I recently wrote a post concerning a report on climate change issued by the U.S. Government stating that “climate change has immediate and local impacts – it literally affects people in their backyards.” Well, as it turns out, there’s more to the story.

With the recent introduction of H.R. 2454 - the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 - there has been an increased push for climate change awareness. The purpose of the bill is to create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.

This all sounds great, right? Well, not to everyone seems to agree. Not everyone believes in climate change. With such a debate raging, it may be difficult to see through the haze of words and opinions that is filling the air.

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From Reuters:

Nobel Peace Prize winner and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore will publish a follow-up to his global warming awareness bestseller “An Inconvenient Truth” on November 3. The book will be called “Our Choice” and will describe solutions to global warming, the environmental crusader and U.S. publisher Rodale Inc. said in a statement

All of the proceeds will be donated to the Alliance for Climate Protection.

Image via Kjetil Bjørnsrud.

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The UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland is ground zero for world leaders looking to take the next steps in tackling global warming. The international conference is aimed at negotiating a new agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, and to be finalized in Copenhagen in December of 2009.

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During this race for the U.S. presidency, many a candidate noted their ability to reach across that proverbial aisle, truly defying party lines. And while I greatly respect that ideal, I questioned its reality.

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About 2,000 teens have signed on with an organization called Inconvenient Youth to tell their friends, neighborhoods, generation and anyone who will listen that the time to take action is now. Why? The founder of Inconvenient Youth, Mary Doerr, believes the young people “can solve it.”

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The webcast which was organized by Power Vote — spear headers of the Energy Action Coalition —  and seeks to emphasize the issue of climate change in the current election. The webcast is co-sponsored by Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection: the Alliance’s We Campaign has enlisted some 1.6 million individuals committed to solving our climate crisis.

Along with this webcast, Power Vote will be kicking off six days of Get Out the (Power) Vote campaigning on October 29, leading up to Election Day. They’re asking young people to gather on campuses and in communities across the country to watch the webcast together.

WHO: Energy Action Coalition and We Campaign
WHAT: Power Vote live webcast featuring Al Gore
WHEN: Wednesday, October 29, 5:30 p.m. PST / 6:30 p.m. MST / 7:30 p.m. CST / 8:30 p.m. EST

To RSVP for the webcast, visit http://events.powervote.org

>>Live Blog

Al Gore opens up to Buffalo Springfield’s Somethings Happening Here

Now JFK’s Man-On-The-Moon speech

Power Vote speaking about the 300,000 young people signing the Power Vote pledge

These Power Vote people like Al Gore - duh!

Al notes campuses Univ Maryland, Portland State, and Univ of Georgia did an awesome job!

Gore says Obama and McCain need to be accountable for the climate crisis

Gore says we went to Iraq for oil!

He links the climate crisis to every other crisis we have …

He says we need to be fuel independent in 10 years

More references to JFK. He is a big part of this election, i.e. Obama

Talking about the 700 Bilion bailout and its connection to the climate and the economy

Gore demands we change our infrastructure from carbon fuels to renewables

Says we need to get out and vote!

Says we need to solve the economic crisis with green jobs and enviromental change

Must build a renewable energy infrastructure

His iPhone just started ringing…

He is takign audience questions

He notes that people dont quite have the right amount of urgency for the climate crisis - we need to step up! there is a Bill McKibben joke there somewhere.

Gore is equating civil rights to climate action.

Talks about how the truth will save us with respect to the climate - Did he borrow one of Obama’s writers?

Al says he got in to this climate-stuff when he was in college - that was a long time ago!

Gore says efficiency and conservation are nubmer one!

Renewable energy is number 2

Says we also need a smart grid to accomadate the renewables

Wait, was the smart grid number 3?? I need Al’s iPhone number.

American biz loses 120 Bil/year due to grid failures…eeks!

Al quotes “Dont ever doubt that a small group of people can change the world, that is the only way the world has changed”

Gore says this election is critical in climate change policy due to record turnout in voting

Al thanks everyone for their effort at Power Vote

Power Vote is taking a 6 day initiative to get the vote out!

The campaign is working to get the ad aired on the next 20/20. The ad details how massive ad dollars spent by oil and coal companies is the key reason America hasn’t switched to cleaner renewable energy sources. Help the We Campaign get this advertisement aired!

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Video source: We Campaign

Get more on San Francisco’s Proposition H here.

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Visit the SF Clean Energy Act site. Video source: sfvotier on YouTube

Video source: GreenForAllOfficial on YouTube

Just how green California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is is definitely up for debate. He has his moments of somewhat progressive policy, which he then dilutes with moments of complete and utter ignorance. For example, when he signed California’s way overdue budget, he lined-out $3.1 million in funding from the Department of Fish and Game (DFG) to restore salmon, steelhead and other endangered and threatened species.

“We are deeply disappointed that the governor would opt to severely limit DFG’s ability to protect our environment at this critical time,” said California Trout Chief Executive Officer Brian Stranko. “Particularly given the dramatic recent reductions in salmon populations and other threatened and endangered species, this action seems especially short-sighted. His action is particularly troublesome given the relatively minor savings achieved to our multi-billion dollar state budget.”

Amusingly enough, this was followed up by the Governator taking center stage in San Francisco at a Commonwealth Club event to celebrate the state’s success in its leadership on fightingglobal warming.

“The global warming debate is over,” Schwarzenegger reminded everyone. He went on to say that Washington is “asleep at the wheel,” and that he would not wait.

Yet, Schwarzenegger has limiting critical funding for DFG’s Biodiversity Program staff. Thy are responsible for enforcing California’s Endangered Species Act (CESA),  as well as overseeing timber harvesting plans. The state’s efforts for recovery of threatened and endangered species are budgeted under this program, according to California Trout.

Here are some other fouls listed by Indybay:

• The refusal of his appointed officials on the State Water Resources Control Board and regional boards to hold agricultural polluters to the same standards as industry and municipalities, in spite of pleas by fishermen, conservationists and farm workers.

• His veto of historic suction dredge mining legislation, sponsored by the Karuk Indian Tribe and California Trout, last year. More recently, the Governor pressured the Legislature to remove interim suction dredge mining restrictions that were to have been incorporated as part of an omnibus resource trailer bill, AB 1338 (Huffman) that was adopted by the Legislature last Monday night as part of the state budget package and sent to the Governor.

• His persistent fast-track advocacy of “no fishing zones” on the California Coast, under the guise of “Marine Protected Areas.” These areas kick sustainable commercial and recreational fishermen off the water while doing nothing to stop water pollution, habitat degradation, water diversions and water exports that have resulted in huge fishery declines. Could it be that Schwarzenegger is removing fishermen from the water, forcing them to find work elsewhere, in order to eliminate the most persistent critics of his water policies?

• The failure by the DFG under the Schwarzenegger administration to support a volunteer rescue of tens of thousands of striped bass, Sacramento blackfish, Sacramento splittail, largemouth bass and other species last November when the Bureau of Reclamation drained Prospect Island in the California Delta. Before the volunteers were finally allowed to do the rescue, thousands of fish died, making Prospect Island the largest fish kill ever documented on the Delta and one of the largest fish kills in California history.

As campaign director of Restore the Delta Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla said, “Schwarzenegger is as green as a silk plant. When you get up close, you realize that is all a big fake.”

Image source: Night Star Romanus at Flickr

The launch includes not only TV ads, but also a series of five short films. With the short films, the network will expose greenwashing to half a billion MTV viewers from around the world. The short films urge corporations and young people to move towards a greener lifestyle.

One TV ad, created by ad agency 180 Amsterdam, features an animated character singing a “green song”.

“The MTV Green Song simply asks you to do your bit for the environment by switching off your lights, computers and TV sets,” said the 180 Amsterdam creative director, Sean Thompson.

The short film series will appear on Switch’s sister site Element. It will be pioneered by five young innovators seeking to fight the climate crisis with their videos.

“In Element, we’ve worked to confront both the skeptics who think that climate change is just too big to tackle — and those who hope that just changing their light bulbs is enough,” said Mark Harvey, Internews Europe’s Head of Development, who with Emily McDowell is the co-founder and co-producer of Element. He added, “Our five characters are from a new generation of climate activists who will connect with young people looking for those who embody lifestyle change, rather than preach about it.”

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Image source MTV Switch

Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario, told The Associated Press this:

“The Markham Ice Shelf was a big surprise because it suddenly disappeared. We went under cloud for a bit during our research and when the weather cleared up, all of a sudden there was no more ice shelf. It was a shocking event that underscores the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic”

The Markham Ice Shelf is about 4,500 years old and this news comes on the heels of unusual cracks in a northern Greenland glacier, rapid melting of a southern Greenland glacier, and a near record loss for Arctic sea ice this summer. Plus earlier this year a 160-square mile chunk of an Antarctic ice shelf disintegrated. Fact is, Arctic temperatures have risen faster than the global average in recent decades due to global warming:

“These changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in balance for thousands of years are no longer present,” Mueller said in an e-mailed statement from the research team sent late on Tuesday.

During the last century, when ice shelves would break off, thick sea ice would eventually reform in their place.

“Reduced sea ice conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice shelf losses this summer, and extensive new cracks across remaining parts of the largest remaining ice shelf, the Ward Hunt, mean that it will continue to disintegrate in the coming years.” said Luke Copland, director of the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research at the University of Ottawa. “We have now reached a threshold where the environment is too warm for these ice shelves to exist anymore,”

These ice shelves contain many unique ecosystems that have yet to be studied. This is an opportunity lost because of how long these shelves take to form. This is just another horrifying reminder of how the climate crisis is rapidly effecting both the Arctic and us.

Related Posts:

Arctic Breakup Growing Each Week
Giant Cracks Appearing in Arctic Ice
Arctic Ice in Battle for its Life

Image source: nick_russill on Flickr

Announcement of the suit came Monday and is being led by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. It charges the EPA with once again violating the Clean Air Act by refusing to issue oil refineries a performance standard in which to curb global warming.  A claim hinged on the fact that 15 percent of the U.S.’s industrial emissions comes from crude refineries.

“The EPA’s refusal to control pollution from oil refineries is the latest example of the Bush Administration’s do-nothing policy on global warming,” Cuomo said in a release. “Oil refineries contribute substantially to global warming, posing grave threats to New York’s environment, health, and economy.”

But the EPA is pointing to Congress to get the job done. EPA spokesman Tim Lyons said time and money would be better spent by encouraging Congress to take action on sound environmental legislation. But it was just in 2003 when the EPA claimed that under the Clean Air Act they couldn’t regulate vehicle emmissions because green house gases were not air pollutants. And as a result from another suit against them, the Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 ruling that they should step up and regulate CO2 emissions.

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Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s comments about House Speaker Pelosi brought the issue to the front of the line. In her current bout of political tourettes, she had this to say:

“[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she’s just trying to save the planet,” Bachmann told news site OneNewsNow. “We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet — we didn’t need Nancy Pelosi to do that.”

Yes, folks…stop recycling, throwout your reusable bags and just let your cars run all day long. For Jesus, yes the one and only Jesus, has already fixed that whole global warming thingamabob.

Mind you, this lady is notorious for her hair-brained explanations. For example, did you know that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is now 100% wildlife free? Yep, same great taste but less filling. And this is why the Democrats favor high gas prices:

“They want Americans to take transit and move to the inner cities. They want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, [and] take light rail to their government jobs. That’s their vision for America.”

Yes, Al Gore, dressed a la Dr. Evil, is trying to scare us all in to using light rail. Oh the horror of it all! It’s just too convenient. I mean all of it, if the planet is all saved thanks to Super Jesus then why do I keep getting copies of the Watchtower? Just let the guy do his job, already - no one likes to be micromanaged.

But that’s the rub. We’re not saved. He did not save us. None of it is okay. We must stop denying it like that mom in the jaw-dropping Jesus Camp movie?  We cannot lend ourselves to distractions like the plight of the incandescent bulb. There is no time. Accountability is our only salvation, not Jesus.

So I pray. I pray for Congresswoman Bachmann. I also pray for that crazy mom in the movie. I pray that for whatever bulb they choose, they themselves won’t remain perpetually dim.

Related Posts:

Saving More Than Souls: Religious Groups Seek “Renewal” for the Environment
You’re Either with Us, or You’re with the CFLs : Red, Green, and Blue
Jesus Unplugged: Religious Groups Participate in Earth Hour 2008

Image source: Asemta at Flickr

Free trade puts corporations and profits first, ahead of environmental and social concerns.  McCain thinks this is not a problem, “As never before, the market would reward any person or company that seeks to invent, improve, or acquire alternatives to carbon-based energy…”  Will the market reward alternative energy companies with profit?  The US and EU are already calling on the elimination of tariffs for goods and services that protect the environment and fight climate change to help these companies profit.

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