- What a horrifying thought while we are still reeling from the massive Gulf spill! And I never knew there were “ice control companies”- did you? Creating jobs to manage disasters really doesn’t qualify as green jobs, but green jobs can help prevent the need to manage disasters.  - Editor

Greenland’s giant island of ice could pose threat to offshore platforms, shipping
It’s slowly drifting across Arctic waters, an iceberg four times the size of Manhattan that broke off from a glacier in Greenland over the weekend.
Potentially in the path of this unstoppable giant are oil platforms and shipping lanes- and any collision could do untold damage. “It’s so big that you can’t prevent it from drifting. You can’t stop it,” said Jon-Ove Methlie Hagen, a glaciologist at the University of Oslo. Few images can capture the world’s climate fears like a 100 square mile (260 sq. kilometre) chunk of ice breaking off Greenland’s vast ice sheet. One Massachusetts Congressman has suggested, with presumed sarcasm, that it serve as a home for climate skeptics. Large enough to threaten Canada’s offshore platforms in the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Wohlleben said “iceberg control companies” can redirect smaller icebergs, by towing them or spraying them with water cannons. “I don’t think they could do with an iceberg that large,” she said. “They would have to physically move the rig.”
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/world/breakingnews/greenlands-giant-island-of-ice-could-pose-threat-to-offshore-platforms-shipping-100369689.html

The Solar Bug is a solar-electric vehicle which travels more than 30 miles on a full charge at speeds up to 35 miles per hour, and can carry two passengers and a small amount of cargo. It has 200 watts of roof-mounted solar power and a proprietary regenerative braking system which converts braking energy into battery storage. The Solar Bug can travel up to 10 miles per day on solar power alone. The Solar Bug is the first commercially available solar powered vehicle in North America.
Very upbeat video- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHKdFFIuOxA
http://evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=23794

Global subsidies for fossil fuels dwarf support given to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power and biofuels, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said. Governments last year gave $43 billion to $46 billion of support to renewable energy through tax credits, guaranteed electricity prices known as feed-in tariffs and alternative energy credits. That compares with the $557 billion that the International Energy Agency last month said was spent to subsidize fossil fuels in 2008. “One of the reasons the clean energy sector is starved of funding is because mainstream investors worry that renewable energy only works with direct government support,” said Michael Liebreich, chief executive of New Energy Finance. “This analysis shows that the global direct subsidy for fossil fuels is around ten times the subsidy for renewables.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-29/fossil-fuel-subsidies-are-12-times-support-for-renewables-study-shows.html

- Protecting the brains of our future generation needs to be a primary goal of any sane society. When you study child development and IQ’s, it is astonishing what even a few IQ points mean. Our society values mere dollars- if it’s cheaper, it’s better. Again the equation needs to place a reasonable price on IQ points to show a truer picture. Lose of IQ points alone should end coal. And what about other health impacts, with these reproductive and developmental toxicants, mutagens, and carcinogens? - Editor

If you want smarter kids, shut coal plants
A major new study by the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health finds:
“Closing coal-fired power plants can have a direct, positive impact on children’s cognitive development and health….prenatal exposure to coal-burning emissions was associated with significantly lower average developmental scores and reduced motor development at age two. In the second unexposed group, these adverse effects were no longer observed; and the frequency of delayed motor developmental was significantly reduced.
For the report- http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.11480
http://climateprogress.org/2008/07/15/study-if-you-want-smarter-kids-shut-coal-plants/
(The book cover is not real but should be!)

- We all have idols, and last week, I got to listen to one of mine. It was partly the ground-breaking Club of Rome work that influenced me away from my intended career and on to population, environment, and climate change. With such an important message, why weren’t all the City decision makers there at the talk? How do we get other cities to listen? Dr. Meadows had read our Sustainable Santa Fe Plan- great! - and while he congratulated us on its importance and value, he said that if population and consumption levels are not included in a climate plan, we can not become sustainable. It’s true. If we cut our emissions, for example 50%, but double the number of people, we have not become more sustainable.

For those of you who have been reading Climate Today for at least a year will not have had any surprises- his talk covered Peak Oil, population growth, the lag time of climate change, the need for local adaptation and relocalization, voluntary simplicity with reduced consumption, etc.

Here are a few gems from his talk that are worth remembering and sharing:
- 50% of all the oil consumed by humans has been consumed since 1984, creating a world we now view as normal, but this high energy usage can not continue.
- We are moving into the “Post Petroleum Age.”  In 2006, 9 billion barrels of oil were discovered, but we consumed 31 billion barrels that year. World consumption of oil is currently 5 to 6 times the amount that is being discovered, so we are using up our savings account, which can not continue.
- Prepare yourself for less available energy. It appears now that the government in the coming years will have to resort to some kind of rationing or quotas, similar to World War II. Just raising prices harms the poor.
- The “biocapacity” of the earth has been surpassed, and we are currently overshooting, which, if continues, is always followed by collapse. We are now consuming 140% of resources with demands accelerating against the world’s ecosystems. These trends include not only fossil fuels but also groundwater, greenhouse gases, the destruction of agricultural soils, the degradation of natural resources, the gap between the rich and the poor, the supply of fish, etc.
- Embodied energy is the energy used to create and ship the things that we import. We have to fully recognize the energy and resources used in other places like China if we are to reach sustainability.
- The world’s population will be going back down this century. It is only a matter of how.
- It is unlikely that waiting for the Federal government will work. Politicians want to get re-elected, and therefore fail to make the essential significant structural changes required to convert to sustainability.
Thank you Dr. Meadows for speaking so frankly. - Editor

- Again, when real full-cost accounting is used, our polluting ways will clearly be revealed as disastrous financially. The $120 billion versus $3 billion is striking! And if it’s your child struggling with damaged lungs, the dollars issue seems trivial. Shutting down more polluting coal plants needs to be a promise- not a threat! - Editor 
EPA: Clean-air rule would overturn Bush-era plan
The Obama administration is proposing a new rule to tighten restrictions on pollution from coal-burning power plants in the eastern half of the country. The Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday the new rule represented its most consequential effort yet to tackle deadly pollution that contributes to smog and soot that hangs over more than half the country. The proposed reductions should save more than $120 billion a year in avoided health costs and sick days and save thousands of lives each year, Jackson said. Those benefits would far outweigh the estimated $2.8 billion annual cost of compliance, she said. Environmental groups hailed the new rule as a step toward taming pollution from coal-fired power plants. But industry groups said it will boost power prices and force many older coal-fired power plants to be closed.
For a fact sheet- http://www.epa.gov/airtransport/pdfs/FactsheetTR7-6-10.pdf
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g90-40S6CjhfALdoGfm7_KUUn7MAD9GPS4J04

- The Gulf devastation going on right now is causing deep anguish in many of us. A speaker on the radio yesterday said that he was seeing people in Florida actually getting sick because they knew they were watching the death of the ecosystem they loved so deeply. It helps your soul to take action. This Saturday, you can visibly support NO offshore drilling and YES to clean energy. - Editor

 

Hands Across the Sands
Hands Across the Sand is a movement made of people of all walks of life and crosses political affiliations. This movement is not about politics; it is about protection of our coastal economies, oceans, marine wildlife, and fishing industry.  Let us share our knowledge, energies and passion for protecting all of the above from the devastating effects of oil drilling.
A Message To The World
Hands Across the Sand is now international. Any person in any country may plan events on this website. This is a peaceful gathering of the people of the world. Planning an event is as simple as this:
 Go to your beach (or city) on June 26 at 11 AM in your time zone.
 Form lines in the sand and at 12:00, join hands.
The image is powerful, the message is simple.  NO to Offshore Oil Drilling, YES to Clean Energy.
http://www.handsacrossthesand.com/

- With natural gas being touted as the “bridge fuel,”  we need to look seriously at what this really means. We strongly recommend you watch and share with everyone the video “Split Estate”  (http://www.splitestate.com/buy_dvd.html) and now you can add an East Coast version with the 11 minute Vanity Fair video “Know the Drill.” We think that we know the costs of natural gas or petroleum, yet these new expansions right in people’s yards and using new technologies are revealing themselves to be horribly expensive, both in dollars IF we did full-cost accounting, and to life itself. Real estate prices are dropping along the Gulf as well- see Gulf property sales slide further on oil fears-  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100623/ap_on_bi_ge/us_oil_spill_real_estate . Shall we make our planet worthless bit by bit? Aren’t those solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars looking more and more beautiful? And more and more affordable when we total the true costs of fossil fuels? - Editor

A Colossal Fracking Mess 
As drillers seek to commence (natural gas) fracking operations in the Delaware River basin watershed and in other key watersheds in New York State -all of which sit atop large repositories of natural gas trapped in shale rock deep underground- concerned residents, activists, and government officials are pointing to Dimock as an example of what can go wrong when this form of drilling is allowed to take place without proper regulation. Some are pointing to a wave of groundwater-contamination incidents and mysterious health problems out West, in Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming, where hydraulic fracturing has been going on for years as part of a massive oil-and-gas boom, and saying that fracking should not be allowed at all in delicate ecosystems like the Delaware River basin.
 
The Sautners (who have drilling right next to their house) now rely on water delivered to them every week. The value of their land has been decimated. Their children no longer take showers at home. They desperately want to move but cannot afford to buy a new house on top of their current mortgage.
“Our land is worthless,” says Craig. “Who is going to buy this house?”

The people who have been burned badly by their firsthand experience with what you might call the New Natural Gas, and who have not gone silent, are spreading their message of acute disillusionment, ecological destruction, land-value decimation, and serious health concerns. As I sit and talk with the members of Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, news reports from the tragic Deepwater Horizonleak in the Gulf pop up from time to time on their computers. The disaster serves as a grim backdrop to our conversation, reinforcing the hazards of pushing forward with experimental forms of drilling whose risks are not well understood.
For the video- Know the Drill
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/06/fracking-in-pennsylvania-20100

 
At BP stations “You Are Responsible for Any Spills”
This photograph was taken at a BP filling station in southern Virginia where the management wants to be sure customers are aware that
they are responsible for any spills.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/you-are-responsible-for-any-spills/

- The bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 turned our country around in a matter of weeks and months. The entire car industry, so beloved by Americans, was converted in 6 months to manufacturing airplanes! No more cars were made! People developed responsible, conserving lifestyles. So many sacrificed their lives. The common goal of survival united our people and lead to success. We can win the Climate War, but not by dawdling. Can we take this sudden warning flaunting how truly absurd our addiction to fossil fuels is and save not only ourselves but the entire planet? The irony is that actions like renewable energy are actually better for us as well as the planet! Let’s TRY!! - Editor

Trying to Fix the Perhaps Impossible

For Five Days of Oil
It’s still rather stunning to consider how a single pinprick in the seabed- a tiny part of the global effort to slake humanity’s rising thirst for liquid fuels, and profit from it, of course- could create such a mess. After all, the  Macondo Prospect, the name for the reservoir of oil slowly draining into the gulf- is considered a small deposit. While its dimensions remain poorly known, BP officials have estimated it contains no more than 100 million barrels of oil. That’s five days and change worth of American demand for this precious fuel. All of this for five days of oil.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/for-five-days-of-oil/