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You know how sometimes Jon Stewart gets all smarmy and sycophantic when he has on a guest he actually admires? And you know how Al Gore has a reputation for being a bit stiff on occasion? Let’s just say they seemed to bring out those qualities in each other last night—or, as Stephen Colbert “jokingly” put it later, there was “no Al-Gore-rhythm.”

Still, Gore spoke clearly about the energy and technology solutions that exist, what it will take to actually implement them, and why it ain’t happenin’. The Daily Show published a two-part extended interview on its site—here’s part one:

... and here’s part two:

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Kirsten Gillibrand was in the midst of her second term in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving New York's 20th District, when Gov. David Paterson selected her to replace Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate. (Clinton, you'll recall, was chosen by Obama to serve as secretary of state.) Gillibrand will serve in the Senate at least until a special election in 2010 to serve out the remainder of Clinton's term, which ends in 2012. She's viewed as a strong favorite to win that election and, more generally, as a rising star in the Democratic Party.

As a member of both the Environment & Public Works Committee and the Agriculture Committee, Gillibrand will be heavily involved in the development of the Kerry-Boxer clean-energy bill. She is considered a likely "yes" vote, and her advocacy for the bill has had three notable features, each reflecting her state's interests:

We asked Sen. Gillibrand about these issues, and she was gracious enough to answer the questions via video (full transcript below):

Here's the full transcript:

-----

Hi, I'm Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York. I'm pleased to be here today to answer some questions from Grist.org on climate change legislation.

Question #1: The first question asks: Do other senators share your support for EPA Clean Air Act authority? Will it survive the coming negotiations?

Absolutely. Other senators do share my view on this issue, but for a number of the senators who don't serve on the [Environment & Public Works] Committee they haven't been as engaged yet on this discussion, which is why they need to hear from constituents like you so that they know how important it is that they preserve the Clean Air Act. These protections, as you know, are critical to New York 'cause we are the ones that suffer from a lot of the air pollution that comes across the country from coal-fired plants. We suffer from acid rain, we suffer particularly in the Adirondacks increasing contamination in all of our rivers and streams. In New York you can only eat one fish a month because of the high mercury content in our waters. And we also have a growing asthma rate throughout our state, so for me this is a critical issue that I will continue to fight for.

Question #2: Second question. How are you working to persuade your Senate colleagues to support the creation of a carbon market involving many financial instruments?

I'm very concerned that we make sure we have a robust financial market that will fuel investments in carbon reductions. I think it's very important that we have proper oversight and accountability, good regulations that provide transparency, and also capital requirements. I think this kind of regulation will be a derivative market that will be regulated through the [Commodity Futures Trading Commission], and I think it's critical that we regulate this alongside the other derivatives legislation that we are going to do. We want to make sure that capital is available for investing in clean energy generation like large-scale wind and solar projects, so we have to make sure that we have the kind of products that are necessary to do this. I've been advocating for both standardized products and customized products with oversight and accountability and capital requirements for both.

Question #3: Third, What type of measures would you like added to the climate change bill to serve the interests of farmers?

Well, I think farmers can play a very important part in this climate change bill. We want to make sure that the agriculture section can achieve the overall parts of the bill or the overall goals of the bill which is to make sure there is verifiable reductions in carbon emissions, but there are so many opportunities for our farmers whether they're going to be part of wind energy or solar energy or whether they're going to be part of anaerobic digesters and cellulosic ethanol, they have a lot of opportunity to be part of the climate change bill and do those offsets by the things they can create throughout agriculture. We also want to make sure that our farmers have the resources and technical assistance available for smaller projects and working with aggregators who can connect for example multiple dairy farms for large methane digestive projects or make the project not just achieve reductions but also be economically feasible for those farms who are participating. So there is a lot of opportunity out there and I just want to make sure our farmers have a voice in this climate change bill.

Question #4: Fourth question: Which Senate Republicans do you think will support climate change legislation?

Answer: Well, I really think this issue is not about Democrats or Republicans, I think climate change is not going to wait for anybody so we need to bring colleagues together to actually achieve results. I think Senator Graham, Senator McCain have both spoken out in favor of climate change in the past, and I'm hopeful that they will join us in our efforts. But the bottom line is, as Chairman Boxer said, that this is something we all have to care about. It's the future of our country, its our national security, its our economic strength, and it's the one thing that's going to turn around global climate change, so I think we will have a lot of allies in this and my goal is that for all Americans we need to support these kinds of efforts to achieve energy independence, grow green jobs in a clean economy, and stop all of the threats of global climate change.

I want to thank Grist.org for giving me the opportunity to discuss these very important issues. The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act will lead to long-term economic prosperity, energy security, and the protection of our environment for generations to come.

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The Canadian campaign Moms Against Climate Change just released a provocative video (below) that makes a boldly emotional appeal for action on global warming.

Set in an unnamed city, the 86-second video “Demonstration” features a protest march comprised entirely of children. Riot police block the street, tap their shields and clubs ominously, and hold back barking dogs. Eventually the cops let loose on the children, chasing one boy up a chain link fence while another falls in the street.

It ends with the message, “If our children knew the facts we do, they’d take action. Shouldn’t you?” The violence is presumed, not shown explicitly, but the implication is that we’re all engaged in violence against children by failing to head off the climate changes whose biggest impacts will unfold later this century.

There’s more: Moms Against Climate Change also launched a new website that encourages Canadian mothers to post photos of their children beneath a message to the Prime Minister: “Stephen Harper: Remember who you’re representing in Copenhagen.” Given the reservations many parents have about posting private information about their children on the internet, it’s a strategy likely to cause controversy. The children’s first name and hometown accompany the pictures, and there is a note about private protection in the “Upload” section.

The campaign is a joint effort of two Canadian environmental groups, Environmental Defence and ForestEthics. But it holds importance everywhere, because the Conservative Harper is a world leader that climate negotiators are particularly worried about.

The prominent Australian author and climate activist Tim Flannery recently called on Harper to change his “obstructionist position” on a climate treaty.

"We desperately need Canada to play a much more positive role in the coming months," Flannery said at a recent news conference in Ottawa. "Canada is an important country with important obligations."

With the “Moms” campaign, Harper will hear that message from Canadians too.

The video:

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Comic and author David Cross kicks off Grist’s new comedy interview series, “It’s Getting Ha! in Here”! Check out his riffs on laughter saving the environment, how his fans can help planet earth and, of course, farting. And if that’s not enough, check out Cross’s new book I Drink for a Reason.

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

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

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

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

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

Greenpeace puts out the call for real action:

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

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

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Another brilliant stunt from the Yes Men: the New York pranksters sent out a fake press release this morning, pretending to be from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber is reversing its opposition to the clean energy bill in Congress. It’s had a change of heart. It’s now taking climate change seriously, the press release said.

It was all a hoax, but before that was discovered Reuters, Fox Business Network, and CNBC reported the news as fact. The Chamber, which can’t seem to catch a break these days, clarified that it still, in fact, opposes the climate bill and thinks these shenanigans “undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change.” But the best fun happened at a fake press conference held by Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum, pretending to be a Chamber spokesperson. A real Chamber spokesman interrupts, and shouting and hilarity ensue. Watch it:

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University of Washington campus.Did you know that many of our country’s colleges and universities -- places that are supposed to be a source of higher-education and leadership -- get their electricity by burning coal? And sometimes those coal-fired power plants are even on the campuses?

I think many of us look back in disbelief at some of the things we did in college. We’re seeing that same sense of disbelief from current college students when they learn that their campuses are still powered by coal.

This ad launches a campaign that will use print and online advertising (two more video ads to come) to highlight that some things are just too dirty, even for college.

The ads play off stereotypically “dirty” college behavior, becoming progressively more “dirty” throughout the series. Though college life allows for leniency in the socially acceptable, coal still crosses the line.

The ad campaign targets schools in 11 states which currently rely on coal power.

If you attend one of these schools, you can sign a petition asking your university president to kick coal off your campus -- the list and the petition are on this website. 

The Campuses Beyond Coal Campaign is working nationwide to wean all campuses off coal-generated electricity and replace it with clean energy options. With organizers on the ground in several of the more than 60 campuses with on-site coal plants the campaign is working to help universities achieve the zero carbon emissions targets set forth in the Presidents' Climate Commitment.

We released a report last month to support the campaign: “Breaking Coal’s Grip on Our Future: Moving Campuses Beyond Coal.” It highlights many of the problems facing coal dependent schools and the solutions available.

We know students want a cleaner, healthier future, and so they're organizing on campuses coast-to-coast to make that vision a reality.

The ad campaign will run through the end of October, with the remaining two videos to be released in the next few weeks. It’s time to kick coal off campus!

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Grist catches up with The Yes Men—those high-minded pranksters behind the faux climate-week New York Post and the notorious SurvivaBall—to talk about runaway climate change, that Big Apple arrest, their plans for Copenhagen, and their latest movie, The Yes Men Fix the World, which comes out on October 7.

To get involved with The Yes Men in an effort they hope will be the largest international climate civil disobedience action of all time, visit www.beyondtalk.net.

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Update! The people have spoken; we have have a winner. Presenting the nifty Tracing Emissions mobile (and a gallery of entries).

Photo courtesy spike55151 via FlickStory: In June I wrote about Burning Embers, an art and design competition that invited students to create illustrations that reflected the causes and effects of climate change. The idea was that we need more compelling imagery than the sometimes-drab, sometimes-confusing graphics in policy reports. Well, four intriguing finalists have been selected—a video, a photo essay, a set of “animal cards,” and a mobile (the last is my favorite).

Ji Lee, creative director of the Google Creative Lab, did the judging for the organizer, the non-profit Artist as Citizen. Commenters on the Dot Earth blog of New York Times science reporter Andy Revkin will vote for the winner. Revkin pitched the early idea for a climate art competition after reporting on the problematic “burning embers” graph in a 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Anyway, have a look at the four finalists—they’re all worthwhile. Then vote for a favorite at Dot Earth, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Thin Ice
M. Drennan, School of Visual Arts, M.F.A., Photography, 2009

Extinct
D. Kim, Parsons School of Design, B.F.A., Communication Design, 2009

Tracing Emissions
T. Holliday, S. Reagin, Pratt Institute, both M.F.A., 2011

Climate Change
M. Shapiro, New York University, B.F.A. Film, 2011:

Climate Change from ArtistAsCitizen on Vimeo.

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For a joyously peaceful week, residents beneath Massey Energy's Edwight mountaintop-removal site in the Pettry Bottom community in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia have received a reprieve from reckless blasting, fly rock, silica-dust showers, and potential flooding--thanks to tree-sitter Nick Stocks, who voluntarily came down at 10:00 a.m. on Monday. The seventh day into the protest, Stocks and fellow tree-sitter Laura Steepleton endured all-night sleep-deprivation tactics from Massey security guards, including the firing up of chainsaws last night. 

UPDATE, September 1, 10am EST:  According to Climate Ground Zero, both protesters "have been charged with trespassing, obstruction and littering, and their bail has been set at $25,000 each.  For the past five days, they endured psychological torture, verbal assault and threats."

A direct report from Rock Creek, West Virginia has been filed by Rainforest Action Network:http://understory.ran.org/2009/09/01/where-in-the-world/

UPDATE, Aug. 31, 5:00 p.m. EST: According to Climate Ground Zero, the State Police have confirmed that Laura Steepleton also descended the tree and has been arrested.

Stocks stated, “To this day the DEP [West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection] has acted as a thin, weak delegate for Big Coal in West Virginia. They have circumvented, sidestepped, dismissed, and lied to communities and individuals who look to them for protections that ought to assure healthy children, safe drinking water, and a continued existence in the valley. To this day, they have not done their job to even the slightest degree. When the government fails in its obligation to protect its people and communities are made unsafe and unlivable, it is the responsibility of all concerned people to turn attention to that failure and do all in their capacity to ensure the safety of the community. If the DEP doesn't do it, we must do it ourselves, and we will go beyond. We will stop the devastation of this mountain and protect the communities below. We will end mountaintop removal.

The security guards' actions with lights and air horns are making the situation less safe, Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice volunteer Charles Suggs said. “Depriving sleep from people who have to maintain safety systems to prevent a fatal fall endangers their lives."

Filmmaker Jordan Freeman has released an incredible aerial video of the massive Edwight mountaintop-removal site, the nearby coal-sludge impoundment, and the protesters nuzzled into the lush Appalachian forests.

As part of a growing national campaign to stop mountaintop removal, the protesters have drawn attention to the West Virginia DEP's lack of enforcement of mining laws, and the deleterious impact of the mountaintop-removal blasting, silica dust, and fly rock on the health of the local residents, their watersheds, and deciduous forests. Just last Friday, fly rock and boulders from a strip-mine site slammed into a home in eastern Kentucky.

For updates on the action or to support the defense fund, visit Climate Ground Zero or Mountain Justice. Also find out more about the West Virginia DEP's negligence.

Here's more of Jordan's film work on the recently released documentary Coal Country:

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In November 2006, Michelle Conlin began a year-long experiment in extreme sustainability, resolving to burn no fossil fuels, produce no trash, and eat only food grown within 250 miles of her Greenwich Village home. She gave up nearly all shopping and learned to use cloth diapers for her 2-year-old daughter. She took up bicycling and rode a scooter to work. Describing her earlier self as “espresso-guzzling, retail-worshipping” and a “take-out junkie,” she gave up coffee (with some lapses) and to-go food. Eventually she gave up electricity at home, relying on candles in her 9th-floor apartment and lots of stair climbing.

Michelle, Isabella, and Colin, still smiling.Photo courtesy Oscilloscope Laboratories

Conlin, a 42-year-old reporter at Business Week, had no blog, book deal, or film project to send her on this journey of sacrifice and self-denial. What she had was a husband.

By fortune or misfortune, Conlin is married to Colin Beavan, the self-described No Impact Man. He cooked up the No Impact Man stunt as fodder for a book of the same name, out Sept. 1. He keeps a No Impact Man blog. And a film crew recorded his year for No Impact Man the movie, also released next month.

Beavan, 45, says he undertook the project to learn if his own lifestyle could become part of a solution to the world’s environmental crises. In writing about his motivation, he says he was afraid of becoming “that brand of liberal who whines about the world but doesn’t actually do anything about it.”

“If I were still a student, I’d probably march against my adult self,” he quips.

Hence, the bathtub full of laundry and the winter dinners of local cabbage. Also, because of the deforestation crisis, no toilet paper.

While Beavan gets all the attention and the superhero nickname, his wife and their 2-year-old daughter, Isabella, are dragged along for the un-motorized ride. That’s a good thing for the film, because Conlin emerges as the most vivid character for the simple reason that she struggles to make such drastic changes in her life.

Beavan, despite his claims that he was a do-nothing liberal, seems like he was just waiting for a reason to build a kitchen compost bin, mix up natural cleaning supplies, start buying groceries at the Union Square farmers market, etc, etc. The movie shows him reflecting on and defending the project, it shows him visibly losing weight over the year, but you don’t really see him struggle.

Conlin is more sympathetic because she misses coffee and tires of eating local root vegetables. She thinks, understandably, that a year is a long time to go without buying new clothes. While No Impact Husband devotes much of his day to cooking, cleaning, and making the experiment work, she keeps her day job. The filmmakers play up Conlin’s “espresso-guzzling, retail-worshipping” characterization, but it’s still clear this is difficult for her.

The movie opens with Beavan backstage at The Colbert Report, practicing different ways of explaining his shtick. This is telling, as a lot of the movie is about the couple explaining the project. A New York Times profile about them serves as a plot development, because they’re shocked at how strongly and negatively readers react to their project.

“I didn’t quite get why people hated us,” says Conlin. She visits Eating Liberally blogger Kerry Trueman, who wrote a scathing post about No Impact Man before softening her view of the enterprise.

“This really touches a nerve for people,” Trueman says. “Aside from making people feel guilty and defensive about their consumer habits, people are very traumatized if you suggest that they should make do without something.”

Others weren’t angry but dismissive, leading Beavan to complain about the Times profile headline, “The Year Without Toilet Paper.”

Beavan holds Isabella at the Union Square Greenmarket. Photo courtesy Oscilloscope Laboratories

“What if we called it the year I lost 20 pounds without going to the gym once?” he says. “Or the year we didn’t watch TV and became much better parents as a result? Or if we called it the year we ate locally and seasonally and it ended up reversing my wife’s pre-diabetic condition?”

But if the project is meant to get people talking—and Beavan says it is—it succeeded. Colbert, Good Morning America, and a slew of other media called to get his story. Sony/Columbia bought the right to rework the story as a drama that could, reportedly, include Will Smith. (Weird, I know.)

At some point toward the end of his project Beavan makes the discovery that he isn’t alone in working toward sustainability. He visits a project to reintroduce oysters in the Hudson River and an industrial cleanup project in the Bronx and says, “There is this network of people who have been working on this stuff forever.”

It shouldn’t have taken a year-long experiment to figure that out, but Beavan understands that the publicity gods reward stunts like No Impact Year. To my knowledge, the Bronx cleanup people haven’t been invited on Good Morning America.

Beavan undertook the project expecting that it would launch a more politically engaged stage in his career. (He has a Ph.D. in electronic engineering and wrote previous books about the history of forensics and D-Day.) After learning that 12,000 diesel trucks a day pass through the Bronx neighborhood he visited, he reports, “The diesel particulates in the air are causing asthma in kids, causing brain damage in kids … I’m not talking about the polar bears, I’m not talking about people in faraway island communities who are going to be hurt when the ocean levels rise. I’m talking about people who are already feeling the effects of our over-consumptive society.”

I hope his work keeps moving in this direction. In explaining why he flipped off his apartment’s circuit breakers earlier in the film, he says, “I can’t change the way that electricity is delivered to my house.” I wanted to tell him that a lot of engineers, activists, and citizens are working hard because of their conviction that—together--they can change where electricity comes from.

He seems to sense this when he installs a rooftop solar panel and says, “For the first time I’ve realized that it’s not about using as little as I can possibly use, but finding a way to get what I need in a sustainable way.”

It might be an artificial revelation at the end of a patently artificial “experiment.” Then again, even Thoreau’s shack at Walden Pond was a stunt, with a book deal always in mind. Walden proved both deeply irritating and useful to those who were unsettled by it. No Impact Man (the movie) inhabits that tradition well.

One more note: It’s a thoroughly fun movie to watch, with great music. Watching Beavan reading Gawker comments about himself gives a sense of how hard it can be to dramatize a story about not doing things. But filmmakers Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein make the most of the Manhattan setting, using traffic jams, overflowing trash cans, and belching exhaust pipes as foils to Beavan and Conlin’s clean living. They got into the no-impact spirit, shooting from a bicycle rickshaw while filming the couple on their bikes.

Find out when the movie is coming to your city, and watch the trailer:

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