Maybe Exxon Mobil's Profits Can Buy Us a New Planet

Exxon Mobil made more than $3 billion in profit per month in the first quarter of 2013 and its CEO says now is no time to go using less oil just because it's destroying our planet's climate:

The CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp. says there’s no quick replacement for oil, and sharply cutting oil’s use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would make it harder to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.

“What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?” CEO Rex Tillerson said at the oil giant’s annual meeting Wednesday.

Think about how much oil the world's poor consume. Are they buying cars and driving to work, or are they walking or biking? Would they be helped more by lower gas prices for cars they can't afford anyway, or by making small-scale clean energy more affordable - solar-powered local water filtration systems, home solar stoves, and better battery storage?

Now think about who suffers most from global warming-fueled extreme weather disasters. Is it wealthy jet-setters like Rex Tillerson? Or is it that subsistence farmer in Africa who Tillerson's holding up as a human shield to protect his company's mind-bogglingly huge profits?

Video: Two Minute Drill on What's Wrong with Coal

New video from the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign:

 

Sen. Jim Inhofe on Disaster Aid: Totally Not at All Racist

Disaster aid went to victims of superstorm Sandy far away from the New Jersey landfall in places like Rhode Island. But Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) had some very specific places in mind for his claim that Sandy aid was wasted or stolen:

They were getting things — for instance, that was supposed to be in New Jersey, they had things in the Virgin Islands, they were fixing roads there. They were putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C. Everyone was getting in and exporting the tragedy that took place. That won't happen in Oklahoma.

Gee, I wonder what the Virgin Islands (76% black) and DC (the original Chocolate City) have in common?

I don't know what's more amazing: That Inhofe didn't even bother to toss one non-minority-heavy area onto his list, or that unless a Republican says BLACK BLACK BLACKITY BLACK no reporters will call him on being a racist.

All victims of natural disasters deserve our support. You can donate directly through the Red Cross.

If You Deliberately Ask Dumb Questions, People Will Think You're Dumb

On a recent flight with my girlfriend, we shared earbuds and watched a TED Talk interview with Elon Musk, founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, Solar City, and SpaceX.

In contrast to TED's usual style of assuming a high level of audience sophistication, host Chris Anderson launched into a series of curiously ignorant questions. Aren't electric car batteries heavy? (So are tanks full of gasoline.) Isn't gasoline just thousands of years of solar power compressed into a small space? (Put a dinosaur in your tank!)

My girlfriend reached over to pause the video. "Why is he asking dumb questions? Is he stupid?" Instead of helping a broad spectrum of audience learn more about clean energy, Anderson seemed to be asking questions mostly on behalf of a narrow slice of clean energy skeptics.

What hosts and journalists like Anderson may not realize is that if you ask deliberately ignorant questions, you risk having people wonder if you yourself are ignorant.

The Green Milestone: 200,000 Visitors

The Green Miles just passed 200,000 visits. Thanks for reading!

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Don't Back Down to Cape Cod Anti-Wind Bullies

Longtime Cape Wind opponent Peter Kenney has an op-ed in today's New Bedford Standard Times attacking me personally. It's part of a broader strategy by wind opponents to bully clean energy supporters into silence. Will Massachusetts leaders stand up for reasoned debate, or give into scare tactics?

What was my crime in Kenney's eyes? Daring to point out that Bill Koch, a billionaire Cape Cod estate owner and heir to a polluting energy fortune, is blocking New Bedford clean energy jobs by bankrolling Cape Wind opposition.

I'm only the latest person Kenney has targeted for personal attacks. "Mr. Kenney has a history of not being able to disagree respectfully," Yarmouth Planning Board Chairman Erik Tolley said last year.

What's bizarre is that in Kenney's op-ed, he claims I refused to take his call. I talked to him on April 23 for two minutes. Here's my annotation of the phone record:

It was a short call. He immediately launched into berating me for supporting Cape Wind and accused me of taking bribes not to say anything bad about Cape Wind. I asked why he was calling since it didn't exactly sound like there was much room to win him over. We said goodbye. That was it.

It's not just Kenney - across Cape Cod in Falmouth, wind opponents are using similar bullying tactics. "As town meeting members spoke, turbine abutters Neil Andersen and Colin Murphy sat in the back of the auditorium, quietly heckling speakers at times," Sean Teehan reported in the Cape Cod Times last month.

Falmouth has already voted against dismantling its turbines, but the anti-wind crowd has forced yet another vote on May 24. With Fox on their side, you have to wonder: Will the anti-wind folks will just keep forcing votes until they get their way?

More broadly, Massachusetts elected officials and news organizations need to decide how we'll determine our shared energy future. Will we have a reasoned, fact-based dialogue and move forward together? Or will we let the loudest, harshest and most frequently raised voices dominate debate and shout down anyone who disagrees with them?

If you stand with clean energy, sign up and register your support at Cape Wind Now.

Gabriel Gomez Puts Personal Profit Over Protecting Massachusetts

Gabriel Gomez's incoherence on climate science and energy policy makes a lot more sense once you take a deeper dive into his personal finances, as Joshua Israel did at ThinkProgress:

A ThinkProgress review of Gomez’s personal financial disclosure filings reveals that a significant amount of his own money is invested, directly or indirectly, in dirty energy stocks and bonds. These include investments of between $1,000 and $15,000 each in: 

1. Emerson Electric Co., which automates oil and gas operations for energy companies.
2. Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded international oil and gas company.
3. Occidental Petroleum Corp., an international oil and gas exploration and production company.
4. Schlumberger Ltd., a the world’s largest supplier of technology and project management services for the oil and gas industry worldwide.
5. Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc., a deepwater drilling contractor for the oil and gas industry.
6. DTE Energy Co., a Detroit-based electric and gas utility.
7. Dominion Resources, a Richmond-based electric utility.
8. Xcel Energy Inc., a Minneapolis-based electric and gas utility.
9. Gulf Power Co., a Florida-based electric utility.
10. Southern California Edison, a California-based electric utility.
11. Entergy Louisiana, a Louisiana-based electric utility

By doing the dirty work of his out-of-state polluting investments, Gomez is turning his back on the more than 71,000 people who work in Massachusetts' booming clean energy industry. He's also ignoring the impacts that climate change is already having on Massachusetts - stronger storms like Sandy, rising sea levels, deeper droughts, and deadlier summer heat waves.

As I'm knocking on doors for Ed Markey in the weeks ahead, this story speaks to the one thing I'll be telling undecided voters: Gomez is so beholden to big money - polluters, national Republicans, shady tax breaks - that we just can't trust the guy to do what's right for Massachusetts.

Another Inconvenient Truth: Sometimes American Politics Kill People

As the carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere rocket past 400 parts per million this week, what's more evident than ever is the inability of our political systems to respond to this crisis that's killing Americans right now and growing worse by the day.

Politicians and the reporters who cover them do NOT like hearing that. They absolutely hate being told that the American political system isn't responding fast enough to a crisis and that people might die as a result. This is how we do things! How dare you ask us to change just for your issue? The folks in industry don't tell us that we're accomplices in mass death and they throw really killer parties.

But we knew that cigarettes killed tens of millions of people and tobacco companies covered it up ... and Washington took decades to respond. We knew lack of health insurance killed millions of people and bankrupted millions of other families ... and Washington took decades to respond.

The climate crisis cannot be solved by horse trading. It cannot be solved by trying to say yes to everyone - to cutting carbon pollution AND to whatever Big Oil and Big Coal are demanding. And it cannot be solved by We'll Have to Leave It There journalism that tells viewers, "Scientists say this, polluter front groups say that, who can say what's true?"

We need what Grist's David Roberts calls wartime mobilization - an all of the above approach to cutting carbon emissions. Can Washington answer that call to action?

Something Strange is Happening at National Journal

Folks, what is going on at National Journal? How is Coral Davenport allowed to write pieces not based on "scientists say this, polluter front groups say that, who can say what's true?" false equivalency, but on a reasoned interpretation of what's actually reality? Wait till Rush Limbaugh gets wind of this.

Read Coral's piece today on how rank-and-file Republicans are breaking with their party's extreme denier ideology on climate change, and check out her archive of long-form articles on the policy & politics of climate & energy.

Imagining a Tea Partier Reacting to Huge Benefits of EPA Investment

Sure, $1 invested in the Environmental Protection Agency delivers $10 in benefits. But who gets that return? Probably lots of poor brown people, right? Then forget it! GET BIG GOVERNMENT OUT OF PROTECTING MY HEALTH.

Today's Must-Read Piece on Barack Obama and Climate Change

Heading out the door in a few minutes for the groundbreaking for New Bedford's South Terminal, which hopes to service the Cape Wind project when it finally goes in the water late this year or early next, but first a few quick thoughts on Jonathan Chait's New York magazine feature, Obama Might Actually Be the Environmental President:

• If coal & oil state Democrats and purple state Republicans don't like Barack Obama regulating carbon pollution through the Clean Air Act, Chait's piece is a reminder that they should blame Claire McCaskill, Jay Rockefeller, Lisa Murkowski, Lindsey Graham, Blanche Lincoln, and all the other "moderates" who blocked climate & energy legislation in 2010. That legislation would likely have blocked the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating industrial carbon pollution. But extreme Republicans and those "moderates" were successful in blocking it, so now we get the EPA regulations many of those same senators claim to oppose. 
• It could've been an even stronger piece if Chait wasn't so hand-wavy about Keystone XL being important. Climate activists are making a stand on Keystone not just because of Keystone's direct climate impacts. We're taking a stand on it because, for as many positive things as Obama has done, he's been extremely reluctant to say no to new polluting energy projects, from pipelines to oil drilling to coal mining. 
• It's a good reminder that despite Beltway media hype about presidential rhetoric and the bully pulpit, presidential powers are in reality limited by Congress. Bush couldn't completely destroy the environment in part because he was limited by Congressional Democrats. Obama can't completely save the environment because of the same handcuffs. 

Read Chait's article and let me know what you think in comments.

Don't Buy Antibacterial Soap

America has spent decades putting a chemical called triclosan in our soap to wage chemical warfare on every bit of bacteria within a five-mile radius of our skin. So what benefit are we getting? According to an extensive new Associated Press investigation, none:

The [U.S. Food and Drug Administration]'s website currently states that "the agency does not have evidence that triclosan in antibacterial soaps and body washes provides any benefit over washing with regular soap and water."

No benefit. None. But there's this:

Recent studies of triclosan in animals have led scientists to worry that it could increase the risk of infertility, early puberty and other hormone-related problems in humans.

Swell! Thanks for looking out for us, FDA!

Part of the problem is that chemicals like triclosan kill ALL bacteria - good and bad. And during the exact same time we've been massacring all bacteria, friend or foe, reports of food and skin allergies are increasing.

A little dirt is good for your kids. Maybe even a little dog slobber. Afterwards, wash 'em up with some Method, Seventh Generation, or any other old-fashioned, plain ol' soap.

Gabriel Gomez is Completely Incoherent on Climate and Energy Policy

Gabriel Gomez, the Republican opponent of Democrat Ed Markey in the U.S. Senate special election to fill John Kerry's seat in Massachusetts, is working hard to be all things to all people, and nowhere is that more evident than his positions truthiness on climate and energy policy:

Climate change is real. However, while science says climate change is real, addressing the problem must be done rationally. Unfortunately, many solutions offered by politicians in Washington are not rational, and would put America at a competitive disadvantage. We need a serious energy agenda that promotes private sector innovation in both the United States and in other countries around the world.

Oh, I get it. He supports confronting climate change with a national policy to spur clean energy projects like Cape Wind, right? Not exactly:

Gomez, however, said [Cape Wind] is an issue that should be decided at the local level, and that the local authorities have been pretty much excluded from the process. Gomez made it clear his is opposed to Cape Wind.

So, local control all the way! Then he must oppose Keystone XL tar sands pipeline because of strong local opposition, right? Wrong again:

The Obama administration is wrong in stopping the Keystone pipeline, a project that will create jobs, drive down our energy costs, and help us to become energy independent.

Worth noting: Gabriel Gomez thinks that for some reason TransCanada is dramatically lowballing the benefits of its own Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. TransCanada doesn't say Keystone will drive down energy costs - it knows Keystone won't lower gas prices anywhere in America and would actually raise gas prices in the Midwest. TransCanada doesn't say Keystone will make America energy independent - it knows Keystone is an export pipeline that's being built to get tar sands to the Gulf Coast and the international market so Canada doesn't have to dump tar sands oil in the Midwest anymore.

To sum up, Gabriel Gomez says he understands climate change is threatening Massachusetts with extreme weather like superstorm Sandy, rising sea levels, and deadly summer heat waves - he just doesn't want to do anything about it. And Gomez thinks we need a national energy policy, except in cases where the mansion views of Republican donors are threatened, or if those donors really want a polluting project built even if it's not in America's national interest.

What's the reason for Gomez's incoherence? With the U.S. Senate's antiquated disclosure laws, we don't know yet where Gomez is getting his money. But given his refusal to sign the people's pledge to reject big-spending special interests, I'd suspect he personally knows exactly what climate change means, but he knows the implications of that truth are far too inconvenient for today's fossil fuel money-addicted Republican Party.

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.