Senator Boxer: Global Warming Action

On March 19th, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, delivered remarks on the path forward for addressing global warming, including legislation and other actions. Included in her speech were the following prinicples:

The primary goals of this legislation would be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid dangerous global warming while promoting economic growth and energy independence. To achieve these goals, legislation to cut global warming pollution shall:

1. Reduce emissions to levels guided by science to avoid dangerous global warming.

2. Set short and long term emissions targets that are certain and enforceable, with periodic review of the climate science and adjustments to targets and policies as necessary to meet emissions reduction targets.

3. Ensure that state and local entities continue pioneering efforts to address global warming.

4. Establish a transparent and accountable market-based system that efficiently reduces carbon emissions.

5. Use revenues from the carbon market to:

- Keep consumers whole as our nation transitions to clean energy;
- Invest in clean energy technologies and energy efficiency measures;
- Assist states, localities and tribes in addressing and adapting to global warming impacts;
- Assist workers, businesses and communities, including manufacturing states, in the transition to a clean energy economy;
- Support efforts to conserve wildlife and natural systems threatened by global warming; and
-Work with the international community, including faith leaders, to provide support to developing nations in responding and adapting to global warming. In addition to other benefits, these actions will help avoid the threats to international stability and national security posed by global warming.

6. Ensure a level global playing field, by providing incentives for emission reductions and effective deterrents so that countries contribute their fair share to the international effort to combat global warming.

A video of her speech, and the transcript are here.

Sustainability & Global Warming: Get It?

Once we've sucked out all of the oil and natural gas from under the land and the sea floors, blown up every mountaintop and stripped the Earth of all of it's coal, burned all of the oil, gas and coal, and reached 1000 parts per million CO2, enjoy the weather because our planet will be transformed from a magnificent globe inhabited by billions of people and other living things to something that looks like THIS.

Tom Toles Gets It!

A major problem for us and for future generations is that our old fossil fuel economy is not sustainable and can't prosper without polluting and destroying the planet. We need to transition to a clean energy economy that will create new jobs in support of renewable energy sources that don't pollute the planet. Unfortunately, not everyone gets it.

Sustainabilty and the Story of STUFF

Annie Leonard, an expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues, made an informative and humorous video-cartoon called "The Story of Stuff". It explores the costs and consequences of our consumer culture and its impact on the environment, third-world nations, working class Americans, personal health and our general state of happiness. To learn more about sustainability, and how our consumer culture works against it, click here to watch Annie Leonard's video.
Sustainability is defined as "a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. The term, in its environmental usage, refers to the potential longevity of vital human ecological support systems, such as the planet's climatic system, systems of agriculture, industry, forestry, and fisheries, and human communities in general and the various systems on which they depend."
Since sustainability has to do with the environment, ecology and people, I went to the Environmental Protection Agency web site to see if they knew about the concept. They cite it, but they define it a little differently. According to the EPA, sustainability is "the ability to achieve economic prosperity while protecting the natural systems of the planet."* Hmmmm, economic prosperity wasn't mentioned in the previous definition. And why does economic prosperity come first, before the more important part about protecting the planet?
A major problem for us and for future generations is that our dirty energy economy can't prosper without polluting the planet and increasing global warming. Simply put, our current system is not sustainable! We need to transition to a clean energy economy that will create new jobs in support of renewable energy sources that don't pollute the planet. And oh yes, contrary to Bush's advice to "go shopping", we could all do the planet a big favor by purchasing LESS STUFF!

[*UPDATE, September 2008: the EPA has now adopted a more reasonable definition of sustainability: “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”]