Earlier this week leaders from 185 businesses and organizations, along with 77 individual activists, delivered to Congress a letter urging members that “greenhouse gas emissions can be cut swiftly and in an economically and environmentally sound way by means of a national emissions cap that is realized through a combination of aggressive energy efficiency and renewable energy standards.”

By focusing on this three-pronged strategy (i.e., carbon cap + efficiency + renewables), it may prove unnecessary – for the moment at least – to tackle either of the two most controversial options for addressing climate change: creating a “trading system” for emissions credits or imposing carbon taxes.”

Additionally, the letter emphasized that “climate legislation that promotes continued or expanded use of fossil fuels and/or nuclear power, or which rolls back existing environmental safeguards, could result in a bill that might actually be worse than no bill at all.”

Key points:

Cap, conserve, renew

• The United States should establish a mandatory cap on allowable greenhouse gas emissions as well as both a near-term and a longer-term schedule for reducing overall emissions to levels consistent with the best science now available (e.g., 30% or more by 2020).
• The cornerstone of near-term U.S. climate policy should be quickly reducing energy waste and fossil fuel consumption. Rapidly curbing energy consumption by 30% or more is well within reach.
• The goal of 25% renewable energy by 2025 – or an even stronger one – should be formally incorporated in Senate climate or energy legislation.

No coal, no nukes, allow the EPA to do its job

• U.S. climate policy should include the aggressive phase-out of coal-fired plants and oil use in the transportation sector. Federal subsidies for the fossil fuel industries should be ramped down considerably, if not completely eliminated.
• There should be no financial or regulatory incentives for new nuclear construction or relicensing of existing plants.
• Existing environmental or human-health safeguards should not be rolled-back; in particular, the authority of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate CO2 emissions should be left intact.

Read the full text with all signatories (pdf).

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The Sustainable Energy Network is an unincorporated network founded in 2006 comprised of 625+ organizations, businesses, and individuals advocating aggressive development of sustainable energy technologies to curb energy imports, slash greenhouse gas emissions, and phase out nuclear power.

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For many, it's time that climate scientists took off their white coats and stood up to the ongoing broadside against their work and the near-constant drumbeat from right-wing pundits and politicians that have added derision of global warming to their conservative litmus test, disavowing anyone who might dare take seriously the work of the climate science community.

Earlier this month, a thread of emails was disclosed to Greenwire and the New York Times from U.S. scientists revealing that many are "mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore," encouraging their colleagues and scientific institutions like the National Academies to "push back" against the "McCarthyite" smear campaign.

Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate," said Paul Ehrlich, a well-known biologist and author of The Population Bomb. "We’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules.

Not all the participants in the email discussion think a counteroffensive against the denial and cynicism is the best approach. Matthew Nisbet author of the blog Framing Science, warns that there is more at play with the decline in public concern and understanding of global warming than just the efforts of denialists, including the economy, confusion over the cold weather, and lack of effective leadership in Washington. Focusing on an angry and emotional battle with such people is a  "a major distraction and it reflects their own perceptual biases."

These biases are well understood and predicted by past research in communication," says Nisbet in an email. "They include a tendency for individuals heavily involved on an issue to perceive almost all news coverage as hostile to their goals (even news coverage that favors their position); to presume much larger effects for a message on the public than the actual influence; and to apply a faulty quasi-statistical sense to where public opinion might actually stand on an issue, perceiving public opinion as hostile to their goals, no matter what the objective indicators might say.

Dr. Randy Olsen, author of Don't Be Such a Scientist started his lengthly reply to Nisbet with:

There comes a point where the public DOES want to see the science community stand up for themselves. My book is about the fact that there is more than just brains inside average folks — they also have hearts, guts and even sex organs.

You want to know why Al Gore and his movie have proven to be such an abject failure? (And yes, failure is the right word — polling shows no net increase in public concern about global warming in the years following the movie — for two decades its been roughly a third of the public who are seriously worried about global warming.) It’s for this very reason. A very dull and dispassionate voice was chosen to deliver a supposedly dire and passionate message. It was one of the worst cases of bad casting in history. Gore is ultimately “a scientist” when it comes to communication instincts. You can see it played out in his movie and two books as he’s slowly come to the realization that you need something more than information to reach the masses. Duh."

Others echo Olsen's sentiment, suggesting that the there comes a time when it is best to fight fire with fire. Writes professor Paul Falkowski at Rutgers University Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences:

We need to develop a relentless rain of science and scientific dialog on the incredible, destructive demagoguery that has invaded the airwaves, the news media and the public forum and has prevented a rational discussion about political solutions to human perturbations on the environment"

Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University, is one of the 17 scientists that Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, a vociferous climate change denier known for his questionable and often dishonest tactics in pursuit of his denial, has accused of "possible violation of federal law" in the wake of the hacked email fiasco from last year now popularly known as "climategate". Schneider maintains the scientific community has been subjected to "neo-MaCarthyism" by the likes of Inhofe and his staff.

I am hopeful that all the forces working for honest debate and quality assessments will decry this McCarthyite regression," says Schneider, "and by name point out what this Senator is doing by a continuing smear campaign."

The email discussion originated on a listserv maintained by the National Academy of Sciences for members on the Academy's environmental sciences and ecology division. An NAS spokesman said the emails where a private conversation between the dozen or so scientists involved, and the thread appears to have been forwarded outside the list by an unknown person.

Some other sentiments questioned whether an effort to launch a full-blown public relations counteroffensive was the best use of time and money. More importantly, the discussion led to the consequences of the fallout from Climategate on the "broader well-being" of the scientific community.

If the public looses faith in scientists, we can see the inevitable consequences. H1N1 vaccines were taken a plot to kill our children. Regardless of the evidence, cell phones cause brain cancer," wrote Falkowski from Rutgers. "The political dialogue is course — but scientists are being treated like political pawns — and it is not acceptable."

Paul Ehrlich warned that now is the time for the scientists to take a strong stand, or at least try:

Science is getting creamed with no effective response, and our colleagues involved with the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] are getting threatened with prosecution by the likes of Inhofe. It is not clear whether the NAS can ever be an effective voice, but if we don't start some action it surely never will be."

Read the entire email thread (pdf)

EarthTalk® is a weekly environmental column made available to our readers from the editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: Isn’t the interest in electric cars and plug-in hybrids going to spur increased reliance on coal as a power source? And is that really any better than gasoline/oil in terms of environmental impact? - Graham Rankin, via e-mail

It’s true that the advent of electric cars is not necessarily a boon for the environment if it means simply trading our reliance on one fossil fuel—oil, from which gasoline is distilled—for an even dirtier one: coal, which is burned to create electricity.

The mining of coal is an ugly and environmentally destructive process. And, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) burning the substance in power plants sends some 48 tons of mercury—a known neurotoxin—into Americans’ air and water every year (1999 figures, the latest year for which data are available). Furthermore, coal burning contributes some 40 percent of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) estimates that coal mining and burning cause a whopping $62 billion worth of environmental damage every year in the U.S. alone, not to mention its profound impact on our health.

Upwards of half of all the electricity in the U.S. is derived from coal, while the figure is estimated to be around 70 percent in China. As for Europe, the United Kingdom gets more than a third of its electricity from coal, while Italy plans to double its consumption of coal for electricity production within five years to account for some 33 percent of its own electricity needs. Several other countries in Europe, where green sentiment runs deep but economics still rule the roost, are also stockpiling coal and building more power plants to burn it in the face of an ever-increasing thirst for cheap and abundant electricity.

On top of this trend, dozens of electric and plug-in hybrid cars are in the works from the world’s carmakers. It stands to reason that, unless we start to source significant amounts of electricity from renewables (solar, wind, etc.), coal-fired plants will not only continue but may actually increase their discharges of mercury, carbon dioxide and other toxins due to greater numbers of electric cars on the road.

Some analysts expect that existing electricity capacity in the U.S. may be enough to power America’s electric cars in the near future, but don’t rule out the possibility of new coal plants (or new nuclear power plants) coming on line to fill the gap if we don’t make haste in developing alternate sources for generating electrical energy. And while proponents of energy efficiency believe we can go a long way by making our electric grids “smarter” through the use of monitoring technologies that can dole out power when it is most plentiful and cheap (usually the middle of the night), others doubt that existing capacity will be able to handle the load placed on even an intelligent “smart grid” distribution network.

Environmentalists—as well as many politicians and policymakers—maintain that the only viable, long-term solution is to spur on the development of renewable energy sources. Not long ago, the concept of an all-electric car charged up by solar power or some other form of clean renewable energy was nothing but a pipe dream. Today, though, such a scenario is within the realm of the possible, but only if everyone does their part to demand that our utilities bring more green power on line.

Contacts:
EPA/mercury emissions

Image credit: Rich McGervey, courtesy Flickr.

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