To Till and to Tend

As Congress and the Administration work furiously- and mostly behind the scenes- towards regulating greenhouse gas emissions, a variety of non-climate environmental issues came up in a very big and very public way this week. Congress debated public lands protections, clean water, and endangered species laws, with some big wins and one major disappointment for green advocates. Here’s the wrap-up…

 A package Public Lands bill, including over 150 provisions on land use, failed to pass on Wednesday, despite strong support in both the House and Senate. The bill would have codified protection for millions of acres of land and created new national parks, monuments, and historic sites. While disappointed at this setback, we will continue to push for public lands protections and smart development of water and renewable energy resources on these lands.

In better news, the Senate did pass a clean version of the Omnibus spending bill that will allow the government to stay in business for the rest of the year. While conversation over the $400 billion bill was heated and many were disappointed with the outcome, several promising environmental provisions arose from the debate:

On the way out of office last December, the Bush Interior Department passed a series of ‘midnight regulations’ that many advocates argue cut the bottom out from under the Endangered Species Act, the cornerstone of species and habitat protection for our country. Luckily, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has ordered a review of these regulations, and the Senate defeated attempts to reinstate the old regulations using the recent spending bill. We hope to move forward with a strong Endangered Species Act as a major tool for environmental protection.

A less noticed provision pushed by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) reinstates rules requiring disclosure of chemicals in industrial and commercial products under the Toxics Release Inventory program. Senator Lautenberg has long been a champion for environmental health, working towards ‘right-to-know’ rules for potentially harmful chemicals. While some companies complain about the cost of implementing the rule, Lautenberg and others contend that it is necessary to give people the information they need to mobilize and advocate for air and water quality in their own communities.

On Thursday the House passed the Water Quality Investment Act of 2009, the first major piece of water legislation this year. The bill flew through the House despite spending concerns but has not yet been introduced in the Senate. The Act aims to increase funding for clean water infrastructure programs, allowing states to better provide safe and potable water to all their citizens by covering a shortfall in state water funding.

…and that’s just this week! Keep checking back for more, and for opportunities to take action on the issues that matter most to you!

Rachel is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant working on environment and energy issues at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, DC. She will be a regular guest blogger on To Till and To Tend this year, posting entries every other Thursday. This, and all of Rachel’s entries, can also be found on the Religious Action Center blog.

Thousands of climate activists will take to the streets and the Hill this weekend for two watershed events that hopefully foreshadow a huge year in the fight against climate change.

On Friday, nearly ten thousand students from across the country will converge on Washington for PowerShift ’09, a training conference focused on advocating for progressive climate and energy legislation. Students will hear from leading environmental thinkers and activists will hit the Hill to demand that our leaders act now to protect our planet for future generations. Universities are America’s laboratories for ideas and ideals, and many of the schools sending students to PowerShift are already acting to reduce their own carbon footprints. In just one example, Middlebury College in Vermont recently “fired up” a $12 million dollar project to generate electricity and steam for heating, cooling, and cooking operations using a biomass generator run mostly on woodchips. The boiler is projected to cut campus carbon emissions by 40% AND save the college money, as wood chips cost much less than conventional fuel sources.

But it’s not just college students who are riled up; On Monday, many PowerShift participants will join thousands of others in what is being touted as the greatest act of environmental civil disobedience in U.S. history. Capitol Climate Actionwill open with a prayer vigil, followed by a rally to galvanize opposition to coal power. In an act of peaceful civil disobedience, many participants will block access to the coal-fired power plant that partly powers Congress, and symbolizes our national dependence on dirty fuels. The event is endorsed by hundreds of organizations and individuals from Greenpeace and Students for a Democratic Society to Religious Witness for the Earth.

We know our leaders are listening. In his speech to Congress last night, President Obama lifted up climate and energy as major priorities, issuing an historic mandate for a nationwide cap on carbon emissions, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already indicated intentions to bring a climate bill to the floor this summer. However, President Obama also touted clean coal, a technology that is, at best, questionable in its positive implications for our climate.

As Bill McKibben (professor and founder of 350.org) explains, it will take every instrument in the activist toolbox to convince our leaders, and our fellow citizens, to act urgently to save our planet and the civilization that depends on its resources. And the need for action could not be more urgent, as it seems that new reports on the increasingly rapid melting of the Antarctic ice sheets, and ensuing rise in sea levels,are released weekly. As we put all our energy into this issue, let us do what we can in our individual lives and as citizens not to fight the power, but to shift it- to the renewable sources that will power the sustainable economy of the future.

Rachel is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant working on environment and energy issues at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, DC. She will be a regular guest blogger on To Till and To Tend this year, posting entries every other Thursday. This, and all of Rachel’s entries, can also be found on the Religious Action Center blog.

A slew of stories emerging from Washington and around the world are giving renewed hope to many environmentalists who have been fighting a steep uphill battle in recent years. A combination of bills in Congress, Presidential directives, and global actions indicate that the tide may finally be turning in the fight against climate change and other environmental disasters. First on the minds of most Americans, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (more commonly known as the ‘economic stimulus package’), includes billions of dollars for investment in renewable energy technologies to drive the green economy of the future. The most recent version of the recovery package includes funding for green jobs training programs, weatherization for low-income communities, and investment in ‘smart grid’ technology to encourage efficiency and conservation in homes, schools, and public buildings. The economic downturn presents a unique opportunity to make the long-term investment needed to clean up our nation’s economy and environment, and the latest version of the bill appears takes this charge seriously.

President Obama continued to lobby for the stimulus on Monday, pushing for clean energy provisions backed by strong environmental regulation as part of his strategy. To this end, the President recently issued two strong directives to his administrators at the Department of Transportation and Environmental Protection Agency to update and strengthen standards on fuel economy and tailpipe emissions for automobiles. As American automakers face increasing unemployment and drastic drops in demand, building more efficient vehicles is the way to bring these corporations into the 21^st century and ensure the security of both American jobs and our environment. The directives demonstrate the Administration’s dedication to confronting climate and energy issues in a meaningful way.

Climate is not the only environmental issue receiving attention during the first 100 days. Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, has ordered a halt to the implementation of any regulations put in place in the final days of the Bush Administration- so-called ‘midnight regulations’- which include changes to the Endangered Species Act that were strongly opposed by many in the environmental community. Maintaining the strength of the conservation and environmental protection laws that we already have in place is a critical piece of our environmental agenda, and reexamining changes to the ESA and other environmental laws is yet another political tool to reverse our course of environmental degradation.

President Obama has clearly declared that the U.S. is done ‘dragging its feet’ on climate and a whole host of other issues, but the action this week was not limited to Washington. A recent piece by Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute discusses policies underway in China and other Asian nations to fight climate change by ending logging practices. Deforestation is a huge contributor to climate change, and the fact that developing nations are acting on this front, even absent leadership from the developed world, is beyond encouraging.

Despite this progress, the climate crisis is upon us and here to stay. Our greenhouse gas emissions are already causing droughts, floods, and dangerous damage to species habitats, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. With so many environmental challenges currently facing our planet, we are all responsible to follow the news and push for greater awareness and action (such as passing a green economic recovery package). While the new Administration brings new opportunities, it is up to all of us to begin to build a green, sustainable world.  

Rachel is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant working on environment and energy issues at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, DC. She will be a regular guest blogger on To Till and To Tend this year, posting entries every other Thursday. This, and all of Rachel’s entries, can also be found on the Religious Action Center blog.

As President-elect Obama prepares to take office next week, a lot of attention is being focused on his proposal for a huge economic stimulus package designed to shock the economy back into gear.  I admire Paul Krugman as much as the next person, but there are a couple of elements of this that concern me.  First, The New York Times reported on Saturday that the new administration’s focus on economic recovery will likely cause it to delay addressing the many other challenges that Obama addressed in the campaign – especially (for this site) the restriction of carbon emissions that cause climate change. 

I don’t think I need to tell the readers of this blog that global climate change is not a boutique issue that can be dealt with if and when the “real” problems have been solved.  This is an emergency – just as much as the economic crisis, perhaps even more so given the neglect or worse the issue has been dealt with over the past eight years. 

Obama has promised that some of the stimulus package will be used as a “down payment” on projects focused on energy independence.  I haven’t seen any details on this, which makes me think that there really haven’t been too many, which leads me to my second concern:  the focus in the stimulus package on “shovel ready” projects.  According to news reports 
 

a large portion would go toward infrastructure — highways, bridges, railways — which would make this the largest such plan since the U.S. Interstate highway system was created under President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s.

The
Minneapolis bridge collapse made it abundantly clear that there are major improvements in infrastructure needed in this country.  But even more than that, we need to move away from the whole highway-and-car paradigm that has caused so many of our current problems, and toward an increase in mass transit options, the development of more locally based economies and in general giving people more ways of doing more things without cars.  In addition, of course, to developing ways to meet our energy needs without the burning of coal. 

Given how the stimulus package is being framed as an emergency solution to the economic crisis (and we all know that Congress responds to nothing like it does to an “emergency”), and given how quickly most of these old-tech approaches can be implemented, I wouldn’t be surprised if applying stimulus money to developing new technologies will be pushed even further down the list of priorities.  And that would be a mistake – a lost opportunity to use the means of addressing our economic emergency to begin to address our climate emergency. 

Every dollar spent on fixing the highway system or other old-school tactics is a dollar not spent on the development of alternative approaches that, though harder to understand now, have much more potential for addressing our myriad needs – economic and environmental – in the long run. 

This week, hundreds of world leaders gather in Poznan, Poland to discuss the ongoing global response to the imminent threat of climate change at the UN Climate Change Conference.  The meeting will set the stage for next year’s Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, where the successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol will be drafted. Poznan presents yet another critical opportunity for the U.S. to step up to the plate on climate issues and make amends for our failure to take a meaningful role in past international negotiations. As a global superpower and the historic leader in CO2 emissions, we have responsibility to come to the table prepared to act.

The good news is that Senator Kerry (D-MA), incoming Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will lead the U.S. delegation to Poznan, joined by Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and others. Kerry’s decision to make the trek to Poland is critical because the Foreign Relations Committee will be the first to pour over any international treaties that come out of Copenhagen. As Kerry and others outside the Committees that typically address environment issues (Energy and Commerce in the House, Environment and Public Works in the Senate) become active on climate and energy, the opportunity expands for robust debate in Washington, and U.S. leadership on this issue.

Less encouraging is the decision of the Obama transition team not to send anyone to Poland, despite repeated promises to make this a priority issue when the President-elect takes office in January. Disappointing to me, on a personal level, is the lack of Jewish presence at the Conference; while several Christian denominations and other faith groups sent representatives to monitor the negotiations and hold faith events on climate, there is no formal Jewish participation in the event. The Jewish voice on climate is steadily becoming louder and more articulate but we as a community, like our nation as a whole, are still far from leaders on this issue.

While no new treaties are expected to emerge by the time the conference closes next week, Poznan is a critical step along the path to global action to confront the climate crisis. Without serious U.S. engagement and leadership, the possibilities for a meaningful global response to climate change are severely limited. And without participating in these conferences, our Jewish voice on this issue will be dampened as well.  Politicians and faith leaders alike deserve praise for braving the cold and making the trip, and leaders who are not participating need to hear from their constituents (read: all of us!), urging them to keep climate change in the forefront.

Rachel is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant working on environment and energy issues at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, DC. She will be a regular guest blogger on To Till and To Tend this year, posting entries every other Thursday. This, and all of Rachel’s entries, can also be found on the Religious Action Center blog.

Hundreds of citizens gathered on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to demand that our next Congress and Administration make climate change a priority during their first 100 days in office. In an event organized by the 1Sky campaign and a host of other environmental groups, these activists came together to demand that President-elect Obama honor his campaign promises to confront the climate and energy crisis. Despite freezing temperatures (yes, I realize the irony of talking about the urgency of global warming on a cold winter day), they joined with one voice to declare that the United States MUST start tackling climate change in a meaningful way if we are to avoid disastrous environmental and economic repercussions. Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Bill McKibben, environmental activist and founder of 350.org, inspired the crowd with speeches on the importance of climate change.

The first goal of the rally was to ensure that the President-elect send representatives to the international conference on climate change in Poznan, Poland in December. The world community will come together at this conference to decide how to tackle climate change moving forward, and it is vital that the U.S. represent itself at this meeting to show the world that we are finally ready to meaningfully engage and confront the climate crisis. As the activists in Washington presented a symbolic plane ticket to Poznan, thousands across the country met with the staffs of over 200 Members of Congress to ensure that they will work with the new President to cut our carbon emissions.

We are at a critical moment on this issue, as scientists agree that we are nearing (if not past) a climate ‘tipping point,’ after which we may not be able to mitigate or adapt to the worst effects of global climate change. A grassroots movement around the country is sending this message loud and clear to our government, and the Jewish community needs to be a vocal member of this coalition. Our obligations to care for our Earth and to speak out for the most vulnerable among us mean that confronting climate change is a moral and religious obligation, and a central piece of our task of ‘tikkun olam.’

To take part in the effort, you can fill out the RAC action alert urging President-elect Obama to make climate change a priority in his first 100 days in office, and visit your local elected official to send the same message in person. Visit the 1sky campaign for more information and resources, and to join the movement to make sure that this urgent problem is addressed beyond this day of action.

Rachel is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant working on environment and energy issues at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, DC. She will be a regular guest blogger on To Till and To Tend this year, posting entries every other Thursday. This, and all of Rachel’s entries, can also be found on the Religious Action Center blog.