The concert is on!

We’ve started 24 hours’ worth of music from the series of Live Earth concerts in Rio, London, Hamburg, Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Johannesburg, and most importantly, New York – where I’ll be blogging live during the concert!

So, as you’re tuned in to your TV or your computer (what an era!), check back with us on a regular basis for the latest from an insider’s view on the concert! Press pass granting, look forward to some exciting stuff!

NASA’s James Hansen has sent around this note with a new, short essay (below):

George Polk initiated a stimulating meeting when I was in London earlier this week, which led to a focus on the critical task of halting construction of additional “dirty” coal-fired power plants, i.e., ones w/o CCS (carbon capture and sequestration). In working on my assignment to write “two paragraphs” of science rationale, I could not refrain from wandering into a related matter: the need to involve people, especially young people, in vociferous objection to the damage that such coal plants are doing to their and the entire planet’s future. It seems to me that we have not done a good job of making young people aware of the matter. How can we communicate with them??”

Here are Hansen’s thoughts on “Old King Coal”:

Read more

The audio for my “Talk of the Nation” interview is here. I came in around the 25 minutes mark. The subject of the interview:

From organic food to carbon offsets environmentally friendly products are all the rage — but what do “green” labels really mean? Guests discuss how to determine whether a “green” product is truly eco-friendly, and whether the current trend of eco-marketing will ultimately pay off for the environment.

One of the other guests was the very knowledgeable Josh Dorfman, host of The Lazy Environmentalist talk show, who was kind enough to invite me on his show.

Live Earth — Al Gore plus Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood — will be in DC after all. Come down to the National Museum of the American Indian at the National Mall tomorrow morning for the free concert.

Kudos to Mother Earth — a previously scheduled day-long event featuring “films, music, dancing and guest speakers, including scientists and cultural leaders from the American Indian community” — for sharing their space and their permit! More details on Mother Earth are here.

Drought, Floods Fuel Australian Climate Change Debate – Voice of America (VOA.com). Hell and High Water strikes another country that has been slow to act on global warming. But that is changing. The article concludes:

The common view is that if climate change is not addressed urgently a warmer future will make this country, already prone to drought and cyclones, an increasingly tough place to live and prosper.

Gore slams U.S.-led climate pact as sham – Reuters. “With all due respect I think the Asia-Pacific initiative is more of a Potemkin Village approach,” Gore said of the six-member pact called the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. “It has been organized by the two developed countries that alone among the world community have refused to join in on the Kyoto Protocol.”

I completely agree that the Asia-Pacific initiative is bogus — and Australia (and the U.S.) won’t be serious about avoiding ever worsening Hell and High Water until they walk away from it.

Before you pay others to reduce their emissions on your behalf, you need to do everything reasonably possible to reduce your own emissions first. As the saying goes, “Physician, Heal Thyself” before presuming to heal other people.

This rule is so obvious I almost forgot it. And yet many people, including Google and PG&E, don’t seem to get it.

The whole point of offsets is not to make you feel good, and it’s not to allow you to continue polluting as much as you want (by, say, supporting new coal plants or other dirty forms of power). Offsets are cheap and in some sense bastardized emissions reductions (more on this in a future post).

In general, the point of offsets is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and specifically to allow you to offset any emissions that are left over after you have cleaned up your own act — or to offset emissions from one-time events such as concerts.

While the other rules apply to offsets themselves, and thus can be independently verified in a fairly rigorous fashion, this rule applies to a company’s — or person’s — whole range of polluting activities and requires a judgment call. What is “everything reasonably possible”?

Google’s plan to burn coal and then buy offsets won’t make the cut. PG&E’s plan to sell offsets to people (trees, no less!) — rather than selling them green power — just makes no sense.