I live in Colorado, and I believe in co-ops, so this is particularly frustrating -

Evidently, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, an electric co-op which is part of the 900 member National Rural Electric Cooperative Association gave $100,000 to Patrick Michaels, a UVA professor of environmental science.

That seems fine, except, the IREA has substantial interest in keeping coal plants the way of the world, and Michaels is a fellow at the CATO Institute.

If you don't know, CATO gets money from folks that don't believe in global warming, and Michaels is one of their top global warming skeptics.

A look at some of their funders, shows the following:
Energy conglomerates include: Chevron Companies, Exxon Company, Shell Oil Company and Tenneco Gas, as well as the American Petroleum Institute, Amoco Foundation and Atlantic Richfield Foundation.

Anyway, you can read all about Michaels here, including excerpts from his papers and books - his emails in there too, if you're interested.

Back to the co-op: one of the most egregious aspects of this story, from ABC News:

Lewandowski says the IREA board of directors legally and unanimously approved hiring Michaels — who he says has "significant credentials" — though he says that IREA's 133,000 customers were not notified first.

While this is technically in keeping with the by-laws of the co-op, it goes completely against the spirit of a co-op, and I'm certainly hoping the 133K customers stand up and fight back on this issue. It only takes a petition by 10% of the members to kick a member off the board......

It appears there's a full on PR blitz to compare Al Gore, 'An Inconvenient Truth', and environmentalists to the Nazis.

From the Albuquerque Tribune, comes a revelation that Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK),

compares 'An Inconvenient Truth,' which he doesn't plan to see, to Adolf Hitler's book 'Mein Kampf.'"

On Fox News, Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, said,

That's the problem. If I thought Al Gore's movie was as you like to say, fair and balanced, I'd say, everyone should go see it. But why go see propaganda? You don't go see Joseph Goebbels' films to see the truth about Nazi Germany. You don't go see Al Gore's films to see the truth about global warming

In the Tulsa World Sen. Inhofe says,

It kind of reminds . . . I could use the Third Reich, the big lie

The Washington Post quotes Professor Bill Gray,

Gore believed in global warming almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with the Jews.

Frankly, this is offensive -

Estimates of persons killed during World War II range from 40-60 million. So, if the U.S. raised fuel economy standards, puts more funding in public transportation along with R&D into alternative fuels, that would be as atrocious as genocide?

Let's say, just for a split second, we're wrong. Global warming isn't happening, the ice isn't melting, polar bears aren't drowning, crazy weather patterns are figments of our imagination. What's the harm exactly in raising fuel standards? In not relying on ONE source to move all people and goods around the country? In providing a better bus and rail system for people? These seem like good things to do anyway, regardless of global warming.

But the scary thing is, we're not wrong. This is happening, and it's happening in our lifetime. And people like Sen. Inhofe, who has called global warming the 'greatest hoax eve perpetrated on the American people, and who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee have enough power to not just be offensive, but to be dangerous.

Today we took the first step in taking Energy Independence to the Senate - we need people to email their Senators, asking them to sign on the Declaration - if you haven't already done so, please help out!

The Declaration of Energy Independence calls for immediate steps to reduce our dependence on oil by 50 percent by 2030 and to end our dependence by 2050.

Last week, Senator Jeffords (I-VT) introduced the Global Warming Pollution Reducation Act with nine cosponsers - there're some great provisions in this bill - from Sen. Jeffords' press release:

Requires that the U.S. reduce its emissions between 2010 and 2020 to 1990 levels. By 2030, the U.S. must reduce its emissions by 1/3 of 80% percent below 1990 levels, by 2040 by 2/3 of 80% percent below 1990 levels and by 2050, to a level that is 80 percent below 1990 levels.

- Requires that power plants, automobiles and carbon intensive businesses reduce their global warming pollution.

- In the event that global atmospheric concentrations exceed 450 parts per million or that average global temperatures increase above 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average, EPA can require additional reductions.

- Provides for standards and grants for sequestration of greenhouse gases.

- The National Academy of Sciences will report to EPA and the Congress to determine whether goals of the Act have been met.

- Requires the US to derive 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

So far we've gotten hundreds of responses to our survey, which is fantastic. It looks like, based on the results, we will have a successful campaign.

If you don't know, we're launching an effort to take Energy Independence to the Senate - asking every Senator to sign the Declaration of Energy Independence - and we need everyone to pitch in and help out.

From simply emailing, to hosting a house party, to collecting signatures, we need everyone to do what they can.

To join in, and let us know what you can do click here.

We're going to tally up the results this weekend, finalize the plan, and then really get cooking next week.

We're launching our effort to bring the 'Energy Independence' message to the Senate this week, and we need to know how everyone can help out - maybe it's emailing your Senators, maybe it's putting a sign in your window, or maybe it's petitioning your neighborhood.

Either way, we need everyone to pitch in to make this work - to take the survey, click here.

If you've been reading for awhile, you know that I've had an informal 'campaign' (perhaps hope is the better word) to get 'An Inconvenient Truth' to beat Madonna's 'Truth or Dare' on the list of highest grossing documentaries of all time......and it worked!

An Inconvenient Truth is officially the fourth highest grossing doc, behind Fahrenheit 9/11, March of the Penguins, and Bowling for Columbine. There's a shot it'll get above 'Bowling' (needs another $4.5M), but unlikely to bust the top 2.

All kidding aside, according to NOAA, the first six months of 2006 are the hottest in the 20th century - we're 3.4 degrees above the temperature average for the year, which is 7% over the average. Five states (Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri) experienced record warmth for the period.

Let's put this in perspective. The human body operates at 98.6F. If your body were to be 7% above that, you'd have a temperature of 105.5.

A few quotes from today's NYT article on the G8 Summit's energy discussion jumped out and hit me over the head.

"They said that demand for oil, natural gas and coal would rise more than 50 percent above current levels by 2030, and that these fossil fuels would constitute 80 percent of the world's energy supply by then."

This is awfully frightening, not to mention short-sighted - when will our leaders realize the answer is getting off oil, not squeezing every last drop out of the earth.

Thank goodness, they came up with solutions though:

"Group of 8 members agreed to push oil-producing countries to be more open with data on reserves"

"prepare for a possible world oil shock with a plan to coordinate the release of the Group of 8 countries’ emergency reserves "

So, bullying other nations, and, oh yah, let's use our savings. It's like cashing out your 401K to buy a sports car. Ridiculous.

But, at least these talks led to specific, binding agreements:

"few concrete measures to control prices emerged from Sunday's talks"

"The final statement called for "investment in all stages of energy supply" and "transparency and good governance in the energy sector," but suggested no requirements on countries to make that happen."

Wow. Eight of the world's leaders get together, discuss the energy crisis, and have come up with, 'Let's keep on keepin' on!' as a plan. It's hard to blame them, because so far that strategery has worked very very well.

Two days ago, Governor Schwarzenegger formally petitioned the federal government to protect the roadless areas of national forest in California.

As background, in 2000, President Clinton protected 58.5 million acres of roadless land within the national forest system from logging, drilling, roadbuilding, and other destructive activities. It was one of the largest land conservation efforts of the last 100 years.

Sadly, as soon as President Bush came into power, he began to question the legitimacy of the rule (despite 2.2 million Americans signing petitions to protect it, and the National Forest Service doing a rigorous multi-year review of the project), and worked to put the question of protection for these roadless areas in the hands of the states.

Obviously, much of this land is in the western states, where politicians like Gov. Owens (CO), Gov. Kempthorne (ID), and Murkowski (AK) are vehemently pro-logging and pro-drilling.

But, for a long time, environmenetalists have suspected they could build an ally in one western governor: Arnold Schwarzenegger of CA.

I did environmental organizing in California for about five years before coming to work with Environmental Action - and we busted our butts to get the Governor to submit this petition to protect 4.4 million acres of roadless in California. Initially, the governor's office balked; at the time President Bush was very popular, very powerful, and squashing the roadless rule was one of his top priorities.

Environmental ctivists wouldn't relent though, and while it has taken about five years, our actions have paid off, and I couldn't be happier.

The Governor did a press conference with California's top environmental leaders: Dan Jacobson of Environment California, Carl Zichella of Sierra Club, Sam Davidson of Trout Unlimited, and Mary Wells of California Wilderness Coalition and Chair of the California Wld Heritage Campaign.

To see the press conference, click here (whatever movie watching program you use will start up and run the video). Wish I could've been there.

I've been curious how much increasing gas costs have impacted gas consumption, so I've been looking over some Energy Information Administration stats, and it seems like it has -

I looked at data from the last 13 years, and basically just split it down the middle, with the following results:

For the period of 4/2000-4/2003, the average cost of gas increased 8.43%, and the sales increased 4.94%.

For the period of 4/2003-4/2006, the average cost of gas increased 70.61%, and the sales increased 2.75%.

So, it seems that increasing prices do have an impact on usage - though we're not at the level it needs to be make a significant dent in our usage. It would take a pretty dramatic increase in cost to see a useful decrease in usage, which might be the way to go.

This week's issue of Newsweek touts the 'Greening of America' - while I'm always happy to have some kind of major national coverage on eco issues, it's a little ridiculous to say that 'all of a sudden Americans care about the environment, who knew?'.

But one of the most disturbing pieces in the issue is 'The President: Shades of Green'. Couple things which need to be rebuked:

"But following his green-tinted State of the Union address in January, Bush now travels the country promoting both hybrid vehicles and solar power."

Now, I watched the State of the Union - I saw the President defend the war, domestic spying, and the economy. I saw him say, 'We're a nation addicted to oil' - but in less than 24 hours his PR team spun that with, 'he didn't mean it LITERALLY'. I'm still not sure how one is figuratively addicted to something.

Secondly, Newsweek states:
"They [activists] accuse him of relaxing clean-air standards on power plants and refineries, and of blocking Kyoto-style measures to halt global warming."

This makes it sound like us crazy treehuggers are saying the President made a long distance call from our house at a party. The word 'accuse' implies no guilt and that either side could be right.

But the President has pushed repeatedly to weaken our air standards under the so-called 'Clear Skies Initiative'. He's blocked the roadless rule, which protects 58.5 million acres of untouched national forest land (as I type there're efforts in several states to log these areas). He's allowed more mercury into our water, and snowmobiles into Yellowstone. These are not accusations - these are facts, provable in the public record - and I couldn't believe Newsweek would cloud the issue this way.

Until I read this:

"On the highways, Bush has set rules to improve the fuel consumption of light trucks and SUVs. In the air, he has proposed the first-ever cut in mercury emissions from power plants. And on global warming, the most controversial part of his green scorecard, Bush acknowledged back in June 2001 that the National Academy of Sciences believed climate change was "due in large part to human activity." The dispute is what to do about that warming. Bush thinks new technologies—not treaties—can save the day."

Which of course reads like a White House press release, and contains nothing but half-truths.

This is shameful reporting, plain and simple.

Thanks to Grist for posting on this earlier -

Not to be greener than thou (and I know there are plenty of you greener than me), but I have to say, with gas prices at the highest they've been in 2006, hitting $2.99/gallon, I'm pretty glad that I walk and bike everywhere.

I do own a car, but about six months ago, discovered that it needed some work done. So I put it in the garage and, being the procrastinator I am, haven't gotten around to fixing it. Instead I cancelled my insurance, let the registration lapse, and got a bike from a friend.

I have to say, if high gas prices have an impact like that on the country, maybe they're not so bad after all.

This is likely not 'news' to anybody, but is shocking to me nonetheless. In honor of this year being the 40th anniversary of the original Endangered Species Act, I've been pouring over ESA stats from the Fish and Wildlife service.

I was amazed to discover the following -

The number of species listed as 'Endangered or Threatened' went up 87% under President Reagan, 43% under the first President Bush, 65% under President Clinton, and 2% under President Bush.

To put that in numerical terms:
Reagan: 245 new species listed (30.6/year)
GHW Bush: 227 new species listed (56.8/year)
Clinton: 491 new species listed (61.38/year)
GW Bush: 28 new species listed (5.6/year)

Now obviously, some species get de-listed (42 so far), and some are cross listed - but the success of the program depends on new species being listed so that we can determine the habitat that's truly in trouble, and what needs immediate attention.

An Inconvenient Truth is now showing in over 500 theatres across the country, and seems to be gaining speed every week. As a lifelong environmentalist, this is really exciting news for me.

As of today, it is now the 5th highest grossing documentary of all time, and a mere $1.6M away from tackling Madonna's Truth or Dare. Shirah, at Unbossed, did a great piece today on the sources of Al Gore's slide show, which is definitely worth checking out.

I for one would love to take my Dad (a nonbeliever in the 'hoax' of global warming), but he's about 2000 miles away - so I'm curious, have any of you out there taken a 'non-believer' to see it? If so, what was the reaction? Drop me a line, and let me know.

To find show times near you, click here.

An oped in the Washington Post a few days ago runs the numbers on biofuels, and not surprisingly, they aren't pretty.

As we've stated here before, it is a false hope to suggest that the U.S. can replicate Brazil's march to energy independence on biofuels. The U.S. uses nearly 20 times as much oil and has access to significantly inferior biofuels. The piece in the Washington Post hits on these points, though I do believe it probably overstates them. Here's my thinking:

1) Biofuels cannot be the primary solution to ending America's dependence on oil. The first step—without question—is to reduce our consumption by both increasing efficiency and reducing vehicle miles traveled.

2) Biofuels can play a small role in helping us meet a portion of our (reduced) oil needs. As many have pointed out, switchgrass is significantly more promising than corn, but even it can't overcome point number one.

The reality of course is that the politics of biofuels (especially for presidential candidates) is much easier than the politics of fuel economy. Let's call it the "path of least resistance politics:the place where big problems go to get bigger".