Courtesy Brita Climate RideHow far would you go to fight climate change? How about 300 miles? Hundreds of cyclists will pedal from New York City to Washington, D.C., in late September to do just that.

The Brita Climate Ride is a multi-day bicycle ride that raises money and awareness for climate change action. The riders will depart New York City on Sept. 26 having raised $2400, the proceeds of which will go toward three climate/bike advocacy charities: Focus the Nation, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, and Clean Air - Cool Planet.

During their five-day ride, they'll hear from experts like climate scientist James Hansen, No Impact Man Colin Beavan, Lazy Environmentalist Josh Dorfman, and Friis Arne Petersen, Denmark's ambassador to the U.S. and the host of the COP15 U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen this December.

On Sept. 30, they'll cycle past the Washington Monument to arrive on the steps of the Capitol building. Once there, riders will have a chance to sit down with their senators to discuss what they learned on the Climate Ride and why they want to see them supporting climate-change legislation.

But the Climate Ride isn't meant to be all pedaling and politics. Along the way, riders will be joined by The Great Salt Licks, the first bluegrass band on bicycles. They'll also have the chance to hang out in a solar-powered eco-lounge each night and check out a sculpture made from empty plastic bottles, which will be towed by one team for the length of the trip.

Want to make change while changing gears, to add some power to your pedaling? Join the Climate Ride -- there are still 40 spots left!

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The progressive group Americans United for Change unveiled a new TV ad today that seeks to put pressure on Republicans to support President Obama’s energy plan.

Titled “Jobs of the Future,” it links Obama’s green-jobs ambitions to President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to the nation to put a man on the moon. “Today President Obama has challenged us again -- to create the jobs of the future for our generation -- millions of clean energy jobs,” says the narrator.

“But the oil companies and the Republicans just say no.”

The ad begins airing tomorrow on DC cable. It urges voters to tell members of Congress to support “the Obama Energy Plan.” It doesn’t mention the Waxman-Markey House bill (American Clean Energy and Security Act) by name, though an accompanying press release does.

Americans United for Change formed in 2005 to oppose President Bush’s attempt to privatize social security. The new ad isn’t especially slick—it has more still images than video, and “futurey” music that could well be from the Kennedy era. Here it is:

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Photo: Corey McKrillThe U.S. EPA is holding two public hearings next week on the "climate endangerment" finding -- one near Washington, D.C., on Monday and one in the other Washington, out here in Seattle on Thursday.

About a month ago, the EPA announced they had "determined that planet-warming greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health and welfare." Now they've got to decide how to move forward with that information, and that's about where y'all (Joe and Jane Public) come in.

So if you feel, um, endangered by climate change, and you'd like to make a comment about that -- perhaps urging the EPA to take strong and swift action -- make your way to Arlington, Va., on Monday or Seattle, Wash., on Thursday. But probably only if you can get there by foot, bike, or public transit because (have you heard?) greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health and welfare.

Live somewhere in the middle of the country, but still have strong opinions? Submit your comments by email, fax, or snail mail by June 23.

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The poor shopping mall. That once impenetrable fortress now seems as susceptible to the ailing economy as the rest of us. Vacancies are at an all-time high. Dead and dying malls continue to plague the landscape. And, perhaps worst of all, the mall has transformed from an icon of American life -- see Fast Times at Ridgemont High -- to a scourge, a symbol of the poor judgment of developers and the government policies that supported them. The mall, at this point, is not only unsustainable, it's downright unfashionable, and not just for urban planning aficionados; regular old mall-loving Americans are abandoning it, too.

Luckily, mallternatives are popping up across the land, demonstrating new futures for these old fixtures. Some dinosaur shopping centers are being de-malled, a polite term for razing and rebuilding. Some, like Bridgewater Commons in central New Jersey, are cutting hours to save dough. Others are lowering rents to allow locally owned businesses to set up shop inside, dispensing with the chain-store-only exclusivity that once characterized them.

And in at least one case, a mall is in the process of morphing into a new being: a city.

Tysons Corner developers are shopping a vision for the future.Fairfax County

Tysons Corner Center, the largest shopping mall in metropolitan Washington, D.C., is doing just fine, thank you, says John Genovese, executive vice president of Macerich, the mall's developer. But for the past six years, its creators have been dreaming of redeveloping it. "Tysons was very successful back in 2003 when we started this process, but we saw this opportunity to enhance it," he says.

Tysons opened in 1968 as a traditional super-regional mall, drawing people from all over the area on the shiny new Beltway to big businesses like Woolworth and Hecht's. In its current incarnation, it's a 2.2 million-square-foot enclosed mall with five fancy anchor stores -- Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's, Lord & Taylor, Macy's, L. L. Bean -- as well as 300-plus other stores and restaurants and a 16-plex movie theater. It's so popular that it's a major cause of the notorious traffic surrounding the city that houses it, also called Tysons Corner (that, and the fact that there's almost no way in or out of the city except by car).

That traffic is what prompted Fairfax County -- which runs the city of Tysons Corner, since the latter is unincorporated with no centralized government of its own -- to begin planning for the 23-mile extension of D.C.'s Orange Line that would add four Metrorail stations to this sprawling edge city. Thanks to a change in the area's comprehensive plan, allowing density to almost triple, Tysons Corner Center could grow, up and out and differently.

In the next decade or so, the mall will increase to 3.5 million square feet. It will include a 300-room, 266,000-square-foot hotel, 200,000 square feet of retail, and 1.4 million square feet of offices. Most importantly, it will include 1.6 million square feet of residences, surrounded by green spaces, walking paths and recreational facilities like an ice rink, sculpture plaza, gardens and performance spaces. It will be a city unto itself, with a transit stop within walking distance to ferry people to and from the development.

"You're [creating] almost a 24-hour nature to the property," says Genovese, as opposed to a mall that deadens its lights and releases its patrons at 9 p.m. The 21st century mall is the opposite of an enclosed, super-regional bubble -- a local, centralized creation with not just high-end chain stores but the little retailers that support residential life, like dry cleaners and grocers and shoe repair shops. The name of the project: Tysons Future.

Some of its parking lots will be transformed into streets, a central part of the new plan for the entire Tysons area. Currently, there are only a few busy roads in and out of the city, with private streets ending abruptly or spilling out into parking lots -- the county wants to create a street grid throughout the city. While Macerich wants Tysons Corner Center to be as walkable, bikeable, and urban as possible, Genovese is realistic about the limits of transforming mall into city. When it comes down to it, there are limits to the plan. After all, as he points out, "We're not going to run a street through Nordstrom's."

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Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me three times, shame on the media.

In a move that calls into question the journalistic integrity of the entire Washington Post editorial staff — especially editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, who should be fired — the newspaper has published a third disinformation-pushing op-ed by George Will “Climate Change’s Dim Bulbs.”

The distortions and disinformation in Will’s earlier two pieces have been widely criticized and debunked (see “In a blunder reminiscent of Janet Cooke scandal, the Washington Post lets George Will reassert all his climate falsehoods plus some new ones“).

Indeed, the WP published a devastating critique by the World Meteorological Organization on the “misinterpretation of the data and of scientific knowledge” in using WMO data from one year to try to “invalidate the reality of global warming and its effects” — along with an op-ed making the same exact point (see “Washington Post publishes two strong debunkings of George Will’s double dose of disinformation“).

Why on earth would the Washington Post publish a long letter by the WMO Secretary General (here) last Saturday, explaining how his organizations’ work was misused by Will, and then let Will publish this sentence today:

Reducing carbon emissions supposedly will reverse warming, which is allegedly occurring even though, according to statistics published by the World Meteorological Organization, there has not been a warmer year on record than 1998.

Does the Washington Post editorial staff care that Will is playing them for fools? Does the Post have any idea whatsoever how amateurish this makes them look, like some high school newspaper.

Why does the Post bother publishing letters to the editor if the content of those letters apparently mean nothing whatsoever to the Post itself?

Let me reprint the bulk of the letter the Post published on Saturday:

Data collected over the past 150 years by the 188 members of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) through observing networks of tens of thousands of stations on land, at sea, in the air and from constellations of weather and climate satellites lead to an unequivocal conclusion: The observed increase in global surface temperatures is a manifestation of global warming. Warming has accelerated particularly in the past 20 years.

It is a misinterpretation of the data and of scientific knowledge to point to one year as the warmest on record — as was done in a recent Post column [by Will] — and then to extrapolate that cooler subsequent years invalidate the reality of global warming and its effects.

The difference between climate variability and climate change is critical, not just for scientists or those engaging in policy debates about warming. Just as one cold snap does not change the global warming trend, one heat wave does not reinforce it. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the global average surface temperature has risen 1.33 degrees Fahrenheit.

Evidence of global warming has been documented in widespread decreases in snow cover, sea ice and glaciers. The 11 warmest years on record occurred in the past 13 years.

While variations occur throughout the temperature record, shorter-term variations do not contradict the overwhelming long-term increase in global surface temperatures since 1850, when reliable meteorological recordkeeping began. Year to year, we may observe in some parts of the world colder or warmer episodes than in other parts, leading to record low or high temperatures. This regional climate variability does not disprove long-term climate change. While 2008 was slightly cooler than 2007, partially due to a La Niña event, it was nonetheless the 10th-warmest year on record.

So what is going to happen now?

Will the Washington Post publish another letter from WMO Secretary General debunking Will’s anti-scientific claim and its misuse of WMO data. And then let Will do it again. Then publish another WMO letter.

Is the Post in the business of trying to inform its readers or does it just publish anything anybody writes? Does the editorial staff of the Post exercise any editorial judgment whatsoever?

You can write to Andrew Alexander at ombudsman@washpost.com, but I can’t imagine that would do much good (see “The Post ombudsman whitewashes George Will’s columns, the editors, and his own role“).

Finally, most of Will’s piece is an attack on compact fluorescent light bulbs. You won’t be surprised to learn that it is as misinformed as everything else Will writes on this subject, but I will let others take a first crack at responding in detail — see Get Energy Smart Now. Yes, as is the case with of all new products rushed to market — in this case, very low cost compact fluorescents — not all of them are high quality. They will get better, but they still save consumers big money and reduce pollution — and the tiny amount of mercury they contain locked away in their hardware is infinitely preferable to the vast quantities of mercury released into the air from coal consumption.

The bottom line about conservatives deniers like Will is that they have no plan at all to protect the health and well-being of your children and grandchildren and the next 50 generations from catastrophic global warming impacts: Hell and High Water. They just have lies and disdain for all things green and efficient. They don’t want to conserve a livable climate, natural resources or anything at all but the status quo.

The bottom line about the Post is that it would appear to have no journalistic standards at all for what it publishes on its editorial page and its letters page. Let me end with what Hilzoy of the Washington Monthly wrote about Will’s first (!) piece:

Where I come from, when someone writes something of the form: “P is not evidence for Q, and here’s why”, it is dishonest to quote that person saying P and use that quote as evidence for Q. If one of my students did this, I would grade her down considerably, and would drag her into my office for an unpleasant talk about basic scholarly standards. If she misused quotes in this way repeatedly, I might flunk her.

The Washington Post editorial staff has flunked journalism 101.

I repeat, editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, should be fired.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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The Washington Nationals will play their baseball season opener Sunday in the first green-built professional stadium in the U.S. The LEED Silver certified ballpark was built on a restored brownfield, and many building materials were produced locally. The stadium boasts efficient lighting and plumbing, drought-resistant plants, a concession area with a green roof, filters to keep stormwater runoff out of the nearby Anacostia River, and proximity to public transit (as well as a shortage of parking). Throwing out the ceremonial first pitch as the Nats take on the Atlanta Braves: President George W. Bush. He's sure to be hit. Er, a hit.

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