To Till and to Tend

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.