"New Energy for America" Trumps "Drill Baby Drill"

Washington, DC -- Gerald Ford, on replacing Richard Nixon, declared "our long national nightmare is over." George Bush's administration has been a much longer national nightmare -- but we finally know that it will end on January 20. Barack Obama's transformational victory ended the notion that America is evenly and deeply divided between reactionaries mired in the past and more hopeful Americans looking to a future based on renewable energy, advanced biofuels, efficiency, and low greenhouse-gas-emitting technologies. Obama carried not only the designated "battleground" states of the last eight years but also Virginia, Indiana, Colorado, Nevada, and, as I write, is leading in North Carolina and is almost even in Missouri.

The centerpiece environmental issue in this election was energy -- polling for the Sierra Club on Monday and Tuesday showed that an unprecedented 50 percent of the voters said that energy issues were either the most important or one of the most important factors in determining their votes. Student activists organized 400,000 voters in battleground geographies around a clean-energy pledge. And candidates who argued for new energy solutions like renewables; electric and plug-in cars; and high-performance, low-carbon-use buildings trumped those who clung to coal, oil, and nukes.

Everywhere you looked, "new energy for America" trumped "drill baby drill."

In Utah, desperate efforts to keep a Sevier County grandmother from giving local citizens the final decision to approve or reject new coal-fired power plants failed. Coal proponents desperately tried to knock the measure off the ballot, passing a special bill through the legislature to deny citizens the right to vote. But the Utah Supreme Court stood up for the voters' right to choose, and guess what -- it turned out Sevier County residents are not so hot on having coal plants shoved down their throats.

In Missouri, a renewable-energy portfolio standard passed overwhelmingly by 66 percent. In Washington State, a mass-transit bond passed; only a year ago a combined transit-highway bond that the Sierra Club opposed because it was too heavily weighted towards roads was defeated in a huge upset. In California two renewable-energy ballot measures -- opposed by environmentalists because of concerns about possible drafting flaws -- were beaten.

Environmentalists picked up at least five seats in the U.S. Senate and 20 in the House, and prevailed in their highest priority congressional races: electing Mark and Tom Udall and replacing John Sununu with Jeanne Shaheen in the Senate, and defeating global-warming denier Joe Knollenberg in the House.

But as important as the energy and environmental consequences of this election are, watching the nation react to Obama's victory reminded me most intensely of the words carved in marble in the Lincoln Memorial -- a quote from his second inaugural address:

Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether."

Last night, I felt that perhaps we had finally come to the end of the American Civil War.

Comments

[Dr. J. Singmaster]

Carl: I would suggest that you and Club members check NYTimes Green, Inc. Blog for Nov. 5 write-up "Energy Thinkers Ponder the Future". Rather dismal narrow points of view are paraded especially as none of them considers hydrogen for being the cornerstone for clean energy.
I made a comment 10 on hydrogen for fuel but pointed out again that we have a 35% and growing overload of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from which clean energy does not remove one atom of carbon. Getting to hydrogen, windmills, and solar energy just stops the adding of more GHGs but does not remove any of the overload. Again I pointed out that we should be taking advantage of the massive messes of organic wastes and sewage to use pyrolysis on them to stop the messes from reemitting carbon dioxide trapped so conveniently in biochemicals by nature.
Unfortunately, your meeting tomorrow sounds like it is still stuck on the climate and energy crises without awareness of the role those massive messes will soon be playing in the environment. The hazards in them(Germs, Toxics & Drugs) will be having more and more escapes as haphazard handling of the messes increases with less money available.
Dr. James Singmaster, Fremont, CA

[N. Sukumar]

The 21st century came late to American shores (by about 8 years) but hopefully it is at last beginning to dawn!

[UN]

LOL, drafting flaws - whatever.
Until people like Mr. Pope quit picking and chosing their science by ignoring the UN study on meat consumption this green movement will go no further. That is why 69% of the US polled by CNN a few months ago said they wanted to open the coasts to drilling.

As long as Carl and Obama are eating meat they are part of the problem. We know the repubs don't care - sadly looks like Carl is with them.

[Celeste Shitama]

Yes, there is much to do and learn about what it will take to save our planet. As a vegetarian, I agree that the meat and fish consumption is unsustainable, and no doubt the messes are many and complex in nature to undo. However, the door is now open to our best efforts to rectify some measure of what has been done in greed and ignorance. And we must all work together to see our way to a cleaner, brighter future, indeed to a future at all. Our economic structure worldwide needs to be reconstructed, we need to truly act and work locally with a global consciousness (not a global economy run by multinationals). We need to brave the storms of change and be willing to radically change our lifestyles to insure some peace and goodwill and sustenance for all.

We have our opportunity, let's be smart and willing.

[Helene De Rade Campbell]

Dear Mr. Pope:

I hope you can push for a national ban on drilling for oil/gas especially in the Marcellus Shale asap. We are terrified of what the drilling and secret chemicals and potentially tainted water could do to our quiet, serene environment. Many farmers have already signed leases and believe the party line about no danger being put forth by the gas companies. Please use your connections to let Obama know this is urgent.
Many thanks,

Helene De Rade Campbell
Orson, PA (Wayne County)

[Roslyn Williams]

Memo to the President: Build a Secure Energy Future

Your campaign pledges to ramp up energy efficiency and expand renewable energy can be best accomplished if you launch a new partnership with state governments, which spend half of all infrastructure funds, most notably on public transportation and smart-growth infrastructure. The variation in state policies—and their climate footprints—is extraordinary. For example, states set standards on air and water pollution, which should be harmonized so that industry does not confront 50 different standards.

[Fortheturth]

Climate Change: It's been a bad year for global warming alarmists. Record cold periods and snowfalls are occurring around the globe. The hell that the radicals have promised is freezing over.As the British House of Commons debated a climate-change bill that pledged the United Kingdom to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050, London was hit by its first October snow since 1922.

Apparently Mother Nature wasn't paying attention. The British people, however, are paying attention — to reality. A poll found that 60% of them doubt the claims that global warming is both man-made and urgent.

Elsewhere, the Swiss lowlands last month received the most snow for any October since records began. Zurich got 20 centimeters, breaking the record of 14 centimeters set in 1939. Ocala, Fla., experienced its second-lowest October temperature since 1850.

October temperatures fell to record lows in Oregon as well. On Oct. 10, Boise, Idaho, got the earliest snow in its history — 1.7 inches. That beat the old record by seven-tenths of an inch and one day on the calendar.

In the Southern Hemisphere, where winter was winding down, Durban, South Africa, had its coldest September night in history in the middle of the month. Some regions of the country had unusual late-winter snows. A month earlier, New Zealand officials reported that Mount Ruapehu had its largest snow base ever.

At the top of the world, the International Arctic Research Center reported last month, there was 29% more Arctic sea ice this year than last.

None of this matters, of course, to the warming zealots. It doesn't matter if it's too dry or too wet, too hot or too cold. All of it, they say, is caused by global warming.

We believe, however, as do many reputable scientists, that the warming and cooling of the Earth is a natural phenomenon dictated by forces beyond our control, from ocean currents to solar activity.

The latest warming trend, which appears to have ended in 1998, is the result of the end of the Little Ice Age, which extended from roughly the 16th century to the 19th. During that period, Muir Glacier in Alaska filled Glacier Bay. In fact, when the first Russian explorers arrived in Alaska in the 1740s, there was no Glacier Bay — just a wall of ice where the entrance would be.

As the Earth warmed, long before SUVs roamed the globe, Alaska's glaciers also warmed and began to recede, starting in the 1800s. All that may be changing. During the winter and summer of 2007-2008, unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by unusually cold temperatures in June, July and August.

"In June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound," says U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia. "On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface of the Taku Glacier in late July."

It was the worst summer he'd seen in two decades.

As the Anchorage Daily News reports, "Never before in the history of a research project dating back to 1946 had the Juneau Icefield witnessed the kind if snow buildup that came this year. It was similar on a lot of other glaciers too."

It's been "a long time on most glaciers," Molnia says, "where they've actually had positive mass balance." In other words, more snow is falling in the winter than melts in the summer, making the glaciers thicker in the middle.

Glaciers can appear to be shrinking even as they are growing. Photos taken from ships can record receding edges even as mass is building inland. When they get thick enough, the weight forces the glacier to advance.

The U.S. may owe its ascension to a global power on the global warming that began with the end of the Little Ice Age, which almost doomed the American Revolution. George Washington's famous winter at Valley Forge was part of that natural phenomenon.

As the climate warmed from 1800 to 1900, the U.S. tripled in size, spreading westward to straddle a continent. The population of the windy and very cold trading post known as Chicago grew from 4,000 in 1800 to 1.5 million by 1900, sitting on a great lake carved by glaciers long since receded.

Due to a decline in solar activity and other factors, the Earth is cooling and has been since 1998. And a peer-reviewed study published in April by Nature predicts the world will continue cooling at least through 2015.

Now, if only we could get the warming alarmists to face facts and cool it as well.

[Fortheturth]

Is burning wood to heat my house and shop burning a dirty fossil fuel become a crime? Who do I pay for cap & trade to offset my carbon? I probably can pay it to myself because I plant about a thousand trees a year on my 80 acres. Maybe one of Obama's 'Brown Shirts' will come to my home and make a audit for me to pay a carbon tax. Where is all this taking us to? I also went out Tuesday and KILLED a whitetail deer. They are over populated and causing damage to our livestock (TB), agricultural crops and damaging our vehicles.