by Katie Valentine

Climate and energy initiatives were major topics of discussion at UN headquarters in New York last week, with countries pledging new clean energy commitments and calling for increased global cooperation in developing climate change mitigation goals at the UN General Assembly High Level Debate.

Several new commitments and initiatives were announced September 24 during a high Level Sustainable Energy for All event. Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) is a UN program that aims to bring clean energy to people in developing countries without access to modern electricity and cooking services.

According to the UN, nearly one in five of the world’s population doesn’t have access to modern energy sources, and almost 40 percent relies on wood, coal, charcoal or animal waste to cook their food. The SE4ALL program operates on three platforms that aim to address this problem of energy inequality: 1) ensuring universal access to modern energy services; 2) doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency; and 3) doubling the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix. The recent announcements build on SE4ALL’s commitments, and include:

• UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced the creation of an Advisory Board, which will provide strategic guidance in the SE4ALL initiative.  Ban will co-chair the board along with the World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, and its members will be selected among exceptional leaders from the private sector, civil society and governments.
• Ban announced the Creation of an Executive Committee, which will be chaired by Chad Holliday, Chairman of Bank of America. The Executive Committee will oversee the work of the chief executive of SE4ALL.
• Ban also announced the designation of Dr. Kandeh Yumkella as Special Representative of the Secretary-General and chief executive for SE4ALL. As chief executive, Yumkella will be responsible for planning and implementing SE4ALL initiatives.

• Eskom announced the creation of an electricity roadmap for the Southern African Development Community, with the goal to connect 500 million people to modern energy sources by 2050.
• Accenture announced the release of its report on the value of SE4ALL to global industries.
• Philips announced it will install 100 “light centers” in areas in rural Africa previously without electricity. The soccer field-sized centers are lit by solar-powered LED lights and will be installed by 2015, with the first 40 to be installed late 2012.

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by Jorge Madrid and Matt Kasper

Last week President Obama, with the help of former President Bill Clinton and other partners including the Center for American Progress, flexed some executive power to leverage $4 billion in government and private sector funds to finance energy efficiency building projects across the United States – creating jobs, reducing pollution, and cutting energy costs.

“The Trifecta” President Obama called it.

With commitments to retrofit over 4 billion square feet of commercial real estate, American construction and manufacturing workers will be getting back on the job — at zero cost to taxpayers.

That’s right. The investment will pay for itself by way of energy savings.

The executive order will direct all federal agencies to make at least $2 billion worth of energy-efficiency upgrades in the next two years. This investment will be matched dollar for dollar by a coalition of over 60 private-sector companies, including 3M, Alcoa, GE and Southern California Edison, along with nonprofit organizations, state and local governments and universities, to upgrade a minimum of 1.6 billion sq. ft. of commercial and office space.

The efforts were made in response to a challenge set by President Obama earlier this year called the Better Buildings Initiative, a program that would achieve 20 percent energy saving by 2020, saving American business’ nearly $40 billion every year in energy costs. Former President Clinton, who was asked by President Obama to help lead this Better Buildings challenge, spoke forcefully on the economic common sense of moving forward immediately on energy efficiency:

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When the comedic actress Kristen Wiig came up with the idea to ban breathing in order to stabilize CO2 emissions, she probably didn’t expect a leading Republican presidential candidate to take it seriously.

But sure enough, in pushing his flip flop on climate change to an extreme degree, Mitt Romney did exactly that at a campaign stop last week:

“I’m all in favor of eliminating pollution,” Romney said. “Now I know there is also a movement to say that carbon dioxide should be guided or should be managed by the Environmental Protection Agency. I disagree with that.

“I exhale carbon dioxide,” he added. “I don’t want those guys following me around with a meter to see if I’m breathing too hard.”

Even in jest, Romney’s comparison of human exhalation of CO2 and the burning of 300-million-year-old carbon is so incredibly ludicrous, it is a punch line in itself. The former Massachusetts governor, who once backed efforts to combat climate change, has now joined the ranks of the most extreme climate deniers.

One can imagine the climate strategy meetings taking place within the Romney campaign. Does Kristen Wiig have inside information?

(Note the video below is part of a longer skit produced about the Clinton Global Initiative, which we covered. If you haven’t seen the whole piece, it’s worth your time.)

Started by Former President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative helps direct money and human resources toward the world’s biggest problems — with climate change at the top of the priority list.

The Center for American Progress has been involved in a number of projects with CGI, recently working with the organization to help broker $1 billion in energy efficiency investments from public pension funds.

But what if Clinton decided to shake things up and employ the world’s most famous actors — Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Jack Black, Matt Damon, Sean Penn, Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen & Kevin Spacey – to help brainstorm solutions to the world’s most pressing problems? The hilarious below video, produced by CGI and FunnyOrDie.com, helps imagine what might happen:

Clinton Foundation: Celebrity Brainstorm from President Bill Clinton

At the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting, ThinkProgress Green interviewed Zack Rosenburg, the CEO and co-founder of St. Bernard Project. His non-profit organization has been rebuilding homes and lives in New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. So far, the St. Bernard Project has rebuilt 405 houses with 36,000 volunteers, provided mental health services, and has created local jobs for unemployed residents and returning veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

With climate disasters on the rise, improving disaster preparedness and resilience is a critical need. Rosenburg believes that the existing, bureaucratic structure for disaster relief needs to be revamped drastically to be much more efficient, rapid, and responsive, because “time matters in disaster recovery.” The project still has 130 families on their waiting list for home rebuilding in New Orleans. There are 10,000 American families that are still displaced from that disaster, and 200 families are still living in FEMA trailers. The project has also been asked by the city of Joplin, MO to take over the construction part of their recovery from the devastating tornado.

“Disaster recovery in America is broken,” said Rosenburg.

Watch the interview:

Rosenburg was at CGI as a guest of Toyota. In an interesting partnership, Toyota engineers are teaching the St. Bernard Project to build houses quicker, more efficiently, and cheaper, applying the business practices Toyota uses with its automobile construction. This contribution from the Toyota Foundation compares to the kind of business consulting that companies like McKinsey provide at high cost, usually out of reach to small non-profits.

The St. Bernard Project is not alone in its mission. At the Solar Decathlon now taking place on the National Mall, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign team has built Re_home, designed explicitly to be a permanent residence prefabricated for rapid response to disaster situations. Green construction also fits the philosophy of trying to reduce the risk of disasters before they start, in part by reducing the greenhouse pollution that is making our weather more extreme.

“I’m really proud of the Obama administration in taking a much more aggressive and proactive role in dealing with these inevitable disasters,” Rosenburg said. He is also hopeful for the future, inspired by the outpouring of help from around the country. “America wants America to be whole,” he believes.

Read more coverage of the Clinton Global Initiative from ThinkProgress.
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Republicans and other conservatives have argued that the Solyndra bankruptcy means that all clean-energy investment is disastrous. The Heritage Foundation claimed Solyndra “ends the green jobs myth.” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said the bankruptcy is “Exhibit A in the case for why the president’s economic policies have failed.” “A green jobs fueled recovery is a theory, and is yet unproven,” argued Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) at a hearing on Solyndra.

Last week, former president Bill Clinton met with a small group of bloggers on the sidelines of the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York City and blasted these right-wing attacks on technology innovation. Asked by ThinkProgress Green about how to fight the corrupting influence of climate deniers, Clinton said that people need to defend the facts about the green economy as vigorously as the opponents of the clean economy promote lies:

They can take nothing like Solyndra and say that proves all green energy is bad. Why? Because those of us on the other side don’t say: Whatever the truth is, here’s the mega truth. We can’t burn up the planet. We’ve got to find an economically sustainable way to save it. Green energy jobs have grown at twice the rate of overall economy jobs in the last decade, they pay 20 to 30 percent more, they’re directly responsible for a $60 billion trade surplus.

Do whatever you want about Solyndra, but do not insult my intelligence by trying to say that the big oil compaires are right and the green tech people are wrong.

Clinton was citing the analysis by the Brookings Institution of the clean energy economy, which found that employment in the clean-tech sector, which includes companies like Solyndra, grew at 8.3 percent from 2003 to 2010, twice as fast the overall economy.

Many of the Republicans attacking clean-energy jobs seem to just be seeking to score political points against a Democratic administration, especially those who helped put the clean-tech loan program in place. Other conservatives, as Clinton noted, are attacking technological innovation as a way of defending the continued dominance of fossil interests.

Later in the roundtable, Clinton offered some thoughtful analysis of why the government is “picking winners and losers,” as some have described the loan guarantee program that supported Solyndra. He explained that the understanding that corporations have a responsibility to all stakeholders has been lost to the idea that they only answer to shareholders. The role of government in setting market fundamentals has been attacked relentlessly. So government policies that define the market — like clean energy standards, cap and trade, or carbon taxes — can’t get passed, even though those are the most efficient at supporting economic innovation.

People need to understand that the government should play a role in making markets, Clinton said, and “part of the market making should be designed be create a mentality of shared value rather than just shareholder value.”

Read more coverage of the Clinton Global Initiative from ThinkProgress.

ThinkProgress Green is reporting live from the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City.

In a roundtable discussion with a diverse group of bloggers, former President Bill Clinton addressed many facets of the challenges caused by global warming pollution, and also what he believed are the opportunities for building a global green economy. Clinton spoke passionately about the challenge of climate refugees, who are growing in number as floods, storms and droughts grow more intense and frequent:

You have to assume because of climate change there will be a lot more refugees. The laws which exist are built for a different time, when you’d have a surge from a particular country because of a particular disaster or event. That’s almost certainly not going to work now. The countries who take the most refugees should try to reach an agreement on broadbased strategies.

In addition to policy changes that reflect our changing world, Clinton said that the culture of how people in developed countries perceive immigrants and refugees needs to change.

“America needs to become more pro-immigration again. I think it helps our economy. In the refugee category the United States and other countries need to create opportunities for housing and jobs, even if it increases the likelihood they want to stay.” Clinton rejected the idea that it makes sense to have policies that prevent integration of people who can’t quickly return to their homeland. “Keeping people in long-term limbo is a waste of human potential.”

ThinkProgress Green is reporting live from the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York City.

A billion-dollar collaboration between unions and public pension funds is spearheading a nationwide effort to invest in energy efficient infrastructure projects. Along with the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers was critical to the establishment of this Clinton Global Initiative commitment, engaging a broad group of unions and public pension funds, including CalSTERS, California’s teacher pension fund.

ThinkProgress Green interviewed AFT President Randi Weingarten to find out why the nation’s largest teacher’s union got involved in a green jobs program which doesn’t have a direct connection to the educational system. Weingarten explained that America’s teachers believe in a stronger America, in which working people help each other:

If you actually believe in America, and believe in the American dream, and believe that we need to get people back to work and we need to build things, instead of waiting for other people to do it, you figure out the hows. You try to figure out how you can take and utilize — as long as they are fiduciarily sound investments — pension funds, which are working people’s capital, and put that to work for other working people.

Watch it:

The commitment of the American Federation of Teachers is also intergenerational, in keeping with the fundamental purpose of the educational profession. Teachers “want to make a difference in the lives of kids,” and rebuilding our nation’s crumbling infrastructure while fighting pollution does that. “If we create a stronger economy, we will have a stronger America. And frankly, a stronger economy and stronger educational opportunity go hand in hand,” Weingarten concluded.