On October 11, one of CAP‘s interns, Zoe Brown, attended an Innovation Symposium with a handful of climate-concerned characters (see below). Here are her thoughts:

“The Atlantic and BMW sponsored From Ideas to Solutions: Overcoming the Challenge of Climate Change, held at the Meridian International Center Meyer-White House. The panel discussion included Nancy Kete from the World Resources Institute, Gregg Easterbrook from Brookings, John Podesta from the Center for American Progress, and moderator Jason Grumet from the National Commission on Energy Policy.

Many issues were covered by the panelists, but what struck me as especially relevant was their discussion of the U.S.’s role on the international scene. The panelists took this opportunity to address the U.S.’s use of the ‘China excuse.’

Read more

This morning the Center for American Progress hosted an event on Green Collar Jobs — sort of like blue collar jobs, but with an environmentally-sustainable edge to economic development.

The panel was packed with four leaders (an activist, a community organizer, a city government rep. and a private real estate developer). They were: Van Jones (Ella Baker Center in Oakland, CA), Majora Carter (Sustainable South Bronx in NYC), Sadhu Johnston (City of Chicago), and Carlton Brown (Full Spectrum, LLC).

Collectively, they outlined the problem:

• global warming
• environmental injustice: the likelihood of low-income communities also being where waste facilities and power plants tend to concentrate — and, most likely to be where African-American and Latino communities are located
• unemployment, its correlation with imprisonment, and the generally poor management of human capital

More importantly, they focused on the solution:

Read more

Well, they dropped a bundle to get a quarter-page “Clean Power” ad in the Washington Post (page A21 today) so the least I can do is give them a shout out on Climate Progress.

CLEAN is a “clean power and coalfield state grassroots organization” circulating a comprehensive national “call to action” on energy policy that includes:

• a five-year moratorium on new coal-fired power plants
• increased investments and tax credits for stepped-up renewable energy production
• greater emphasis on energy efficiency in all new construction
• a sharp jump in federal mile per gallon (MPG) fuel efficiency standards
• changes in personal energy consumption patterns.

And a lot more — you can read the long version of the call to action text here.

Glad to see more groups joining the fight to conserve a livable climate.

UPDATE:  Turns out this was a legitimate question to ask — the feds did examine this issue in detail, but ultimately concluded it was not a factor (see their final report here, page 126).

I got a little flak when I made a similar suggestion back in August, prompted by my Minneapolis-based brother. So I will try to report as neutrally as possible on an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune just sent to me by said brother, headlined:

Did heat, rusted plates doom bridge?
Federal investigators are trying to determine whether 91-degree heat caused expansion that put too much pressure on the corroded gusset plates that held the I-35W span together.

What does the article say?

… authorities are analyzing what role the 91-degree heat on Aug. 1 might have played in increasing stress on the already-weakened L-11 gusset plate, which connected four steel beams located near the bridge’s south end.

Like the New Orleans levees that failed during Katrina, this bridge was not well-designed. In particular, it apparently could not handle the consequences of the cold and heat that Minneapolis is subjected to:

Read more

The long-feared saturation of one the world’s primary carbon sinks has apparently started. The BBC reports, “The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world’s oceans has reduced.”

After 10 years and more than 90,000 ship-based measurements of CO2 absorption, University of East Anglia researchers reached this stunning conclusion:

CO2 uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005.

The BBC writes: “Scientists believe global warming might get worse if the oceans soak up less of the greenhouse gas.”

Sigh. Note to the BBC, you don’t need a double hedge: If you’re going to just say “might get worse” you surely can drop “Scientists believe.” Frankly I doubt you can find many, if any, reputable scientists — or even the few remaining deniers — who would say that if the ocean sink saturates, global warming won’t get worse. I would probably phrase it this way: Global warming will accelerate if the oceans soak up less of the greenhouse gas.

The researchers say, “it is a tremendous surprise and very worrying because there were grounds for believing that in time the ocean might become ‘saturated’ with our emissions – unable to soak up any more.”

Why is that bad news?

Read more

You have probably been racking your brains for months wondering “what can I give back to Climate Progress in return for all this free up-to-the-minute climate information and snarky climate commentary?”

Well, as part of our endless effort to deliver you a better product, we have partially redesigned the web site to make it more user-friendly and to let you share the content with others. Here’s what you can do for us:

1. TELL A FRIEND ABOUT CLIMATE PROGRESS.

If you click on the new “Share This” button at the bottom of each post, and then click on “E-mail,” you can now send any post to your friends (or to your enemies, if that’s the kind of person you are).

At a loss as to what post to send? Look no farther than the new “Most popular posts” feature on the right. These include some of Climate Progress’s most clicked-on and most commented-on posts — and are a good introduction to the site for newcomers.

2. TELL THE WORLD ABOUT CLIMATE PROGRESS.

The “Share This” button “Social Web” feature allows you to recommend any post to the top social networking sites. If enough people vote for a post, it gets brought to the attention of people using that site. What are the most useful sites?

Read more