Photo courtesy Greenpeace International via FlickrLast week, Greenpeace activists blocked rainforest destruction in Indonesia's Kampar Peninsula by chaining themselves to excavators. Activists then draped a bright red "Obama You Can Stop This" banner over the destruction and called on the world's leaders to stop deforestation at next month's climate talks in Copenhagen.

The protest came days before President Obama's scheduled visit to Asia, and Greenpeace criticized Obama for not taking a more active role: "With just weeks left before December's critical U.N. climate summit, his administration is actively undermining and stalling the climate change negotiations."

The "Obama You Can Stop This" banner -- and the deforestation around it -- highlights some of the biggest challenges facing the Copenhagen crowd. Deforestation accounts for 20 percent of the CO2 emissions that account for climate change.

In Copenhagen, Brazilian President Luiz Lula will offer to reduce deforestation in his country by 80 percent by 2020. Both Lula and other leaders want industrialized countries to do their share by helping developing countries transition to clean energy. But agreeing on who will cut what (in terms of emissions) and who will pay for it has been one of the many hurdles standing in the way of an effective international climate treaty.

Activists can send a form letter to President Obama urging him to "create a $140 billion fund to help poorer nations increase their own renewable energy sources, end deforestation, and adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change."

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This Saturday, Oct. 24, is the International Day of Climate Action.  You’re all geared up to join an event in your hometown or ‘hood, right?  Here are a few videos to get you even more pumped up.

350.org, which is sponsoring the day, gives us a sneak preview of the animations that will splash across Times Square on Saturday (warning: no headphones required):

Bill McKibben explains the significance of the number 350 to Stephen Colbert:

Current Green gets the scoop on how the 350 movement has gone viral from Bill McKibben and other 350-ers:

Denizens of the Maldives, an island nation threatened by rising sea levels, dramatize their plight with underwater escapades:

Greenpeace puts out the call for real action:

And, best of all, Umbra gets into the game:

Seen any other good Climate Action Day videos? Tell us all about them below in comments.

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Photo: Mongabay

A combination of dramatic technological advances, experience, and application of a little common sense has markedly increased scientists' confidence in their ability to monitor forest conservation projects for their climate impact.

As The Eliasch Review [PDF], the U.K. Government's authoritative recent report on forest-climate science and policy, put it, "Using appropriate techniques, forest emissions can be estimated with similar confidence to emissions estimates in other sectors." 

That's very good news, as approximately 20 percent of total global warming pollution comes from deforestation, more than all the world's cars, trucks, planes, and ships combined. As the United States and the world move towards a system in which these forests are valued for their immense carbon storage, it's critical that we make those valuations as accurate as possible -- so we can know exactly how much a particular forest conservation project (and ultimately a particular country) is actually reducing emissions.

Of course, there's a key caveat in The Eliasch Review's conclusion: "using appropriate techniques." Although these appropriate techniques are available and have been applied in many projects, deploying them at the global scale needed to end deforestation will require financial and human investment.

Those investments are very affordable -- the costs of monitoring forest projects are typically less than $1 per ton of carbon reduced, often much less. But they need to happen quickly, before we lose more forests. That's why it's so important that Congress pass climate legislation that includes strong public and private financing for tropical forest conservation (including especially the five percent tropical forest set-aside) -- and supplements it with interim financing that's able to go into place before climate legislation enters into force in 2012.

So why are emission reductions from forests so easy to monitor?

At a certain level, it's very simple. Unlike smokestacks, tailpipes, chemical processes, or even agriculture, you don't have to constantly monitor forests to measure how much carbon they store (or how much carbon is sent into the atmosphere when they're burned).

You can look at a forest, use decades-old techniques to measure the amount of carbon stored in it, write the amount down, and then come back 5, 10, or 50 years later and measure how much carbon is there.

Now, although confidence in monitoring has come a long way, it doesn't mean there isn't any complexity. In particular, in areas where forests have been partially degraded, some sophistication is required to come up with an accurate baseline figure for deforestation, below which emissions reductions are determined.   It's been done, and done well, but it does require more effort than the classic model of just measuring degradation to a pristine forest.

But contrast forest monitoring to smokestack or tailpipe monitoring -- just looking at it does nothing for you. You need to make sure that there are meters (or at least that you've got a very accurate recording of how much coal or gas is going in), and that no one ever "accidentally" turns off the meter or misreports quantities burned at any time. If you don't catch misreporting in real time, it's almost impossible to catch it ever. Of course, unlike critics of giving credit for forest conservation, I'm not suggesting that measurement challenges mean that we shouldn't give credit for pollution reductions in the energy sector -- just that the challenges in that sector should be recognized.

Forest monitoring has also benefited from innovation in satellite technology over the last half century. Satellites like NASA's MODIS, the Brazilian Space Agency and China's CBERS, the Japanese ALOS, and French SPOT are actively and accurately monitoring the world's forests -- and new, even better satellites go up every year.  There's now even low-angle radar from Japan that can see under clouds. These "eyes in the sky" can look into your bathroom; from that perspective, measuring forest emissions looks a lot less challenging.

Satellite image of deforestation in the Amazon.Photo: MongabayIndeed, the last 35 years have seen the democratization of satellite technology, so that anyone can check up on what's happening even in forests thousands of miles away. It started with the U.S. government's Landsat satellite, which published some of the earliest high-resolution images of deforestation in the 1970s. 

Now, anyone can just login to Google Earth and monitor deforestation for themselves. Google has partnered with a variety of groups in the Amazon, including indigenous tribes, to monitor deforestation -- and allow individuals to protest and point out illegal and unwanted activities.

From Rhett Butler at Yale 360: 

One of the first Google Earth Outreach projects involved indigenous tribes in the Amazon rain forest. Facing an onslaught of threats to their lands and culture, the tribes have embraced advanced technology as a means of protecting and better managing their homeland. The tribes -- including the Surui in western Brazil and the Wayana and Trio in Suriname -- are using GPS to map their lands, plot rivers, sites of spiritual significance, and their resources, including medicinal plants and rich hunting grounds. The Rainforest Foundation U.K. and the Global Canopy Program are taking a similar approach in Congo and Cameroon, respectively, helping communities map their lands to protect against illegal logging and other forms of encroachment.

In sum, it's very difficult to hide a forest that's been cut down. "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" is a question anyone trying to illegitimately get credit for forest conservation will have to ask.

This Orangutan certainly can't wait. Photo: MongabayKnowing the high certainty pollution reductions that forest conservation can deliver, Congress and the world can now turn their attention, with confidence, to figuring out the best incentives to actually save the forests. Because the truth is that we cannot afford any further delay. In the dozen years it's taken for the countries of the world to start to realize that excluding tropical forests from the Kyoto Protocol was a mistake, more than 300 million acres of forest have been destroyed, putting an amount of pollution equivalent to about 10 times the United States annual pollution into the air. We can't afford to wait another dozen years to finally agree to solutions that actually work.

For more on the reliability of forest conservation, check out "Not Your Daddy's Offsets" and "The Tropical Global Warming Solution," and stay tuned for a sequel to this post.   

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As an activist who has been arrested for civil disobedience, organized national climate mobilizations, protested outside of coal plants, and worked for Greenpeace, I am calling on my friends and colleagues to fight for the Kerry-Boxer "Clean Energy Jobs Act" and a strong global treaty in Copenhagen. On Monday Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Energy Secretary Steven Chu said there is a chance of passing a climate bill in Congress before the international talks in Copenhagen this December. Many of us have spent the better part of a decade preparing for this moment. While supporters of the Kerry-Boxer legislation fend off well-financed attacks by the fossil fuel industry, they simultaneously face opposition from progressive voices within the climate movement.

It's time for radicals and moderates to come together around what we stand for. Being right isn't enough. Each of us must be loud and strong and boisterous in defense of our cause. Oppose offsets and giveaways to the fossil fuel industry. But let us fight hardest for what we believe in -- a strong climate bill and a stronger global treaty -- than what we fear.

In November 2000 I had the privilege to be one of 200 young people from the U.S. and Africa invited by Greenpeace to lobby delegates at the U.N. Climate Negotiations in The Hague, Netherlands. We stood below a stage listening to four middle-aged Inuit women, who had traveled outside of their homeland for the first time. They were coming from Alaska, a place where winter temperatures had increased 6 degrees since 1950. Fighting back tears we listened as the women told us of men falling through melting ice while traversing age-old caribou hunting routes. They spoke of dwindling food supplies from altered seasons and seeing mosquitoes in a region that had never known such things. They felt the climate crisis first-hand and were reaching out to us in partnership.

Instead of leaving us in fear, the women joined together in a traditional dance. At that moment we knew what we were fighting for: a strong global climate treaty -- to preserve hope, love, community, tradition. The lesson for me: in a crisis, fight hardest for what you believe in, not what you fear. While we should never be afraid to oppose weaknesses and flaws in a policy, they should not rule our agenda or define our movement.

Nine years later there is still no cap on carbon pollution and the stakes have risen. CO2 has risen from 369 ppm in 2000 to 385 ppm in 2008. Progressive opponents of the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs Act include Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the recently-formed Climate SOS coalition. The Energy Action Coalition, a youth clean energy alliance that I co-founded in 2004 while serving as Greenpeace Campus Organizer, has struck a largely positive chord on the climate bill. However, several of the 50 member organizations are part of Climate SOS lobbying swing Senators to filibuster a federal climate law. These voices have real power and legitimate concerns.

Real Power

In 2008 Energy Action Coalition mobilized over 300,000 youth to sign a pledge to vote for candidates supporting a clean energy economy. Responding to student pressure, over 650 college and university presidents have committed to eliminating carbon pollution on their campuses. Students in Appalachia and around the country have fought side by side with fence-line communities against new coal plants, stopping several. The call for 80 percent carbon reductions by 2050 landed in Barack Obama's climate platform and was inserted into the federal climate bill following a youth-led "Step It Up" campaign in 2007. If united, the climate movement has the power to pass a federal climate law and a strong global treaty in Copenhagen.

Legitimate Concerns

Those who follow climate science and support people on the front lines of this crisis are frustrated. By now we should have built a unified movement so powerful that in policy debates we wrangled over penalties for Big Oil as if they were Big Tobacco instead of capitulating about carbon offsets and tolerating coal subsidies. We know that the climate bill's carbon reduction targets are not strong enough to prevent dangerous tipping points. Many polluters will buy carbon credits rather than reduce their own emissions. We will continue a long trend of wasting tax money on false energy solutions like "clean coal", offshore drilling, and nuclear power. This is unfortunate -- and we should make it clear that we do not support these things and will fight to change them. However, the consequences of inaction are much higher.

Bold actions are needed now more than ever. On July 8, Greenpeace activists put their lives on the line, hanging a giant banner on Mt. Rushmore that reminded President Obama of his obligation to lead: "America Honors Leaders, Not Politicians. Stop Global Warming." The President and leaders in Congress will only stick their necks out far enough if we come together to make them act.

The truth is Kerry-Boxer, by itself, will not solve the enormity of our climate issues. No matter the outcome, we will have work left to do. Nevertheless, Kerry-Boxer is an important step forward and its overall impact will be overwhelmingly positive.

Because of a four-month fight from a coalition of civil rights and labor groups led by Green For All, the Clean Energy Jobs Act includes important equity provisions. These provisions would provide access to quality green jobs and job training for under-served communities through funding for the Green Jobs Act and a first-of-its-kind Green Construction Careers Demonstration Project. More than words, the climate bill represents legal action that will force change.

There is a principle that says to change people's hearts you must first meet them where they are at, not where you would want them to be. As much as we would like to believe everybody in America is part of the climate movement, it is not the case. People want clean energy and they want change, but they are afraid of a weak economy and rising energy bills. An army of powerful, moneyed forces with short-term interests is playing on peoples' fears to kill any action on climate change.

In this defining moment in our history, I am calling on fellow climate activists to fight for a federal climate law and a strong global treaty in Copenhagen. Let us be a generation of "Yes we can" instead of "We should not." If noise gets attention, let our noise be solution-rich. Let's win real change for real people and build upon each success as a foundation for something better.

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Greenpeace protesters on the British parliament roof.Photo: Greenpeace UK

LONDON -- House of Commons authorities ordered an "urgent" probe Monday after dozens of climate change protesters scaled the roof of the British parliament as lawmakers returned from their summer break.

Twenty-three people were arrested and bailed by police after climbing up the landmark and unfurling a banner saying "Change the politics, save the climate." They want urgent action before the U.N.'s crunch Copenhagen summit in December.

House of Commons speaker John Bercow told the first parliamentary session after a near three-month break that the security breach was being investigated urgently.

"We do not discuss matters of security in this chamber but I wanted to say to the house that I have had a preliminary report and the full circumstances are now being investigated urgently and thoroughly," Bercow said."Whatever action is necessary will be taken."

A Greenpeace protester waves flag in front of Big Ben. Photo: Greenpeace UK

Around 25 people remain on the roof, from where Greenpeace employee Brikesh Singh, 29, from Bangalore in southern India, said: "We want them [lawmakers] to get the message loud and clear that if you want a planet-saving deal in Copenhagen, we need to change the climate policy."

The December 7-18 United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen will see nations attempt to hammer out a new global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.

London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement, "Twenty of the protesters who climbed onto the roof ... have come down and been arrested on suspicion of trespassing on a protected site. They have been taken to a central London police station." A further three were later arrested, a spokesman added afterwards.

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http://JPGreenHouseUploads.yolasite.com

Mike Roselle has a knack for being in the right place at the right time and a genius for creating confusion in high places. As with all effective rabble-rousers, he has left a trail of enmity in his wake (not always in the opposition camp), but that is to be expected in any political life anchored in truth and guided by the precept that disruption of the status quo on behalf of wild things and wild places is both moral obligation and wise strategy.

Mike’s rollicking new book announces in the very title that this is a chronicle of external conflict with rapacious despoilers of the land, and a story about the ongoing struggle for the soul of environmentalism. I count Mike as a friend, we worked briefly together at Greenpeace USA, yet almost every page in the book divulges stories I’ve never heard. Tree Spiker, From Earth First! to Lowbagging: My Struggles in Radical Environmental Action, coauthored with Josh Mahan, is a fascinating and hugely enjoyable read, which captures the raconteur as well as the experienced campaigner in Roselle. It’s easy to conjure up Mike’s laconic voice and slapstick humous in lines like, “We threw Abbie Hoffman into the pool and left.”

Beyond entertainment and a fascinating backstory, this is an important book because it is an eye witness account from an influential actor who managed to be at ground zero over three decades of political struggle. From youthful skylarking with the Yippies, to paradigm-busting campaigns to preserve old growth forests, Mike gives us a court-side seat for moments key in shaping US environmentalism. David Brower, who was an inspiration and mentor for Mike, as with soon many other environmental leaders, is perhaps the only person with a record of environmental organization-building which betters Roselle, who co-founded Earth First!, Rainforest Action Network and the Ruckus Society, and shares credit for Greenpeace forest campaigning.

Tree Spiker also does an excellent job of capturing Mike’s penchant for blunt speaking. Who else would acknowledge that many of us became campaigners because it seemed like a good way to get laid?

Tree Spiker is enjoyable and valuable for its insights, history and style, but it is revolutionary in its main objective, because Roselle ain’t been stopped yet. This is no backwards looking memoir penned by an ancient campaigner, but a polemic for urgent action. Two years ago, Roselle began to commute from his beloved adopted state of Montana to West Virginia, where he met and befriended leaders of the local effort to stop mountain top coal removal. Convinced that this conflict held a key to unlocking the conundrum of climate campaigning, which has stymied the best and brightest environmentalists for over a decade, Roselle pulled up stakes and moved to West Virginia. There he joined his considerable direct action skills to local organizing, launching what must be considered one of the most successful local preservation effort and critical juncture for US climate campaigning.

Looking at the overall picture of US environmentalism, the West Virginia coal action is not just one of the most successful recent efforts, it is also astonishingly cost effective. By any measure of dollars spent to objective gained, paradigms reshaped and power built, the West Virginia coal campaigning is a lop-sided winner. Herein lies the moral of Mike’s story, and it is a lesson we reject at peril of losing the earth as we know it.

What Mike and handful of other brave souls are doing in West Virginia must flower in all parts of the nation. Local coal plant actions, creative campaigning, and direct action are on the rise, to be sure, but on nothing like the scale and speed now required to change US politics in the time alloted before climate cataclysm is unavoidable.

In one year we have managed to break the bounds of what I’ve referred to as the “climate policy paradigm” – the tangled web of incautious partnerships, over-emphasis on micro-policy at the expense of transformative campaigning, tendency to interpret access as power, reliance upon moderating foundation funds, and so on, which encourages US environmentalists to downplay climate risk, place all bets on the Democratic Party, and accept any compromise – but not nearly fast enough. 

We require abrupt change within the institution of US environmentalism and in the form and manner of US climate campaigning. Roselle and others in West Virginia have shown us what is possible if we act on our conscience, open our minds to reality and act with courage, but there is no time for such examples to diffuse across the nation in the ordinary way of things. We need money, infrastructure, staff and institutional prestige.

Tree Spiker closes with Al Gore’s familiar-to-the-point-of-numbness quote, “I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers, and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants,” to which Roselle, in inimitable spirit, answers, “I agree with Al Gore, I just wish he would put his money where his mouth is.”

[Mike is currently on tour to promote his book. Mike will appear at the Jamaica Plain Forum this Sunday, Oct. 4th, 7-00, at First Church JP/UU, Monument Sq., in JP, co-sponsored by the JP Green House. For information on the tour, or to schedule an event, contact Mike here.]

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A new report, "Forging the Climate Consensus: Domestic and International Offsets" makes clear exactly how important a role high-quality offsets play in maintaining the integrity of climate legislation -- and how they could allow an international climate agreement to achieve far stronger emissions reductions targets than would otherwise be possible.

The report was issued by the National Commission on Energy Policy, which represents major corporations, NGO's, and labor unions (and whose executive director is Jason Grumet, Obama's top energy advisor during the campaign, so it should be taken at least somewhat seriously as the type of thinking being seriously considered in the White House and on Capitol Hill). It includes strong support for offsets, but questions if the verification requirements in the legislation are too tough to allow offsets to be brought to market in sufficient quantity to deliver major cost savings for climate legislation, especially in the first years.

If the bill's restrictions on use of offsets are so severe as to prevent them from being developed, their cost containment value would be reduced and the cost of climate legislation would be higher. That's of concern to the members of the commission, many of whom represent utilities and other interests that are, to a great extent, focused on keeping the cost of climate legislation down (a concern shared by many senators whose votes we'll need to pass climate legislation).

As a result, the commission recommends adopting alternate cost-containment measures like a price collar or an allowance auction reserve to hold prices down.

That's a huge problem. Unlike offsets, which, when done right, deliver emissions reductions by financing affordable (and important) activities like forest conservation and reforestation, price collars let polluters off the hook whenever the price of carbon rises above a certain level -- a dangerous policy, given that we can't be 100 percent sure what the price of carbon will be at any given time. An allowance auction reserve works in a similar way -- the government just releases more pollution permits whenever the price rises. Unlike offsets, which deliver affordability through pollution reductions, these mechanisms deliver affordability but no emissions reductions.

That's a fundamental calculus that offset critics just don't seem to get: if you remove offsets from legislation or an international climate agreement and you have to find cost control mechanisms somewhere else -- or just lower the targets. And that doesn't do any good for the planet or its people.

It was a perspective certainly missing from two anti-offsets broadsides issued this week by opponents of climate legislation: the "Dangerous Distraction" report by Friends of the Earth and a Greenpeace website mocking their use.

Of course, it's essential that offsets actually deliver reductions in pollution. FOE and Greenpeace recycle decades-old claims to imply that many offsets are less than credible.

But these are not your daddy's offsets. There have been tremendous advances to ensure that offsets, especially forest-based offsets, deliver the reductions they promise. Consider the offsets in the American Clean Energy and Security Act passed by the House of Representatives.

In addition to establishing a rigorous scientific board to evaluate any proposed offsets, the bill also includes an essential requirement: in order for any offsets to receive credit, they must have already taken place. In other words, you can't get credit for a plan to offset emissions, but only for verified emission reductions that have already occurred.

In addition, there are a variety of very strict requirements to ensure, for instance, that indigenous and forest-dependent people benefit from tropical forest conservation offsets (indeed, if a country doesn't meet the bill's standards for protection of indigenous people, they could be entirely shut out of the program) and that domestic reforestation activities use only native species and protect biodiversity.

Protection of indigenous people is an especially important issue. Deforestation has brought disease, terror, and displacement to indigenous communities around the world. In the Amazon alone, more than 90 indigenous tribes have been wiped out since 1900. These forests are being destroyed because they're not valued for the immense quantity of carbon they store.  To unscrupulous agribusiness and timber interests, their only value is as plantation land. In other words, they're worth more dead than alive.  And to some corporations, the same goes for the communities who live in them. Offset critics sometimes forget that the greatest threat to forest-dependent indigenous people is the destruction of forests, not their conservation. The simple fact that forest offset critics sometimes forget is that the greatest threat to the indigenous people of the forests is their destruction, not their conservation. It's for this reason that rainforest nations have been the leaders in calling for inclusion of incentives to protect forests in climate legislation.

But it's not just Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth who underestimate offsets' potential. I think those who are skeptical about how many will be eligible to be brought to market may underestimate the ability of even the poorest nations to develop, for instance, robust national plans and baselines to monitor the effects of deforesttation and conservation. With the possibility of big development resources on the table, they may be spurred to action faster than anyone realizes. Indeed, Brazilian states, in particular, have shown tremendous capacity to ramp up to monitor and attract forest conservation projects.

Of course, I don't want to pretend that all offsets are good. A variety of polluting industries have in the past successfully lobbied for crediting of their dubious activities. Friends of the Earth is absolutely right to point out the absurdity of providing carbon credit to, for instance, big dams, as has been done under the Clean Development Mechanism. Even if one accepts their carbon reductions, the damage they do to rivers and local communities is enormous. These dams should be removed, not subsidized (tell that to the World Bank, which has drastically increased their subsidies for dams).

For instance, there are real worries that the standards behind the domestic agricultural and biomass offsets are way too weak -- meaning that they could undermine a lot of the good work the legislation does to protect forests (see this post for more).

I think there's a fairly easy way to tell which kinds of offsets we should be suspicious of and which we shouldn't: look at what those backing certain kinds of offsets are saying: in general, those willing to embrace rigorous scientific and social standards can be trusted more than those who are lobbying for weaker standards, such as the Big Ag lobby. I wish offset critics were able to see the difference between crediting activities to save forests and giant environmentally destructive hydropower projects or unsustainable biofuels cultivation. Their legitimate criticisms might be listened to more seriously if they didn't try to demonize, for instance, saving endangered forests as well.

This is especially true when it comes to tropical forests. Critics successfully fought to keep tropical forest offsets out of the Kyoto Protocol. The world has suffered the consequences since then. Because of this giant mistake, more than 300 million acres of forest have gone up in smoke in the last ten years, producing an amount of global warming pollution equivalent to ten times the United States' annual emissions. That mistake has not only polluted the climate, it's also made extinct an untold number of species and allowed genocide and murder to be perpetrated against indigenous peoples throughout the tropical forest belt. It's time to come up with solutions to the deforestation crisis, not just dump on one of the key mechanisms that could provide ammo to solve it. 

A final point: the use of offsets shouldn't be conceived of as some kind of necessary concession.  They should be used in any climate legislation (or international agreement), no matter how strong, to make it even stronger by getting bigger pollution reductions for the same economic and political cost.

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Engaging in a bit of a lovefest, Greenpeace and Kimberly-Clark announced today that the paper-products giant has finally agreed to clean up its act. It will source the fiber for its tissue products, under brand names that include Kleenex, Scott, and Cottonelle, from “environmentally responsible sources,” including those that are FSC-certified and recycled. The company has also committed to end the purchase of non-FSC fibers from Canada’s Boreal forest by 2011. For its part, Greenpeace will drop the five-year-old Kleercut campaign that has long urged Kimberly-Clark to quit destroying the Boreal just so cold-sufferers can experience a softer blow.

In a fit of hard-earned mutual admiration, Kimberly-Clark VP Suhas Apte said, “We commend Greenpeace for helping us develop more sustainable standards,” while Greenpeace USA Forest Campaign Director Scott Paul called Kimberly-Clark a “responsible company” and said its “efforts are a challenge to its competitors. I hope other companies pay close attention.”

Those other companies include Georgia Pacific and Procter & Gamble, both of which Greenpeace is still pressuring on the sustainable sourcing front.

I contacted Michael Conroy, who wrote a book on corporate greening and grassroots campaigns called Branded (and whom I interviewed last year for Grist), to see what he made of the news. “This is a huge victory for global forests, the FSC, and Greenpeace,” he replied. “Kimberly-Clark is the world’s largest manufacturer of tissue paper products. The nature of the commitments, the specific timetables provided, and the Kimberly-Clark agreement to report back regularly on what proportion of the fiber sourced for its tissue has come from recycled and FSC-certified sources makes this a very credible commitment.”

Conroy also pointed out that the conclusion of Kleercut, which “used print media, social networking, YouTube videos, and incredibly creative ways to wear down Kimberly-Clark resistance, shows that the new tools for communicating with consumers are bringing even more power to civil society as we seek to transform the social and environmental practices of the world’s largest corporations.”

Ginger Cassady, senior campaigner for ForestEthics, was also pleased as punch by the news. As Cassady wrote in an op-ed for Grist this spring on Kimberly-Clark’s “Scott Naturals” line, “Kimberly-Clark has no trouble with innovation—if they can make an anti-viral tissue product, for god’s sake, they can make Kleenex with 100 percent post-consumer recycled content.” Angry that the company was still “wiping away ancient forests to make Kleenex,” Cassady used that piece to advise consumers to avoid the distraction of a single product line and keep their eyes on the entire company.

The company’s new policy, she told me today, “is among the strongest in the world ... truly impressive.” Along with Greenpeace, she says she hopes the move by Kimberly-Clark will influence other companies. “ForestEthics congratulates Greenpeace and allies for a campaign well run,” she said.

In short, it’s an ugly situation with a hugfest ending—as evidenced by this goofy Greenpeace video:

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I am outside of Mexico City with delegates from the world's 17 biggest economies who are meeting this week ahead of the next G8 meeting to further negotiate international climate agreements. Issues on the table include funding for forest protection, mid-term and long-term emission reduction targets, and financing for adaption and mitigation. The outcomes from these talks remain in doubt and other questions fester, like to what will the U.S. commit to?

Greenpeace and our partners have our own climate treaty, which can serve as a model for these delegates as they decide the crucial questions about the future of our planet. Given the future potential economic costs of the emerging climate crisis, we can't afford not to tackle climate change. We need to see the economic crisis as an opportunity to invest in our future through building sustainable green economies by massively increasing energy efficiency and investing in renewable sustainable energy sources like solar and wind power, thereby stimulating the economy, creating jobs, promoting sustainable growth and simultaneously addressing the climate crisis.  What we cannot afford is being locked into unsustainable dirty industries dependent on fossil fuel power. 

For an effective climate deal at December's Copenhagen Climate Summit, the world's wealthiest nations--the G8 countries, who are at the core of the MEF-- need to take the lead both at MEF and when they meet in L'Aquila, Italy for the G8 Summit next month. The G8 countries emit more than 40% of global CO2 emissions, despite being home to only 13% of the world's population. These countries are looking at the U.S. to show leadership, but thus far, the leadership from the U.S. has been absent.

This is really a question of trust. By committing to targets for emissions cuts and financing for developing countries for mitigation, forest protection and adaptation, G8 countries can build trust and confidence and lead the way on global climate action - both for the MEF as well as for the UN negotiations, which will culminate in Copenhagen in December. But if they don't show leadership, the rest of the world will have little incentive to take any sort of action.

At the last MEF, Germany and France called for strong short-term commitments, along the lines of what the world's leading scientists recommend to fight against climate change. But the U.S. balked, and the slow progress of the U.S. Congress on a climate deal and its refusal to support the policies that keep climate change as far under 2 degrees C as possible must be leaving the rest of the world questioning the U.S.'s commitment.

Last week, the White House released a report that found that climate change is already creating changes in the United States by threatening the Southwest with heat waves, the Atlantic with stronger storms and the Midwest with drought. Given confirmation from the highest levels of government, there is no excuse for inaction.

The time to lead is now. The G8 leaders at the MEF and the G8 summit need to take responsibility for their role in climate change and agree to:

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The Climate Post: You heard it here first—Copenhagen a success

I can certainly understand why people are unhappy with the weakening of Waxman-Markey.  Heck, I lowered the grade for it to B or B-.

But I wasn’t grading on a curve.  The bill remains a stunning legislative achievement that (if enacted) would require the United States to eliminate virtually all greenhouse gas emissions in four decades — no mean feat, even for those of us who know that is eminently doable (and climatically crucial)!

Indeed, when was the last time the nation’s political system enacted a major economy-wide air-pollutant regulatory system?  [Hint:  It was a long time ago and a key reason it passed is a cap-and-trade system that gave away virtually all of the pollution allowances to industry -- interesting NYT piece today on the politics of emissions regulations then and now.]

On the other hand, if Waxman-Markey fails to get out of committee or fails to make it through both houses of Congress over the next 12 months or so, don’t expect any US climate action for a long time — the political mavens will not take failure as a sign to pursue a stronger bill.  And failure would mean the international negotiation process would be dead.  Equally important, why would China agree to a target if we don’t?

If the hardcore enviros want to attack the bill (as opposed to some of its provisions), to undermine support for what Al Gore called “One of the most important pieces of legislation ever introduced in the Congress … has the moral significance” of 1960s civil rights legislation and Marshall Plan, well, it’s a free country, as they say.

And I’m free to point out the absurd rhetoric and factually flawed arguments.  Before I get to the myths about the European Trading System that Greenpeace is peddling in its press release Thursday, let me start with their indefensibe and over-the-top first line:

A piece of legislation that started out as a real opportunity for the US to combat climate change has been co-opted by special interests and now threatens to do more harm than good.

Uhh, no it does not.  Maybe it threatens to not do as much good as it could as fast as it might, but, frankly, that was true of the first draft.  Or any politically feasible energy and climate bill.

To repeat, whatever people imagine that this bill “threatens” to do, what it actually does is enact into law a sweeping clean energy revolution that puts the nation on a path to virtually eliminate global warming pollution from the entire economy in four decades.

PEDDLING MYTHS ABOUT THE EUROPEAN EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME

Beyond the overheated rhetoric is the repetition by Greenpeace of a now too-common myth that needs addressing:

According to reports, the bill might actually end up giving as much as 55 percent of the permits away for free. The EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme originally gave away so many permits that pollution permits were trading for as little as 1 euro cent, providing no incentive for polluting industries to clean up their act. Now the fossil fuels industries –- who have spent some $45 million lobbying against the bill -– are succeeding in convincing House Democrats to make the same mistake.

Not quite.

Greenpeace — and many other people, to judge by the e-mails and comments I get — are conflating two completely different issues.

The EU’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) had too many total permits. That was why the price crashed, not because those permits were given away for free.  If the EU had auctioned all the tons, the price still would have crashed as soon as everybody realized there were too many in the market.

What people forget about ETS Phase one, from 2005 to 2007, is that the hard emissions caps the Europeans had agreed to under the Kyoto protocol didn’t kick in until 2008.  Phase one was thus a wild and unique experiment — a trading system without a true, binding cap.  I never thought it would seriously motivate much action by industry or be a big success, but in fact, it certainly wasn’t a total failure, especially given that the Europeans had never done anything like this before.

A poorly headlined piece in Reuters, “U.S. cap and trade plans risk European mistakes” almost gets the story right but ends up spreading confusion:

The European Union scheme, launched in 2005, has struggled to shake off two early mistakes: handing out too many permits which removed the requirement to buy them, and giving them to power plants for free.

Analysts say utilities pass on the price of carbon permits to consumers regardless, making billions of euros (dollars) in windfall profits across the sector as a result.

And because there were initially too many permits the EU carbon price crashed to zero two years ago, relegating the first trading phase of the scheme from 2005-07 to an experiment.

Note to Reuters:  It always was an experiment.  In Phase 1, the EU was not under legally binding emissions reduction targets.

Why did the EU have too many allowances?  Well, unlike the United States, where we have a single Energy Information Administration that keeps close tabs on coal, oil, and natural gas supply and demand as well as total greenhouse gas emissions, the EU is still a relatively dysfunctional collection of very distinct countries.  It simply is a lot harder for them to estimate accurately total emissions, particularly since they had never done it before and never had a trading system before.  As one 2007 analysis put it:

… at the outset, the European Commission had no reliable information about companies’ emissions, and was therefore obliged to use figures provided by installations themselves. In the spring of 2006, it became evident that in fact actual emissions were below the initial allowances. This led to some of the most volatile days in the market as prices fell close to zero.

I would note that an analysis by MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change (among others) had predicted a price crash back in Ocotober 2005, concluding that the ETS’s market clearing price should be “about 0.6 to 0.9 euros/tCO2 (~2 to 3 $/tC) for the 2005-2007 period in a base run of our model in line with many observers’ expectations who saw the cuts required under the system as very mild.”  I think is quite fair to say that the Europeans screwed up the Phase 1 experiment, especially how it was perceived elsewhere — but given how many people foresaw both what was going to happen and the reason why it happened, I just don’t think you can point to Phase 1 as proof that a cap-and-trade system is inherently flawed.

Why did the EU give away such a high fraction of the allowances?  In part because they became sold on the benefits of cap-and-trade in the first place from the incredible success of the acid rain program in this country, which achieved faster and deeper emissions reductions at a far lower cost than everybody had predicted.  And the EPA gave away 97% of the permits to industry for free.

What about the windfall to industry and the possible disincentive to industries to clean up their act of they are are given free permits?   Waxman-Markey learned from European mistakes, as Reuters explains:

So far the U.S. plans appear aware of the risks — allocating free permits for example to the steel sector according to average emissions — meaning if you pollute less you’ll still get the same number of permits, and a surplus to sell as a reward for being clean.

The ruling Democrat plans would also avoid some of the risks of EU-style windfall profits, because in the electricity sector the permits would go to local distribution companies regulated by states which could limit how far utilities pass on costs.

“The difference between this and the EU is that they go to regulated entities that have to pass the value directly to consumers,” said Tony Kreindler, spokesman for Environmental Defense Fund.

Let me also return to the must-read (or must-watch) E&E TV interview of Richard Morgan, a DC commissioner and leader of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ Task Force on Climate:

Monica Trauzzi: Looking at Europe as an example, too many credits were handed out there which ended up creating windfall profits for utilities. So how does Congress find that balance between auction and allocation?

Richard Morgan: Well, we haven’t specified what exactly the right balance is. I think we want to start out more toward an allocation of free allowances and move toward an auction over time, I would say at least a decade, perhaps a little bit longer. And we can avoid the problem that happened in Europe. Yes, they had too many allowances, that’s one problem. We want to avoid that. The other problem was that they gave away the allowances without any strings attached. And I’m not proposing that we do that at all. The allowances should only be given to entities that are price regulated, where they can’t just simply pass along these free allowances as profits to their shareholders. If their price is controlled, we make sure that the price is set in a way that reflects the value that they’ve received in free allowances. And then consumers will receive those benefits simply as an offset against the higher prices that they’re paying. So, in effect, what we’re doing is recycling the higher cost that people would pay in their utility bills back to the very customers who are paying those higher prices, so that it basically reduces the impact on those consumers.

Again, the Waxman-Markey bill is far from perfect.  Some of the allowances it gives away are not to entities who should get them.  For instance, merchant coal and long-term power purchase agreements receive 5% of the allowances — although even in that case, merchant coal is only part of the 5%, and the merchant coal part is phased out steadily from 2012 to 2029.

I’d very much like to see the bill improved, if not in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, then the full House or in the Senate.  So go ahead, attack some of the provisions — I’m with you!  But suggest the whole bill threatens to do more harm than good, that it repeats the mistakes to the experimental European Trading System Phase one,  or that cap-and trade is inherently doomed and we must abandon it fir some other approach (the imaginary “simple carbon tax” for instance) — and we part company.

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Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) released the much-anticipated full text (PDF) of their climate legislation on Friday, prompting several big-name green groups to take sides on whether or not the House Democrats' bill is strong enough.

Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and Public Citizen released a joint statement on Wednesday as reports on the deal trickled out, arguing that "the compromises being struck on the bill undermine these goals."

With the full text now available, Greenpeace Executive Director Phil Radford issued a statement Friday outright condemning the changes. His group, he said, "cannot support" the bill in its current form.

The Sierra Club struck a more positive tone about the legislation, but Executive Director Carl Pope warned that energy interests are working to water down the proposal:

Most of the other mainstream environmental groups are generally praising the Waxman-Markey plan, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the League of Conservation Voters, the Wilderness Society, the Nature Conservancy, and the Environmental Defense Fund.

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It's hard to tell, but that's Greenpeace Executive Director Phil Radford standing atop a construction crane mast as Greenpeace activists display a banner near the State Department in Washington, D.C.Greenpeace / Tim AubryPhil Radford spent his first day on the job as Greenpeace USA's new executive director getting himself arrested by staging a bit of climate activism in the nation's capital.

Several Greenpeace activists, Radford included, scaled a large construction crane located near the U.S. State Department building in D.C.'s Foggy Bottom and hung a large banner stating, "Too Big to Fail. Stop Global Warming. Rescue the Plant." The message was aimed at attendies of the Major Economies Forum happening at State, a gathering where climate issues are on the agenda.

You can read all about the Greenpeace prank on the group's website, and be sure to see Radford's first post as Greenpeace's chief.

Video from Greenpeace below:

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Get psyched for the Day of Climate Action—with videos!

Grist hates Earth Day because it thinks every day should be Earth Day. Don’t let us have the luxury to pick up some litter one day a year and forget the 300 unnecessary trips to Home Depot the rest of the year. Fine, but kind of cranky. As an aging Italian male, I am working on cranky.

I’ve got a different grievance, however. There’s no @#$&ing enforcement with Earth Day. Anyone can claim anything on Earth Day.

Sure, there are other, similarly co-opted holidays. Thanksgiving marks the day before the country’s biggest shopping day. But hell, the Pilgrims never had any real power anyway, plus weird shoes and a boxy boat. How about President’s Day, with those stupid ads of Abe Lincoln selling Chevys? Those Presidents are dead, so we can’t expect them to enforce anything.

Think about it: On Christmas, Jews and Muslims don’t try to drive an agenda that the Christians picked the wrong guy. Nah, they let it slide. Leave the day alone. On Yom Kippur, non Jews don’t walk around claiming the whole “Ten Days of Repentance” is a waste of time. No way, non Jews give them their space. How about Muslims? Nobody makes fun of Ramadan, not even Jon Stewart.

Which brings me back to Earth Day. It could have been the day we get all mushy and reverent about our Earth Mother, she who gives us our very breath. But no, it’s the perfect time for a libertarian think tank to press its campaign against the scientific consensus that has proven global warming is happening and that human activities are causing it. That’s right, the Cato Institute has been led by climate skeptic (that means somebody who thinks the Earth is flat) Dr. Patrick Michaels into questioning every conclusion about global warming. Oh yeah, and taking a little backsheesh from the fossil fuel industry at the same time.

Pat Michaels has long used out-of-context data to try and confuse the public about global warming. He said global warming wasn’t happening, then he said it was good for us, then he said it was minimal. Now he is using his perch at the Cato Institute, founded on free-market principles, to question the consensus on global warming in newspaper ads. In the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Times, CATO is running a full-page ad that starts with this line from President Obama -- "Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear." -- and then screams in large font, "With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true."

A long list of Ph.D. scientists have signed on to the ad, supposedly to add heft to the contrary opinion. Unfortunately for Cato, the list is wrought with professional global-warming naysayers and discredited academics.

Between the signer who espouses the view that chlorofluorocarbons are the cause of any warming trends, and the ones who dabble in known pseudoscience, to the one who attacks evolution, drawing frequent connections between evolution and Nazism, these so-called scientists are fringe, to say the least. In fact, Greenpeace research director Kert Davies -- an expert on following the money of the fossil fuel industry to paid global warming skeptics -- says that of the scientists listed in the ad, 29 of them show up in his database as discredited, perennial naysayers.

Michaels has pushed Cato to interpret libertarianism as inclusive of crackpot science. This I said in a letter to Ed Crane, founder and president of Cato.

It’s no wonder some of us have gotten sick of Earth Day.

So I found a way to deal. Earth Day is the day I litter. Throw the McDonald's wrappers right out the window. Take unnecessary trips in my car, leave lights on, pretend that nuclear power is safe and that the waste magically goes away, that coal is clean and the tops of mountains are not blown off to mine it. I let the water run while I shave -- ahhh, that stream of pure, hot water ... endless.

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Here come the reactions ...Grist’s Kate Sheppard has a great story on today’s big news, the EPA decision that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare:

The news set off a flurry of reactions from wary industry reps, gratified green groups, and eager politicians. Here’s a sampling.

Industry

The American Petroleum Institute is none too pleased:

Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, which represents power companies, offered a similar warning:

Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute: 

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opened its statement with a somewhat measured reaction:

“Today’s proposed finding shows that EPA is at a crossroads when it comes to greenhouse gases,” said Bill Kovacs, vice president for Environment, Technology and Regulatory Affairs at the U.S. Chamber. “In proposing endangerment without attaching regulations, the EPA recognizes that the framework of the Clean Air Act poses a unique set of legal and, ultimately, economic problems.”
 
“The motor vehicle title of the Act, under which this proposed finding is made, allows EPA the flexibility to phase in regulations while taking into account technological and economic considerations,” Kovacs continued. “The rest of the Act, however, does not—and a final endangerment finding will surely spur litigation to shoehorn all emitters, not just motor vehicles, into a wide range of Clean Air Act programs. The EPA therefore has a choice to make:  it can proceed at a pace consistent with current and future technology, or it can allow non-governmental entities and activist groups to take the regulations out of EPA’s hands and apply the Clean Air Act through the courts. The second option would kill economic growth and jobs.”

No surprise, the National Association of Manufacturers said it opposes using the Clean Air Act to deal with CO2 emissions. The group said it was already on record as having...:

"...warned that using outdated programs under the CAA as a tool for regulating GHG emissions will further burden an ailing economy while doing little or nothing to improve the environment. Between 2000 and the first quarter of 2008, as many as 3.7 million jobs were lost in the U.S. in large part because of high energy prices. 'This proposal will cost jobs. It is the worst possible time to be proposing rules that will drive up the cost of energy to no valid purpose,' said NAM President John Engler."

Green groups

Environment America's Emily Figdor put her reaction in layman's terms:

The Sierra Club met the news with a new “Big Picture” campaign, promising outright support for President Obama’s energy agenda:

Greenpeace, on the other hand, isn’t ready to break out the champagne and party hats. It’s gloomier take on the EPA’s finding begins “It’s about time,” and continues:

The Environmental Defense Fund issued a similar call for political vigilance:

Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, offered a warning to disgruntled business interests:

Politicians

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), whose state has taken a lead in tackling climate change, praised the Obama admin for getting with the program:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.):

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which will begin hearings on the Waxman-Markey climate bill next week:

The EPA announcement confirms what science has told us -- global warming pollution poses a grave threat to the nation’s public health and welfare.  EPA is legally compelled to take action and I commend them for complying with the law.  However, I believe it is Congress that should create a comprehensive framework to combat global warming that will break our dependence on foreign sources of energy and help transform our economy with millions of new clean energy jobs.

Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chair of the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee:

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee:

Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee:

Sen. James “global-warming-is-a-hoax” Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee:

Heard more interesting reactions? Post ‘em below in comments.

--

Related Story: States left wondering about EPA's greenhouse gas ruling

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Very interesting, very positive response from 200+ at  American Friends Service Committee conference on the triple threats of security, economy and climate to blunt assessment of the state of climate change and climate politics. Another strong indicator that our organizations are fast losing touch.

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This is a guest post by John Hocevar and Jeremy Jackson. Jeremy Jackson is the William E. and Mary B. Ritter Professor of Oceanography at the Scripps Institution. John Hocevar is a marine biologist and the director of Greenpeace’s oceans campaign.

If you like seafood, you’ve probably eaten Alaska pollock, the tender white fish used in most frozen fish sticks, McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, and the imitation crab meat found in California rolls. But the pollock – the world’s largest food fishery – is on the verge of collapse.

The most recent data from the National Marine Fisheries Service show the pollock population approaching the lowest level ever recorded; since 2003, the population has declined from 8.5 million tons to 3 million tons. That’s bad news for fish eaters and fishermen alike, and really bad news for Alaska’s extraordinary ocean ecosystem.

Even as the pollock – and the wildlife that rely on them – have declined, the government has allowed overfishing to continue.  Incredibly, these steep declines do not even meet the government’s definition of overfished.

As a result, two of Alaska’s four pollock fisheries have been closed and a third is just a fraction of its former size.  Until recently, though, the strength of the Bering Sea pollock stock was sufficient to support a billion dollar industry and earn a “sustainable” rating from the Marine Stewardship Council.

But like economics, fisheries management involves too many variables and too much uncertainty for anyone to make precise predictions.  And, as with the economy, when large amounts of money are at stake, managers tend to downplay that uncertainty and hope for the best.

That’s exactly what happened to the Atlantic cod, the pollock’s close relative, and the previous holder of the title “world’s biggest food fishery.” For years, the Atlantic fish industry refused to heed the warning signs that cod was in serious trouble, and tighter regulation was needed.

When policy makers did finally act, in 1992, it was too late – and the fishery crashed to less than one percent of its former level. By 1994, the fishery, which had been active since at least the beginning of the 16th century, had to be closed. Suddenly, more than 40,000 people were out of work and the industry went begging to the government for a multi-billion dollar bailout.

Today, the North Pacific Fisheries Council seems to be repeating the cod tragedy.

Despite the warning signs, including several years of low juvenile survivorship, the Council continues to allow trawlers to kill the fish that lay the golden eggs.  Each winter, factory trawlers brave the stormy Bering Sea to target spawning pollock, killing huge numbers of pregnant females before they release their eggs, or roe. The roe fishery is lucrative but ecologically dangerous even in the best of times. At a time when the pollock population needs all the offspring it can produce – and global warming seems to be putting additional stress on the fishery - it’s just reckless. The Council members (mostly representatives of the fishing industry) persist in saying that we can trust the industry to police itself – and are increasingly sounding like the Alan Greenspans of the sea.

It's still theoretically possible that environmental conditions will allow for a season of epic pollock reproduction that will begin to re-build the stock. If we continue with business as usual,though, it’s more likely that the fishery will collapse, with devastating consequences for the wildlife and people of Alaska.

The next year or two may be our last chance to save the fishing industry from itself. The key will be in taking action before things reach the point of no return, as appears to have happened with cod.  Most immediately, the pollock catch needs to be cut significantly, and the roe fishery should be suspended.

Many of the measures necessary to save the pollock fishery are just as needed in other fisheries around the country that are also reeling from overfishing. Across our oceans, fish have nowhere to find refuge and replenish their population – which is why we need to move quickly to establish a network of no-take marine reserves.

Until we move from simply managing fisheries in a vacuum to protecting the ecosystems that sustain them, fisheries managers will continue to be surprised by one economic and ecological disaster after another – and taxpayers could find themselves on the hook for yet another multi-billion dollar bailout.

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So long and thanks for all the fish

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Phil RadfordPhoto: Kate SheppardGreenpeace USA's announcement on Tuesday that the group is elevating its grassroots director to serve as the next executive director sends a clear signal that the 38-year-old environmental organization is focused on growing its membership and playing a lead role in rallying public support for big changes in U.S. energy and climate policies.

Phil Radford, 33, has run Greenpeace's grassroots efforts for the past six years, and in that role he has helped double the organization's membership and its budget. Greenpeace USA now boasts a $30 million annual budget, 240,000 members, and more than 400 canvassers pounding the pavement around the country. He takes the helm from John Passacantando, who stepped down in January to start a consultancy to advise institutional investors on environmental risks and opportunities.

In the past three years, the group also launched regional organizing efforts, with 26 coordinators currently working in cities across the country as part of the Project Hot Seat program (recently renamed Climate Rescue). Radford says it's this kind of organizing that is going to be key to making the environmental movement into a viable political force in Congress and around the country.

"There are huge shifts across the country, massive shifts in the environmental community," said Radford. "You have a realization in the environmental community that for too long we have played on the fringes and haven't had political power."

Noting that leaders of groups like MoveOn, 1Sky, and Rock the Vote all earned their stripes in grassroots organizing, Radford said it's time for the environmental community to adopt more of those strategies.

"What's missing right now is what Obama figured out and what other people figured out, which is in political campaigns in the past there just wasn't enough money invested in on the ground organizing and using the internet really strategically to mobilize people," said Radford. "You can be incredibly more effective if you put far more resources on the ground across the country."

"The environmental community tends to focus too much on D.C., too much on negotiating from a point of weakness," he continued. "Greenpeace's role is to build the power on the ground across the country so the entire environmental community is negotiating from a place of strength."

Radford said the environmental movement has focused too heavily in recent years on working the Washington game and delivering votes for politicians who are already sympathetic to the environmental cause, rather than building grassroots networks around the country. But as Obama demonstrated during the campaign last year, there's much more that can and should be done at the local level, which is where Greenpeace's hundreds of canvassers and regional organizers will focus their efforts going forward, he said, especially when it comes to the political debate over climate change policy.

"We are building power to pressure and persuade people," Radford. "There's a whole surge of people trying to figure out how to make the environmental community more powerful, rather than just nice people in suits with good ideas and white papers."

Despite his young age, Radford has nearly two decades of grassroots organizing experience. He started his career in organizing at 14, when a friend's mother took him to a hearing on a waste incinerator in his neighborhood on the west side of Chicago. Soon he was recruiting other kids to activism on the incinerator issue and organizing with the Student PIRGs in his area. He worked with PIRG through college, running campaigns in Chicago, Cleveland, and Kalamazoo, Michigan, and after college took an organizing fellowship with Green Corps.

From 1999 to 2001 Radford was a field organizer for Ozone Action, where he ran the group's Global Warming 2000 campaign (and worked for Passacantando, who led Ozone Action before moving to Greenpeace in 2000). In 2001, Radford founded an organization called Power Shift, which led a campaign in 12 cities to invest in clean energy and efficiency, and also worked with financial industry heavyweights like Citigroup to create new financing mechanisms for green energy projects.

Radford officially assumes leadership of Greenpeace on April 27. He said the group will continue to focus much of its organizing on global warming, with plans to expand the number of activists on the ground and grow online organizing efforts. 

With most of the attention in Washington currently focused on the draft of a climate bill introduced by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Radford said his group will be pushing the two lawmakers to improve the measure. Right now, the specifics of much of the bill have not been finalized, including the auction of carbon credits and how the revenues would be spent. Greenpeace wants to see the offset provisions strengthened, and the funding for coal projects reduced.

"It's better than any bill we've ever seen, and that's good," said Radford. "Our position right now is that it needs to be stronger, and we're going to work with Congress to make sure that happens."

Greenpeace will continue its various corporate campaigns, including an effort to get Kimberly-Clark, the world's largest paper goods company, to start using Forest Stewardship Council-certified trees and recycled paper in its products. The group is also working with musical instrument-manufacturers like Fender and Gibson to push them toward using FSC-certified trees from Alaska's Tongass National Forest, and with McDonald's to curb deforestation in Brazil.

The grassroots experience is at least part of the reason the Greenpeace board tapped Radford for the new role. "For bold ideas to win on the climate crisis in Congress and boardrooms, we need thousands of courageous people to put themselves on the line for the Earth," said Greenpeace Fund Board Chair David Chatfield. "Phil knows how to put ideas and people together for change."

"What the board has said is that we see our role much more now as helping to build the movement that's being created around global warming," said Radford. "How are we getting out of the Beltway and really building the power of that movement?"

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LAS VEGAS—Consumer electronics manufacturers are making greener products than a year ago but more progress needs to be made before they can claim a truly environmentally friendly product, Greenpeace said Friday.

In its second greener products survey, “Green Electronics: The Search Continues,” the environmental activist group assessed the progress made by consumer electronic companies in greening their products over the past year.

The Greenpeace survey was released at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where manufacturers have been seeking to outdo one another this year in touting how green their products are.

The CES organizers have dedicated a special area in the convention hall to Greener Tech and among the products unveiled here was a mobile phone made of recycled plastic water bottles from Motorola.

For the survey, Greenpeace said 15 companies submitted 50 new products they considered their greenest for evaluation: mobile and smart phones, televisions, computer monitors, notebook and desktop computers, and game consoles.

The products were graded on use of hazardous chemicals, energy efficiency, innovation, promotion of environmental friendliness and lifecycle—whether they can be recycled and upgraded.

“Progress is being made,” said Casey Harrell, Greenpeace International toxics campaigner. “We’re no longer having to cajole people about the need for green.

“These companies understand both what green is and the need for it,” he said. “We’re moving in the right direction.”

The Greenpeace survey found that fewer products contain harmful PVC plastic and hazardous chemicals and more post-consumer recycled plastic is being used in televisions and monitors.

Electronics manufacturers are also taking back more used products and engaging in more recycling, Greenpeace said.

But the “race for the green winner is still on,” Harrell said.

“We’re on the hunt for a truly green product that is free from toxic chemicals and excels in energy efficiency and durability,” he said.

“The electronics industry has taken encouraging strides towards increasing the green features on some gadgets over the past year but none stand out in all environmental categories.”

Greenpeace said the Lenovo L2440x wide computer monitor scored highest in the monitor category with 6.9 points on a 10 point scale.

Other category leaders were the Sharp LC-52GX5 television (5.92), the Samsung F268 mobile phone (5.45), the Nokia 6210 Smart phone (5.2) the HP Elitebook 2530P laptop (5.48) and the Lenovo ThinkCentre M58 Desktop (5.88).

Submitting products for the survey were Acer, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, RIM/Blackberry, Sharp, Samsung, Sony, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba.

Greenpeace said the following companies refused to take part: Apple, Asus, Microsoft, Nintendo, Palm and Philips.

Among the green initiatives announced at this year’s CES was a joint program by Panasonic, Sharp and Toshiba to recycle televisions and other gadgets they sell in the United States.

The global firms on January 15 will begin using an Electronic Manufacturers Recycling Management network of 280 locations as collection centers for their products.

The network will have at least one recycling center in each US state and intends to expand to at least 800 drop-off points.

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