Recent Articles

Saving the Forest from your Bathroom

Fake NY Post Tells Real Story on Climate Change

On Energy, We’re Finally Walking the Walk

Improve Health with a Carbon Diet

Carbon Permit System Will Pay

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Saving the Forest from your Bathroom

Did you know? Americans could save more than 400,000 trees if each family bought a roll of recycled toilet paper- just once.

Click here to download the tissue guide to your iPhone or to get a paper version.  The Guide makes it quick and easy to find out which brands of facial tissues, toilet paper, paper towels, and napkins are truly green and which should be avoided.

Greenpeace and countless activists have asked Kimberly-Clark (K-C) to help save the Boreal forest since 2004, when the Kleercut campaign was launched. In a tremendous victory for ancient forests, including the Boreal, the company that makes popular brands like Kleenex, Scott, and Cottonelle has announced a new policy that places it among the industry leaders in sustainability, bringing the Kleercut campaign to a successful completion.

Kimberly-Clark has set a goal of obtaining 100 percent of the wood fiber used in its products – including the flagship brand Kleenex – from environmentally responsible sources. By 2011, Kimberly-Clark will ensure that 40 percent of its North American fiber is either recycled or certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) – a 71 percent increase from 2007 levels, representing over 600,000 tonnes of fiber. Also by 2011, Kimberly-Clark will eliminate any fiber from the North American Boreal Forest that is not FSC-certified.

“The revised standards are proof that when responsible companies and environmental advocates come together, the results can be good for business and good for the planet,” said Scott Paul, Greenpeace USA Forest Campaign Director. “Kimberly-Clark’s efforts are a challenge to its competitors. I hope they pay close attention.”

K-C’s sustainability policy: Not just about protecting the Boreal

The Canadian Boreal Forest is North America’s largest ancient forest, providing habitat for threatened wildlife such as woodland caribou and over 1 billion migratory birds.

But clearcutting doesn’t just wipe out the biodiversity of a forest – it wipes out an essential carbon storehouse. Canada’s Boreal Forest stores an estimate 186 billion tones of carbon, 27 times the world’s annual fossil fuel emissions — meaning that a victory for the Boreal is also a victory for the climate.
While protecting the North American Boreal Forest has been a focus of the Kleercut campaign, K-C’s policy is about protecting Endangered Forests the world over. Greenpeace would not have agreed to anything less.

Because of K-C’s place in the paper products market, the company’s new policy will send a strong signal to its competitors, Procter & Gamble and Georgia Pacific, that creating a policy that protects ancient forests is a key element of sustainable business.

Fake NY Post Tells Real Story on Climate Change

Amidst the usual daily bustle of hurried pedestrians and newspaper vendors at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue subway station this morning, it was easy to spot the Yes Men’s latest prank.

At first blush, the newspaper, which was distributed by volunteers across NYC today, did look a lot like the New York Post. Yet any closer examination revealed that it was clearly not your run-of-the-mill Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid.

With a giant headline proclaiming “We’re Screwed” alongside an image of lighting striking Manhattan’s skyscrapers featured on the cover, the 32-page tabloid was devoted entirely to environmental issues. Check it out online here.

Even the sports section had an environmental bent, with an entire story devoted to enumerating carbon emission cutting opportunities in pro sports (such as NOGASCAR — a hybrid car version of NASCAR).

While a full-page color ad featuring a couple making out on a beach (the kind of image one frequently sees in ads for vacation packages) advertising “sex” reminded readers that that this activity has “no emissions (of the carbon variety)” (The faux travel ad’s slogan: “Why Travel? — You Just Wanted to Get Laid, Right?”)

Outside the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway stop in downtown Brooklyn, Erica (she declined to give her last name), a young woman who’d picked up a copy of the paper with a friend earlier that morning at Union Square, stopped to talk to my friend and I about her response.

“First of all we were really scared,” she told us. She had been particularly struck by an image of a large tornado featured in the paper.

She said she soon realized “it was fake.” But she added, “It’s very possible … We need to be more environmentally conscious.”

Indeed, as Rory O’Connor points out, the fake paper’s coverage of a city report predicting “massive climate catastrophes” will hit New York City as a result of global warming is all true.

It just takes a fake NY Post to get the real story about climate change out to the city’s tabloid readers.

Source: Alternet.org

On Energy, We’re Finally Walking the Walk

The United States has entered a new energy era, ending a century of rising carbon emissions. As the U.S. delegation prepares for the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December, it does so from a surprisingly strong position, one based on a dramatic 9 percent drop in U.S. carbon emissions over the past two years and the promise of further huge reductions.

Prominent among these carbon-cutting initiatives are stronger automobile fuel-economy standards, appliance efficiency standards, and the potential to heat, cool and light buildings with carbon-free sources of electricity. On the supply side are efforts supporting the development of U.S. wind, solar and geothermal energy resources.

Even though part of this decline in carbon emissions was caused by the recession and higher gasoline prices, part of it came from gains in energy efficiency and shifts to carbon-free sources of energy, including record amounts of new wind-generating capacity. This impressive drop in carbon emissions should enable the United States to push for a steep cut in Copenhagen.
Although Congress is considering legislation that would cut emissions only 15 or 20 percent by 2020, it’s clear to me that with just a little effort, the United States could far surpass this. Given the potentially catastrophic climate change the world is facing, we should push in Copenhagen for an 80 percent reduction by 2020.

The really big gains in fuel efficiency will come with the shift to plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars. Not only are electric motors three times more efficient than gasoline engines, but they make it possible to run cars on domestic wind-generated electricity at a gasoline-equivalent cost of 75 cents a gallon. As the low fueling cost becomes more apparent, the shift to plug-ins and all-electric cars will come far faster than most policymakers anticipate.

With carbon cuts, it’s time to stop talking about political feasibility and start talking about scientific necessity. The science is scary. We need not go beyond ice melting to see that civilization is in trouble. The Greenland ice sheet is melting. If it were to melt entirely, and that obviously would take a few centuries, sea level would rise by 23 feet. The latest reports suggest that we are looking at a rise in sea level of up to six feet this century. Such a rise would inundate part or all of many low-lying coastal cities, such as London, Miami, New Orleans, Alexandria and Shanghai, producing millions of refugees. Such a rise would also inundate the rice-growing deltas of Asia, devastating harvests in Bangladesh and Vietnam.
The melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan Plateau will deprive the Indus, Ganges, Yangtze and Yellow rivers of the ice melt that sustains their flow during the dry season and the irrigation systems that depend on them. Let us not forget that China is the world’s leading producer of wheat and rice. India is number two in each. Anything that reduces their grain harvests will raise food prices everywhere.

If the United States pushes for an 80 percent cut, will the rest of the world follow? In particular will China, now the world’s leading carbon emitter, cooperate? And what about India?

In times past, if countries resisted international initiatives, the international community could resort to trade boycotts, export embargoes or tariffs on exports from the offending countries. Bilateral penalties are also an option. The United States is, after all, China’s largest export market.

On the renewable front, China’s wind-generating potential is seven times its current electricity consumption. Although a late starter, China is building wind farm complexes on a scale the world has not seen before. In recent years, the United States has led the world in new wind generating capacity, but within the next year, China will overtake the United States, moving so fast we might not even see it go by.

Source: The Washington Post

Author: Lester R. Brown, the president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of the forthcoming “Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.”

Improve Health with a Carbon Diet

Few of us realize it, but the food we put in our mouths each day dramatically affects the global climate. The typical American diet requires the staggering equivalent of 400 gallons of oil each year. That, in turn, generates, nearly as much planet-warming carbon dioxide as the average U.S. car creates.

In this modern food transportation system, wasted energy reaches absurd levels. For example, a lettuce farmer near Atlanta, Georgia who wants to sell lettuce to a Safeway in Atlanta, must first ship the lettuce 621 miles to Upper Marlboro, MD for inspection, then ship it back down to Georgia. This transportation not only consumes fossil fuel but takes up extra road space and leaves the lettuce less fresh!

These diet-related impacts on our climate and natural environment could be dramatically and painlessly reduced if Americans took three easy steps. These are 1) buy locally raised foods whenever possible; 2) buy organic foods; and 3) reduce meat and dairy consumption.

How? 

Thankfully, buying local food that has not been trucked thousands of miles gets easier every year. According to the US Department of Agriculture, regionally based farmers markets with a wide variety of fruits and vegetables have grown from 300 in the mid 1970s to 3100 in America today.  Such markets simultaneously decrease transportation inputs while increasing community interconnectedness. One study estimates that people have 10 times as many conversations at farmers’ markets than at supermarkets. Visit www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/map.htm for a farmers market nearest you.

People across America can also buy directly from a specific farm nearest their home thanks to a practice called “community-supported agriculture (CSA).” For a set annual price, you essentially “subscribe” to a farm, receiving a standard weekly share of whatever the farm produces during the growing season. Visit www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/csa/csastate.htm for a CSA nearest you.

A second important step, beyond buying locally, is to buy organically raised food. On average, organic farms use 37 percent less energy than conventional farms. Also, unlike soils rendered nearly biologically lifeless from petroleum inputs, organic soils are full of plant matter and various biological processes that naturally absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. According to a 23-year study by the prestigious Rodale Institute, one acre of organic crops “sequester” as much as 3,700 pounds per year of CO2, the world’s leading greenhouse gas. So organic food consumers fight climate change with every meal they eat.

Meat, eggs, and dairy products are high-energy, high-impact foods. It takes 40 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef.  Simply put, America could feed most of Africa with the grains we feed to livestock, while Americans are consuming twice the government’s daily recommended allowance of protein. 

A vegetarian diet also dramatically reduces your risk of heart disease, the nation’s number one cause of death.

17 percent of U.S. energy use now devoted to food, it’s clear we’ll never solve the climate crisis with wind farms and hybrid cars alone. We must - and obviously can - cultivate and consume “clean-energy” food, grown close to home for the benefit of the whole world.

Author: Mike Tidwell

Source: www.chesapeakeclimate.org

Carbon Permit System Will Pay

As envisioned by President Barack Obama’s budget proposal, the federal government will soon begin tapping into a huge new source of revenue by requiring companies to pay for the permission to emit so-called greenhouse gasses linked to global warming.

The Obama budget blueprint assumes that by 2012, the Treasury will be collecting $78.6 billion in new revenue from carbon emissions permits. From 2012 to 2019, it envisions that a total of $645.7 billion would be raised from auctioning of such emission allowances.

A “cap-and-trade system” would be created, under which the government would place a cap, or limit, on the total amount of greenhouse gasses that can be emitted. Companies that need to exceed their allotted level must buy offsetting permits from those that emit less.

What impact would the emissions curbs have on consumers?
Congressional Budget Office director Peter Orszag, who is now head of the Office of Management and Budget under Obama, testified last year that the firms that were required to buy permits would pass the costs along to their customers in the form of higher prices. The price increases, he said, would “be essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program” because they would be the mechanism by which businesses and households would be forced find ways to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

Won’t that harm consumers, especially the poor?
A recent study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, said, “Low-income consumers are the most vulnerable (under such a system) because they spend a larger share of their budgets on necessities like energy than do better-off consumers.”
They also are “least able to afford purchases of new, more energy-efficient automobiles, heating systems and appliances,” it said.

Obama proposes using about 80 percent of that anticipated revenue — or $526 billion — to pay for tax credits for low- and middle-income people to help offset higher energy costs. The rest of the money would subsidize alternative energy projects and firms.

The New York Times reported  that low-wage and middle-income workers would receive a $500 tax credit, or $1,000 to couples; but the credit would be phased out for single people with incomes above $75,000 a year and for couples with incomes of more than $150,000, it said.

Ultimately it will up to Congress to decide how the money will be used. 

read the full article on msnbc.msn.com

Author: Tom Curry