Has your newborn already outgrown those Ronald Reagan ‘Trickle-Down Diaper Covers’ that were hand-me-downs from your cousin? Well, the long wait is finally over, because you can now wrap your newest neo-cons in the soft organic cotton of the John McCain ‘Onesie.’ And no, I’m not kidding.

In conjunction with the unveiling of its climate change policy earlier this week, the McCain campaign has added a new “Go Green” section to its campaign store, where supporters can purchase various “eco-friendly items” to proudly display their political support for the presumptive Republican presidential candidate. No small children? Don’t despair. The collection also features the “men’s Bamboo Pique short sleeve solid polo shirt” and the “ladies’ Eco-friendly basic cap sleeve crew neck tee,” both of which are made in the USA with a 70/30 bamboo/organic cotton blend.

I was also happy to learn that the items are described as “biodegradable and antibacterial.” That’s important, because when my current clothes get soiled or overcome with bacteria, I usually just throw them away, in stead of going through all the hassle of actually laundering them. I feel rest-assured knowing that any of my John McCain earth friendly clothing would simply decompose in the landfill when I throw them away – as opposed to the garments in my current wardrobe, which would undoubtedly sit around for millions of years before decomposing (thanks to Skye K. for the heads-up).

Other posts about John McCain:

• “McCain Begins Environmental PR Push Across American West”
• “Obama: Blame the Iraq War for Lack of US Climate Leadership”
  

McKibben is a champion of the environmental movement and he made it clear that policy action on climate change will require broad-based and sustained political support for it. (Running time 4 mins.)

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Tries to woo Western Dems by touting climate change as key

It might be argued, that the only way for John McCain to win in November’s general election would be by setting himself apart from President Bush enough to attract support from the middle - and one way he is doing that is by emphasizing his stance on environmental issues. Last week, the Straight Talk Express began a PR campaign aimed at courting independent-minded environmentalists, especially in the swing states.

In remarks he prepared to give at a wind technology firm in Portland, Oregon, on Monday, the Arizona senator said he would seek international accords to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and would offer an incentive system to make businesses in the United States cleaner. McCain said:

“We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great. The most relevant question now is whether our own government is equal to the challenge.”

The presumptive Republican presidential candidate is using his stance on energy and the environment to draw distinctions between himself and President Bush, whose approval rating has sunk to a near-record low of 28% (Pew, Gallup, USA Today).

McCain’s stance on climate change is out-of-step with many Republicans. Some of those Republicans, including President Bush, suggest governmental efforts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions, like those found in a ‘cap-and-trade,’ will cripple our economy; while other Republicans challenge the validity of global warming and climate change altogether.

As part of McCain’s PR push, his campaign just released a new television ad. I was surprised to find out that the ad’s tone is much more apocalyptic than I would have expected. And I was also struck by the claims in the ad that somehow McCain’s proposed cap and trade policy would somehow circumnavigate regulatory involvement, when that is not the case at all - McCain’s plan will just delay that regulatory involvement.[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/WuRHRRYHKIY" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

The next stop for McCain’s Straight Talk Express will be neighboring Washington. Oregon and Washington are among several potential battleground states in the West, including California, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, where voters count the environment as an important issue.

Other posts on the environment in the 2008 Presidential election:

• “Clinton Gas Tax Plan Doesn’t Need Economists, Only Good Implementation?“
• “Obama’s New Ad Rejects Gas Tax Holiday“

Wall St. Journal

Washington Post

Photo: NathanF

Although they have yet to disclose the location of the new tower manufacturing facility, it would be situated to complement the company’s fist North American blade manufacturing plant, which recently opened its doors in Windsor, Colorado.

For the tower plant, the company will need a large parcel of land served by freight rail, a combination that Northern Colorado can provide at several locations, including the Windsor location, where construction proceeds on phase two of the blade plant. According to the Northern Colorado Business Review, more than 1,000 new jobs could result from further expansion of Vestas’ manufacturing presence.

Healthy Profit Margins Hide Industry Bottlenecks

In the second piece of big news for the Vestas, the company reported very strong earnings on Thursday - the kind of earnings that emphasize the wind energy industry’s resilience to the slumping economy. Net income for Vestas rose 94 percent to 33 million euros ($56 million) from 17 million euros a year earlier. The company was expected to earn 35.5 million euros, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of five analysts.

Despite the strong growth in the wind energy business worldwide, the overall demand pressure on the industry persists. According to Bloomberg, there are still long lead times for a number of key components that can last as long as 15 months. Of particular concern to turbine manufacturers is a global increase in demand for carbon-fiber, the graphite composite material that moderns turbines blade use because of their light weight, and high tensile strength.

With that said, it seems that it will be a few years before supply will match demand. Even as new manufacturers pop up around the globe, they are being outpaced by the increases in global demand for clean, renewable energy.

Sources:

• Northern Colorado Business Review
• Bloomberg

Other posts about the cleantech industry:

• “Can ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’ be Sexy: Two Energy Efficiency Stocks
• “Solar System Leases Taking Industry by Storm“
• “The Unlimited Potential of American Wind Energy: AWEA“

Photo: Vestas Wind Systems

Among other things, the Consumer-First Energy Act of 2008 would roll back tax breaks for oil companies and invest the money in renewable energy development and energy efficiency technology. It also would create a windfall profit tax on oil companies failing to invest in increased capacity and renewable energy resources.

According to one of the bill’s co-sponsors, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.-VT):

“The bottom line is that at a time when this country faces a major crisis in terms of the price of oil, when many working families in our state and all over this country are hurting, I think we have brought forth a comprehensive piece of legislation, which begins to attack that problem with the result of lowering the price of oil.”

Reaction Less than Stellar

Thus far, reaction across the blogosphere is just as what might be expected. Dave Roberts at Grist makes no bones about his skepticism and calls the move a “counter-pander.” He writes:

“Look: you can’t promise Americans you’re going to lower the price of gas. It’s a lie, and they’re going to notice when prices don’t go down. It might help you tactically in the short-term, but in the long-term it’s going to come back and bite you on the ass. Gas prices are going to keep going up, and good leadership begins with honesty.”

It’s not just bloggers who oppose the Consumer-First Energy Act, the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) released a statement yesterday decrying the windfall profits title of the bill as “misguided.” According to the statement:

“Regrettably, this proposed margin provision, which would push trading from regulated and transparent markets to unregulated and nontransparent markets, would constitute a significant step backward in transparency and market integrity.”

The problem I see with this legislation is that it does nothing to address the structural problems that are causing a rise in oil prices. Simply put, the only way for us to even try and stabilize oil prices is to use less. Using less would require major investments in public transportation, the kind of investments the feds are very skeptical of providing.

Some of the components of the Consumer-First Energy Act are as follows (adapted from bill summary - available here)

• A windfall profit tax for oil companies - A 25 percent windfall profits tax on companies that fail to invest in increased capacity and renewable energy sources. This provision would not apply to the profits those companies reinvested in clean, affordable, domestically produced renewable fuels, expanding refinery capacity and utilization, or renewable electricity production.
• Stop speculation in the oil markets - First, the bill prevents traders of U.S. crude oil from routing transactions through off-shore markets to evade speculative limits and sets forth reporting requirements. The bill also requires the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to set a substantial increase in the margin requirement for all oil futures trades, contracts or transactions.
• Roll back tax breaks for oil companies and invest the money in renewable energy - Bill would roll back $17 billion in tax breaks for oil and gas companies and instead invest those taxpayer dollars to improve consumer price protection, renewable energy development and energy efficiency echnology through a designated Energy Independence and Security Trust Fund.
• Stop government purchases of oil for the Strategic Petroleum until the price of oil drops to $75 a barrel or less - The Consumer-First Energy Act calls for suspending through December 2008 oil purchases for the SPR. Filling could resume when the 90 day average price of crude oil recedes to $75 or less.
• Protect consumers from price gouging - Give the President the authority to declare an energy emergency should there be a shortage, disruption or significant pricing anomalies in the oil market.

See Also:

• “Clean Energy Tax Credits Will Not Be Passed Without Funding“
• “Senate Passes Renewable Energy Tax Credits: Why am I not More Excited?“
• “Feast or Famine Cycles of US Clean Energy Development“
• “Show Me the Deliberation…Please“

Associated Press

Photo: © Tommyschultz | Dreamstime.com

Cool looking contraption, huh? What you’re looking at is Finavera Renewables’ latest project in scalable wave power technology. If you think that picture is pretty cool, you’ll enjoy the animation: [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/r89xQxZsaN8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Photo: U.S. Minerals Management Service

In the fall of 2001, Jim Gordon of Energy Management Inc. (EMI) announced his intentions to build a 420 megawatt wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts - the nation’s first. Now, the long permitting process that was made even longer by powerful opposition groups, is nearing resolution…finally.

More than 40,000 individuals and organizations have submitted comments on an environmental review of the wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound, according to an article in the Cape Cod Times.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Rodney Cluck, Cape Wind project manager for the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the lead federal agency to review Cape Wind Associates’ plan to build 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound, off the coast of Massachusetts. Originally, the comments were set to be released last Friday, but officials at the Minerals Management Service postponed the release to give agency staffers more time to organize the overwhelming public response to the proposed wind farm.

As a result of the scoping process’ popularity, the MMS announced that they would be preemptively extending the comment period for all of the remaining “Alternative Energy Leases” from 30 to 60 days.

The final number of public comments submitted on the agency’s Cape Wind draft environmental report has yet to be tallied. But it is quite telling that an earlier 2005 report on the same project issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers produced one-tenth the number of comments than this one indicates that MMS did something right since taking over the review of Cape Wind from the Army Corps as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (As an aside, I think it also says something about the Corps of Engineers’ ability to adequately conduct a thorough public scoping process).

Opponents remain critical; supporters remain confident

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the project’s most vocal opponent, enlisted 40 experts to review the report. The hired guns produced a 3,000-page critique of the Cape Wind proposal. One theme of critique coming from private scientists as well as public ones, was that the report’s information on migratory birds and fishery habitats where the project would be located is inadequate. “At the very least, the (report) should explain why recommended studies and analyses were not conducted and the ramifications of not having that information,” Michael Bartlett, supervisor for the New England Field Office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Despite the criticisms of the MMS report, the vast majority of comments submitted will be in favor of the project, predicted Mark Rodgers, Communications Director for Cape Wind Associates.

A record of decision from the agency indicating approval or disapproval of the Cape Wind project is expected to be released sometime in the winter. And only then will this long, arduous journey be over…right?

Cape Cod Times

Other Posts Related to the Cape Wind Project:

“The Politicos Chiming in On Cape Wind” :: sustainablog (8/2005)

“(D)emocracy: Tell the Feds What You Think About Cape Wind” :: Planetsave (2/2008)

“Survey Finds Overwhelming Support for Cape Wind” :: ecopolitology (8/2007)

“Breaking: MMS Report Favorable on Cape Wind” :: sustainablog (1/2008)

“Cape Wind Opponent to Step Down” :: sustainablog (1/2008)

Photo: © Kamil Sobócki | Dreamstime.com

What I’m getting at, is that I did not see Hillary Clinton on This Week with George Stephanopolous, on Sunday morning. But since we have a 24-hour media matrix covering every breath and every word in this presidential campaign, I was told all about it by all of my regular news outlets as soon as I got up. I was most struck by Senator Clinton’s reply to Stephanopolous’ question about the pushback her proposed summertime gas-tax holiday has received.
STEPHANOPOLOUS:

“Economists say that’s not going to happen. They say this is going to go straight into the profits of the oil companies. They’re not going to actually lower their prices. And the two top leaders in the House are against it. Nearly every editorial board and economist in the country has come out against it. Even a supporter of yours, Paul Krugman of The New York Times, calls it pointless and disappointing.

Can you name one economist, a credible economist who supports the suspension?”

[Clinton tried to elude the question with a foray into populist appeals of how elite opinion is bringing down the hard-working middle class, but Stephanopolous reiterated the question].

STEPHANOPOULOS:

“But can you name an economist who thinks this makes sense?”

CLINTON:

“Well, I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to put my lot in with economists, because I know if we get it right, if we actually did it right, if we had a president who used all the tools of the presidency, we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively.”

Now, I am usually the last person to be defending economists, but when it comes to designing energy tax policy, perhaps an economist is not a bad person to talk to, no? Former Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration, Robert Reich thinks so. Reich wrote in his blog on Sunday:

“I’m not suggesting economists have all the answers. But when economists tell a president or a presidential candidate that his or her idea is dumb – and when all respectable economists around America agree that it’s a dumb idea – it’s probably wise for the president or presidential candidate to listen. When the president or candidate doesn’t, and proudly defends the policy by saying she’s “not going to put my lot in with economists,” we’ve got a problem, folks.

“Even though the summer gas tax holiday is pure hokum, it polls well, which is why HRC and John McCain are pushing it. That Barack Obama is not in favor of it despite its positive polling numbers speaks volumes about the kind of president he’ll be – and the kind of president we’d otherwise get from McCain and HRC.”

This gas tax holiday is just a bad idea all the way around. First of all, Sen. Clinton proposes that her tax be paid for by the oil companies. Do you actually think something like that would get through the Senate? Let me say this, if Congress wouldn’t repeal tax breaks to big oil to fund renewable energy tax credits, they are not going to pay for a summertime tax moratorium on gas with an increased tax on the oil companies.

Abolishing the federal excise tax on gasoline in the summer leading up to the presidential election is exactly the kind of pure pandering that is not going to get Hillary Clinton or John McCain elected.

Photo: robertstown2001

See Also:

• “Obama’s New Ad Rejects Gas Tax Break“
• “Can Hillary Clinton Take on Big Oil?“
• “Clinton Takes Jabs at Obama’s Energy Policy“

Tesla Would Be Proud

A few years back, Marin Soljačić was driven from bed by the insistent beeping of his mobile phone. But it wasn’t beeping for him to answer it, it was beeping for him to plug it in. Since that night, the assistant professor of physics at MIT, has been thinking about ways to start his phone charging as soon as he enters his home - without the need for plugs or wires.

Jennifer Chu at Technology Review writes that Soljačić considered using radio waves, but found that most of their energy would be lost in transmission. Targeted methods like lasers require a clear line-of-sight and could be dangerous for anything in their way. According to Chu, he eventually settled on a phenomenon called magnetic resonance coupling, in which two objects tuned to the same frequency exchange energy strongly but interact only weakly with other objects.

“A classic example is a set of wine glasses, each filled to a different level so that it vibrates at a different sound frequency. If a singer hits a pitch that matches the frequency of one glass, the glass might absorb so much acoustic energy that it will shatter; the other glasses remain unaffected.”

Now, Soljačić and his team have successfully demonstrated the use of magnetic resonance coupling to power a 60 watt light bulb from a distance of roughly two meters - and through a thin wall.

The most effective setup, thus far, transfers power over a distance of two meters with about 50 percent efficiency. The team is looking at other materials to decrease coil size and boost efficiency. “While ideally it would be nice to have efficiencies at 100 percent,” says Soljačić. “So realistically, 70 to 80 percent could be possible for a typical application.”

While some wireless power technologies have emerged in the marketplace, Soljačić’s technique differs in that it might one day enable devices to recharge automatically, whenever they come within range of a wireless transmitter.

Technology Review

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See Also:

“Smart Powerstrips Are the Garlic of Vampire Electroncs“

The commercial denounces the proposed gas-tax cut, a proposal which Senators Clinton and McCain both support, as the type of quick-fix policy solution that is emblematic of Washington politics. Running time: 1 min.

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See Also:

“Can Hillary Clinton Take On Big Oil?”

“Video: Obama on Climate and Energy”

“Clinton Takes Jabs at Obama’s Energy Policy“

According to Ryan Grimm at Politico.com, when asked what the President would do if the current iteration of the farm bill made its way to the President’s desk White House spokesman Scott Stanzel replied, “as it stands now, it is not something the president would support.” Stanzel wrote in an email:

“The proposal before Congress would dramatically increase spending, in part by masking additional spending in budgetary gimmicks and accounting tricks.”

Farm bills pass - that’s what they do

Despite the threat, there may be enough Congressional support to override the veto. According to House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN), “If the White House is stupid enough to veto this, they’re going to get overridden.”

The farm bill is a very popular funding mechanism for Congressional spending. Every state’s congressional delegation works extremely hard to get their slice of the agricultural pie - not doing so does not bode well in the eyes of powerful ag interests and the voters of agricultural states. In short, farm bills do not get vetoed. At least very rarely do they get vetoed - there are a few exceptions.

One exception to the rule is when a second term president uses a veto (or threatens to veto) an appropriations bill, such as a farm bill - and criticize Congress for loading it with pork and earmarks - without any serious political repercussions. Interestingly enough, the last time a farm bill was vetoed was nearly 10 years ago, when another late second-term president successfully vetoed a farm bill - a veto which Congress made no attempt to override. But the political climate is quite different from that of ten years ago, and I would suspect that this President does not have the political capital to successfully veto the farm bill.
See also: “Small Wind Remains in Farm Bill” :: Green Options (12/2007)

Photo: mike138

“Because of his support for U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, neo-liberal economic policies that harm the world’s poor, and especially for promoting bogus solutions to the global climate crisis.“

“We sought to expose the hypocrisy of allowing Friedman, who is known for his influential support of U.S. wars for oil in the Middle East, to call himself an environmentalist,” said Margaret Little, the Brown University student responsible for the creamy projectiles.

In the statement, the Greenwash Guerillas object to Friedman’s support for nuclear power, coal power, industrial biofuels, and carbon trading markets. “These false solutions are smokescreens, intended to generate massive corporate profits while creating global humanitarian and environmental disasters.”

Video of the pie throwing incident was posted on YouTube along with a couple of environmental blogs (including this one). The video had received close to 70,000 views in 36 hours on YouTube, before it was removed without warning or comment by YouTube. The Greenwash Guerillas have now reposted the clip at their blog.

Ms. Little was suspicious of the disappearing video on YouTube, as she indicated in the statement:

“Given the many other pieings on YouTube, the removal of the video can only be understood as an act of political censorship. One has to wonder whether billionaire Friedman has more influence than “you” on YouTube.”

The statement indicates that Little faces University disciplinary hearings, which could potentially lead to expulsion. Colonel Custard, Little’s male accomplice is still “at-large” (although he is listed as the media contact and was probably responsible for emailing us the statement - so he’s probably not that hard to find).

See also:

“Opposition for Opposition’s Sake?” :: Red, Green, and Blue (4/2008)

“The Geo-Green Alternative” :: Sustainablog (1/2005)

Photo: .Larry Page

Interested parties can now let the agency know what they think on EPA’s new interactive Web page (I’d love to a fly on that digital wall). Additionally, agency officials will be made available occasionally online for interactive chat sessions. The first of these was held last Thursday, when EPA’s chief information officer Molly O’Neill was made available for answering questions interactively online.

It is no secret that, under the Bush administration, the EPA has cut back on information available to the public through channels like the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and the EPA libraries. The administration has also been under tremendous scrutiny for interference with EPA science on several separate occasions throughout the last seven years. And in a recent report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, 900 employees of the EPA feel like their work has been interfered with for political reasons; sixty-percent of those who responded to the Union’s survey encountered some form of executive manipulation.

With new evidence of tampering and data manipulation continuing to mount on what seems like a daily basis, the “national dialogue” could not have come a minute later - that is if the EPA wants to salvage any shred of its rapidly waning legitimacy.

The initiative may indicate a desire on behalf of the EPA to repair the bruised relationships between the agency and the public, and to restore public confidence in the EPA’s ability to perform its duties without political interference from the White House. And while I applaud this effort, perhaps the EPA could adopt their “national dialogue” as a standard practice, as opposed to closing it at the end of June - as if there will be nothing left to say come July.

Related Posts:

“Bush Administration Just Says ‘No’ to Science” :: Red, Green, and Blue (4/2008)

“Thank You Bush for Weakening Smog Limits” :: Red, Green, and Blue (3/2008)

Best quote:

“We do have a national energy policy - it’s basically to keep wasting lots of energy; import it at whatever price, by whatever means necessary; keep stealing from our kids and keep screwing up the climate.”

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See also:

“Can Low-Hanging Fruit Be Sexy? Two Energy Efficiency Stocks” :: CleanTechnica (4/2008)

I was reminded of this fact recently when I read an interview with the king of all energy geeks, Amory Lovins, at Mother Jones. Lovins was asked the question, “If you had $1 million to invest in the energy sector, where would you put it?” Lovins responded,

“Efficient use. I want to do the cheapest things first to get the most climate protection and other benefits per dollar. Buying micropower and “negawatts” instead of nuclear gives you about 2 to 11 times more carbon reduction per dollar, and you get it much faster.”

While not as ’sexy’ as solar and wind, energy efficiency might be the smartest investment play if you’ve got some cash burning a hole in your pocket (though that’s not really the current trend). And while we here at CleanTechnica do not really fancy ourselves to be professional analysts of Jim Cramer or Tom Konrad caliber, we do keep our eyes on emerging trends in the industry. For that reason it is hard not to pick some favorites. I’d like to share two of my favorite energy efficiency plays with you: Echelon (ELON) and Beacon Power (BCON) .

While I am particularly interested in the technological potential of the two companies’ products, I also see plenty of room for growth in the energy efficiency sector more broadly

• Echelon (ELON) markets a suite of network infrastructure products designed for smart-grid applications. Echelon is poised to take the lead in smart-grid hardware for both small and large-scale applications. Last year, Echelon signed a deal with McDonald’s to network its restaurant kitchen equipment and create the “kitchen of the future,” which aims to lower energy consumption and increase operational efficiency.
• Beacon Power (BCON) designs and develops advanced products and services to support stable, reliable and efficient electricity grid operation. More specifically, Beacon has developed a proprietary flywheel system that allows the storing of grid-energy and the smoothing of fluctuations caused by wind-generated electricity. Flywheel-based energy storage systems, unlike lead-acid batteries, do not use hazardous materials for production, nor create them during operation. Unlike batteries, flywheels operate reliably for many years with little or no maintenance.

[Disclosure: The author holds positions in ELON and BCON. However, in no way is this an endorsement or recommendation to purchase either of these stocks. Please thoroughly research any potential investment and always seek the advice of a professional).

Photo: epicharmu

See also:

“Amory Lovins: ‘Senseless Energy Policy’ (video)” :: ecoscraps (4/2008)

“Utilities Announce Major Efficiency Initiative” :: Green Options (10/2007)

“Eco-effective Decisions” :: Green Options (10/2007)

The action, as well as the ensuing discussions over at the blogs It’s Getting Hot in Here, and the Huffington Post, underscore the longstanding divide within the environmental movement between those who believe we should work within the system to address our most pressing environmental issues, and those who believe that the system itself is the cause of the environmental problems.
From the Brown Daily Herald:

“A female audience member ran on stage last night and threw a green pie at New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who had just begun a lecture on environmentalism in Salomon 101. The woman had been sitting in the south side of the auditorium’s front row when she pulled the pie out of a Brown Bookstore plastic bag that had been tucked in a red backpack and leapt out of her seat.

At the same time the woman threw the pie, a male accomplice seated a few rows back ran down the aisle and onto the stage, throwing small pamphlets explaining the actions into the crowd.

…The pamphlets thrown by the male accomplice identified the pair as the “Greenwash Guerillas,” who wrote that they were acting “on behalf of the earth (sic) and all true environmentalists.”

One side of the pamphlet contains an excerpt from a September 2006 review of Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat,” written by Raymond Lotta for the journal “Revolution,” which styles itself as the “Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.” The review is highly critical of Friedman, who the review claims cannot see his own errors while “seated in the business class of his analytical jetliner.”

The other side contains five bullet-points explaining why “Thomas Friedman deserves a pie in the face,” which include reasons like “his sickeningly cheery applaud for free market capitalism’s conquest of the planet,” and “for helping turn environmentalism into a fake plastic consumer product for the privileged.”

The pamphlet declares “Thomas Friedman’s ‘Green’ as fake and toxic to human and planetary health as the cool-whip (sic) covering his face.”

Personally, I think it was a pretty bush-league maneuver. And watching the video, I feel bad for Friedman as a human being, regardless of how I feel about his politics. Running time is 1:39.

I found one comment at It’s Getting Hot in Here particularly poignant, it reads:

“Had you stayed and listened to the speech, you would have learned that Friedman has one of the most comprehensive characterizations of the challenge than I’ve heard in a long time. He spoke about the scale of climate change, global justice and petro-dictatorships, biodiversity loss, energy poverty (i.e. global inequality), and the need for conservation. In fact, he directly addressed most of your complaints, making you come off as reactionary and uninformed. Of course Friedman has major flaws, but if your intention was to start discussion about them, you failed. Instead, you’ve started a discussion on the inappropriateness of your tactics, and left everyone confused as to what you were trying to say.”

See also: “Crazy Acts or Civil Disobedience” :: Green Options (7/2007)

Photo: Charles Haynes

Mostly because I’m not one for ethics, I will not build an ethical argument as to why it is fair for me to be skeptical and even cynical about Earth Day as we currently know it. In stead, I will argue that this skepticism has been a part of Earth Day since its inception in 1970. And until some substantive change is produced by the actions on Earth Day, there will be those who remain skeptical.

Earth Day 1970

Earth Day started out as an idea for a teach-in, a tactic used effectively by the New Left and the anti-Vietnam War movement. Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI) was the first to develop the idea for the event, which would be a “National Teach-in on the Crisis of the Environment” designed to help crystallize this new environmental constituency while also distancing it from the counterculture and New Left activists (1).

Senator Gaylord Nelson later wrote, “I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda.” Nelson was proved correct. As the word got out, “It took off like gangbusters…Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country…That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.”

But traditional conservationists were not comfortable with the mainstream tone the event was promoting, nor the intense media coverage the teach-in was attracting. Both of these, they argued, were attracting the powerful moneyed interests of industrial manufacturers and utilities. According to environmental scholar Robert Gottlieb, “In the weeks leading up to and following April 22, the media embraced environmentalism as the all-inclusive cause of the day.” On the other hand, some industry groups were not comfortable associating with the first Earth Day event, thanks to the paranoid fears of right-wing politicians who suggested a conspiratorial connection between the date selected for Earth Day and the centennial of Vladimir Lenin’s birthday (2).

The teach-in organizers wanted to avoid the polarizing politics of confrontation. But despite efforts to distance themselves from the activist movements of the 1960s, the new environmentalism was largely seen as an extension of them.” We didn’t want to alienate the middle class…” said Denis Hays, the 25 year old Harvard Law Student and teach-in organizer. And for the most part, they didn’t. Estimates of the overall number of participants were as high as 10 million, and the gatherings were largely peaceful and non-confrontational.

Other events, however, maintained the oppositional flavor of the New Left and anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s. At the University of Alaska, Secretary of the Interior Hickel was booed off the stage when he laid out administration support of the Alaska pipeline. In Denver, antinuclear activists presented the Colorado Environmental Rapist of the Year award to the Atomic Energy Commission. And who could forget about the activists in Florida who presented a dead octopus at the headquarters of Florida Power and Light, a utility responsible for the thermal pollution of Biscayne Bay?

Earth Day 2008

I am not just advocating opposition for opposition’s sake. But it seems to me, for healthy debate to occur, we need to be hearing as many voices as possible – those in agreement, as well as those in dissent – and Earth Day has yet to create that forum.

With that said, I don’t consider Earth Day to be a bad thing – quite the contrary. Earth Day has the capacity to be so much more. It has the potential to be a powerful tool for education, discussion, and the mobilization of concerted political action on behalf of the environment. Earth Day could even be a national holiday, recognized with all of the rights and privileges associated with the title. Earth Day could take on greater political significance were heads of state to assemble along with heads of environmental groups, trade associations, labor unions, and indigenous populations. All of this is what Earth Day could be, but we are not there…at least not yet.

(1) Gottlieb, Robert. 1993. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement.

(2) Gottlieb (p. 111)

Earth Day 1970 (Video) from the Butterfly Project

Photos: 1. Birmingham, AL (1972) - Courtesy of The National Archives. 2. pingnews.com