After months of a bitter and violent political dispute, Zimbabwe’s political protagonists have decided to take to the negotiating table.

Besides resolving the country’s longstanding socio-economic problems, the ongoing political talks in Zimbabwe will go a long way to start redressing the damage that has been inflicted onto the environment over the past decade.

A botched government led land reform programme resulted in the unmonitored movement of people and the untoward cutting down of trees and an increase in the poaching of endangered animal species.

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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.

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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.

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Under the Swiss system of direct democracy voters have a right to challenge parliamentary laws or pass constitutional amendments by collecting a minimum of 100,000 signatures to force a ballot. In just 18 months, a coalition of green organizations have collected over 150,000 signatures, enough to force a vote on increasing Switzerland’s current 20% Co2 reduction targets to a slightly more ambitious 30%. The initiative has been so popular that people have reportedly been queuing up to sign the petition.

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Though the hearings were only exploratory in nature, the FTC was able to address some of the concerns and misgivings the public has about unregulated voluntary carbon markets. The FTC also raised their concern about the validity of some companies’ advertising claims (for an excellent analysis of the carbon-offset hearings, read the piece by Jeremy Elton Jacquot for TreeHugger). In short, people want to see what they get and get what they pay for - and in the world of renewable energy credits and carbon offsets, this can be a tricky prospect.

In response to these hearings, and in an effort to legitimize the fledgling offset and REC industries, carbon offset retailer TerraPass has decided to democratize. By opening up a comment period for seven particular carbon-offset projects, TerraPass has decided to build-in an added layer of transparency to make their enterprise a little less hazy. I applaud TerraPass for this move forward. And I am totally fine if it is purely profit driven.

As companies strive to stay in the black of their ‘triple bottom line’ I hope we will be seeing more of these democratic experiments in the private sector. You don’t have to be a ’stockholder’ to make a comment, just a stakeholder. And when we’re talking climate change, it seems that everyone is a stakeholder. According to the company:

“We welcome comments from our customers, from anyone familiar with the projects themselves, from policy experts, and from the general public.

If you have any feedback for us regarding these projects – their environmental records, the importance of TerraPass support to project success, or anything else, please provide it via email.”

Photo Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency

1. Do you have an opinion about offshore wind energy development?

2. Are you an American citizen?

3. Do you give a s#!t about this planet?

If you answered yes to all of the above, then you might be interested to know that the comment period for the Cape Wind project, the proposed offshore windfarm near Cape Cod, MA, is open to the general public until March 20th. This project is proposed for development in Federal waters, so it is open to all American citizens. You can submit an e-comment via the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service Public Connect system. Since the release of the draft EIS last month, most seem to think the report is generally favorable on the Cape Wind proposal. But the process is far from over. The anti-Cape Wind effort is still well-funded and persistent. The public commenting period can have a significant impact on the final determination in an EIS, so go ahead and speak your mind.

Post E-Comment via MMS Public Connect

From the MMS Website:

The 60-day comment period for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement is about half way through, assesses the physical, biological and social/human impacts of the proposed project and all reasonable alternatives, including action not taken (i.e., the project is not built), in an objective fashion in order to determine if the proposal is environmentally sound. A final decision will be made, which will account for the regional, state and local benefits and impacts as well as for the overall public interest of the United States. A final approval will be granted only if, after consideration of both environmental and non-environmental issues, the MMS finds that the proposed action is in the public interest.

Post E-Comment via MMS Public Connect

Photo: dpicker via flickr

Swiss hotel owner and environmentalist Walter Knutti has become tired of the noise and concerned by unnecessary emissions from military aircraft on training flights from the nearby airbase of Meiringen. Taking action, Knutti has collected enough signatures to force the issue to a popular vote - under the Swiss system of direct democracy voters have a right to challenge parliamentary laws or pass constitutional amendments by collecting a minimum number of signatures to force a ballot.

Under Knutti’s initiative, Swiss voters will decide next month if military jets should be banned from tourism zones.

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If our goal is to encourage environmental protection legislation, it is our responsibility (indeed, our exciting privilege) to educate ourselves on the environmental impact of local and state propositions and vote accordingly. If our goal is to support elected officials who serve our interests as citizens (such as clean air and water), we have to make our interests known and hold officials accountable with our power to vote them in or out of office. Voting is possibly the single most important way to ensure strong civil liberties, government accountability, and policies that protect the health of the environment in which we live.

For one source of information on the environmental policies and view of the 2008 presidential candidates, take a look at Mike Garofalo’s blog on GO, which addresses each candidate one by one. The League of Conservation Voters also offers a quick reference database of the candidates for president, graded by their response to a series of questions on the environment.

We need no reminding that in this 2008 presidential election, there is a lot at stake. With President Bush spouting off about World War III, and with the U.S. still refusing to acknowledge its share of responsibility on climate change, it may even be an understatement to simply say that there’s a lot at stake. If you are a citizen of the United States, you can be assured that your decision to vote has the power to affect change — potentially positive change — the world over.

Here’s the good news: in the 2004 elections, voter turnout was higher than in the 2000 elections by 3.6%. With any hope, in 2008 the numbers will be even greater. The sad news, however, is that even in 2004, still less than two thirds of the country performed their civic duty of voting: 58.3%. Of people age 24-44, only 52.2% voted in 2004 and for the age group 18-24 just 41.9% voted. (U.S. Census Bureau)

So what gives? Do people not know that they have a "Get Out of Work Free" card on voting day that requires employers to let employees out of work long enough to vote? This alone should be enough to motivate us to head to the polling booths in droves whenever there’s an election. Do people cavalierly forget when voting day comes around? Or does half of our population actually think that they can’t make a difference by voting and recklessly forfeit their suffrage?

Maybe you know somebody who desperately wants positive reform in this country and a change of political agenda, but who suffers from voter apathy: the apathetic rebel. The apathetic rebel imagines that s/he’s doing something extraordinary by not voting — that s/he’s somehow taking a stance against the status quo by brushing off democracy. But how can a person change the system when s/he won’t tell the system how it should change. We do this by voting.

So wherever you are, register to vote. You can register at your local post office and your registration must be up to date with your current address. By doing so, you are sending a strong message that you care about the course of environmental, social, and political events at home and abroad. It’s easy to put off registering and the primary elections are coming up fast. Maybe you vote Republican, maybe Democratic, maybe Green. However you vote, the most important thing is simply that you do vote. As John Lennon said, "We came here to show and to say to all of you that apathy isn’t it, that we can do something!"

References and Resources:

Home | Rock The Vote!

Earth Trends: More Democracy, Better Environment? | The World Resource Institute

Mike Garofalo’s blog | GO

Presidential Profiles, 2008 | The League of Conservation Voters

Voting and Registration | U.S. Census Bureau

Photo Source:

Your Vote Is Your Voice | Flickr