Category Archives: Laws

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“Sandy Senators” Call for Swift Action on Carbon Limits

In a letter sent to President Obama today, five Democratic Senators from states most effected by Superstorm Sandy called for “swift action” on carbon pollution standards for power plants.

There’s been much discussion lately about infrastructure improvements that could help protect communities from extreme weather events caused or made worse by climate change. Those measures, which, wrote the Senators, will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, “demonstrate the urgency of squarely addressing the causes of climate change and its effects.”

The Senators wrote that Congressional failure to take action on climate change makes executive action “setting carbon pollution standards for existing power plants… a necessity.”

The letter, below, was signed by Senators Robert Melendez (NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Charles Schumer (NY), Christopher Murphy (CT), and Richard Blumenthal (CT).

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Solar advocate Nancy LaPlaca considers state office: “Arizona is at a crossroads.”

Citing Arizona’s potential to be a leader in renewable energy, former Arizona Corporation Commission policy adviser Nancy LaPlaca announced today she is considering running for a position on the ACC in 2014.

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“Arizona is at a crossroads on critical policies for electricity, gas and water.” Nancy LaPlaca.

“Clean energy will grow our economy and bring us good-paying jobs we can be proud of,” LaPlaca said in a statement released today.

“Instead of leading the U.S. in the $100B global solar energy industry,” she continued, “our current commission is satisfied that only 2% of in-state electricity comes from solar while we send $2+ billion in ratepayer money every year to Texas, Colorado and New Mexico to buy coal and natural gas. Those dollars should stay in Arizona…”

The five-member ACC sets utility rates and implements programs to nurture renewable energy — or to ignore it. After being a national leader in RE for many years, the ACC has, say its critics, abandoned that role, following November’s election in which the commission’s only Democrats were voted off and replaced by Republicans.

In January, the new ACC sent shock waves throughout the solar industry when it announced without warning that some of the most important solar incentives would be eliminated.

“The Arizona solar industry has dramatically reduced its dependence on incentives,” said one solar spokesperson at the time, “but this is too much, too soon.”

LaPlaca cited her four years experience as a policy adviser to ACC member, Democrat Paul Newman. During most of that time, the ACC was led by Kristin Mayes, a Republican who made Arizona one of the most renewable-friendly states in the country.

In addition to renewable energy, LaPlaca stressed the ACC’s role in solving other critical resource issues.

“The Southwest is feeling the results of rising temperatures and drought,” she stated. “A recent U.S. Geological Survey report says the Verde River is at serious risk of going dry and some water wells have already failed. We need smarter policies that value not only water, but all of our critical natural resources.”

 

 

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Has Keystone XL Fight Rebooted the Environmental Movement?

The Keystone XL pipeline is a very real threat to the environment. If burned, the Canadian tar sand oil the pipeline is meant to carry will pump tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, increasing the devastation of climate change. Pipeline leaks of dilbit (diluted bitumen) could contaminate the vast and vital Ogallala aquifer. (Read the recent Pulitzer Prize-winning series on a dilbit leak in Michigan to get a sense of what’s at stake.)

Dilbit pipeline leak in Arkansas forces evacuation, March 2013 (Photo credit: EPA)

The fight against Keystone XL also has a symbolic component, Bryan Farrell argues over at Slate.

The greatest environmental threat of our era, global climate change, has lacked the kind of focus and specificity that allows organizers to, well, organize. The problems are so varied. Rising ocean levels, forest fires, flooding, the death of coral reefs from acidification. Paradoxically, climate change is hard to fight in part because the threat is so large and multifaceted. Overwhelmed, many people simply throw up their hands and give up.

That, says Farrell (editor at the excellent site Waging Nonviolence), is where the movement against the Keystone XL comes in.

[The anti-Keystone movement] was never about just a pipeline. [Bill] McKibben and a handful of others had another, less talked about goal—to remake the environmental movement into something far more active, creative, and formidable for years to come. The gap that once existed between mainstream environmental groups and grass-roots activists has now largely dissolved, resulting in widespread action that has not been seen in the United States for decades—perhaps even since the first Earth Day in April 1970.On that day, mainstream environmental groups with roots going back to the conservation movement of the early 20th century united with grass-roots activists for a day of teach-ins, influenced by the burgeoning student anti-war movement. Amid the thousands of demonstrations that took place across the nation, there was at least one major act of civil disobedience, in which 15 people were arrested for holding a mock funeral inside Boston’s Logan Airport. Interestingly enough, it was a sort of proto-climate protest against a supersonic plane and its accompanying release of water vapor—a major greenhouse gas.

via Bill McKibben’s fight against Keystone XL: The movement against the pipeline was always an attempt to bridge the divide between mainstream environmental groups and grass-roots activists. - Slate Magazine.