FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy

A new kind of organizing - using Recovery funds in Florida

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:09:00 +0000

Crossposted at Green for All Blog

It's amazing what a little money can do.

As soon as the Obama Billions from the stimulus package started to trickle down, community groups around the nation began to mobilize with a new found zeal. All of a sudden, programs parched by decades of under-funding are springing to life – the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), which has had an average yearly budget of roughly $200 million just received a whopping $5 billion.

That money, however, isn’t flowing as freely as it needs to. In this case, state and local agencies which renovate the homes of families with low incomes to be more energy efficient and thus more affordable to live in, are simply overwhelmed.

In Miami, Florida – my hometown – the local agency providing weatherization assistance employs two full-time employees and weatherized fewer than 100 homes last year. Now, they have the funds to retrofit 3,000-4,000 homes.

This is going to require a new kind of organizing. State and local agencies are not used to having this much money and they’re not used to thinking outside the box in order to spend it. With the carrot of stimulus dollars dangling, the caveat is the money must be spent within two years – a requirement that, at current capacity, no agency in the country will be able to meet.

We need to seize this moment and this opportunity – we’re no longer the powerless, moneyless minority and we need to be prepared and ready for our own success. The stimulus money sent a clear message – this is an administration that will serve the people and society first, but it's up to us on the ground to make sure that investment is spent in an equitable and just manner.

Those of us working on behalf of the public’s highest interest, on behalf of those who have been left out, and on the side of equity and justice, must be at the table to define and create our collective future. Community groups should engage the local agencies that are tasked to spend stimulus dollars and create new collaborations and partnerships that will maximize our communities’ abilities to benefit from this new green wave. We need to bring together existing groups and programs doing job training, involve local contractors and other employers, and engage government officials to create robust and successful green jobs programs that will lay the foundation for future investments in the green economy.

This is starting to take root here in Florida. I’m a proud member of a new coalition in Tampa called Green Jobs for the People – a collaborative of the local Community Development Corporation, the local agency in charge of the weatherization program, and other grassroots community groups. We are calling to incorporate green collar jobs training and pathways out of poverty programs into the city of Tampa’s plans to use stimulus dollars, and to plan for the long term development of an inclusive and equitable green economy. You can learn a little more about our work by reading this article and listening to this interview done by a local radio news program. (Click here to download the mp3 file of the interview)
Green For All is right when they say that now is the time to move from hope to change, from inspiration to implementation. Let’s bring home a green recovery for all. This is just the beginning.

300 Florida Youth in One Room

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:46:00 +0000

Wow! What an amazing feeling to be in a room with 300 young people who had travelled to D.C. all the way from Florida to join 12,000 other young people from around the country in order to demand action on the energy and climate conference. The Florida break out session was inspirational and really gave me chills. 300 plus students in a room who all are active on their campuses and representing hundereds of other individuals who could not make the trip to D.C. Power Shift showed that there are plenty of young people who care about climate change, clean energy, and green jobs. For me, it was amazing to see that we have so many of them in Florida!

Carbon Free Nuclear Free

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:24:00 +0000

I wanted to post this picture from the Capitol Climate Action (http://www.capitolclimateaction.org/) that I took part in on Monday. We are currently fighting for the concept of Carbon Free Nuclear Free here in Florida. Some folke in the Florida legislature want to define nuclear as a clean and renewable source of energy. They want to change the Renwable Energy Portfolio (RPS) to a Clean Energy Standard in order to include nuclear in the definition of renewable energy. Please read the action alert below:

The Battle for True Renewable Energy Begins

The utility industry is aggressively lobbying the Legislature to allow nuclear power as an eligible resource in meeting the target of 20% renewable energy. This self-serving utility scheme, labeled as a “clean energy portfolio standard,” is unprecedented as no other state permits the inclusion of nuclear energy to meet renewable energy goals. Nuclear energy is a prohibitively expensive energy source with little job creation benefits and it has no place in a policy intended to promote renewable energy!

Voice your Concerns!

Contact Governor Crist and ask him to stand up to utility lobbyists that are trying to undermine the RPS intended to reach his target of 20% renewables by 2020. Your outreach to the Governor will make a difference!

Email: Charlie.Crist@myflorida.com
Telephone: (850) 488-7146

Contact the following legislative leaders. They sit on key committees that will have significant influence over the RPS – it’s important that they hear from you that nuclear power has no place in a policy intended to promote renewable energy!

Senator Lee Constantine (Orlando)
Email: constantine.lee.web@flsenate.gov
Telephone: (850) 487-5050

Senator Jim King (Jacksonville)
Email: king.james.web@flsenate.gov
Telephone: (850) 487-5030

Representative Page Kreegel (Punta Gorda)
Telephone: (850) 488-9175

Rep. Debbie Mayfield (Vero Beach)
Telephone: (850) 488-0952

The Power is Starting to Shift

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:17:00 +0000

This past weekend I had the honor of participating in two events in Washington D.C. The first was a conference called Power Shift which brought together 12,000 young folks (many of whom were college students) to learn and take action on the energy and climate crisis. I have to say that my expectations for this event were far exceeded. Most panel and workshop discussion were having to turn people away because so many folks were intersted in attending. The workshops had speakers who discussed science, local initiatives (several mayors presented in one of the panels I attended), and even faith/spirituality (which of course I thought was superb, but of course I am not biased at all). The best part of Power Shift for me was on Saturday evening after the Roots performed when at least 8,000 of the participants did not leave the convention center. Instead they all lingered in the lobby chanting and singing for about 45 minutes, calling for bold action on the climate and energy crisis. They were chanting for carbon reductions, equitable green jobs, and a focus on devloping a clean energy grid. It not only recharged my grassroots organizing batteries, but it gave me hope that these young adults are serious about taking action on the energy and climate crisis. On Monday morning, this was confirmed when D.C. saw the most snow it has encounterd in several years. Still, thousands of these individuals went to speak with their elected officials on Capitol Hill. It was an awesome site to be walking around the Capital and to see that 95 percent of the people I passed were from Power Shift. Many of them had their green hard hats on with their suits and certainly looked ready to speak truth to power.

My Monday then continued after briefly participating in the Power Shift rally on the Capitol law, by walking towards Justice Park to participate in a protest again the Capitol Coal Plant. I have to say that this is an event I am having trouble explaining, because the energy I felt in this crowd of 2500 people is hard to put into words. All I can say is I encourage you to go to the website: http://www.capitolclimateaction.org/ and check out some of the video and pictures posted there. I have included a picture of the affinity group I marched with from the Carbon Free Nuclear Free Alliance. It was an honor to spend my afternoon with them and I think we added the added voice that nuclear power is also not a smart or viable option in energy production. I believe this was only the begginning of a growing movement of folks who are no longer willing to accept business as usual in this country. We cannot sit on the sidelines while mountains are blown up, communities ravaged by sickness and disease from mining and coal plant emmissions, and while the climate science continues to grow bleeker by the day.

I was proud to be a part of these two events this past weekend. I look forward to continuing this fight with everyone who was in D.C., for those who were supporting us from their homes, and for those who will join us in the future. It was truly an honor to have participated in what I saw as the continuation of a power shift in this great nation.

Sincerely

Jesse Glickstein
Faiths Untied for Sustainable Energy (www.fusenow.org)

Good Jobs, Green Jobs – An opportunity for Sacred Activism

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:14:00 +0000

Going to your average conference is hardly a spiritual experience. Sure, it’s a great opportunity to meet and network with people in your field, travel to a different city, and even learn a thing or two. But there’s often a gap between the stuff that gets talked about at workshops and speeches and the work that happens on the ground. I also find an absence of soul, time for inner reflection, and spiritual grounding that is necessary for building a successful movement. The upcoming Good Jobs Green Jobs conference in Washington D.C. will be very different. The Green Collar movement, with its values of inclusion and equity, has its roots in the struggle for civil rights and economic justice. The spirit of this struggle, launched in the churches of the South, must infuse our current movement to create an ethos of what Andrew Harvey has dubbed Sacred Activism - “when the deepest and most grounded spiritual vision is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing political, economic, and social institutions, a holy force - the power of wisdom and love in action - is born.”

We can’t green America without greening our souls first. The scale of the challenge and opportunity before us for a complete transformation of our economy and society requires so much effort that activists are constantly on the brink of exhaustion. We need to continuously replenish our physical and spiritual energy stockpiles so that this movement doesn’t fizzle out. But since there’s little chance for time off to attend spiritual retreats, we need to integrate a Sacred Activism into our work that will nourish our souls and advance the movement at the same time. To achieve this we need to reawaken the houses of worship and people of faith that once marched on the front lines of social movements to retake their rightful place as leaders in the Green Collar movement along with environmentalists, labor groups, and government. I and other FUSE staff will be attending the conference with this goal in mind. In addition to learning and sharing with the nation’s leading experts on the green collar economy, we will visit with our congressional representatives to deliver the message of economic justice and inclusion as a moral imperative backed by the support of millions of constituents from faith communities throughout the nation. We need our leaders to act boldly with a moral compass pointing toward an equitable future. The time is here. Green Jobs Now!

A Green New Year’s ReSolution for Miami

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:12:00 +0000

I walked through the courtyard at my office building yesterday and noticed a line of people pouring out the door of the employment agency located there. Older folks, college students, all anxiously abuzz, speaking in the familiar languages of Miami – Spanish, French Creole, and even a little English. I overheard a conversation as I walked into the building - “you think they’ll have something for us this week?” a man asked. “Who knows,” his friend replied, “I don’t even know why we wait in this line. Even when we do get work from here, it pays crap and only lasts a few weeks.” As I got in the elevator I couldn’t get that scene out of my head. Never had the need for green jobs hit so close than at that moment. Even though Miami is one of the most vulnerable cities in the world when it comes to climate induced sea level rise, what gets people up and mobilized is the need to put food on the table. There, in the heart of Little Havana, where most of the jobs are at the countless small restaurants, cigar shops, and grocery stores, I got a glimpse of what’s going on everywhere – people are stressed, the economy is in a tailspin, and the planet is on fire.

I walked into my office and looked up at the green hard hats decorating our bookshelf. “I’m Ready” reads the sticker on the front of each hat. “We sure are,” I thought to myself. And we’ve got a lot of work to do if we’re serious about creating millions of green collar jobs. We need a new New Deal, a bailout for the people, and its got to be green and inclusive. Most importantly, it must work! Now, every single one of us has a part to play in this. We need a society-wide mobilization of people all over this country demanding green jobs – from unions and teachers, to priests and businesses, we all have a chance to make good on the ticket for change that was voted in to the White House just over two months ago.

We here at Faiths United for Sustainable Energy (FUSE) will be doing our part by visiting with communities of faith all throughout the State of Florida to help people learn about the connections between their faith, the environment, and social justice. We’ll be building grassroots support for green collar jobs, renewable energy, and a new, green, sustainable way of life through picture petitions, constituent visits with legislators, media, and public rallies and events. We will also be building alliances with other organizations and individuals who are committed to making a Green Collar Jobs a reality throughout the State of Florida. So if you’re in Florida and want to help build the green collar movement, get in touch with us and we’ll plug you in.

FUSE Members in Action: Faith Communites Across the Nation Work Towards a Sustainable Future

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 07:12:00 +0000

ARC Launches 7 Year Plan for Generational Change

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:50:00 +0000

Our allies at the Alliance of Religion and Conservation have launched, in partnership with the United Nations, the "Seven Year Plan for Generational Change." This is an amazing initiative that all faith communities and institutions should join. We here at FUSE look forward to partnering with the ARC in this great effort. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about this initiative please email jesseg@fusenow.org.

To read the entire plan and learn more about the ARC click here:

UN/ARC: The Seven Year Plan

Why? Increasing destruction of the natural environment and climate change are probably the biggest global challenges to human development and to the welfare of all life on earth. They both threaten developing communities’ economic, social and physical well-being and put at risk the diversity and wonder of nature itself – through destruction of forests, pollution of the waters and loss of habitats.

For many, this has created fear and anxiety about the future. We believe it is therefore a time when the major religions of the world must take a lead - sharing their wisdom, their insights and their hopes, and working through their faithful to address these issues in a holistic and comprehensive way.

This is why we have launched The Seven Year Plan with the UN as cosponsor.

The heart of this ARC/UN Programme is to assist the major organisations and traditions within the world’s faiths to draw up their own Seven Year Plan of action designed to create generational changes. This will help faith communities respond practically and effectively, offering programmes and models of constructive engagement with these great global issues.

As a guide, there are Seven Key Areas the faiths can explore:

"The key contribution the faiths can make to the environmental issues of today is to develop programmes based not on fear, guilt or apprehension but on doing what is right" A Muslim fisherman in Africa explains why he has stopped fishing with dynamite... because it is right to do so.
The Seven Key Areas are:

1. Assets: land, investments, purchasing and property

2. Education and Young People

3. Pastoral Care and Theological Education

4. Lifestyles

5. Media and Advocacy

6. Partnerships, Eco-twinning and Creating your own Environment Department

7. Celebration

The Plans
We are therefore asking that faiths consider how they can develop Plans which will shape the behaviour and outlook of the faithful for generations to come - and to assist them we have produced some guidelines (note that this is a 2MB file) full of creative ideas and examples: there are some things that many faith groups are already working on: others that they might not have thought about.

The guide offers various ideas and models of constructive engagement with these great global issues. Not all areas will be relevant to all faiths. The Seven Year Plans should reflect particular strengths and interests of each faith community. Each Plan will be unique. The guide will be updated and expanded as faiths send us their stories and examples.
Announce Your Plans by November 2009
We invite faith groups to create Seven Year Plans to be announced in local, provincial, country and international celebrations in November 2009.

We will be linking faith communities worldwide on that day, through internet and radio and TV as community after community, country after country announce their Seven Year Plans.

The results of all these Plans will contribute directly to the Climate Change meeting in Copenhagen at the end of November 2009, which will determine the shape of the next stage of the ‘Kyoto Protocol’, considered by many to be a crucial event for the future of the planet.

A climate hero: The early years

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:54:00 +0000

Originally posted at Grist.com

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A look back at James Hansen's seminal testimony on climate, part one

The speakers at a Washington, D.C., climate rally this past Earth Day, April 22, showcased the range of the modern environmental movement. They included an activist who engaged in a hunger strike, an outspoken preacher from the Hip Hop Caucus, and a folk duo that performed, "Unsustainable," a parody of Frank Sinatra's "Unforgettable."

Yet it was a comparatively dry, 20-minute scientific presentation that brought the crowd to its feet. The speaker, introduced as a "climate hero," was James Hansen, a long-time scientist with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Hansen is not a revolutionary by character. He is a mild-natured man who speaks with a soft, Midwestern tone. Raised in southwest Iowa, the fifth child of tenant farmers, Hansen would later commit his life to studying computerized climate models. With human-induced climate change now widely regarded as the greatest challenge of this generation, Hansen is considered a visionary pioneer.

Theories of climate change first surfaced more than a century ago. But it was Hansen who forever altered the debate on climate change 20 years ago this month.

On June 23, 1988, in the sweltering heat, Hansen told a U.S. Senate committee he was 99 percent certain that the year's record temperatures were not the result of natural variation. It was the first time a lead scientist drew a connection between human activities, the growing concentration of atmospheric pollutants, and a warming climate.

"It's time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here," Hansen told reporters.

Scientists first expressed concern about possible climate change more than a decade before Hansen's testimony. The most-publicized report came from the National Academy of Sciences in 1977. It warned that average temperatures may rise 6 degrees Celsius by 2050 due to the burning of coal.

Around the same time, Hansen, a space scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, began studying the effect of greenhouse gases on climate. His first paper on the subject, published in the journal Science (PDF) in 1981, predicted that burning fossil fuels would increase global temperatures by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 degrees Celsius) by the end of the 21st century.

Click here to continue reading article and series at Grist.com

The 'pope' of hope

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:51:00 +0000

Originally posted at Interfaith Power and Light

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Can religion help prevent eco-catastrophe? The leader of the Orthodox Church thinks so - and as the spiritual guide for 300 million people, he has more influence than most politicians.
. . .

For the many pilgrims who stream into the lavishly decorated Church of St George, Istanbul, it is the crystal chandeliers, incense clouds, iconography and sombre, chanting, enigmatic bishops dressed in black that are the main attraction of a little-known district in the throbbing Turkish metropolis.

Yet this cathedral holds far greater significance than photo opportunities and a sliver of Christendom in a Muslim-majority country. Around the corner from dusty cafes and tat shops, up a cobbled street, you come to the office of one of the most influential figures in the fight against climate change and world poverty.

His All Holiness, Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch, is the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians and 270th successor to the Apostle Andrew. He is also extremely green, taking heads of church and state to areas beset with environmental problems - the Amazon and Arctic among them - and confronting them with the best science.

After announcing, on an Aegean island, that attacks on the environment should be considered sins, he called pollution of the world's waters "a new Apocalypse" and led global calls for "creation care".

The Guardian America has the rest.

Evangelicals and Global Warming

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:22:00 +0000

From the Interfaith Power and Light Blog

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There's plenty of news out there about growing divisions among evangelicals over the science and the action required to address global warming. Although this video is a bit light on information, the young Christians here actually give a good sense of the debate and reveal some emerging generational, authority, and messaging issues.

Here's head of governmental affairs head for the National Association of Evangelicals Richard Cizik bringing his faith down to earth. Note: Interfaith Power and Light on that Sen. Boxer poster.

Interfaith Power and Light is beginning to work more closely with committed evangelicals who care deeply for creation and understand the science. Have you had any conversations with global warming skeptics? What have you said that's helped create common moral ground or explain the science? Share your experience and ideas below for all our IPL folks.

Report: Global Warming Has Changed Our Weather — Worse Heat Waves, Floods, Hurricanes, Storms To Come

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 05:45:00 +0000

From the Think Progress Blog

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The traditional media rarely discusses extreme weather events in the context of global warming. However, as the Wonk Room Global Boiling series has documented, scientists have been warning us for years that climate change will increase catastrophic weather events like the California wildfires, the East Coast heatwave, and the Midwest floods that have been taking lives and causing billions in damage in recent days.

Today, the federal government has released a report that assembles this knowledge in stark and unequivocal terms. “Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate,” by the multi-agency U.S. Climate Change Science Program with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the lead, warns that changes in extreme weather are “among the most serious challenges to society” in dealing with global warming. After reporting that heat waves, severe rainfall, and intense hurricanes have been on the rise — all linked to manmade global warming — the authors deliver this warning about the future:

In the future, with continued global warming, heat waves and heavy downpours are very likely to further increase in frequency and intensity. Substantial areas of North America are likely to have more frequent droughts of greater severity. Hurricane wind speeds, rainfall intensity, and storm surge levels are likely to increase. The strongest cold season storms are likely to become more frequent, with stronger winds and more extreme wave heights.

Unfortunately, some of the cautions in this long-delayed report have come too late for the victims of the Midwest Flood:

Some short-term actions taken to lessen the risk from extreme events can lead to increases in vulnerability to even larger extremes. For example, moderate flood control measures on a river can stimulate development in a now “safe” floodplain, only to see those new structures damaged when a very large flood occurs.

Climate change is threatening our health, our lives, our economy, and our security already. Now the only question is when our media will take notice, and when our leaders will respond. Our future depends on it.

From the accompanying brochure comes this chart summarizing the findings:

(Click here to continue reading this article at Think Progress / The Wonk Room)

BREAKING: Bush Asserts Executive Privilege To Hide Global Warming Documents

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:52:00 +0000

Orginally posted on ThinkProgress / Wonkroom

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With a contempt of Congress vote looming by Rep. Henry Waxman’s (D-CA) House Oversight Committee, President Bush asserted executive privilege this morning to block the committee’s subpoenas for documents relating to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to reject California’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to override scientific recommendations on ozone standards.

Waxman’s committee had scheduled the 10 am business meeting to hold contempt votes for EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and White House Office of Management and Budget regulatory administrator Susan Dudley. On May 20, Johnson appeared before the committee, without the subpoenaed documents and evading questions about Bush’s involvement.

Stephen Johnson has been compared to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for his mishandling of the EPA. Susan Dudley and her husband Brian Mannix, an EPA administrator, are products of the Mercatus Center, a right-wing pro-industry think tank.

UPDATE: From TPMMuckaker, Waxman’s blistering response:

I don’t think we’ve had a situation like this since Richard Nixon was president. When the President of the United States, may have been involved in acting contrary to law and the evidence that would determine that question for Congress, in exercising our oversight, is being blocked by an assertion of executive privilege. I would hope and expect this administration would not be making this assertion without a valid basis for it, but to date I have not seen a valid instance of their executive privilege.

UPDATE II: Waxman’s written statement from the committee website: “Today’s assertion of executive privilege raises serious questions about Administrator Johnson’s credibility and the involvement of the President.”

This is the fourth Congressional investigation Bush has impeded by asserting executive privilege. He invoked the privilege repeatedly in the US attorneys scandal that brought down Alberto Gonzales last summer: to prevent Josh Bolten from turning over documents; and to protect Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor and Karl Rove and Scott Jennings from testimony. Rove, Gonzales, and Jennings resigned from the White House soon thereafter. Considering the assertions of executive privilege improperly made, this February the House voted to hold Miers and Bolten in contempt of Congress, but Attorney General Michael Mukasey declined to investigate.

As the Washington Independent notes, Bush also claimed executive privilege to block the Pat Tillman investigation and a 2001 investigation into the FBI corruption scandal fictionalized in “The Departed.”

The last time the full Congress found an administration official in contempt was in 1983, against EPA official Rita Lavelle for her cover-up of Dow Chemical’s dioxin poisoning in Midland, Michigan. Twenty-five years later, EPA regional administrator Mary Gade was fired by Johnson when she tried to clean up the pollution.

UPDATE III: In an email, Daily Kos contributor Kagro X notes further parallels between today’s scandal and the 1983 EPA scandal: “Reagan’s EPA Administrator, Anne Gorsuch, refused to testify or turn over documents on the advice of White House counsel Fred Fielding.”

Fielding replaced Harriet Miers as Bush’s White House counsel when she resigned last year.

UPDATE IV: Clean Air Watch’s Frank O’ Donnell writes in to the Wonk Room:

This is basically an admission that the White House did indeed tamper with EPA’s decisions. Executive Privilege only applies to actions taken by the President or his top aides.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of our government. This isn’t a matter involving national security. This is really about a very political White House helping special interests by interfering with an agency’s responsibility to carry out the law.

Global Boiling: Rush Versus Reality

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:40:00 +0000

From the Think Progress Blog

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Last week, conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh assailed the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s “Global Boiling” Progress Report, which explained that the extreme weather events causing death and destruction across the United States “are consistent with the changes scientists predicted would come with global warming.” He called it a “piece of propaganda” by “wackos” but refused to read any of it — “You can imagine what it says.” He continued:

You know, it is a crying shame to have to sit out here and just do nothing but refute a bunch of lies that are repeatedly told by leftist activist groups and then amplified and promulgated by willing accomplices in the Drive-By Media.

The “leftist activist groups” Rush is attacking now includes not only us but also the Bush administration, whose multiagency Climate Change Science Program has released two reports this week on the damage climate change is doing to the United States.

The first, released Thursday, said:

Many extremes and their associated impacts are now changing. For example, in recent decades most of North America has been experiencing more unusually hot days and nights, fewer unusually cold days and nights, and fewer frost days. Heavy downpours have become more frequent and intense. Droughts are becoming more severe in some regions, though there are no clear trends for North America as a whole. The power and frequency of Atlantic hurricanes have increased substantially in recent decades, though North American mainland land-falling hurricanes do not appear to have increased over the past century. Outside the tropics, storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are becoming even stronger.

Friday’s report on the effect of global warming on our continent’s ecosystems finds that “Climate change has very likely increased the size and number of forest fires, insect outbreaks, and tree mortality in the interior West, the Southwest, and Alaska, and will continue to do so.”

Its warning for the future?

The resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances (e.g., flooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification), and other global change drivers (e.g., land-use change, pollution).

To conclude: the U.S. Climate Change Science Program — comprised of the Agency for International Development, Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, Department of State, Department of Transportation, US Geological Survey, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics & Space Administration, National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution — has found that global warming has likely or very likely worsened:

Intense rainfall
Heat waves
Winter storms
Hurricanes
Wildfires
Insect outbreaks
Coral bleaching

The future, in addition to the above, will see worse:

Droughts
Ocean acidification
Storm surges
Wildlife disruption
Extreme coastal erosion

It’s important to note that none of these are new findings — these are simply summaries of thousands of works of scientific research from the past decades. And even with the release of these long-delayed reports, the Bush administration continues to violate its lawful mandate to take action on global warming, as the president’s Nixonian assertion of executive privilege on Friday makes clear.

So, despite Rush’s attacks, these “wackos” at the Center for American Progress Action Fund will continue to report the truth and hold his friends accountable.

Science: Greenland can warm 2-4°C in one year!

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:31:00 +0000

From the Climate Progress Blog

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A new article in Science Express, “High-Resolution Greenland Ice Core Data Show Abrupt Climate Change Happens in Few Years” (subs. req’d) examines “The last two abrupt warmings at the onset of our present warm interglacial period.” The article explores the underlying causes of

… abrupt shifts of northern hemisphere atmospheric circulation resulting in 2-4°K changes in Greenland moisture source temperature from one year to the next.

The article concludes that

… polar atmospheric circulation can shift in 1-3 years resulting in decadal to centennial scale changes from cold stadials to warm interstadials/interglacials associated with astounding Greenland temperature changes of 10°K. Neither the magnitude of such shifts nor their abruptnesses are currently captured by state of the art climate models.

The time to act is yesterday.

Video - Crude Impact

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:19:00 +0000

U.S. driving down 4.5 billion miles in April

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:15:00 +0000

Originally posted at Climate Progress

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April 2008 saw another sharp drop in vehicle miles traveled (aka VMT) according to the Federal Highway Administration’s monthly report on “Traffic Volume Trends.” This follows “the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history” in March (see here).

I was compelled to blog on this because of the incredibly astute media coverage by AFP, “worldwide news agency,” which wins the “Duh!” award for the month:

Observers surmise a possible link between the declining number of miles driven and rising US gasoline prices.

Wouldn’t want the ever-cautious media to leap to any conclusions. [Note to AFP: Observers surmise a possible link between the declining number of readers for big media and the rising blandness of your/their coverage.]

As it becomes increasingly clear that high gasoline prices are not a fluke, Americans are adjusting their driving habits. The longer prices stay high — or go even higher — the more people will start to make permanent adjustments in their driving — and then, ultimately, in where they live and so on.

Here are the details from the April report:

In April 2008, Americans drove 245.9 billion milles, compared to 250.3 billion in April 2007. Indeed, the April 2008 figure is lower than the April 2004 figure. To see just how remarkable that is, look at the annual vehicle-distance traveled data (in billions of miles) since 1983 (this is a moving 12-month total):

Lake Chad now more like Pond Chad

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:20:00 +0000

Satellite images show Lake Chad one-tenth the size it was in 1972, not even 40 years ago. Lake Chad used to be the world’s sixth-largest lake, but its resources have been diverted for human use or affected by rainfall such that its been almost entirely depleted in a very short amount of time.

In the IPCC’s 2007 report on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation in Africa, there is no specific mention of Lake Chad. But staring at these satellite images one can’t help but wonder how global warming, which is expected to cause drastic changes to the hydrological cycle (drought, rainfall, water levels, etc.), especially in Africa, will accelerate or contribute to the already scarce resources that this map demonstrates is quite the stark reality.

Click here for article source at the Climate Progress Blog

Upward from the Climate Security Act: Stronger. Simpler. Fairer.

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:18:00 +0000

The following is a guest blog from KC Golden, policy director at Climate Solutions in Seattle. You can read more of KC's writings, including a more detailed version of this post, at the CS Journal blog.
-- Luis

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Senate tied itself in a procedural knot, preventing a vote on the substance of the Climate Security Act (CSA) – the first meaningful climate legislation to reach the Senate floor. Once again, the "world's greatest deliberative body" did nothing about the world's biggest problem. Twenty years after our pre-eminent climate scientist Jim Hansen warned Congress of the need for immediate action, this dilly-dallying is enough to make you scream.

But a closer look at the political tectonics at play gives cause for hope. Climate deniers and dawdlers are running out of places to hide. The election will be unkind to candidates who fail to offer real solutions to the fossil fuel dependence that is strangling the economy as aggressively as it is wrecking the climate. And months ago, we narrowed the field of presidential contenders to those who support real climate action.

Even more encouraging, a much stronger bill is already emerging. Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) has introduced the "iCAP" (Investing in Climate Action Policy) Act. Compared to the CSA, its emission reduction provisions are stronger, it protects consumers better, and it gives more assurance against development of coal plants that lack technology to safely dispose of climate pollution.

Click here to continue reading article at the 1sky blog

Global warming causes deluges and flooding, just like the Midwest is seeing (again)

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:10:00 +0000

The British and the Chinese understand global warming has driven their record flooding. The United States? Not so much.

Although you wouldn’t know it from most U.S. media coverage (here or here or here), the record “once-in-a-hundred-year flooding” the Midwest now seems to be getting every decade or so is precisely what scientists have been expecting from the warming.

A 2004 analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center found an increase during the 20th century of “precipitation, temperature, streamflow, heavy and very heavy precipitation and high streamflow in the East.” They found a 14 percent increase in “heavy rain events” of greater than 2 inches in one day, and a 20 percent increase in “very heavy rain events”-best described as deluges-greater than 4 inches in one day. These extreme downpours are precisely what is predicted by global warming scientists and models.

Click here to continue reading article at the Climate Progress Blog

A new twist for offshore wind

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:42:00 +0000

Jun 5th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Energy: Floating wind-turbines are being developed that can be used at sea in deep water, and do not need to be permanently fixed in place

WINDS sweeping across New England, in the north-east of the United States, blow at an average of about four metres a second (m/s). But a few hundred metres offshore they blow more than twice as fast. This increase in speed is found offshore in much of the world. But although engineers know how to build turbines to generate electricity from offshore wind—mounting them on towers pounded deep into the seabed, or anchored by massive blocks of sunken concrete—they can do so only in waters up to about 40 metres deep.

Now wind power could be taken into deeper waters. Building offshore wind farms is expensive: each turbine costs at least 50% more than one built on land. But the stronger winds out at sea can generate more electricity, and hence more revenue: wind blowing at 10m/s can produce five times as much electricity as wind blowing half as fast, and this greatly favours building more offshore wind farms, says Walter Musial, a senior engineer at the National Wind Technology Centre, a government research laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. Yet just 300-400 offshore wind turbines have been built worldwide, most of them in British or Danish waters. There are none in America. People think they ruin the view and harm the offshore environment.

Take, for instance, a project known as Cape Wind, based on plans by Energy Management, an American company, to build 130 turbines 10km (six miles) offshore in Nantucket Sound, Massachusetts. Although it is backed by a number of green groups, local opposition (not least from the allegedly verdant Kennedy family) has been fierce. Jim Gordon, Energy Management’s boss, says “visceral” local protests have delayed the project by at least three years and cost his company millions of dollars.

But what if the turbines could be put much farther out to sea? Many experts say new technology now makes floating turbines feasible. These could be sited a long way from land. Devices known as “floaters” are already used to support more than two-thirds of the 4,000 or so oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, says Paul Sclavounos, a marine engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With funding from ConocoPhillips, Mr Sclavounos is developing a turbine floater for the windy North Sea. He expects an industry making floating wind-turbines to flourish in about five years. Others think it may take longer, but few doubt it will happen. Building turbines on land can be just as controversial, suitable locations for fixed-base shallow-water turbines are limited and a new generation of big turbines will need lots of space: only a couple can be placed in each square kilometre.

SWAY, a company based in Bergen, Norway, is developing turbine floaters that can operate in 150 metres of water. The firm, partly funded by Statoil, Norway’s energy giant, estimates that each will cost about as much as a fixed-base turbine placed in 30 or 40 metres of water. Its design uses a hollow, buoyant cylinder that extends down from the tower to about 100 metres underwater. The cylinder is anchored to gravel ballast on the sea floor. SWAY plans to float a full-scale prototype in 2010.

In December a company called Blue H Technologies, based in Oosterhout in the Netherlands, placed a half-size prototype turbine about 20km off the coast of southern Italy in water 108 metres deep. It uses a flotation framework known as a “tension-leg platform”, similar to that used to float oil rigs. Construction of full-size floating turbines for the site has now begun. The company has had to convince Italy’s naval-certification agency that a floating turbine could withstand a “100-year wave”—which in that part of the world amounts to a 9.7-metre wall of water. When it blows at sea, it can blow very hard. That presents difficulties, but it also provides opportunities.

Mission: Transmission - Harvesting the breeze is trickier than it sounds

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:40:00 +0000

Apr 28th 2008
From Economist.com

“BANANA” is the wind industry’s bitter motto for its farms—meaning Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone. Most people do not want to see or hear a wind farm, just as they want to stay clear of other power plants.

Although people tend not to live in windy areas, BANANA can complicate another necessity for wind farms (as it can for most sources of electricity): transmission. Given the gigantic distances in America especially, remote generators require miles of nuts-and-bolts infrastructure to get the power to population centres.

Transmission is expensive and often an afterthought, at least for consumers. Even within windy areas the generators are often scattered across wide expanses, which makes gathering it and bringing it to market difficult. Rob Gramlich of the American Wind Energy Association calls transmission the industry’s “biggest long-term barrier”.

Texas leads the nation in wind power, most of which comes from its remote western plains, and it has made transmission infrastructure a priority, according to Jess Totten of Texas’s Public Utility Commission, who spoke at an MIT energy conference earlier this month. The creation of “Competitive Renewable Energy Zones”, which identify wind-rich and encourage their development, has allowed Texas to gather wind projects together, making transmission easier.

Other parts of America are also hoping for a burst of building. In Maine, the best wind is in the northern and central parts of the state, hundreds of miles from New England’s population centres of Portland, Boston and Providence. In New York, the wind is upstate and the people down in New York City. In California, where wind development has stalled in recent years, a big project to bring power to population-rich Southern California from rural Tehachapi, one of the windiest areas of the state, is moving ahead. Its completion could restart California’s wind industry.

As America’s demand for electricity grows, transmission developers will run into BANANA issues even for wires. High-tension aerial lines are not glamorous. Nobody wants to live near them. In New York, a 190-mile proposed upstate-to-downstate transmission line has run into opposition from residents who dread the words “eminent domain”.

Stephen Conant of the New England Independent Transmission Company plans an undersea cable to shuttle energy from wind farms in Northern Maine to Boston. “We minimise BANANA by going under the ocean,” he says. “So long as the fish don’t start voting.”

Then there are costs. In a place like rural Kansas, where the right-of-way is cheap, new line can cost as little as $500,000 per mile. But putting transmission underground, through a dense suburban area like Boston’s, can cost up to $20m per mile.

In Texas, $3-6 billion more is needed for transmission, according to a recent filing by ERCOT, the Texas electrical grid operator. Overall, across America, between $12-15 billion per year is being spent on transmission infrastructure, according to Lawrence Makovich of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. Costs are worsening with the rocketing prices of steel, copper and engineering services.

All of which raises the pesky question of who pays. One way or another it is generally the users, who naturally resent the extra charges. But being fair to everyone is complicated. A transmission system is a network; when you connect a new line to an existing system, it affects power flows throughout. The actual costs can be hard to predict. The electricity industry’s answer is “socialisation”—the cost of any new capacity is spread evenly among a state’s consumers. This can be an effective quick fix, but it risks burying price signals and creating some thorny interstate issues.

Arizona, for instance, has access to much cheaper electricity than does neighbouring southern California. So naturally Arizonans chafe at the idea of building new transmission lines across their beautiful state, lines which would connect with California’s grid to reduce prices there—while raising them at home. If planners are going BANANAs, there is good reason for it.

A combination of flexible solar cells and low-energy lighting provides a way to bring electric light to isolated communities

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:37:00 +0000

A bag full of sunshine
Mar 6th 2008
From The Economist print edition

IF YOU live in a remote area, particularly in a poor country, obtaining electricity can be a problem. It is probably too expensive to connect you to the grid, so you are left reliant on generators and batteries—and even these have to be wired to the points, such as light bulbs, where power is wanted. But Kennedy & Violich Architecture of Boston, Massachusetts may have the answer. In collaboration with Global Solar Energy of Tucson, Arizona, it has developed a cheap, practical and portable way to capture the sun's rays by day and release them by night as useful light, wherever it is needed.

The idea, dubbed “portable light”, combines solar cells with light-emitting diodes attached to the surface of a fabric that can be made into bags, and thus carried around during daylight hours. In sunlight, the cells generate electricity that is stored in batteries stitched into the material. When it gets dark, the batteries power light-emitting diodes that are also sewn onto the cloth.

The solar cells themselves are made from a substance called copper indium gallium diselenide, Global Solar Energy's speciality. This is not quite as good at capturing sunlight as silicon, the material from which solar cells are usually made, but it is less rigid and easier to work with. Crucially, a working cell can be made by spreading a thin layer of the stuff on another material, such as a sheet of plastic. The result is flexible and fairly robust.

Storing the electricity generated by the solar cells involves small batteries that are also woven into the fabric, along with plastic-coated wire connectors. Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries—the sort used in mobile phones—can store more energy per unit weight than other types, and do not lose their charge too rapidly if they go unused for long periods.

These batteries then power hundreds of light-emitting diodes a few millimetres across that are sewn into the fabric on the opposite face from the one occupied by the solar cells. Until recently, such diodes were expensive and did not shine very brightly. But they have improved enormously over the past few years and are now used in mainstream lighting. (A town in Italy recently became the first to switch its street lighting over to such diodes.) Light-emitting diodes are well suited to providing portable illumination, because they are robust, they are not heavy and, unlike traditional bulbs, they do not become too hot to touch.

So far, so good. But there was room for further improvement. As the person carrying the bag moves around, parts of it will be in the shade while others are overwhelmed with sunlight. So the engineers devised a way to direct the energy where it is most needed. To do this, they have woven sensors and switches into the fabric. These ensure that energy from a fully illuminated photovoltaic cell is sent to batteries that are not already receiving electricity at the highest rate they can store it.

In this way, the engineers have created a device that can stash away enough electricity to power the light-emitting diodes for ten hours after three hours in full sunlight. Unlike conventional light sources, the fabric can be spread out to provide background lighting for an entire room or rolled up to generate more concentrated light for a particular task. Moreover, many pieces can be joined together to produce light for larger meetings, and also to power devices such as mobile phones.

The first beneficiaries of this technology are the Huichol, a group of Amerindian people who live in the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico, but if all goes well, Kennedy & Violich hopes to sell its invention to rural communities in Africa and Australia as well. And at $50 per bag—less than the average Huichol spends on candles and torch batteries each year—it seems a bargain.

Caring for planet increasingly tied to faith groups

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:20:00 +0000

By Nancy McLaughlin
Staff Writer at www.news-record.com

"Abraham sits at the oaks. Deborah holds court under a palm tree. Moses speaks to a bush.

'I would say connecting this to the Bible is important for some people,' said Dr. Matthew Sleeth, a former hospital chief of staff who couldn't shake the faces of patients with seemingly increasing environment-related illnesses. So he quit his job, gave away half his belongings and began spreading the word on the urgency of people paying more attention to the environment.

Pointing out the symbolism of trees in Scripture has helped Sleeth link faith with personal responsibility. His book, 'Serve God and Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action,' is in its seventh printing. Sleeth also has a prominent role in the publication of an upcoming 'green Bible.'"

To continue reading click here.

Video - Veg My Ride - How to convert a diesel engine to run on vegetable oil - Instructional Video

web@fusenow.org (FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy) — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:18:00 +0000