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Dispassion as the world ends: The absent heart of the great climate affair

Adam Sacks — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:45:13 -0700

by Adam Sacks
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

Photo: Adam D. SacksIn "The Fallacy of Climate Activism," I suggest that we as climate activists are not telling the unadulterated truth -- which seems to worsen daily -- to the public. This is one critically important reason we're making so little progress in changing behavior and politics commensurate with the drastic acceleration of global warming. We have hurled ourselves far beyond the point where simply reducing greenhouse-gas emissions will make a difference that makes a difference.

Having examined some of the what of our missteps in "Fallacy," in this piece I take a look at some of the how: the timid, tentative, emotionally impoverished voice of our communications, the feelings unexpressed in the face of the premature and squalid end of so much of what we love, the unfathomable reluctance to speak to the depth of the grief we are bringing upon ourselves.

Global climate disruption -- having graduated in short order from a spectre a century away to a battering present-day reality -- foreshadows the demise of civilization, the failure of our life-support systems, and even, perhaps, the end of most life on earth. Yet most industrialized humans, to date, remain largely unaware and only marginally concerned. This is a remarkable puzzle, and were we to solve it perhaps we would take a major step toward addressing the climate catastrophe.

I offer you a key puzzle piece: The end of all that we have known is an unthinkable thought,[1] as are so many unprecedented abrupt and catastrophic events.[2] When a thought is unthinkable, it is invisible even when writ large -- we simply can't see it, even when we have reason to try.[3] If we do see it, it quickly falls from awareness. If, finally, we accept it, perhaps after months or years of getting used to the idea, we find that we're alone, mostly talking to ourselves.

Then, when the reality strikes us all irrefutably, undeniably, without mercy, we are completely unprepared, asking incredulously, "Why didn't somebody tell us?"

And what hasn't been told?

To date, most of our arguments about the reality of global warming have been data-driven, psychically tepid litanies of climate science and industrial "solutions," peppered with the heartstring-tugging of cute polar bears and sad stories of people in distant lands whom we don't care about very much (well, of course we care, but we don't know them and there's nothing we can do to help anyway, except perhaps changing lightbulbs). Coastal insalination rendering vast swaths of farmland useless, houses plunging into the sea as permafrost melts, even wildfires threatening the City of the Angels, to name just a very few -- these are far, far away and don't really affect us. Or we don't see it. (Yet.)

We climate activists are the ones who aren't saying what needs to be said.[4] Our silence is not the lack of words, it is the absence of an essence in urgent human relationships, an essence with power to break the bonds of unthinkable thoughts:

Passion.

To illustrate, I would like to reproduce for you an excerpt from one of my favorite speeches of the 19th century. It is entitled "What to a Slave Is the Fourth of July," and was delivered by Frederick Douglass before the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society on July 5, 1852 (he refused to speak on July 4, for reasons that will quickly become apparent). Douglass, as you may remember, was one of the great political thinkers and orators of that horrific era, an escaped slave who taught himself to read and went on to become an erudite, articulate, and passionate abolitionist, a writer, a sought-after speaker, and a guest of President Lincoln.

Here are his words:

... What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong?

... What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine!! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument has passed. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire, it is not a gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. ...

Well ...

Today we are addressing the end of the world we know, quite possibly the extinction of homo sapiens and most other species on earth, and we can do little more than cite statistics?[5] Surely an unravelled web of life, miserable ends for countless creatures great and small, and mass death of billions of human beings, mostly innocent, should call for "scorching irony," at the very least.

Where are our fire, thunder, ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, stern rebuke? Why are we so polite?[6] Why are we so obedient? What are we thinking? What aren't we thinking? What are we doing? What aren't we doing? When do we start? [7]

I have a proposition for you. Try your hand at a letter -- to an editor, or to a friend, or to a lover, or to a child -- availing yourself of all the passion you can muster as we hasten blindly toward world's end. Post it here for all to ponder -- then we'll send the collection to everyone we know, far and wide.

When do we start? Now's the time.

Quill and ink (or keyboard) in hand, summon your muse and write for our lives!

---

Endnotes:

[1] Timothy C. Weiskel, "Selling Pigeons in the Temple: The Danger of Market Metaphors in an Ecosystem," Harvard Seminar on Environmental Values, Harvard Divinity School, July 6, 1997. "In democratically organized societies thought is not overtly censored. We are not forbidden to think about particular topics, but thought control manifests itself nonetheless in the far more subtle form of self-censorship. It is not what it is forbidden for us to think, but rather what it does not occur to us to think, that establishes the bounds of publicly acceptable thought in democratic society."

[2] These could be natural disasters, such as unforeseen volcanic eruptions, hurricanes or changing climate; or the result of human activity such as the overshoot and collapse on Easter Island or the invasion of Europeans and consequent sudden disruption and/or extermination of indigenous peoples and cultures. Prior to such occurrences, few if any members of the affected societies would have been able to envision the outcomes, and if told would likely have given short shrift to such "conspiracy theories."

[3] John A. Livingston, pioneer environmentalist, preservationist, teacher, and writer, described his experience in addressing the challenges of giving voice to the realities of nature in our technoculture: "It is not that audiences disagree with us or resent our argument or are offended by it: it means that they cannot perceive it [emphasis is Livingston's]. They literally do not know what we are talking about." The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, in The John A. Livingston Reader, McClelland & Stewart, 2007, p. 61.

[4] The scientists' job is to be dispassionate analysts and observers, and they are doing it full well. The climate activists' job is to put the science in the context of real lives, real communities, real future, and communicate with all the means at our disposal. So far, we have screwed it up, but good.

[5] For example, parts per million carbon dioxide is an obsession; necessary fundamental change in the ways we live on earth hardly merits a whisper. And by fundamental change I don't mean switching to 35 mpg -- or even 350 mpg -- vehicles. That's another obsessive and meaningless statistic among the many.

[6] Symptomatic of our wayward rationality is the data-driven response to climate "skeptics," neo-classical economists, and other toxic relics of an unsustainable culture. They are paragons of delusion and dishonesty, unworthy of scorn and disdain, yet we respond to them as if we were having reasonable conversations with reasonable people. Not everyone will wake up (just ask ark-craftsman Noah), so let's not waste our time, and spend our energies on the vast majority of people who are concerned about the future and willing to face it -- if only we get around to starting a conversation about planetary realities.

[7] Of course there are some passionate writers who stir us beyond wind turbines and photovoltaic panels, but they are, to date, few and far between.

Related Links:

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

We have met the deniers, and they are us

‘No compromise’ faction attacks climate bill

Jonathan Hiskes — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:08:59 -0700

by Jonathan Hiskes
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

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:

Activists handed out fake $2 trillion bills at a rally for climate legislation in New York last week, criticizing the size of the global-warming emissions market they oppose. ($2 trillion is their estimate for the size of the emissions market they oppose.) The bills depict Al Gore holding a wrench and a compact-fluorescent light bulb and the words “Corporate Giveaways! Carbon Ponzi Schemes! FALSE SOLUTIONS!” Others hung a 14-foot banner of the same bill from the Manhattan headquarters of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “Cap’n Trade,” an actor in a pirate costume, unfurled a similar banner at a presentation by Connie Hedegaard, chairperson of the Dec. 2009 UN Climate Summit and Denmark's minister for climate and energy. Still others blocked a motorcade of UN delegates to drop a banner with the message “Cap + Trade is a Dead End.”

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.

What does that even mean?

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 old saw

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:

Corporations call off the old green battle, but Chamber of Commerce soldiers on [UPDATED]

Jonathan Hiskes — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:00:19 -0700

by Jonathan Hiskes
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

Update: This story keeps growing. Since last week...

The country's largest utility, Exelon, said it was quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest of the group's climate-bill opposition. New Mexico utility PNM Resources did the same. Nike, the most public-facing Chamber defector to date, said it would leave the Chamber board of directors while keeping its membership in the group. The Chamber has tried to do damage control, without changing its opposition to clean-energy legislation. And if you're not sure why the Chamber even matters, "no organization in this country has done more to undermine [climate] legislation," according to the New York Times editorial page.

Original story:

More trouble this week for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the 97-year-old business advocacy group that has been courting controversy by questioning climate change and trying to weaken a clean energy bill.

California’s second-largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., announced it was quitting the Chamber on Tuesday, citing “fundamental differences” over climate change. PG&E is a member of USCAP, a coalition of corporations and environmental groups calling for a comprehensive climate plan. The utility is also a leader in solar energy; this spring, it announced a 500 MW solar-voltaic initiative.

Nike and Johnson & Johnson, while retaining membership in the Chamber, have also let it be known that they're unhappy with the organization's climate position. The old battle line between business and environmentalists is blurring, but the Chamber is still fighting the old war.

PG&E CEO Peter Darbee explained the company's decision to leave the organization:

We find it dismaying that the Chamber neglects the indisputable fact that a decisive majority of experts have said the data on global warming are compelling and point to a threat that cannot be ignored. In our opinion, an intellectually honest argument over the best policy response to the challenges of climate change is one thing; disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality of these challenges are quite another.

He’s referring to the Chamber’s recent call for a “21st Century Scopes Monkey Trial” to force the EPA to defend in court its finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health. As David Roberts detailed earlier this month, the monkey-trial fiasco is just one in a string of clumsy steps by the Chamber.

The Chamber can commiserate with another fossil-fuel-friendly group, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), which saw prominent members Duke Energy and Alstom Power quit this month. The loss capped an embarrassing summer in which it was revealed that ACCCE had contracted with an Astroturf firm that sent forged letters to Congress, purporting to be from minority and senior-citizen groups opposed to climate legislation. Congress is now investigating the fraudulent letters.

So here’s a question for climate activists: Why not hound companies in the Chamber and ACCCE, demanding to know why they lend their money and their legitimacy to such groups? Companies may decide that membership is a weight around their necks they don’t need.

The Chamber, by the way, doesn’t release names of its members. You’ll have to find out from companies themselves whether they belong.

I’m no activist, but I tried this out two weeks ago when I met Microsoft’s chief environmental strategist, Rob Bernard. Microsoft has never been considered an environmental leader, but it’s got a decent climate policy on paper. It opened an energy-efficient data center this summer that could lead to significant energy savings, particularly if the company finds ways to use the innovations in larger server labs.

Given all this, why is Microsoft a Chamber member? Bernard told me Microsoft takes climate change very seriously and tried to distance the company from the Chamber's climate shenanigans. "The views expressed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce do not reflect Microsoft’s position on climate change and we are not participating in their climate initiatives," he said in a followup email.

It’s not much of an answer. But if people keep asking, that answer might change.

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Thoreau, Walden and civil disobedience in the age of climate change

Jonathan Hiskes — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:58:39 -0700

by Jonathan Hiskes
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

On a frigid January night some years ago, a friend and I snuck into a Massachusetts state preserve, stripped naked, and charged into Walden Pond. For a few exhilarating, painful moments we swam, and I imagined some hard-to-name kinship with the pond's most famous neighbor, the 19th century eccentric Henry David Thoreau.

It was a climax in my relationship with Thoreau and his Walden. When I read the book for the first time at age 17, it reawakened the intellectual curiosity that I tried to bury in high school. (It didn't seem useful for attracting girls, not that anything else worked better ... ). Thoreau's reflections on nature inspired me to take a notebook out to the forest preserves that dot suburban Chicago, determined to think deep naturey thoughts of my own. Thankfully, that notebook's been lost.

In college I made my pilgrimage to Walden -- hence the dip. But somewhere around then Thoreau's uncompromising social critique grew tiresome. Like plenty of Walden readers before me, I came to see the great champion of American individualism less as a prophet than as a self-righteous crank. In praising the bright fire within each soul, I concluded, he failed to see the profound ways our lives are connected to others. The famous proof for his hypocrisy is that while philosophizing about self-sufficiency in his solitary shack, he would drop off his laundry at his mother's place back in town.

Lately, trying to make sense of the deeply un-philosophical threat of climate change, I've wondered if Thoreau has anything to say to the movement to halt greenhouse gas emissions. Back-to-nature environmentalists of the '60s and '70s embraced Thoreau's skepticism toward technology -- he distrusted even the telegraph and the railroad. Organic gardeners approved of his bean field. His contemplative habits seemed to fit the spiritual strain of the era.

But now? Environmentalists have largely cast off their crunchy garb in favor of business suits, the better to woo lawmakers and venture capitalists. This is especially true of climate-minded activists. As Time magazine's Bryan Walsh wrote last winter about a renewable energy summit in Abu Dhabi, "There's little about trees or wildlife, nothing about environmental sacrifice -- this is about the business of getting the carbon out of our energy supply as quickly as possible."

All of that suggests the movement has outgrown Thoreau, just as I thought I had myself. I've been prompted to reconsider by Robert Sullivan's recent book The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant. Sullivan, who has written unusual "nature" books on rats and the Meadowlands dumping grounds outside New York City, tries to rescue Thoreau from the humorless image that turned off so many high school English students and the cloud of reverence cast by those who would see Thoreau as a patron saint of wilderness preservation.

I think Sullivan does a great job. In place of the crank Thoreau, he offers evidence for a dancing Thoreau, one who played ditties on his flute, got along well with children, and wrote with his tongue in cheek. In place of the wilderness saint (and hermit) image, Sullivan introduces a Thoreau just as interested in the peopled world as in the natural world, a distinction he didn't buy into anyway.

"Today, adults force high school students to read him, though he critiques the life-in-a-rut grown-up and might prescribe a little teenagerness," writes Sullivan. "He loved nature, but if we read him closely ... we see him cutting down trees, polluting ponds, working with land developers and miners."

It's not hard to see how the humor suffers over the years. Thoreau has a line about eating rice because he likes the philosophy of India. I misread it as deadpan until Sullivan pointed out the joke, uncovering a bit of Thoreau's mischievous streak.

The simplest reason to reconsider Walden's relevance might be its economic context -- Sullivan argues the book was written after a recession as bleak as our own. New England's dominant agricultural industry was unsmoothly giving way to the early stages of a manufacturing economy. Thoreau no doubt had money on his mind at Walden. For much of his adult life he casted about, struggling to make it as a schoolteacher, poet, lecturer, or in the family pencil-making business (where he gladly embraced advances in pencil-tech; it was the uncritical embrace of technology he opposed).

To miss the recession context of Walden is like reading the Grapes of Wrath without considering the Great Depression, Sullivan says. The United States had reached middle age, its political parties grown bloated, and a variety of reformers were grasping about for various fixes. "America needed a kick in the pants and a lot of people knew it," Sullivan writes, "though all those people had very different ideas of where and how to deliver the kick, resulting in no one effective boot."

With that familiar situation in mind, I'd suggest three reasons Thoreau is still worth engaging.

The stunt

Key to Sullivan's interpretation is the idea of the Walden years as a stunt, with a book deal always in mind. Think No Impact Man, Julie and Julia, The Year of Living Biblically, even Supersize Me. These are undertaken as journeys of self-discovery, sure, but also out of full knowledge that the hero is on camera, so to speak.

Same with Walden. Thoreau's itemized list of costs for his hut -- with second-hand materials, it totaled $28.12 and 1/2 cents -- parodied the lists in house pattern books fashionable at the time. The hut's lack of ornamentation rejected the way housekeepers had begun to stylize their homes. In his writing at the pond, Thoreau could describe his own strange life and the reasons he chose it. He knew readers would listen.

The cheap lesson for climate change activists is something about being media savvy. Perhaps there's a bigger message: People look at how you live. Even a stunt shows some investment. That's why David de Rothschild builds his plastic boat. There's an undeniable power in preaching something by living like you believe it.

Solitude

What first hooked me with Walden was the chapter on solitude and the author's story of returning to the pond after a late dinner with friends to paddle alone and fish. At 17, this deliberate aloneness seemed like an appealing alternative to lame old loneliness. Withdrawing from a society that was "commonly too cheap" felt more noble than tripping around awkwardly inside it. But Thoreau wasn't looking for zero company; he was looking for encounters that let him give and receive full attention: "We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another."

Dealing with climate change -- through legislation, international treaties, renewable energy projects, green entrepreneurship -- is all about playing well with others. Thoreau-as-misanthrope isn't much help. But the Thoreau who praised periods of contemplative solitude because they allowed him to present a more fully awake self when interacting with others -- there's something useful in that.

Civil Disobedience

I haven't even mentioned "Civil Disobedience," the essay in which Thoreau explains why he went to jail instead of paying taxes to fund the Mexican War, seen in its day as an effort to expand the reach of slavery. Here lies the strongest proof that Thoreau's politics were about engaging, not escaping, society and government. "Let your life be counter friction to stop the machine," Thoreau writes in the piece that Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. found deeply influential in the following century.

He is not demanding no government but better government: "I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject."

Civil disobedience still finds some expression in the climate change movement, in demonstrations against coal power and nowhere in the country more than in Appalachia. In their appeal to moral authority, these demonstrators are saying something considerably more difficult than "we all win with green jobs." They're saying, if we don't do anything, some people won't win. They'll die.

I'm all for doing the easy stuff first. By all means, let's take the nearly painless gains to be gotten through weatherizing and retrofitting jobs and saving easy money through energy efficiency. There's money lying on the ground and we may as well pick it up. But once that's done, there's still Thoreau in his hut with his confounding instruction to "simplify" and his aphorisms: "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."

He spoke in glaring moral terms, and that's always a risk. It gets tiresome. It's like the wrong kind of song stuck in your head -- catchy and unrelenting both at once. Sullivan makes a good case that Thoreau wasn't quite as irritating as he's been made out to be. But he was still irritating. Still is. That's why he's hard to ignore.

Related Links:

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The fallacy of climate activism

Adam Sacks — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:19:49 -0700

by Adam Sacks
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

In the 20 years since we climate activists began our work in earnest, the state of the climate has become dramatically worse, and the change is accelerating -- this despite all of our best efforts. Clearly something is deeply wrong with this picture. What is it that we do not yet know? What do we have to think and do differently to arrive at urgently different outcomes?[1]

The answers lie not with science, but with culture.

Climate activists are obsessed with greenhouse-gas emissions and concentrations. Since global climate disruption is an effect of greenhouse gases, and a disastrous one, this is understandable. But it is also a mistake.

Such is the fallacy of climate activism[2]: We insist that global warming is merely a consequence of greenhouse-gas emissions. Since it is not, we fail to tell the truth to the public.

I think that there are two serious errors in our perspectives on greenhouse gases:

Global Warming as Symptom

The first error is our failure to understand that greenhouse gases are not a cause but a symptom, and addressing the symptom will do little but leave us with a devil's sack full of many other symptoms, possibly somewhat less rapidly lethal but lethal nonetheless.

The root cause, the source of the symptoms, is 300 years of our relentlessly exploitative, extractive, and exponentially growing technoculture, against the background of ten millennia of hierarchical and colonial civilizations.[3] This should be no news flash, but the seductive promise of endless growth has grasped all of us civilized folk by the collective throat, led us to expand our population in numbers beyond all reason and to commit genocide of indigenous cultures and destruction of other life on Earth.

To be sure, global climate disruption is the No. 1 symptom. But if planetary warming were to vanish tomorrow, we would still be left with ample catastrophic potential to extinguish many life forms in fairly short order: deforestation; desertification; poisoning of soil, water, air; habitat destruction; overfishing and general decimation of oceans; nuclear waste, depleted uranium, and nuclear weaponry -- to name just a few. (While these symptoms exist independently, many are intensified by global warming.)

We will not change course by addressing each of these as separate issues; we have to address root cultural cause.

Beyond Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The second error is our stubborn unwillingness to understand that the battle against greenhouse-gas emissions, as we have currently framed it, is over.

It is absolutely over and we have lost.

We have to say so.

There are three primary components of escalating greenhouse-gas concentrations that are out of our control:

Thirty-Year Lag

The first is that generally speaking the effects we are seeing today, as dire as they are, are the result of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide in the range of only 330 parts per million (ppm), not the result of today's concentrations of almost 390 ppm. This is primarily a consequence of the vast inertial mass of the oceans, which absorb temperature and carbon dioxide and create a roughly 30-year lag between greenhouse-gas emissions and their effects. We are currently seeing the effects of greenhouse gases emitted before 1980.

Just as the scientific community hadn't realized how rapidly and extensively geophysical and biological systems would respond to increases in atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations, we currently have only a rough idea of what that 60 ppm already emitted will mean, even if we stopped our emissions today. But we do know, with virtual certainty, that it will be full of unpleasant surprises.

Positive Feedback Loops

The second out-of-control component is positive (amplifying) feedback loops. The odd thing about positive feedbacks is that they are often ignored in assessing the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions. Our understanding of them is limited and our ability to insert them into an equation is rudimentary. Our inability to grasp them, however, in no way mitigates their effects, which are as real as worldwide violent weather.

It is now clear that several phenomena are self-sustaining, amplifying cycles; for example, melting ice and glaciers, melting tundra and other methane sources, and increasing ocean saturation with carbon dioxide, which leads to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. These feedbacks will continue even if we reduce our human emissions to zero -- and all of our squiggly lightbulbs, Priuses, wind turbines, Waxman-Markeys, and Copenhagens won't make one bit of difference. Not that we shouldn't stop all greenhouse-gas emissions immediately -- of course we should -- but that's only a necessity, not nearly a sufficient response.

We need to find the courage to say so.

Non-Linearity

The third component is non-linearity, which means that the effects of rising temperature and atmospheric carbon concentrations may change suddenly and unpredictably. While we may assume linearity for natural phenomena because linearity is much easier to assess and to predict, many changes in nature are non-linear, often abruptly so. A common example is the behavior of water. The changes of state of water -- solid, liquid, gas -- happen abruptly. It freezes suddenly at 0°C, not at 1°, and it turns to steam at 100°, not at 99°. If we were to limit our experience of water to the range of 1° to 99°, we would never know of the existence of ice or steam.

This is where we stand in relationship to many aspects of the global climate. We don't know where the tipping points -- effectively the changes of state -- are for such events as the irreversible melting of glaciers, release of trapped methane from tundras and seabeds, carbon saturation of the oceans. Difficult to pin down, tipping points may be long past, or just around the corner. As leading climatologist Jim Hansen has written, "Present knowledge does not permit accurate specification of the dangerous level of human-made GHGs. However, it is much lower than has commonly been assumed. If we have not already passed the dangerous level, the energy infrastructure in place ensures that we will pass it within several decades."[4]

Evidence of non-linearity is strong, not only from the stunning acceleration of climate change in just the past couple of years, but from the wild behavior of the climate over millions of years, which sometimes changed dramatically within periods as short as a decade.

The most expert scientific investigators have been blindsided by the velocity and extent of recent developments, and the climate models have likewise proved far more conservative than nature itself. Given that scientists have underestimated impacts of even small changes in global temperature, it is understandably difficult to elicit an appropriate public and governmental response.

Beyond the Box

We climate activists have to tread on uncertain ground and rapidly move beyond our current unpleasant but comfortable parts-per-million box. Here are some things we need to say, over and over again, everywhere, in a thousand different ways:

Bitter climate truths are fundamentally bitter cultural truths. Endless growth is an impossibility in the physical world, always -- but always -- ending in overshot and collapse. Collapse: with a bang or a whimper, most likely both. We are already witnessing it, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

Because of this civilization's obsession with growth, its demise is 100 percent predictable. We simply cannot go on living this way. Our version of life on earth has come to an end.

Moreover, there are no "free market" or "economic" solutions. And since corporations must have physically impossible endless growth in order to survive, corporate social responsibility is a myth. The only socially responsible act that corporations can take is to dissolve.

We can't bargain with the forces of nature, trading slightly less harmful trinkets for a fantasied reprieve. Geophysical processes care not one whit for our politics, our economics, our evening meals, our theologies, our love for our children, our plaintive cries of innocence and error.

We can either try to plan the transition, even at this late hour, or the physical forces of the world will do it for us -- indeed, they already are. As Alfred Crosby stated in his remarkable book, Ecological Imperialism, mother nature's ministrations are never gentle.[5]

Telling the Truth

If we climate activists don't tell the truth as well as we know it -- which we have been loathe to do because we ourselves are frightened to speak the words -- the public will not respond, notwithstanding all our protestations of urgency.

And contrary to current mainstream climate-activist opinion, contrary to all the pointless "focus groups," contrary to the endless speculation on "correct framing," the only way to tell the truth is to tell it. All of it, no matter how terrifying it may be.[6]

It is offensive and condescending for activists to assume that people can't handle the truth without environmentalists finding a way to make it more palatable. The public is concerned, we vaguely know that something is desperately wrong, and we want to know more so we can try to figure out what to do. The response to An Inconvenient Truth, as tame as that film was in retrospect, should have made it clear that we want to know the truth.

And finally, denial requires a great deal of energy, is emotionally exhausting, fraught with conflict and confusion. Pretending we can save our current way of life derails us and sends us in directions that lead us astray. The sooner we embrace the truth, the sooner we can begin the real work.

Let's just tell it.

Stating the Problem

After we tell the truth, then what can we do? Is it hopeless? Perhaps. But before we can have the slightest chance of meaningful action, having told the truth, we have to face the climate reality, fully and unflinchingly. If we base our planning on false premises -- such as the oft-stated stutter that reducing our greenhouse-gas emissions will forestall "the worst effects of global warming" -- we can only come up with false solutions. "Solutions" that will make us feel better as we tumble toward the end, but will make no ultimate difference whatsoever.

Furthermore, we can and must pose the problem without necessarily providing the "solutions."[7] I can't tell you how many climate activists have scolded me, "You can't state a problem like that without providing some solutions." If we accept that premise, all of scientific inquiry as well as many other kinds of problem-solving would come to a screeching halt. The whole point of stating a problem is to clarify questions, confusions, and unknowns, so that the problem statement can be mulled, chewed, and clarified to lead to some meaningful answers, even though the answers may seem to be out of reach.

Some of our most important thinking happens while developing the problem statement, and the better the problem statement the richer our responses. That's why framing the global warming problem as greenhouse-gas concentrations has proved to be such a dead end.

Here is the problem statement as it is beginning to unfold for me. We are all a part of struggling to develop this thinking together:

We must leave behind 10,000 years of civilization; this may be the hardest collective task we've ever faced. It has given us the intoxicating power to create planetary changes in 200 years that under natural cycles require hundreds of thousands or millions of years -- but none of the wisdom necessary to keep this Pandora's Box tightly shut. We have to discover and re-discover other ways of living on earth.

We love our cars, our electricity, our iPods, our theme parks, our bananas, our Nikes, and our nukes, but we behave as if we understand nothing of the land and water and air that gives us life. It is past time to think and act differently.

If we live at all, we will have to figure out how to live locally and sustainably. Living locally means we are able get everything we need within walking (or animal riding) distance. We may eventually figure out sustainable ways of moving beyond those small circles to bring things home, but our track record isn't good and we'd better think it through very carefully.

Likewise, any technology has to be locally based, using local resources and accessible tools, renewable and non-toxic. We have much re-thinking to do, and re-learning from our hunter-gatherer forebears who managed to survive for a couple of hundred thousand years in ways that we with our civilized blinders we can barely imagine or understand.[8]

Living sustainably means, in Derrick Jensen's elegantly simple definition, that whatever we do, we can do it indefinitely.[9] We cannot use up anything more or faster than nature provides, we don't poison the air, water, or soil, and we respect the web of life of which we are an intricate part. We are not separate from nature, or above it, or in any way qualified to supervise it.[10] The evidence is ample and overwhelming; all we have to do is be brave enough to look.

How do we survive in a world that will probably turn -- is already turning, for many humans and non-humans alike -- into a living hell? How do we even grow or gather food or find clean water or stay warm or cool while assaulted by biblical floods, storms, rising seas, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, snow, and hail?

It is crystal clear that we cannot leave it to the technophiliacs. It is human technology coupled with our inability to comprehend, predict, and prevent unintended consequences that have brought us global catastrophe, culminating in climate disruption, in the first place. Desperate hopes notwithstanding, there are no high-tech solutions here, only wishful thinking--the tools that got us into this mess are incapable of getting us out.[11]

All that being said, we needn't discard all that we've learned, far from it.[12] But we must use our knowledge with great discretion, and lock much of it away as so much nuclear weaponry and waste.

Time is running very short, but the forgiveness of this little blue orb in a vast lonely universe will continue to astonish and nourish us--if we only give it the chance.

Our obligation as activists, the first step, the essence, is to part the cultural veil at long last, and to tell the truth.

---

Endnotes:

[1] Many thanks to Richard Grossman, who posed that question fifteen years ago with respect to corporate domination of governance and culture when he founded the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD). He understood that we must take the time to stop and penetrate beyond the obvious if we are to think outside of the cultural prescriptions that constrain our ability to act differently. Many thanks as well to Ross Gelbspan, a courageous and ground-breaking journalist, who early on investigated the forces driving the fossil fuel machine and has been sounding the alarm for almost two decades. See his excellent article, "Beyond the Point of No Return," December 2007, which inspired many of the ideas in this piece.

[2] I would like to express deep gratitude to John A. Livingston, pioneer environmentalist, preservationist, teacher and writer. In 1981 he wrote "The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation," which inspired the title of this piece. The fallacy that Livingston was referring to is well-described in the foreword by Graeme Gibson: "The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, as a statement of belief, is one of the fiercest and most uncompromising of John Livingston's convictions. Had he entitled it 'The Failure of Wildlife Conservation,' we might have tried again -- without having to think too much about it. But he didn't. ... As a result of the word fallacy, we are confronted with an insistence that we rethink everything." From The John A. Livingston Reader, McClelland & Stewart, 2007, pp. xiv-xv. So it is, with the fallacy of climate activism, that we must rethink everything.

[3] Endless (exponential) growth is an impossibility in a finite physical system (planet earth), and we have a wealth of examples of overshoot and collapse, non-human and human, all of which are fully predictable. Our cultural inability to grasp such an obvious reality is a primary obstacle to progress in addressing climate change and its root cause. Indigenous cultures tend to have much better understandings of these things. See Herman E. Daly and Kenneth N. Townsend, "Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem," from Valuing The Earth: Economics, Ecology, Ethics, MIT Press, 1993, p. 267 ff. For a wide-ranging discussion of the demise of civilizations, see Jared Diamond, Collapse, Viking, 2005.

[4] James Hansen et al.(2007), "Climate change and trace gases," Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A 365: 1925–1954 (2007).

[5] Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900 - 1900, Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 92. The actual quote, referring to population, is, "Mother nature always comes to the rescue of a society stricken with the problems of overpopulation, and her ministrations are never gentle."

[6] A word here about the skeptics, with whom we are also obsessed: Forget about them. They may appear to have control of the public discussion, but they are babbling into the abyss. Our enemy is us. By our own unwillingness to face the profound implications of climate change -- that we have to reject civilization as currently conceived and come up with something completely different -- we are doing far more damage to the cause of preserving life on earth than the deniers could ever do.

[7] "One of the more peculiar traits of our society is its assumption -- its insistence -- on solutions. Just as there are reasons for all things, so there are solutions for all things. Always there are ultimate answers; there is no problem that is not amenable to logical reduction. This, as we have seen earlier, in spite of such bewildering enterprises as ecology. I have no 'solution' to the wildlife preservation problem [read 'global warming problem']. There may not be one. But given the somewhat shaky assumption that one exists, I sense that I can at least feel the direction." John A. Livingston, The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, p. 151.

[8] Our culturally skewed and defensive view of pre-hierarchical societies, seeing only lives that were "nasty, brutish and short" struggling to survive in "nature, red in tooth and claw," has distorted earlier human experience beyond recognition. See, for example, Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade, Harper & Rowe, 1987; and Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics, Tavistock Publications, Ltd. (London), 1974.

[9] Jensen is one of our most passionate and incisive cultural critics and environmental writers. His words are, "For an action to be sustainable, you must be able to perform it indefinitely. This means that the action must either help or at the very least not materially harm the landbase. If an action materially harms the landbase, it cannot be performed indefinitely ..." From Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay, What We Leave Behind, p. 56.

[10] Although, as I indicate in footnote 12 in a brief discussion of holistic management of grasslands, we can and must repair enough of the damage so that the infinitely complex self-organizing systems of nature -- the systems that gave life to all living creatures -- can begin anew.

[11] For example, consider hare-brained schemes from very smart scientists, some of whom know that the schemes are hare-brained but in their desperation see no other way. A recent article in Rolling Stone, "Can Dr. Evil Save The World?," has an interesting overview of the geo-engineering debate. The bottom line seems to be that we currently are able to do and think anything except changing the way we live, and risking the existence of life on earth is simply a chance we have to take (although 100 percent odds of failure is hardly a bet one should want to take, assuming there are any rational moments left). See also Ross Gelbspan's article, "Beyond the Point of No Return," footnote 1.

[12] Glimmers of hope lie in the remarkable restorative powers of the earth. One such phenomenon is ancient pre-history but new to us. That is the relationship between grazers and grasslands. Whereas conventional grasslands management destroys soils and diversity, nature's way sequesters vast amounts of carbon in soils, with photosynthesizing plants as intermediators along with fungi, micro-organisms, insects, animals and birds -- and creates productive and healthy land that, unlike forests, can bind carbon for thousands of years. We have the potential to remove gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gas concentrations by many parts per million with proper land management. Beyond grasslands, the planet's power of regeneration, despite our assaults, remains extraordinary. See the Holistic Management International website.

Another example is the dramatic restoration of denuded rainforest in Borneo after only six years: "Planting finishes this year [2008], but already [Willie] Smits [the Indonesian forestry expert who led the replanting] and his team from the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation charity claim the forest is 'mature', with trees up to 35 metres high. Cloud cover has increased by 12 per cent, rainfall by a quarter, and temperatures have dropped 3-5°C, helping people and wildlife to thrive, says Smits. Nine species of primate have also returned, including the threatened orangutans. 'If you walk there now, 116 bird species have found a place to live, there are more than 30 types of mammal, insects are there. The whole system is coming to life. I knew what I was trying to do, but the force of nature has totally surprised me. ... The place became the scene of an ecological miracle, a fairytale come true,' says Smits, who has written a book about the project."

Related Links:

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

We have met the deniers, and they are us

NRDC Action Fund goes on offense against opponents of climate action

Kate Sheppard — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 12:48:28 -0700

by Kate Sheppard
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

The Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund is bashing representatives who voted against the House climate bill as "villains" and lauding reps who voted for it as "heroes" in a new campaign.

With TV and newspaper ads and a website, the campaign is aimed at states whose senators are on the fence about passing a climate bill this year -- Indiana, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

"We really felt like now is the time for us to draw a line in the sand," NRDC Action Fund director Heather Taylor told Grist. "What we want to do is make sure the Senate understands that we are going to be clearly identifying who's part of the problem and who's part of the solution. Hopefully it's going to immediately influence the Senate vote."

The ads will air on local TV for the next two weeks, and print versions are running in local papers on Wednesday and Sunday. They tout the House climate bill's potential to create green jobs, and urge constituents to call their senators and ask them to support a similar bill this year.

Taylor pointed to specific senators the campaign hopes to sway: Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), and Jim Webb (D-Va.). "We definitely think those are swings, and we think there were very good examples of heroes and villains in [their] states for us to draw upon," she said.

The half-a-million-dollar ad buy is the first of its kind by NRDC Action Fund, which has not in the past weighed in on specific candidates nor waged such a public campaign. The action fund's parent organization, NRDC, focuses on inside-the-Beltway policy making, working closely with legislators to shape environmental law. NRDC was one of the key groups involved in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, the enviro-business coalition that played a significant role in shaping the House climate bill.

"We thought it was so important right now to be active not only inside the Beltway but also outside the Beltway," said Taylor. "We hope we can be more frank in our messaging."

Of the representatives targeted in the ads, Taylor said, "I think these members knew. They completely and clearly understood that this was the highest priority of the environmental community ... This is when it counted. This is when there really were going to be repercussions. It's very important that constituents know that their members are not listening to them."

Here is the TV ad praising Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.) for voting in favor of the House bill:

And here's the ad criticizing Virginia Reps. Frank Wolf (R) and Glenn Nye (D) for voting against it:

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

Gore’s group targets swing senators in new climate ads

Kate Sheppard — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:33:36 -0700

by Kate Sheppard
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

New ads from Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection are pushing swing-vote senators to back climate and clean-energy legislation, touting the job-creation angle.

The TV and radio ad campaign is targeted at moderate Democratic and Republican senators from fossil fuel–dependent, manufacturing-heavy Midwestern and Southern states: Blanche Lincoln (D) and Mark Pryor (D) of Arkansas, Evan Bayh (D) and Dick Lugar (R) of Indiana, Kit Bond (R) and Claire McCaskill (D) of Missouri, and Kent Conrad (D) and Byron Dorgan (D) of North Dakota. ACP plans to roll out ads in four additional states later this month.

"These senators represent the heartland of America, states hardest hit by our economic downturn but with the most to gain from jump-starting our economy and creating jobs with a new clean energy policy," ACP spokesperson Brian Rogers told Grist.

The TV ads feature a generic-looking white suburban father talking to the camera. "The folks in Washington need to stop arguing and help people get back to work," he says in the ad targeted at Bayh. "Take clean energy jobs. Now America talks about 'em, yet China's creating 'em. Are we forgetting we need those jobs in Indiana?"

"Look, the future's in clean energy -- wind and solar," he continues. "The question is, who's gonna to build it?"

The group is also running radio ads targeting the senators. One aimed at Pryor tells voters to call his office and "urge him to stand up for Arkansas jobs, clean energy and our nation's security." It highlights a 2005 quote from Pryor in which he said, "We need to take ambitious steps to reduce our country's increasing dependence on foreign oil. Fortunately, the solution will result in Americans manufacturing and using cleaner, healthier energy sources. We're talking about a win for national security, the environment, our children, and the economy."

In a more general ACP ad being run on national cable, entitled "Family Values," the same folksy dad argues that families would benefit from climate legislation that would provide new jobs, a cleaner environment, and decreased dependence on oil.

"Reading about Washington these days, I gotta ask, 'What's in it for me?'" the dad says. "I'm not looking for a bailout -- just a good paying job. That's why I like this clean energy idea."

"I hope our senators are listening," the ad concludes.

ACP would not say how much it's spending on the ad campaign, other than to acknowledge that the investment is "substantial." The ads will run through Labor Day, right up until senators return to Washington following their August recess.

Here is video of the Bayh ad, followed by the national ad:

Related Links:

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Calling all radicals: Unite for Kerry-Boxer

Making change, one door at a time

Erik Hoffner — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:41:58 -0700

by Erik Hoffner
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

It's officially summer, and one thing that brings, besides Kennedy yacht races on Nantucket Sound, is an army of thousands of kids with clipboards, out canvassing neighborhoods, street corners, and subway stops for green: green causes and the green of cash.

This tried and tested organizing tactic is a mainstay of many groups from Sierra Club to the PIRGs (college-based public interest research groups), and is one of the biggest, most regular shows of force that the green movement has outside of climate rallies and mountaintop removal protests.

It's proven to build member rolls and donor bases, yet has many detractors. A guest commentator here at Grist started a heated debate 2 years back with his assertion that it's a waste of effort, in that the clipboard horde does not invite or engender activism amongst those canvassed, and just turns people off when it asks for money. Better to just talk with people, or do outreach via electronic channels, he said.

Rereading the comments, I found much to agree with, both pro and con. Yes, some canvasses are worse than others in terms of info and action items. Much of the money raised goes to pay for the canvass effort, leaving little extra to fill out the group's budget. Yes, it's a really tough job that has a high rate of burnout. And yes, around 40 percent of what you give to the canvasser stays with him or her, not the group or mission.

But what the writer missed is that a canvass is often a group's biggest outreach effort. It brings real people to others' doors to start a conversation, no matter if these chats are sometimes clumsy, ill-informed, or frustrating. And it's paid for by its own proceeds.

The canvasses I've worked, a PIRG fighting an incinerator in New York and a wolf reintroduction project in Colorado, were grueling but exhilarating. Both focused on gathering signatures and letters while distributing literature, and in the former case resulted in an outright win.

All we had to do was prove that recycling would handle just as much of the waste stream as burning trash would, at a fraction of the cost. But we had to do that one person at a time.

What I think is an under-appreciated aspect of canvasses, though, is that for many, it's the first time they'll get paid for their activism. And that's crucial. If we want more green leaders tomorrow, we need to find them work today. Just look at the conservative movement to understand how important that is.

I didn't stick with canvassing long, but used it as a stepping stone to other jobs in organizing, as so many do. It was a formative experience for me, to face my fear at every door and try to make a connection with a person who usually didn't want to talk, and share my passion for this world. And along with other gigs I stitched together, I was making a living as an activist.

This is why I don't flinch at giving a donation to someone at my door, after asking how else I can be involved. I know lots of people insist on sending their donations in by mail to the main office to avoid giving canvassers a cut, but not me. That 40% is part of what keeps green boots on the ground.

Dispassion as the world ends: The absent heart of the great climate affair

If you want a revolution, start with a clean energy one

Ted Glick — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:22:53 -0700

by Ted Glick
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

It was about five years ago. I was talking with a radical friend about my then-recent personal decision to prioritize work on the climate crisis. I had done so after the European heat wave in the summer of 2003 that led to 30,000 or more deaths. This catastrophe jolted me into serious study about the issue of global warming, study which led me to conclude that the dangerous, earth-heating-up process was happening much more quickly than I had thought it was.

My friend didn’t disagree about the urgency of the climate crisis, but his view was that what we needed to do about it was to build a stronger movement to replace capitalism with a 21st century version of socialism. At the time, I didn’t agree. I felt that we didn’t have the many, many years that it would take to build the kind of powerful mass movement that would be necessary to accomplish that objective, especially given the weaknesses and disorientation of the Left. I felt that the immediate historical need was to do all we could to get off of fossil fuels and onto a renewable energy/energy conservation path. I was convinced that this clean energy movement, to be successful within the limited time period we have, would have to include a very broad range of people, people like Al Gore, for example, not exactly a revolutionary.

However, for the past few months, since liberal Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman made public a first draft of comprehensive climate legislation for the House of Representatives, I’ve been seriously re-thinking this question.

Waxman’s draft of “The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” ACESA, was very problematic, but as it evolved through behind-closed-doors negotiations between Waxman and coal state, oil state and industrial agriculture Democrats, it got even worse. The target for greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions reductions over the next 10 years, an absolutely critical period of time if we are to have any hope of avoiding world-wide catastrophe, is way too weak, and it is questionable if even this weak target would be met. It contains a huge percentage of problematic “offsets” that will likely allow U.S. corporate polluters to avoid or minimize actual reductions of emissions from their dirty coal plants or oil refineries for 15-20 years or more. It gives away free 2/3 of the permits to emit ghg’s to corporate polluters; half are given directly to the fossil fuel industry. It strips the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to regulate coal plants and other stationary sources of ghg’s. Its cap-and-trade framework allows Wall Street speculators to get into the huge new “carbon market” being created. It is nuclear power-friendly, and it projects giving the U.S. coal industry tens of billions of dollars for carbon capture and sequestration, an unsafe boondoggle that is, at best, a decade away from being commercially viable, if it ever is.

All of this from a liberal Democrat who, in the spring of 2008, one year before the release of the ACESA bill, introduced legislation calling for a moratorium on the building of any new coal plants unless they sequestered 85% of their greenhouse gas emissions. The ACESA bill will allow new coal plants to be built without having to sequester any carbon dioxide or other ghg’s until 2025.

It’s a similar thing with our “yes we can” President. All through his campaign for the Presidency one of his top issues was a call for a steadily-declining cap on ghg emissions and a 100% auction to polluters of ghg emissions permits. Most of that auction money would be returned to taxpayers and consumers to help them deal with higher prices, with some of it used for clean energy and green jobs investments. In March of this year Obama included this plan in his proposed 2010 budget authority legislation. But when he couldn’t get a filibuster-proof 60 U.S. Senators to support this, and after Waxman came out in late March with his ACESA bill draft, Obama went silent. Like Waxman, he allowed the powerful fossil fuel interests which continue to dominate Capitol Hill to wreak their carnage.

I wasn’t a big Obama fan. I wanted him to win and said so publicly, but I also said publicly that Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney was the candidate whose platform and personal history of courageous leadership were most consistent with my own beliefs. However, I did believe that an Obama Presidency would create openings for progressives and revolutionaries, and based upon Obama’s consistently-articulated, 100% auction position, I thought we had a good chance to get some decent climate legislation through the House of Representatives even if the odds were much longer in the Senate.

I was wrong.

What might have made a difference? Things might have been different if there had been a much stronger, more massive radical wing of the climate movement to visibly push back against the fossil fuel Democrats and the environmentalists who quietly went along with them. If there were demonstrations of thousands around the country, or a massive sit-in on Capitol Hill, this might have had an impact. Instead, most environmental and climate groups used their usual tactics, doing some lobbying to try to strengthen ACESA but engaging in virtually no “street heat.”

Where was the U.S. Left during this battle for strong federal climate legislation? It was around, here and there, individuals writing articles, some groups putting out statements, but by and large independent progressives who understand that corporate capitalism is our underlying problem were largely missing in action.

Why This Issue Is So Critical, Short- and Long-Term

There are a number of reasons why this issue needs to be one that every person in the world who considers themselves part of the Left should be studying about and taking action on.

The most important one is the reality of the climate science. There is no question that the burning of fossil fuels, the destruction of forests and the general disregard for our ecosystem manifested by industrial capitalism, as well as 20th century efforts to build socialism in the Soviet Union and China, have led us close to the edge of a cascading series of ecological disasters that are a grave threat to the future of life on earth as we have known it for thousands of years. Stronger and more destructive hurricanes and typhoons, spreading desertification, more intensive and extensive heat waves, chronic and numerically increasing wildfires, rising sea levels, 100-year-floods happening every decade or less, the disruption of agriculture, growing water scarcity—all of this is happening now, and it’s going to get worse. The question is whether we as a human species, worldwide, are going to be able to gather the spiritual and political strength in enough time to make a rapid shift away from our past polluting practices. We must, we absolutely have to do this to prevent the acceleration of global warming which, sooner or later, will lead us past critical climate tipping points.

What are these tipping points? There are four: the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets, the thawing of the methane-full permafrost in the northern latitudes, the release of methane frozen in ice on the bottom of the ocean as the ocean warms, and the decimation of the Amazon rainforest caused by drought or by humans cutting down too much of it. Any one of these tipping points alone would likely cause such catastrophic impacts or trigger such a major spike in greenhouse gas emissions that the extensive ecological disruption would be almost impossible to reverse for centuries if not millennia.

We aren’t at any of these tipping points yet, but each year that goes by without a dramatic worldwide effort to seriously reduce our ghg emissions brings us closer to one or more of them.

Any “revolutionary” or alleged revolutionary movement which doesn’t do all that it can to prevent this worldwide catastrophe is a complete and total contradiction in terms.

The climate crisis is also a fundamental justice issue. Who is it that is being hit first and hardest as the world begins to experience the negative impacts of a hotter world? It is the people who did the least to cause it, low-income people and people of color. It is Black people in the 9th Ward in New Orleans who lived in the neighborhoods least protected from a strong hurricane. It is Indigenous people in the Arctic where the ice and permafrost are melting, villages are collapsing into the ever-rising ocean waters and hunters are experiencing an unstable and weakening ice. It is residents of islands in the South Pacific where rising seas are threatening to displace entire nations from their historic homelands going back thousands of years.

Those with the least resources are those with the fewest options as climate impacts affect their livelihoods and living situations.

The politics of this dynamic is currently playing itself out as the nations of the world struggle to come up with a stronger international climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, expiring in three years. For close to two years there’s been an effort underway to come up with a treaty by this December at a major United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen. Yet as of right now there are significant differences between the Group of 77 and China, the formerly colonized countries of the global South, and most of the industrialized countries of the North, with some European exceptions. The global South is demanding significant cuts in ghg emissions by the industrialized North, at least 40% below the baseline year of 1990. They are demanding this since over 80% of the ghg emissions in the atmosphere affecting all the nations of the world are the result of the North’s economic development over the past 150 or so years. Yet the United States, responsible for over a quarter of those historic emissions, is proposing via the ACESA legislation to reduce U.S.-based emissions no more than 7-8% by 2020.

Revolutionaries who recognize the deep-seated inequality and injustice of the world economic order, growing out of centuries of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism by the coal- and oil-burning capitalist powers, have a responsibility to support the call for a truly just treaty. Only such a treaty can begin to restore the necessary trust internationally that would then make possible rapid leaps forward to renewable energy-based, sustainable and fair economic development throughout the world.

There is a growing and interconnected, international grassroots climate movement that is planning for action in scores of countries all around the world this fall, beginning on October 24th (www.350.org) and continuing with other actions leading up to and during the Copenhagen climate conference in December. This movement has been steadily developing since 2005. It is a hopeful development and a concrete indicator of the potential for the climate issue to galvanize and advance an independent progressive movement that puts climate justice issues at its center. Another reason why the Left should be doing consistent work on this issue is because, as a once-great revolutionary leader once said, “the masses make history.”

Everyone is affected by this issue. Some are affected more by it and are suffering and will suffer earlier and more seriously, but this is an issue that ultimately affects us all. 75% of U.S. Americans understand that global warming is real and that we need to shift away from the use of fossil fuels. People are experiencing the changes in weather patterns in their daily life.

You can be sure that Barack Obama and John McCain would not have made this a major issue in their 2008 campaigns for the Presidency if it wasn’t one that their polls showed had resonance among the broad voting public.

We have a significant opportunity to build the kind of mass-based movement that, sooner or later, can force the kinds of changes needed in the way the U.S. creates its energy. As we are seeing right now with what is happening on Capitol Hill, there is a need for people who understand the way in which corporate power operates. We need people who can help the climate movement avoid the trap of blindly following Democrats who say one thing but, once in power, are then willing to settle for something very different. In this process progressive independents can build a stronger base of support and a more activist movement able to increasingly challenge corporate power and those subservient to it.

Helping people to understand the way in which power works, helping them to develop the tactics and the organizational strength to overcome it on particular issues—this is a key task for an independent progressive movement. In the process of doing this work and exposing the powers-that-be for who and what they are, we will be laying the basis for broadly-supported revolutionary changes in our energy policy, as well as in other areas of society.

On a very practical level, renewable energy technology can be used on local levels to provide “power to the people,” not just the power of the sun or the wind but power to build local economies that are more self-sufficient. Think about a local neighborhood which joins together to install rooftop solar panels and/or several windmills which, in combination, provide most or all of the electricity needed by that neighborhood. Organizing a neighborhood to do this is, first, a way to bring people together around a commonly-shared need—affordable and reliable electricity. The process of community organizing around a commonly shared need can develop confidence and hope within the community that will then likely manifest itself in other positive projects and initiatives. It will give people a sense of their power when they join together with others.

This kind of a process is the essence of what is needed to build a popular movement capable of eventually making revolutionary change.

Finally, but very importantly, the process of building a clean energy revolution will organically lead growing numbers of people toward a deeply-felt appreciation for and connection to our natural environment. This is something needed not just by the general population but by too many of those who call themselves radicals or revolutionaries. It is needed because the negative values of domination and greed which undergird capitalism and the destructive corporate practices which flow from them are responsible for tremendous environmental damage and pollution. The development of an ecological consciousness and a will to act on it on the part of ever-larger numbers of people is an absolute prerequisite if we are to have any hope for developing the kind of future new society which sees itself as one with nature, not its master.

On an individual level, appreciating, connecting to and learning from the natural world is an essential aspect of how new women and new men can emerge who are able to give leadership within a 21st century revolutionary process.

There are many things that make good revolutionaries: an ability to listen, a sensitivity to human suffering, an understanding of history and economics, basic organizing skills, a commitment to development of new leadership, self-motivated discipline, a willingness to sacrifice for others. Many of these qualities are enhanced by a personal connection to the many other life forms with whom we share this planet Earth.

In the words of an Ojibway prayer,

“Grandfather.
Look at our brokenness.

“We know that in all creation
Only the human family
Has strayed from the Sacred Way.
We know that we are the ones
Who are divided
And we are the ones
Who must come back together
To walk the Sacred Way.
Grandfather,
Sacred One,
Teach us love, compassion
and honor
That we may heal the earth
And heal each other.”

Amen.

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

MoveOn calls on Senate to preserve Clean Air Act in climate bill

Kate Sheppard — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:40:32 -0700

by Kate Sheppard
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

MoveOn is running full-page ads in D.C.-based publications urging the Senate to maintain the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate carbon dioxide.

The climate bill passed by the House last month would limit the EPA's ability to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act, instituting a new regulatory system instead.

Keeping the EPA's authority intact is one of several improvements that enviros and progressives are hoping to make to the climate bill in the Senate, where discussions about climate policy began this week.

Here's the MoveOn ad:

Related Links:

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

Republicans for Enviromental Protection push back for Graham

Top Twitterers the Grist staff can’t live without

Ashley Braun — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:21:23 -0700

by Ashley Braun
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

Sure, we could compile a list of the "Top 1,000 Greens to Follow on Twitter" -- because there are at least that many worthy of the title. But is it just us, or are you curious about who we, the writers and editors at Grist, actually follow and favor on Twitter ourselves? You are? We thought so. For all the environmental news you need via Twitter -- from the instantaneous and important to the inane -- please follow and recommend our top green Twitter picks below (and don't forget us @grist).

For more worthy green Twitter recommendations, check out http://www.grist.org/ecomonday and get an introduction to EcoMonday on Twitter here.

David Roberts, Staff Writer, @drgrist

#1. @Kenwardjr Ken Ward Jr.
Bio: Reporter, The Charleston Gazette
Recommendation: Ward is an Actual Reporter working down in Appalachia -- no one does more to keep tabs on the coal industry's evil shenanigans.

#2. @climatebill Climate Bill ACES 09
Bio: American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009
Recommendation: The mysterious "climatebill" is a great example of what Twitter can do -- he/she came out of nowhere and began obsessively tracking the Waxman-Markey bill. Very helpful. [See @climatebill's identity revealed by Kate Sheppard below.]

#3. @worldresources World Resources Institute
Bio: Environment and human needs - climate change, global warming, ecosystems, green business, sustainable markets, good governance, sustainable development
Recommendation: The World Resources Institute does some of the best wonky analysis work available, and also points to interesting outside work.

#4. @GreenEnergyBrf Green Energy Brief
Bio: Produced from the White House press room, we cover company news, finance, legislation/policy, opinion/analysis. Washington, Wall Street, Silicon Valley.
Recommendation: Tapped-in tweets from connected DC ex-journo.

Tom Philpott, Food Editor, @tomphilpott

#1. @naomistarkman Naomi Starkman
Bio: Food policy media consultant to Consumers Union, others; co-founder, CivilEats.com; former Dir. of Comm., Policy, Slow Food Nation; aspiring organic farmer
Recommendation: A powerhouse of info, Naomi Starkman is a power-linker.

#2. @ediblesf Bruce Cole
Bio: Edible San Francisco - The Bay Area's Smartest Food Magazine
Sample Tweet: Colbert rips MO Rep. Davis who opposes subdz. school lunches, & says "Hunger can be a positive motivator" http://bit.ly/3mySwJ

#3. @civileater Paula Crossfield
Bio: Managing editor of Civil Eats, Huffpo blogger, contributing producer at The Leonard Lopate Show, rookie gardener, avid cook, food policy wonkette
Sample Tweet: Join us talking about urban agriculture @sustagchat #sustagchat

#4. @ethicurean Bonnie Azab Powell
Bio: Food politics writer, blogger, editor, and sometime meat slinger.
Recommendation: Bonnie Azab Powell covers good general food politics, with an emphasis on industrial meat.

#5. @tlaskawy Tom Laskawy
Bio: Eco-blogging daily at Beyond Green and Grist
Recommendation: Tom Lasakwy is really good for general food politics and sustainable food issues too.

Russ Walker, Executive Editor, @russ_walker

#1. @guardianeco Guardian Eco
Bio: Breaking news, tweets and comment from The Guardian's environment team
Sample Tweet: Beers and bikes: do they really mix? | Gwladys Fouché http://bit.ly/tQs7b

#2. @WWF_Climate WWF Climate
Bio: World Wide Fund for Nature Climate Change Team at the frontlines. Saving us and the planet one tweet at a time!
Sample Tweet: Want 2 know how the #G8 countries score on #climate? see how #WWF scores them http://is.gd/1m37U

#3. @greenwombat Todd Woody
Bio: Contributing editor, Fortune Magazine, Grist columnist, Green Wombat writer
Sample Tweet: A picture is worth 24,000 mirrors as eSolar turns its solar farm into a Fourth of the July tableau. http://bit.ly/PGiyP

#4. @redgreenandblue RedGreenandBlue.org
Bio: Environmental politics from across the spectrum. Part of the Green Options Media Network.
Sample Tweet: No Funds Allocated for Clean Energy, Climate Change Mitigation in India’s $200 Billion Budget http://tinyurl.com/oswxgq

#5. @robertmcclure Robert McClure
Bio: Veteran journalist seeking new frontiers after decades in the business
Sample Tweet: Interesting: In Rose Garden speech on Cap'n Trade bill, Obama called for safe nuclear energy and "cleaner" coal. Not "clean" coal. #ACE

#6. @HuffPostGreen Huffington Post Green
Bio: Breaking environmental news, green-it-yourself projects, blogs, animal stories and more!
Recommendation: Can't forget our pals there!

Sara Barz, Editorial Assistant, @skbarz

#1. @streetsblog Streetsblog.net
Bio: The national blog network for sustainable transport, smart growth and livable streets.
Recommendation: That's an interesting one about bikes and transit [issues].

#2. @current_green Current.com/green
Bio: From inspiration to information: The latest green news, DIY on a nickle and dime, tech innovation, stats and facts, calls to action, and more...
Sample Tweet: Welcome to the era of the urban environmentalist! VIDEO http://bit.ly/3DQcWz (and who knew that's what rivers looked like in LA...) #green

#3. @treehugger Treehugger.com
Bio: Links, Ideas and Conversation from the TreeHugger hive mind, the latest in modern green.
Sample Tweet: VW announced an electric car for 2013! Let's hope it's affordable and available in USA http://su.pr/2zDo1b

#4. @algore Al Gore
Bio: None listed, but really, does he need one?
Sample Tweet: The most important environmental vote of this generation. http://tinyurl.com/l3lsja

#5. @climatehaiku Climate Haiku
Bio: This guy will never be confused with Keats.
Sample Tweet: Clean energy in / a flash? Wind turbine built in / one minute! watch here http://bit.ly/3qG7T

Kate Sheppard, Political Reporter, @kate_sheppard

#1. @MeghanMcNamara Meghan McNamara
Bio: climate change reporter by day, political news junkie by night
Recommendation: A reporter for Exchange Monitor's GHG Transactions & Technologies who has also been following the progress of the American Clean Energy and Security Act in the House via Twitter.

#2. @climatebill Climate Bill ACES 09
Bio: American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009
Recommendation: The handle of Jeremy Blanchard, a student at the University of Oregon who has been feverishly twittering about the progress of the ACES legislation.

#3. @focusthenation Focus the Nation
Bio: Empowering a Generation to Power a Nation! Join the conversation, use #FtN
Recommendation: Focus the Nation is a national nonprofit working to engage citizens in the climate debate.

#4. @TwilightEarth Adam Shake
Bio: Twilight Earth is dedicated to saving the Environment through shared News, Discussion, Advocacy and Activism. Adam Shake - Founder
Recommendation: The twitter hub for Adam Shake, founder of http://www.twilightearth.com/.

#5. @thingsbreak
Bio: None listed. Who does this person think she/he is? @algore?
Recommendation: I have no idea who this is, but this twitterer has been delivering smart commentary on climate.

Jonathan Hiskes, Staff Writer, @jhiskes

#1. @yalee360 Yale Environment 360
Bio: Yale Environment 360 is a publication of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
Recommendation: From the capable news-condensers at Yale Environment 360 and the e360 Digest.

#2. @kgrandia Kevin Grandia
Bio: Managing Editor of DeSmogBlog.com, co-founder of VoteForEnvironment.ca and New Media Director for the Vancouver PR firm Hoggan and Associates
Recommendation: I like a climate journalist/activist who's not exclusively focused on the serious stuff.

#3. @Olympicreporter Jeff Lee
Bio: 2010 Olympics reporter for The Vancouver Sun
Recommendation: Jeff Lee of the Vancouver Sun, for ideas on the environmental impacts of the 2010 Olympics.

#4. @makower Joel Makower
Bio: Founder of GreenBiz.com, author of Strategies for the Green Economy and other books, frequent speaker on green business, green marketing, and clean tech
Recommendation: For keeping tabs on the green business realm.

#5. @globalpost Global Post
Bio: 70 Correspondents in 53 Countries = World News Covered
Recommendation: I'm intrigued by anyone with the audacity to start a network of foreign correspondents in 2009. Has an environment channel too.

Ashley Braun, Community Coordinator, @ashleybraun

#1. @ejgertz Emily Gertz
Bio: Journalist, editor, content strategist
Recommendation: Smart, plugged-in stories, links, and wit on climate and environmental news, with great coverage of the ACES cap-and-trade bill.

#2. @Jambutter Rob Smart
Bio: Creating sustainable #ProFood solutions offering great food experiences, while improving health, environment, and local economies
Recommendation: Thoughtful news and analysis on the topics around creating sustainable food communities.

#3. @ecorazzi Ecorazzi.com
Bio: Ecorazzi.com :: The Latest in Green Gossip. Founded by @michaeldestries and @rebeccacarter
Recommendation: Fun and sarcastic tweets about green living and pop culture.

#4. @fakeplasticfish Beth Terry
Bio: Living with less plastic since 2007. It's not that hard. Join me!
Recommendation: A pioneer in walking the talk: an environmental blogger on an anti-plastic crusade.

#5. @loveofscience Allie Wilkinson
Bio: Environmentalist/Blogger/Journalist/Conservationist @ ohfortheloveofscience.com
Recommendation: My daily dose of tweets on conservation and marine issues, with a satisfying science twist.

#6. @elephantjournal Elephant Journal (Waylon Lewis)
Bio: Elephant Journal is a blog, articles, videos, interviews re: 'the mindful life': yoga, Buddhism, green, politics.
Recommendation: For insightful & holistic green tweets about what really matters, look no further than @elephantjournal.

1Sky looks to Twitter for climate movement’s next rallying cry

Activist groups rally support for climate bill

Ashley Braun — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:18:12 -0700

by Ashley Braun
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

Photos of 1sky volunteers in South Carolina from their June 19 action day event. Find out how you can get involved with climate action groups.1sky.org via FlickrThis is an exciting week for environmental activist organizations. After all, they're all about rounding up masses of grassroots supporters for just such an occasion as the expected House vote this Friday on historic climate change and energy legislation.

If you're not tapped into the various climate action networks, Grist scanned a handful of activist groups' websites and social media pages to pull together a list of what actions they are urging their members to take in the next 48 hours before the vote.

If our list is lacking, please amend it in the comments.

1Sky

website/email/action alert: Fax Congress right now with one click and tell your rep to strengthen and pass H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act. | Link via Facebook: Call & fax your rep. to urge support for strengthening & passing HR 2454 so it can be made even stronger in the Senate! | Link via Twitter: Call & fax your rep. to urge support for strengthening & passing HR 2454 so it can be made even stronger in the Senate! | Link

350.org

via email/action alert: radio silence via twitter: radio silence via Facebook: radio silence

To be fair to 350.org, it's working on an international day of climate action later this year.

Alliance for Climate Protection/Repower America

via Twitter: @RepowerAmerica: Join Al Gore for a conference call on next steps for #ACES, tomorrow at 8pm EDT | Link via email/action alert: Let your Representative know that you want a cleaner and stronger economy today. Urge them to support the American Clean Energy and Security Act now. Call your Representative: 877-9-REPOWER (877-9-737-6937) via Repower America website: Al Gore has a video message and phone system set up to connect you with your Representative to tell her or him: "Vote 'yes' on comprehensive clean energy legislation." | Link

Campus Progress

via email/action alert: "Tell Your Rep: Strengthen & Pass the Climate Bill" | Link via rabble (and rebel?) rousing on blogs: "Get together a group of friends and show up at your representatives' in-district office with signs calling for more (find out who your representative is here, find out where their office is located by going to their website)" | Link

Center for Biological Diversity

via email/action alert: We need your help right now to contact Congress with a simple, clear message: "The American Clean Energy and Security Act is not strong enough yet to fight the climate crisis - I urge you to support deeper, faster cuts in greenhouse gas pollution and keep the Clean Air Act in place." If implemented, the bill would give us less than a 50/50 chance of avoiding catastrophic runaway global warming and devastating impacts to humans and other species. | Link via Facebook: A link to above URL and "Please, use the quick link above to send a letter to your congressperson today. Urge them to support deeper, faster cuts in greenhouse gas pollution and keep the Clean Air Act strong."

Energy Action Coalition/PowerShift

via action alert: These groups are co-hosting a rally in front of the Capitol on Friday, June 26th at 1:00pm, with lobbying to follow. | Link to RSVP
via website: Declare your Independence from Dirty Energy - Take Action, June 27th to July 4th. Join us in demanding that President Obama and Congress stand with us, not the polluters, and fight for a strong and clean energy economy. | Link Host an event in your community or at your District office Demonstrate political pressure with petition deliveries or a call-in day

Environment America

via website: Sign an online petition to Congress: "I support dramatic efforts to usher in a new clean energy economy and cut global warming pollution. Please support [the American Clean Energy and Security Act] and take every opportunity to strengthen it and deliver more clean energy for America." | Link

Environmental Defense Fund

via action alert/website: Urging members to email their representative with the following message: "The House is about to vote on the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, HR 2454. This historic bill will invest in America, create jobs, curb our global warming emissions, and free us from foreign oil. I strongly urge you to vote for the Waxman-Markey bill." | Link via Facebook: "FYI - The House is schedule to vote this Friday on Waxman-Markey, the most important climate bill of our lives. Take action today, and urge your Representative to vote YES! http://bit.ly/lyaXR Then, please share with your friends!" Also posted URLs about why EDF is supporting ACES, what the key features of the bill are, and how to contact your representative in support of the bill via Twitter: @EnvDefenseFund: $3,000 per year? Try $175 by 2020 and that's without calculating the benefits! A new CBO assessment of #ACES - http://bit.ly/5I9ro

Focus the Nation

via email/action alert: "We're asking you to call your Representatives today and tell them to strengthen and pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009." | Link via Facebook: They have a message ready for you and tailored to your Representative's stance on the bill: "We're asking you to call your Representatives today and tell them to strengthen and pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (HR 2454, "ACES")." | Link

Green for All

via Twitter: "CALL CONGRESS NOW - Critical vote in 48 hours! http://tools.advomatic.com/27/aces Opportunity for All in the clean energy bill!" via email/action alert: The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) could begin America's much-needed transition to a clean energy economy. But ACES falls short when it comes to creating accessible jobs and opportunity for our local communities. Ask your Representative to strengthen ACES by: Funding the Green Jobs Act! Ensure local access to quality via Facebook: "Call Congress Now - Critical vote in 48 hours! -- http://alturl.com/oqes -- Include Opportunity for All in the clean energy bill!" via YouTube: Short video touting Waxman-Markey as a path to more green jobs.

League of Conservation Voters

via Twitter: Thank you @BarackObama for supporting landmark climate legislation and the #American Clean Energy & Security Act - http://bit.ly/54rjQ #ACES via website: Letter from LCV to Congress: "LCV urges you to vote YES on H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act...In light of the tremendous importance of this legislation, LCV has made the unprecedented decision that we will not endorse any member of the House of Representatives in the 2010 election cycle who votes against final passage of this historic bill." | Link

NRDC

via Twitter: @NRDC: RT @michaeloko Heading to press conference-rally on Capitol Hill to support clean energy and climate bill #ACES [If you're there, tweet it!] via email/action alert: Please do all you can to oppose any weakening measures, strengthen and help pass this critical bill. | Link via Facebook page: Tune in to NRDC's Switchboard blog for live coverage of the ACES bill rally on Capitol Hill STARTING NOW. Al Gore calls the ACES bill the "most important environmental vote of this generation." Urge Congess to pass it! | Link

Oxfam America

via action alert: "Tell Congress: Support the world's poor people; vote yes on climate bill" | Link

Sierra Club

via email/action alert: THE AMERICAN CLEAN ENERGY AND SECURITY ACT OF 2009 Let's Defend, Improve, and Pass It! Don't let Big Oil and Coal weaken the bill.Â Call your Representative today! | Link via Twitter: @Sierra_Club: Come to a press conference TODAY AT 2 to urge members of the House to pass ACES. 2:00 pm at the House Triangle: http://bit.ly/dvWx0

WWF

via email/action alert: "Contact your representative and urge him or her to work to support and strengthen the American Clean Energy and Security Act." | Link via Facebook: We need your help to jumpstart America’s clean energy economy! Tell your member of Congress to vote YES on the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Click here via Twitter: Tell Your Member of Congress to Vote YES on the American Clean Energy and Security Act. http://ow.ly/fENx #WWFUS #WWF #Climate

So long and thanks for all the fish

Frogs in the forest: the new canaries in the coal mine

Ashley Braun — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:00:19 -0700

by Ashley Braun
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

Dr. Kerry Kriger cracks a smile during his visit to Grist's Seattle HQ.Russ Walker / GristOn Tuesday, the staff at Grist devoured frogs for lunch. Well, not exactly.

We sat down with conservation biologist Dr. Kerry Kriger of the newly minted nonprofit Save the Frogs! -- one of several stops he's making in Seattle during a country-wide speaking tour. As one of the lone voices raising the alarm for amphibians, Kriger dished about the worst disease ever to hit wildlife, why it's such a big deal that one-third of amphibians are threatened with extinction, and just how many people actually are having frogs for lunch.

A scientist by training, Kriger first became involved with amphibians while in Australia researching how frogs are affected by the fungal disease chytridiomycosis, which currently is decimating frog populations and which may be the worst disease ever recorded to hit a group of organisms. It's the chytrid fungus, and it has caused more than 100 extinctions since the 1970s.

Didn't know frogs were in such shoddy shape? Don't worry, you're the norm. Which is precisely the reason Kriger started Save the Frogs! in the first place. He realized he was writing scientific papers about how bad the situation is globally for frogs, which then got published in journals "normal people don't read." On top of all that, he and other scientists were making recommendations based on that research, but there was no one to carry them out. Kriger figured starting a nonprofit was the best way to fill that void.

His current vision for the organization is simple but powerful: "that everyone in America know that frogs are disappearing." Once general awareness is established, especially among the younger generation, it is Kriger's hope that grassroots and legal action to protect frogs and their habitat will follow.

When asked why the average citizen should care about some dying frogs on a mountain somewhere, Kriger took a minute to measure his answer.

"Frogs have been around 250 million years," he said. "They've outlived the dinosaurs ... But in the last 30, 40, 50 years, they're now going extinct."

Because thin-skinned frogs live both on land and in the water, they are biological indicators of the planet's health -- the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. With over one-third of these species in imminent danger of extinction, what's really alarming is that most of us have no idea what's going on.

If that's not cause for concern, he reasoned, you only have to look as far as human disease and medicine. Little-known fact: 10 percent of Nobel prizes in medicine and physiology recognized research that was performed, in part, by researchers using frogs. Additionally, frogs eat disease-carrying ticks and mosquitoes, reducing the spread of malaria, dengue fever, and other less-than-desirable conditions people don't want to catch.

So where is the ray of sunshine in all of this? Kriger admitted he was rarely asked that question, saying, "Good news comes out occasionally."

However, he went on, individuals can do a lot to reverse the threats to amphibians. A few ways to do this are by supporting organics (keeping harmful pesticides far from frogs), by buying pet or food frogs that are captive-bred and local (America is the second-largest importer of frog legs ... who knew?), and by dropping into casual conversation news of the amphibian extinction crisis (over cocktails, naturally).

If you're interested in hearing more from Kriger, take a look at his list of speaking engagements or contact him to help organize an event in your area. And really, consider skipping the frog legs next time.

Tweet for the bees

Climate activists to descend on House cafeteria on Tuesday

Kate Sheppard — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:47:51 -0700

by Kate Sheppard
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

A side of flashmob with your lunch?

An unnamed group of climate activists is planning to descend on one of the larger Capitol Hill cafeterias on Tuesday to call for strengthening the American Clean Energy and Security Act. They're using Craigslist to gather supporters.

Here's the ad:

Dear DC-ite.

Your presence is requested on Tuesday, June 23rd for a special mission. At precisely 12:15pm, all of us will be walking through the Longworth office building cafeteria and will freeze in place for 120 seconds. At the end of 120 seconds, at the signal, we will drop playing cards (aces, of course) to the ground, or throw them up in the air and let them fall where they may. And we'll quietly resume whatever we were doing, presumably walking calmly out.

Specific instructions:
-show up at Longworth cafeteria at 12:05pm on Tuesday, June 23rd dressed in business attire.
-Bring an Ace playing card (or several) in your pocket. You are encouraged to write "The world needs better" on your card(s)
-At 12:15 precisely, freeze where you are. >>> No sitting, and don't obstruct any cash registers, doors or walkways.
-At 12:17, (120 seconds later) after the signal, drop the aces to the floor, and quietly disperse.

The action refers to the ACES bill, otherwise known as Waxman-Markey. Our stance: We need a good global climate agreement by the international negotiations in Copenhagen. ACES is not good enough. It needs to get better.

Longworth cafeteria is located in the center/basement of Longworth Congressional Office building. Its quite nice, and Tuesday is a 'farm days' lunch.

Anyone know who's behind this? Post in the comments below.

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

White House and enviros amp up efforts to pass climate bill in House

Kate Sheppard — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:32:23 -0700

by Kate Sheppard
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

The House is gearing up to vote on the American Clean Energy and Security Act as soon as next week, and both the White House and environmental groups are planning a full-court press to get it passed.

Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), coauthor of the bill, has said he is "very close" to making a final deal with Democrats like Collin Peterson (Minn.), chair of the House Agriculture Committee, who has threatened to torpedo the bill if he doesn't get exactly what he wants for the ag sector. A new, negotiated version of the bill is expected to be released next week.

The Obama administration is planning to make next week "energy week" to rally support for the bill. Reports Politico, "The White House plans to dispatch Cabinet officials to push the administration's energy agenda and urge Congress to pass climate legislation currently under siege from skeptical Democrats in the House."

The admin started its push this week, with the release of a new government report on climate science that warns of dire effects across the country. The report's authors have been holding briefings on the report on Capitol Hill this week to light a proverbial fire under legislators and their staffs.

The big question is how vocal President Obama himself will be; he was notably absent from launch events for the new climate report this week. We don't yet have a schedule of events for "energy week," but First Lady Michelle Obama is slated to kick off the 2009 National Conference on Volunteering and Service in San Francisco on Monday, and word around town is her remarks will have a green bent.

Meanwhile, greens and other progressive groups are going at full tilt. On Wednesday, a coalition of environmental, labor, Hispanic, and veterans groups announced that they're spending about $5 million on an "ad blitz" aimed at getting the climate bill passed. They're running print ads [PDF] in the major Capitol Hill publications, plus online ads targeted at decision makers.

Two members of the coalition, the Sierra Club and Vote Vets Action Fund, are running this ad on cable and broadcast TV in the D.C. market through June 25:

Other groups are running ads targeting specific legislators and demographics.

This ad from Environmental Defense Action Fund, in which a Christian minister discusses the need to address climate change, is running in the districts of nine swing representatives from both parties: Allen Boyd (D-Fla.), Brad Ellsworth (D-Ind.), Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.), Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-S.D.), Baron Hill (D-Ind.), Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio), Erik Paulsen (R-Minn), Lamar Smith (R-Texas), and John Tanner (D-Tenn.).

Another Environmental Defense ad, this one featuring Exelon CEO John Rowe, is running nationally, with extra time slots in the districts of Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.):

Environmental Defense has also teamed up with Republicans for Environmental Protection on ads that target specific GOP House members, calling on them to be "true, common-sense Republicans" and support the bill. Here's one running in the district of Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.):

Similar ads are aimed at Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), Michael Castle (R-Del.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Leonard Lance (R-N.J.), Christopher Lee (R-N.Y.), Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), Dave Reichert (R-Wash.), and Chris Smith (R-N.J.).

Related Links:

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350.org—In every corner of the globe…

Russ Walker — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:08:58 -0700

by Russ Walker
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

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New Repower America ad aims to rally support for climate bill

Kate Sheppard — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:31:46 -0700

by Kate Sheppard
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

The Alliance for Climate Protection on Monday rolled out a new TV ad calling for a shift away from oil and toward a clean-energy economy. The ad will be airing nationally on cable channels just as the House is preparing to vote on the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill; a floor vote could come as soon as next week.

The ad features an older man on a farm telling his fellow citizens that "it's time to get real" about American energy and environmental policy. "Forty years now we’ve been talking about how we’ve got to stop being held hostage by foreign oil," says the man. "Well, we’re still borrowing money to buy oil from dictators who don’t like us and burning it in ways that kill God’s green earth. Why can’t we use our own clean energy and create good paying jobs here instead of sending billions overseas?"

The ad is part of the Alliance's Repower America campaign, and part of a larger effort by Al Gore's climate groups to get a climate bill passed through Congress this year.

Watch it:

Labor teams up with enviros to pass climate bill and promote green jobs

Kate Sheppard — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:18:56 -0700

by Kate Sheppard
Reprinted by permission from Grist. For more environmental news, humor, and inspiration, visit www.grist.org.

After working for the United Steelworkers International Union for 30 years, Lauren Horne left in January to take on a new role within the labor movement -- rallying union members to help fight climate change.

Union members call for a cleaner, greener economy.Photo: Step It UpHorne, a Pittsburgh native, is now coordinating an education campaign in Pennsylvania for the Labor Climate Project, a program run by the Blue Green Alliance. She spends her days traveling to union meetings throughout the state, where she teaches members about the problem of global warming and the ways that solutions could lead to new, green jobs for blue-collar workers.

"One question I ask is, 'Do we have any environmentalists in the room?' And very, very few hands, if any, go up," she said. "If they're not familiar with [climate change], or if they don't believe in it, I educate them."

Ultimately, Horne ties her presentations back to the economy and jobs. "We talk about the economic situation today, which everyone knows about," said Horne. "And then we also talk about the climate crisis situation, and about how by resolving one you can resolve the other and create good, family-sustaining jobs to help rebuild the middle class in this country again, particularly in manufacturing and construction, because those industries have been particularly hard-hit during this recession."

Horne is now one of five veteran labor organizers working on the ground for the Labor Climate Project in Rust Belt states. Some 350 volunteers from the environmental and labor communities are doing similar education work for the campaign. Their goal is to create a network of union members who will be active in getting a climate and energy bill passed through Congress.

Blue Green Alliance Executive Director David FosterPhoto: Blue Green Alliance"I think generally people are surprised at how supportive union members tend to be on environmental issues," said David Foster, executive director of the Blue Green Alliance (BGA). He was a district director for the Steelworkers until he left to help found the alliance in 2006. It started as a joint project of the Steelworkers and the Sierra Club, and has since expanded to include the Communications Workers of America, the Laborers’ International Union of North America, the Service Employees International Union, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

But Foster notes that while union households are often sympathetic to green causes, there hasn't been much outreach to them from the green community. BGA is now trying to remedy that by hiring organizers like Horne to help create "a blue-collar constituency for global warming solutions."

"I've always believed that in organizing you're better going to where people are at than standing outside and asking people to come to you," said Foster.

Ramping up the pressure in D.C.

With the Obama administration gunning to get a climate bill passed this year, and the House already at work on one, the Blue Green Alliance has been increasing its presence in D.C. In March, the group hired its first full-time employee in the capital, Yvette Pena Lopes, who is serving as director of legislation and intergovernmental affairs. She comes from the Teamsters union, where she represented their 1.4 million members on trade, workers’ rights, and green-jobs issues.

"The challenge with the environmental movement has been that people have seen it as a choice between ... taking care of their family financially, or doing what they think is right for the planet," said Pena Lopes. "I think our job is to make both of those easy choices, and to not pit one against the other."

Pena Lopes is working to ensure that the legislation coming out of Congress will not only address environment and energy concerns, but also boost employment opportunities. "It's the No. 1 priority for environmental groups and also a very important priority for the labor groups in ensuring that these aren't just environmentally focused policies that address climate change without taking into account the jobs aspect of it," she said.

The Blue Green Alliance and a number of other labor organizations are encouraged so far by the Waxman-Markey climate and energy legislation that was passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on May 21. Foster called it "a positive step toward ... a clean energy economy that provides good jobs in green manufacturing and skilled construction trades."

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney praised the bill, saying that in its current form, "it makes significant, job-creating investments, while attempting to minimize impacts on existing workers." The AFL-CIO -- the largest federation of unions in the country -- has become increasingly active in the environmental realm recently, in February unveiling plans for a new Center for Green Jobs in Washington, D.C.

The United Auto Workers also endorsed Waxman-Markey, happy that the bill includes funding to set up infrastructure for electric cars and retool auto plants to make advanced-technology vehicles. The United Mineworkers are on board too.

These labor groups like the basic framework of the Waxman-Markey bill -- an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to curb greenhouse gases -- but they have some differences of opinion over how quickly to reduce emissions. There is also disagreement over how to distribute pollution permits, with BGA wanting the permits auctioned off and the auction revenues used for public purposes, while the AFL-CIO wants permits given away to some energy-intensive industries. The current version of Waxman-Markey takes the latter approach, giving permits free of charge to industries like iron, steel, cement, and paper.

Still, overall, the bill in its current form is getting a hearty thumbs-up from the labor community.

That's what friends are for

Employee Free Choice Act banner on Sierra Club building.Photo: Sierra ClubAs unions back the most important environmental legislation in years, some greens are now supporting the most important labor legislation in years: the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would make it easier for workers to unionize.

The Sierra Club has taken the lead on this front; it has formally backed EFCA since 2007, but has been more vocal in recent months. In April, the group rolled out a two-story banner on its Capitol Hill office featuring a giant image of a Philadelphia security worker with the words, "I want the economy to work for everyone." The club has also hosted education sessions on the bill for staff, volunteers, and members, and sent out email action alerts asking supporters to call their members of Congress and encourage them to support EFCA.

"We're looking at sustainability more broadly, not just reducing emissions but also a sustainable economy and sustainable conditions for workers," explained Margrete Strand Ragnes, who splits her time between the Sierra Club, where she works on the Labor, Workers' Rights & Trade Program, and the Blue Green Alliance, where she's deputy director. "As we're looking towards this new green energy economy that we believe has the potential to create millions of new jobs, we want to make sure those new green jobs are also good jobs. It's not that all green jobs will be union jobs, but that workers should have the right to organize if they want to, so they can fight for better wages and benefits." Strand Ragnes also argues that employees with union protections are more likely to report environmental concerns and health violations.

Of course, supporting EFCA is also a way to help strengthen the enviro-labor partnership by scratching labor's back on an issue that's exclusively theirs. Most issues the two movements have coordinated on in the past have been environmental, according to Brian Obach, a sociologist at SUNY New Paltz who studies social movement alliances. "For environmentalists to be taking a stand on Employee Free Choice is a significant breakthrough," he said.

And while EFCA is outside the normal range of green issues, Foster of the Blue Green Alliance says it should be a natural fit. "I think environmentalists are generally very easy to persuade that if we reverse the trend of declining unionization in the United States, we increase the chances that we'll have strong environmental protections in this country," he said.

Labor groups outside of the BGA have praised the coalition's environmental partners for stepping up on EFCA. "The work the Blue Green Alliance has done to build that understanding is very fundamental and very important," said Bob Baugh, executive director of the Industrial Union Council and co-chair of the AFL-CIO's Energy Task Force.

Past is prologue

The Blue Green Alliance has gotten a lot of attention for bridging two movements that have often been perceived as at odds with each other, but in fact environmental groups and unions have a long history of working together, even if they've butted heads at times.

In the late 1960s and the 1970s, the Steelworkers, United Auto Workers, and other unions joined with green groups to help pass the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, two landmark environmental bills of the 20th century, according to Scott Dewey, a legal scholar and environmental historian at UCLA.

In the 1980s, with the rise of Reaganomics and the drive for economic growth, relations between the two camps became more adversarial, said Obach, and environmental protection was portrayed as a job killer. "Historically employers have been very effective at using the jobs-versus-the-environment argument, that their interests are antithetical, and they've really been able to pit workers against environmentalists in many cases," he explained. The two sides clashed over major environmental priorities, including fuel-economy standards for automobiles, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, logging, and endangered species.

Enviros and unions began partnering again in the 1990s on trade issues, when global trade agreements raised concerns about the loss of protections for both jobs and the environment. The 1999 World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle brought "turtles and Teamsters" together on the streets to protest sweeping trade deals being hashed out behind closed doors.

But the present-day confluence of an economic crisis and a climate crisis has helped bridge the two camps' interests perhaps more than any issue in the past, according to Obach. Rather than just fighting against bad things, the two movements can now work toward a common, positive goal: a new, green economy.

"The whole idea of rebuilding the economy on the basis of sustainable industries has really opened up a lot more opportunity for unions and environmentalists to work together in a proactive way," said Obach.

Of course, enviros and labor still have their differences on specific issues, and recognize that there are some areas where they may never agree. Unions tend to want more lax timetables for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions to limit economic disruption. Groups like the United Mine Workers and the Boilermakers Union want to ensure a sound future for the coal industry, while many environmentalists would like to see an end to all use of coal. The two movements have also disagreed over the trade protections they would like to see in climate bill.

Over the years, however, they have become more understanding of each other's views on these issues, according to Baugh of the AFL-CIO. He credits the environmental community for an increased recognition of the importance of preserving jobs and economic growth. Baugh points to the example of the Kyoto Protocol, which unions did not back in 1997, largely because they were worried about international competitiveness since major developing nations like China and India were not included. Today, Baugh said, unions and enviros are largely agreed that there needs to be full international cooperation on a new climate treaty.

"I think the change for the environmental side is a far clearer recognition that jobs, economy, and employment are critical if we're going to change our economy ... It really matters about creating good jobs in a way that the environmental purists didn't think or care about and they do now," said Baugh. "You don't want to trade off one for the other, and you don't really have to."

The Blue Green Alliance has worked to promote this sort of mutual understanding by bringing rank-and-file members of green groups and unions together at joint events like meet and greets, town halls, and political rallies.

"If this is only about polar bears drifting away on ice breaks, then we're not going to make this an issue that's relevant to the broader population," said Strand Ragnes of BGA and the Sierra Club.

Bill they, or won't they?

Both EFCA and a climate bill will be tough to pass through Congress. In March, it started looking like EFCA wouldn't have the votes to pass in the Senate, though there's now talk of a compromise. The House climate bill has jumped over its first hurdle, but has many still ahead, and climate legislation will be an even tougher sell in the Senate.

Unions and greens have some common foes on the bills. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce actively opposes both measures, and spent $15.5 million on lobbying in just the first quarter of 2009.

"We are going to educate the people in the center of the country as to the fact that they are the ones who are going to pay the tab and have to make the sacrifices" if a cap-and-trade bill passes, Chamber of Commerce Vice President William Kovacs told Politico recently. “The fight’s going to be in the center of the country."

Whether or not they get a climate bill or EFCA passed this year, both labor and environmental leaders are optimistic about their prospects for long-term partnership.

Baugh believes relations between the two camps are now much stronger than they were in the past. "We lost for a long time, and this country couldn't have a conversation about industrial policy," he said. "It's taken a long time to get back to this point, where we've got an economic crisis and a climate crisis, and in fact the answers are a cleaner planet and good jobs."

Related Links:

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