World's First Comparison of Tim Kaine to Derek Jeter

With Tim Kaine taking a bold stand against the dirty, destructive Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, has my long history of questioning Kaine's motives come to the end of the road?

Back in the 2003 playoffs, I watched Derek Jeter take a head-first dive into the stands while making an incredible catch. On the spot, I pledged to never make fun of Jeter again. I've held to that (while rededicating myself to mocking his teammates like Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira).

I've been on Tim Kaine's case for years now, ever since he served as apologist-in-chief for Dominion Virginia Power's incredibly polluting, wildly expensive, unneeded Wise County coal-fired power plant. But doing the right thing on Keystone XL, especially when so many Democrats like fellow Virginia Sen. Mark Warner are bowing to polluter pressure, is just as clutch as Jeter's dive.

Have I been wrong about Kaine? Should I give him the benefit of the doubt going forward - or even the full Jeter treatment?

Climate Science Deniers: Really Old and Really Strange

The Heartland Institute has a new climate denial "book" out called The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism. I can only assume the title is a reference to the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, even though the Heartland version is for some reason one "Mad" short.

How old are the folks over at The Heartland Institute? Their book title references a movie that came out a half century ago. Its star, Spencer Tracy, died when President Obama was six years old.

How strange are the folks over at The Heartland Insitute? Look at that "book" cover. Are those ... hip-hop polar bears? I think? Driving a convertible through ... a corn field that's getting hit by a thunderstorm? Also, the polar bears are terrible drivers taking up both lanes of what is apparently a one-way street through the middle of nowhere.

It's like something your old crazy conservative uncle would post to Facebook and think it was HILARIOUS, which tells you a lot about The Heartland Institute's membership and funders, and about the ability of climate deniers to connect with anyone outside their cocoon of crazy old conservatives.

Because Driving Sucks, That's Why

My answer to the question in the headline of this Brad Plumer post, which you should go read.

Driving is expensive, time-consuming, boring*, makes you road rage-y, pollutes the air, and cooks the planet. What's not to like?

Taking the bus or train is no picnic, but at least you can let the driver stress out while you relax. Biking is also not a magic carpet ride, but at least you get some exercise and fresh air and it's extremely cheap.

I would also point out that advances in phone technology have made taking the bus or train significantly more fun. It used to be that you'd have to lug a book or a Walkman with you if you wanted to read or listen to music - and if you forgot one of those, welcome to Boringville. Now I can not only do either of those things on my lightweight, long-battery-life iPhone, I can also play games, read news or text my friends, and it's already in my pocket so there's no remembering involved.

* - I like long drives through scenic areas as much as anyone, but we all know this is 0.0001% of driving. The other 99.9999% involves wishing you were already there.

President Obama & Climate Change: Bold Talk, Meek Action

Hey, remember President Obama's inaugural address and State of the Union speech? How he compared the need for climate action to the civil rights movement? Pledged to stand up for the victims of climate-fueled extreme weather like superstorm Sandy? Said that if Congress wouldn't act on climate change, he would?

Now that we're past the time for dramatic speeches, President Obama is back to barely mentioning climate change in his budget, considering delaying and/or watering down first-ever limits on industrial carbon pollution, and refusing to talk about whether the Arkansas tar sands pipeline spill means we should reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

It was fun while it lasted.

The Polluter Conspiracy to Delay Cape Wind, Massachusetts Jobs

With Cape Wind finally on the verge of construction, I have an op-ed in today's New Bedford Standard-Times pointing out that the years-long wait has unnecessarily delayed hiring thousands of workers here in southeastern Massachusetts:

What makes this damaging delay so outrageous is that it's no accident — a coalition of big polluters and big-money landowners on the Cape have conspired to fund the "Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound," a front group that's spent millions to keep Cape Wind tied up in red tape. On Tuesday, the Alliance is set to hit an outrageous new low: At exactly the same time as Gov. Deval Patrick and Mayor Jon Mitchell are finally breaking ground on the South Terminal here in New Bedford, the Alliance's head will be in Washington urging Congress to kill incentives for offshore wind energy.

Please click over to read the whole thing here, and if you agree, share it on your Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Fun fact: I've written 1,654 posts here at The Green Miles, but this is the first op-ed I've submitted and gotten published in the dead tree edition of a newspaper.

When Climate Polls Collide with Political Conventional Wisdom

A new Gallup poll shows worry about global warming and acceptance of the climate science consensus is up sharply in the last two years. The spike isn't being fueled by Democrats - it's being fueled in large part Republicans.

But the political conventional wisdom in Washington presents a very real obstacle to this reality breaking through. The same pundits who bemoan partisan polarization in one breath perpetuate it the next - all Democrats hate coal, and all Republicans hate clean air! The nuance of rank-and-file Republicans disagreeing with Republican party leadership stands little chance of breaking through these stereotypes.

Let's dig into the poll numbers. You could make the case that Republicans are just cooling off from the heated fight over clean energy & climate legislation that had party leaders, polluters, and conservative media telling them that they had to oppose climate action to support the team.

But we're just coming off an election year in which Republican candidates went after climate science and clean energy with renewed fury, yet rank-and-file Republican acceptance of the climate science consensus went up anyway. What's really going on here?

Another poll, this one from the Yale Forum on Climate Communication, fills in some of those gaps. It finds rank-and-file Republicans frustrated with their party leadership on climate change & clean energy:

• A majority of respondents (52%) believe climate change is happening, while 26 percent believe it is not, and 22 percent say they “don’t know.”
• By a margin of 2 to 1, respondents say America should take action to reduce our fossil fuel use.
• Only one third of respondents agree with the Republican Party’s position on climate change, while about half agree with the party’s position on how to meet America’s energy needs.
• A large majority of respondents say their elected representatives are unresponsive to their views about climate change.

There are organizations like ConserAmerica and former GOP Rep. Bob Inglis' Energy and Enterprise Initiative trying to break through. But when the Koch brothers and other billionaire polluters are funding such massive operations to keep GOP leadership polluter-aligned, what chance do true conservative reformers have of breaking through?

Will the Next Major Tar Sands Spill be in New England?

Homes evacuated. Chemicals fouling the air. Wildlife soaked in tar sands oil. Could it happen in New England?

I traveled to Arkansas last week to monitor wildlife impacts of the Exxon Mobil Pegasus tar sands pipeline rupture for the National Wildlife Federation. I kept thinking, if the tar sands industry gets its wish and reverses the Trailbreaker pipeline across northern New England to carry tar sands, will I be in New Hampshire covering a spill like this in a few years?

The parallels to the Exxon Mobil Pegasus pipeline are eerie: An old pipeline built to supply oil where it was needed, now reversed to carry corrosive tar sands at high temperature and pressure to supply profit to Canada's polluting tar sands industry. Exxon claimed Pegasus was safe, right up until a 22-foot-long gash opened in it below an Arkansas subdivision, unnoticed until local homeowners called 911.

A Boston Globe editorial raises all the right questions:

As President Obama weighs approval of Keystone XL sometime this year, concern over tar sands oil has spread from the Midwest to New England. Hundreds of people rallied earlier this year in Portland, Maine, against even the possibility that such crude from Alberta, which environmentalists say is the stickiest and dirtiest form of oil, would wind its way through the pristine lakes, rivers, and rugged terrain of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Five years ago, Enbridge floated a proposal to reverse pipelines that currently send imported oil into the interior of New England from the marine terminal in Portland, Maine. Instead, Enbridge would transport oil from the tar sands of Canada to tankers in Portland, bound for southern refineries along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Enbridge managing director Steve Letwin said in a 2008 investor conference call, “We’re pretty excited about this opportunity,” because it was a much cheaper alternative for that company than building a new pipeline such as Keystone. [...] 

[T]he endless Kalamazoo cleanup, and disputes now erupting in Arkansas as to how much damage is being done by that spill, raise inevitable questions that must be answered before anyone should contemplate reversing the pipelines through New England. Though Keystone is foremost in the mind of the White House, the EPA and NTSB should also take the time to assess the risk of bringing tar sands oil through one of the most beautiful and environmentally sensitive parts of the United States.

Much stronger safety standards are clearly needed for existing tar sands pipelines, as the National Wildlife Federation and partners from Texas to Maine have called for. But the bigger question is, why are we letting America serve as the middleman to get Canadian tar sands to the international market at all? 

Whether it's Pegasus, Trailbreaker or Keystone XL, these tar sands pipelines all have one thing in common: They go to coastal ports. America gets all the risk of spills and climate disruption, the international market gets all the oil, and Canadian tar sands producers get all the profit.

Right now, the national debate centers on Keystone XL, and that's where you need to make your voice heard. Please take a moment right now to ask President Obama to say no to Keystone XL. If we can stop Keystone XL, we can turn the tide against dirty tar sands oil.

Or maybe in a few years we'll be looking at pictures of oiled wildlife and watching videos of oiled creeks in northern New England. It's up to us to raise our voices loud enough that Canada will be forced to look elsewhere to peddle its dirty tar sands oil.

Exxon: Now Delivering Oil Right to Your Driveway

Update on Coal's Long Sunset

From the Washington Post WonkBlog's Brad Plumer. Previous coverage here and here.

Back From America's Newest Flammable Marsh

Apologies for a lack of posts this week, was traveling to Arkansas for the National Wildlife Federation to monitor impacts of the Exxon Mobil tar sands pipeline spill. Read about my trip at the NWF blog.

Is Man-Made Deer Overpopulation the Right Issue to Take a Stand for Animal Rights?

If you were to design a system for ensuring an overpopulation of deer, it would look a lot like DC's Rock Creek Park - a huge expanse of temperate land with well-maintained vegetation, no predators, and no hunting allowed.

And it's worked perfectly! So now the National Park Service is having to pay hunters to harvest the deer for food:

Sixty to 70 deer are expected to be shot. After the carcasses are tested for disease, the venison will be donated to food pantries.

The Park Service says that what it euphemistically calls a deer “harvest” is needed to safeguard the health of the park, the herd, and the people who live nearby or use the park. With 70 deer per square acre, the park has about four times the density considered ideal.

Animal rights activists have called for the Park Service to use birth control, but that's proved expensive and ineffective. Meanwhile, the results of the man-made deer explosion have proved disastrous, with car-deer accidents and Lyme disease among the serious public health threats. When animal rights activists are comparing the deer cull to Newtown and using the hashtag #DontKillBambi, are they being dismissive of those threats to people?

The case for culling is even greater if you see Rock Creek Park for what it is - a man-made deer farm. Why not take advantage of it, especially considering how much deer meat food pantries stand to gain? I'd seen reports online that one deer can feed up to 200 people, which seemed high but is backed up by the math. One pound of deer meat makes up to six servings. The average deer provides 40 to 60 pounds of meat. By that math, assuming every culled deer is healthy, we're talking about meat for 10,000 meals provided free to food pantries.

The No-Brainer of the Century: Solar on Old Landfills

Via WPRI.com

A new solar farm has gone up on the old town dump in Dartmouth in just five months:

The capped Russells Mills Road Landfill has a new lease on life after Borrego Solar Systems Inc. quietly topped the former dump with a solar farm, a venture that drew none of the complaints common to similar solar projects in town.

"It's the town of Dartmouth that showed leadership today," state Department of Energy Resources Commissioner Mark Sylvia said Wednesday during a ribbon cutting for the facility.

State and local officials including U.S. Rep. Bill Keating, state Rep. Chris Markey, Select Board Chairwoman Lara Stone and others attended Wednesday's ceremony celebrating the 5,300-panel, 1.4 megawatt solar farm slated to meet 20 percent of the town's energy needs.

If you have an old landfill and you don't have a solar farm on top of it, you're throwing money away. Even in March as the sun shines for hours less and at much lower intensity than it will in summer, the solar farm is already producing more than a megawatt.

But the article also has a reminder that to really reap the benefits of renewable energy, towns should consider properly-sited wind power:

The solar farm can produce 1.4 megawatts of power, slightly less than one of the two 1.5 megawatt wind turbines in Fairhaven, which stand 396 feet tall on land owned by the town.

Learn more at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.

Why Do Only Progressives, and Not Polluters, Need to be Diverse?

Darryl Fears has a good piece in today's Washington Post taking a closer look at diversity in the environmental movement - or lack of it. Tough but fair. I work for an environmental organization and I agree green groups don't do nearly enough.

But what about polluters and their allies - how are they doing on diversity?

• Exxon Mobil board of directors: 12 members, 2 women, 0 Hispanics, 2 African Americans
• Arch Coal board of directors: 11 members, 1 woman, 0 Hispanics, 0 African Americans
• Heritage Foundation board of trustees: 27 members, 8 women, 0 Hispanics, 1 African American
• Congressional Republican leadership (House & Senate): 10 members, 1 woman, 0 Hispanics, 0 African Americans

What about workers in polluting industries? It's just as bad:

• Oil & gas extraction: 23% women, 9% Hispanic, 4% African American
• Coal mining: 6% women, 3% Hispanic, 1% African American

No one writes articles about polluting industries being almost entirely white men because it's taken for granted that polluting industries are all run by rich old white guys. Even when they repeatedly get caught using stock photos to try to not look to the public like such rich old white guys - and Republicans, coal, and chemical polluters all have - it isn't covered in the mainstream media because again, everyone is just supposed to already know that polluters are rich old white guys who buy pictures of non-rich old white guys to make themselves look like they care about non-rich old white guys.

Again, I think conservationists need to do more to reach out to Hispanics and African-Americans. Excluding them isn't just wrong, it's bad business - polls show minorities are exceptionally strong supporters of climate action in particular and clean air & water in general.

But much like the media holds polluters and their allies to a much lower standard ethically, they're held to no standard on diversity.

Sunday Morning Shines Light on Sharing Services

Until recently, you'd be much more likely to read about collaborative consumption on Grist than in the Boston Globe. But Avis' purchase of ZipCar has brought sudden credibility to the notion that car and room sharing services are profitable and here to stay. CBS Sunday Morning takes a closer look:

GOP Congressman: "Best Thing About the Earth" is Drilling It

Not sustaining life and providing food and water and shelter. Fossil fuels.

Statements like this reveal how incredibly insular the world of Congressmen can be. Do you think Rep. Stockman spends more time talking to sportsmen? To parents? To students? Or to oil & gas lobbyists?

The best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas come out.
— Rep. Steve Stockman (@SteveStockmanTX) March 21, 2013

WCVB's Harvey Leonard on Climate Change and Extreme Weather

If you're a TV meteorologist who's not talking about global warming, you're not giving your viewers the whole story.

If you're not talking about how warmer ocean temperatures are adding strength to storms or talking about how higher sea levels are adding to flooding concerns (among many other ways carbon pollution is changing weather patterns), you're putting ignorance, fear or politics ahead of forecasting the facts.

Last week, some Massachusetts viewers went to WCVB to say thanks to WCVB Chief Meteorologist Harvey Leonard for talking about global warming's role in fueling the February "Nemo" blizzard. You can add your name to the petition thanking Leonard at ForecastFacts.org.

Here's the segment that earned Leonard viewer thanks:

Democrats Can't Have It Both Ways on Keystone XL and Climate Action

Self-styled "centrist" Democrats like Senators Michael Bennet (Colorado), Bob Casey (Pennsylvania), Claire McCaskill (Missouri), and Tim Kaine and Mark Warner (Virginia) say they recognize climate reality and support action to cut carbon pollution.

But ... then they see polls that show the public is split on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline ... and feel pressure from Very Serious People in Washington who won't say no to anything the oil, gas and coal industries want ... and think, maybe we can have both? Get credit for support this current & specific polluting pipeline AND burnish climate bona fides by hand-waving towards some future & not yet existent climate effort?

No. Climate action isn't just about the easy & popular things, like clean energy and energy efficiency. It's also about the hard things, like saying no to oil and coal barons who may spend lots of money to try to defeat you in your next re-election campaign. You can't claim to support climate action, but wilt like corn caught in a global warming-fueled drought every time big polluters come asking for a favor. 

Either you support climate action. Or you support Keystone XL and don't really care about things like climate-fueled extreme weather or protecting our natural resources for future generations. You can't have it both ways.

Today at Noon: Talk About Talking About Science

Northeastern University's College of Science has invited me to join their Twitter chat today at noon ET. We'll be talking about science communication and how today's college students can be tomorrow's Bill Nye The Science Guy.

If you'd like to ask me a question or join the conversation, tweet with the tag #sciencechat.

If you're not a Twitterer, leave your question in comments here and I'll field it like Nomahhh going behind second base to grab a grounder. (And then I guess that means I'll also throw it into the 5th row, because no one could follow up a graceful snag with a god-awful throw like Nomar.)

North American Energy Independence is Imaginary, Awful and Socialist

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is once again touting the Republican fantasy called "North American energy independence." Here's a quick reminder of why that concept is phony, horrifying and anti-capitalist:

• Coal companies want to build coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest to send America's coal to Asia. Oil companies want to build the Keystone XL tar sands export pipeline to the Gulf Coast to send North America's oil to Asia - and the Republican plan would force its completion! Unless Republicans plan to nationalize the fossil fuel supplies of both the U.S. and Canada and ban exports rendering Keystone pointless, the GOP plan is imaginary. 
• If we have any chance of keeping global warming to a livable limit, we need to be on a path to using much less of carbon intensive-fuels right now and keeping a great deal of our known fossil fuel supplies buried in the ground forever. The Republican plan would essentially do the opposite - dig them up and burn them much faster than we're currently doing, cooking the planet even faster than we're currently doing. We're talking a 10 degree rise in temperature and 3+ foot rise in sea level in the lifetime of a child born today. Just imagine superstorm Sandy with an extra 10 degrees of fuel and an extra 3 feet of storm surge. The GOP plan is awful.
• The Republican plan would continue massive government help and direct subsidies for the worst polluting fuels with no limit on carbon pollution. The GOP plan is socialism for big polluters.

As Steve Benen details, the Ryan budget is also imaginary in that it pretends the 2012 election never happened.

Dominion Sale Shows Old Coal Power Plants Are Nearly Worthless

Big news today as Dominion announced it's selling two old coal-fired power plants and one gas power plant - and the price-tag is eye-popping:

The power stations are:

• Brayton Point Power Station, a 1,528-megawatt power station in Somerset, Mass., with three coal-fired units and one unit fired by oil or natural gas. Dominion has owned it since 2005.
• Kincaid Power Station, a 1,158-megawatt power station in Kincaid, Ill., with two 579-megawatt coal-fired units. Dominion has owned Kincaid since 1998.
• Elwood Power Station, a 1,424-megawatt power station outside Chicago, with nine natural gas-fired combustion turbines. Dominion has owned a 50 percent interest (712 megawatts) in and operated the station since Elwood became operational in 1999.

The sale will require the approval of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust clearance.

Dominion announced last September that it was exiting the merchant coal-fired generation business as part of the company's continual review of its assets to ensure they fit strategically and support its objectives to improve return on invested capital and shareholder value. The sale is expected to result in after-tax proceeds of approximately $650 million, which includes cash tax benefits generated from the sale. The company plans to invest the proceeds in the company's regulated businesses and reduce debt needs.

"Merchant power" is basically when you own a station and sell the electricity to a utility. It's always a risky business and at a time when America's electricity use is falling overall and the price of electricity from natural gas is falling, now's looking like a good time to bail for whatever Dominion can get.

But look at that low sale value - and that includes tax write-offs! Considering Dominion had spent $1 billion on upgrades at Brayton Point alone in recent years, including two enormous cooling towers, Dominion must be taking an absolute bath. But especially as new Clean Air Act limits on industrial carbon pollution loom, Dominion's happy to take what it can get for the coal plants.

Speaking of limits on industrial carbon pollution, now would be a good time to tell President Obama you support the strongest limits possible.