In a stunning instance of what can only be called collective cognitive dissonance, a small working group of the International Whaling Commission has just proposed we reinstate commercial whaling in order to save the whales.

UPDATE: Click this link to tell President Obama, Say no to commercial whaling!

Make no mistake: This proposal has nothing to do with saving whales, but is instead all about protecting the whaling industries of just a few obstinate countries who insist on destroying these amazing creatures. This proposal is the most serious threat to the moratorium on commercial whaling that we’ve seen since Greenpeace fought for and won the moratorium in the 80s.


Greenpeace activists witness the killing of whales in the Southern Ocean by the Yushin Maru and the Kyo Maru No.1 ships of the Japanese whaling fleet. © Greenpeace / Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert

While some US officials have been insisting that they are not supporting the proposal, we are very concerned about reports that the U.S. IWC Commissioner is not only supporting it but in fact pushing other countries to support it as well. The US position will be clarified at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission in St. Petersburg, FL next Tuesday and Wednesday.

Greenpeace vehemently opposes the proposal because:

1. It would allow whaling to take place in the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary. Not only would the killing of whales there continue, it would be legitimized.
2. By legitimizing all whaling, the proposal would secure the future of whaling instead of seeking to phase it out. With a single stroke, this proposal would reverse nearly three decades of progress in protecting endangered whale species.
3. It will set interim quotas – the number of whales each country is allowed to catch – based on political need, not scientific evidence. Nothing could be more disastrous to fragile whale populations than caving to political pressure rather than listening to scientists about the best way to protect healthy whale populations.
4. Adding insult to injury, the proposal would pass the costs of regulating whaling on to all members of the IWC, meaning that the taxpayers of even anti-whaling countries will be forced to support whaling operations.

You can read the full proposal for yourself online here.

We’re aiming to kill this atrocious, unscientific proposal before it even gets voted on, which will be at the IWC’s annual meeting in June. We’ll need your aid and support if we’re to achieve that goal, though.

The first step? Get the word out about this proposal to reinstate the slaughter of whales for commercial purposes. Post a link to this blog on your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or on your own blog.

We're working on an action alert that you can use to fax President Obama and tell him you expect him to reject this proposal and help save the whales instead of the whalers. The ironic thing about all this is that the United States has a long history of advocating for whale conservation. If you really want to send the president a message right away, you can sign our petition urging the Obama Administration to continue the U.S.'s legacy of protecting whales.

Rest assured that we'll have more for you to do very soon. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment, no doubt.

UPDATE: Click this link to tell President Obama, Say no to commercial whaling!

Well, somehow this cloudy day seems a little brighter as we look back on yesterday's victory up here in Vermont. Yesterday a whopping 26 members of the 30-member state Senate voted against continuing the license at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant for another 20 years after its scheduled closing in 2012. This is a huge victory for Vermonters and our clean energy future.



It was an epic day in many respects, and a testament to the strength of democracy here in Vermont. Hundreds jammed the statehouse, having traveled in terrible blizzard conditions to witness the Senate’s historic vote and make sure senators were hearing from their constituents. As the debate was underway, Senate pages scurried around delivering scores of messages from citizens to senators as they deliberated on the floor. In a memorable moment just before the vote, Senator Choate said, “Just in the past three hours I've been delivered 50 to 60 pink slips.” Our volunteers in the state house were working non-stop to make sure voters were contacting their Senators.

Every walk of life was represented there, farmers, schoolteachers, students young and old, business people, and activists who have been fighting the plant since before its construction. It was an inspiring moment for democracy as we saw the true power of grassroots action. When people stand up, raise their voices and organize we can win big victories for the planet and our neighbors. As we traveled around the state holding volunteer meetings, generating calls, letters, and emails, talking to business people, and learning from long-time community members the response was overwhelming.

When I was in Ludlow with a volunteer knocking on doors, one man asked why we were collecting letters. We explained that a group of citizens was meeting with a Senator the next day. “When, where?” he asked, and then showed up at 8:30AM on a Saturday to make sure his Senator would vote the right way. So did 24 other people; and the Senator had no choice. She voted no.

These stories are not unique, the vote yesterday was by a citizen legislature that listens to its people, and Greenpeace has worked hard to make sure those voices are heard. Our volunteers were tireless and committed, our goals were high, but we have just won a huge victory for the planet. Vermonters are tired of sitting in the shadow of this leaky old reactor and getting lied to and swindled by Entergy Louisiana.

The fight isn’t over. Entergy is a powerful corporation and has said they’re not done, and we aren’t either. Now we want to see the House show the same courage as the Senate and vote this session to retire Vermont Yankee. The vote yesterday was the first time a state legislative body has voted to retire a nuclear plant; we want the House to be the second.

This vote also sends a strong message to the nation and the world that the nuclear renaissance is dead on arrival. President Obama: Vermont knows that nuclear energy can’t be a part of our energy future. We need investments in renewable sources of energy to power our future and put people back to work. The US can follow Vermont’s leadership to the energy revolution America needs.

No Nukes (new or old)!

Jarred Cobb and John Deans
Vermont Organizers

I could only see the pitchfork scene through the tiny space between my fingers. When it comes to horror movies, I’m more than a bit squeamish. On Friday, February 26th, The Crazies hits theaters and I was lucky enough to snag an early viewing to witness all the slashing, hacking and suspense.

I think moviegoers will really enjoy the film, I know I did. I won’t spoil the movie for you, but the story’s about a small town of innocent people who are mysteriously infected with a fictitious bio-warfare agent. Unfortunately, for these people, the infection makes them go crazy and the ensuing horror is enough to make you jump out of your seat. I can attest jumping out of my seat at least a dozen times.

Luckily, for me, this movie is fiction and I’m not going to go crazy (at least I hope I won’t). If you’re scratching your head and wondering why we’re talking about this crazy movie (pun intended) here at Greenpeace, I’ll explain. The movie gives us an eye opener into the real toxic dangers that exist in our every day life.

One important danger that we should all be reminded of is the disastrous risks posed by poison gases used in chemical plants. Some of them started out as chemical warfare agents.

Did you know that the Department of Homeland Security has identified over 6,000 “high-risk” chemical plants in the United States? An accident or attack at just 300 of them would put 110 million Americans at risk. That’s not only crazy, but also down right terrifying.

But, a happy ending is really possible! Since 9/11 more than 200 chemical facilities have converted to safer chemical processes, eliminating poison gas risks to more than 30 million Americans. That's the good news. The bad news is that not all plants have adopted safer technologies – and they won't until laws are passed that require them to.

November 2009 the House of Representatives approved the "Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act of 2009," (H.R. 2868) by a vote of 230 to 193. This is the first time either house of Congress has approved comprehensive chemical security legislation.

Now it’s up to the Senate, they will take up chemical security legislation.

Please take action today. Use our online advocacy tools to tell your Senators to prevent a real horror.

Oh, and you’d be crazy not to check out The Crazies (it’s a good date movie).

-- Michelle

 

Last week, Greenpeace launched P*Harmony, the first online match service for Polluter Lobbyists and America’s Congressmen. Huffington Post, EcoPolitology, and The New York Times’ Greenwire all picked it up.

So did Big Coal’s Public Relations Offices, trying to control and limit the story of their millions of hard-working dollars going to control our Congress and confuse the public.

Climate Criminals like Big Coal were hoping that Greenpeace’s work would end with the net. But this week Greenpeace’s Student Network brought the challenge inside their offices. Our weeklong push to confront climate criminals is targeting the biggest member corporations of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) & their greenwashing campaign, “America’s Power.”

We did some digging and came up with the direct phone numbers of people like Fred Palmer, The VP of Government Relations (aka – dirty lobbying) for Peabody Coal. The Fred Palmers of this world do their work behind closed doors and beyond the reach of traditional public scrutiny. But the Greenpeace Student Network doesn’t rely on traditional scrutiny and we’ve been calling Fred to expose, confront, and disrupt Peabody’s commitment to taxpayer-funded pollution and science-denying propaganda.

Will you join us and make the call to challenge climate criminals like Fred Palmer now? 1,000 calls to these coal giants can disrupt their influence and rattle their walls but we can’t do it without you.

1) Call Fred Palmer’s direct line. (314) 342-7624 2) Tell Mr. Palmer that Big Coal is destroying the climate and America’s clean energy economy! Here’s what you can say: Hi Mr. Palmer, my name is ______. I am concerned about Peabody’s work to control Congress and confuse the public as part of the America’s Power campaign & the ACCCE. Your work funding misleading advertising and Washington lobbyists threatens the future of our planet and our country. I’m demanding that Peabody stop funding the “America’s Power” propaganda campaign & invest in clean, renewable energy and energy efficiency today. 3) Next, ask Mr. Palmer a question. Here are some examples: How much money are you paying in member dues each year to ACCCE? Are you counting on my tax dollars to bankroll the false hope of clean coal? Does your company believe that global warming is a crisis and what are you doing to address it now? 4) If Mr. Palmer’s line is busy, call the customer service line at 314-342-3400. 5) Then let us know you made the call by clicking the button below.

When we called Fred Palmer he told us that “coal is here to stay” and that “global warming is not a crisis.”

We have got to challenge this guy. Make the call now!

& don't forget to share on facebook and twitter it out by clicking up top.

Vinuta Gopal, a climate campaigner at Greenpeace India, just sent the following out in an email. I think it lays out the issue quite well, and figured I'd share it here.

The media has been buzzing about the IPCC's Himalayan glacier controversy.

The international climate panel headed by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for a ground-breaking report on climate change. Several small errors have now surfaced in the 3,000-page report.

If you're wondering what the news reports mean for climate change, here are some answers. Please spread the word to your family, friends, and co-workers.

1. Do the U.N. climate panel's errors mean there is no threat from climate change?

No, the dire threat from climate change is not in question. The panel's errors were only related to the intensity of climate change. There are in fact only two real mistakes that have been found so far and neither necessitate any change to the basic premise of human-induced climate change.

For over two decades, scientists have consistently found that climate change is happening, and it's caused by human activity.

2. Why is there so much furor about these errors?

Over the past 20 years, the U.N. climate panel has been attacked again and again by the fossil fuel industry and by politicians who are determined to discredit climate change science and continue on an unsustainable development pathway which would ensure dire consequences for this earth.

3. Are the Himalayan glaciers melting or not?

In 2007, the U.N. climate panel reported that Himalayan glaciers might vanish by 2035. The specific year turned out to be based on a flawed study, and the panel has corrected the error.

The Himalayan glaciers are retreating, but the exact rate of retreat is still uncertain. India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh was one of the first to argue that the 2035 forecast was "not based on an iota of scientific evidence," but he confirms the Himalayan glaciers "are indeed receding and the rate is cause for great concern."

4. Who will be impacted by climate change?

Everyone. Lesser developed countries and small island states will be hit hardest and fastest.

But rich nations are not immune to the violent weather, drought, disease, famine, mass migrations, and wars that will be caused if we don't stop climate change.

5. What is Greenpeace’s call on climate change?

The science is clear. Climate change is real, is happening now and is caused by people. The solution is clean energy, smart use of our power and forest protection.

Since lots of people are wondering about the media stories, please forward this mail to your family, friends and co-workers.

Thanks a billion!

Vinuta Gopal
Climate Campaigner
Greenpeace India

P.S. If you want more details, check out this thorough analysis at RealClimate.org.

When we launched Polluterharmony, we wanted to be sure that the new online dating service for polluters, lobbyists, and politicians reached those who need it most; all those lonely legislators looking for their very own match.  What better way to reach them than Politico.com?

As it turned out, Polluterharmony has been a hit, quickly becoming the #1 matchmaking site for polluters, industry lobbyists, and politicians! It's great that more public officials have had a chance to learn about this exciting new service, but we want to be sure that it's not just other Senators that know about Senator Murkowski's close relationship with polluter lobbyists.  Her constituents deserve to know too!  So to help get the word out, this week we launched ads on NBC affiliates in Alaska.

"I have always believed that IT is the engine of an efficient economy; it also can drive a greener one." – Michael Dell, Forbes

Last month, Facebook announced that it was building its first data center, in Prineville, Oregon, in the northwest of the US. Unfortunately for the climate, we soon found out that instead of renewable energy, Facebook chose to operate its data center with energy from Pacific Power, a utility that is fueled primarily by coal. Last Friday, Greenpeace responded by challenging the company to become a climate champion and dump coal.

How the internet is powered is an issue not just for Facebook but for the entire IT industry. The industry holds many of the keys to reaching our climate goals by innovating internet based solutions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and increase energy efficiency. Technologies that enable smart grids, zero emissions buildings, and more efficient transport systems are central to efforts to combat climate change.

However, the IT industry's global environmental footprint is still growing — in fact, it's set to double by 2020. In 2008, The Climate Group and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) issued SMART 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age. The study showed the incredible efficiencies IT can create, but it also highlighted the massive footprint of the IT industry and predicted that because of the rapid economic expansion in places like India and China, among other causes, demand for IT services will quadruple by 2020.

How Facebook Should Lead
After we highlighted its growing footprint, Facebook issued a public response. It touted the significant energy efficiency of its data centers, but it also said that Pacific Power and its parent company PacifiCorp "has an energy mix that is weighted slightly more toward coal than the national average" of roughly 50%. This is not the full story. Facebook went to a state with only one existing in-state coal plant (that's shutting down within the decade) and instead decided to throw its lot with a utility that imports dirty coal from out of state.

Moreover, burning coal contributes the largest share of CO2 emissions globally, as well as contributing to increased asthma, acid rain, and mortality from other pollutants. Facebook's decision to choose a company primarily powered by coal over other cleaner sources of energy is a missed opportunity to strike a blow against this dirty fuel and drive a clean energy economy. We expect more from a company that was recently named the most innovative by Fast Company magazine.

In fact, other data center operators are realizing that efficiency is only part of the equation in dealing with company footprint. Yahoo similarly chose a cooler climate in Buffalo, NY for a data center in order to reduce the need for energy intensive cooling systems, but it chose its location based on access to lower carbon hydropower. Google has established Google Energy, which was recently granted its application to become a wholesale electricity buyer and seller. Google will hopefully use this standing to drive more renewable energy powered data centers.

Greenpeace is calling on Facebook, as we have with other IT companies, to:

• Commit to growing without using dirty coal power;
• Use its purchasing power to choose clean sources of electricity;
• Advocate for strong climate and energy policy changes at the local, national and international level to ensure that as its industry's appetite for energy increases, so does the supply of renewable energy;
• Share this information publicly on its website so its 350 million users know the company is a climate leader.

How You Can Get Involved
The IT industry's ability to lead and innovate are the reasons Greenpeace built on its work in the sector and began its Cool IT Campaign in 2009. The campaign uses direct company engagement and public pressure to push the ICT industry to put forward solutions to achieve economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions reductions and to become stronger advocates for policies that combat climate change and increase the use of renewable energy.

We want Facebook users to tell the company that you love using Facebook, but you want them to dump coal. You can get involved by joining one of the numerous Facebook groups that have sprung up to raise awareness about Facebook's choice of coal power for its Prineville data center. You can also use your networks and creativity to spread the word on other online social networks about the campaign. The internet is one of the greatest inventions& ever for creating social change. Let's use it.

Greenpeace has always been known for taking bold action in defense of our planet and basic human rights. More often than not the activists involved are nothing short of real life action heroes putting their lives and liberty on the line to inform the world about environmental and social injustice.

This certainty is the case in our ongoing fight to end Japanese whaling in the southern ocean whale sanctuary. Two of our courageous activists are now facing the fight of their lives. Junichi Sato and Toru Sazuki, known as the Tokyo 2 or T2, took bold action to expose a huge scandal reaching high into the Japanese government involving embezzlement and corruption inside the government-sponsored Japanese whaling program.

They now face serious charges and potentially 10 years in jail for showing the world what’s really going on with Japanese whaling. Junichi and Toru need your help. By standing with them you’re also putting pressure on Japan to end it’s so-called scientific whaling. How often do you get the chance to help real life action heroes?

You too can join the fight to defend the T2, the fight to defend individual civil and political rights, and the fight to end Japanese whaling. Often people ask me, what can I do? Well here’s an easy way to add your voice to the growing body of people actively defending our planet and our human rights.

Take action today and send a letter supporting Junichi and Toru.

A couple of months ago, I visited a vibrant Greenpeace student group at UNC-Wilmington.

About two hours after I arrived, I met up with one of the student organizers, Andy, and we went to pick up some supplies for a banner. We found the perfect sized rods to serve as braces and headed to one of Progress Energy's coal fired power plants for a media event. The plant is less than 10 miles from campus.

We turned on to the main road heading toward the plant and about 20 feet up the road, we saw a security guard, a representative from Progress Energy and a news van. Andy, the savvy campus organizer that he is, had pitched a couple TV stations on the event, and a TV crew showed up! The idea was that this was a publicity event for the screening of "The Age of Stupid" the students were showing the next day on campus. Our banner had STUPID written on it in big bold letters.



We drove in with confidence and headed to the security guard to see why he was there. He responded, "I've been hired here by the property owners to keep folks from coming onto the property." I responded, "OK, we need to pull around and talk to the TV crew. We're just here to get a picture and send a message that we will not let our future be powered by coal." We quickly discussed where we could set up, and were able to carry on as planned.

Andy did an interview with the camera crew, and we provided background support. The reporter did quite the Us versus Them story.

While we were doing the interview, we saw an unmarked car drive by and take photos of our license plates. I asked the Progress Energy representative why this was necessary, and he responded, “It’s a safety precaution.” But, you have to ask yourself, why is an energy company so afraid of a group of students? What are they worried about?

The UNC-Wilmington students, on the other hand, are pretty concerned. They know that it’s their future at stake and they certainly are not going to back down. They know that companies like Progress Energy aren’t transitioning to renewable energy fast enough and are continuing to fuel propaganda by being a part of groups like the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. Young people will keep pushing until they build a future that is not powered by coal, and I look forward to working with them every step of the way.

Maybe you read the post the other day by anti-nuclear activist and Greenpeace senior advisor Harvey Wasserman entitled "Obama's atomic blunder." In case you missed it, or have always been more of an auditory/visual learner, you can watch this video of Harvey on Democracy Now! discussing President Obama's misguided plan to fund new nuclear reactors.

As Vermont seethes with radioactive contamination and the Democratic Party crumbles, Barack Obama has plunged into the atomic abyss. 

In the face of fierce green opposition and withering scorn from both liberal and conservative budget hawks, Obama has done what George W. Bush could not: pledge billions of taxpayer dollars for a relapse of the 20th Century’s most expensive technological failure. 

Obama has announced some $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for two new reactors planned for Georgia. Their Westinghouse AP-1000 designs have been rejected by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as being unable to withstand natural cataclysms like hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. 

The Vogtle site was to originally host four reactors at a total cost of $600 million; it wound up with two at $9 billion. 

The Southern Company, which wants to build these two new reactors, has cut at least one deal with Japanese financiers set to cash in on American taxpayer largess. The interest rate on the federal guarantees remains bitterly contested. The funding is being debated between at least five government agencies, and may well be tested in the courts. It's not clear whether union labor will be required and what impact that might have on construction costs. 

The Congressional Budget Office and other analysts warn the likely failure rate for government-back reactor construction loans could be in excess of 50%. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu has admitted he was unaware of the CBO’s report when he signed on to the Georgia guarantees. 

Over the past several years the estimated price tag for proposed new reactors has jumped from $2-3 billion each in some cases to more than $12 billion today. The Chair of the NRC currently estimates it at $10 billion, well before a single construction license has been issued, which will take at least a year. 

Energy experts at the Rocky Mountain Institute and elsewhere estimate that a dollar invested in increased efficiency could save as much as seven times as much energy than one invested in nuclear plants can produce, while producing ten times as many permanent jobs. 

Georgia has been targeted largely because its regulators have demanded ratepayers put up the cash for the reactors as they're being built. Florida and Georgia are among a small handful of states taxing electric consumers for projects that cannot come on line for many years, and that may never deliver a single electron of electricity. 

Two Florida Public Service Commissioners, recently appointed by Republican Governor Charlie Crist (now a candidate for the US Senate), helped reject over a billion dollars in rate hikes demanded by Florida Power & Light and Progress Energy, both of which want to build double-reactors at ratepayer expense. The utilities now say they'll postpone the projects proposed for Turkey Point and Levy County. 

In 2005 the Bush Administration set aside some $18.5 billion for reactor loan guarantees, but the Department of Energy has been unable to administer them. Obama wants an additional $36 billion to bring the fund up to $54.5 billion. Proposed projects in South Carolina, Maryland and Texas appear to be next in line. 

But the NRC has raised serious questions about Toshiba-owned Westinghouse’s AP-1000 slated for Georgia’s Vogtle site, as well as for South Carolina and Turkey Point. The French-made EPR design proposed for Maryland has been challenged by regulators in Finland, France and Great Britain. In Texas, a $4 billion price jump has sparked a political upheaval in San Antonio and elsewhere, throwing the future of that project in doubt. 

Taxpayers are also on the hook for potential future accidents from these new reactors. In 1957, the industry promised Congress and the country that nuclear technology would quickly advance to the point that private insurers would take on the liability for any future disaster, which could by all serious estimates run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Only $11 billion has been set aside to cover the cost of such a catastrophe. But now the industry says it will not build even this next generation of plants without taxpayers underwriting liability for future accidents. Thus the “temporary” program could ultimately stretch out to a full century or more. 

In the interim, Obama has all but killed Nevada’s proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. He has appointed a commission of nuclear advocates to “investigate” the future of high-level reactor waste. But after 53 years, the industry is further from a solution than ever. 

Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has reported that at least 27 of America’s 104 licensed reactors are now leaking radioactive tritium. The worst case may be Entergy’s Vermont Yankee, near the state’s southeastern border with New Hampshire and Massachusetts. High levels of contamination have been found in test wells around the reactor, and experts believe the Connecticut River is at serious risk. 

A furious statewide grassroots campaign aims to shut the plant, whose license expires in 2012. A binding agreement between Entergy and the state gives the legislature the power to deny an extension. US Senator Bernie Saunders (D-VY) has demanded the plant close. The legislature may vote on it in a matter of days. 

Obama has now driven a deep wedge between himself and the core of the environmental movement, which remains fiercely anti-nuclear. While reactor advocates paint the technology green, the opposition has been joined by fiscal conservatives like the National Taxpayer Institute, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. 

Reactor backers hailing a “renaissance” in atomic energy studiously ignore France’s catastrophic Olkiluoto project, now $3 billion over budget and 3 years behind schedule. Parallel problems have crippled another project at Flamanville, France, and are virtually certain to surface in the US. 

The reactor industry has spent untold millions lobbying for this first round of loan guarantees. There's no doubt it will seek far more in the coming months. Having failed to secure private American financing, the question will be: In a tight economy, how much public money will Congress throw at this obsolete technology?

The potential flow of taxpayer guarantees to Georgia means nuclear opponents now have a tangible target. Also guaranteed is ferocious grassroots opposition to financing, licensing and construction of this and all other new reactor proposals, as well as to continued operation of leaky rustbucket reactors like Vermont Yankee. 

The “atomic renaissance” is still a very long way from going tangibly critical. 

--
Harvey Wasserman is Senior Advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service. His SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.solartopia.org.

Investigators are still trying to find the cause of a February 7 blast that killed five people at a Kleen Energy Systems LP power plant in Connecticut. Sources said that the blast occurred when a welder lit his torch, igniting the natural gas that had built up. The accident was one of the worst in memory in Middletown, a town of about 45,000 people.

To aid in the investigation, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, CSB, deployed a team to examine the activities and conditions that were going on at the plant. The CSB has long urged for improved natural gas safety codes. Most recently, at a public meeting on February 4, the CSB issued urgent recommendations that the national fuel gas codes be changed to improve safety when gas pipes are being purged - cleared of air – during maintenance or the installation of new piping. The Board’s urgent recommendations resulted from the CSB’s ongoing federal investigation into the June 9, 2009, natural gas explosion at the ConAgra Slim Jim production facility in Garner, North Carolina, which caused four deaths, three critical life-threatening burn injuries, and other injuries that sent a total of 67 people to the hospital.

Now is the time for Congress to finally pass strong chemical security legislation. We can’t have any more accidents like the one in Middletown. Congress needs to act now, before another tragedy strikes.

The House passed legislation last fall, now it’s up to the Senate to pass a bill that is even better. Take action and tell your Senators to put the safety and security of the American people above partisan politics and chemical industry lobbyists. Tell them to support comprehensive chemical security legislation even stronger than the bill recently passed in the House of Representatives. Please take action today.

--Michelle

Guest blogger Anastasia Khoo is a former Greenpeace employee. She currently lives in Washington, DC.

When I think about toxic pollution, I usually think about smoke-filled skies and dirty lakes, not toothpaste. But attending the Washington D.C. book launch of Slow Death by Rubber Duck by authors Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie, I'm starting to view my medicine cabinet as a toxic cesspool.

I worked for Greenpeace for six years so I considered myself fairly environmentally-savvy. I buy post-consumer recycled toilet paper, use green cleaning products and don't microwave anything in plastic but I'm also a cosmetic junkie with preferred customer status at Sephora. Slow Death by Rubber Duck points out that between phthalates (contained in products to make them smell good), triclosan (the active ingredient in most anti-bacterial products) and brominated flame retardants (found in upholstered products and electronics), a lot of common household products contain an unnecessary levels of toxics.

The authors of Slow Death embarked on an experiment using themselves as human guinea pigs to test the amount of toxics in their bodies. The one iron-clad rule of the experiment was that the experiment had to mimic real life. For seven days, they secluded themselves and went about life like any other normal American. They ate tuna. They used anti-bacterial soap. They used a Teflon pan. They wore latex (ok, I made that last part up but the question about safety of latex did come up at the book launch!). They tested their blood and urine before the experiment, during and after. The results were astounding. After bathing and using off the shelf shampoo, an antiperspirant and toothpaste for 48 hours like any other normal person, Rick's phthalate levels went up by almost 3,000 times. Rick is a grown man who stands at about 6 ft. Can you imagine what the effects on a child would be?

The book demonstrates the insidious nature that the chemical industry has in our daily lives, ranging from your toothpaste to your safety. Greenpeace has worked for years to educate consumers and legislators about the hazards of the chemical industry and have fought for stricter standards and the use of safer alternatives. But only when there is an outpouring of of consumer activism can change really happen. As the book points out, legislators and companies need to hear from you. So, please take action today on these toxics issues and take a close look at your medicine cabinet.

For more about Slow Death by Rubber Duck or to buy the book, you can visit the site here. (www.slowdeathbyrubberduck.com/USA)

 

--Anastasia

Polluterharmony, the new online dating service we launched this week dedicated to matching polluter lobbyists with politicians is making waves. Check out Dylan Ratigan's kudos on MSNBC;

And the video is also getting attention on Capitol Hill, as Anne Mulkerne reports in her NYTimes/Greenwire article:

Sen. Murkowski, Greenpeace Exchange Barbs Over EPA Regulations

Greenpeace and Sen. Lisa Murkowski's office are in a battle of words over her effort to block U.S. EPA from regulating greenhouse gases.

An aide to the Alaska Republican condemned Greenpeace yesterday after PolluterWatch, a project of the environmental group, launched a Web site called PolluterHarmony.com, a take-off on the matchmaking site eHarmony.com.

<snip>

"If she objects to the scrutiny her conduct has received, she should consider putting her constituents ahead of Washington lobbyists," Davies said. "Until then, we will continue to hold her accountable for her close ties to influence peddlers like Jeffrey Holmstead."

News reports earlier this year revealed that Holmstead, an industry lawyer who served in the George W. Bush administration, advised Murkowski's office on a failed amendment last year to block EPA regulations. Environmentalists have pointed to Holmstead's involvement as a signal that Murkowski is working on behalf of industry interests, but the Alaska senator has said her staff consulted a variety of outside experts, including environmentalists and Republican and Democratic lawmakers, when drafting that amendment.

It's great that more public officials and lobbyists for coal and oil companies might now get a chance to learn about Polluterharmony, so they too might find a match made in Washington. Happy Valentines Weekend!

It has been almost two years since Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki helped uncover a whale meat embezzlement scandal in Japan. This Monday, they will face the first day of their trial for their actions in exposing the essentially government run whaling industry.  Today, Greenpeace US became one of many offices worldwide to show support for the Tokyo Two at a Japanese embassy, deliver new information to Japanese officials, and demand that the Japanese government respect the civil and political rights of its citizens, Junichi and Toru.

For more background on the case and whaling in Japan Read Whaling on Trial

On Monday of this week, the opinion of UN Human Rights Working Group of Arbitrary Detention was released.  The group agreed that Japan is in violation of the ICCPR, an international agreement where countries have pledged to uphold civil and political rights including freedom of expression.  
Read the story
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Japanese Embassy in Romania:

The Japanese government is trying to silence the Tokyo Two.  Fortunately, on Wednesday Greenpeace appealed to a civilian review board to have the prosecution reopen the embezzlement case that it dropped when they arrested Junichi and Toru.  Today in Tokyo, the Greenpeace International Executive Director released an open letter to Prime Minister Hatoyama urging the new Japanese Administration to stand by its international commitments and give the Tokyo Two a fair trial.

Meanwhile, here at Greenpeace US we delivered the same message to the Japanese embassy in Washington, DC. Embassy officials, who would not identify themselves to us, were painfully aware of the international pressure Japan is and will be facing during the trial and before the verdict (February-May).  

The Japanese government has tried and failed to suppress the whale meat embezzlement scandal.  It has tried and failed to silence Greenpeace activists.  We hope that on February 15th in the courtroom they try something new: hold a fair trial for the Tokyo Two.

Take action today and tell the Japanese Embassy that you stand beside the Tokyo Two as co-defendants.

 

From the Seafood Summit in Paris last week, where we were all agog for news of a shift in the French position on bluefin which only happened after we left, I flew to New York for a screening of The End of the Line at the UN General Assembly, organised by the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. This screening was arranged to co-incide with a UN working group reviewing the effectiveness of UN resolution 61/105 passed four years ago that called on states and regional fisheries managers to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems such as sea mounts from deep-sea trawling.

The screening of a 25-minute version of the film was well attended, with some 80 or so diplomats and experts filling the delegates dining room for the screening, Q&A and reception hosted by DSCC. As you can imagine, there were some searching questions, for instance “What can the UN do about over-fishing?” and “What is the attitude to sustainability in Japan?” I attempted an answer and about 50 people departed with a copy of the book on which the film is based.

The audience was greatly fascinated by the announcement, at last, by two French ministers that day, of the French position on bluefin tuna – support for an Appendix 1 listing, a full international trade ban, but with an 18-month delay.

It seemed timely for us, the film-makers, Oceana and Greenpeace to put out a release relevant to the United States, so we pointed out, what few US consumers seem to know, which is that imports of endangered bluefin tuna into the United States for the sushi trade are contributing to the collapse of the population in the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic. The bluefin that finds its way on to the menus of the New York and LA restaurants that have such poor ratings for sustainability on www.fish2fork.com is more likely to have come from the Med than the US. Official export figures from the European Union, compiled by Roberto Mielgo, one of the major players in our film, show that up to 3,341 tons of bluefin was exported from the EU to the United States between 1998 and June last year. In 2008 the US was a net importer of bluefin, importing 360 metric tons from around the world, notably the Mediterranean, compared with the 266 metric tons that were caught domestically. Such is the value of bluefin - nearly $9 a pound on average - that the total trade in the United States is worth nearly $100 million a year.

I returned to England to hear that frenzied briefings were going on in Strasbourg ahead of a crucial vote in the European Parliament on whether the EU should support Cites Appendix 1 for the bluefin. MEPs came under heavy lobbying pressure from DG Fish which told them that an Appendix 1 listing was an incredibly dangerous precedent to set and might one day be applied to the cod. What disgraceful nonsense. MEPs also had their ears ringing with briefings from the European fisheries inspectorate saying they had the fishery screwed down and could police an 8,000 tons a year sustainable quota imposed under Cites Appendix II, which regulates but does not stop trade. There was a rocky moment for our campaign to save the bluefin when it looked as though this advice would prevail. Then, MEPs realized that the EU was not the only player in the bluefin game and that Turkey, Libya, Croatia, Algeria and the Japanese long-liners in the Atlantic were quite capable of wiping out the bluefin on their own if the Japanese market was not closed. Wise counsel prevailed and a majority of MEPs voted to place the bluefin on Cites Appendix 1, without the 18-month delay called for by France. This will make it difficult for DG Fish, or the Commission, to resist pressure to do the same. The same day as the vote, Italy finally declared for Appendix 1, making it inessential that the conditions imposed by France should apply. The fishing lobby was furious. It is looking more and more as though the EU’s 27 member states might actually go to Doha supporting Appendix 1 for the bluefin. Fingers crossed!

 

Clover Charles Clover is the award winning Environment Editor of the Daily Telegraph.  He is author of several books, including The End of the Line, now a feature documentary film.

We launched our new PolluterWatch project to expose the work our elected representatives are doing at the behest of polluter lobbyists and their clients in the big oil, big coal, and other big polluter industries.

And as you might have seen, we launched PolluterHarmony.com a couple days ago — just in time for Valentine’s Day! pHarmony, as we like to call it, uses “a unique compatibility algorithm” that matches polluters and politicians based on their love of dirty energy, their past environmental violations, and their ability to ignore the public health interests of real people.

Now we need your help to hold climate criminals accountable.

Big corporations know that the public doesn’t trust them, so they funnel millions of dollars to front groups who do their dirty work for them. And no one plays the front-group-and-junk-science game quite like Exxon Mobil and its CEO Rex Tillerson. That’s exactly why we started PolluterWatch: to hold people like Mr. Tillerson accountable.



We can’t outspend a company like Exxon on fancy ad campaigns and promotional blitzes, but we can educate the public about polluters’ influence-peddling and propagandizing. Then we can demand accountability for them and the lobbyists and politicians who’ve worked with them to confuse the debate on climate policy and undermine attempts to regulate emissions in the U.S. — all to protect Exxon’s profits at the expense of the planet.

Help us get started by putting up “Wanted” posters for Mr. Tillerson in your hometown.

The idea is a simple one: Download our short one-page toolkit and print out a few copies of the Wanted poster we’ve created for Rex Tillerson. The toolkit contains a black and white version of the wanted poster, to make it easy to print. But you can download the color version as a PDF, if you want that one. And remember to use recycled paper!

Put these posters up around your town, then take pictures and post them to your Facebook, MySpace, or Tumblr. Or TwitPic them, or put them on your blog, or start a blog right here on our site and post them there to share with our activist community. Just make sure you use the keyword “polluterwatch,” or put the hashtag #polluterwatch in your tweets, so we can find them.

We need to make sure that everyone in our communities knows who is really responsible for stalling progress on global warming. Because until people start putting names and faces with the groups who are undermining our future, we’re not going to be able to separate their propaganda from the truth and stop global warming. Take action today!

Whales campaigner Sara Holden explains:

Only for a Greenpeace campaign could you gather together an archbishop, a rock star, a TV detective-turned-game show host, TWO Nobel peace prize winners, a movie heart throb, a heavy metal band, BAFTA and Oscar winning actresses and the captain of a space ship.

If you were planning fantasy dinner party, it would be a good start. But it might be hard to get a table big enough to add the additional Supreme Court advocates, politicians, lawyers and quarter of a million people who are also standing up for the very same cause.

 

 

On Monday, Greenpeace anti whaling campaigners Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki will go on trial in Japan. They are putting their futures on the line in order to expose corruption in the Japanese whaling programme, defend all of our rights to protest injustice and environmental threats.

But with all that support behind them, they are not going into court alone. Their case has gone global. You could even say it has gone galactic. Having William Shatner write a letter of support for the Tokyo Two campaign gives license to crack lots of bad jokes about this case boldly going where no case has gone before – but it is actually true!

For the first time in Japanese judicial history a landmark opinion by a division of the United Nations Human Rights Council has declared that Junichi and Toru’s human rights were breached by the authorities.

Not surprising then, that Junichi and Toru’s case had also already got the attention of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Betty Williams – Nobel Peace prize winners. As to the rest of this eclectic group of celebrity supporters - Benicio Del Toro, Emma Thompson, Thandie Newton, Edd Byrnes as well as rock musicians Bryan Adams (pictured above) and The Scorpions. Admit it – wouldn’t you love to see all of these people in the same room together… The Scorpions and Desmond Tutu – mindboggling!

Our thanks to all of you – famous or otherwise - for being in the same room as Junichi and Toru. You can keep supporting them by joining a pledge to the Japanese Government.

Monday is d-day for the start of their trial and the team at the courthouse will tweet the progress (tweets are in English and Japanese).

In addition to taking action and sending it to your friends -- you can also help to gather support to make sure whaling goes on trial by publicly thanking the celebrities who have signed the open letter. By doing this - their thousands of fans might be encouraged to join us too.

You can submit the following suggested message on their Facebook fan page or send it to them on Twitter - linking to our Tokyo Two Pledge.

"Thanks for supporting the Greenpeace activists - and helping to put whaling on trial http://bit.ly/WhalePledge"

Bryan Adams on Facebook
Bryan Adams on Twitter

William Shatner on Facebook
William Shatner of Twitter

Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Facebook

The Scorpions on Facebook
The Scorpions on MySpace

Thandie Newton on Facebook
Thandie Newton's IMDB page (you can leave a thank you note in the message board at the bottom).

Images © Greenpeace

 

When members of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council looked out their hotel and around the meeting rooms and sessions, they were reminded of the deep sea canyons that they're failing to protect. Greenpeace reminded them on newspapers, napkins, pens and t-shirts.

The Greenpeace spoof USA Today had the following headlines:

• NOAA Habitat Division Launches Program to Actually Conserve Habitat

• Trawl Captain Declares War on deep sea corals

• Seattle based fleet decries 'outsiders' meddling in Alaska Fisheries

• Inside were articles such as:

• Study finds Fur Seals 'Depressed and Anxious'

• Factory Trawlers announce new 'magic gear'

• Lobbyists argue 'Steller Sea Lions not that hungry'

 
This week, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council meets in Portland, Oregon to discuss whether any new protections are needed within the approximately one million square miles of the ocean managed by the Council. The Council is dominated by fishing interests and historically, management has leaned in favor of industrial fishing over ocean ecosystem health.

Greenpeace has been calling attention to a unique area within the NPFMC’s jurisdiction, the Bering Sea (waters between the United States and Russia). It’s home to some of the largest submarine canyons in the world. The Bering Sea is also home to a diverse array of wildlife. Polar bears, seals, sea lions, walruses, whales and millions of seabirds call the Bering Sea home.

You can read more about the Bering Sea and Greenpeace's urge for marine reserves to help protect this amazing region. 

--Michelle

Thank the stars for the Daily Show. While the mainstream media has largely been silent over the lies and distortions climate change deniers have been making over the recent snowstorms affecting the East Coast, Jon Stewart's merry cast of characters took the air out of their ridiculous and irresponsible arguments. At the 3:48 mark of the video below, Stewart hilariously mocks the comments by some that say the heavy snow is proof that climate change is a hoax.

 

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Unusually Large Snowstorm
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Climate change deniers, like Sens. Jim DeMint and James Inhofe, will use any opportunity to push their fact-free agenda. On Monday, DeMint wrote on his Twitter account: "It's going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries 'uncle'". Inhofe and his grandchildren built an igloo on the national mall and adorned it with a sign that reads "Al Gore's New Home".

Oh, the wit. And the utter recklessness of it.

Fortunately, the Daily Show effectively used their sardonic platform to show how ridiculous these sort of actions are. Again, for the benefit of some of our media friends and elected officials, climate is about long-term patterns, which in the case of our climate shows a dangerous warming trend caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Weather is about short-term events, like snowstorms or rainfall. 

In fact, a White House report issued last year shows that climate change is likely to lead to bigger snow storm in the mid-Atlantic region because warmer air holds more moisture. It's true. You can look it up. I invite Senators Inhofe and DeMint to do the same before they go off and embarrass themselves and their families.

With the Federal government shut down by back to back record breaking blizzards, members of Congress are huddled at home, wandering the internet, perhaps looking for a match made in heaven. Across town in the K Street frat houses, hoards of hungry lobbyists, unable to pursue their desired prey on foot, also resort to the internet, looking for love.

When you are a needy Senator, working tireless long hours to preserve and protect our Democracy and facing re-election, you don't have much time to find true love. And you have to be careful who you are seen with these days with all the prying eyes in Washington.

Today PolluterHarmony, a new online matchmaking service was launched to help the lobbyists and politicians find each other from the privacy of their own homes. PolluterHarmony.com, a dating service dedicated to helping polluter industry lobbyists, CEO's and propagandists match up with willing public officials, making it even easier to buy and sell influence, sabotage global warming solutions and derail our clean energy future.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, the new website was launched alongside an online advertising campaign. In coming weeks, Greenpeace organizers will also take to Capitol Hill to help promote PolluterHarmony's compatibility formula, which matches polluters and politicians based on their love of dirty energy, past environmental violations, and their ability to ignore the public health interests of real people.

Greenpeace launches PolluterHarmony at a time when dirty industry companies and their trade associations are spending record amounts on lobbyists and influence peddlers in an effort to undermine clean energy policy and global warming solutions. Serving these needy lobbyists and politicians is the least we can do.

The real life of lobbyists relationships with politicians made headlines last month when the news broke that dirty industry lobbyists helped Senator Lisa Murkowski write legislation aimed at stripping the Environmental Protection Agency of the authority to regulate greenhouse gasses. The lobbyists, former Bush officials Jeffrey Holmstead and Roger Martella, helped Murkowski craft the bill shortly after several of their clients made sizable donations to her campaign account. We are still awaiting a response from Senate Ethics Chairwoman Barbara Boxer to a letter sent requesting an immediate investigation into the matter.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates (in President Obama's words) with the Citizens United decision. Corporations are just like people, says the nation's highest court, so why shouldn't they have a matchmaking service to find their true love?

Here are some testimonials that PolluterHarmony is already working:

• Senator Blanche Lambert Lincoln of Arkansas has found multiple matches with Dirty Coal loving electric utilities like Southern Company, Duke and AEP, and lots of love from Big Oil.

• Representative Joe Barton of Texas, who has long shared a bed with his home state pals from Big Oil is leading the pack on House oil contributions. Now Barton seems to be harvesting the fruit of his labors to derail global warming laws with newfound love from Dirty Coal.

• Senator Lisa Murkowski of Big Oil Alaska is spending her time in the lower 48 finding lots of Dirty Coal love. Murkowski is neck and neck with Senator Dorgan as the leading recipient of coal and utility campaign contributions.
  
  And why not, she is spending her time trying to strangle the EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act, a law that oil companies and utilities have violated over and over in recent years and punished with millions of dollars in fines. Murkowski's suitors have million$ of rea$on$ to love her attack on the EPA and the Clean Air Act.

Corporate violators of the Clean Air Act

Duke Energy has been busted by the EPA for Clean Air Act violations.

ExxonMobil for instance was found guilty of over 2000 Clean Air Act violations and fined millions in penalties.

Chevron has violated the Clean Air Act on numerous occasions and is now being investigated in Alaska for knowingly violating air pollution permits.

ConocoPhillips has also been found guilty of violating the Clean Air Act and paid big fines.

If you are a politician looking for your very own lobbyist love affair or vice versa, check these handy field guides:

OpenSecrets has records of 997 registered Electric utility lobbyists with spending of over $140 million in 2009.

OpenSecrets Electric Utility campaign contributions

OpenSecrets has tracked 790 Big Oil lobbyists and over $160 million in lobbying cash for 2009

OpenSecrets Big Oil campaign contributions

OpenSecrets Coal Mining campaign cash

FollowTheOilMoney

FollowTheCoalMoney


This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.

Climate change is the mother of all financial risks. In addition to its disastrous environmental effects, which will impact all of us, climate change is beginning to disturb supply chains, manufacturing, markets, water, and weather. In other words, global warming could soon make running a business almost impossible by transforming even well-run companies into subprime investments.

Which is probably why the SEC, which regulates our financial markets, recently ruled that corporations must show the risk of climate change on their books:

The Securities and Exchange Commission said on Wednesday for the first time that public companies should warn investors of any serious risks that global warming might pose to their businesses.

Although the agency has long required companies to reveal possible financial or legal impacts from a variety of environmental challenges, it has never specifically cited climate change as bringing potentially significant business risks or rewards.

A year ago, we showed that if the 4 largest coal companies in the U.S. were charged $1/ton for the CO2 emitted from their coal in 2007, this cost of carbon would wipe out their profits and cause most of them to lose over $150 million.



And that was being kind, because the going rate for CO2 in Europe is $12/ton.

What would have happened if these companies paid more of their true costs of doing business? Coal would no longer be considered a good investment or a cheap source of energy.

Despite the tough economic times we’re living in, wind power continues to expand around the globe. According to the Global Wind Energy Council, the worldwide wind power capacity grew by 31% last year, adding 37.5 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy to the global mix. This just points out all the more clearly that it ain't just the answer to our climate woes that is blowing in the wind.


Spain's Maranchon Wind Farm is the largest in Europe with 104 generators, and is operated by Iberdrola, the largest wind energy company in the world. © Greenpeace / Daniel Beltrá

As we continue to search for ways to foster an economic recovery, the incredible growth of wind power capacity around the world shows that wind energy is not just the right choice for saving the climate, but also for creating jobs and putting folks back to work.

The American Wind Energy Association reports that the US didn't do too shabby itself, installing a record-breaking 10,000 megawatts (MW), or 10 GW, of new wind power capacity in 2009. This brings total wind capacity in the US up to 35 GW. But according to the GWEC, China contributed a third of the global wind power expansion last year, marking the fifth straight year in which the country at least doubled its capacity for generating power from the wind. China is now producing more than 25 GW of power from the wind, up from just over 12 GW the year before. Kinda puts our 10 GW increase into perspective. For a country that prides itself on innovation and forward-thinking, the US can and should do better.

Here we are in America still fighting for our first large-scale offshore wind project, Cape Wind. If you haven’t already, sign our petition calling on Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to approve Cape Wind and help get us on the path to a clean, green future.

But even if we were to go all in for wind power tomorrow, how would we get that clean energy from the point of production to the point of consumption? Glad you asked! It just so happens we have just released a report describing how global electricity grids can sustain high levels of renewable energy. The report is called Renewables 24/7, click that link and you can download the whole thing as a PDF.

In the deep winter of New England, the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is leaking radioactive tritium into the groundwater.

This is bad timing for Yankee’s owner, Entergy of Louisiana, because the Vermont legislature is currently considering Entergy’s request to extend the 38-year-old plant’s license to operate for another 20 years. (Vermont is the only state in which the legislature has the power to intervene in a nuclear plant’s license.)

Even Governor Jim Douglas, who has been an unabashed Entergy supporter until now, demanded the firing of Entergy Vice President Jay Thayer.  Mr. Thayer swore under oath that Vermont Yankee has no underground pipes.  Then it was discovered that the tritium was leaking from – underground pipes.  (Still a friend to Entergy, the governor has also called for a “timeout” to allow the corporation to rebuild the people’s shattered trust.)

It’s unclear at this point who is the dog and who is the pony in this dog-and-pony show, but Entergy did get rid of Mr. Thayer.  (Which is not to say he was fired.  He was placed on “administrative leave” pending investigation, which means he goes on vacation until this whole thing blows over; when he returns he will be sent off to tell whoppers about some other Entergy facility.)

The new face of Entergy in Vermont is Curt Hebert, Jr., Entergy’s vice president of external affairs and former head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).  Mr. Hebert is known as a lifelong opponent of government intervention in energy markets.  (Then why was he the federal government’s chief energy regulator, you ask?  He was appointed by George W. Bush.)

 

 

So up here in Vermont, the public, press and politicians are seriously cheesed off at the out-of-state corporation that has mismanaged the state’s only nuke since it bought it in 2002 and has been caught passing misinformation again and again.  What’s Entergy’s response?  To send a bitter foe of government intervention to the one state where the government has more power to intervene than any other.  It makes one wonder if Entergy’s CEO Wayne Leonard might be spending too much time in the radiation room.

Mr. Hebert’s greatest claim to fame is that he presided over the federal government’s deer-in-the-headlights inaction when the 2000-2001 energy crisis caused rolling blackouts in California.  (Heckuva job, Curty!)

According to published accounts, Mr. Hebert – acting on Dick Cheney’s orders – covered up the market manipulation by Enron and others that led to the California and instead encouraged California to cancel its environmental regulations.  Now his kind ministrations will be visited on Vermont.  Oh boy.  

To paraphrase Lord Acton, power corrupts and nuclear power corrupts absolutely.

Hard as it is to believe, Cape Wind still faces an uncertain future.

But Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has said he will decide whether or not the project goes forward by February 12th — and he wants all of us to weigh in. You can sign our petition calling on Secretary Salazar to approve the project and show your support for Cape Wind right now. We'll send our petition with all of your signatures (over 12,000 so far — let's hit 15,000!) over to the Department of the Interior.

In case you don't already know all of this by heart, here's why you should support Cape Wind: The offshore wind project would be great for Massachusetts. Its 130 wind turbines would generate up to 420 megawatts of clean, green electricity – enough to replace the current power plant, which burns oil. This would reduce the region’s greenhouse gas emissions by 734,000 tons per year, which by some estimates is equivalent to taking 175,000 cars off the road.

Cape Wind would also be great for the United States of America. As the only offshore wind farm likely to be approved and built during President Obama’s first term, the completion of Cape Wind would go a long way toward showing the world that we're serious about cleaning up our act and converting to a clean energy economy. America needs to lead the world in solving global warming, and projects like Cape Wind are exactly how we can begin to do that.

The most recent snag is the concerns about the historic and cultural value of Nantucket Sound. These concerns obviously need to be properly addressed, and it seems like they can be met while still allowing this vital clean energy project to move forward. Because the thing is, the impacts of unchecked global warming — including sea level rise that would all but erase the region’s current coastline — are the far greater threat not just to Cape Cod but to the entire world. Building this first-of-its-kind wind farm in the US will be an important step towards tackling the climate crisis we’re facing right now and saving Cape Cod.

So please take a minute and sign our petition to Secretary Salazar and let him know that you support clean energy and Cape Wind. When you're done doing that, there's a link directly to a form on the Department of the Interior's website where you can submit a personal comment (or go here).

There’s currently a bit of a controversy broiling over how to describe the outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference, especially in regards to the so-called “Copenhagen Accord.” Some call it a good first step, some call it a complete failure.

But it is possible to discuss the Copenhagen Accord frankly while avoiding both the disingenuous spin that calls it a fantastic success as well as the unproductive criticism that labels it an abject failure. I see the Copenhagen Accord as a part of the broad global discussion moving us towards addressing global warming, which is exactly how the UNFCCC views it.

Some have hailed the Copenhagen Accord as a positive step forward for international climate negotiations. But there must have been some hard thinking behind those positive declarations that came from the environmental community. I understand and agree with the idea that we should give praise where it’s due to the US administration for their efforts to get commitments to reduce global warming pollution from countries like China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil, which now collectively represent about a third of global warming pollution.

However, praise for Obama and his administration’s work to secure these commitments has no place in a discussion of the Copenhagen Accord, as these commitments were mostly announced before the Accord was even established. So far, only Moldova and the Marshall Islands have used the Copenhagen Accord to announce pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and their share of emissions is about .03% of the global total.

There’s another reason to avoid the Accord in conversations about any positive influence of the US administration: US officials have stated that they don’t even agree with some aspects of the Accord. In particular, the administration has a contradictory position regarding the Accord’s mechanism for helping fund poor countries’ efforts to adapt to climate change. They want this fund to be housed outside of the UNFCCC, but the Accord clearly says this “green fund” will be within the UNFCCC. So I guess the US doesn’t want to “associate” with this part of it.

Many people have said that the Copenhagen Accord actually represents a breakdown of the international negotiation process. In this line of thinking, the Accord epitomizes a failure to have a real binding agreement in Copenhagen. Certainly the Accord represents something less than the US-proposed alternative to a global treaty, “pledge and review,” which was an outcome publicly opposed by most of the environmental community. (Essentially, “pledge and review” would have let countries state whatever arbitrary target they wanted, and then not even be bound to meet that, as they would be given the opportunity to “review” that commitment and adjust it to whatever they determine is feasible at the time of the review.)

One reason critics say the Accord represents failure is its textual incoherence: It was written to be a legal instrument of the UNFCCC, but that’s not how it’s turned out.

It is very important, in fact, to remember that the Copenhagen Accord is not a legal instrument. Most countries were absent when it was negotiated, and many may not ever officially “associate” with it. Today is three days after the January 31st deadline for associating with the Accord that was set by Secretary General of the UNFCCC, Yvo de Boer. But Secretary de Boer still has not heard from well over half of the member countries (USCAN has a great chart that tracks who has associated with the Accord and what commitments they've made here). Of those he has heard from, all who have submitted targets for reducing pollution have placed conditions on those targets. All of developed countries, with the notable exceptions of the United States and Canada, have said that a condition of their commitment is connection with a global, legal agreement.

My own position is that the Copenhagen Accord deserves neither praise nor lambasting. The thing I believe most strongly is that it should not become a distraction to continuing the UN-hosted negotiations toward a global treaty that includes the United States.

I “take note” of the Copenhagen Accord, as does the UNFCCC. Now let’s get on with the rest of the conversation.

Did you know that the Department of Homeland Security has identified 6,300 “high-risk” chemical plants in the United States? Examples of dangerous chemical plants are the ones that store and use large quantities of poison gases (like chlorine). If there were an accident or attack at a plant in a populated area, it could kill or injure 100 million people in as few as 24 minutes. That’s really disturbing news.

But, the good news is that these risks are preventable. Nationwide, 287 plants have switched to safer and more secure chemicals or processes since 1999 and eliminated these risks to 38.5 million Americans.

While some plants have switched voluntarily, others won’t do the same until a law is passed that requires it. That’s where the chemical security bill comes into play. Where feasible, the bill will make the most dangerous plants convert to safer manufacturing and aims to protect millions of lives.

The chemical security bill has been moving along in Congress. The bill has had quite a journey. In November, 2009 it was passed in the House and now it's waiting to be taken up by the Senate.

If you have forgotten the “ins and outs” of the US legislative process, maybe this School House Rocks video will refresh your memory. I remember watching it as a kid and find it’s a simple (and cute) way of seeing how a bill finally becomes a law in our Congress.

 

As you can see from the video, it’s not easy to become a law. The bill has to go through both the House and Senate and in between it goes into committees and even subcommittees. It’s enough to make your head spin.

On November 6, 2009, the House of Representatives approved the "Chemical and Water Security Act," (H.R. 2868). This was an amazing accomplishment because it marked the first time either house of Congress approved permanent and comprehensive chemical security legislation.

Next, the legislation moves to the Senate. The bill has a long way to go in the Senate and we’re going to need YOUR help every step of the way. With so many important issues vying for our Senators’ attention, we have to make sure they hear from us. We need to tell them repeatedly, that chemical security is critical and urge them to pass the legislation (at every single step of the long process)!

The chemical security bill has gotten this far. We can’t let it die in committee!! Please write your Senators and tell them to vote for the bill when it hits the Senate floor.

 

--Michelle