March 2012 was not only the warmest March in the United States since record keeping began in 1895, it was also the second most extreme month for warmth in U.S. history, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center reported.
In fact, 15,272 warm temperature records were broken (7755 daytime, 7517 nighttime records).
Here’s another record smashed: this summer, the world’s oceans were the warmest in NOAA’s 130 years of record-keeping – a factor in producing the ferocious hurricanes like Katrina.
It is easy to point to record heat as evidence of global warming, but every time there is a record cold or blizzard where there shouldn’t be, it is taken by these ignoramuses as evidence countering global warming.
The problem is the term, “global warming.” Poor Al Gore. Perhaps if he should have used the more accurate term: “climate change” or maybe just “weird weather” he would have been spared the guffaws.
Everywhere you turn, there are weather anomalies and extremes – hurricanes, floods, droughts, tornadoes, earthquakes All of these have dramatic and tragic impacts – the wheat crop destroyed in Russia, famine and drought in Africa killing tens of thousands of people; whole towns in the United States destroyed.
The exacerbation of these weather effects coincides with the rise of industrialization around the world, and yet, there are the climate change deniers who for political reasons choose to demonize those who would implement the changes necessary to stop and even reverse the impacts.
“We have had ice ages before,” they say.
Those who dismiss human causation as a factor by ignorantly pointing out that the earth’s climate constantly changes refuse to accept the simple reality: “Not like this, it hasn’t.”
Not this fast, and not this extreme.
It is one thing to live at the base of a live volcano. It is quite another to mix together the ingredients to make a volcano in your kitchen.
If you only think of carbon emissions are particulates that poison the air and make people sick, that should be enough to prompt action. What is more, even reducing the outpouring of carbon will not automatically clean the air – those particulates hang around for hundreds if not thousands of years.
The impending crisis cries out for government action – setting carbon standards, incentivizing research and development of renewable, clean energy (wait a minute: that’s what Obama did, for which he is pilloried), making companies responsible for reducing waste and making their packaging and products recyclable or renewable, investing the trillion dollars needed in a smart energy grid (as Germany is doing, allocating 8 percent of GDP).
Governments at all levels can be doing more to purchase clean energy and promote sustainable development – for example, buying solar panel installations for government buildings, hybrid and biodiesel-powered vehicles – which would help create the market threshold needed for these entities to develop. In fact,, the U.S. Navy is on track to shift to biodiesel (not competing with food supplies, but using algae-created fuel).
Chris Hayes, on his “Up” show on MSNBC, April 21, pointed to NBC’s “Green is Universal” campaign – the Idea that while discrete simple things can make the difference, “[the impacts of climate change] can’t be mitigated altogether through individual action and persuasion. It requires collective action – government action. There is no simple solution to climate change,” he said.
He pointed to a graph prepared by the Carbon Mitigation Initiative that shows this severely angled upward trend of carbon emissions over time, rising from 1.5 billion in 1950, to 8 billion tons of the crud in 2007. That amount will double within 50 years to 16 billion tons of carbon emissions, which would raise the temperature of the planet by nine degrees.
“If that happened, game over.”
That amount of temperature change would completely alter the ecology of the planet; change the ability for organisms to survive and find food and water; provide a Petri dish for bacteria and viruses to flourish; and trigger a rise in sea level that would swamp coastal habitats where 200 million people live, not to mention the violent storms, famines and droughts that would cause the dislocations and deaths of millions more.
And even if the amount of output of carbon emissions remains the same, at 8 billion tons a year, the temperature would rise 5.4 degrees F.
“To keep pace with global energy needs at the same time, the world must find energy technologies that emit little to no carbon, plus develop the capacity for carbon storage,” CMI states on its website. “Many strategies available today can be scaled up to reduce emissions by at least 1 billion tons of carbon per year by 2060. By embarking on several of these wedge strategies now, the world can take a big bite out of the carbon problem instead of passing the whole job on to future generations.” They offer a “stabilization triangle” which shows how globally, we can fill the gap by 2060.
“We have the technology,” they say, pointing to 15 strategies, that in combination, would build the “eight wedges of the stabilization triangle.” (See the list: cmi.princeton.edu/wedges/intro.php)
Republicans have made it a tenet of faith and party membership to bar anything that would address climate change and promote renewable energy – even though a policy of maintaining or increasing dependency on fossil fuels by itself increases costs and economic hardship to families and businesses, while developing new technologies would generate new businesses and jobs, just as electricity and new manufacturing technologies turned the United States into an economic power in the early 20th century.
And yet, as we are so often reminded, Republican presidents were once champions of environmental protection and conservation: Lincoln created Yosemite, Teddy Roosevelt the national parks system, Nixon the EPA, Clean Air and Clean Water Safe Drinking Water acts.
“Ronald Reagan made climate change part of national security discussions – how we would respond to international crisis,” noted Christine Todd Whitman, the short-tenured EPA Administrator under Bush II. “Everything now is looked at through the prism of partisanship … whatever liberals are for, the right wing must be against. Environmental protection has become lumped together with an aversion to Big Government.”
And for many right wingers, an aversion to Big Government has been mutated into an aversion to science, altogether.
But the basis for obstruction may be even simpler than that: as Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), the former chair of the Senate Environment Committee, said on the Rachel Maddow Show, “I was actually on your side of this issue when I was chairing that committee and I first heard about this. I thought it must be true until I found out what it cost.”
Or more precisely, what it might cost to antagonize his donors. Oil and gas groups are Inhofe’s largest single segment of donors ($472,000), according to Maplight, an organization that monitors campaign donations. Among his top single donors: Koch Industries, $41,500; Oil and Gas Producer $21,850; Contran Corporation, $21,500 Oge Energy, $20,800; Devon Energy, $20,000.
But even the question of “cost” is a red herring. Opponents of clean and renewable energy deliberately ignore what dependency on fossil fuels and climate change costs families, businesses and municipalities to rebuild a community, or the health costs (asthma in children, for example), or cleaning up the air or water, or higher food cost because crop failures and expensive transportation, or the cost of everything that involves transportation, or even factor in tax subsidies to Big Oil, which as we all know has become the most profitable business in the history of humankind. (Hardly “free market.)
The fact is that new technologies – electricity, steel manufacturing , transportation – elevated the fledgling United States an economic power in the Gilded Age, and new clean, renewable energy technology would do the same, but for the entrenched interests of the fossil fuel huggers.
As meteorologist and proud Republican Paul Douglas, CEO of Broadcast Weather, said, “At some point, a sane , rational person has to look and say something has to be done. We have to figure solutions…Smart companies will look at liabilities involved and the opportunities ….For the Chinese, Europeans, Asians, where no debate about climate science [have realized this]…. When [companies] realize they are leaving money behind, will get with the program.”
Instead, right wingers use control of purse strings to reverse any progress that the U.S. might have made since the Kyoto Treaty in addressing climate change.
“Unfortunately, NOAA’s greenhouse gas monitoring program has been cut back by Congress in recent years, Colorado University-Boulder Senior Research Associate Scott Lehman said. “Even if we lack the will to regulate emissions, the public has a right to know what is happening to our atmosphere. Sticking our heads in the sand is not a sound strategy.”
The Republicans’ answer? They threaten to shut down the EPA altogether and overturn any regulations that would protect the environment.
In the criminal absence of federal action – thanks to Republican obstruction – states and localities have to step up to the plate. Two weeks ago, we reported on New York State signing onto a partnership to develop wind power from the Great Lakes.
The Long Island Power Authority has also rather remarkably become a national leader in solar power – celebrating Earth Day with its 5,000th solar installation and a CLEAN Solar Initiative LIPA will purchase, through June 30, 2014, up to 50 megawatts of solar generation located on its customers’ premises through a Power Purchase Agreement. Last November, LIPA, in partnership with BP Solar and Brookhaven National Laboratory completed and commissioned the Long Island Solar Farm, a 50 MW utility-scale solar generation project.
North Hempstead on the Forefront of Eco-Friendly Programs
Eco-friendly initiatives do not have to be big or tremendously ambitious or expensive.
North Hempstead, which has a laudable record of doing things to promote sustainability, has now come up with a low-cost, clever way to preserve and protect our drinking water: Recycle the rain.
The idea is actually extraordinarily simple: a rain barrel that captures the rain from your roof for you to use to water your garden or wash the car can, save 1,800 gallons of water in a single summer season, reducing the flow of pollutants into the Bay, and lessening pressure on our pumps that can lead to salt water intrusion into our well water.
North Hempstead has become the first on Long Island and one of the first communities anywhere to introduce a program where residents can purchase a specially-designed barrel for their home use for a discounted rate of $50 (they must also take a half-hour class, given at the Clark Botanic Garden on how to install and use them properly).
The barrels are flat on one side so they lean up against the building under the drainpipe; are equipped a mosquito filter, and a spigot of high-quality brass built to last longer and be more reliable than plastic spigots, and are made of recycled plastic resin and resistant to rust, mold, mildew, rotting, UV rays, fading and deterioration.
The collected water – some 1,800 gallons worth during the course of the high-usage summer season – can be used to irrigate gardens, wash cars or do just about anything that does not involve drinking.
Homeowners will save money on their water bill, but the bigger benefit is keeping pollutants from storm water runoff from going into the Manhasset Bay or Long Island Sound, and in reducing pumping pressure which triggers salt water intrusion that poisons wells.
“This is about rethinking how we sustain our local environment, even down to our own property, our own house, and to get people to think differently about how we utilize natural resources that are available to us such as rainwater, compost, leaves, paper, plastics, all the things that can be reused, and have both the financial and environmental benefit as well as a cultural change in how we use and reuse things, said Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman, introducing the program at a press event at Clark Botanic Garden.
“Each person becomes an ‘ambassador” to their own community,” Kaiman said. “That’s how a little thing can make a big difference.”
Town Clerk Leslie Gross plans to sponsor a class on using the rain barrel during the town’s 8th annual EcoFest, May 5 and 6 at Clark Botanic Garden, Albertson (come for the music, local wildlife presentations, reptile expert, crafts, lawn games, face painting, for fun-filled activities that teach how to be green).
The Town of North Hempstead has been a leader in eco-friendly programs. Indeed, ‘Recycle The Rain’ is just the latest in a long list of initiatives available to residents to recycle, reuse and live more sustainably and responsibly.
The town has a composting cooperative; offers biodegradable leaf bags; has the Stop throwing Out Pollutants program; collects electronic waste (weekdays at 802 West Shore Road; Sundays at 999 West shore Road); collects pharmaceuticals so they don’t wind up in the water supply or food chain; has a “Food to Feed” snack wrap program; and waives permit fees for most environmentally-friendly, energy conservation improvements such as solar panels.
North Hempstead has joined efforts with the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency , Green Jobs Green New York, and Home Performance with ENERGY STAR¨ to provide North Hempstead residents with an innovative program to retrofit homes to reduce energy costs and improve energy efficiency.
The town’s innovative school recycling program, a partnership with nine of the 11 school districts in the town, involves some 34,000 students who become actively engaged in collecting plastic, glass and paper, and bring back these values to their homes.
The town is in the process of implementing a biodiesel program – collecting spent cooking oil from restaurants and even residences, and using it to fuel town vehicles – which should be in place by summer (The Great Neck Water Pollution Control District has had a program in place for years; now restaurants are actually selling the waste oil.)
North Hempstead has even created a virtual recycle “store” where you can go online and find out where you can recycle just about anything.
Recycle the Rain seems like such a simple concept, what took so long?
“It’s a progression,” Kaiman replied. “We start with something – hybrid buses, recycling oil for biodiesel, recycling telephone books – it is a progression. We can’t do everything at once.
“As each program grows and is successful in the community, we can add. But If we do something that doesn’t work, people will lose confidence, and not participate.”
Programs like these can change the culture of a community. “We can educate a handful of people who can change the way a community operates,” Kaiman said. “A student may pick up one bottle a day, and that may seem like a little, but 34,000 students times one bottle times five days a week times 52 weeks a year.. All these programs individually make a difference, collectively change a culture, make our town a green town.”
Residents can call 311 to participate in the Recycle the Rain Program and receive an instructional lesson at Clark Botanic Garden or visit www.northhempstead.com.
