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My letter to Obama about the oil spill
Occupational hazard of being a green blogger: Last night, after listening to a lot of analysis yesterday about whether Obama was taking the oil spill seriously, I was tossing and turning while writing a letter to him in my head. I'm including it below, and I've also put it up as a petition on Care2 if you want to sign on.
Dear President Obama:
I am writing to ask you to make sure that another devastating offshore oil spill never happens again. You can do it. All you have to do is tighten the permitting process for offshore drilling and permanently ban any expansion of it.
It's rare that a president gets such a golden opportunity to change the course of history. The scale of the spill invites you to make strong policy decisions. That opportunity is the one good thing about it — please don't let it go to waste. What better argument for green energy and energy efficiency is there? People who might not ordinarily see the need — say, Louisiana shrimpers — are primed to make a change.
I know you've said we need the oil. Supporters of drilling threaten high prices at the pump if we don't increase domestic production. But economists say offshore drilling is likely to have no effect on gas prices. And the effect it has on the environment is anything but negligible, as NASA's photos of the spill from space make clear. Add in the cost in dollars of the spill and the lives lost and oil doesn't look like such a great deal anymore.
Offshore drilling, according to the most aggressive estimates put out by the industry, could produce 10 percent of what the country uses after a 20-year ramp-up period. Why don't we use that time to reduce demand by 10 percent or more? The United States is an energy hog. There are so many easy ways for us to reduce our use. And climate change demands that we do so. Be a leader, and show Americans how to make these small sacrifices. Be a good executive and create the combination of carrots and sticks that will make them do it.
Backing offshore drilling is inconsistent with the leadership we need you to show on climate change. Only an opportunistic politician — not a leader — talks from both sides of his mouth. Only an opportunistic politician puts his head in the sand about an impending disaster, hoping that his successor will be left holding the bag. Americans want leadership; that's why we elected you.
You may agree with those who say that something like this will never happen again. But those same people never thought it would happen this time. And it was their blasé over-confidence that led them to have no emergency plans in place. It's time to stop believing these bumbling masters of industry and do what we know we need to do: decrease our dependence on fossil fuel.
Lead the way.
| May 29 2010 at 10:23 AM
Caveat eater: Strawberries are about to get more toxic
Ever wondered exactly how powerful the biggest corporate lobbies are? In Washington, note that Republicans support suspected terrorists' "right" to purchase guns, even while maintaining that no other part of the U.S. Constitution or the Geneva Conventions apply to them. And in Sacramento, a pesticide so cancer-causing that it's often used specifically to create cancer in rats for medical experiments was just proposed for approval for use on the state's strawberry crop.
Shutterstock
The state's own Department of Pesticide Regulation had advised in a report against approving the gas, methyl iodide. And several Nobel prize winners asked the U.S. EPA not to approve it. (It did.) According to farmers, there are a number of alternatives to the stuff, including solarization, anaerobic soil disinfestation and natural pesticides. And it's especially important to use safe materials only in strawberries, which hold the chemicals they're treated with. (More background in this TGL post.)
Lobbying for methyl iodide, we have a single company, the largest pesticide manufacturer in the world, Arysta LifeScience. The Strawberry Growers Commission — the people who employ the people who'd be breathing the stuff in — had weakly declined to take a position.
The state is accepting public comment through June 14. Let them know that people trump profits.
Correction: Approval of methyl iodide has been proposed but not yet finalized, pending public comment.
| May 07 2010 at 06:32 AM
How Dixie Cups are destroying the planet
If you don't follow environmental news, you may never have heard of Koch Industries, the second largest privately held company in the United States.
Of course, if you do follow environmental news, you will have heard that the Koch brothers are aggressive funders of climate denial.
ExxonMobil has been wearing the scarlet letter D for denial, while Koch Industries has been outspending them by a margin of almost 3 to 1, according to a new report from Greenpeace. The company has pulled it off because it has no brand name. But it does own Georgia Pacific, which makes Dixie Cups, Brawny paper towels and Angel Soft and Quilted Northern toilet papers.
In and of themselves, these non-recycled throw-away paper products aren't great for the environment, but given where their profits go, it's time to toss them out for good.
Look at climate denial by talking points and you'll quickly stumble upon Koch money. Climategate? Check. "Polar bears are doing fine"? Check. The so-called Spanish study that, with bogus methodology, "proved" that green energy kills the economy? Check.
Think of climate denial in terms of obstructionist lawmakers and you'll quickly spot Koch money in their coffers. The brothers gave more than $10,000 each to James Inhofe (R-Ok.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Ak.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Jim DeMint(R-S.C.), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), David Vitter (R-La.), John Boehner (R-Oh.), Eric Cantor (R-Vir.), and Joe Barton (R-Tex.).
Look at climate denial as a list of right-wing think tanks, and you'll also find Koch money in the safe: Americans for Prosperity, which funded this summer's astroturf "Hot Air" protests, got $5 million. The Cato Institute has been on the climate beat since the 80s. In recent years alone, it's gotten $1 million from the Koch brothers; ditto the Heritage Foundation.
So, if you're an environmentalist or you just support real science over junk science, think about crossing Brawny, Dixie Cups, Angel Soft and Quilted Northern off your shopping list for good.
| April 08 2010 at 12:56 PM
Dancin' in the dark, for the planet
This Saturday at 8:30, turn your lights off for an hour to participate in the third annual Earth Hour, a worldwide event put on by the World Wildlife Fund to raise awareness about the environmental impacts of energy use.
A band of darkness will march around the planet, with each darkened light a symbol of support for cleaner energy. The Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, the City of San Francisco and the State of California will be among local participants. Internationally, the Las Vegas Strip, the Pyramids of Giza, the Parthenon, St. Peter's Basilica and the Sydney Opera House will all go dark at 8:30 local time.
Last year, 80 million Americans participated. So light some candles, break out an acoustic guitar and a bottle of wine, and toast the transition to clean energy.
| March 26 2010 at 01:22 PM
Beware Prop 16
Word about Prop 16, which will appear on the June ballot, is beginning to get out.
The measure would amend the state constitution — which requires just a 50 percent vote plus one — to require municipalities to garner a two-thirds vote in order to replace their private utility service with a public one, like Marin County recently did.
The proposition's sole sponsor, with $35 million to spend, is PG&E.;
San Francisco adopted a compromise "community choice aggregation" plan in 2007. The plan isn't public power, but it would allow consumers to obtain 50 percent renewable energy through the PG&E; grid unless they opt out. PG&E; — which is failing to meet even its minimal state-mandated renewable energy targets — is expected to lobby its rate-payers to opt out, making the unproven claim that the plan, called CleanPowerSF, would result in higher bills. State law requires utilities to "cooperate fully" with such programs.
In 2009, city voters rejected Prop H, which would have moved the city toward public power. PG&E; spent $10 million campaigning against that measure. The utility has also threatened to refuse to deliver power to Marin's public utility, explicitly in violation of state law.
But Prop 16 isn't just another battle in PG&E;'s war on clean energy; it's also an example of everything that's wrong with the balloting system in California: Company buys its way to the ballot with a measure that would specifically diminish voters' already limited influence over the company. That it will take a constitutional amendment to do so is just the putrid icing on the cake.
Former assemblywoman Carole Migden, who wrote the state bill empowering cities to adopt community choice aggregation, will join long-time clean-power advocate John Rizzo of the Sierra Club, as well as Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos, at a public meeting on Prop 16 tomorrow, March 2nd, at 6:45 pm at the LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market St., at Octavia).
Opponents of Prop 16 also have a website here.
| March 01 2010 at 11:29 AM
Speak your mind to Muni this morning
This morning at 9 a.m. in City Hall, Room 400, Muni will hold its hearing on the massive service cuts and moderate fare hikes it has been pushing. Despite public outcry and a union revolt, Muni's revised draft proposal remains almost entirely unchanged.
Erin Lubin / The Chronicle
Perversely, Muni is just as pig-headed about its proposal to undertake a massive expansion of service in the form of the controversial Central Subway project.
But could the unlikely hero of this tragi-comedy be the Federal Transportation Authority? Just after issuing a serious slap to BART's Airport Connector project — releasing $70 billion into regional transit operations — the FTA has, at least according to one source, thrown down a similar gauntlet for Muni's Central Subway plan.
As SFWeekly and SFGate's City Insider report, the FTA demanded that Muni prove that the Central Subway would not harm its ability to provide service.
But SFWeekly suggests that Muni won't be able to meet the requirement because a 2007 report concluded that the project would do just that.
It may come down parsing the legalese. The agency's letter reads:
FTA is concerned about the ability of SFMTA to maintain its equipment and system in a state of good repair. [The law] requires agencies to demonstrate the ability to maintain and operate the public transit system after implementation of the proposed project without requiring reduction in existing levels of public transportation service. Based upon FTA's review of SFMTA's bus and rail fleet management plans and the twenty year financial plan, FTA cannot at this time determine SFMTA's ability to do this.
The average citizen could well take this paragraph to echo his or her own common-sense concern: Does an agency already trying to make its most significant service cuts ever have any business investing in a glitzy new project, when said project would not, even under the best of circumstances, offset those cuts?
But a more cynical reader could see the question posed by FTA more narrowly: Will Muni be able to afford to make repairs to the Central Subway and the rest of its system?
Even if FTA turns Muni away, hat in hand, just as it did BART, will the the Central Subway continue along its greased rails? After all, BART has yet to announce that it's given up the Airport Connector idea.
It's important to note that the problem here isn't just psychosis on the part of agency directors: It's also a reflection of fundamental problems with the way transit is funded at the regional, state and federal levels. It's much easier to get money for one-time expenses than it is to pay for the day-to-day oversight that really makes a system run.
All the more reason why, if you go to City Hall this morning, you should save at least half of your rant for the mayor for failing to make the city's transit first policy anything more than a good joke. Only one problem: Newsom will almost certainly not be there to hear.
| February 26 2010 at 06:31 AM
Your status updates' carbon footprint
There is viral environmental campaign afoot to block Facebook from powering a new data center it is building in Oregon with coal.
First, full disclosure: The petition was created by this author, working with AlterNet editor Tara Lohan, who unearthed the story from a trade pub, and Change.org online action coordinator Robin Beck.
Paul Sakuma / AP
The story goes like this: The social networking giant has gotten so huge that it needs to build a server farm, and has chosen to do so near those operated by Google and Microsoft. But unlike those companies' data centers, which get their power from the Bonneville Power Administration's hydroelectric dams, Facebook will be getting its electricity — and let's be clear, lots of it — from Pacific Power, which produces the bulk of it by burning coal.
Hydroelectric dams may be environmental purgatory, but coal is the ninth circle of hell: It's extremely carbon-intensive, produces particulate pollution in abundance, and is initially obtained by via strip mine or mountaintop removal (in the western United States, most coal is strip mined).
Facebook's rationale? Prices on hydroelectric power have gone up slightly since Google and Microsoft locked in. But because internet companies often get credit for being clean and forward thinking, they really ought to live up to those assumptions. And what better way to let Facebook know that you dislike its decision than to participate in some online activism?
Greenpeace started a Facebook group on the site opposing the coal-powered data center, but it's curiously no longer functioning. Leaving the petition, and Tara Lohan's article — which you can share via Facebook.
powered by Change.org Start a Petition »| February 22 2010 at 07:19 AM
Why you should want higher parking fees
I wrote last week of the dire measures being considered to close Muni's gaping maw of a budget shortfall ($16.9 million to be exact).
The meeting scheduled to address the issue has been postponed from February 16 to February 26 at 9 a.m. The location remains Room 400 of City Hall.
Brant Ward / The Chronicle
In addition to slashing service and boosting fares on Muni, increases in parking costs and fees are also being considered.
It would be all too easy to oppose those new costs for cars. Who doesn't love free parking and a cheap neighborhood parking permit? But the question isn't, Should everything be free in an ideal world? It is: Would I rather have the city get money from my driving in fair, clear, and above board ways, or do I want more tickets for unknown offenses and higher towing and storage fees?
The creepiest municipal behavior comes in the form of these inexplicable, and exorbitant, tickets. To wit: I was charged $600 and change for towing and storage when my car was stolen and recovered, inoperable and worthless.
A friend, who uses transit except for out-of-town trips and hauling, recently received a $400 bill for having parked her truck for more than 72 hours in a legal spot. (Did you know that was illegal?) Hourly storage costs were also included, despite the fact that no one had notified her that the truck had been towed a full day before.
Would you rather confront these Kafkaesque flexes of government power — and continue to watch transit wither away to nothing — or pay $90 for your annual permit and a dollar an hour to park downtown on Sundays?
| February 12 2010 at 10:40 AM
Deadlock, arrests in Copenhagen
Evidence that the talks at the U.N.'s climate conference in Copenhagen are not going well continued to mount overnight. The Danish head of the conference resigned, allowing the country's PM to take the helm for overnight sessions.
The sessions were deadlocked.
Meanwhile, outside Danish police continued to put the "cop" in COP15, surrounding protesters, attacking a truck used as a base and wielding teargas and batons (video). 250 were arrested. Nearly 1,000 peaceful protesters were arrested late last week.
In what appears to be a separate incident, 100 protesters attempting to intervene in the deadlocked negotiations were detained.
Inside the talks, the points of contention reveal the absurdity of narrow political debate about the survival of the world as we know it: Developing countries, which models show will face the brunt of flooding and droughts, want an agreement that will hold the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius—about 3 degrees Fahrenheit, while industrialized countries want to give the green light to a 2-degree increase. (Who gave them the authority to do so remains unclear.)
The U.S., meanwhile, is seeking to gut its obligations by changing the word "shall" in a phrase indicating emissions to reductions to "should." (There are a lot of things one should do that one has absolutely no intention of doing.)
One bright spot: Negotiators are apparently close to a deal to reimburse forested countries for preserving their forests, an essential component in staving off catastrophic climate change because trees absorb atmospheric CO2.
This deal, said Fred Krupp, head of the Environmental Defense Fund, "is likely to be the most concrete thing that comes out of Copenhagen."
A petition demanding an end to police violence in Copenhagen (started by a local activist who is seen getting hit in the CNN video) is available here.
UPDATE: There will be a protest at the Danish Consulate (California at Market) objecting to police violence in Copenhagen this Saturday, December 19, at 4:30 p.m.
| December 16 2009 at 10:51 AM
Go rogue when and if you buy Going Rogue
The Chronicle reported yesterday that Bay Area booksellers were not mavericky enough to carry onetime vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's new book, Going Rogue.
"Our customers are thinking people," said Nathan Embretson, a bookseller at Pendragon Books in Oakland. "They're not into reading drivel."
But maybe you have a morbid desire to read the thing? Well, I'm here to tell you that you can have your cake and eat it, too—almost. If you buy Going Rogue at Green Apple Books in the Richmond, the store will donate 100 percent of its proceeds to the Alaska Wildlife Federation. Sadly, Palin will still get her take, and trees will still have died in the name of this media frenzy.
But Green Apple Books' donations will help undermine one of the many objectionable environmental positions taken by the onetime governor: her support for aerial wolf hunts. Alaska Wildlife Federation opposes this cruel and unnecessary practice.
Sadly, Americans seem to love killing wolves almost as much as they love their domestic cousins, dogs. Today, Idaho is opening a hunting "derby," encouraging hunters in the state to kill as many animals as possible. (For more on mountain state wolf hunts, read this post.)
Another group, Defenders of Wildlife, is asking for donations today to put an ad in Times Square in support of its work to protect wolves and counter the rampant wolf-hating that long-held misconceptions about the animals generate.
Ronnie Howard / Shutterstock
| November 20 2009 at 12:07 PM
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