BBC: "The Disappearing Island in the Chesapeake Bay"

Virginia's Tangier Island was first settled 325 years ago. But as the BBC reports, thanks to a combination of a  Chesapeake Bay polluted by unchecked runoff, rising sea levels fueled by global warming, an eroding shoreline fueled by natural subsidence, Tangier Island is slowly disappearing into the Bay:


Learn in the National Wildlife Federation's 2008 report on the Chesapeake Bay & sea level rise.

The 1% Would Like You To Know It Disdains Your "Car-Free Day"

A letter to the editor in the local Arlington Sun-Gazette begins by declaring "the concept of a world 'car-free day' truly odd," pooh-poohing public transportation and singing the virtues of the car. But the author then gets down to brass tacks:

In fairness, I should mention that I own three cars. One also provides me with a major source of social fun because I belong to a car club that requires you must own that make of car to belong.

Some of my favorite things to do are to take a Sunday early-morning drive in the country or to participate in rallies or social events with like-minded people. It would be difficult for me to imagine a bus- or Metro-owners club.

Oh, do you not own three cars? How unfortunate for you. And why would you choose a form of transportation that does not facilitate lunch at the country club with like-minded people? I mean, the Kennedy Center grows weary after a time, don't you find?

The iPod of Thermostats?

Yeah, sure, saves tons of energy, learns what you temperature you like it & automatically adjusts, yadda yadda yadda. But wait ... being able to turn the heat up on a cold winter night from your smartphone without having to get up from under your blanket?? That's change I can believe in!

Check out the Nest thermostat, created by the same guy who invented the iPod & expected to hit the market next month for $250:


Via Grist

Designs of DC's Downtown Public Parks Discourage Public from Using Parks

Matt Yglesias often makes the case that, in a city where building height limits put a huge premium on ground space, some of DC's parks could be put to better use as homes & businesses:

New York City doesn’t have this problem, but Washington, DC and some other American cities really do seem to me to be plagued with excessive useless parkland. If you had a park featuring a playground no kids were ever on, or a basketball court that was never in use, people would be asking “what went wrong here?” That’s not to say that every park should have a playground. But every park should be used for something. If there’s not going to be any regular programming on your patch of publicly owned land, it makes more sense to sell it and let people put up buildings. Do an unusually wide sidewalk to make room for some extra trees and benches if you need extra trees and benches.

That’s not to say we should pave all the parks. But we should be thinking of something to actually do with them. Cities are full of people, and most of the country doesn’t have Southern California weather. There’s limited practical demand for just sitting around outside.

It's a short post, but Matt conflates two distinct questions:

• What are DC's downtown public parks set up to do?
• What's the optimal set-up for a downtown public park?

DC's downtown parks, managed by the National Park service, seem to be set up with three goals in mind:

1. Appeal to a tourist's impression of what a park in DC would look like (majestic statues! pigeons!)
2. Minimize cost of park management
3. Minimize the utility of the park to DC's homeless population

I worked across the street from DC's Franklin Park for a year and while it was nice to look out at the trees in the summer, I never went there for a coffee break or to eat lunch. It just wasn't designed for that.

By contrast, I visited Boston's new Post Office Square Park for an event this summer and was stunned at how well it met the needs of the park's neighbors:

As of 2009 the square is almost entirely occupied by a privately-owned and -managed but publicly-accessible park, Norman B. Leventhal Park, named for the Boston building manager and designer who designed it. It sits above a parking garage, named "The Garage at Post Office Square." The garage lies 80 ft (24 m) below the surface, the deepest point of excavation in the city. Revenues from parking fund the maintenance of the park. The 1.7-acre (6,900 m²) park is a popular lunchtime destination for area workers. It features a cafe, fountains, and a pergola around a central lawn, and the management provides seat cushions for visitors during the summer. Designed by landscape architects The Halvorson Company, the park is also home to "125 species of plants."

"There’s limited practical demand for just sitting around outside"? I couldn't even find a place to sit down to get on my laptop. Whereas DC's K Street corridor parks have trees plopped in the middle, leaving the open areas filled with muddy, uneven grass struggling to grow, Post Office Square's trees line the edges of an inviting field. Wide paths are lined by wooden benches shaded by vines, cooling them on hot summer days. And the cafe tables were stunning - an outdoor table to sit & eat your lunch? Is there a public park space with tables anywhere in DC? I can't think of one (if you can, please post in comments).

So while I agree with Matt that DC's park space is underutilized, I'd like to see them at least make an attempt to meet users' needs before giving up & selling them off. And if the cost of that is letting a developer put a building on half of Franklin Park or build a garage under McPherson Square, let's do it.

The Importance of Knowing People Good at Rescuing Turtles

Back in August, The Green Miles was at a meeting in Vermont for his day job with the National Wildlife Federation & spotted a turtle trapped in an abandoned pool. Nice to work with people who are experts in wildlife rescue:

This is How You Fight Back Against GOP Attacks on Clean Air

You don't need to have a Ph.D. to talk about why we need clean air and climate action. You don't need to have a mastery of facts & figures.

In fact, you're your own target audience. You need to be able to talk about it in a way that people who don't know facts & figures either can understand. Don't worry about framing the issue or dazzling with statistics - tell a story.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) had the quote of the year back in January, summing up the fight against polluter-funded GOP attacks on the Clean Air Act: "There is a case to be made that, in the contest between corporate profits and children's lungs, someone should be standing up for children's lungs."

Last week on the Senate floor, Sen. Whitehouse expanded on the case with a series of simple yet vivid examples:


If you don't have time to watch the clip, check out the full transcript at ClimateProgress.org.

Greening Your Garbage Bags

Buying products made from recycled materials is just as important as recycling itself. It helps communities get a good price for their recyclable materials and gives business an incentive to keep the cycle going.

I noticed Harris Teeter has apparently discontinued their Naturals trash bags made from recycled plastic, so I went online looking for an alternative. Amazon carries PrideGreen bags, which are not only made with recycled plastic, but contain an additive that helps them biodegrade faster. And at a price as low as 18 cents a bag (with free shipping), they're competitive with bags made from freshly-drilled petroleum.

Tonight: Go See "Gasland" in Arlington

Here's a chance to see the award-winning documentary Gasland while supporting a great organization:

Gasland, The Movie
NRECA, 4301 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, VA
October 18, 7-9pm

Delegate Patrick Hope, The Virginia Progressive Caucus, The Virginia Sierra Club & The Virginia League of Conservation Voters invite you to watch the thought provoking movie, Gasland. Tuesday, October 18, 2011 from 7:00 - 9:00 pm at National Rural Electric Cooperative Association 4301 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22203. Proceeds will benefit the Virginia Progressive Caucus - Friend $25 • Donor $50 • Sponsor $100 • Patron $250 • Benefactor $500. To register in advance visit https://secure.actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/27545 or call Mary 703-486-1010

I can't make the movie, but just contributed $25 anyway to show my support for the Virginia Progressive Caucus. You should too & ActBlue makes it easy, so go give $5, $10, $25 or more right now.

Here's a Threatening Email from an American Electric Power Employee

I got this Facebook message from Jim Hinton, who lists himself on his profile as an accountant with American Electric Power:

I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear that Hinton is also a Facebook fan of Glenn Beck and Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX).

Obviously this email was not exactly vetted by AEP's public relations wing. But it's more revealing than a thousand press releases that Hinton doesn't even bother to make any sort of factual argument and goes right to the personal attack, 2011's preferred climate science denier strategy.

AEP lists $50 billion in assets, has spent more than $30 million on lobbying in the last four years alone, and gives millions to candidates for office (mostly Republicans) like Rep. Robert Hurt (R-VA). Yet this little blog is so powerful that one of its employees feels the need to send me threatening emails?

AEP's entire business model depends on Americans turning a blind eye to the fact that its profits depend on socializing the impact of its pollution while privatizing the profits. AEP is America's biggest carbon polluter and was ranked 40th in the Political Economy Research Institute's Toxic 100 list of America's biggest polluters. Information is AEP's enemy - the more Americans know about how companies like AEP get rich off treating our skies like an open sewer, the more likely they are to support proper pollution regulations.

No wonder America's corporate elite finds the Occupy Wall Street movement so menacing.

UPDATE: Hinton's employer & fan pages have suddenly disappeared from his public profile & he's blocked me. Here's how the message looks now:

Energy Project With Least NIMBY Opposition? Wind Farms

The New York Times' Green Blog digs into some polling data from the Saint Consulting Group and finds hypothetical "wind farms on the ridge above one’s home" polls better than any other potential local energy project, with a full 70% in support of local wind power. Even Tea Party members would rather see a local wind farm than a local oil drilling project or new conventional power plant. Makes you wonder why people like Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) think oil drilling off Virginia is "centrist" when 55% of Americans say they wouldn't want oil drilling to take place in their community.

Richmond: Cycling Capital?

Richmond is about to embark on a crash course to become a world-class city for bicyclists:

Last month, Richmond won its bid to host the 2015 UCI Road World Championships, bringing the nine-day event to the United States for the first time since 1986. The elite racing series is projected to have an economic impact of $86 million in town, and $130 million in the region. But more importantly, bike advocates in Richmond, including its recently converted mayor, Dwight Jones, are hoping the event will prompt new bike infrastructure, new bike commuters, new jobs in bike-related industries, and even new businesses interested in relocating to a “bike-friendly” city.

Currently, Richmond only has about three miles of bike lanes, and just 2.2 percent of people commute to work by bike according to the most recent census estimates (Helmboldt, though, adds that he’s cautious of census statistics on this question). The James River that cuts through Richmond also makes cross-town biking difficult. [...]

So the city has committed to building new infrastructure to accommodate the championships (which will run primarily through a 10-mile circuit within the city’s urban core), but it’s also planning to use the championships as an excuse to ramp up bike routes and programs not necessarily intended for the international cycling elite. By 2015, the region plans to have completed a 52-mile paved trail from the state capitol in Richmond to the old capitol of Williamsburg, so tourists will be able to take in the entire Virginia “Historic Triangle” without setting foot in a car.

Richmond also plans to expand the trails along its riverfront, knit together its existing greenways, and install more bike lanes and bike parking, all while rolling out outreach programs that will help translate cycling from an international spectator sport into a local commuting solution.

One-time events often don't have the impact their sponsors tout (see: the DC Le Mans fiasco in 2002). But if this race is an excuse to give Richmonders a cheap, easy, zero pollution way to get around, why not? Heck, I don't even own a bike, but a Richmond-to-Williamsburg ride sounds like a fun weekend. Will there be any brewpubs near the trail?

New Report Highlights Climate Crisis' Threat to Hampton Roads

A new report takes a closer look at which cities will be hurt by global warming-fueled sea level rise. As Brad Plumer reports, Virginia is in the climate crisis crosshairs:

Things don’t look good for India. But the United States doesn’t get off easy, either. If you look at exposed assets rather than total population, then Miami, New York-Newark, New Orleans and Virginia Beach all climb higher on the list, with $7 trillion in assets vulnerable to severe coastal flooding by 2070. [...]

Take Miami. A three-foot sea-level rise, experts have noted, would likely put all of Miami Beach underwater and turn downtown Miami into an island, channeled off from the rest of Florida. Yet the state isn’t doing all that much to prepare for this eventuality. Instead, it’s racing to subsidize new developments along the coasts, through state-run insurance and funding for coastal protection. By contrast, cities such as London and Amsterdam are taking more prudent steps to guard against future flooding — and, as the OECD report notes, are likely to cope with sea-level rise better.

That’s not an isolated case. In general, the United States has been slow in preparing for rising sea levels. In many cases, we’re actively making things worse, as Steve Nash laid out in this excellent article in the New Republic. This is one area in particular where climate-change denial can do a lot of damage — it’s awfully hard to prepare for a problem that no one can agree even exists.

So we're not doing climate mitigation, like cutting carbon pollution. And as an event just last month at NASA's Langley Center in Hampton pointed out, we're not doing climate adaptation, either, like coastal restoration & limiting development in areas just above sea level.

Basically, if you were consciously trying to leave the worst possible situation for the next generation, you'd be doing exactly what people like Gov. Bob McDonnell are doing now - deny the problem & delay solutions. And note the 2070 date - we're no longer talking about forecast impacts on some future generation, but real changes happening within the lifetimes of the children in your family right now.

Amazing that the same people who profess such a concern with our budgetary national debt have no qualms about leaving our kids stuck with a multi-trillion-dollar climate liability.

Celebrate National Wildlife Refuge Week in Virginia

Did you know Virginia is home to 14 National Wildlife Refuges? Learn more about National Wildlife Refuge Week and check out a map of Virginia's refuges to find one near you.

(All of Virginia's wildlife refuges are in the eastern part of the state, but considering how many state parks are located in central and western Virginia, you have plenty of wildlife-appreciation options.)

What Good's An SUV If You Can't Afford To Drive It Where You Want To Go?

Conservatives love to paint personal vehicles as the pinnacle of freedom, fuel efficiency standards as the government boot on the neck of Lady Liberty, and walkable communities, car sharing & public transit as creeping communism. But an experience last weekend made America's oil-addicted transportation culture seem more constricting than liberating.

I was up in New Hampshire hiking the Boulder Loop Trail off the Kancamagus Highway in the White Mountain National Forest near the town of Conway. The trail walk to the top of Moat Ridge gave us beautiful views of the surrounding mountains as well as the Swift River running through the Passaconaway Valley.

We were hiking with a couple in their 20s who'd brought their 3-month-old baby along. Except for her request for lunch, we barely heard a peep from the baby the whole hike, she was perfectly happy gently bouncing along in her baby carrier.

As we got back to the parking lot, mom said she'd had a great time and wanted to hike more often for regular exercise. I suggested making a routine of it - finding a favorite spot and going for a hike, say, every Sunday.

"Well ... maybe every couple of weeks," she said.

Why not more often? "This thing," she sighed, pointing to her SUV. "I couldn't afford to drive the hour and back to the mountain every weekend."

Over the longer term, President Obama has taken steps to significantly increase fuel efficiency in new cars, trucks & SUVs. But in the short run, families need to consider all the consequences of owning a gas guzzler. I understand the desire for a roomy vehicle to lug around car seats, strollers & such. But what good is owning that vehicle if it means you can't afford to get to the places you want to go?

The newest vehicle that's both fuel-efficient AND family-friendly? Check out the Toyota Prius V:

Exxon Mobil Sponsoring Climate Silence on Science Channel

I was watching Faces of Earth on the Discovery Communications-owned Science Channel this morning as it discussed finding fossil fuels, both coal mining and oil drilling. I was amazed at how the show didn't mention any negative effects of mining fossil fuels:

• Nothing about oil & gas disasters or deaths inside or outside coal mines
• Nothing about the destructive effects of mountaintop removal
• Nothing about global warming or any other air and water pollution

So I waited for the closing credits. Sure enough, as the "sponsors" frame flashed for only a moment, Exxon Mobil helped fund the series.

Once again, it's a shame that networks that profit from the wonders of nature aren't doing more to protect them.

Can We Outrun the Climate Firestorm We're Stoking?

Is it time to stop talking about the low end of climate change predictions?

Until now, I've thought of our climate choices as "mild disruption," "wrenching calamity," and "civilization-threatening catastrophe," depending on how quickly and seriously we act to cut carbon pollution. But reading Jeff Goodell's Rolling Stone article on Australia's grim future, I wonder if our continued inaction is putting that first option in the rear view mirror.

The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change issued its 4th Assessment in 2007, predicting a low carbon emissions scenario would see a rise in temperatures by 2100 of about 2 degrees Celsius (about 3 degrees Fahrenheit). The UN continues to cite that 2 degrees C as its goal for maximum temperature rise.

But since that report nearly five years ago, global carbon pollution has continued to rise steadily. And with Washington talking about sticking a new tar sands pipeline in our oil addicted veins, now experts are wondering if we'll act fast enough to avoid the dreaded high emissions scenario:

How bad could it get? A recent study by MIT projects that without "rapid and massive action" to cut carbon pollution, the Earth's temperature could soar by nine degrees this century. "There are no analogies in human history for a temperature jump of that size in such a short time period," says Tony McMichael, an epidemiologist at Australian National University. The few times in human history when temperatures fell by seven degrees, he points out, the sudden shift likely triggered a bubonic plague in Europe, caused the abrupt collapse of the Moche civilization in Peru and reduced the entire human race to as few as 1,000 breeding pairs after a volcanic eruption blocked out the sun some 73,000 years ago. "We think that because we are a technologically sophisticated society, we are less vulnerable to these kinds of dramatic shifts in climate," McMichael says. "But in some ways, because of the interconnectedness of our world, we are more vulnerable."

With nine degrees of warming, computer models project that Australia will look like a disaster movie. Habitats for most vertebrates will vanish. Water supply to the Murray-Darling Basin will fall by half, severely curtailing food production. Rising sea levels will wipe out large parts of major cities and cause hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage to coastal homes and roads. The Great Barrier Reef will be reduced to a pile of purple bacterial slime. Thousands of people will die from heat waves and other extreme weather events, as well as mosquito-borne infections like dengue fever. Depression and suicide will become even more common among displaced farmers and Aborigines. Dr. James Ross, medical director for Australia's Remote Area Health Corps, calls climate change "the number-one challenge for human health in the 21st century."

Politicians & the media focus almost exclusively on the cost of switching to clean energy. But Australia's case is a reminder that the cost of climate inaction would be far higher.

You can read the whole article here, but as I've written before, buying the newsstand version is a vote with your wallet to keep good environmental journalism coming.

The One Opportunity Steve Jobs Missed

Steve Jobs made a lot of amazing products that made a lot of people's lives more enjoyable. He made a ton of money for his employees, his investors and himself. But I can't help but consider his passing with some regret. Jobs had opportunities to use all that power for greater good, but turned them down.

Under Jobs, Apple used less clean energy & more coal than any other data giant, according to a Greenpeace report (PDF). And as CNN Money reported:

[In 2007] the founder of the Stanford Social Innovation Review called Apple one of "America's Least Philanthropic Companies." Jobs had terminated all of Apple's long-standing corporate philanthropy programs within weeks after returning to Apple in 1997, citing the need to cut costs until profitability rebounded. But the programs have never been restored.

Unlike Bill Gates - the tech world's other towering figure - Jobs has not shown much inclination to hand over the reins of his company to create a different kind of personal legacy. While his wife is deeply involved in an array of charitable projects, Jobs' only serious foray into personal philanthropy was short-lived. In January 1987, after launching Next, he also, without fanfare or public notice, incorporated the Steven P. Jobs Foundation. "He was very interested in food and health issues and vegetarianism," recalls Mark Vermilion, the community affairs executive Jobs hired to run it. Vermilion persuaded Jobs to focus on "social entrepreneurship" instead. But the Jobs foundation never did much of anything, besides hiring famed graphic designer Paul Rand to design its logo. (Explains Vermilion: "He wanted a logo worthy of his expectations.") Jobs shut down the foundation after less than 15 months.

Steve Jobs leaves a legacy of innovation. I just think it's a shame his rivalry with Bill Gates didn't transcend to higher callings.

(Footnote: Fair to point out the size of Gates' philanthropy may in part be a product of the outsize compensation Gates was given compared to Jobs.)

What's Occupy Wall Street & Why Should Climate Hawks Care?

What is Occupy Wall Street? Why does it have Republicans & the establishment media so riled up? The Daily Show explains:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

And why should climate hawks care?


Learn more at OccupyWallSt.org and show your support by donating.

The Washington Post Steals My Armadillo Story

Two days after I posted about how global warming might bring armadillos to Virginia, the Washington Post's Post Local did the exact same story.

How do I know they stole the story? The Post calls it a "new" report, but that's not true - it came out in June. I started a post on it in June but never finished it, and it sat in my drafts file until I needed some new content & published it this week.

Bloggers are happy to share ideas and content for free - all we ask for is attribution, the same courtesy that paid journalists extend to each other when one breaks a story. And come on, considering The Washington Post Company pulled down $547 million in operating income last year, while The Green Miles does this in his spare time for free (refusing paid ads), would a courtesy link be too much to ask? Apparently so.

I wouldn't publicly point it out, except the Post steals from local blogs all the time. Just last month, the Post-owned Fairfax Times stole a quote from ArlNow.com without attribution. Isn't it silly for an enormous media conglomerate to have a policy of stealing from the little guy, especially when doing the right thing is so easy?

And how's this for hypocrisy? The Post has expressed outrage when blogs excerpt the Post's work, even WITH full credit & links back. Gawker's Gabriel Snyder fired back an epic rebuttal.

It doesn't have to be this way. NBC4's NBCwashington.com has used my posts for story ideas several times (including the armadillo story) and always cites my original post with a quick link back. Everybody's happy!

I emailed the Post this morning asking why they didn't provide a link. From what I've heard from other bloggers who've had their work taken by the Post without attribution, I'm not expecting to hear back, but will update this post if I do.

Creative Commons-licensed photo via Flickr's PirateJohnny

Regulating Dirty Coal Will Kill Human-Killing Jobs

There's been a wave of closures recently at the oldest, dirtiest, most-polluting coal-fired power plants, including GenOn's Potomac River Generating Station in Alexandria and Dominion's Chesapeake Energy Center and Yorktown Power Plant.

At Grist.org, David Roberts says we should be celebrating the death of these power plants that we've been subsidizing at the cost of asthma attacks and heart failure:

The key thing to remember is that these are some of the most heavily subsidized jobs in the U.S. economy. They are subsidized at a level that makes anything Obama did with the stimulus bill look like pocket change.

Why is that so? Well, it's widely known by now, at least in economist circles, that the coal power industry grossly underpays for the damages it does. That's the unanimous conclusion of a flurry of new research that's been done on the question: see, e.g., the National Research Council (NRC), Harvard Medical School's Paul Epstein, or last week's bombshell from Yale's William Nordhaus and colleagues, which found that coal-fired power plants do 21 cents of unpaid damages for every single kilowatt hour of power they produce. Economists call these costs "externalities," but really they amount to subsidies -- the public is paying these costs on the coal companies' behalf. [...]

And these subsidies are not investments that pay back over time, like loans to innovative renewable energy firms. These subsidies come in the form of babies with birth defects, asthmatic kids, and adults with respiratory and heart ailments. These subsidies pay negative returns. They subtract value. All in the name of propping up a dying industry.

The Alexandria plant alone is estimated to kill 37 people & sicken hundreds of others every single year.

But the coal industry keeps looking for someone to blame, and it's not just on the human costs of its pollution. As Coal Tattoo's Ken Ward Jr. reports, coal companies are desperately trying to pin falling Appalachian production on regulations & conservationists. That's instead of accepting the simple fact that the low-hanging fruit of Appalachian coal has long since been picked and what little is left is getting more & more expensive to blast out. For today's coal industry, reality is hard to face.

Squirrels: Terrible at Hide and Seek

I was at my aunt's house in Somerset, MA a couple of weeks ago and noticed this black walnut tucked under post on her porch. She said the squirrels in her yard frequently "hide" fall nuts in spots that are in no way hidden.

Coming Soon to Virginia: Armadillos

Global warming has species on the move - for instance, making Vermont less hospitable to its iconic maple trees. Meanwhile, warm-weather species are taking the opportunity to move north, and according to a recent study, armadillos could move north into Virgina & across the entire Mid-Atlantic region:

The consequences of such changes are unclear. Armadillos are a welcome help to residents dealing with fire ants, a big concern in the South, McDonough said. But they're also a nest predator and could put added pressure on local quail populations already trying to defend against possums, raccoons and snakes.

[University of Michigan biology professor Philip] Myers' research in Michigan, meanwhile, suggests southern species are replacing northern ones, rather than simply slotting into the local fauna.

"To predict the impact of adding a chipmunk or subtracting a mouse, you have to know a lot more about the natural history of the communities than we do ... Potentially there are huge changes that could be a consequence of messing around with the species present," Myers said.

See a map of the armadillo's projected range at DailyClimate.org.

The quail connection is an example of the cascading effects of the climate crisis. Even if a quail can survive in a region that's rapidly becoming warmer & wetter, it may not survive a new predator moving into its habitat. It's also a major reason so many sportsmen have become climate activists.

Red Pandas Were Pandas Before Being A Panda Was Cool

Red pandas are like your friend in college who claimed he listened to bands before they got big. They were named "panda" before giant pandas took panda coolness maintstream:

Red pandas exist in the shadow of giant pandas, but they were actually the first animals to be called "panda." In the past, red pandas have been classified with the bear family (which includes giant pandas) and with procyonids (a family that includes raccoons). Today, they are classified as the sole species in family Ailuridae.

And as these new pictures from the National Zoo show, red pandas can be just as cute as giant pandas, without being all in your face (or rip your face off) about it:



UPDATE: Twitter's @MarineGJ also points out the National Zoo's red panda cam

Pro Tips for Enjoying Fall

A few links:

• Where to pick apples & what to do with them.
• A map of typical peak fall foliage times.
• The best fall event for beer lovers? Shirlington Oktoberfest.
• The weather's finally cooling down enough to enjoy hiking again.

Reporting to the Chewbacca Controversy

Yes, the Washington Post devoted 571 words today to examining the intricacies of Sen. Jim Inhofe's Chewbacca Defense.

The article discusses how Sen. Inhofe is very terribly, awfully, really concerned about the peer review process. And how many of those 571 words are spent discussing how many times Inhofe has addressed conferences entirely devoted to pushing non-peer-reviewed science? Come on, no time for that, there's a controversy to report to!

Jim Inhofe Spends $300,000 of Your Tax Money On His Latest Climate Chewbacca Defense

The first rule of climate science denial is that you do not talk about the temperature record or human influence on it. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) follows this rule perfectly in his latest attack on climate action.

Inhofe demanded the EPA's Inspector General investigate the Obama administration's explanation for regulating carbon pollution. Why did the Obama administration have to act? Even the conservative Supreme Court told the Bush administration its explanation for not regulating carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act was indefensible.

The EPA IG report cost $300,000 of your tax dollars to produce. What did it find?

A federal investigation, requested by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) in an April 7, 2010 letter, finds that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) endangerment finding for greenhouse gases “met statutory requirements for rulemaking and generally followed requirements and guidance related to ensuring the quality of the supporting technical information.”

Wasn't that exciting? Not exactly. But to Inhofe, it's scandalous! It has to be, because to Inhofe, anything that validates climate science must not be true because he's well-compensated by the oil & coal industries to say so. And Inhofe will prove it to you by saying things that are borderline incomprehensible:

In our opinion, the endangerment finding TSD is a highly influential scientific assessment that should have been peer reviewed as outlined in Section III of OMB’s Final Information Quality Bulletin for Peer Review.

To avoid talking about the temperature record and human influence on it, Inhofe is once again resorting to The Chewbacca Defense:


The data showing our planet is warming and man-made carbon pollution just keeps rolling in. But Sen. Inhofe doesn't want to talk to you about that. He wants to talk to you about how the EPA should actually have formally peer-reviewed the major reviews of the peer reviewed literature.

/head explodes

Office Lobbies As Proof The Human Is Not Smart

My office building has a lobby with marble floors (buffed nightly) that become extremely slick when they get wet. So every time it rains, they put mats down on the floor and security harasses people to put their umbrellas in brand-new plastic bags that the building provides.

It reminds me of Jerry Seinfeld's routine about motorcycle helmets:

There are many things you can point to as proof that the human is not smart. But my personal favorite would have to be that we needed to invent the helmet. What was happening, apparently, was that we were involved in a lot of activities that were cracking our heads. We chose not to avoid doing those activities but, instead, to come up with some sort of device to help us enjoy our head-cracking lifestyles. And even that didn't work because not enough people were wearing them so we had to come up with the helmet law. Which is even stupider, the idea behind the helmet law being to preserve a brain whose judgment is so poor, it does not even try to avoid the cracking of the head it's in.

We could just make our office building floors all-weather to prevent head-cracking falls. But instead, we continue make them completely impractical for any inclement weather, then come up with devices to help us enjoy our head-cracking lifestyles, buying mats and drilling for oil to turn into plastic bags which can then use keep our umbrella drippings from hitting the floor and prompting head-cracking falls.

Uranium Site Faces "Frequent & Pervasive" Flooding. What Could Go Wrong?

A Canadian-owned company is trying to get Virginia legislators to roll back the 30-year-old ban on uranium mining in Virginia so it can mine a multi-billion-dollar uranium deposit in Pittsylvania County. But a new study from the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League warns the site - upstream from four major drinking water supply intake points - is prone to frequent flooding:

The report contains maps of Coles Hill showing the locations of three FEMA flood hazard zones aligned with Mill Creek, Whitethorn Creek, and the Banister River, all of which flow through the Coles Hill site. The maps show the location of three historic flood events that occurred within the proposed mine and mill site, including two on record with the National Weather Service, as well as the location less than two miles away where flooding associated with Hurricane Fran was videotaped in 1996. Another map contains date-stamped photographs demonstrating pervasive flooding at the site in November, 2009. Another shows the location of a spring and several acres of wetlands on the site.

The League’s report links evidence of flooding at Coles Hill with warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency. IAEA contradicts many industry assurances that uranium mill tailing disposal sites are essentially maintenance free, stating, “There is no such thing as 'fail-safe' facilities for tailings management. Neither regulations, design specifications, nor management systems can be relied upon in isolation to provide assurance against containment failure: all three must be applied, in a framework of quality assurance and post-closure care and maintenance, to deliver a high probability of tailings containment security.”

A uranium mine site that would leave at least 28 million tons of uranium waste in a flood-prone area upstream from the drinking water for tens of thousands of people? What could go wrong?

Learn more in this video & sign the petition to keep Virginia's ban on uranium mining at KeepTheBan.org:

Tonight at 5pm: Join FDL's Book Salon for "Tropic of Chaos"

I'll be hosting FireDogLake's Book Salon tonight with Christian Parenti, author of Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. Please plan to join us at 5pm!

UPDATE: The live book salon can be found here.

Will Rep. Wolf Side With Tea Party or With Children's Lungs?

Just got this email from a local conservationist:

Right now there is a bill in the House of Representatives to stop that rule from moving forward: the “Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation (TRAIN) Act” (H.R. 2401). The bill blocks and indefinitely delays two of the most important clean air regulations of the past few decades – including the mercury and air toxics standards that we all advocated so hard for.

Based on our outreach here in DC, we believe that Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA 10) is yet undedicated on whether he’ll vote “party-line” in support of this bill, or stand up for public health and wildlife and oppose the TRAIN Act.

Which way will Rep. Wolf vote today? If you live in Virginia's 10th Congressional district, please call Rep. Wolf's DC office at 202-225-5136 right now. If you can't get through to Rep. Wolf's DC office, call his Herndon office at 800-945-9653 or his Winchester office at 800-850-3463.

Could a Cuban Oil Disaster Spill Oil on Virginia's Coast?

With Cuba set to begin oil drilling, Anya Landau French blogs for the Christian Science Monitor that a Cuban oil spill could deliver disaster far beyond the Gulf of Mexico:

Now, after several delays, with a Chinese-built Italian oil rig, the Scarabeo 9, on its way to Cuba, drilling of the first of five exploratory wells in Cuban deep water is set to commence this December.

A spill from this first, easternmost exploratory well to be drilled by the Repsol consortium could be particularly damaging due to its location where the Gulf Stream exits the Gulf of Mexico for the Atlantic. Whereas the BP disaster was somewhat "contained" in the northern Gulf, Piñón tells me to "imagine a fan-shaped spill with the well as the axis." If something were to go wrong on Scarabeo 9, we could see and feel the effects of a major oil spill in Cuban deep water not just in Florida, but far up the Atlantic coast.

And as Fareed Zakaria writes, "the nearest and best experts on safety procedures and dealing with oil spills are all American, but we are forbidden by our laws from being involved in any way with Cuba." What could go wrong?

The New Forbes 400 is Out! Guess Who's #4?

It's the Koch Brothers! They rank 4th in the newest Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans, up from 5th last year. In fact, the fortune of Charles and David shot up 14% just from March to September 2011.

What's most interesting - despite the Koch brothers' war on President Obama and crazily overheated rhetoric against him, the Koch brothers' fortune has grown wildly during President Obama's first term. It's up 79%, from $14 each billion in March 2009 to $25 billion each in September 2011.

Wait ... you don't think the Kochs' opposition to Obama is about an extremist political crusade and not sound economic policy, do you? Nahhh.

Opponents of Clean Energy Never Think They Sound Crazy

Over at Time's Swampland blog, Massimo Calabresi spends hundreds of words goofily mocking clean energy, including a Foghorn Leghorn reference (really). Calabresi simultaneously claims that wind power doesn't employ enough people to be considered anything more than a "fantasy" AND that it employs so many people as to be "totally unscalable." See? Whether the wind power industry adds jobs or loses jobs, it proves his point! This is how you get to be a Beltway Insider Journalist.

That's right! Calabresi isn't an opinion columnist - he's Time's Washington correspondent. Can you imagine the demands for Calabresi to resign if he'd similarly bashed coal?

But at the end of the article, there's one sentence that pushes this article past Tired Conventional Wisdom and into Colbert-esque self-parody:

I'm all for innovation and believe in government investments to fuel it.

It may be the least self-conscious statement I've ever read. Look, just because I spent this entire column bashing innovation and government investments to fuel it doesn't mean I'm some mindless shill for our outdated, failed energy policies! Clearly I am a forward thinker, because I just said so!

Bill Clinton: Climate Science Deniers Make America "Look Like a Joke"

Read more from Joe Romm at ClimateProgress.org.

Ask Senators Warner & Webb to Save Smart Growth Support

Just called the offices of Sen. Mark Warner (202-224-2023) and Sen. Jim Webb (202-224-4024) and asked them to support continued investment in the Partnership for Sustainable Communities. What is it?

When cities, towns and suburbs plan their future transportation, housing, water and sewer infrastructure and public services strategically, they save money and so does the federal government. The Partnership for Sustainable Communities, a collaboration between the EPA, DOT and HUD, is about making that type of planning possible. 45 regions containing 80 million Americans in rural, suburban and urban communities are already benefiting from the Partnership programs.

Investment? Planning? Of course it was cut by House Republicans in the 2012 budget, while tax cuts for the rich and subsidies for oil companies were continued. Cutting investments in America's future that cost just $527 million a year in the name of protecting tax cuts for the rich is like telling your kids you can't afford vaccines because you have to keep making payments on your Porsche.

Click the above map for an interactive look at how the program has delivered $3.4 million in targeted investments to Virginia. Doesn't sound like much, less than Washington Redskins Coach Mike Shanahan's 2011 salary, but that's exactly the point - small amounts of money well-targeted can deliver big benefits. The program has also worked closely with Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute.

Learn more at SmartGrowthAmerica.org, find your senators at Senate.gov, and please call them to support this incredibly inexpensive, valuable program.

Amtrak Northeast Corridor > Flying

Flying in post-9/11 America is a unique combination of boring, stressful, and submission to authority. Taking the Amtrak from Providence to DC hasn't just been relaxing, it's been interesting. Today I've seen:

• A fire at an industrial plant in (or just outside) New York City, with smoke pouring from the building & fire trucks out front
• A play at the plate in a softball game (safe), which took place 300 yards from the fire
• Four osprey fishing, likely while on their way south for the winter
• Half a dozen people fishing, which relaxes me just watching them

Yes, it takes longer. But I've gotten a ton of work done & had a pretty good time doing it. The only downside: Amtrak's cafe car remains unfriendly to my reusable mug, but then again airline flight attendants aren't any friendlier.

New Fossil Fuel Device Charger: 7 Times the Cost of Solar

The Green Miles is on the Amtrak Regional heading back from Massachusetts, where I read about a new butane-fueled device charger being developed by a company north of Boston called Lilliputian Systems. They're expected to hit the market in 1-2 years and cost up to $200, plus up to $5 for refills of butane.

But Boston Globe technology columnist Scott Kirsner doesn't mention that there are already solar device chargers on the market ... and they're 1/7th the cost of this butane charger. The ReVIVE Solar ReStore (to pick just one well-reviewed solar device on Amazon) only costs $29. Plus you don't have to pay for charges - you can just leave it on your window sill or dashboard for free.

Lilliputian would likely counter that its device rescues people who can't/won't plan ahead enough to leave their charger in the sun, but all things being equal, wouldn't you rather think ahead a bit and keep the big pile of money?

In the wake of Hurricane Irene's power outages, I ordered a ReStore & it arrived just before I left for Massachusetts. I'll give it a trial run in the next few weeks & let you know how it works.

You're Welcome: Biodegradable Hokies Jello Shots

From a Virginia Tech fan who'd been annoyed that jello shots involved wasting plastic cups:

It's actually quite simple, the magic is mostly in choosing a color scheme. I just halved the oranges and removed their "guts" (to use in OJ later), then put them in muffin tins and poured the jello (half water, half vodka). Next morning I cut them in half again. Then enjoy!

For bonus green points, you can compost the rinds:

Park(ing) Day Will Blow Your Mind

Think about your neighborhood. Think about how much of it taken up by parking spaces - not just marked parking spaces, but streets that are wider than they need to be for traffic so cars can park on one or both sides.

Now think about how many of those parking spaces are filled, even at peak usage times. If you're in Adams Morgan, parking's probably pretty efficiently used. But if you're in Germantown or Springfield or even many parts of Arlington, there are vast amounts of land taken up by little-used parking areas - land that could be used in myriad other ways.

Now think about what you could do with that unused land if it wasn't parking. Could you build a playground? Plant a garden? Put in some shade trees to make your summer walk to Metro a bit cooler? Open space for an off-the-charts adorable scene like this?

That's what Par(king) Day is all about. GreaterGreaterWashington.org has more pictures & video from celebrations around the region.

Revisiting Arizona's Solar vs. Virginia's Coal

A few years back, I did a post about two states making divergent energy choices - Arizona picking renewable power, Virginia picking coal.

So how's solar power working for Arizona?

About 850 construction workers have descended on Gila Bend to work on the plants this summer, and about double that number are expected next year as the largest alternative-energy project in the state, the Solana Generating Station [at right], ramps up construction. [...]

Abel Ortiz, 49, of Buckeye, had been out of work for months before landing a job as a laborer at the power plant.

He said the pay assembling the solar-panel arrays was good. Normally, a labor job would pay about $8 an hour, but he's making more than $10 an hour, he said. [...]

The two small plants have a combined 34 megawatts of capacity, and Solana has 280, putting the economic benefit to Gila Bend north of $300 million from the current projects.

"These projects have been taking a lot of folks that have been unemployed and putting them to work," Geisler said.

Meanwhile, electricity prices in Virginia are up about 35 percent since 2005. Electric rates in Arizona have increased somewhat, but there's one major difference: While Arizona has incentivized efficiency, the Virginia General Assembly still tells Dominion Virginia Power to make more profit by selling you more juice.

So while Arizona Public Service Co. will be trying to cut its customers' electricity use 22 percent by 2020, Dominion Virginia Power expects demand to increase 30 percent by 2026. That means lower electricity bills in Arizona and higher electricity bills in Virginia.

Celebrating 40 Years of Pissing Off the Powerful (Video)

Happy 40th birthday, Greenpeace! (Naughty word warning.)

Last Month Was America's 2nd-Hottest August On Record

The latest State of the Climate report is out from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. The top news:

• August of 2011 was the 2nd-hottest ever in the United States
• Globally, August was the 8th-hottest on record
• So far, 2011 is Earth's 11th-hottest year on record

On top of that, not only did Texas' June through August break the record for hottest three-month stretch for any state, but Oklahoma's June through August is #2 on the list. The Dust Bowl's been pushed to third - by more than a full degree.

What's the impact of that extreme heat, and with it extreme drought? As the Texas Forest Service put it, "No one on the face of this Earth has ever fought fires in these extreme conditions."

Watch how fast the winds of Tropical Storm Lee whipped one wildfire through Texas (in real time):



Might be time for climate science deniers to face reality.

In Defense of Using Old Stuff Till It Breaks

A friend got his nice, new briefcase stolen at District Chophouse last night. Luckily his laptop, iPod, Blackberry and wallet were not inside ... but his keys were.

My friends always kid me about my giant ugly secondhand laptop backpack that's been in use for a total of about a decade and has gone through several repairs. I've thought about replacing it, but this makes me think twice. At least it screams IF I COULD AFFORD ANYTHING OF VALUE DON'T YOU THINK I'D PUT IT IN A NICER BAG THAN THIS.

Susan Collins Only In Favor of Saving Lives If Anderson Cooper's Black T-Shirt is Watching

The Environmental Protection Agency's proposed limits on pollution from industrial boilers and process heaters would annually prevent 6,600 premature deaths, more than 4,000 non-fatal heart attacks, more than 1,600 cases of acute bronchitis, and more than 313,000 missed work and school days. But Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) wants to block those protections, citing an electric utility consulting group's warning that retrofitting their operations to stop killing so many people would surely cost jobs.

I know it's not surprising that Republicans - even ones the media likes to call "moderates" like Sen. Collins - are trying to take us back to the Bush-Cheney era playbook of letting the free market make the rules. You know, the strategy that gave us the worst job creation results on record.

But still, this sentence stood out:

Collins noted that her bill would exempt some regulations needed to deal with emergencies, such as threats to public health and safety.

So Sen. Collins is fine with 6,600 Americans dying prematurely as long as they do it in the quiet corner of a hospital out of the public eye. But if it's going to be a big news story, suddenly every life is precious.

One Small Recycling Event Keeps 30,632 Pounds of Electronics Out of Landfills

I was really impressed by Saturday's Fall Recycling Extravaganza here in Falls Church. There were plenty of staff, the event was well-organized, there was no line, and in no time I'd dropped off about 50 pounds of old electronics (most of that a computer & its monitor).

How much electronic equipment, potentially laden with hazardous material, was kept out of the landfill? Here's a tally from Barbara Gordon, Falls Church director of communications:

A total of 30,632 pounds or 15.3 tons of electronics and computer equipment were collected at the City of Falls Church’s fall Recycling Extravaganza on Sept. 10. Total weight of items collected and therefore kept out of the waste stream and the land fill were:

• 19,472 pounds of electronics
• 136 TVs, estimated at 6,120 pounds
• 144 computer monitors, estimated at 5,040 pounds
• Combined total 11,160 pounds of cathode ray tubes

And that's just in a Little City of 12,332. If your community isn't holding a similar event, it's not because there isn't demand.

1880s View of Rock Creek Park: Totally Worthless

I'm reading Henry David Thoreau's Walden for the first time and will post some more thoughts of that at a later date. But this DCist post is an interesting window into the mentality that Thoreau was pushing back against - that nature is only worth what can be extracted from it. A few years before it was made into a national park in 1890, a DC official proposed building a dam to turn the park into a reservoir. After all, it was "worthless for any other purpose, being precipitous, rocky hillside, covered with thickets of laurel and small timber."

A Decade of Global Warming-Fueled Extreme Weather in DC

Just since I moved to the DC area in May 2002, we've had ...

• 4 of the top 10 warmest years on record
• 3 of the top 8 largest snowfalls on record
• Set the all-time record for most precipitation in a year with 60.83" in 2003

And who knows where this week's rain will fall in the record books as we continue getting triple-teamed by tropical storms. The scary part is we're still in the very early stages of climate change. What kind of extreme weather world will our children face even a couple of decades from now?

But no need to cut our climate pollution, right John Boehner, Eric Cantor & Mitch McConnell? Best to just keep waiting it out, cashing coal & oil checks, and blaming moon volcanoes.

UPDATE 11:10am: Capital Weather Gang looks at some of this week's highest rainfall totals, with Fort Belvoir's 8.82" ranking among the highest on record. Joe Romm has a good look at this month's East Coast flooding through a historic lens.

Also, from the polluter-funded "Capital Research Center," we have a new crazy climate science denier meme: Cosmic rays! Even the article the CRC staffer links starts, "It sounds like a conspiracy theory ..." Yes! Yes it does!

Now Bottling in the Potomac: Swill Mineral Water

What do you get when you combine heavy, sustained rain, a surplus of impermeable surfaces, and a shortage of water treatment capacity? WTOP has the gory details:

Heavy rains have resulted in the D.C. sewer system overflowing into local waterways including the Potomac. D.C. Water engineers estimate about 250 million gallons of sewer overflow including raw sewage have been released into local waterways this week.

Due to these hazardous swim conditions, organizers of the 2011 Nation's Triathlon have canceled the swim portion of Sunday's event. There will be a 40K bike and 10K run only.

What's in a combined sewage overflow? You don't want to know. But if you're a glutton for punishment, Riverkeeper.org has the gory details.

Rick Perry: Galileo Got Harassed By Ignorant Politicians Like Me, Too!

At last night's Republican presidential debate, the harshest blow may have been landed by Rick Perry ... against Rick Perry.

The Texas governor, already infamous for his climate science ignorance, somehow dug his own hole even deeper last night. Perry mangled an analogy and managed to compare himself to the religious and/or political figures who found Galileo's sun-centered model of the solar system to be an inconvenient truth:

"Galileo got outvoted for a spell," said Perry, in attempting to argue that the issue of climate change remains "unsettled." But what Perry fails to realize is the fact that the scientific community actually agreed with Galileo. It was the clergy who outvoted him, accusing him of being a heretic. "By the time Galileo was publishing on heliocentrism, the idea was already circulating and widely accepted in scientific circles, including Jesuits," explains Joshua Rosneau from the National Center for Science Education. "He wasn't outvoted by scientists, he was outvoted by the political and religious leadership of his country."

The example of Galileo would actually make a great metaphor for climate change scientists, not the deniers. Following his Galileo blunder, Perry parrots the familiar political reasoning behind brushing off the theory of climate change, one supported by the vast majority of environmental scientists--97 percent of them, in fact. Perry warns of putting "America’s economic future in jeopardy, asking us to cut back in areas that would have monstrous economic impact on this country." But a study by the National Academy of Science and funded by Congress said bluntly that the "the environmental, economic, and humanitarian risks posed by climate change indicate a pressing need for substantial action to limit the magnitude of climate change and to prepare for adapting to its impacts." Despite what Perry claims, climate change continues to be debated not by scientists but by politicians.

Even as his own state of Texas is ravaged by global warming-fueled wildfires, exactly in line with the predictions of climate scientists, Rick Perry still denies reality. Think it has anything to do with the more than $11 million Perry has raked in from oil companies? Heaven forbid.

Fall's Local Recycling Events Start This Weekend

Got an old computer you want to dispose of safely? Eyeglasses with an outdated prescription? Communities in our region are holding their fall recycling events, collecting a lot more than what they pick up curbside:

• Arlington: E-CARE, Saturday October 15th, 8:30am-3pm, Thomas Jefferson Middle School, 125 S. Old Glebe Rd.
• DC: Holds Household Hazardous Waste/E-cycling/Document Shredding events on the first Saturday of the month (except holidays), 8am-3pm, Ft. Totten Transfer Station, 4900 John F. McCormack Road NE
• Fairfax: Household Hazardous Waste Event, Saturday September 10th, 9am-2pm, McLean Governmental Center1437 Balls Hill Road, McLean, VA
• Falls Church: Semi-Annual Recycling Extravaganza, Saturday September 10th, 9am-2pm, Falls Church Recycling Center, 217 Gordon Road

You can Google to find out if your community offers electronics recycling events, or see more options at the Environmental Protection Agency's eCycling.

Another Climate Denier Scandal: Will Media Ever Treat Them Skeptically?

A paper came out a couple of months ago questioning climate science. It quickly became the great shining hope of the climate science denial crowd. An actual scientific paper! Accepted by an actual scientific editor! And published in an actual scientific journal!

But a review of the paper by Roy Spencer and William Braswell published in Remote Sensing is dashing the hopes of climate deniers on the rocks of reality:

• The paper itself? "Fundamentally flawed" and contains "false claims."
• The editor? Apologized for accepting the paper and resigned.
• The journal? Editorialized that the paper "should not have been published."

The question has become, how many scandals will it take for the media to apply any degree of skepticism to what climate science deniers say? Deniers hype "Climategate" - independent investigation finds no wrongdoing. Deniers attack Michael Mann - independent investigation vindicates Mann. Deniers tout work of Edward Wegman - independent investigation finds Wegman's work riddled with plagiarism & inaccuracies.

Instead, the media breathlessly hypes whatever lies the deniers push, but barely mentions the independent investigations that reveal the truth. And the scientific consensus on climate change remains as inconvenient as ever - Earth is warming, man-made carbon pollution is to blame, and we're running out of time to make the switch to clean energy as climate disasters multiply.

1,252 Arrested at White House Protesting Tar Sands: Is President Obama Listening?

More than 200 people were arrested Saturday in the final day of the civil disobedience urging President Obama to reject a proposed tar sands pipeline. More from TarSandsAction.org:

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline has become the most important environmental decision facing President Obama before the 2012 election and sparked nationwide opposition, from Nebraska ranchers to former Obama campaigners. A petition with 617,428 names opposing the pipeline will be delivered to the White House today.

Over the course of the two-week sit-in 1,252 people were arrested, including top climate scientists, landowners from Texas and Nebraska, former Obama for America staffers, First Nations leaders from Canada, and notable individuals including Bill McKibben, former White House official Gus Speth, NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen, actor Daryl Hannah, filmmaker Josh Fox, and author Naomi Klein.

“Back home we are fighting to protect our land and water. This week, we decided to bring that fight to the President’s doorstep,” said Jane Kleeb, Director of BOLD Nebraska, who led a delegation of Nebraskans who were arrested this morning. “We are acting on our values and expect our President to act as well.”

Despite the 1,252 arrests and about a thousand more people rallying in Lafayette Park, the White House is continuing its code of silence: "We heard not one word from them," McKibben told the New York Times.

For more details, photos and a video from Saturday's protest, check out my full post over at Blue Virginia.

More Pollution, Higher Gas Prices: Tell Obama to Say No to Tar Sands

From activist Bill McKibben to actress Daryl Hannah, about 600 people have been arrested so far this week at the White House. They're protesting a planned tar sands pipeline cutting from the Canadian border all the way down to Texas.

Al Gore explains why a bipartisan coalition has come together to ask President Obama to take a stand against the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline:

The leaders of the top environmental groups in the country, the Republican Governor of Nebraska, and millions of people around the country—including hundreds of people who have bravely participated in civil disobedience at the White House—all agree on one thing: President Obama should block a planned pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.

The tar sands are the dirtiest source of fuel on the planet. As I wrote in Our Choice two years ago, gasoline made from the tar sands gives a Toyota Prius the same impact on climate as a Hummer using gasoline made from oil. This pipeline would be an enormous mistake. The answer to our climate, energy and economic challenges does not lie in burning more dirty fossil fuels — instead, we must continue to press for much more rapid development of renewable energy and energy efficient technologies and cuts in the pollution that causes global warming.

Here's what's most ridiculous: The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline wouldn't cut gas prices. The company that wants to build the pipeline admits it would actually raise gas prices 15 cents a gallon in the Midwest, where it's currently forced to dump tar sands oil at a discount. Why would President Obama even consider a pipeline that would put communities, water supplies and wildlife at risk, would lock in our oil dependence, and would raise gas prices?

But with Energy Secretary Steven Chu making approving statements about the pipeline and the White House press secretary refusing to even tell President Obama about the protests, it's fair to wonder if the fix is in for dirty tar sands.

Learn more at TarSandsAction.org, then tell President Obama to say no to dirty tar sands.