--Washington Governor Christine Gregoire on her all-hands-on-deck cleantech philosophy, speaking at the Cleantech Open's Pacific Northwest Regional Awards Gala Oct. 29. She was quoting Blue Marble Energy CEO Kelly Ogilvie.

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This post was co-written by Kathleen Ridihalgh, Senior Representative for the Sierra Club’s Northwest Region

The first three days of this week are seeing a slew of activities taking on coal. We have events in 25 states to counter the coal industry and cheer on clean energy investments. It’s all part of our National Day of Action, and there are events happening across the nation, including rallies, public hearings, coal deliveries to polluters, press conferences, brown bag lunches, coal tours, and town hall meetings. Our Campuses Beyond Coal campaign is holding photo petition events on a dozen campuses nationwide, calling on campus administrators to shut down old, dirty coal plants polluting those universities and the neighboring towns.

These events are all sending one message from coast to coast -- coal is dirty business, and we need clean energy. You should check the website to learn more about these creative events and see if there are any taking place near you.

As we watch activists in these states work together for clean energy, we want to highlight a few states taking steps in the right direction that we hope other states will emulate. The Governors of Washington (Chris Gregoire), Oregon (Ted Kulongoski) and Montana (Brian Schweitzer) have all committed their states to meeting climate goals and investing in a clean energy future.

Now these three governors can continue to lead the way and take another tangible action within the region that will make significant progress towards meeting those goals: Directing the Northwest Power and Planning Conservation Council’s (NWPCC -- the region's official power planning agency) latest power plan to phase out coal by 2020, assign a responsible cost to carbon pollution, and maintain high energy efficiency goals.

This may be the one action they can take that is solely under their power to deliver. And they can do it today. This would get the region on a path to reducing the emissions from our electricity by 77 percent and ensure a safer, cleaner, more reliable energy portfolio overall. NWPCC has even stated that "serious efforts to reduce or even stabilize CO2 production beyond 2005 will likely require replacing existing coal-fired power plants with low CO2-emitting resources."

Washington's Gregoire and Oregon's Kulongoski have made real progress and paved the way for meeting the climate challenge. The 6th Power Plan is an excellent opportunity for Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer to demonstrate a true commitment to meeting the scientific goals for climate change.

This step with the NWPCC would mesh well with the states’ actions thus far:

But this action with the NWPCC is something they can do in the Northwest to show the rest of the world that there is a better way. We urge the governors to stay true to their vision now with the NWPCC Power Plan -- they should improve the current plan by maintaining maximum energy efficiency goals, putting a price on carbon emissions, and stating, as a goal, the plan to move the region off coal power by 2020.

This would be the single most important step they can take to have any real chance of meeting their states goals and making real their personal commitment to this important issue.

If you’re in the Seattle area, you can help promote this idea of moving the region off coal at a rally on Wednesday night. Otherwise, be sure to find any National Day of Action events near you.

The NWPCC is also having hearings throughout the Northwest where you can make your voice heard for a Coal-Free Northwest:

Though it has spent millions on "clean" coal advertising, the truth is that the coal industry has for years actively fought against cleaning up the existing fleet of over 500 coal-fired power plants, some of them dating back to the Eisenhower Administration. The industry must stop trying to block common sense regulations and policies that will protect communities and the environment. Rather than seeing these efforts as a threat to jobs and the economy, such regulations are the path forward to protect people’s livelihoods. Strong regulations put us on a path to cleaner technology that boosts economic growth, creates jobs and protects the planet. 

We didn't use to have a choice about how to power America. Today we can do better.  It's time to clean up pollution from coal and build the clean energy economy.

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Runoff and dog poop are killing Puget Sound.

On Sept. 17, a diverse coalition of 57 cities, counties, businesses, universities, and advocacy groups launched a campaign called Puget Sound Starts Here to try and deep six these and other threats to Washington State’s vast inland waterway. (Funding for the effort is coming from state and private sources.) 

Puget Sound is home to orcas and octopi, salmon, and sea lions and four million people. The people -- and their pets -- are the problem.

On an average day, stormwater runoff fouled by lawn fertilizers, household cleaning products, and oil from roadways sends 140,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into streams and rivers, which empty into the Sound. An amount of oil equivalent to the 11-million gallon Exxon Valdez spill washes into Puget Sound every two years.

Puget Sound pet poop adds even more goodies: fecal coliform bacteria, roundworms, salmonella, giardia, and perhaps even the dreaded MRSA, the staph bacteria that’s been turning up on beaches around Seattle.

These environmental insults are bad for Puget Sound orcas, already among the most PCB-contaminated mammals; bad for the region’s multi-million fishing and shellfish industries and for its $9.5 billion tourist industry; and of course, bad for the Sound itself.

“Puget Sound is dying,” said David Dicks, director of Puget Sound Partnership, one of the coalition members. “And many of us don’t realize that our actions are contributing to its decline.”

Puget Sound Starts Here hopes to change that. A new advertising campaign and website encourage residents to take simple steps, including reducing or eliminating the use of fertilizers and pesticides, fixing any fluid leaks in the car, choosing biodegradable home cleaning products and religiously scooping that poop.

Polling shows that 97 percent of Puget Sound residents value the Sound and want to protect it, but that a mere 25 percent know there’s a problem. Puget Sound Starts Here plans to boost awareness of the problems confronting Puget Sound and inspire fans to become part of the solution. 

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Daniel plants showy fleabane, a prairie flower native to the Pacific Northwest, at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center.Photo: Sarah van Schagen

Rows and rows of small yellow cylinders fill the greenhouse where Daniel works steadily, beads of sweat forming on his round, bald head as he places tiny seeds in each container. He is planting showy fleabane, an endangered variety of prairie groundcover that will eventually produce purple-petaled blooms worthy of their moniker.

His work is part of a federally funded prairie restoration project, an effort to repair the native grasslands of the Pacific Northwest in areas like Fort Lewis, Wash. But Daniel, who asked that his last name not be used, is not your average horticulturalist. For one thing, his greenhouse is on the grounds of a maximum security prison.

Daniel, as well as many of the men tending seedlings around him, is part of the Sustainable Prisons Project at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in western Washington. The program is a partnership between Evergreen State University and several state correctional facilities that allows offenders to opt in to sustainability-related work projects.

Jason Chandler plants Walla Walla Sweet Onions in the organic garden at Stafford Creek Corrections Center.Photo: Sarah van SchagenThe liberal-arts university/state penitentiary partnership may sound like an odd pairing -- the Evergreen alumni magazine likened it to Maya Angelou dating Dick Cheney -- but so far, both parties consider the relationship a success. The scientists get cheap (and eager) labor, while the offenders get the opportunity to participate in meaningful work.

One inmate participating in the pilot program at the Cedar Creek Corrections Center was the senior author of a peer-reviewed paper about the project in an international sustainability journal, and upon his release began pursuing a Ph.D. in biochemistry.

"What I care about is that [the offenders] are exposed to what we can offer in the way of science, the wonder of nature, of thinking critically," says Nalini Nadkarni, the Evergreen ecologist who helped establish the Sustainable Prisons Project. "Those are all things that when they get back out into society, they will carry with them ... increas[ing] the scientific literacy of our country, and perhaps even more important ... the civic engagement that they have with society."

The tasks vary across the four prisons that are now part of the sustainability project (administrators hope eventually to expand it statewide), and include tending to organic gardens that provide fresh produce for the kitchen, separating recyclables from the waste stream, beekeeping, and minding composting worms.

The offenders can also participate in a variety of conservation efforts like the prairie restoration, a project being led by The Nature Conservancy. They are also helping breed endangered spotted Oregon frogs and "farm" mosses for the horticultural trade (which aids in preventing unsustainable harvesting from old-growth forests).

Photo: Sarah van SchagenAll of the offenders involved in the program get specialized training and guidance from scientists and other educators working with the corrections centers.

That green-collar job training is key, says Doug Raines, the man behind Stafford Creek's new beekeeping operation. He knows there are lots of valid reasons to keep bees -- honey production, pollination, protection from colony collapse -- but he does it to provide job opportunities.

"If I can get one guy a job and he doesn't come back, then I have paid for everything that we have done, and that's my reason for having the bees," Raines says. "It's one more avenue for employment when they get out of here."

The offenders aren't the only ones at the correctional facilities who are benefitting from the project, though. The sustainability efforts are also saving money -- a valuable incentive in an economy that has seen significant cuts to the state's Department of Corrections budget.

When the Cedar Creek facility began to tap out its water supplies, efficiency upgrades like low-flow toilets and showers and a rainwater catchment system helped save 250,000 gallons of water in the summer alone. And the gardening, composting, and recycling efforts are saving the facilities thousands of dollars every year.

"[Correctional facilities] are essentially small cities running 24/7," says Sustainable Prisons Project Manager Jeff Muse. "If we can make them more sustainable, not only will it save money, save natural resources, and save lives, but it would be an example for all kinds of other institutions, such as military bases, summer camps, hospitals, and schools."

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This post was originally published on the website of the Center for Public Integrity and is reposted on Grist with CPI's kind permission.

More than 460 new businesses and interest groups jumped into lobbying Congress on global warming in the weeks before the House neared its historic vote on climate change legislation, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of just-disclosed lobbying records shows.

The surge in the 12 weeks leading up to the June 26 vote meant that about 1,150 different companies and advocacy organizations were promoting their vision of how the nation should tackle climate change, a more than 30 percent cumulative jump over the 880 companies and associations that were storming Capitol Hill on the issue as the year began. Some 190 of the interest groups that were lobbying in the first quarter of the year did not continue their lobbying in the April-June time period.

It’s impossible to say with certainty how much money was spent on lobbying the climate bill, since businesses don’t have to detail expenses for separate issues they are pushing in Congress — like climate, health care, the economic stimulus, or taxes. But so many groups were lobbying climate that even if the issue consumed only 10 percent of their efforts, the cost would have been more than $27 million in just the second quarter-from April through June.

The interests were wide-ranging. It’s no fluke that farm interests took center stage as the vote approached, considering that nearly 20 companies and organizations that produce or promote biofuels — including refiners and would-be refiners of plant matter from corn to wood chips to algae — started lobbying climate legislation for the first time. But they were joined by a host of others. American Superconductor of Devens, Massachusetts, pushed for the electricity grid modernization in the bill — a move that would enhance the market for its superconductor wires, which the company says can carry ten times the power of traditional copper cables and potentially double the power capacity of wind turbines. Electric grid investment also was a primary goal for PickensPlan, the advocacy project of billionaire T. Boone Pickens, which joined the lobbying fray in the second quarter. Pickens had sunk millions into the Texas wind power he touts as an important domestic resource, but electricity from the rural plains isn’t going anywhere without more wires. In fact, Pickens last month postponed his power plan due to financing problems.

Numerous religious groups, from Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, to the National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, have been lobbying on the bill over the past year. In the second quarter, another advocacy group joined in: the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, concerned about possible subsidies to “faith-based” organizations for energy system retrofitting.

T. Boone Pickens. Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/ / CC BY 2.0

About 30 higher education institutions and associations — from Ivy League to community colleges — also joined in lobbying on the climate bill in the final weeks before passage, most with an eye on federal money that might be available for climate-based educational programs or research. The Exploratorium — a San Francisco-based, interactive science museum — along with four other science centers, said in a letter to the climate bill’s authors, “we see few more important issues for our future as a species” than global warming; the organizations wanted to be sure that institutions like science centers and natural history museums also would be eligible to compete for climate education grants.

“The closer we got to finishing the bill, the more intense the frenzy to get little pieces into the bill,” said a senior Congressional staffer. The aide believes the integrity of the legislation held up, nevertheless, even as the measure ballooned from the initial 648-page draft to the 1,428-page mammoth passed by the House. The main goal — reducing the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent by 2020 — remained intact, the source said. “It worked out okay, but sometimes at the end of the day you felt like you had been pawed by a lot of people — all your good friends who just wanted to help you out on this piece of legislation.”

Companies and advocacy groups that started lobbying on global warming in the second quarter, according to filings with the Senate Office of Public Records.

Adage LLC
Algenol Biofuels, Inc.
American Sugar Cane League
Aurora Biofuels
Corn Refiners Association
Fulcrum Bioenergy, Inc.
GeoSynFuels
Green Earth Fuels
Growth Energy
Kai Bioenergy
National Biodiesel Board
New Generation Biofuels (Formerly H2Diesel)
Patriot Renewable Fuel
Petroalgae, LLC
Poet LLC
Renewable Biofuels
Novogy
Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative
Targeted Growth

What did all these groups get for their lobbying dollars? In the case of agriculture — with nearly 80 total businesses and interests groups lobbying — it’s pretty clear, due to the high-profile showdown forced by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., who threatened to deep-six the bill. To gain his votes and those of other committee members, the climate bill’s authors, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and his global warming subcommittee chair, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., agreed to enhance the benefits farmers would gain for participating in the nation’s effort to cut greenhouse gases. And the legislation gave some protection to the makers of ethanol, the fuel alternative distilled mostly from corn, despite opposition from critics who claim it’s not as green as portrayed.

Agriculture-based alternative fuels were especially well represented among the new lobbying entrees. For instance, there were lobbyists from technology firms claiming they can make fuel from new sources, with at least four separate companies touting the promise of algae (Algenol Biofuels, PetroAlgae, Kai BioEnergy, and Aurora Biofuels). There were also companies like sugar maker Florida Crystals, which operates the largest biomass power plant in North America, and was pushing for greater support of biomass power development.

But the biofuel lobbying powerhouses remained the companies that refine ethanol from corn, especially POET Biorefining of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In 2007 POET overtook agricultural giant and longtime industry standard-bearer Archer Daniels Midland as the nation’s leading ethanol producer, and its first foray into lobbying on climate was the second quarter of this year.

Former NATO Commander Wesley Clark

Leading the charge for POET was the new interest group it helped create with several other ethanol makers last fall, Growth Energy. Retired four-star general and former NATO commander Wesley Clark is the group’s public face, but there’s also a team of lobbyists behind the scenes. In addition to its chief executive Tom Buis, a long-time fixture in the farm lobby, and former Iowa Republican congressman Jim Nussle as special adviser, the group paid $30,000 to Kountoupes Consulting last quarter. That brought on board former Clinton administration congressional liaison Lisa Kountoupes, who also had been a staffer to Energy and Commerce chairman emeritus John Dingell, and Melissa Shannon, former legislative aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Since the House vote, Growth Energy has added even more Washington firepower, hiring Anne Steckel, former aide to Illinois’ Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, the majority whip, and Ted Monoson, former aide to House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). With what is widely seen as a tough battle coming in the Senate over the climate bill, Growth Energy’s CEO Buis says there is plenty of work ahead, beyond the changes made at the behest of House Agriculture committee chairman Peterson.

“What he did was stand up for all of rural America and say ‘We’re gong to be impacted by this and we want some of these issues addressed,’” said Buis. “Did he get them all addressed to satisfy everyone? I think that obviously Senator [Tom] Harkin [D-Iowa] and the Senate Agriculture Committee are going to be addressing other concerns. Because if you look at the Senate, it’s going to have to address ag issues, because I don’t see how you get to 60 votes without it.”

Even so, it’s still energy interests and heavy energy users that dominate the lobbying scene. Leading the pack were manufacturers, with about 200 companies and advocacy groups, followed by the power companies and utilities, with some 130. Coal and coal utility interests were seen as making out well in the House climate bill, especially regarding provisions requiring the federal government to initially give away carbon emissions “allowances” that likely will eventually be worth billions of dollars. But not all energy interests gained in that deal, which likely will slow the move to low-carbon forms of electricity generation. Enter a new interest group: America’s Natural Gas Alliance, representing more than two dozen producers of natural gas that are independent — that is, not affiliated with a larger oil company. The alliance, which represents about 40 percent of U.S. natural gas production today, argues that they should be fueling a much bigger share of the nation’s electricity production since natural gas is the least carbon-intensive fossil fuel. The coal industry has argued that such fuel-switching could be costly, but ANGA is plying the Senate, the White House, and Obama administration energy and environmental officials with maps showing how new drilling techniques mean the nation can rely more heavily on natural gas without fear of the price spikes that have previously plagued the fuel.

ANGA’s argument is being aided by a team from Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates, including Joel Malina, a former political aide to New York Democratic Representative Nita Lowey, and Jack Howard, who was on the White House staff of both President Bushes. Howard had also been a senior adviser to GOP House Speakers Dennis Hastert and Newt Gingrich, as well as former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.

Rod Lowman, who spent 17 years in Washington defending the plastic industry against environmentalist critics as president of the American Plastics Council, is now pushing the benefits of natural gas as president of ANGA. “The principal question we’re getting, quite frankly, is ‘Where have you been?’” says Lowman. “The utilities and the coal industry have been at this for a very long time.” Because “most of the deals had been cut” in the House by the time ANGA started lobbying on May 1, he says the group is focusing its sights on the battle on the other side of the Capitol. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chair Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, says that battle will begin September 8. “The Senate will be looking at those emissions allowances, looking at offsets, looking at renewable energy standards — all those things will be revisited — and we want to make sure we are a part of that discussion,” says Lowman. “We will be a part of it.” And so, apparently, will more than 1,100 others.

David Donald, M.B. Pell, Joe Kokenge, Josh Israel, Te-Ping Chen, and Sarabeth Sanders contributed to this article.

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About four miles from the town of Cle Elum, Wash., there is a large, flat piece of land surrounded by a ring of 50-foot-tall Ponderosa Pines. The area has been repeatedly logged over the last few decades and is now relatively treeless. But it may soon be home to an entirely different sort of renewable resource.

The land has been purchased by investors who want to build a 400-acre solar park that would generate 75 megawatts of renewable energy -- enough to power 45,000 homes -- making it the largest solar photovoltaic facility in the world.

The world's largest solar park ... in Washington state? Why yes, says Howard Trott, the managing director of the project. Contrary to popular belief, this area of the state (about 80 miles southeast of Seattle's notorious gray skies) enjoys over 300 days of sunshine a year -- plenty enough to move Washington state into position as the second largest solar producer by megawatt in the U.S., behind California.

If all goes as planned, the Teanaway Solar Reserve would also include a solar manufacturing facility that would construct the photovoltaic panels needed for the park and then go on to produce versions appropriate for residential customers. All told, the project would create "hundreds of new family-wage manufacturing and construction jobs" in the area, Trott says.

It would also extend Washington state's leadership in the emerging clean-energy economy, says Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who worked closely with Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) to ensure that critical tax incentives for renewable energy did not expire at the end of last year.

Before construction can begin, the Teanaway Solar Reserve project must survive the local permitting process, which could take about six months. But Trott is hopeful that by 2011, they'll be up and running -- and showing the rest of the country that Washington has a bright future in solar energy.

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The American Clean Energy and Security Act (aka the Waxman-Markey bill) narrowly passed in the House late Friday thanks to eight bold Republicans who hopped the fence. And one of them is Washington state's very own Dave Reichert of the 8th District (which includes Mercer Island, Bellevue, and surrounding areas).

Some 44 House Democrats, mostly from coal-producing and industrial states, broke party lines by voting "no" on the bill that promises renewable electricity standards, emissions caps, investments in energy technology, and more. That means those eight Republicans who gave a "yay" rather than a "nay" produced the simple majority vote (plus one bonus vote!) that catapulted ACES to the Senate floor.

Why did Reichert decide to break from the Republican pack and support the bill? He remained tight-lipped about the decision until the votes were counted, and then released this statement:

How did your representative vote? Here's the breakdown for Washington state:

Yay

Nay

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Here's a King 5 News video clip and here is a short article from the online Seattle PI, demonstrating how much easier it is to fall back on science when there's money involved. The PI article suggests that Seattle quit because of this EPA study, which came out in May (Figure 2 shows soy biodiesel worse than regular diesel). It also suggests that this is a temporary situation when it isn't. Quite a change from a year ago when permission was given to invest ten million dollars of the Seattle Employee's retirement funds in a local biodiesel refinery now sitting idle.

Here is a quote from an article I wrote in the first week of April:

And here is the information presented to that particular politician via email prior to that meeting.

The city of Berkeley also stopped using biodiesel. Seattle is located in King County, which dropped biodiesel earlier in the year. That leaves Washington State, which still has laws on the books mandating ever-increasing blends of biodiesel in all state vehicles.

Higher level politicians appear to be taking a wait and see position. Visit their websites you'll find they are still gushing over how biofuels are going to stimulate the local economy (refinery death watch), fight global warming (not), and make us energy independent (80% of biodiesel was being shipped overseas).

What should have been obvious from the beginning is that growing both food and fuel will take more land. That land has to come from somewhere. It is coming from existing ecosystem carbon sinks. It should also have been obvious that food processors would be competing for the same feedstocks as the fuel processors, thus temporarily driving the price of both up, which in turn is the signal needed by farmers around the world to start torching grasslands, rainforests and peat bogs, which will in turn lower the price of feedstocks again, until the next biofuel mandate causes another round of price signaling and land clearing. There are 3 billion more people on the way.

It was just about four years ago that I first suggested this was a really bad idea. Be sure to read all of the comments from that post from four years ago.

The food based biofuel issue is in many ways analogous to the coal issue in that change is going to have to come from the bottom. Get off your butts and join some peaceful protests.

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The Climate Post is a weekly roundup of climate news, produced by the The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University.

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For those mercifully far enough away not to know, the “Capital beltway” is a looping highway, Interstate 495, the way many metro Washington residents ride to work. “Inside the beltway” isn’t coincident with Washington, DC. It also connotes a mythical place unrestrained by geography, a state of mind where consequential details of legislation attract and hold attention, sometimes for years on end. Whether you work inside or outside the beltway determines whether you think there was climate news this week in the capital, and by extension, Bonn.

Insider baseball: Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the committee chairmen who authored the climate bill now moving through the House, spent the week explaining the 900-plus-page draft to colleagues. At this writing, Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) just began an agriculture committee hearing into how the bill might affect rural communities. Peterson and more than two dozen Democratic members of Congress threaten to hold their support from the bill unless Waxman and Markey address their concerns about equitable treatment of farmers. Republicans introduced an energy bill in the House Wednesday that emphasizes nuclear power and would set as a target the construction of 100 new reactors over the next two decades, 100 more than the U.S. has built in three decades.

Talks in Beijing between the world’s two largest greenhouse gas polluters, China and the U.S., overshadowed international negotiators in Bonn, who are wrapping up two weeks of United Nations-guided talks, according to the Economist.

Climate chatterers have ample material with which to choose how to think about developments in China. That’s not because the ideology behind different publications support different facts — although that does happen with greater frequency in the U.S. media. It’s because there are so many facts coming out of China, it’s hard to keep track of all the trends. Here are two. The Guardian buttonholes a national development officer who boasts that by 2020 China will produce 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources — on par with Europe. That’s not mutually exclusive with the continued rise in Chinese coal use — 1.8 percent higher in 2008 than in 2007, according to Bloomberg. A lively debate continues in scientific and policy circles about whether the rise of coal use in China is significantly reversing a three-decade long global decline in the carbon-intensity of industrial fuels.

“Outsider” baseball: Without a simple beltway story unifying the news, media coverage becomes a patchwork of simultaneous episodes in the climate saga. Disinterested observers might wish for a national or international climate regime, not because they care about a particular approach, but because it might help impose one central storyline on the whole climate space, its politics, policy, business, and science (Sort of the way that some argue for a national climate policy to unify efforts in California, the Northeast, and the West).

Instead, this week's stories play out in the Midwest and U.K., in Texas and China, as many people around the world confront the climate challenge locally. Two stories from Hawaii beg the question, why does this matter to anyone else? By any traditional standard, they don’t. Some 50,000 people on Oahu have been given rebates for solar water heating systems that are expected to cut fossil-fuel bills significantly. On Maui, a German-born entrepreneur is pushing the state’s utility regulator to adopt what’s called inside the beltway a “feed-in tariff,” a law that would offer homes powered by renewable electricity a fixed price per kilowatt, over a 20-year contract and guarantee a connection to the grid so homes and businesses can send unused electricity into the network. This nano-scale Hawaiian news suggests that forces other than politics are shaping energy transformation on the margins. A beltway insider recently suggested to Climate Post that climate legislation is having its make-or-break moment in Congress, and if it fails will vanish after that — poof! This week’s global headlines suggest that the potential for new-energy entrepreneurship — and, on the downside, risk of catastrophic climate change — will ploddingly change behavior regardless of congressional actions this time.

Tilting at exploration platforms: Fights over wind power are a common trend this week in the Midwest. Chicago private and civic leaders fear that a national carbon regime is likely to raise electricity prices in the region, but is also likely to ignite the rust belt’s economic renewal. Midwest governors received a report commissioned in 2007 charting a cap-and-trade program to help six states reduce their emissions. Wisconsin is emblematic of the two-steps-forward-one-step-back success of wind power in the state, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

Confusion about what to do isn’t limited to the Midwest, where this week’s reports document conflicts within neighborhoods and between interest groups. Greenwire catches a Monmouth University poll suggesting that individuals are conflicted within about energy issues: The number of Mid-Atlantic residents who support offshore drilling rose from 33 percent to 46 percent in two years. More than 80 percent support offshore wind farms if they can’t be seen from land — and 67 percent do if they are visible.

Whither wind? Scientists cited in an AP story suggest that average wind speeds across the U.S. might be slowing. Roger Pielke Jr. takes a bite out of the finding at over at Prometheus, and Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann parse the question at Real Climate.

The eclectic physicist Freeman Dyson has garnered increased attention in the last couple of years for his skeptical thinking about global warming, in a New York Review of Books essay, a New York Times Magazine cover story, and this week an interview with Yale e360. In the latter piece, Dyson provides abundant caveats for his views, namely that he doesn’t know “technical facts.” Dyson’s general attacks on computer modeling studies of climate change exclude the “preponderance of evidence,” physical evidence, that suggest big changes are afoot.

Prefer glazed donuts, please: When a proposed law as consequential as the climate bill (few are more consequential) passes through a major committee en route to the House floor, prominent commentators forge new opinions in real time. When mainstream thinkers take on previously cloistered policy, it’s a good time for both communities to take notes. Take newly minted Pulitzer columnist Eugene Robinson’s Washington Post column about so-called clean coal technology. He introduces the topic with this sentence:

The plan is to meet ambitious targets for limiting emissions of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse” gases through development and widespread use of an unproven technology known as — prepare for your eyes to glaze over – carbon capture and storage. [Emphasis added.]

Hawaiian solar water heaters, Ohio street dirt and “pulp liquor,” carbon capture and storage, and Mississipi Delta bamboo industry expansion (it exists) might not qualify as an eye-popping thrill ride, but it appears to be the ride we’re on.

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Last week, news broke that regional power consortium Energy Northwest may be looking to build another nuclear reactor in Washington state.

The last time Energy Northwest went after nuclear power, they were known as Washington Public Power Supply System -- or WPPSS, which eventually came to be pronounced as "whoops" when only one of five proposed plants was completed (the Columbia Generating Station operating on the Hanford Nuclear Site), causing one of the largest municipal bond defaults in U.S. history.

So why revisit this issue some three decades later? Energy Northwest is seeking the golden ticket that is carbon-free electricity generation; they already utilize solar, wind, and biomass sources but are now looking at other options. Nuclear power is certainly one of those options, but it doesn't come without risk, says Robert Alvarez, director of the Nuclear Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

And Alvarez would know. After serving as senior policy adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Energy during the Clinton administration, he and his colleagues published a report in 2003 detailing the vulnerabilities of spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants across the country.

Alvarez is in Seattle this week as a guest of the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility; he'll be giving a free talk at Town Hall Wednesday night on "Energy and Weapons in 2009: How do we assure a sustainable, nuclear-free future?" I took the opportunity to ask him about the Energy Northwest project and the ways it could affect local citizens.

Q. You're here in Seattle to talk about the need for a nuke-free future. What are the issues at stake here in Washington state?

A. You basically have three main issues. You have a lot of nuclear weapons stationed at Puget Sound and what will happen in terms of future arms reductions is going to have an impact on that. You've got the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which stopped making materials for nuclear weapons 20 years ago and has left behind a very large, daunting mess that needs to be cleaned up. And now you have talk of perhaps building new nuclear power plants by Energy Northwest.

Q. If Energy Northwest was to build a new nuclear power plant, what would be the dangers there?

A. The dangers, if you want to put it in those terms, would be of an economic nature. The fact of the matter is that even before the collapse of Wall Street and the financial services industry, they had pretty much made it clear that they weren't going to take any risks in financing nuclear power plants and that's the way it's been for some 30 years. So if Energy Northwest decides to proceed to build and operate a new nuclear power plant, they're going to have to rely on the taxpayer and the ratepayer to bear all the risk of this operation.

The other issue is that since the Obama administration is effectively taking the Yucca Mountain disposal site off the table, the Columbia Generating Station and all the nuclear power plants in the United States -- all 103 of them -- are facing the prospect of having to store these wastes on site for the indefinite future. So the waste problem is not really being solved -- it's just there.

The additional issue I have with nuclear power plants is that the way spent fuel is stored at these reactors is not, I think, acceptable in this day and age where we can be targets of terrorist attacks … [My colleagues and I] pointed out that if the terrorist were to cause the water to drain from these pools, it could lead to a catastrophic fire [that would] release radiation over the landscape and create an area of severe contamination that would render an area uninhabitable for hundreds of years; it would be substantially larger than the radiation control zone created by the Chernobyl accident.

Q. What cities would be affected?

A. This would be the Tri-Cities area. We raised this issue because there are definitely safer ways of storing spent fuel at reactors and whether you're for or against nuclear power plants, there's no reason to have this stuff stored the way it is right now. The whole idea behind dense compaction was that it would be suitable until Yucca Mountain was opened. So now it's time to be thinking more seriously about the prospects of the spent fuel staying at these sites for several decades and storing it in the safest, most secure way possible.

Q. What are your thoughts on nuclear power as a carbon-free alternative?

A. I think we have tended to look at nuclear power in a very narrow way, like "gee whiz, it's here, we can generate electricity and we don't have to generate all these greenhouse gases." But there are other issues here that you have to consider when you make that decision [to build a nuclear power plant]; if you don't, this can turn into something a lot more serious and more regrettable.

Q. During your talk at Town Hall, what will be your message to the citizens of Washington state?

A. Be aware that if a decision is made to proceed with a nuclear power plant, the citizens of Washington state, as ratepayers and taxpayers, are going to bear the complete risk of this plant -- financial and any other risk. Is that how you want to generate electricity? The other message is that there's already a very large mess created, and we have to really start to pay attention … to the Hanford Site -- there's a lot more work that has to be done out there. The third issue is we need to really work hard to hold President Obama to his pledge to transform our energy future.

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A plan to build a "clean coal" plant in Washington state is officially dead:

Energy Northwest officials said they could not produce a required plan for capturing carbon emissions from the proposed plant in the foreseeable future. A 2007 Washington law sets strict limits on carbon emissions from coal plants and requires that utilities show how any future coal plant would capture or "sequester" carbon emissions by permanently injecting them deep underground, thus preventing them from entering the atmosphere.

Energy Northwest's decision to withdraw its application "was simply a reflection of the fact that the law passed by the state Legislature made it financially and probably legally impossible for us to move forward with the gasification plant," said Energy Northwest spokeswoman Rochelle Olson. "Carbon sequestration is really still in the research and development stages, and as a public agency we are prohibited from accepting open-ended risk."

Once companies have to start building "clean coal" plants instead of just using them as a rhetorical device to slow down climate legislation, it's quickly going to become apparent that, well, there is no such thing.

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Climate change is a global problem—but as of yet, there’s no global solution. That’s why mayors across the U.S. are taking action, from building green to organizing bike rides, from redeveloping downtowns to cutting emissions. Here are just a few of the municipal leaders who have worked to take our collective future into their own hands.

Bloomberg unveils his grand Plan.PlanNYC 20301. Michael Bloomberg, New York City.
Pop.: 8.2 million
Call New York the accidental eco-city: cram millions of people onto an island, and you’ve got to figure out how to build up, not out. Throw a big park in the middle, and voila: you’ve got an anti-sprawl city that values open space. During his tenure, Bloomberg has made the most of that happy accident, creating an ambitious 127-point initiative called PlanNYC 2030 that encompasses everything from reclaiming waterfronts to repairing electrical grids to reducing traffic congestion. (OK, that last one hasn’t gone so well.) A year after unveiling the plan in 2007, the city had launched a full 93 percent of its components.

Nickels at a climate rally with King County exec Ron Sims, since tapped to head HUD.Oran Viriyincy 2. Greg Nickels, Seattle.
Pop.: 594,000
In some ways, Greg Nickels became synonymous with the phrase “green mayor” after spearheading the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in 2005. Since then, more than 900 of Nickels’ fellow mayors have come on board, Republican and Democrat alike, from all 50 states. No stranger to eco-ideas at home, Nickels—who has led the Emerald City since 2002—has also been instrumental in bringing light rail to the area, pushing to increase investments in open space, and launching an ongoing series of “clean and green” community-service events. He’s up for reelection this year, and one challenger says he hasn’t done enough on the environment. Only in Seattle.

Newsom uses a white hanky to demonstrate clean diesel emissions. Seriously!MTC3. Gavin Newsom, San Francisco.
Pop.: 765,000
Another mack daddy of sustainability, Newsom is almost too green to believe. Since he took office in 2004, the city has reduced government emissions to below 1990 levels, launched the nation’s largest solar incentive program, banned plastic bags, and introduced ambitious green building and green jobs programs. Sometime in the not-too-distant future, city leaders hope to increase wind power by the Bay, including underwater turbines at the Golden Gate Bridge. Speaking at a conference of green IT entrepreneurs this spring, Newsom—who also recently confirmed his 2010 gubernatorial ambitions—offered up his city as guinea pig: “If you have an idea, let me know. We are a laboratory for innovation.”

Malloy in a glamorous mayoral moment.Will Merydith/flickr4. Ed Malloy, Fairfield, Iowa.
Pop.: 9,650
In November, the city fathers in this liberal southeastern Iowa outpost unanimously adopted a Green Strategic Plan. Their vote was more than ceremonial: they also secured a state-funded grant to hire a sustainability coordinator, inventory their greenhouse gases, and create educational materials for residents. The new plan envisions everything from conserving energy to supporting local farms. Malloy, who’s been mayor since 2001 and heads up a local oil company, says the environment-economy connection is clear. He hopes Fairfield’s ideas will catch on: “We want to create a model community, a virtual template that other small towns can adopt to create the same results.”

What a difference a Daley makes.www.drugabuse.gov5. Richard Daley, Chicago.
Pop.: 2.8 million
Since announcing his intention to make Chicago the country’s greenest metropolis, Daley has made great strides. Green roofs cover or are planned for 3 million square feet, topping everything from City Hall to a McDonald’s. Redevelopment and landscaping have revitalized gathering places across the city, from prominent landmarks like Grant Park to neighborhood playgrounds. And the Windy City is committed to increasing its use of renewable energy (though a recent revelation showed things lagging in that area). Chicago is even bidding to host the 2016 Olympics—a bid that hinges on the event being the greenest Olympics in history.

Franklin, my dear, she does give a damn.City of Atlanta6. Shirley Franklin, Atlanta.
Pop.: 519,000
Often held up as the poster child for sprawl, Atlanta boasts more green than meets the eye—and Franklin is to thank for much of the recent progress. Mayor since 2002, she has attacked infrastructure and intangibles with the same gusto, from overhauling the city’s sewer systems to creating a Climate Action Plan. The city is building a public-transit BeltLine, is tops in LEED-certified buildings, and has implemented practices in City Hall that led to a 20 percent decrease in energy usage. A comprehensive private-sector group called Sustainable Atlanta is developing recommendations for further actions, and all eyes are on the future. “We are building a green, sustainable city,” Franklin says. “We do this for our children, and we do this because it is the right thing to do.”

Planner, politico, father, grandfather.RalphBecker.com7. Ralph Becker, Salt Lake City.
Pop.: 179,000
Building on the groundbreaking work of predecessor (and official Grist crush) Rocky Anderson, Becker—who took office in 2008—has already made ripples in the eco-community. Upon taking the helm, Becker introduced his Blueprint for a Green City, in which he pledged to improve public transit, expand greenways, create neighborhood centers to promote walkability, and improve air and water quality. And the former urban planner isn’t just talking the talk; among other concrete steps, the city is piloting hybrid police cars and has undertaken an overhaul of its city code to make sustainability easier for all residents to achieve.

Don’t mess with Jerramiah.Byron Smith/Jersey Journal8. Jerramiah Healy, Jersey City.
Pop.: 242,000
He’s a rough and tumble guy running a historically rough and tumble city. But that just goes to show that green can be pursued anywhere, by anyone. Healy was recently given a Green Leadership Award by the state U.S. Green Building Council chapter. During his five-year tenure, he has held polluters accountable, opposed a controversial reservoir development scheme, and redeveloped brownfields. Up for reelection this month, Healy recently introduced ordinances that would require city departments to pursue LEED certification and green purchasing, and is reportedly considering a ban on plastic bags.

Manny being Manny.City of Miami9. Manuel Diaz, Miami.
Pop.: 410,000
Though some critics have dubbed him “Concrete Manny” due to his love of development, Diaz is paving the way for sustainability in Miami. An early signatory to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, he created Miami’s first sustainability department and a community-wide Green Commission. He has pushed green building, led an energy-retrofit of City Hall that included solar-panel installation, and is converting the city’s fleet to more efficient vehicles. Late last year Diaz launched Bike Miami Days, and this spring the city hosted a week of events leading up to Earth Hour. “We’re on the front line of global climate change here,” Diaz told Newsweek in 2007. “The water level doesn’t have to rise too much for us to be riding around Miami in canoes.”

Walker? I’d rather bike.Robert the Noid/flickr10. Elaine Walker, Bowling Green, Ky.
Pop.: 53,000
This TV producer-turned-politician has her hands full, from increasing affordable housing to contending with the crash of Big Auto, but green is on her radar screen. Transportation issues loom large in this western Kentucky city, and Walker has worked with local bike-advocacy groups (even creating a Mayor’s Bike Ride) and launched a Rethinking Transportation Choices task force. A signatory to the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, she is a proponent of green building and downtown redevelopment. “There’s too much of a perception that going green is a little bit out there and idealistic,” she has said. “It’s not idealistic—it’s vital.”

Cicilline envisions a model future.Cicilline.com11. David Cicilline, Providence, R.I.
Pop.: 175,000
In late March, this native son signed an order requiring all new municipal buildings to be LEED-certified, saying such a move would help create jobs and boost the economy. It was the first step in a 30-point plan called Operation Opportunity that seeks to help this mid-sized New England city rise from the doldrums; other steps include doubling the recycling rate, creating a green jobs training corps, and finalizing site plans for wind turbines. Cicilline, at the wheel since 2003, has also named walkability and sustainable leadership among his goals for the city.

Get your Phil.Tom Story/ASU12. Phil Gordon, Phoenix.
Pop.: 1.6 million
The long-time Phoenician made a splash in March when he unveiled a 17-point sustainability plan for the desert megalopolis he’s run since 2004. During his tenure, Gordon has already overseen eco-upgrades ranging from LED traffic lights to LNG buses, as well as bringing light rail to the city. The new plan aims to make Phoenix the first carbon-neutral city in America, through green job training, building retrofits, and a massive investment in solar energy. It’s making Phoenix hot in a whole new way.

Coleman (left) and Rybak do their thing.Lou Michaels13. Christopher Coleman, St. Paul.
Pop.: 274,000
14. R. T. Rybak, Minneapolis.
Pop.: 377,000
The Twin Cities are in the hands of two progressive mayors intent on doubling the metro region’s eco-efforts. Coleman and Rybak, elected in 2005 and 2001 respectively, have both made sustainability a priority—Minneapolis, for instance, doles out climate change grants to neighborhood organizations, while St. Paul created its own hybrid car-sharing program. Together, the two leaders have created an annual sustainability report and a green manufacturing initiative, and they’re bringing bike-sharing to town. It’s all part of an effort, they say, to make theirs the most livable cities in the country.

Dixson, far left, leads the groundbreaking of Greensburg’s first eco-home.Greensburg GreenTown15. Bob Dixson, Greensburg, Kansas.
Pop.: 850
Talk about inheriting someone else’s problem: Bob Dixson became mayor of Greensburg in 2008, exactly a year after it was devastated by a tornado. But Greensburg has rallied, and the former postmaster is now overseeing the town’s much publicized green rebuilding effort (which has also been documented for TV). Learning as he goes, Dixson has become an eco-evangelist of sorts, traveling the nation to talk up renewable energy, green building, community spirit, and the common sense behind green. “In rural America,” he told Smithsonian magazine earlier this year, “we were always taught that if you take care of the land, the land will care of you.”

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Like the thorn under the rosebud, big piles of dirty dishes symbolize the tragedy of existence: pleasure (e.g., the pleasure of eating and cooking) invites pain.

But dishes are more than just a symbol; they also (unfortunately) need to be done, day in and day out. The question becomes: how to do them as painlessly -- and harmlessly -- as possible? Thankfully, Grist's own Umbra Fisk has signed off on the automatic dishwasher as the greenest option. "Dishwashers have been proven, again and again, to be more efficient than the typical hand-washer," Umbra writes. 

The choice of detergent matters, Umbra adds, because the conventional ones contain phosphates, ammonia, fragrances, bleach, and petroleum-based surfactants. The key offender is phosphates -- which both help get dishes squeaky clean, and end up in wastewater that leaches into waterways, creating fish-killing algae blooms. As companies begin to phase out phosphates, will dishes come out just as clean?

Without phosphates, are we forked?iStockIn at least one part of the country, some people are answering that question with a thunderous "no." Compelled to buy hippie-brand detergents by a strict limit on household phosphates, a flood of Spokane County, Wash., residents are streaming over the Idaho border to snap up conventional suds, Associated Press reports. In July 2010, the Spokane phosphate limits will extend to the entire state of Washington.

According to the AP, Spokane residents compelled to go phosphate free complain of dishes "encrusted with food, smeared with grease, and too gross to use without rewashing them by hand." One observer has even raised the specter of violent reaction: a blogger for the prominent conservative site Red State wondered, "At what point do [Washington residents] get off the couch, march down to their state legislator’s house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?"

Hmm. While the good citizens of Washington mull fisticuffs to avoid greening their dishwashers, I've been testing phosphate-free dishwashing detergents for weeks here in western North Carolina, and using them for years in the high-volume kitchen of the sustainable-agriculture project I helped start, Maverick Farms. The consistent result: no food crusts, grease smears, or rewashing at all -- just clean dishes.

So why the radically different experiences?

Turns out that the high level of minerals in hard water hinders soap's ability to clean -- and phosphates act as a water softener. Spokane's water is particularly hard; the water in western N.C. is soft. What that means is that people who live in hard-water areas might have to do a little conscious pre-rinsing to make phosphate-free detergents work. The practice needn't be a major water sucker.

Rather than pummel public officials or burn fossil fuel by trekking to Idaho for illicit powder, I urge Spokane residents to consider this tip from Umbra: "Pre-rinse your dishes in one of two ways: Either keep a rubber spatula at the sink and squeegee off each dish, or keep a little bowl of water handy and sponge off each dish."

With the soft-water caveat in mind, here is what I observed from several weeks' study of leading "green detergents." As you'll see, the results are about as exciting as lukewarm leftovers: all of the soaps worked just fine. For these test runs, I didn't rinse at all; I merely drained glasses and scraped plates. All products are both phosphate- and chlorine-free.

Ecover Dishwasher Tablets
Eco-claim: Plant-based ingredients; minimal impact on aquatic life

These little tablets worked like a dream. Even a plate that had been involved in a fish-breading project came out clear and shiny, with just one little fleck of crusted flour. Points off, though, for the plastic wrapper that swaddles each tablet.

Citrasolv Citradish Automatic Dish Detergent
Eco-claim: Contains no synthetic perfumes or dyes

This is the one I've used for years -- mainly because it's usually a little cheaper than the others on the supermarket shelf. It works great, even burnishing the bottoms of deep, fluted glasses crusted with dried red wine. Odd detail: the product contains a "spot prevention agent" called sodium polyacrylate polymer, which the company acknowledges is "not biodegradable." Environmental Working Group includes this stuff on its list of "polymer derivatives," which have these health effects: "cancer, reproduction and fertility, birth or developmental effects, organ system toxicity (non-reproductive)." Me, I'd rather have a few spots on my wine glasses than subject my family or the outside world to that stuff.

Seventh Generation Free and Clear Automatic Dishwasher Powder
Eco-claim: Safe for grey-water systems

This widely available brand works well. A small pot that had been used to reduce a tomato sauce and then left to dry overnight emerged sparkly, as did a Pyrex dish used to cook an apple crisp.

Biokleen Automatic Dish Powder
Eco-claim: Concentrated in order to leave the smallest footprint on the environment

Another stellar performer, this one transformed oily pesto residue on a half-dozen plates to a clean, glossy sheen. I wish the company revealed ingredients in individual products on its website, though.

The bottom line: Face it -- phosphates in dishwasher detergents are obsolete. If your water is soft like mine, hippie detergents get the job done. If not, learn to live with a little conscious pre-rinsing (see above), and you won't likely miss old-school suds. All of these products performed like champs. If we eliminate Ecover for its plastic wraps, Citrasolv for its polymer derivative, and Biokleen for its lack of ingredient transparency, we're left with Seventh Generation. 

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The Ivy League is the greenest of them all, according to the EPA, which today announced the college and university winners of the Green Power challenge -- a competition to motivate American schools to purchase more renewable energy. Participating schools compete within their athletic conferences to purchase the most certified green power, but conferences only qualify if each purchases more than 10 million kWh in aggregate. 

University of Washington.The Ivies, anchored by University of Pennsylvania's purchase of 192 million kWh, chalked up the best conference performance, purchasing a total of 225 million kWh of green power. Here in the Pacific Northwest, four colleges and universities bested their respective conferences: Oregon State University (Pacific-10), Western Washington University (Great Northwest Athletic Conference), The Evergreen State College (Cascade Collegiate Conference), and Pacific Lutheran University (Northwest Conference).

But as remarkable as these collegiate green-power investments are, the competition itself is a bit thin.  For instance, participation in this challenge is voluntary, so even though Oregon State won in the Pac-10, it only had to beat the University of Washington and Stanford University's Synergy House, a cooperative living residence. Other major Pac-10 schools such as USC, UCLA, and Arizona State did not participate.

What's more, the competition results are misleading. UW is only recognized for a purchase of 14.9 million kWh of green power, even though the university is entirely powered by a portfolio of carbon-free electricity.  John Chapman, director of campus engineering and operations, explained that 94 percent of UW's power comes from hydropower, which the EPA does not count as green.  The 6 percent the EPA does credit comes from the the renewable energy certificates that the university purchases to compensate for the portion of its utility's electricity portfolio that is fossil-fuel derived.

"We are completely powered by renewable energy and carbon-neutral electricity, but the EPA does not count hydro, and it does not look kindly on utility-purchased electricity," said Chapman.  "They want you to buy the credits and certificates."

Oregon State's win comes from its purchase of renewable energy certificates for 75 percent of the university's need. "We buy 75 percent of our power in renewable energy certificates from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation.  It's mostly windpower," said Brandon Trelstad, sustainability coordinator for Oregon State.

But the Green Power challenge wasn't a motivating factor Oregon State's win.  The university won in 2008 with the exact same amount of green power  (66.7 million kWh), as it did this year. The green-power investment is primarily funded (and limited) by a student fee of $8.50 per student per term, which was voted on by the student body in the spring of 2007.

"Nothing really significant has chaged in our power purchasing," said Trelstad.

Like Oregon State, it seems that most collegiate winners were celebrated for doing what they were already doing. Overall winner U. Penn. purchased over 192 million kWh of green power to win this year, but the Ivy League leader posted the exact same amount in 2008 [PDF]. In the three years that the challenge has run, the overall purchasing leaders have stayed the same -- U. Penn., New York University, and Penn State -- with little variability elsewhere in the field of competitors (see 2007 results [PDF]). So what good is a Green Power challenge that fails to motivate colleges to actually green their power purchasing habits?

I would have liked to pose this question to the EPA, but the contact did not return my calls.

The Green Power challenge is one of many tools with which to rank the greeniness of colleges and universities in the U.S. For more info, check out America's Greenest Campus, the Princeton Review's green rating honor roll, and Grist's list of the 15 greenest colleges.

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Photo: libraryman via FlickrWashington state's cap-and-trade legislation is no more.

Or rather, it IS ... in the existential sense ... but after the House passed a watered down version on Wednesday, it should no longer be allowed to call itself "cap-and-trade legislation." As there is no cap and trade in said cap-and-trade legislation. There is cap (Washington's only coal-fired power plant will be required to halve greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025), but there is no trade, and there is certainly no cap-and-trade.

In fact, I suggest this so-called "cap-and-trade legislation" pull a Prince and henceforth refer to itself only as The Bill Formerly Known as Cap-and-Trade.

So what does TBFKACAT call for? Well, it tells the state to "work with the Western Climate Initiative" on any federal actions and tells the Department of Ecology to "work with polluters" to devise a way to reduce harmful emissions. I'm sure that'll all "work out" peachily.

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Over the last couple of weeks, there's been a lot of hand-wringing about the state of climate policy in the Northwest. Washington's citizen-backed renewable energy standard is in jeopardy and neither Oregon nor Washington appears close to implementing the Western Climate Initiative. Even British Columbia's pioneering carbon tax is taking fire.

Freak out! Everybody panic!

Or not. If you take a sober look at regional climate policy, you'll see that it's still percolating.

Yes, it's true: things are not as good as we would like. Legislative prospects for regional cap and trade this year look dim. For the past six months, we have been hoping that the three Northwest jurisdictions -- BC, Oregon, and Washington -- would sign off on the recommendations of the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), kick-starting what would be the most comprehensive and progressive carbon pricing program anywhere on earth. Don't lose sight of that: WCI would be the best carbon-reduction plan anywhere in the world. We haven't exactly set a low bar for progress.

(Actually, we have been aiming at an even higher bar. We wanted the Northwest jurisdictions to improve upon the WCI, enhancing equity through full auctioning plus rebates targeted at lower income families.)

In case the Eeyores haven't noticed, the legislature is still in session in Oregon and Washington. And anyone who knows anything about politics knows that it's tough to know anything about politics. Things can change quickly and unexpectedly -- and many of us are still working hard to see WCI become a reality in the Northwest. So let's not start the Monday-morning quarterbacking while there's still time left on the clock.

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski remains determined to leave a green legacy, one that includes cap and trade. And this week Washington Governor Christine Gregoire took the unusual step of testifying before a House committee, urging lawmakers to move toward WCI's cap and trade program. Whatever else happens this session, you can bet that Governor Gregoire hasn't played all her cards yet. And if you want to see how serious she is, here's the governor saying in unequivocal terms that she will be fighting for the bill:

You may recall that last year, late in the session, she marched in to arm-wrestle state leaders into signing off on HB 2815. It was a landmark piece of legislation that set Washington's climate targets into law, among other things.

In part, Governor Gregoire's appearance in the House may have been in response to a week's worth of blistering editorials from the state's most respected newspapers, including the Olympian, the Seattle Times, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer(pause for reverential silence). Here's a sample from the Everett Herald:

Take a moment to grok that. We're at a place now where newspaper boards across the state are demanding answers. They want to know why don't we have WCI's cap and trade already.

Astonishing!I should know. My job includes talking to journalists and opinion leaders and I can personally attest that a few months ago, cap and trade did not event register as a faint blip on the radar screens of many major Northwest scribes. And legislators? In preliminary conversations, I considered someone to be on the informed end of the spectrum if he or she had even passing familiarity with the term "cap and trade."

Nowadays, editorial boards are demanding cap and trade. What's more -- in fact, what's most impressive --is that they understand the details. They want assurances about the features of policy design that wonks like me stay up late worrying about, things like auctioning rules, emissions thresholds, and secondary market governance. To me, this is almost as huge a turnaround as if my five-week-old son started sleeping through the night.

That's not all that's changed. Over the last year, climate advocates forced the hands of the region's biggest polluters. Scores of businesses, utilities, and local governments have put themselves on record asking that cap-and-trade programs include transportation fuels, the single largest source of emissions in the Northwest. (Here's one list. Here's another.) Including transportation fuels is a huge win for comprehensive carbon limits; one that will not go unnoticed by federal lawmakers -- especially when we tell them.

Perhaps even more importantly, during the debates in Olympia some of the most outspoken opponents went on the record opposing state policy on the grounds that they prefer uniform federal policy. (I'm looking at you, Western States Petroleum.) You can bet those endorsements of federal cap and trade will make their way to Washington, DC. (Hat tip to the Northwest's National Wildlife Federation office.)

The same sort of shift has occurred in Canada. Though British Columbia's well-crafted carbon tax has become a political liability for the ruling Liberal party in some parts of the province, it also appears to have borne fruit across the country. At the Canadian federal level, there's a robust discussion over whether the future holds carbon taxes or a North American-wide cap and trade program. Though Prime Minister Stephen Harper remains an obstacle, it appears the political tides may have turned, in part because of the four Canadian provinces that have joined the WCI, especially giants Ontario and Quebec, whichare moving to adopt a joint cap and trade program.

That's not to say there aren't lessons from the last half year. Foremost among these is my new axiom: "you can't predict the future."

Two big events changed everything. The first was the economic implosion. It's little wonder that state officials' attention has been diverted. They've already got plenty of fish to fry: multibillion dollar funding gaps that will scorch universities and pre-schools, social services and prisons, road repair and state parks. Given the economic context, the mere fact that the legislatures in Oregon and Washington are still considering putting a price on carbon is remarkable.

The second big event is Barack Obama. Obama winning the presidency was hardly a foregone conclusion in the months leading up to the election. Plus, as president, he's giving every indication that he'll go all-out to deliver comprehensive, fully auctioned cap and trade with built-in protections for working families.

Like two storm systems converging, Obama and the economy merged this winter. The result was to a vacuum that temporarily sucked the air out of regional carbon pricing.

Why temporarily? Because there's a corollary to my axiom about not being able to predict the future: "you still can't predict the future."

Yes, prospects seem improved for federal climate action, but we cannot know what will happen in Congress. Already eight centrist denators have raised red flags. And the opponents of carbon constraints are motivated, ruthless, and marinating in cash. So even in the Obama administration, national carbon limits may face an uphill battle.

If federal action loses steam, regional policy will return to the front burner. And there's a feedback loop. Part of the reason why federal legislation is finally cooking is because states and provinces including those in Cascadia have been successful in bringing regional carbon policy to a boil. Set WCI and the other regional programs aside to cool and federal lawmakers may suddenly lose interested in nationwide cap and trade.

Or it may be that federal climate policy is watered down, and regional programs can step up to more comprehensive and fairer versions of cap and trade. We just don't know how regional policy will interact with federal law. As I've said, you can't predict the future.

So chill out, hand-wringers! If WCI doesn't pass legislative muster this spring, I'll join you at the bar for an evening, but then it's right back to work in the morning. Even without a big win this spring, we're still making good progress.

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