My colleague Nick Zigelbaum posted this on his NRDC Switchboard blog. Nick is NRDC's lead advocate on California building policy and has worked extensively on efficiency policies in China. He's a fellow engineer and his blog is a great resource for thoughts on California and all things building related.

I developed the following graphic for a presentation to a visiting Chinese delegation. I believe it sums up our building energy efficiency strategies simply and effectively.

An Explanation:

The dotted line curve represents a rough idea of the new construction market in the U.S. The y-axis intimates a informed assumption of all buildings and the x-axis shows the relative efficiency of those buildings. We assume the buildings market would shape out a bell curve when measured on efficiency, as do most statistical analyses.

The far left piece of the graph represents the least efficient buildings built every year. These are the buildings in states without mandatory codes and non-compliant buildings in states with very weak mandatory codes. We call these buildings laggards.

The far right shows early adopters; those who build the most efficient buildings as part of a pilot project, research and development, competition, or just to say they could do it.

Beyond this, the graphic illustrated NRDC's policies regarding buildings, from left to right:

With these strategies combined, and with the refinement of each of the above bullet points each year, the buildings market can function properly, promote efficiency and draw the country into a cleaner future. Of course, this is easier said than done. Each of these strategies has obstacles to overcome and opportunities for growth. In my next blog I hope to elaborate on these challenges and opportunities. 

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Salvadoran mudslides: A plea for climate change solutions and holistic water policy

DOE and EPA Agree to Make a Brighter Energy Star

New air conditioning and furnace standards mean big savings

Courtesy Climate SOSGlobal warming activists endorsed by the preeminent climatologist James Hansen are working to defeat the climate and energy bill in Congress, and they’re using some provocative stunts to spread their message.

Briefly:

At least three groups worked together on last week’s events—Climate SOS, Rising Tide North America, and “Greenwash Guerrillas,” which pied Thomas Friedman last year. They all hold a “no compromise” philosophy on climate-change action, opposing carbon markets that allow polluters to buy and sell pollution credits and arguing that larger environmental groups such as NRDC have compromised too much in working with businesses and Democratic lawmakers.

“It’s an awkward position to be environmentalists working on climate change but opposing a climate bill,” said Climate SOS organizer Rachel Smolker, a Vermont ecologist and author. “Especially with a new administration that we want to support. But we felt we need to take a really strong position because this [bill] is so inadequate.”

The campaign is awkward for “establishment” green groups too. They’ve been preparing to battle fossil-fuel interests over the energy bill introduced in the Senate this week. Now they must figure out if and how to respond to this attack from the far left.

“It’s troubling,” said Daniel J. Weiss, director for climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank with close ties to the Obama administration. “No one believes that the clean energy bill that will come out of Congress will address the threat of global warming in a single step. But we have to start.”

“The real enemies are Big Oil and Big Coal and the right wing attack machine,” he said. “For them to mock [Gore] in the way they did shows that they don’t understand you need to attack your enemies and not your allies.”

Hansen’s involvement is especially troublesome. The director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies wasn’t involved in the New York stunts, but he endorsed Climate SOS’s recent tour against a climate bill. The $2 trillion bill includes his statement that a cap-and-trade program “would be worse for the environment than doing nothing.”

The opposition by Hansen and Climate SOS is unlikely to influence Washington policymakers, in Weiss’s opinion, but it’s got the potential to make everyday Americans think the situation is hopeless.

“If they hear from such a respected scientist as James Hansen that what Congress is doing won’t matter, then why would they bother to call their senators to say ‘Act on this’?” he said.

Climate SOS activists at NRDC's headquartersCourtesy tanukiAside from the stunts last week, other moves by the “no-compromise” camp are downright perplexing. Last week Greenwash Guerrillas launched a website in response to Cleanenergyworks.us, a three-month-old diverse coalition supporting a comprehensive energy bill. The similar-sounding Cleanenergyworks.biz was a replica of the real Clean Energy Works site, with two notable changes: The phone number and email address for spokesperson Josh Dorner had been changed. His name was left the same. The site changed to a more innocuous version over the weekend and is currently down. (Have a screen grab? Send it in and we’ll post.)

Dorner had no interest in speaking about the site that took his name. “I don’t send too much of my day worrying about a website,” he said Thursday. “There are considerably more important tasks before us to get this bill across the Senate floor.”

NRDC spokesperson Michael Oko shared Dorner’s reluctance to give attention to the stunts. “There are a lot of different groups out there,” he said in regard to the banner hung at NRDC’s office. “Everybody has the right to express themselves.”

About the replica website Oko said, “Frankly, I was a little confused about what their intention was.”

Smolker of Climate SOS said the idea was “to provide a spoof, to reveal the emptiness of the claims Clean Energy Works provides. For them, it’s green jobs and clean energy and everything’s a smiley-face, you know? Our goal is to tell people to look deeper and take the smiley faces off.”

At Environmental Defense Fund.Courtesy tanukiShe said she contributed ideas for the mock site, but individuals from Greenwash Guerrillas, who did not want to be identified, created the idea.

The 51-year-old Smolker has seen firsthand how environmental groups can evolve, professionalize, and grow in wealth and influence. Her father was one of the founders of Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), another group targeted by Climate SOS last week. EDF met in her childhood home when it was still a “ragtag group,” as Climate SOS is now, she said. (Smolker, who works for Biofuel Watch, declined to give funding information for Climate SOS but said all members were volunteers.)

“We’ve played that compromise game for a long time,” she said. “There’s too much at stake right now.”

The compromise question—whether to sacrifice what is ecologically necessary for what seems politically possible--has been around as long as the green movement itself. The naturalist-and-mystic John Muir and the politician-and-forester Gifford Pinchot clashed over the same tensions in the early 20th century.

As for Hansen’s “worse than nothing” remark, there has been plenty written about the failings of the House climate and energy bill—it gives away too much to dirty-energy backers, it even protects coal-plant pollution from further regulation. But there is historical precedent of legislation that is deeply flawed at first evolving into something effective and durable. The original Clean Air Act did not address the acid rain crisis, an omission not corrected until 1990. The original Social Security Act did not include domestic or agricultural workers, effectively excluding many Hispanic, black, and immigrant workers, as Democratic strategist Paul Begala notes.

“If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist,” writes Begala. “Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start.”

Most progressives, including many major green groups, would gladly embrace an imperfect climate bill as a start.

“Those who see the House clean energy bill as somehow tainted by deals, and therefore want a carbon tax, have to understand that no tax proposal would ever emerge from Congress as we know it without similar or worse deals being made,” said Weiss. “Unfortunately the moral high ground of ‘we must act for our children’ is necessary but not sufficient for our political process.”

Smolker said Climate SOS would continue on a different tack, insisting on an acceptable bill from the get-go. She expected the group would pause to take stock of the bill released in the Senate this week, then regroup.

Here's Cap'n Trade delivering his message to Danish climate and energy minister Connie Hedegaard:

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Which of the following organizations -- U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Natural Resources Defense Council or the American Coal Council -- posted the following paragraph?

“... policies to support CO2 capture and sequestration at power plants and industrial facilities could also help recover almost 37 billion barrels of stranded domestic oil by 2050. This increase in annual oil production using the CO2 from power and industrial facilities could cut crude oil imports by over 55%, create tens of thousands of new jobs, and generate up to $800bln in royalties for states and the federal government. In addition, this increase in domestic oil production could also prevent or delay dirtier fuels from coming to market and help to lower global oil prices as well.”

The only good thing about this NRDC piece, written by Andy Stevenson, a former hedge fund manager, is the quality and number of sane NRDC membership responses.

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Senators opposed to Clean Energy Jobs Act are ignoring bill’s benefits to Americans—Part 2

Rod Coronado.“Rod Coronado is not a terrorist,” says Dean Kuipers, author of Operation Bite Back: Rod Coronado's War to Save American Wilderness and a longtime writer about the world of eco-activism.

Back in the 1980s and '90s, during Rodney Coronado's radical sabotage campaigns on behalf of animals and the environment, terrorism was generally considered to mean violence against people. Feeling strongly that the loss of any life was wrong and that casualties would harm the movement, Coronado took care to not hurt anyone as he liberated animals and burned down research facilities across the American West. Charged with arson in 1995, Coronado served four years in a medium-security prison and, in August of 2006, was sentenced to eight more months for dismantling a government-owned mountain lion trap.

But over the years, the official definition of terrorism expanded. Through the 1992 Animal Enterprise Protection Act, the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act, and the 2006 Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, the federal government proclaimed that the tactics the radical animal-rights crowd had been using for years were now a form of "terrorism" and could be prosecuted much more harshly.

In 2007, Coronado found himself standing before a judge once more--though not for property destruction, as his days of burning down buildings were long behind him, but for making a speech. While giving a lecture about his past radical actions, Coronado answered an audience question about how to build an incendiary device out of a plastic jug, and for that, Coronado was charged with a felony and ultimately sent to federal prison for a year and a day. Compared to other collared eco-activists who have been threatened with sentences of up to 20 years under the stricter federal laws, perhaps he got off easy.

Kuipers has been following Coronado's flame-broiled tale of radical action for 17 years and tells the whole story in Operation Bite Back. Kuipers makes it clear that he does not advocate arson or property destruction, but challenges us to consider whether it's reasonable to apply the label of terrorist to someone who releases animals from a lab.

------

Q. How has the shifting definition of "terrorism" changed the environmental movement since the 1980s?

A. I think a lot of the old-timers, the "rednecks for wilderness"--it's sort of where Earth First! began, and Sea Shepherd too in a way--might pin a little bit of that expansion of the term "terrorism" on the late '80s-'90s anarchists who came into the scene. Guys like Rod Coronado. They changed things a lot because the original eco-radical[s], like Greenpeace, were sort of mainstream conservation guys -- they called themselves conservationists. Mostly they were white men who had parties out in the woods and ate steaks and drank whiskey. They were kind of red-blooded Americans, like the heroes of The Monkey Wrench Gang.

And then this whole new contingent, right around 1990, started coming in that was much more about anarchism and identity politics. "What do I believe, and how does that separate me from the rest of the world?" People got into listing their issues. "I not only don't eat animals, but also I am transgendered and I have these piercings that are very important to me." Those kind of issues just drove the old-timers insane, because all of those things started being in the radical journals: "What are we going to do about the homophobia in our movement?" Those are all important discussions, but they didn't have anything to do with saving whales or species problems. That was very disconcerting to the old school of the movement. A lot of them kind of left the movement, because they didn't think that was as important as saving a chunk of wilderness or preserving a specific species.

The use of the word terrorism was always around, even in the '60s, early '70s -- but it was always rhetorical. I think it was Ron Arnold who actually coined the term in 1982: "eco-terrorist." But it was rhetorical at that time because eco-terrorism didn't exist. Unless you killed somebody, you weren't a terrorist. And they hadn't killed anybody, so there wasn't any eco-terrorism.

Changing [terrorism] laws [to encompass environmental activism] really came about because guys like Rod Coronado went further, started using arson. The threat of more violence was sort of there in that movement and I don't think that went over very well with a lot of the conservation movement, and they kind of split off in a lot of ways. So I think that the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front and people who modeled themselves after them have found themselves very isolated from the rest of the movement.

Q. Where do you see the eco-movement going from here?

A. I think that the mainstream approach is totally taking over right now, and they're being successful. Kind of all they had to do is wait out George Bush. I think they have a very sympathetic ear right now. All of the big groups -- NRDC, the Sierra Club -- are very effective right now. They have sympathetic ears in Congress; people like Henry Waxman [chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and cosponsor of the House climate bill] kind of took the key positions that they needed them to take. The deck is loaded now for a lot of stuff to happen.

However, I think that the radical parts of the movement arise because of threat. The global warming question will continue to get bigger, and species extinction and various types of animal abuse, for lack of a better word, are not going to get better. So I think that that kind of action will rise. I don't see that the terrorism laws have ever really stopped it because people -- young people in particular -- just assume they won't get caught. And they're right. They've hardly caught any of those people through the years, [even though there have] been over 1,200 actions and like a billion dollars worth of damage.

I think that the radicalism will rise if the mainstream movement fails to get anything done. I think that's why there's always a radical element to any movement. They're there to step it up and push everybody to a more aggressive position. If they pass some real bullshit legislation about global warming that's basically full of loopholes and everybody can drive a Hummer, the radicalism will step up.

Q. How do people respond when you talk about your work?

A. It depends on who it is. There's such a huge community of people who believe in more radical action -- called direct action -- in solving environmental and animal rights problems that there's a lot of sympathy. But there [are] a lot of people for whom Rodney Coronado is not radical at all and would like to see it go far beyond that.

But that's not the mainstream, and for the most part, mainstream America doesn't really want to get involved in this. They still eat meat and they don't really want to think about factory farms or where their mink coat comes from. Consciousness has definitely gone way, way up, but still it's a huge jump from being conscious about where your food comes from or where your coat comes from to being somebody who knows people who actually go out and do stuff about it, [whether] it's just legislation [or] actually trying to close a place down physically. That's kind of shocking.

I'm sure my family in Michigan would be a little bit appalled: "Another book from Dean that we can't read!"

Q. Have you faced conflicts within the mainstream media because there are stereotypes about environmental activists?

A. I haven't encountered that many serious challenges. You have to dial things back. You have to position them in such a way that the publication feels comfortable that you haven't just completely denied one half of the story from getting its say. Even when we know things are just absolutely for sure -- something like a cancer cluster of people from asbestos -- you've still got to call for a comment from the asbestos department where they say, "No, it's not us." But I do that, so there haven't been too many stories I've brought to people where they've just said, "No, that's too radical for us."

Even in my book, I don't write about Rod Coronado saying that arson is awesome. Arson is not awesome. Arson sucks. It's a thing that people should not do, but it's a tool that he used and I present it pretty matter of fact. I'm sure I will be accused of being an apologist for arson, but that's not my purpose. But if I did write a book about that, I don't think it would be as good, because suddenly there's no reason for any of the farmers to talk to me, the FBI, the police. All those guys have amazing and cool facts that I don't know, and I want all that stuff. As long as we do that, I think the story gets better and people are more open to reading it. I lose less of the audience. You can make more of a difference.

Q. What originally drew you to writing about eco-radicalism?

A. [The actions] happen in great locations. I grew up in the woods in Michigan with a big hunting and fishing family. I was living in New York City when I first started doing this stuff and really sweating it, and having a hard time getting myself out to the Catskills on the weekends to see some trees.

But there are whole protests that last for months happening in redwood groves in Northern California, and people trying to stop roads from being built into central Idaho, which is like God's Country. It's just amazing there -- huge contiguous pieces of roadless wilderness with wolves and moose. Those are the kind of places I like to be in. And on a boat with the Sea Shepherds out in the eastern tropical Pacific to Cocos Island or something -- it's fantastic. I'm not only working on a story, but I'm in the places I would like to see preserved.

Q. Does it water down our legitimate concerns about terrorism to have environmental and animal-rights activists looped into it?

A. Sure. I think it's an insult to the intelligence of the average American, that we can't tell the difference. But of course we can tell the difference! Osama bin Laden goes on the TV on one of his Al Jazeera tapes and says, "We will make the infidels pay," and that's about killing people. The Militant Vegan League -- which is something I'm just making up -- sends out their communiqué saying you have to stop hurting bunnies and you have to stop factory farming where you keep chickens in little cages. It's just a completely unrelated issue in every way -- strategically, philosophically, tactically, in every way. Terrorism is such a strong word that it just allows the same kind of law enforcement tactics to be used to suppress it.

Q. What is the No. 1 message you want to stick with people after reading your book?

A. What we were just talking about. I picked out a particular person--Rod Coronado--to help me tell the story because I want it to be obvious by the time you get to the end that Rod Coronado is not a terrorist. He's done lamentable things, he's burned things and attacked businesses and been very aggressive. But he's never attacked any people. He's an intelligent and respectful person who did things on principle and believed that he was executing the height of nonviolent direct action.

There's a difference between bursting into the Holocaust museum with a gun with the intention of "I'm going to kill a bunch of people to make a statement," and going into someplace late at night and burning their fence and making sure that no people are hurt because you want to make a statement.

We need to take some action to preserve the difference, for all kinds of reasons. So that people don't rot in jail who don't need to for long periods of time. So that we, as a country, are not spiritually affected by this -- I think that there's a price to pay when your country endorses things like torture, and calling people terrorists who are not terrorists plays into that. You're falsely accusing certain sectors of the public of doing something they're not doing.

I also think that it's not that good for us environmentally, that we shouldn't be able to demonize people who are trying to get a message across that many people would recognize as positive.

Catch Dean Kuipers on his book tour or follow him on his blog. You can also see him on BookTV Sunday, July 25.

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Cast your vote for the best climate journalism

Seattle is the most sustainable big city in the nation, according to a list compiled by Smarter Cities, an NRDC project that looks at the progress American cities are making toward going green. Not surprisingly, San Francisco and Portland are the runners-up.

Using data from the EPA and the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as some voluntary survey responses from city governments, the project identified the top 15 large, medium, and small cities according to 10 different environmental criteria, from air quality to recycling to transportation.

Here's a look the top 15 large cities (population of 250,000 or more):

It's hard not to be environmentally minded in a city with views like this.Photo: Simonds1. Seattle
The Emerald City gets props for its brand-new light rail system, reliance on hydroelectricity (and the resulting good air quality), Mayor Greg Nickels' U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Agreement, and two global warming initiatives: Seattle Climate Action Now and Seattle Climate Partnership. Seattleites are described as "highly educated and environmentally minded." Think it's just a coincidence that Grist is headquartered here?

San Francisco is one of the most densely populated cities in the country.Photo: ATIS5472. San Francisco
San Francisco's dense population, walkability, plastic-bag ban, city-created carbon offset fund, solar power program, and booming local food movement propelled it to the No. 2 spot. (Read more about Mayor Gavin Newsom's green efforts.)

Portland has always been a leader in big-city sustainability.Photo: Ben Amstutz3. Portland
Seattle's neighbor to the south got its light rail up and running more than 20 years ago, and the city has always been ahead of the curve on controlling urban sprawl and suppressing greenhouse-gas emissions. Portland's residents also recycle more than half their waste.

Oakland is making a green comeback.Photo: satanslaundromat4. Oakland, Calif.
This once-struggling city has a Green Jobs Corps, a New Urbanist 10K Downtown Housing Initiative, a Zero Waste Plan, and a growing local food movement (as urban farmer Novella Carpenter explains). It also gets 17 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. Sounds like there is a there there.

How green was my Silicon Valley?Photo: the_tahoe_guy5. San Jose, Calif.
Always on the cutting edge of the high-tech world, this capital of Silicon Valley is fast on its way to leading the green-jobs revolution. Its Green Vision includes plans for bringing 25,000 new clean-tech jobs to the area.

Austin's new smart grid will light up the night -- sustainably, of course.Photo: Visualist Images6. Austin, Texas
A liberal outpost in red Texas, this city owns its electric utility (meaning voters elect the utility's board) and plans to adopt a smart grid in the near future.

Sacramento aims to be green while it grows.Photo: kla40677. Sacramento, Calif.
The Golden State's capital, while suffering from the side effects of rapid population growth, has a progressive, publicly owned utility that, in addition to offering a 100 percent renewable power option, provides free trees to residents hoping to cool their homes with natural shade.

Boston stands out among less-green East Coast cities.Photo: werkunz18. Boston, Mass.
Boston's push toward wind and solar energy, its efforts to become more bike-friendly, and its LED traffic lights make it a leader on the environmentally lagging East Coast.

Denver conserves water like nobody's business.Photo: kla40679. Denver, Colo.
The Mile High City is already way ahead of its goals for reducing water consumption. Its new bike-sharing and composting programs and extensive system of city parks also helped it make the top 15.

Chicago's city hall has its own green roof.Photo: Smarter Cities10. Chicago
Always famous for its architecture, today Chicago has more LEED-certified buildings than any other U.S. city and boasts 300 green roofs. (Read more about Mayor Richard Daley's green efforts.)

San Diego is growing smart.Photo: Smarter Cities11. San Diego
Parks and open spaces make up almost a quarter of this city's land area, and its smart growth program has led to impressive developments.

The Big (Green) Apple.Photo: mikeleeorg12. New York City
What it lacks in air quality and renewable energy it makes up for in density, walkability, and Mayor Bloomberg's commitment to reducing the city's carbon footprint. (Read more about Bloomberg's green efforts.)

L.A. works to clear a path through the smog.Photo: Storm Crypt13. Los Angeles
Infamous for its smog and clogged freeways, L.A. is making admirable efforts to switch to renewable energy and conserve its water supply.

Big D: Greener than you'd think.Photo: dherrera_9614. Dallas
Dallas gets 40 percent of its electricity from wind, has seen a huge spike in public transit usage in recent years, and cracks down on lengthy truck idling during the "ozone season" from April to October.

Columbus hopes for an urban resurgence.Photo: jpmueller9915. Columbus, Ohio
A perhaps unexpected entry on the list, flat Columbus lends itself to bike-friendliness. The city has also been working hard to revitalize its downtown core and combat sprawl.

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Last week, Time magazine asked, "Why Are Southerners So Fat?"

There's no simple answer, of course. Poverty, culture and climate all play a role in the South's high obesity rates. But one factor that's increasingly blamed by everyone from medical journals to the CDC is how Southern cities are built.

"The South doesn't have many bus stops," Time writes. "Public transportation is paltry, and for most people, the best way to get around is by car. ... States like Mississippi and Tennessee also have a surprising lack of sidewalks, discouraging even the most eager pedestrians. Many roads are narrower than those in the North -- where streets have wider shoulders to accommodate winter snow -- and people who want to bike or jog find themselves uncomfortably close to traffic."

All of which speaks to the fact that cities matter -- to our health, as well as to the health of the planet. When we think of the environment in this country, we generally conjure up images in our mind of cuddly wildlife and pristine wilderness -- the kind of things that we go on vacation to see, not what's around us every day. But how we build our cities can play a very important role in preserving and protecting the environment.

"When it comes to global warming," Time says, "green acres aren't all that green -- life in the crowded city is actually much more climate-friendly."

There's a tendency in America to believe that everyone wants to live on two-acre lots in the suburbs, but city living has made a comeback in recent years, in part because cities are working to improve quality of life and sprawl is turning out to be not-so-sustainable or desirable to many people.

Well-designed transportation systems, mixed-use development, progressive planning, energy and water conservation, recycling programs, open space preservation -- all of these factors can help make a city more friendly to the environment and more livable for its residents.

A new website known as Smarter Cities, which launched earlier this month, aims to highlight the potential of cities to help reshape the environment responsibly. The site grew out of the Smarter Cities Project, formerly part of National Geographic's Green Guide and now affiliated with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Smarter Cities ranks communities across the country with a population of 50,000 or more on criteria of sustainability and livability. The data is collected and crunched with the help of a researcher from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

The result: "One of the nation's most comprehensive and robust databases of U.S. urban progress toward sustainability," according to the Smarter Cities site.

So how green is your city? It will probably come as no surprise that among the nation's largest metropolises, perennial greenies such as Seattle, San Francisco and Portland topped the list (although you might be surprised at some of the other names in the top 15). Madison, Wis., is the top medium-sized city, while Bellingham, Wash., gets the small city nod.

Smarter Cities is far from the only attempt to identify the nation's greenest burgs, and not everyone is going to agree. The criteria used, how they're weighted, studying cities vs. metro areas, etc., can all make a difference. So while the rankings can be fun, it's more important to look at what they're based on and get a sense of what your city is doing right -- and where it needs improvement.

Is your city on the right path?

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Courtesy trackrecord via FlickrOmaha zillionaire Warren Buffett repeated his criticism of cap-and-trade emissions regulation on Wednesday, telling CNBC the plan being pushed by Democrats amounts to “a huge tax” and a “fairly regressive tax” that’s going to burden poor consumers in particular.

“If we buy permits, essentially, at our utilities, that goes right into the bills of the utility customers and an awful lot of people in Iowa, in Oregon, and Utah, and places where we are, very poor people are going to pay a lot more money for electricity,” said Buffett, who runs the holding company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (Transcript.)

“Regressive” is the opposite of the conclusion reached by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

The CBO’s study found Waxman-Markey would cost the average household $175 a year by 2020, while the lowest-earning fifth of households would see average savings of $40 a year. That’s the opposite of regressive.

EPA's analysis found household electricity and natural gas spending would be reduced by 7 percent in 2020 because of the energy efficiency and consumer protection provisions of the legislation. (Buffett, like so many others, seems interested only in the cap-and-trade portion of Waxman-Markey, not its other three titles.)

The NRDC created a model of Waxman-Markey’s impact and found it would have the cumulative effect of cutting household electricity bills in 46 states (with modest increases in Minnesota, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota).

And ACEE found the bill would save approximately $750 per household by 2020 and $3,900 per household by 2030.

Next time Warren Buffett stops you on the street and starts hating on cap and trade, consider yourself equipped to respond.

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There's a lot of talk about the costs of the proposed climate bill for American consumers. As we've documented repeatedly, opponents of climate policy have cranked out lots of "studies" to prove the bill will crater the economy.

The latest garbage to come out of the opposition team was the map that suddenly popped up last week, purporting to show that the American Clean Energy and Security Act would rob states of large sums of cash. Kate Sheppard traced it back to the National Mining Association in a terrific piece.

While the NMA map was a good visual, it wasn't a good actual. As in, actual representation of the bill it purports to represent. As Kate notes, the analysis on which it was based didn't actually model the bill. Which as I've noted before is a tried and true way to show catastrophic effects for climate legislation.

The Climate Bill Cuts Electricity Bills

Well, NRDC did model the actual bill. And its actual provisions. And we find that Americans in nearly every state will save on their monthly electricity bill under the American Clean Energy and Security Act. With its energy-efficiency and consumer protection provisions, H.R. 2454 creates modest savings for most consumers. Even in the few states where savings compared to business-as-usual are not projected, bills still will be lower under H.R. 2454 than they were in 2007.

For a pdf map and a detailed methodology and explanations, see my original post.

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In other UK news: “Rain like this happens once every 1,000 years”

Let’s look at one of the illegally hacked emails in more detail

Investments in clean energy -- such as those encouraged by the American Clean Energy and Security Act -- would produce several times as many jobs as the same amount of money spent on traditional fossil fuels, according to new studies released Thursday by a coalition of environmental groups and research institutes.

Lower-income Americans in particular would benefit, according to a report from the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, which was commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Green for All.

Upgrading the U.S. economy to rely less on fossil fuels would create a surge of manufacturing and construction jobs that would include renovating homes and buildings to be more energy efficient, tapping clean energy sources such as wind and solar to produce more electricity, and building better transit systems and other infrastructure improvements.

"For a generation, this is the great opportunity in our economy: rebuilding our energy infrastructure," said PERI's Robert Pollin at a news conference Thursday morning.

A separate report produced by the Center for American Progress and released jointly Thursday found that a $150 billion annual investment in clean energy could create a net increase of 1.7 million American jobs and significantly lower the national unemployment rate.

Clean energy investments take dollars that would be spent on energy from overseas and instead invest that money in local, homegrown energy sources and improvements in energy efficiency, which saves homeowners and businesses money, said Bracken Hendricks, a CAP fellow.

That's why clean energy investments create more than three times as many jobs as the equivalent investment in traditional fossil fuels, he added.

The bottom line, said NRDC executive director Peter Lehner, is that the United States will spend trillions of dollars on energy over the coming decades, in one sector or another.

"It will spend that money stupidly, or it will spend it smart," Lehner said. "If we spend it well, it will have tremendous impacts throughout the economy."

That's especially true for people with lower levels of education, according to the NRDC and Green for All report. It found that about half of the 1.7 million new jobs created by a $150 billion investment in clean energy would be available to workers with a high school degree or less, providing opportunities to lift low-income workers out of poverty.

The study confirms that a "non-polluting economy" provides more opportunities for people of color and people in urban areas, said Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, CEO of Green for All.

NRDC's Lehner added that "the two reports provide solid evidence why we need to move forward"  by encouraging Congress to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which is expected to be considered soon by the House. He added that the studies show that opponents of the bill -- who raise the specter of economic losses if it's enacted -- "have no facts to support them."

Although ACES is not perfect, Lehner said, it's a starting point for capping global warming pollution and investing in clean energy -- and the need for clean energy investments and the resulting benefits to the U.S. economy have never been clearer.

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Memo

TO: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, Heritage Foundation and other industry groups predicting the end of life as we know if America takes action on climate change

FROM: Natural Resources Defense Council, Political Economic Research Institute/University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Green for All and the Center For American Progress

Subject: Inconvenient New Study Debunks Your Scare Tactics about the American Clean Energy and Security Act

It's time to face facts. You are just wrong when you forecast massive job losses, economic dislocation and harm to low-income Americans if the U.S. takes action on energy/green jobs issues. Contrary to what you've been suggesting, it turns out that "down is not up" and "night is not day": More green jobs resulting from tackling climate change is a good thing for America -- including lower-income households.

Today, NRDC and Green for All are releasing "Green Prosperity:  How Clean-Energy Policies Can Fight Poverty and Raise Living Standard in the United States" a new report by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI.)

The report finds that half of the net new jobs created through clean energy investments would be accessible to workers with high school degrees or less, and that about 75% of those jobs will offer good opportunities promotions and rising wages over time. In addition, investments in energy efficiency and transportation reduce monthly living expenses, which consume a high proportion of the budgets for low-income budgets.

The report concludes: 

"The building of a clean-energy economy in the United States can also serve another purpose: to create new 'pathways out of poverty' for the 78 million people in this country (roughly 25 percent of the population) who are presently poor or near-poor, and raise living standards more generally for low-income people in the United States."

According to a complementary study that PERI recently completed with the Center for American Progress (CAP), clean-energy investments at the level of about $150 billion per year-i.e. around 1 percent of U.S. GDP-can generate about 1.7 million net new jobs throughout the U.S. economy."

Here is what the new study found:

Less unemployment and more earnings

More & better jobs for those who need them most

{Sidebar: See and hear workers in the clean energy economy talk about their clean energy jobs here.}

Lower home utility bills for low-income Americans

Improved Public Transportation

So, let's get the story straight: Tackling climate change means more jobs, more income and lower living expenses for low-income Americans. The conclusion is simple: If you really care about poor and near-poor Americans, get on the right team and start working for Congressional action on climate change and green jobs.  I'm not holding my breath here, but I would like to think that you can't ignore the facts forever!

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When I was growing up, my family lived in New Orleans for several years, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. One of my father's friends had a boat, and he liked to take it out shrimping. My dad and I would often join him and his son.

I loved those early morning boat trips (except for the time that I got very seasick -- probably my fault for snacking on Fritos -- and the trip that I'm about to tell you about). The lake was so big that you could barely see the shoreline.

On one occasion, our nets were coming up empty, so my dad's friend steered the boat toward the mouth of the lake where it meets the Gulf of Mexico and ventured into a cove where he hoped to find some shrimp. Soon, the boat started dragging. We feared that the net had gotten snagged on the bottom of the lake. But when they winched it in, the cause turned out to be quite a bit scarier for my 10-year-old self.

The boat had gone right over a school of stingrays, which had probably ventured into the lake from the Gulf, and our net was full of them. As the net came up, it looked like they were going to spill into the boat. My dad and his friend struggled to release them without damaging the boat or the fishing equipment, but eventually they had no choice but to cut the net away.

I watched from the prow as those ghostly stingrays spread out beneath us, silently gliding away from the hapless weekend fishermen who had inadvertently disturbed them.

Drawing food from the sea is one of the most fundamental interactions that we can have with the our oceans, and I'm glad that I have those early experiences in New Orleans to draw upon. The stingray incident taught me a respect for the ocean and its creatures -- and a concern for how we interact with them -- that sticks with me today.

The fish we choose to eat -- and the way we fish for them -- can have a tremendous impact on our oceans. As part of a personal goal to eat healthier, I'm trying to increase the amount of fish in my diet. It's a lean protein with great health benefits. But there are risks, as well: Some types of fish can be contaminated with mercury and PCBs, and sometimes seafood is harvested in a way that's bad for the oceans.

A new Sustainable Seafood Guide from the Natural Resources Defense Council can help me -- and you -- make better choices about what we eat. It provides seven basic guidelines to follow when shopping for seafood or ordering at a restaurant, as well as specific advice about America's five favorite types of seafood, from shrimp to tuna to fish sticks.

I was a little disheartened to see that many of my favorite varieties of fish -- grouper, halibut, orange roughy, cod -- had landed on the recommended "avoid" list. (Pacific cod and halibut are OK, but the Atlantic varieties are badly depleted.) I was aware of the overfishing problems that many species face, but this put it in pretty stark terms.

Today is the first-ever World Oceans Day, designated by the United Nations as an occasion to celebrate and protect the world's oceans. And there are certainly a lot of problems facing our seas -- overfishing, habitat destruction, acidification, water pollution, giant trash vortexes in the Pacific ... the list goes on.

We might not be able to tackle all of those big problems all at once. But as NRDC's Laura Pagano suggests, one way that each of us can make a difference right now is to make smarter choices about the seafood we eat and understand its impact on the oceans.

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The U.S. government will designate critical habitat for polar bears off Alaska's coast as part of a partial settlement of a lawsuit brought by Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Center for Biological Diversity. The Interior Department declared polar bears a threatened species in May, but neglected to make any stipulations for habitat protection. "You can't protect a species without protecting the place where it lives," says CBD's Kassie Siegel, adding, "After global warming, oil development is the biggest threat to polar bears." Federal law prohibits actions that "destroy or adversely modify" designated critical habitat, which would seem to include offshore oil and gas drilling -- though with GOP vice prez candidate Sarah Palin touting "safe, environmentally friendly drilling offshore," one never can be certain. After a rule proposal, public comment, and public hearings, the finalized critical-habitat designation must be in place by June 30, 2010. And the one remaining polar bear will no doubt appreciate it.

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American beaches "continue to suffer from serious water pollution that puts swimmers at risk," concludes the Natural Resources Defense Council in an annual report. There were 22,571 pollution-related closures or warning advisories on 3,516 beaches in 2007, says the report, second only to the all-time high 25,643 closures or warnings in 2006. NRDC attributed the decline to less rainfall in the West and Hawaii in 2007, which caused less overflow from sewer systems and storm drains. But stormwater runoff still caused nearly half of the closures and warnings, and pollution at 7 percent of the beaches exceeded national health standards. Says NRDC's Nancy Stoner, "Some families can't enjoy their local beaches because they are polluted and kids are getting sick -- largely because of human and animal waste in the water." Ew. In many places, dunes, beach grass, and other natural buffers have been wiped out by encroaching development, the report noted; it called for improved monitoring and tougher federal standards for beach water quality.

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Eco-friendliness has been seeping into pro baseball for a while, and now it's pretty much official: America's pastime has gone green. Major League Baseball partnered with NRDC at the start of the season to encourage teams to, um, win at sustainability. Head to a ball game near you, and chances are you'll toss your plastic beer cup into a recycling bin, gaze upon a solar-powered scoreboard, and pee in a no-flush urinal (sorry, men only). Scouts are traveling in fuel-efficient vehicles; stadiums are converting used cooking oil to biofuel; and teams are offsetting their carbon footprint. With 80 million spectators attending MLB games each year, the trend toward greenness is welcomed. "[T]his is signaling a cultural shift that I think is unprecedented, to have Major League Baseball embracing environmentalism," says NRDC's Allen Hershkowitz. "It's apple pie, it's motherhood, it's baseball, it's environmentalism."

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Doing nothing in the face of climate change would cost the U.S. $1.9 trillion a year (in today's dollars) by the turn of the next century, says a new report from green group NRDC. That includes big spending on severe-weather damage, real-estate losses, and energy and water costs. The NRDC report is aimed to counter claims that the Lieberman-Warner bill, set to hit the Senate floor in June, will severely hurt the economy. "If you think it's expensive to do something about climate change, this tells you how expensive it will be to do nothing about climate change," says lead author Frank Ackerman. The report also predicts that unchecked global warming would lead to an average temperature increase of 13 degrees Fahrenheit in most of the U.S. by 2100, so that New York City would have the clime of Las Vegas, San Francisco that of New Orleans, and Boston the average temperatures of Memphis.

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In entirely expected news, green groups have sued over the Interior Department's listing of the polar bear as a threatened species -- or, more accurately, over Interior's caveats that the listing not be used as a means to fight global warming. The Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, and NRDC say the bears should be listed as endangered instead of threatened, and that the listing should spell out steps to reduce climate change -- the main threat to the bears' livelihood.

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A long-running disagreement over what should be done with the largest swath of privately owned wilderness in southern California has been settled by a deal between green groups and a developer. Ninety percent of the 270,000-acre Tejon Ranch will be conserved, while 26,000 homes will be permitted on the remaining 10 percent. The Center for Biological Diversity, which was not involved in the truce, expressed iffiness, saying that the development would disrupt crucial habitat for the endangered condor. But the green groups involved in the deal -- including NRDC, the Sierra Club, Audubon California, the Planning and Conservation League, and the Endangered Habitats League -- were satisfied that a good balance was struck. So was Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who stated that the agreement shows how "we can protect California's environment at the same time we pump up our economy." Yes, he said "pump up."

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A new green-jobs campaign has been launched by the Sierra Club, NRDC, the United Steelworkers, and the Blue Green Alliance (itself a project of the Sierra Club and the steelworkers union). The Green Jobs for America campaign, moving forward on the momentum of last month's Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference, will be focused in 12 states and will aim to raise public awareness, encourage private investment in renewable energy, and push for green-minded policy.

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