climate change – RI Future

October 25, 2016October 25, 2016

‘We have no fossil fuel industry here in Rhode Island,’ said Governor Raimondo this morning, but actually…

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Governor Gina Raimondo was the introductory speaker Tuesday morning at the AWEA Offshore WindPower 2016 conference in Warwick. Raimondo spoke to the conference attendees, mostly representatives of various wind power companies and allied industries, with some federal and state government employees on hand as well. Raimondo was keen on selling Rhode Island as a place for the growth and development of renewable energy such as solar and wind.”

“I am an advocate for the environment,” said Raimondo, “and I usually begin my comments in audiences such as these talking about the reality of climate change… Climate change is real, caused by human activity and not going to go away on it’s own. It’s up to us, policy makers, business leaders, entrepreneurs to meet the challenge of climate change.”

Comparing the problem of climate change to her work on pension reform, Raimondo said, “Climate change isn’t that different from big, thorny fiscal issues, which is to say it’s not going to go away unless we take action and it’s only going to get harder the longer we wait. So we have to meet the challenges of climate change with urgency and a seriousness of purpose, in the same way we would with other fiscal challenges.”

The governor then made her pitch for creating jobs in the state. “As Governor of Rhode Island I want my state to be a leader. Number one, it’s the right thing to do, number two, I want our state to be known as the state that solves problems and meets challenges. But number three, the silver lining in meeting the challenge of climate change is that we can create jobs.

“The good news here is that we can create jobs in solar, in wind, in energy efficiency, and those are the kind of jobs that I want to have here in Rhode Island.

“My message is that all the things about Rhode Island that enabled us to be first, with Deepwater Wind, are the reason you ought to think about doing business in Rhode Island,” said Raimondo, before making a very questionable claim that, “we have no fossil fuel industry here in Rhode Island. We’re not ‘as attached’ to [the] ‘good old’ fossil fuel industry. That’s a big deal. That means we have a culture embracing of this industry [wind energy].”

The governor’s press secretary, David Ortiz, later clarified what Governor Raimondo meant by this statement, saying that, “her point was that the state has no fossil fuel deposits and does not extract natural gas, crude oil or coal.”

2016-10-25-wind-conference-02 — Jeff Grybowski

Though this is true, it does not follow that Rhode Island has a “culture” embracing alternative energy. The fossil fuel industry has a giant economic, political and environmental presence in the state.

Putting aside the proposed Burrillville power plant, or any other of the proposed LNG infrastructure expansions in various stages of being approved, “Rhode Island’s Port of Providence,” according to the US Energy Information Administration (USEIA), “is a key regional transportation and heating fuel products hub” and “natural gas fueled 95 percent of Rhode Island’s net electricity generation in 2015.”

The USEIA goes on to say that Rhode Island “does not produce or refine petroleum,” as Raimondo’s office clarified, but, “Almost all of the transportation and heating fuel products consumed in Rhode Island, eastern Connecticut, and parts of Massachusetts are supplied via marine shipments through the Port of Providence. The port area has petroleum storage tanks, and a small-capacity petroleum product pipeline runs from the port to central Massachusetts.”

Rhode Island is heavily dependent on LNG imports. “Electric power generators and the residential sector are Rhode Island’s largest natural gas consumers. More than half of the natural gas consumed in the state goes to the electric power sector and almost all in-state electricity generation is fueled with natural gas,” says the USEIA, “Historically, natural gas has arrived in Rhode Island from producing areas in Canada and from the U.S. Gulf Coast and Mid-Continent regions, but increasing amounts of natural gas are coming from Appalachian Shales, particularly the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania.” This makes Rhode Island heavily dependent on fracked gas for its power generation.

And finally, as far as the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal, goes, “Providence is one of the leading coal import centers in the northeast, receiving one-tenth of the imported coal delivered to eastern customs districts in 2015. The state is part of the six-state Independent System Operator-New England (ISO-NE) regional grid. And, although Rhode Island and Vermont are the only two states in the nation with no coal-fired electricity generation, the ISO-NE grid remains dependent on coal-fired facilities during periods of peak electricity demand.”

So, although Rhode Island has no industry producing or refining fossil fuels, Rhode Island is heavily burdened and intertwined with the fossil fuel industry. We are soaking in fossil fuels as an importer and exporter. We fund the fracking of America with our energy choices, and even as we are economically and politically dictated to by companies like National Grid, Spectra, Invenergy and Motiva (a subsidiary of Saudi Aramco and Shell Oil Company, we bear the environmental scars of their abuse of our habitats and our health.

This is the fossil fuel industry in Rhode Island.

It is massive and it is killing us.

Also speaking at the AWEA Offshore WindPower 2016 conference was Deepwater Wind’s Jeff Grybowski, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Representative David Cicilline.

October 6, 2016October 6, 2016

While championing renewables, Raimondo dog whistles fossil fuels

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“At breakfast this morning my nine year old, out of the blue, said, ‘Mom, what are you doing about climate change?’” said Governor Gina Raimondo at a press event in the offices of Newport Solar on Monday, “What a perfect day to ask the question! So I told him all about this and he was proud of me that we were on that.”

Newport Solar in North Kingstown is where Raimondo chose to kick off National Energy Awareness Month with her new Office of Energy Resources (OER) commissioner Carol Grant. Newport Solar is a Rhode Island leader in solar installation, and its successful efforts should be lauded.

“Our clean energy sector in Rhode Island has created a slew of new opportunities for education and jobs, and that will continue as we move forward in building the clean energy industry,” said Raimondo at the event.

Commissioner Grant spoke about Rhode Island’s high ranking in the State Energy Efficiency Scorecard. The American Council on Energy‐Efficient Economy (ACEEE) recently ranked Rhode Island fourth in the country for best energy efficiency programs and policies. “We want to educate Rhode Islanders on the many benefits of the state’s energy efficiency and renewable energy programs,” said Grant, “and we look forward to further developing a future of clean, affordable, reliable and diversified energy.” [italics mine]

Also at the event was Michael Ryan, Vice President of Government Affairs at National Grid, encouraging Rhode Islanders to save energy.

Energy in Rhode Island needs to be “affordable, reliable, and clean” said Raimondo, “It’s got to be all three, and it can be all three.”

Later, Raimondo’s three criteria had mysteriously become four, or more. “So I’m going to continue to lead and push, as your governor, towards more clean, affordable, and reliable and diversified energy sources… to lead the nation in more and more sources of clean, renewable, affordable, sustainable energy.”

Towards the end of the presser, National Grid’s Michael Ryan, ironically standing in front of a large Newport Solar banner emblazoned with the tagline, “Think outside the grid,” mis-repeated Raimondo, saying that the energy must be “efficient, affordable and reliable.

“Those are key with National Grid.”

In the video below you can watch the complete press event. Solar, wind and efficiency were lauded but fracked gas, the third leg of Raimondo’s energy policy, and a key driver of National Grid’s business, was never mentioned except via subtle dog whistles.

These dog whistles are words like reliable, diversified and efficient. These are the words anti-environmentalists use when they want to scare us into accepting fracked gas as a bridge fuel, like when Rush Limbaugh said, “Solar panels are not sustainable, Millennials. May sound good, yes. ‘Clean, renewable energy.’ But what do you do when the sun’s down at night? What do you do when the clouds obscure the sun? We’re not there yet.”

Limbaugh admits that solar panels are clean and renewable. But he’s doubting their reliability and sustainability.

This is how a politician like Raimondo can appease companies like National Grid, which are actively working to expand Rhode Island’s dependence on fossil fuels, while publicly talking only about the work she’s doing on energy that’s actually clean and renewable.

On April 13 Raimondo appeared at a solar farm in East Providence to announce the results of the 2016 Rhode Island Clean Energy Jobs Report released by the Rhode Island OER and the Executive Office of Commerce. At this event Marion Gold, who publicly supported the power plant planned for Burrillville, was still the OER commissioner.

“The clean energy economy is supporting nearly 14,000 jobs,” said Raimondo, “a forty percent increase from last year. That is amazing.”

The press release for this event noted that this job growth was likely the result of the “maturation of the solar industry, start up activity in smart grid technologies, and the progress made on the construction of the Block Island Wind Farm.”

There was no mention at this event of fracked gas, Burrillville, Invenergy, Spectra pipelines, or National Grid’s expansion of LNG at Fields Point, until reporters asked the governor about it directly, at which point Raimondo somewhat reluctantly admitted that she does in fact support Invenergy’s $700 million fracked gas and diesel oil burning power plant planned for Burrillville.

In Raimondo’s capacity as vice chair of the Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition she was proud to “support the foresight of my colleagues to broaden the Coalition’s focus and include solar energy development as a policy priority. Wind and solar provide complementary benefits to the U.S. electric grid and will help diversify the country’s energy mix. The need for states to take a broader view of renewable power is clear.”

Again, no mention of her support for fracked gas.

Raimondo has consistently touted her support for renewables like wind and solar, only occasionally voicing her support for fracking. Raimondo never holds a press release in front of a fracked gas pipeline or compressor station. She holds them at wind turbines and solar farms, giving the appearance of a strong leader on the environment.

But National Grid and Invenergy need to know she’s on board with their plans, so she signals her support during the press conference with careful phrasing.

And if the governor’s phrasing is off message, National Grid’s Michael Ryan will misquote her. “Clean” energy is out, “reliable” energy is in. In other words, “Let them eat fracked gas.”

Raimondo’s choice of location for her press conferences demonstrates that if she is not embarrassed by her support of fracked gas, she at least is beginning to recognize how history will ultimately judge her support.

As Bill McKibben said in a recent message to Rhode Island, “Five to ten years ago we thought the transition was going to be from coal, to natural gas as some sort of bridge fuel, onto renewables and now, sadly, we realize we can’t do that in good faith, because natural gas… turns out to be a dead end, not a bridge to the future but a kind of rickety pier built out into the lake of hydrocarbons.”

Fracked gas was well known to be a bad idea when Raimondo stood with Invenergy’s CEO Michael Polsky and tried to sell the idea to Rhode Island. Raimondo’s support for Invenergy’s power plant was a massive political blunder with consequences not only for her political career, but for the future of Rhode Island and the world.

A future, and a world, her children will be living in.

May 2, 2016May 2, 2016

Polls show climate change and cannabis are important to Rhode Island

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Lost in last week’s primary election were some other promising poll numbers for progressives. A Public Policy Polling survey found 3 of 4 Rhode Islanders would be more likely to support a candidate who would drastically decrease our dependence on fossil fuels and a Brown University Taubman Center poll found 55 percent of Rhode Islanders want to legalize recreational marijuana.

Climate change

The PPP poll of 1,179 likely Rhode Island primary voters found that 53 percent of Rhode Islanders were “much more likely” to “vote for a candidate who believes the United States must do all it can to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels by embracing measures like solar, wind, and renewable fuels, like biofuels,” and 22 percent “somewhat more likely” to support such a candidate. Only 26 percent of Rhode Islanders don’t want to support a climate champion for elected office with 11 percent “somewhat less likely” to support such a candidate, 7 percent were “much less likely” and 8 percent said it wouldn’t make a difference.

Even a majority of Rhode Island Republicans want to support a climate champion, the PPP poll found. A total of 63 percent of Republicans were more likely to support a candidate who would decrease dependence on fossil fuels, with 37 percent much more likely and 26 percent somewhat more likely. For Republicans, 27 percent were less likely to vote for a candidate who would invest in alternative energy and 10 percent of Democrats.

The PPP survey parsed its climate change question in terms of fossil fuels contributing to terrorism. It asked: “You may have heard about a connection between fossil fuels and terrorism. Even though the US doesn’t buy oil directly from regimes hostile to us and our allies, our demand for oil does drive up world prices, which benefits hostile regimes. Knowing this, would you be much more likely, somewhat more likely, somewhat less likely, or much less likely to vote for a candidate who believes the United States must do all it can to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels by embracing measures like solar, wind, and renewable fuels, like biofuels?”

Cannabis

The Brown poll posed a more straight-forward question about marijuana. “Thinking beyond medical marijuana, do you support or oppose changing the law in Rhode Island to regulate and tax the use of marijuana, similarly to alcohol,” it asked.

Much of Rhode Island does, with 55 percent answering yes. 21 percent strongly support taxing and regulating cannabis and another 34 percent support it. Only 4 percent were neutral, 24 percent oppose the idea and 12 percent strongly oppose ending prohibition. 5 percent said they didn’t know or refused to answer.

Young Rhode Islanders overwhelmingly want marijuana to be legal, with 72 percent of people age 18 to 44 supporting the idea. Older Rhode Islanders were evenly split with 42.9 percent supporting legalization and 42.1 percent opposed. 56.3 percent of people age 45 to 64 support it and 37.7 percent are opposed.

The poll showed people were more likely to support regulating cannabis like alcohol the more education and income they had.

It also showed that white people were both more likely to support and oppose legalization than black people. 55 percent of white people polled said they support legalization and 36 percent were opposed compared with 50 percent of black respondents who support it and 30 percent who are opposed. Conversely black respondents were more than twice as likely as whites to either refuse to answer or remain neutral.

May 1, 2016May 5, 2016

Youths secure second win in Washington state climate lawsuit

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Seattle, WA, April 29, 2016— In a surprise ruling from the bench in the critical climate case brought by youths against the state of Washington’s Department of Ecology (“Ecology”), King County Superior Court Judge Hollis Hill ordered Ecology to promulgate an emissions reduction rule by the end of 2016 and make recommendations to the state legislature on science-based greenhouse gas reductions in the 2017 legislative session. Judge Hill also ordered Ecology to consult with the youth petitioners in advance of that recommendation. The youths were forced back to court after Ecology unexpectedly withdrew the very rule-making efforts to reduce carbon emissions the agency told the judge it had underway. This case is one of several similar state, federal, and international cases, all supported by Our Children’s Trust, seeking the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate.

In granting the youth a remedy, Judge Hill noted the extraordinary circumstances of the climate crisis, saying, “this is an urgent situation…these kids can’t wait.” The court discussed the catastrophic impacts of climate destabilization globally, including the impending loss of polar bears and low-lying countries like Bangladesh. The court explained that while it had no jurisdiction outside of Washington state, it did have jurisdiction over Ecology and would order the agency to comply with the law and do its part to address the crisis.

After a landmark November, 2015 decision, in which Judge Hill found that the state has a “mandatory duty” to “preserve, protect, and enhance the air quality for the current and future generations,” and found the state’s current standards to fail that standard dramatically, Ecology nonetheless unilaterally withdrew its proposed rule to reduce carbon emissions in the state in February, just months after Judge Hill specifically underscored the urgency of the climate crisis.

“It was absurd for Ecology to withdraw its proposed rule to reduce carbon emissions,” said petitioner Aji Piper, who is also a plaintiff on the federal constitutional climate lawsuit, supported by Our Children’s Trust. “Especially after Judge Hill declared last fall that our ‘very survival depends upon the will of [our] elders to act now…to stem the tide of global warming.’ I think Ecology should be ashamed by its reversal of potentially powerful action and today, Judge Hill issued a significant ruling that should go down in history books. Our government must act to protect our climate for benefit of us and future generations.”

“For the first time, a U.S. court not only recognized the extraordinary harms young people are facing due to climate change, but ordered an agency to do something about it,” said Andrea Rodgers, the Western Environmental Law Center attorney representing the youths. “Ecology is now court-ordered to issue a rule that fulfills its constitutional and public trust duty to ensure Washington does its part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the planet.”

“This case explains why youth around this country, and in several other countries, are forced to bring their governments to court to secure a healthy atmosphere and stable climate,” said Julia Olson, executive director and chief legal counsel at Our Children’s Trust. “Despite clear scientific evidence and judicial recognition of the urgency of the climate crisis, Washington and most governments across the U.S. and other countries are failing to take correspondingly urgent, science-based action. That failure unfairly consigns youth to a disproportionately bleak future against which they can only reasonably ask the courts to step in to address this most time sensitive issue of our time.”

“This is a massive victory,” said petitioner Gabe Mandell.

Related cases brought by youth to protect the atmosphere are pending before other U.S. courts in the federal district court in Oregon, and in the state courts of North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Massachusetts and Oregon.

This is a press release of:

Our Children’s Trust is a nonprofit organization, elevating the voice of youth, those with most to lose, to secure the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate on behalf of present and future generations. We lead a global human rights and environmental justice campaign to implement enforceable science-based Climate Recovery Plans that will return atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration to levels below 350 ppm.
The Western Environmental Law Center (WELC) is a public interest nonprofit law firm. WELC combines legal skills with sound conservation biology and environmental science to address major environmental issues throughout the West. WELC does not charge clients and partners for services, but relies instead on charitable gifts from individuals, families, and foundations to accomplish its mission.

January 26, 2016January 26, 2016

Senate bills would make RI national leader in sustainability, resiliency

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Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed is introducing a suite of bills today designed to attract more green jobs to the state, educate more Rhode Islanders to work in green industries, lower consumer costs to switching to solar power and invests heavily in local agriculture, seafood and aquaculture.

She describes her vision of transforming Rhode Island into a national leader in sustainability and resilient-related industries in a new document called the Grow Green Jobs Report, which lays out a vision for Rhode Island’s economy that would closely mirror ideas being implemented in her hometown. Last week, Newport officials testified at the House Commission on Economic Impacts of Flooding and Sea Rise about how the City-by-the-Sea is poised to both suffer and benefit from rising oceans.

“The Rhode Island Senate has identified the green sector of the economy as one that offers great opportunity for both job growth and environmental benefits,” the Grow Green Jobs Report says. “As the Ocean State, our economy and people have experienced the impacts of severe storms, rising sea levels and warming temperatures. We have the workforce and educational assets to build upon – to turn these challenging events into opportunities for a stronger economy and a more resilient state.”

Paiva Weed is leading a round table discussion today at 2pm in the Senate Lounge. “Participants will include the Chambers of Commerce, DEM, Office of Energy Resources, DLT, Resource Recovery, Department of Education, Higher Ed, Build RI, and others from the environmental community and green industries,” said Senate spokesman Greg Pare in an email.

The legislation that accompanies the report is expected to be filed today, Pare said. The policy recommendations in the report give an idea of what the legislation will include:

Expand Real Jobs RI’s planning and implementation grants to include green industries.
The Governor’s Workforce Board should create workforce training programs to support well-paying clean energy jobs, including establishing career pathways and internships to ensure accessibility at all income levels.
Incentivize the creation and expansion of STEM/STEAM into all Rhode Island elementary and secondary schools, including certificate and pathways to higher education degree programs to prepare students in green technologies.
Encourage our public higher education institutions to partner with green sector businesses to identify areas of job demand and to develop certificate and degree programs in a public report.
Encourage our public higher education institutions to further develop degree programs leading to employment in the areas of climate change risk evaluation, sustainability, resiliency and adaptation.
Extend the Renewable Energy Standard (RES) that provides for annual increases in the percentage of electricity from renewable sources that National Grid supplies to its customers.
Incentivize in-state generation of renewable energy by expanding the Renewable Energy Growth (REG) Program, ensuring that more jobs and the economic benefits of renewable energy stay in Rhode Island.
Implement an efficiency program for delivered fuels customers, adding construction jobs and assisting households with oil and propane fuel costs.
Expand the RES to include renewable thermal technologies, such as geothermal heating and biofuels, which produce energy for heating, cooling or humidity control.
Institute policies that will reduce the price of solar installation and support the anticipated five-fold increase in solar power over the next decade.
Implement a streamlined statewide permitting program that removes unnecessary regulatory barriers, resulting in a predictable and less costly process for solar developers.
Establish statewide property tax standards for small residential and commercial solar projects.
Reinstate a state incentive for the installation of residential renewable energy systems.
Rhode Island Commerce Corporation should provide specific job development incentives to companies that process and add value to Rhode Island’s agricultural and seafood products. The increased demand for local farm grown products will create additional production and logistics jobs.
The Office of Regulatory Reform should work with state agencies and business representatives to review existing regulations that apply to Rhode Island plant-based industries and agriculture, identifying opportunities to coordinate across agencies and simplifying rules that apply to these businesses.
Task Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation (RIRRC) with submitting an economic impact study of Rhode Island’s solid waste industries (recycling, reuse, trash hauling, recycling food waste, composting) to identify the most effective ways to develop jobs related to increased recycling in Rhode Island.
Establish a goal to increase recycling to at least 50% of the state’s solid waste stream by 2025 and direct RIRRC to develop strategies to achieve that goal.

December 13, 2015

The cop-out of COP21 Paris climate talks

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News broke that a “historic” deal had been stuck in Paris by the largest gathering of states in human history at the COP21 United Nations conference meant to address climate change. Yet despite the self-congratulation, adulation from the lame-stream press, and over-glorified silliness, activists and scientists were adamant that the whole affair was simply a gigantic ruse, with Friends of the Earth International (FEI) calling the agreement “a sham”.

“Rich countries have moved the goal posts so far that we are left with a sham of a deal in Paris. Through piecemeal pledges and bullying tactics, rich countries have pushed through a very bad deal,” said Sara Shaw, Friends of the Earth International climate justice and energy coordinator. Dipti Bhatnagar, Friends of the Earth International climate justice and energy coordinator, said “Vulnerable and affected people deserve better than this failed agreement; they are the ones who feel the worst impacts of our politicians’ failure to take tough enough action.”

At the core of the deal currently being touted as a success are the following policy goals:

Limit global temperature rise to 2*C (3.6*F), if not 1.5*C
Limit greenhouse gas emissions beginning somewhere between 2050 and 2100
Review of each state’s contribution every five years
Rich countries will finance adaptation to climate change and transfer to a renewable energy grid in poorer ones

Yet as Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! reported all week from the City of Love, the agreement has always been lacking several key elements. It fails to protect women and indigenous peoples and does not include a mechanism allowing for states to claim damages from the large polluter nations and corporations that have already affected millions of lives with climate change. Consider what Dr. Bill Nye told The Huffington Post at the beginning of the month about how climate change had caused the war in Syria:

The news is filled weekly with stories of natural disasters, exacerbated by climate change, that cause cataclysmic events throughout the world. And when one considers that it has recently been revealed that the Exxon oil company knew in the 1970s that climate change existed and was caused by the burning of fossil fuels, one can easily see a clear-cut case of industrial malfeasance that resulted in catastrophic consequences for the population, not unlike the case of tobacco companies, especially since both the petroleum and tobacco companies intentionally misled the public about the harmful affects of their products. This would create the opportunity for governments throughout the world to file massive class-action lawsuits against the oil companies and even perhaps the nation states that aided and abetted this cover-up. Furthermore, as reported on Democracy Now! when Goodman interviewed Dr. Kevin Anderson, things are far worse than the public believes.

Well, those of us who look at the—running between the science and then translating that into what that means for policymakers, what we are afraid of doing is putting forward analysis that questions the sort of economic paradigm, the economic way that we run society today. So, we think—actually, we don’t question that. So what we do is we fine-tune our analysis so it fits within a sort of a—the political and economic framing of society, the current political and economic framing. So we don’t really say that—actually, our science now asks fundamental questions about this idea of economic growth in the short term, and we’re very reluctant to say that. In fact, the funding bodies often are reluctant to fund research that raises those questions. So the whole setup, not just the scientists, the research community around it that funds the research, the journalists, events like this, we’re all being—we’re all deliberately being slightly sort of self-delusional. We all know the situation is much more severe than we’re prepared to voice openly. And we all know this. So it is a—this is a collective sort of façade, a mask that we have. [Emphasis added]

How bad is it? Consider this recent article in Science Daily. A rise of 6*C in ocean temperatures, something that could happen by the end of the century, would cause phytoplankton to stop photosynthesizing. These phytoplankton are responsible for 2/3 of the planet’s oxygen, which would cause the planet’s air to have a massive drop in oxygen content, resulting in a massive die-off of animals and humans, something not dreamed of seriously perhaps since John of Patmos delivered his Book of Revelations.

Now consider also recent developments regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The deal, revealed recently to massive outrage, would severely impact the ability to file class-action lawsuits against corporations and entities over consumer safety issues. Poorer nations, especially those island nations in the Pacific Ocean that face massive land loss within the next fifty years, should be able to sue for damages. Yet instead, the COP21 agreement foists onto these nations proposals for a neoliberal loan package that will entail greater hegemony for capital, parasitical debt resulting in cuts to vital social services, and no protection for those most impacted by climate change and who find themselves on the front lines of the battle. It as if an arsonist were to light your house on fire and then offer to sell you a garden hose to put the blaze out with a caveat that you become their indentured servant for an unspecified amount of time!

To quote the Bard at this point seems almost cliche. Yet I cannot help but recall the words of Cassius:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves

September 21, 2015September 22, 2015

No-new-permits faster in DC tells his story

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Steve Norris, a 72-year-old retired professor from North Carolina, told me on Saturday about his fast at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Washington, DC. He was doing surprisingly well, he said, 12 days into his fast and having lost over 10 pounds. One of the first things Steve asked me was if I had read Lee Steward’s testimony:

To fast is absurd. This is true especially for someone like me who doesn’t believe anything absent systemic, revolutionary change will do much good.

Yes, I had read Lee’s testimony; it sums up my feelings.

Steve Norris reminding NPR of the source of its funding

This is what Steve wrote about his experience occupying the Sidewalk at the FERC Gates of Hell:

Being here, eating no food for 18 days, has taken me down a fascinating and disorienting rabbit hole, where “normal” appears absurd and even suicidal, and where unrealistic may be our only way out. I recall hearing Starhawk saying something like this many years ago. “The time for reasonable is past,” she said. But I have struggled to make sense of this. The fast is a journey into unreasonable.

The other day was hot on the sidewalk in front of FERC, I was talking with a guy I dislike – he dominates conversation and is loud and bombastic. He mentioned something about money in the middle of our conversation, but I got so tired of him after 15 minutes I got up and, so as not to appear impolite, distributed fliers to passersby on the sidewalk. He continued talking to another faster, but when he decided to leave, I asked if he was serious about donating money. He hemmed and hawed, but we talked for a minute about the $1000 BXE wanted to give to Lincoln Temple, the very poor African American Church which generously has been providing us space for sleeping. He left, and I forgot about him. But half an hour later he returned and gave me an envelope with $1000 in cash. “Use this for whatever BXE needs.” We’ve given it to the minister of Lincoln Temple.

Jan and Ron Creamer at the RI Peace Fest in the People’s Park in Providence

On Thursday twenty year old Berenice Tomkins, a college student, went into the “open” FERC commissioners meeting, which does not allow public comment. The five polished FERC Commissioners are the corrupt decision makers in this powerful regulatory agency which makes life and death decisions for communities and people all over the country. Most of us are not allowed entry because we have disrupted meetings in the past, but this was Berenice’s first time, so she got in. She wasn’t sure what to do and waited through the incomprehensible conversations of the Commissioners, which in a coded language talk about decisions already made behind closed doors. When they started talking about forest fire mitigation she could no longer hold her tongue. She stood up and with a twenty year old’s strong voice took over the meeting: ” What are you talking about? It’s your policies which are creating the climate crisis, and you can’t mitigate the fires without talking about the climate crisis!” She talked for a minute or so until until FERC Security grabbed her arm and dragged her out. She was crying and proud as she came out.

The brave people of BXE need our love and support, they and all others who put their lives on the line to expose the ecocidal and communicidal crimes of our federal and state governments in support of their sponsors on Wall Street: No New Fracked-Gas Power Plant in Burrillville, RI!

Please join us at the People’s House in Providence tomorrow—come and hear the what motivates some of our local fasters in Rhode Island.

Help us avoid this:

The paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks and everything sown by the brooks shall wither, be driven away, and be no more.

Maybe it’s not too late yet.

September 17, 2015September 17, 2015

As the fast continues: Educating Raimondo on climate change

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PeacePeoplePlanet — Peter Nightingale at the State House (Photo by Pia Ward)

“You can’t negotiate with a beetle. You are now dealing with natural law. And if you don’t understand natural law, you will soon.”

Oren Lyons, a member of the Onandaga Council of Chiefs, quoted by Mary Christina Wood in her book Nature’s Trust, sums up what’s wrong with our self-absorbed political system and its failure to deal with our planetary climate emergency in referring to four million acres of Canadian forest wiped out by beetles now thriving in warmer winter temperatures as a result of global warming.

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, our dear governor Gina Raimondo was too busy for an unscheduled intro to the laws of nature. Too busy to interrupt paying back time for her campaign debts, I guess. Thanks, ProJo, for your perfectly timed editorial Familiar Odor. But please remember: Gina is an honorable person; so are they all, all honorable people.

Maybe Gina was doing the hard work of making sure that Providence will not be left behind, as—in city after city—we build what Frank Deford calls “Athletic Taj Mahals,” monuments for the “filthy rich.” Thanks, Frank; you nailed it: Spending Public Money On Sports Stadiums Is Bad Business. But do not forget that Gina is an honorable person; so are they all, all honorable people.

We The People who do not revolt against systemic corruption are the problem.

Since August 31, I’ve been trying to make an appointment with Gina to deliver a basic physics message. It took until September 13 before I got a reply: “Once again, thank you again for being in touch,” pretty pathetic writing that I should have received within three seconds rather than after two weeks, but no appointment.

The web site of the Office of the Governor is totally dysfunctional, but, dear reader, I’ll spare you details. I just wonder, why should we trust people to run a state if they cannot manage a web site? Of course, the problem in Rhode Island is not small-scale incompetence; broken democracy is what we are dealing with, but it’s not Gina, for Gina is an honorable person; so are they all, all honorable people.

Pia Ward, my dear friend, is the engaged artist who made the black-and-white photographs in this post. Pia and I went to Gina’s office on Wednesday to deliver a pizza, a lunch skipped in support of Beyond Extreme Energy’s No-New-Permits fast in DC.

Of course we were told that web site was not the way to make appointments with the governor. We have to follow procedures, no matter how many people have their lives destroyed or put their lives on the line in DC and elsewhere in the nation. We are but a nuisance and who cares about Terry Greenwood?

One of Gina’s aids, who dutifully took notes of our story, instructed us that I had to go home and to make an appointment I had to send an email to the gubernatorial scheduler, Kelly Harris (Kelly-Harris@governor.ri.gov). Never mind that we were already at the State House; the important work for corporate America and the filthy rich should never be interrupted, for they are all, all honorable people.

Report from the No-New-Permits fast in DC

**Fasters occupying the side walk for an overnight at the FERC Gates of Hell in DC.**

Ted Glick of ChessapeakeClimate.org and one of the Beyond Extreme Energy water-only fasters in DC had the following exchange with Norman Bay, the chairman of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Ted asked if the chairman would come down to receive the five copies of the Pope’s encyclical, Laudato Si’, on September 25th at noon. Bay said he would consider it. We all know what that means, but let Ted speak:

Then he stopped and we looked each other in the eye. He told me that he respected what we were doing with the fast and the commitment it showed as far as our beliefs. He said he felt this type of action was a good type of action.

However, he went on to say that he really had problems with us disrupting their monthly meetings and asked if we would stop doing that.

I responded: “How can we do that when there’s no change at FERC as far as permitting gas pipelines and fracking infrastructure, one after the other, with virtually no exceptions.”

His response: “These are just pipelines. We’re a regulatory agency. Blaming us is like blaming the steel companies that make pipes. It’s the production of the gas that you need to deal with.”

Keep up the disruption, my friends; irritation makes pearls. Dear reader, if you ever have to explain Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil,” this exchange would be a perfect starting point.

Events for the rest of our fast

Following up on the pledge to do three Ramadan-style fasts centered on each event in RI, Wednesday’s visit to the State House got Beatrijs, my wife, and me restarted fasting on Tuesday, after a one-day interruption. The following will get us to Friday, the 25th, when Beyond Extreme Energy will end its fast:

Peace Fest RI, Kennedy Plaza, Saturday, September 19, 2015, 1:30pm-4;30pm
Rally for People, Peace and Planet
URI International Day of Peace on the Quad 10am-3pm

Of course, it’s not too late to call Gina’s friends at Invenergy to tell them that fracked gas is not clean and that they should cancel the fracked-gas power plant proposed for Burrillville. Just keep in mind that Gina signed a contract with Invenergy, but Gina is an honorable person; so are they all, all honorable people. We The People are the problem, we who think that the next fully-scripted ElecToon will bring system change.

Oh, yes, how about that pizza we took to the Gina’s office? As anticipated, it ended up feeding hungry people on Kennedy Plaza.

August 24, 2015August 24, 2015

Green Party’s Jill Stein puts ‘people, planet and peace over profit’

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The Green Party of Rhode Island welcomed presidential candidate Jill Stein to their 2015 Green Gathering held at the Warwick campus of CCRI. Stein spoke for about 35 minutes about her campaign, her vision for the future of America, and the need for a new political party that represents ‘people, planet and peace over profit.’

Stein praised the Rhode Island Green Party for their environmental effort against fracked gas. “You’ve all been an incredible inspiration,’ she said. “With the sustainability leadership that’s been coming out of Rhode Island and your amazing leadership on the pipeline resistance and starting the five state coalition of Green parties to fight pipelines together.”

This is, said Stein, “a moment of crisis, but also a moment of potential for deep systemic change… Half of Americans don’t identify as Democrats or Republicans right now.”

Stein feels that the success of Bernie Sanders is a sign of America’s dissatisfaction with the two party system, but she feels Sanders’ campaign for the presidency is doomed to fail. “What they are not counting on is the basic structure of the Democratic party… the Democratic party has a built in structure for sabotaging that revolt.”

As examples, Stein brought up the presidential campaigns of Howard Dean, Jesse Jackson and Dennis Kucinich who were all sabotaged from within the Democratic Party.

Also, says Stein, there’s Super Tuesday, a big money primary that requires a huge amount of cash to win, since a candidate has to cover 25 states with advertising. Sanders will be hopelessly outspent here. But even if Sanders were to get through these hurdles, he still has to face the super delegates, created after George McGovern won the nomination, and they control half of the Democratic Party’s votes.

Sanders has promised to support the winner of the Democratic primary, so he’s taking all that positive radical energy and either giving it to the Democrats or destroying it. The Greens, on the other hand, won’t disappear come November. “We are building a permanent force for people planning for peace over profit,” says Stein, “We are here to develop a political party that supports that agenda.”

“As Bernie begins to run into trouble there are going to be a lot of unhappy campers…” says Stein, and as Sanders brings his people into the Democratic party presidential campaign of someone like Hillary Clinton, he’ll be working against his own agenda.

The Democratic Party will combat the agenda of the rebels who want to keep the party from shifting to the right. Democrats in the Sanders camp will need a Plan B if Sanders doesn’t win. Plan B for Sanders supporters is the Green party, says Stein.

“We are facing an unprecedented crisis right now across the spectrum of economy, ecology, peace and democracy,” said Stein. During the last economic crisis, with a Democratic president and both houses controlled by Democrats, the priority was Wall St. Homeowners didn’t get a bailout. Wall St. did.

“Enough with the lesser evil, it’s time to stand up for the greater good.” The Greens, Stein said, “really do represent basic American values and basic American sentiment…

“When we go into debates, we usually win them… That’s why they work so darn hard to keep us out of the debates.” Stein went on to talk about how when she was running for governor of Massachusetts, she had to fight to get on the televised debate, and afterwards the “instant online viewer polling” said that she had won. She was not allowed in the debates after that.

The Greens, teaming with the Libertarian Party, are trying to get into the debates this year. They have two court cases pending, they’re working on a petition to change the rules about who can participate in the debates and they’re planning to boycott the sponsors of the Commission on Presidential Debates. This is a real attempt to change the political climate, and the two big parties are fighting against this.

Speaking of Libertarians, Stein says they are a “work in progress.”

“The more they learn about politics, the more the they’re converting from Libertarians to Greens… Libertarians are often people who get that there’s a problem but they haven’t quite discovered what the solution is yet… we have many things in common around foreign policy, the drug wars here at home and protecting our civil liberties.”

The Greens will be the only party on the ballot saying, “Not only do young people deserve free public higher education, that should be a birth right, but we’re saying, ‘we bailed out the friggin’ bankers, who got us into this mess… isn’t it time to bail out the students who were the victims of that waste, fraud and abuse?’” says Stein, “Forty million millennials who are mobilized to come out and vote to abolish debt…that can actually win the election.”

Stein also talked about the environment, and the terrible threat of climate change. She referenced the new study from James Hanson, which shows that sea level rise by 2050 may reach ten feet, effectively putting large parts of the world under water. (What this means for the Ocean State, as we plan heavy investments into fracked gas over the next thirty years, is disaster.)

“What this means is stop what you’re doing,” says Stein, “Let’s join the team to stop this, immediately… In stopping this, we can actually start a whole new way forward. A new way forward based on peace, justice, democracy and sustainability.

“These things go together. We put them together in the phrase, ‘People, planet and peace over profit.’”

Stein praised the growing movements for human rights and climate justice, such as Black Lives Matter, but she wants these various movements to unite into a powerful political force. “They want us to be divided into our separate issues… but by coming together around a unified agenda of ‘People, planet and peace over profit,’ then we are unstoppable.”

The Republican Party is a radical, fringe movement, says Stein. The Democrats aren’t much better. People want something new. “People are actually supporting a Green New Deal, spending half a trillion dollars a year to make the emergency transition” from fossil fuels.

The Green Party has popular support for its policies. “We have the Green New Deal, we’ve got health care as a human right, we have the right to a job, we have living wages, we have cutting the military…”

Speaking of the military, Stein makes the point that it’s American imperialism, fueled by an addiction to oil and the sale of arms, that keeps us in the Middle was, spending trillions and killing hundreds of thousands while we create the next Al Qaeda or ISIS. “How about an arms boycott to the Middle East?’ asked Stein, to applause.

“We could put twenty million people to work right now… to transition us to one hundred percent clean renewable energy by 2030. We are the only campaign that is calling for a specific ‘time over.’” said Stein, “We can’t really address the climate crisis without addressing the economic crisis.”

Action on the climate will have immediate and positive health effects, the savings from which will pay for the transition itself.

“This is our moment. This is what we have been preparing a lifetime for. The solutions are in our hands. There is a political vacuum that is waiting to be filled. Democracy is in our hands. Justice is in our hands. A survivable climate is in our hands. It’s up to us, so join the team, I look forward to working with you and having the campaign of a lifetime. We have all of our lives to change, and to change the course of history. So let’s do it together.”

August 13, 2015May 3, 2016

Activists arrested in Burrillville for protesting gas expansion project

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Police arrested two environmental activists arrested this morning who were protesting a methane gas pipeline project in Burrillville, Rhode Island, by chaining themselves to a gate at the project site.

Peter Nightingale, a University of Rhode Island physics professor and occasional RI Future contributor, and Curt Nordgaard, a pediatrician from Massachusetts, were both arrested according to Fighting Against Natural Gas, of FANG, the grassroots group of activists who have been calling attention to the Algonquin pipeline project that would cut through northern Rhode Island.

“I’m taking action today because as a parent and a being pediatrician compels me to use any and all nonviolent means to stop this project,” said Nordgaard in a prepared statement.

Journalist Steve Ahlquist was on the scene and recorded the direct action and subsequent arrests:

This is the latest in increasingly disruptive tactics by FANG to raise awareness of the negative environmental impacts associated with continued investments in fossil fuels like methane gas, which is often captured through fracking. A tree sitter was removed from a stand by police in July and Nightingale was arrested in December for refusing to leave Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s office because the climate change champion would not speak against the pipeline project. FANG has also held more traditional protest events.

“We will keep taking action until these projects are stopped” Nightingale said in a statement.

August 9, 2015August 15, 2015

Is it climate change o’clock yet?

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ku-bigpic3 — Earth, 2037, map by that radical leftist outfit National Geographic.

Over 30 years ago, activist Larry Kramer, disgusted by the apathy of public officials and the timidity of gay men who refused to come out, wrote a blistering article called 1,112 AND COUNTING.

Kramer was furious at Ronald Reagan, who refused to say the word AIDS, New York Mayor Ed Koch, a closet-case who wouldn’t be seen within a hundred miles of anything remotely to do with homosexuality, the CDC, which was giving pittances to AIDS researchers, and Gay Men’s Health Crisis, a group he had founded and then witnessed descend into a puddle of politically-correct mush. Many historians of the epidemic see Kramer’s dispatch as the moment when people woke up and said that, unless they got into the street and began making noise, there was a real chance AIDS could become the Bubonic Plague.

We need an article like that now for climate change. The first lines of Kramer’s writing read:

If this article doesn’t scare the sh*t out of you, we’re in real trouble. If this article doesn’t rouse you to anger, fury, rage, and action, gay men may have no future on this earth. Our continued existence depends on just how angry you can get… I repeat: Our continued existence as gay men upon the face of this earth is at stake. Unless we fight for our lives, we shall die. In all the history of homosexuality we have never before been so close to death and extinction. Many of us are dying or already dead.

And such is the case with climate change now. I just got my electricity back on yesterday after that freak storm that struck Tuesday morning. I was aware the night before that there was a thunder storm predicted, so I closed my windows. When it hit that morning at 6, my jaw hit the floor and I was terrified. That was not just a storm, it was a catastrophe that happened because of global warming.

I am uncertain if this is a correct diagnosis, and I welcome the critique of a meteorologist, but here’s what I think happened: for weeks now we have been reading about bizarre things like fish washing up on the shores by the hundreds, dead from suffocation and water temperature. I recently heard a climate scientist on NPR talking about how the waters of Cape Cod this season are the warmest he has ever experienced. I think that, when the storm passed over the Narragansett Bay, it sucked up a lot of heat generated by the warm water. Warm air generated by water is like a massive dose of anabolic steroids for weather, it turns normal storms into monstrosities. In 2005, the warm air generated by the Gulf of Mexico smashed into the bottom of Hurricane Katrina and resulted in a regular hurricane transforming New Orleans into a war zone. That’s the same principle I think was at work here.

And yet after we get smashed upside the heads by a gigantic warning to reduce our carbon footprint, people continue to create aforementioned footprint, if not doubling it. Around my neighborhood, the night air was abuzz with the sputtering of gas-powered generators. Others would sit in their running cars to charge their phones and use the air conditioner. When a child touches a hot stove, they get a clue and don’t do it again. But with climate change, we don’t stop touching the stove, we thrust our hands into the white-hot center of the fire!

It’s not like we do not know what to do, there are plenty of examples in Europe, Canada, and California that lead the way. We could increase our number of wind turbines, the government could sponsor a proliferation of solar panels for homes and municipalities, there could be geothermal, hydroelectric, and all sorts of sustainable energy projects that would give high-paying, long-lasting jobs to both white- and blue-collar workers.

To extend the AIDS analogy one step further, Kramer later dramatized his experiences with AIDS in a play, THE NORMAL HEART, which was made into a HBO film last year starring Mark Ruffalo. Ruffalo, a man of deep principles and morals, has created a non-profit, The Solutions Project, where he offers sustainable energy plans for every state. According to his website, Rhode Island has a lot of progress to make. We have a power grid consisting of 4.4% residential solar panels, 17.8% solar PV plants, 10% onshore wind, 0.1% hydroelectric, and 0% geothermal. There would be 7,473 construction jobs and 5,775 operation jobs created by the transition to a sustainable power grid.

And it’s not like there aren’t financial benefits immediately to be seen from installing solar panels on your house. Did you know there is a mechanism you can install so that, in the day, after charging the battery that will power your house during the night, you can feed the excess energy back into the power grid, reducing your electrical bill to almost nothing per month? Teddy Roosevelt was a lot of things, but one of those things was a conservationist and environmentalist. He saw the basic logic of environmentalism not just as a matter of what we leave our progeny but also as a matter of fiscal conservatism and responsibility. He knew that, if you do the right thing and don’t pollute, you end up saving both yourself and the government money. He created the Food and Drug Administration not just so to stop people from eating bad food and taking tainted medicine, he did it to prevent lawsuits against the vendors, a real type of tort reform that these lunatic Tea Partiers would call state socialism!

But what do we get instead? Gina Raimondo opening a power plant operating on fracked natural gas while President Obama’s uber-hyped “clean energy plan” in fact only phases out coal while maintaining natural gas mining! What changed? These politicians are servants of the power companies that fund their campaigns. They do not care. Get over the delusion that the Dismal Dollar Democrats are serious about climate issues, they aren’t. I voted not twice but three times for President Obama, first in the primary contest against Hillary Clinton and then in both the 2008 and 2012 general elections. I had deep-seated hopes for him as both the first African-American president and as someone who said he was going to change Washington.

But instead, he has been a Clinton Democrat who has defenestrated environmental laws and allowed our fossil fuel fanaticism to fester unchallenged. He could have passed an executive order any day of the week to stop fracking. But instead, his appointees at the Environmental Protection Agency recently issued a piece of quackery about how fracking does not affect drinking water, flying in the face of a consensus that the chemicals used in that horrid process are carcinogens! Richard Nixon was a monster responsible for despicable crimes, but he would seem like a flaming liberal, if not an outright Red, when comparing his policies on pollution with the pack of lunatics at the helm now.

If we don’t get this thing under control not very soon but now, we are going to all suffer terrible consequences. The polar ice melt, already in process, is going to raise the sea level so drastically that by 2037 Rhode Island, if it still exists at all, will be a string of hilltop islands peaking out of the water, with Providence either totally submerged or functioning in a method not unlike Venice. The Ocean State will have a year-round temperature akin to Georgia. And the midwest, our breadbasket and source of most of the food on our tables, is going to be a desert not unlike the Sahara! These days we rue how our grain silos store surpluses of grain and corn that could feed the hungry, but those days are numbered, we are going to face a massive food and water shortage emergency before I am sixty years of age. If you want a preview of what is going to come, look at the genocide in Sudan and Darfur, that multi-decade nightmare was caused at its root by droughts brought on by climate change.

Our continued existence as human beings upon the face of this earth is at stake. Unless we fight for our lives, we shall die. In all the history of humanity we have never before been so close to death and extinction. Many of us are dying or already dead.

In the wake of Larry Kramer’s disappointment with Gay Men’s Health Crisis, he did two things. First, he went on a long vacation and wrote THE NORMAL HEART, a deeply affecting play derived from the finest tradition of agit-prop. Second, he formed the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT-UP). They were mortally terrified young men and women who were fighting for their lives, so they didn’t care what the consequences were so long as they got results. It is not my place here to call for any type of law breaking, and I furthermore admire Bill McKibben’s People’s Climate March. The Pope is now coming to America to make an address about climate change at the UN as a follow-up to his ground-breaking encyclical. The G7 just made a vow to end fossil fuel consumption totally by the end of the century. But there are simple steps we as humans need to make to affect change. Here’s what I do, I am not going to suggest anything I don’t practice because it is hypocritical if I only preach it.

Become a vegetarian.
Veganism is hard and I have yet to get that far. But the facts are simple, it takes more electricity to store and prepare animal products. If you give up meat alone, you are making a serious impact on the level of fossil fuels you consume. And what’s more, you also can do yourself serious good. Studies are now showing a link between depression and eating meat, probably having to do with the amount of hormones and other junk they pump animals up with these days.
Ride a bike and public transportation.
Again, you not only decrease the amount of fossil fuels you consume, you give your body a major work-out. Exercise is also shown to help benefit your mood and productivity.
Recycle more.
Most of us probably separate the newspaper and bottles and put them in the green bin already, but we might be missing a few things. For example, how many recyclable paper items do you throw into the trash in your bathroom? I have made it a habit of digging out the cardboard toilet paper cores and bar soap wrappers, which are made of either paperboard or recyclable paper. Take the extra time to rinse out used plastic food storage bags and put them in the recycling bin. What about the plastic bag your loaf of bread comes in? You would be surprised at the number of items you find in the trash that belong in the green bin.
Monitor the amount of electricity you use.
There are so man little things that reduce your power consumption. Unplug things like phone chargers when they are not in use. Reduce the brightness on your computer monitor. Change the settings in your computer to moderate whether disk drives are powered when not in use. Use fluorescent or LED bulbs in your lights. Turn off your computer when not in use. These little steps lead to a long journey of responsible power consumption.
Share this information.
If you can get people to also follow these steps, they results could be astounding.

The results that are already guaranteed to take place because of climate change are terrible. There is no stopping some of it. But at the same times, human beings are magnificent creatures that have never failed to survive in the most dire straits. The flooding of 2037 could be catastrophic, but it also could be hindered if we adopt some of the dike and dam practices used for centuries by the Dutch. We could also in that time adapt out buildings to prepare for the inundation and create high structures to house people. And, if we are lucky, we could end up recreating our species in the face of this catastrophe. I just recently read on CounterPunch an article about a type of organic farming that pulls carbon out of the air, something that shows great promise. But we cannot rely on our leaders for this. It is going to require a lot of small-d democratic work to create the groundswell necessary.

August 4, 2015August 5, 2015

Raimondo’s fracked gas plant and Obama’s clean energy plan

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The world is still examining the nitty gritty of President Barrack Obama’s Climate Change Action Plan. In the video that accompanies the announcement on whitehouse.gov, Obama can be seen touring a solar power plant. Windmills can be seen in some shots. The entire video, and the plan, seems to be about renewable power generation, like solar and wind.

Missing are examples of fossil fuel burning plants, except as cautionary images and examples of antiquated, dangerous technologies.

So why is Rhode Island building a natural gas energy plant in Burrillville?

Natural (or should I say Fracked) gas is mentioned twice on the whitehouse.gov page I linked to in this piece. It is mentioned as a source of carbon emissions, and as a source of methane. These are the very gases that are contributing to climate change.

Screen Shot 2015-08-03 at 10.38.36 PM — “…remind everyone who represents you that protecting the world we leave to our children is a prerequisite for your vote.”

Despite the president’s leadership, Rhode Island, lead by Democratic Governor Gina Raimondo, has decided to invest in a 50 year plan to directly undermine efforts to prevent climate change. It’s almost as if Rhode Island has decided to say “fuck you” to the future and to the very planet our children will inherit.

Calling the fracked gas plant a “‘Next-Generation’ Clean Energy Facility” is merely Orwellian Newspeak. Even if the plant were somehow able to produce carbon and methane at 10 percent of conventional natural gas plants, it will still be producing carbon and methane where previously there was none. It will be running on fracked gas, imported from not-so-distant environmental wastelands devastated by oil companies through pipelines made to enrich Saudi sheiks.

Building this plant is like investing in land line phone companies in 2005. It’s the energy planet version of 38 Studios. When Governor Raimondo officially announces this plant at the Providence Chamber of Commerce, 30 Exchange Terrace, Providence RI, on Tuesday at 10am, she will be announcing a failure of leadership, a failure of vision, and a wasted opportunity.

This is not the future Rhode Island deserves.

In the video, Obama encourages us all to “remind everyone who represents you that protecting the world we leave to our children is a prerequisite for your vote.”

You can remind Governor Raimondo tomorrow. See the Facebook event page here.

July 21, 2015

Office of Energy Resources proposes $14 million for clean energy investments

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The Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources has announced a plan to invest in clean energy, as well as reduce energy costs, by distributing $14 million in proceeds from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) auctions.

Commissioner Marion Gold, courtesy of www.energy.ri.gov

RGGI, which was launched in 2009, allowed participating states to establish a cap on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fueled electric generating facilities. The power plants in these areas must possess a tradable carbon dioxide allowance for each ton that they emit, and these allowances are distributed through quarterly auctions.

“Rhode Island’s participation in RGGI is a vital component of the state’s energy and environmental policy framework. This plan will not only advance important energy goals, but it will also contribute to local economic growth by investing in carbon-free energy resources, including energy efficiency and renewable generation,” State Energy Commissioner Marion Gold said.

The $14 million will support a number of clean energy programs. Three million will support the capitalization of the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank, and another $3.6 million will go towards supporting energy efficiency measures for residential, commercial, and industrial consumers. Two million more will support the installation of LED streetlights throughout the state, as well as support clean energy investments in state and municipal buildings. Another $300,000 will go toward funding residential rooftop solar panels.

LED streetlights will also be installed all along Rhode Island’s highways, not just within towns and cities. $2.8 million will be allocated towards that venture. Rhode Island Department of Transportation Director Peter Alviti said that energy efficiency is a top priority.

“The conversion to LED streetlights not only has the potential of reducing statewide energy costs by approximately one million dollars per year, but it also demonstrates the financial benefits of good environmental stewardship,” he said.

The Office of Energy Resources also stated that the plan will support job growth along with enhancing sustainability.

“This is a smart plan that will grow jobs, reduce energy costs, and help protect our environment,” Governor Gina Raimondo said. “By investing in innovative clean energy initiatives like the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank, Solarize Rhode Island, and energy efficiency programs, Rhode Island can help lead the nation towards a more sustainable energy future while also growing our economy.”

The financial impact is only one part, though. These investments also have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which will improve air quality throughout Rhode Island

“Each kilowatt-hour of energy saved or generated by a renewable energy source means one less kilowatt-hour generated from fossil fuel-fired sources,” said Department of Environmental Management Director Janet Coit. “Programs like these may start small, but the represent important steps forward toward achieving our greenhouse gas reduction goals and transitioning to a clean energy future.”

The Office of Energy Resources is currently taking public comment on the plan, and can be reached by emailing Barbara.Cesaro@energy.ri.gov, or by mailing One Capitol Hill, Providence, Rhode Island, 02908. There will be a public hearing on the proposal on July 29 at 10 am in Conference Room B on the second floor of One Capitol Hill.

June 23, 2015June 24, 2015

Open letter to Senator Whitehouse: Mother Nature not moved by political pragmatism

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Dear Senator Whitehouse,

In response to your latest email A Moral Urgency To Act On Climate, I would like to let you know that I have a hard time reconciling your writing with your support of natural gas as a bridge fuel. The problem with your email is not with what you write, but with what you omit.

"Someone will get upset." — **“Someone will get upset.”**

Here is the video that shows Pope Francis holding up that t-shirt saying “NO AL FRACKING.” The conclusion is clear, Senator Whitehouse, you do not have the Pope on your side. Indeed, in his Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ he quotes Patriarch Bartholomew:

[F]or human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; for human beings to contaminate the earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life – these are sins.

The secular humanists among us might not have chosen the word “sin,” but that’s not the point.

I uploaded several papers for your perusal on my web site. The titles of the first two say it all:

A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas
A crack in the natural-gas bridge

These two papers are not all that new, but they are just as relevant now as when they were first published. They demonstrate that your support for natural gas as a bridge fuel is extremely ill-conceived. A third paper, A Comprehensive Analysis of Groundwater Quality in The Barnett Shale Region, has just been accepted in Enviromental Science and Technology.

This paper only scratches the surface of the reality that comes with the wholesale destruction of the environment that you support. This, Senator Whitehouse, is its human face:

The late Randy Udall estimated in 2013 that the oil and gas industry had leased 10% of the Lower 48—wholesale destruction indeed.

Look at this from the perspective of Pope Francis’ encyclical:

We all know that it is not possible to sustain the present level of consumption in developed countries and wealthier sectors of society, where the habit of wasting and discarding has reached unprecedented levels. The exploitation of the planet has already exceeded acceptable limits and we still have not solved the problem of poverty.

Shrill is the contrast with the economic ideology that can can come up with nothing but a carbon fee “to adjust the market.”

The papers you’ll find are just a tiny fraction of the science that led to a ban on fracking in New York and Maryland. If you are interested, I can supply you with quite a few more. Science is having a hard time keeping up with the pace of the industrial developments. As a consequence, little of it is definitive, but what is known is extremely disconcerting. One thing is clear: fracking poses a serious threat for the environment and for the health of vulnerable communities that are sacrificed to the pernicious ideology of perpetual, reckless growth.

With the impending start of the build-out of the compressor station in Burrillville and the construction of the rest of the AIM Project, it is particularly distressing that you have remained silent while the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has ignored numerous requests for rehearing of the AIM Project. Mayor Martin Walsh of Boston—see #4 on my list—and your colleagues, Senators Warren and Markey of Massachusetts have weighed in, but the RI congressional delegation, which seems to take its lead from you in this matter, is nowhere to be found.

Your realization that the AIM Project was driven by the industry’s desire to export gas to the world market came too late, years after it was front page news in the American Oil and Gas Reporter.

We have brought up these issues before, but unfortunately you have never provided a reasoned response. You appear to have delegated your fiduciary responsibility to protect the environment to federal agencies that operate following statutes written by the very corporate interests that they are supposed to regulate. One of the most egregious examples of this regulatory capture is the “Halliburton Loophole.”

Here is the relevant, perverted section of the Safe Drinking Water Act on fluid injection, which together with the resulting “produced water” backflow, is essential to fracking:

“The term ‘underground injection’ –

(A) means the subsurface emplacement of fluids by well injection; and
(B) excludes –
(i) the underground injection of natural gas for purposes of storage; and
(ii) the underground injection of fluids or propping agents (other than diesel fuels) pursuant to hydraulic fracturing operations related to oil, gas, or geothermal production activities.”
While the SDWA specifically excludes hydraulic fracturing from UIC regulation under SDWA § 1421 (d)(1), the use of diesel fuel during hydraulic fracturing is still regulated by the UIC [Underground Injection Control] program.

The effect of the destruction visited on American Frackland does not stay there. As James Hansen on page 7, line 15, of his Friend of the Court Brief (number 5 on my list) wrote:

[F]ailure to act with all deliberate speed in the face of the clear scientific evidence of the danger functionally becomes a decision to eliminate the option of preserving a habitable climate system.

This brief was part of 2011 Atmospheric Trust Litigation, designed to address government’s delinquency as a trustee of the environment, and to secure “the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate for all present and future generations.” Here is a more detailed and more recent presentation of the science that led Hansen to the statement quoted above.

Four years have gone by since Hansen wrote his brief, but we continue our relentless wrecking of the global climate. Those who mistake feel-good rhetoric for reality might see progress, but I’m a simple physicist; I measure progress by numbers not adjectives.

As of today, we have to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions globally by 7 percent per year, a number that does not even begin to account for the additional immediate threat posed by the fugitive methane that will be emitted as a consequence the natural gas policy that you support.

Few understand what a yearly 7 percent global greenhouse gas reduction would look like; I certainly do not. All I know is that “Mother Nature is not a kindly grandmother,” as Randy Udall put it. She is not moved by my lack of understanding nor by your apparent political pragmatism.

When you write about moral urgency, this causes a painful clash with the fact that National Grid is one of your biggest energy sponsors. This is just a relatively minor example of the legalized corruption we still call democracy. This kind of sponsorship allows the elites to perpetuate a racist, neo-colonial empire in which superpowers thrive while the many suffer, recognized as nothing but unpeople. Maybe, Senator Whitehouse, you prefer Pope Francis’ more delicate formulation:

There has been a tragic rise in the number of migrants seeking to flee from the growing poverty caused by environmental degradation. They are not recognized by international conventions as refugees; they bear the loss of the lives they have left behind, without enjoying any legal protection whatsoever. Sadly, there is widespread indifference to such suffering, which is even now taking place throughout our world.

Yours respectfully,
Peter Nightingale

June 12, 2015

Ed Achorn, Union of Concerned Scientists debate ProJo editorial

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Providence Journal editorial page writer Ed Achorn is well-known in Rhode Island for stretching – and sometimes abusing – the truth in order to make a point. He sometimes defends his misstatements by labeling critiques as assaults on the First Amendment, but more often he ignores critics altogether.

But he didn’t ignore Aaron Huertas on Twitter recently. Huertas is a communications officer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that organizes scientists to come up with solutions to climate change. He took Achorn to task because a Providence Journal editorial misrepresented a recent Washington Post op/ed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse that said fossil fuel companies should be held accountable for lying about their product’s harm to the planet.

Since Achorn so infrequently defends the Journal’s seemingly unscrupulous editorials, I’ve collected the Twitter exchange between the two here.

https://twitter.com/aaronhuertas/status/609048776339288064

https://twitter.com/aaronhuertas/status/609083926733303809

https://twitter.com/aaronhuertas/status/609102514479316993

https://twitter.com/aaronhuertas/status/609104383868059648

https://twitter.com/aaronhuertas/status/609113052500381697

https://twitter.com/aaronhuertas/status/609370346827968512

https://twitter.com/aaronhuertas/status/609376008093962240

https://twitter.com/aaronhuertas/status/609386052655149056

https://twitter.com/aaronhuertas/status/609399842260000768

https://twitter.com/aaronhuertas/status/609386565731794944

Achorn eventually decided to ignore Huertas. But he didn’t seem to stop tweeting about the issue….

"All Ministers … who were Oppressors, or intended to be Oppressors, have been loud in their Complaints against Freedom of Speech." — "Cato"

— Ed Achorn (@Ed_Achorn) June 12, 2015

…Yeah, because the fossil fuel companies are being oppressed if they can’t lie about the product they sell…

June 8, 2015June 9, 2015

Conceivable Future: Will climate change impact your reproductive decisions?

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I had come to Slater Mill to hear a discussion about whether or not to have children in a world threatened by the dystopia of climate change. Conceivable Future is a project that asks, “How is climate change affecting your reproductive and/or child-rearing decisions – whether to have children, how to raise them if you do, and what to do if you don’t?”

The idea was launched by Meghan Kallman, a frequent contributor to RI Future, and Josephine Saxton Ferorelli back in November. It is described as “a woman-led network of Americans bringing awareness to the threat climate change poses to childbearing.”

Conceivable Future house parties, attended by both men and women, discuss their thoughts in an open and safe space, and if interested, record video testimonials about their thoughts concerning reproduction and climate change. There have been house parties in Chicago and New Hampshire previous to the one I found myself at in Pawtucket. More are planned for the future.

Many of the thoughts expressed by the eight young people gathered in a circle of chairs were private and sometimes difficult to express. I decided early on that I could not, in good conscience, report on the specifics of what was said. Some people seemed to be thinking aloud, rather than delivering well thought out answers. I had intended to observe and listen, but when Josephine asked if there was anyone in attendance who was already a parent, I found that I was the only one. I am twice the age of most here, my oldest daughter is their age.

I found myself explaining the doubts and fears I had entertained when my wife and I decided to have children over a quarter century ago. I didn’t grow up with the specter of cataclysmic climate change. I had grown up under the threat of nuclear war, an idea that now seems quaint and old fashioned.

Having children is not a decision I have ever regretted. But I do recognize the selfishness of bringing my own biological children into the world: as one of the women in attendance pointed out, there are so many children in the world who need parents, why make new ones? Yet even as I understand the logic and the concerns, many of us have a deep yearning to become biological parents. For many, it is tied to our concept of what makes us human. Of course, there are many who do not feel this way. The beauty of Conceivable Future is that this isn’t about judging the choices and desires of others, but of understanding.

Every parent who follows the news will wonder, “What kind of world am I bringing my children into?” The Conceivable Future manifesto states this idea as, “Throughout history we have always had to think about what sorts of lives our children would live; that’s what it means to be a parent. This is our time and climate change— and its consequences— is our struggle.”

Right now, there is no political will to battle climate change. Our politicians continue to support the fossil fuel industry that is literally killing our planet. The conversations and video testimonies that the Conceivable Future project is facilitating is an attempt to “build moral power and solidarity” with the ultimate goal of demanding, “an end to all US fossil fuel subsidies.”

If our species can somehow bring positive action towards solving the problem of encroaching ecocide, perhaps the future won’t seem so bleak and the stakes won’t seem as high. Until then, the Conceivable Future project offers a possible space to share our hopes and fears.

The Conceivable Future project will soon be launching a full website, with video testimonials and a more complete idea as to what the project is and what it hopes to accomplish.

In the video, co-founder Meghan Kallman reads the Conceivable Future manifesto.

March 2, 2015March 2, 2015

Climate activists disrupt Whitehouse speech at Yale

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Often called a “climate champion” by his defenders, Rhode Island’s Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse faced criticism in New Haven, Connecticut on Saturday for his strong support of fracked methane gas.

During Whitehouse’s keynote address at Yale University’s “New Directions in Environmental Law” conference, members of the Connecticut-based climate justice collective Capitalism vs. the Climate interrupted Whitehouse with an action they called a “laugh riot.”

Each time the Senator suggested he was a climate champion, the demonstrators roared with hearty laughter.

“It’s a joke that Senator Whitehouse is an environmentalist,” said a protester when asked by an audience member what they found so funny. “He needs to stop supporting Spectra’s fracked gas pipeline expansion. He’s not a climate champion. He’s a climate clown.”

Activists then walked to the stage and held a banner reading “Fracked Gas Kills” in front of the Senator. Asked to leave by police, the protesters left the auditorium chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, ha ha, ha ha!”

Apparently, after Yale campus police had cleared the room of laughing rioters, Senator Whitehouse joked that he was glad that open debate was alive and well at Yale. Police-moderated debate in the time of free speech zones! There you have it.

Prior to the senator’s speech, about 30 demonstrators from 350-Connecticut and Capitalism vs. the Climate protested outside the conference in opposition to his support of fracking. Capitalism vs the Climate quoted several examples illustrate Senator Whitehouse’s record as a fracking champion:

Spectra Energy’s website lists Senator Whitehouse as a supporter of their so-called “Algonquin” pipeline expansion in the Northeast states.
Senator Whitehouse praised fracking as a “blessing” in a 2014 interview: “I think it’s been an economic and environmental blessing to have gas as a bridge.”
Senator Whitehouse’s third largest campaign contributor in 2012 was Goldberg, Lindsay & Co., an investment firm that owns several natural gas distribution and pipeline companies. Goldberg, Lindsay & Co. also contributed $20,000 to the Senator’s “OCEANSPAC” that distributes money to candidates who support “ocean and environmental issues.”

Indeed, Senator Whitehouse —in the dedicated company of the other environmentalists of our congressional delegation— has consistently supported fracked gas a bridge fuel.

Early in January, I wrote to Lynsey Gaudioso, the `New Directions’ conference chair, to convey my dismay that Senator Whitehouse would be an honoree and keynote speaker at the conference. Not that I ever received a reply, or expected to, but one of my arguments was:

A plaintiff in one of the suits brought by Our Children’s Trust sued the federal government “for making decisions that threaten our right to a safe and healthy planet.” This right is enshrined in public trust law and demands that government act as a trustee in the management of essential natural assets. Building more fossil fuel infrastructure will delay developing a green power sector, while fracked gas has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than coal and oil. In other words, the policies Senator Whitehouse supports clash with his duty to protect the common good.

Regarding this last point, Bill Moyers recently interviewed Mary Christina Wood. She argued that it is the responsibility of government to hold in trust the health of earth’s environment for present and future generations:

If this nation relies on a stable climate system, and the very habitability of this nation and all of the liberties of young people and their survival interests are at stake, the courts need to force the agencies and the legislatures to simply do their job.

Instead, our legislators support policies that are manifestly inconsistent with their fiduciary duties as trustees of Nature’s Trust. In addition, the executive is in bed with the “stakeholders” it should be overseeing. As a case in point, just think of the agency whose “oversight” was responsible of BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster. Yes, that’s the famous Mineral Management Service of an ethics scandal, involving sex, drugs and graft. Finally, we have a complicit judiciary that fails to enforce the general requirement that legislative trustees avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.

Oh, oops, I forgot; a $20,000 donation is free speech!

January 21, 2015

US Senate says: ‘climate change is real and not a hoax’

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The United States Senate is now on record, 98 to 1, that “climate change is real and not a hoax.”

That’s the language of an amendment Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse squeezed into a bill on the Keystone Pipeline, which was overwhelmingly approved – and even co-sponsored by Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe. No small feet, considering Inhofe, an infamous climate change denier, once wrote a book called, “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”

Whitehouse chalked it up as a victory. “This resolution marks a historic shift for many of my Republican colleagues,” he said in a statement. “While a number of Republicans have long acknowledged that climate change is real, including Senator Graham who spoke once again today, many others either denied the science or refused to discuss it.”

But the beltway media suggests the idea may have backfired.

“Senate Republicans head-faked Democrats on climate change Wednesday, agreeing in a floor vote that the planet’s climate was changing, but blocking language that would have blamed human activity,” wrote Politico.

Inhofe countered that there exists “Biblical evidence” of climate change and blocked a vote on whether or not humans are contributing.

“It was a nifty, if insincere, bit of politics,” . “There’s no question that a vote against a flat statement that climate change is real could have been problematic for candidates down the road — especially for those various Republican senators quietly preparing for the big election in 2016. With Inhofe’s re-framing the question, the Democrats, trying to engineer a gotcha moment, ended up empty-handed on the vote, with neither the satisfaction of nailing down opposition to scientific consensus and without a point of leverage for future discussions of addressing the warming planet.”

Whitehouse was pleased to have at least gained some consensus. “I was glad to see almost every Republican, including Senator Inhofe, acknowledge the reality of climate change today,” he said, “and I hope this means we can move on to discussing not just whether climate change is real, but what we should do about it.”

December 18, 2014December 25, 2014

Taking on a climate champ: getting arrested at Sheldon Whitehouse’s office

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I’m a 67 year-old physics professor at the University of Rhode Island. I have a wife, four kids, five grandchildren and sixth on the way. I would claim to be a respectable citizen, and yet, earlier this week Senator Sheldon Whitehouse had me arrested for caring about the global climate.

About ten friends from the multi-state NOPE (No Pipeline Expansion) Coalition and I set up a sit-in at Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s downtown Providence office that ended with my arrest by a Providence police officer when the senator’s staff was about to close the office.

I understand that Senator Whitehouse is well-regarded as a climate champion and a realist who understands the constraints imposed by political reality. Senator Whitehouse might understand politics, but I know something about physics. The problem is that the Earth’s climate does not obey the rules of that reality; it evolves according to the laws of nature.

Knowing that the lives of many millions are being put at risk, and that the impact would be distributed according to the same old rules of colonialism, racism, and patriarchy, I refused to leave the Senator’s office. All of us were there to make it clear that with his image of climate champion, he had become a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

After attending the PUC hearing about National Grid’s proposed 23.3% rate hike, RI members of the NOPE Coalition started out on our mission to occupy Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s office in downtown Providence. The action was coordinated with a similar action at his DC office. On our way, we picked up a couple friends from Burrillville. We made our way into the Providence office, and announced the purpose of our visit. We also made it known that some of us were willing to risk arrest to accomplish our goal, namely to convince the senator to do the right thing: to withdraw his support for fracked gas as a substitute for coal and oil.

That plan is being sold as a step in process of kicking the nation’s fossil fuel addiction, but in reality it will simply continue business as usual at best. As usual, the profits will going to Wall Street both as the shale bubble is being inflated and once again as it will pop.

We came equipped with sleeping bags and settled in comfortably for the duration.

We peacefully took over the space and started filling it up with our signs.

Our message was a follow-up of another NOPE action: on the previous day, police arrested two of our friends of Capitalism vs. the Climate, who had chained themselves to a mock “bridge to nowhere” and blocked the driveway to Spectra Energy’s methane gas compressor station in Cromwell, CT.

This is our bridge to nowhere:

The sign on the right reads:

HOW MANY KATRINAS, SANDYS AND SUPER TYPHOONS WILL IT TAKE, SENATOR WHITEHOUSE?
MOTHER NATURE IS NOT OUR KINDLY GRANNY
SHE’S NOT MOVED BY POLITICAL COMPROMISES
NOR ARE THE MILLIONS WHO WILL DIE ON THE FRACKED-GAS BRIDGE TO NOWHERE
SENATOR:
DRILL, BABY, DRILL
=
KILL, BABY, KILL!

On the left is a sign that identifies the problem with the President’s Climate Action Plan, which features natural gas a the bridge fuel between us and a green future:

…both shale gas and conventional natural gas have a larger GHG [greenhouse gas footprint] than do coal or oil, for any possible use…
A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas
RobertW.Howarth
Energy Science and Engineering 2014
http://tinyurl.com/meth-bridge

Of course, we made sure that we identified the central problem with what we still call a democracy for lack of a better word.
You might wonder how all of this ended. Well, it has not ended. I have a court date for January 8 and we’ll see how that goes, but I was back out on the streets of Providence and on my way home within an hour after arrest. One member of our group had picked up my car and was waiting outside. I was released without ever having seen the inside of a cell.

In fact, I may have made some friends among the Providence police. We had a pleasant conversation during the ride to the station, as I sat with with my hands shackled behind my back. (One of the unknown advantages of yoga is that this pose is quite comfortable compared to the more extreme positions I tend to favor.) The officer who drove us to the station told me that he respected me for standing up for my convictions. He asked me if I wanted to be processed quickly so I would be out within an hour. Who’d say no to that? I heard the other officer, the one who wrote up the incident report, say to one of his colleagues that I was the nicest protester he had ever arrested. That really made my day as I thought of the motto of the People’s Climate Movement: “To change everything we need everybody.” And, yes, that includes not only the police, but also Senator Whitehouse, his staff, and all of those whom we hope to welcome in our midst once they will have freed themselves of the chains of predator capitalism. Please help us to make that happen, but remember that time is running out: we are in Decade Zero of the climate crisis.

December 11, 2014December 12, 2014

A study of pricing carbon pollution: reality or fiction?

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Last year's news: "Concern about the scale of energy company earnings and high fuel bills could surface again with National Grid unveiling first half operating profits of over £1.5bn." This year, National Grid obviously needs more money so their CEOs and stockholders can refine the well-deserved lavish lifestyles to which they are entitled.

Scott Nystrom, a senior economic associate Regional Economic Models (REMI), gave a talk at Brown University about Fee-and-Dividend Carbon Tax, a plan proposed by the Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL). The talk presented the effect on the economy and power generation of a steadily rising fee imposed on the CO₂ content of fossil fuels. The presentation was a condensed version of a report prepared for the CC by REMI and Synapse Energy Economics.

Here are my impressions, based both on the talk and the report. Nystrom started with an overview of the plan, which can be found on CCL’s beautifully-organized web page:

Place a steadily rising fee on carbon-based fuels
Give all of the revenue from the carbon fee back to households
Make border adjustments to ensure fairness and competition
This will be good for the economy AND even better for the climate

Border adjustments is short for fees on products imported from countries without a carbon tax, along with rebates to US industries exporting to such countries. Such adjustments serve to level the playing field for international trade.

Based on model calculations, REMI*Synapse makes the following predictions about what implementation of this plan would look like nationally by 2025 by comparing projections with and without the Fee-and-Dividend carbon tax:

2.1 million more jobs
33% reduction in CO₂ emissions
13,000 premature deaths saved from improvements in air quality

The fundamentals of the CCL model legislation are perfectly solid, namely that burning of fossil fuels is causing rising global temperatures and poses an imminent threat to the natural environment and an unacceptable risk of catastrophic impacts to human civilization. Also the principle of letting the polluters pay is sensible. The problem, as I see it, is the unsatisfactory implementation of these principles resulting from incomplete understanding of climate science.

The proposal is to put a fee on carbon pollution, but it fails to account for fugitive fracked gas leaking into the atmosphere at the well, from the pipelines or anyplace else down stream. Clearly, the study predates our current understanding of the effects of fracked gas. The unburnt gas that escapes in copious amounts is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO₂. The net result over the next couple of decades is that conversion to natural gas, as called for in the President’s Climate Action Plan, is very likely to be more dangerous for the global climate than coal and oil.

The Fee-and-Dividend puts a price on CO₂ while pollution by fugitive fracked gas continues merrily free of charge. Summing up the climate impact exclusively in terms of a reduction CO₂ emissions, as the REMI*Synapse study does, is simply wrong.

Similar criticism applies to the reduction by 13,000 of premature deaths that will result from near-absence of pollution caused by coal fired power plants. The effect of the poisoning of air and water due to fracking are very difficult to quantify with our current understanding.

What we do know does not look good; we are waist deep in the big muddy of an uncontrolled fracking experiment with public health. Notice that we’re not even talking about the effects of the nuclear power generation featured prominently in the study. I guess that the study also manages to suspend the possible health impacts of climate change.

If you can temporarily suspend your disbelief, follow me on to the prediction about power generation. Let’s look at the following figure lifted from the REMI*Synapse study. The figure compares power generation with and without Fee-and-Dividend Carbon tax. The impact on total power generation even as far into the future as 2040 is small. By that time, according to the study, roughly half of the power will be green. The other half will be a a toxic mix of fossil fuel and nuclear energy. The plan will be essentially phase out coal, and the share of nuclear energy will double nationally. Renewable energy increases by about a third relative to the no-fee baseline.

**From page 9 of the REMI*Synapse study**

The talk left some of us wondering why the South is projected to have only a minuscule fraction of power generated by wind and solar, while there is a big chunk of nuclear power. Compared this to a proposal by the Solutions Project, a plan for how the world can transition to 100% renewable energy based exclusively on wind, water and sun, with no nuclear power whatsoever.

Time to wrap up. As mentioned, the REMI*Synapse study of pricing carbon emissions fails to price fugitive methane. The results might be interesting for some, but they have no relevance for the world we live in. Computational science has a phrase for such studies: garbage in, garbage out. Of course, this particular problem could be addressed by redoing the study and incorporating our current insights, but there is a more fundamental problem. The study seeks exclusively for market driven solutions. Those proposed by the Solutions Project are simply not in the realm of possible outcomes of any study that take the rules of predator capitalism for granted.

The good people of CCL may think that they have to speak the language of the ruling class to get its attention and they may have a point. It’s not my style, but as long as they do not really hope to get what they seem to wish for, they have my blessing. After all, we’re in this together, and to change everything, we need everyone.

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