more likely to be a meter.”

If not more.

“Politicians,” he said, “regardless of their political leanings on climate change need to be aware that they’re ethically bound to consider the upper bounds of sea level change…It’s delinquent for people to say they’re going to plan for the minimum (possible change) and then in 50 years time find that huge amounts of their infrastructure is flooded because they didn’t pay attention.”

• The lecture tour dates and cities are:

• Oct. 20 – Philadelphia

• Oct. 21 -  Portland, Maine

• Oct. 22 – Tampa, Fla.

• Oct. 23 -  Tampa, Fla.

• Oct. 24 – Miami, Fla.

• Oct. 27 -  Wilmington, N.C.

• Oct. 28 – Norfolk, Va.

• Oct. 29 – Hampton, N.H.

For details on those talks see the Clean Air-Cool Planet website. For more information on melting ice and rising ocean levels, as well as other predicted outcomes of global warming, see the US Global Change Research Program 2009 report (East Coasters can see the section on the Northeast) or the  IPCC reports at the United Nation’s website.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

As the Nobel Prize Committee noted in awarding President Obama with the Nobel Peace Prize last week, the world is in a better place than it was a year ago.

The world also is in a better place thanks to six young people who are being honored on Tuesday for their heroic environmental efforts. The 2009 Brower Youth Awards, sponsored by Earth Island Institute, will be given to:

• Sierra Crane-Murdoch, 21, of Vermont, for helping unite the movement to fight coal.

• Adarsha Shivakumar, 16, of California, who has put into place a biofuel solution in rural India.

• Diana Lopez, 20, of Texas, who started an organic food source in San Antonio.

• Hai Vo, 22, of California, for transforming food purchasing at the University of California.

• Robin Bryan, 21, of Manitoba, whose project protects 1 million acres of forest in Canada from industrial logging.

• Alec Loorz, 15, of California, who initiated Kids vs. Global Warming and is the youngest presenter of Al Gore’s “The Climate Project.”

Each award recipient will receive a $3,000 cash prize and be recognized at 10th annual Brower Youth Awards Gala in San Francisco. The Earth Island Institute, which sponsors the Brower Youth Awards, is a nonprofit group that recognizes people who come up with solutions to protect the planet.

Sierra Crane-Murdoch

The common thread that connects the six winners is their youthful idealism and  shared passion. As Sierra Crane-Murdoch said via e-mail, “It’s our idealism that energizes our ideas, and it’s comaraderie that makes our ideas succeed.”

Crane-Murdoch says she became an organizer when she arrived at Middlebury College and joined an environmental forum called The Sunday Night Group.

“I’ve always loved the outdoors,” she says, “but I actually started to really care about the environment when I began to understand the human component…and realized that climate change is affecting disadvantaged communities that haven’t caused the problem in the first place.”

Her work with the Sunday Night Group led to Step It Up and 350.org, founded by Middlebury professor and environmentalist Bill McKibben, which she includes among her many mentors. She says that environmental organizing was considered their “5th class” at Middlebury, but “when Power Past Coal came along, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to commit entirely to the project and take classes.”

So Crane-Murdoch took a leave of absence to go live in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia and learn about the issues of dirty coal. She now has one more semester at Middlebury, after which she plans to return temporarily to Appalachia. She is a 2009 Middlebury Fellow in Environmental Journalism, which is directed by McKibben. Currently she is reporting on former union coal miners who are standing up to mountaintop removal coal mining.

Adarsha Shivakumar

Two years ago, at the age of 13, Adarsha Shivakumar of Pleasant Hill, Calif., co-founded Project Jatropha. The organization promotes the plant, Jatropha curcas, a small perennial shrub with oil-rich seeds. Shivakumar says the plant can grow on marginal lands without diverting valuable land from food production. It’s considered an ecologically friendly and economically profitable crop for the farmers of rural India.

Shivakumar says every year he and his sister spend time with their grandparents who live on a farm in south India. “During that time,” he says, “we regularly visit the nearby villages…to see the work done by Parivarthana, a non-governmental farmers aid organization.” Many of the villagers grow tobacco for a living, but to do this the farmers must burn large amounts of firewood to cure the tobacco leaves. Because the farmers do not have a lot of wood on their land, they have turned to cutting down the trees of the local national park.

“My sister and I realized that if we do not make an effort to wean the farmers off tobacco, then the whole forest and all of its incredible biodiversity would disappear,” Shivakumar says.

Shivakumar’s group collaborated with Parivarthana and a plant biotechnology company, Labland Biotechs, to convince farmers that Jatropha seeds could be converted into biofuel.

“Carbon dioxide emissions are local,” says Shivakumar, “but their effects are global.” Though the project is based in India, he hopes it will influence others to help curb global warming and decrease dependence on fossil fuels.

Diana Lopez of San Antonio got excited about social justice and the environment after one of her high school teachers introduced the class to the Southwest Workers Union. The union had a youth chapter that focused on living wages, youth organizing, environmental justice and border global organizing.

As if the dire predictions about the sad state of the planet aren’t enough, we’re now being treated to gloomy forecasts about whether our leaders have the will to do anything about it.

At the Climate Summit at the United Nations in NYC observers had hoped for a breakthrough pledge or statement from either US President Barack Obama or China’s President Hu Jintao. But the event was long on rhetoric, short on serious commitment and left many advocates muttering their disappointment, mainly because the leaders of the two most polluting nations are still playing chess.

Catherine Brahic of New Scientist noted: “Obama said once again that the US could do nothing if developing nations didn’t take steps towards reducing their own emissions. Given hopes that the summit would break that deadlock, this was almost shocking.”

Jintao, meanwhile, spoke in terms of lowering China’s carbon pollution as a proportion of GDP units, which meant that China would try not to pollute as fast as it has been. He was silent on the topic of outright carbon reductions.

Neither leader’s remarks matched the urgency or eloquence of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the convener of the UN conference, who warned that the world has only 10 years to try to avert the worst-case climate change scenario predicted by scientists and told the 100 world leaders in attendance: “Now is your moment to act.”

Obama and Jintao seemed no where near acting, or perhaps they were being great actors, delivering well-crafted speeches. (And I mean that in the worst way.)

Other global leaders at least noticed the vacuum.

“What we lack today is confidence and determination,” said French President Nicholas Sarkozy. “The time has passed for diplomatic tinkering, for narrow bargaining. The time has come for courage, mobilization, and collective ambition.” (For the skinny on all the post-summit grumblings see this WorldWatch post-mortem.)

Everyone , it seems, is beginning to worry about the chances for a strong climate agreement at the December conference in Copenhagen. Some think it won’t matter much. Some think it would be devastating.

Will this become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Is Obama just too mired in the health care debates to be bothered with a melting planet — and recall his campaign promises to put global warming high on the priority list?

When will China get over its stubbornness about being a developing country in need of help and recognize that it is both a major carbon polluter and potential great green leader?

One might ask nearly the same about the US, a country willing to lead endless military excursions, but not yet firmly grasping that we need a “surge” to save Earth.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Not convinced that climate change matters? The Union of Concerned Scientists has concluded that if Americans adopt that stance, they’ll be gambling not just with their lungs, but with their pocketbooks.

The UCS surveyed 60 studies to better examine the anticipated financial toll of global warming if we fail to “dramatically curb emissions.” The nonprofit released the findings today in a report called “Climate Change in the United States: The Prohibitive Costs of Inaction”.

It found that rising sea levels, intense hurricanes, flooding, impaired public health and strained energy and water resources would all add up to one monumental price tag.

“By late this century, the Midwest could be inundated with more torrential rainstorms costs tens of billions of dollars [in crop and property damage]. California, Washington and Oregon could be hit with an additional billion dollars in property damage from wildfires every year. The Northeast and Northwest, meanwhile, could lost most of their snowpack, which would kill the ski industry,” said Lexi Shultz, deputy director of the Climate Program at UCS.

But wait, there’s good news: The US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration says that developing clean energy and taking steps to slow global warming emissions would be affordable. The EIA says that the cost of fighting global warming would only cost each American household about $10 a month in increases in their energy bills by 2020.

The UCS wants us to stack that price tag of about $120 a year against the staggering costs of inaction. If climate change continues unchecked, with temperatures climbing by 7 to 11 degrees by 2100, the UCS report projects that:

• The federal government could end up spending billions fighting wildfires (which would increase by as much as 53 percent in 2100) considering the feds spent $200 million fighting just three wildfires last year in California.

• California would also suffer from heat-related public health issues and associated costs of billions to mitigate the human effects of ground-level ozone, which would worsen under climate change.

• The loss of snowpack would make many recreation areas in the Northeast and the Northwest unsuitable for skiing and snowmobiling, costing, conservatively, a loss of $405 million in annual skiing revenues.

• Reduced snow melt in all of the nation’s mountainous regions could affect water flow in streams and ultimately cost farmers, such as those in New Mexico where the loss of water from reduced snowmelt could cost $21 million a year by 2080.

• Shrinking snowpack would have huge impact in Oregon and Washington on many industries. Losses to the coldwater fishing (angling) industry could ultimately cost about $1 billion annually.

• In the Northeast, sugar maples would lose habitat, meaning annual loss of $5 to $12 million just to that industry.

• Sea level rise all along the East Coast would require seawalls. Possible cost in the Northeast: Up to $1.2 billion, and more in the Southeast

• In the Southeast, where a projected rise of 18 inches is anticipated in sea levels, the beach recreation industry could incur $11 billion in cumulative damages by 2080.

• Georgia alone could lose 5,000 tourism jobs.

• Florida could be especially hard hit, experiencing residential real estate losses of as much as $60 billion a year by 2100, due to sea level rises. The tourism industry could be slapped with more than $175 billion in annual losses due to beach erosion. Property damage from hurricanes could top $100 billion annually by 2100.

• In the Midwest, flooding and heavy downpours predicted by a collaboration of 13 federal agencies, could cause billions of dollars of crop damage and exacerbate erosion, raising the price of food production. Looking at just one state, Illinois, the annual costs to agriculture could reach $9.3 billion.

• Alaska, where warming is occurring disproportionately faster than in other states, would suffer continued damage to infrastructure as the permafrost melts, costing up to $6 billion just by 2030.

As for those who might ask whether these projections are alarmist, a spokesman for the UCS notes that the report was based on “mainstream” studies and that scientists, if anything, tend to err on the of conservatism.

“Most climate scientists acknowledge that current methods of predicting the consequences of climate change may underestimate the real impact and costs of climate change. More carbon dioxide is staying in the atmosphere as the ocean absorbs less and less over time. At the same time, ice sheets appear to be melting more rapidly than scientist have expected,” said Aaron Huertas, press secretary for the UCS, which is based in Massachusetts.

“…If these costs seem large it’s only because our dependence on the relatively stable climate of the past century or so is immense,” Huertas said. “Every home, every crop, every road — our entire civilization — has been built for today’s climate. A rapid shift in our climate will mean major disruptions for our way of life.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Nearly all the world’s electric utilities now believe that climate change is threatening power outages, higher costs and changes in usage as demand grows to power the world’s expanding cities, according to a new report from Acclimatise.

Over ninety percent of the global electric utilities that report climate change activity to the Carbon Disclosure Project say they are at risk from changes in climate and water availability, which are already adding stress to the sector. However, fewer than a third say they are undertaking any financial or quantified evaluation to the impact of climate change on their business.

The report, sponsored by IBM, suggests the energy industry is rapidly approaching a critical stage of development. As demand is growing from new requirements such as electric vehicles, increased cooling during warmer summer months and rapid urbanization, the report suggests that utilities will need to attract new financial investment to grow existing capabilities and develop emerging technologies in a low-carbon way.

The report, titled “Global Electric Utilities – The Adaptation Challenge,” is based on 219 responses to the Carbon Disclosure Project’s annual request for investor information from the industry, analyzed using the Acclimatisation Index(TM). Methodology.

Many scientists report that climate change is underway and the direct effects of increasing global temperatures, such as changes in precipitation and rising sea levels, are becoming more evident. Climatic issues have the potential to impact how all major electric utilities operate, underpinning the world’s major cities, transport and water infrastructures, which are essential to the commercial world and the way we live.

As the impacts of climate change become more direct, governments are starting to resort to prescriptive regulation and statutory controls to ensure that electricity companies take appropriate action on climate change adaptation.

Early indications of action by governments are already evident. In the United Kingdom the Climate Change Act 2008 gives the government an adaptation reporting power that requires electricity companies to assess and disclose the impacts climate change might have on their business.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission asks publicly-listed companies, including electric utilities, to disclose climate threats to their bottom lines in annual reporting. Voluntary agreements on climate risk disclosure have also been signed between electric utilities and governments, such as New York City.

Could all of our efforts to become green — our rehabbing of buildings, spurning of plastic bags and buying  of new hybrids — turn out to be mere tinkerings in the tool shed as the whole grand project collapses around us?

That seems to be the point up for consideration these days. That this whole Save-the-Earth thing might be bigger than a green fashion trend or an overhaul of the auto industry. It might require more drastic action than turning down our newly installed programmable thermostats.

Recently, the New York Times ran a blog item about a  study showing that having babies is one of the non-greenest things you can do, especially if you’re a Westerner and your baby is destined to be a giant among world consumers. This is sort of a “duh”. But the University of Oregon scientists quantified the impact, concluding that an American child would have seven times the impact of a Chinese-born kiddo.

We are hearing more and more discussions about the population explosion, something that’s still pretty un-PC. Except for a few voices — like World Watch Institute analysts who regularly report on population stresses — thought-leaders have been tiptoeing around the issue much like they do Al Gore’s meat-eating habits.

No one wants to point fingers at people’s personal choices, their ability to procreate and their right to fill their plate. These are sacred matters. Or are they? Perhaps we all have a weak flank — a gas guzzler in the driveway, an overly large house, a guilt love of over-air conditioned spaces — and we’re just not sure how personal we want to get in this discussion.

We certainly don’t want to talk about air travel, dining out, overbuilding, eating copious amounts of meat — and a panoply of other matters that could stand review. Who is raising their hand to trade in their well-earned trip to Acapulco for a stay-cation next year? In America, the paradigm is still, if you can afford it, then so be it.

These are slippery slopes, and we’re understandably reluctant to get off the bunny hill. (And I’m not getting off my soap box either, at least for today.)

Take consumerism. We’re fine with making products more eco-friendly. But buying less, that’s scary.

We have a story this week about shoes. They play a role in the depletion of the Amazon rainforest. That’s a discussion we must have. The rainforest is just too vital. Some companies (Nike and others) are willing. They’re getting stricter in how they obtain their leather, to try to disentangle their business from any cattle ranches that have destroyed forests in South America. Might we next want to look at our own collection and consider a vegan shoe? It sounds radical; some will think it sounds ridiculous. They will laugh.

The New Scientist took look at our voracious appetite for stuff in a recent article Consumerism is Eating the Future. Author Andy Coghlan reports on an address to the Ecological Society of America, meeting in Albuquerque this month. The premise of the speaker: Our destruction of the earth is a natural outgrowth of human (or animal) nature. We are driven to fill up the available space and conquer territory, eventually we will overrun the Petri dish, spill out and die.

It’s not a new idea. Remember Darwin? However, one New Scientist reader, pointed out a key difference between humans and other territorial animals (or bacteria): We know what we’re doing.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

At a time when most 15-year-olds are thinking about sports, learning to drive and dating, Alec Loorz is trying to stop global warming.

The Ventura, California teen is the creator of Kids vs. Global Warming, a non-profit group dedicated to getting youth involved in the fight against global warming. “As young people, we are the ones who have to face the consequences of global warming,” he says, in an interview from his home. “We need to get involved now.”

Alec says he was 12 when he was first introduced to the topic. His mom, Victoria, had rented An Inconvenient Truth. “She tried to persuade me to watch it. I thought it was going to be a boring documentary. Instead, it changed my life forever. I watched it two more times, including the special features.”

“I knew then that I wanted to do something about it. The next day at school, I talked about the movie to my friends. One of my friends said, ‘global warming was a hoax and Al Gore is a psycho.’”

Just to prove his friend wrong, Alec went home that night and researched everything he could about global warming. “That was when I realized that I could do something about it.”

He applied to be trained as a presenter for Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth programs, but they rejected him. “I was still 12 and you had to be 14,” Alec says. “It bugged me a little, so I decided to do it on my own.”

Alec began giving his own global warming presentations to area schools, churches, colleges and adult environmental groups. A few years later, Alec says, “Al Gore personally invited me to his next training session in Nashville. He felt bad. He had learned about my rejection.”

Like many environmentalists, Alec agrees, that by not becoming president, Al Gore has made a bigger impact on the world. “If he had become President,” Alec says, “I’d probably still be playing video games.”

Now, at the ripe old age of 15, Alec has met the former Vice President five times. At a presentation in San Diego, Gore brought Alec up on stage with him. “Whenever I’ve been with him, he always includes me in his presentations.”

Wherever you turn, someone, somewhere is talking about climate change. And that’s a good thing. But it’s not a happy conversation. Often, the discussion pivots on how much time we have left to reel in our carbon emissions — and among those who consider climate change a real threat (let’s say the majority of us), the realistic answer to that is, less than a decade.

Give or take a month. (I’m kidding.)

So we’ve got to make some real progress, fast.

Here’s some good news, being highlighted by the WorldWatch Institute today. McKinsey & Company says the U.S. could reduce it’s “non-transportation” energy consumption by 23 percent by 2020.

According to McKinsey’s report Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the U.S. Economy, if the country made an all-out effort it could eliminate $1.2 trillion in energy waste — which would more than cover start-up investment costs. And it would save 1.1 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions annually.

Yes, more than a gigaton. Put that in your calculator and check out the zeros.

This savings, McKinsey says, would be the same as removing the entire US fleet of passenger vehicles and light trucks from the road.

The report goes on to note that this energy savings will only be possible if the US overcomes “significant sets of barriers” which are basically everything from inertia to a lack of education to a lack of financing and incentives to inadequate building codes and standards, etc.

Business types, civic leaders and other interested parties may want to read the report, and/or the WorldWatch summary, which notes that some of these transformative new energy actions that could save our planet include simple things — like turning off one’s computer at night and applying duct tape where needed to leaks.

Of course, we all know that solving climate change will be even more challenging, because, in the end, getting all the cars and light trucks off the road might not be enough. But we’d better start listening to radical groups like McKinsey (you get that I’m kidding right?) if we want to get started.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

A majority of Americans – about 75 percent – support regulating greenhouse gases from power plants, cars and manufacturing that would reduce global warming, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

But only a bare majority – 52 percent – support a cap-and-trade approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and 42 percent oppose such a program, which is the type of approach taken in the Waxman-Markey climate legislation expected to be voted on in the US House of Representations, possibly Friday.

Support for controls on emissions wavered even more as those polled were asked whether they’d pay higher electricity prices to help bring about reduced greenhouse gases.

Only 44 percent said they would back a cap-and-trade system if it meant monthly electricity bills would be $25 higher. Support was stronger, at 56 percent, if the proposed monthly electricity increase was just $10 a month, according to the randomized poll of 1,001 adults.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that regulating greenhouse gases would cost the typical household about $175 a year in 2020, when the shift to clean energy and emissions controls would be in high gear.

But opponents of the pending climate legislation, especially conservative Republicans, argue that costs will be much higher.

The poll found that people living in households making less than $50,000 a year were the most concerned about the costs of the climate regulation.

Young people were the most supportive of federal regulation to control climate-related emissions (about 60 percent said they supported cap-and-trade) and senior citizens the least supportive (about 40 percent said they favored cap-and-trade).

Cap-and-trade is a market-based approach to controlling GHG emissions. It sets caps on the amount of pollution companies are allowed and lets them bid for extra credits if they go over their emissions allowance or sell credits if they keep under pollution limits. Limits for everyone are lowered over time to reduce carbon emissions.

By John DeFore
Green Right Now

The old-fashioned American road trip — packing the kids up and driving from one motor lodge to the next — may seem less than 100% wholesome these days, what with eco-conscious drivers becoming as sensitive to the amount of CO2 they’re generating as they are to cries of “are we there yet?” from the back seat.

But getting out into the natural world remains one of the best ways to introduce children — and city-dwelling adults, for that matter — to the environment we all want to preserve. And a well planned road trip can provide vacationers with an array of views and experiences that’s stunning enough to make a phrase like “ecosystem diversity” suddenly sound like a tangible good worth fighting for instead of a dry academic concern.

With its wealth of park lands, varied terrain, and caravan-friendly roads, Colorado presents excellent opportunities for this kind of eco-exposure road trip. I loaded up the car recently to see how much I could squeeze into a week or so of vacation time, and was surprised at the result.

Starting in Colorado Springs, my trip began with sights that have been part of summer-vacation itineraries for so many decades that simply showing up might make the most unconventional family feel like the Cleavers. Cave of the Winds, for instance, one of the state’s many natural caverns open to visitors, seemingly encourages its guides to toss around corny banter almost as crusty as the stalagmites on display.

But one seemingly hokey affectation can have a transporting effect: In addition to regular tours, the cave’s operators offer a lantern tour that uses no lighting other than the kind of oil-burning lamps available to the spelunkers who explored the caves in the late 1800s. Paradoxically, limiting visitors’ ability to see makes the tour more involving, attaching a sense of discovery to geological formations that might be taken for granted on the standard tour.

Other well-exploited points of interest in Colorado Springs include Seven Falls and Pike’s Peak, a mountain that isn’t as high as other summits you’ll scale on a thorough Colorado trip (it’s not even in the top 20), but is the site of a scenic cog railway.

The town’s most impressive asset is the Garden of the Gods, a collection of above-ground rock formations whose starkness is reminiscent of iconic landscapes, like Utah’s Monument Valley, generally found farther west. Its craggy red rocks are particularly stunning in the morning sunlight, and the park’s relatively small size makes it perfect for a pre-breakfast hike. (It’s clearly a favorite jogging spot for locals.)

From Colorado Springs I drove north, through the granola-friendly community of Boulder, to Estes Park, a verdant little spot that, with its creekside inns and unpretentious businesses, makes the perfect spot to gather your strength for an expedition into the Rocky Mountain National Park.

The rock star of Colorado’s natural attractions, the RMNP is big and rich enough that whole books tackle it without covering everything one might see and do within. Outdoor enthusiasts could spend weeks here without getting bored, but those wanting to integrate the park into a larger trip can get a sense of it on a scenic drive like the one along Trail Ridge Road, which winds its way up through forest to a treeless tundra offering breathtaking views in all directions. The cold winds whipping around up here (it’s usually 20 to 30 degrees cooler here than in Estes Park) are just the thing to cool you off after a hike through one of the many trails found lower down the mountain range.

Rocky Mountain National Park is an excellent place to pause and consider global climate change. The park’s tundra ecosystem, high on the continental divide, faces imminent and multiple threats from warming temperatures, according to a 2007 report, Climate Change in Rocky Mountain National Park.