There is a new coalition of five western states who have come together to fight global warming on their own. Oregon, California, Washington, Arizona, and New Mexico have banded together, and promise to set greenhouse gas emissions limits on vehicles and power plants.

While no specific plans are in place, the coalition, which formed because of the complete lack of action from the Bush Administration, promises that they will start by setting goals to slo the growth of GHG emissions, and then targets for emission cutbacks.

This coalition is following the lead of nine eastern states who signed a similar pact recently, (I guess technically making the west second best).

Well, we've been predicting it for a while, but the onslaught of 'dirty' energy alternatives is on the way. Right now, it's liquefied coal. According to reports, Virginia Representative Rick Boucher (D) is introducing legislation to promote the idea of liquefied coal, and to provide for funding to build new plants to produce this form of energy.

Basically, liquefied coal is what it sounds like - and the process results in a kind of diesel fuel. The technology has been around for decades, but has not been pursued very seriously because of the exorbitant cost (up to $1 billion per plant), and it's negative impact on the environment - some studies say that between processing the fuel and burning it, it's generates more pollution than traditional fossil fuels.

Can you imagine a worse way to get out of our energy crisis?

One major danger with our nation's realization that we're addicted to oil is defining alternative energy sources. For example, as Gov. Romney (MA) is starting his presidential bid, he's up in NH talking about alternative energy sources. Unfortunately, his version of 'alternative energy' includes liquefied coal and nuclear power.

The reality is that yes, we need alternatives to oil - but we fall into the old paradigms at our old peril. We don't just need alternatives, we need smart alternatives. Liquefied coal and nuclear power will only get us into the same old energy patterns - over dependence on one source of energy, and energy sources which destroy environment and wreck our public health.

As the presidential election creeps into our lives again, I'm certainly hoping that smarter heads prevail. We need smart alternatives like wind and solar power, along with public transit and better public transit. Those are the alternatives we need.

A new coalition, including Wal-Mart, has formed to get Americans to switch from normal light bulbs to the far more energy efficient CEF bulbs.

This is exciting news - as you know, EA has done a lot of work to get Wal Mart to sponsor Free Energy Efficient Light Bulb Day. While this isn't exactly what we wanted, it's a decent first step.

The coalition, named 18Seconds after the amount of time it takes to change a lightbulb. Frankly, I'm a little underwhelmed by the coalition's stated plans ('hip' public service announcements and a website), we'll see how far it goes.

Not sure if people have heard about this, but the Greenpeace ship 'Esperanza' been down around Antarctica working to muck up some Japanese whaling happening down there.

Sadly, there was a fire on board one of the whaling ships, incapacitating it, and killing one sailor. Now, after this tragedy, this ship is floating dead in the water, with the assistance of a couple of other ships in the whaling fleet.

Now the worry is that the ship will begin to leak oil or other toxics into the fragile ocean waters down there, so Greenpeace has offered the Japanese government to help get the ship safely back to Japan. So far, the government has turned down the offer, but GP is inviting people to email them and push for them to accept this option. You can check it out here.

Maybe it's because they're 8 feet tall, weigh 1000 pounds, and can kill a walrus with a single swipe of their paws.

But, for whatever reason, polar bears aren't allowed to testify before the Bush Administration's Fish & Wildlife Service . . . even to save their own skins. So, if the 25,000 polar bears left in the wild are going to be heard before the bureaucrats close the books on April 9th and decide whether to protect them as endangered species, we humans are going to have to do it for them . . . and we're going to have to do it fast.

Here's how you can help:

Contribute $25 to help pay for collecting and shipping 25,000 letters, one for each polar bear alive today, from Americans in eight politically-important cities.

If 200 people contribute $25 each, we'll raise the $5,000 needed to collect and ship those 25,000 letters. Coincidentally, the distance from some polar bear's habitat and George Bush's office is 5,000 miles - so your donation helps us get the polar bear from their home into the Oval Office.

To donate, go to the link below -

https://www.oursecureserver.org/environmental-action/polarbear.html

We shouldn't be surprised, per se, but January 2007 is officially the warmest January in recorded history. The news was announced yesterday - and the frightening part is that while usually weather records are broken by a tenth or even hundredth of a degree, January 2007 was 3.4 degrees warmer than the average January.

According to reports, the U.S. was about average, but world temperatures soared, both as a result of global warming and El Nino. It was by far the worst in the northern parts of the globe, with Siberia nine degrees above normal, Eastern Europe eight degrees higher, and Canada five degrees warmer.

It's gotten bad enough in Canada in fact, that representatives from the Inuit tribe in Canada are coming to the U.S. to scold us for not taking climate change seriously, and allowing global warming to destroy their way of life.

I thought it might be good to start introducing you to some of the folks, both good and bad, in our environmental neighborhood. Today, I'd like to talk about Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman.

Secretary Bodman came to the Department of Energy after serving in as the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, and Deputy Secretary of Commerce. He possesses a B.S. and Sc.D. in chemical engineering. He taught at MIT for a while, and later served as the CEO of Fidelity Investments.

The reason I'm bringing up Secretary Bodman is that given our energy crisis right now, as Secretary of Energy he wields enormous power. But his views on energy and your are probably very different.

In response to the UN global warming report from a couple weeks ago, Bodman said, "Even if we were successful in accomplishing some kind of debate and discussion about what caps might be here in the United States, we are a small contributor when you look at the rest of the world," an insanely false statement. As you and I both know, the U.S. is the number one emitter of greenhouse gases, responsible for close to 25% of the world's output. That doesn't seem small to me all.

Then, this week, speaking to the annual meeting of Cambridge Energy Associates, Sec. Bodman said, "The only way to meet our future needs for power will be through nuclear energy," another ridiculous idea. First of all, given that two thirds of our oil use is for transportation what we need is more public transit, more alternative fuels, and better gas mileage. Unless, of course, the Secretary is proposing R&D into adding a Mr. Fusion to our automobiles. Even given that, we all know that future non-transportation energy needs can be met through wind and solar power, not just through nuclear power.

Unfortunately, the nuclear industry is using the current energy crisis to confuse the public mislead them into thinking that nuclear power has suddenly become safe and clean.

According to reports this week, the Florida Public Service Commission has adopted new (read: weaker) rules to encourage more nuclear energy development.

According to the South Florida Business Journal, "Investor-owned electric utilities can now request partial recovery of the planning and construction costs of a nuclear power plant prior to the plant's commercial operation."

Florida Power and Light has announced plans to build a new plant in Florida, and all of this is quite disconcerting. As the nation is waking up to it's oil addiction, the nuke pushers are waiting at the door to get us hooked up on yet another dirty and dangerous energy source.

In the coming months, look for EA to tackle this problem - we thought we solved it in the 70's, but it turns out there's more work to be done.

It has been announced that former Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton has taken a job with (drumroll please) Shell Oil. She will evidently be working as counsel for Shell's Colorado oil shale exploration programs.

In case you don't remember, as secretary, Ms. Norton was a gigantic proponent of drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. None of this comes a surprise, however. Many of President's appointees served previously as lobbyists or executives for many of the most polluting industries in America. So it comes as little surprise that as they leave their 'public service' careers, they would return to those same industries. Ms. Norton is a little more unique having served in the Colorado government for many years prior to her federal service.

Of course, that just means that as she's pursuing the ridiculous idea of oil shale development in Colorado, she'll be working to influence former colleagues. Don't be surprised if, as the Bush Administration winds down over the next few years, we see dozens of these folks returning to their corporate buddies for jobs.

There was an announcement this week that a Danish physicist, Henrik Svensmark, has concluded that cosmic rays, not manmade carbon dioxide emissions are largely responsible for global warming.

I'm almost not sure how to respond to this idea, given that over 2,500 of the world's leading climate scientists agreed last week that human activity was in fact causing global climate change.

The sad thing is that in a time of such momentum on reducing emissions, a scientist comes out talking about gamma rays, which only continues to spread clouds of doubt across positive action.

The idea of listing the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act is causing quite the controversy. Scientists on all sides of the debate are weighing in.

This week, for instance, Lee Foote, an associate professor at the University of Alberta, has testified that polar bear science is too complex to definitively say that global warming will cause a decline in polar bear populations. He even went so far as to say, "I liken this to trying to stack four bowling balls on top of each other: Let them fall and make some prediction which direction the top bowling ball will likely go, it won’t be the same direction any two times."

This seems crazy to me. I've said it before, and I'll keep going off on this for years - even if we're way off, and global warming won't impact the polar bear, how on earth does it hurt anything to protect them? And, to further Mr. Foote's ridiculous metaphor - if the top ball could land on your foot and break it, you may want to take some precautions to make sure the pile doesn't fall in the first place.

I want to send a big thanks out to Alan Abbadessa - he's a great Environmental Action member who's been helping out quite a bit with the Coke part of the campaign. Evidently, he pulled an all-nighter last night, and came up with this - it's a great video. Thanks Alan! If you're a YouTube member, take a minute to go to this video and leave a comment - the more traffic it gets there, the more people will know about the issue.

As global warming is becoming a more popular issue, and energy independence becomes more of a buzz-phrase, some not-to-surprising entities are getting into the fight.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and oh yah, a bunch of oil companies, are proposing massive increases of offshore oil drilling as a solution to our energy problems. Add this to the nuclear industry, chomping at the bit to be viable again, and the ridiculous work around oil shale, and you've got a whole bunch of presumably smart people completely missing the point.

Oil and natural gas are not renewable resources, and therefore, are not sustainable solutions to our energy problems. Yes, there may be up to 86 billion barrels of oil off the coasts of the US. That's perhaps a ten-year supply. Great, so we rip up our oceans, destroy our coasts, in the process wrecking several states' tourists economies, and around 2017, what happens? Yep - still addicted to oil.

It's utterly ridiculous. Simply put, we cannot drill our way to energy independence, and it is futile to try. It's time to leave the old, dirty forms of energy in the dust, and promote conservation and alternatives.

A couple months ago, I posted about the American Enterprises Institute (AEI), and their twisting of information to suit political purposes, along with their ties to the oil & gas industry.

Well, roast my veggies, looks like AEI might be in deeper than we thought. The Guardian (UK paper) reported today that AEI was offering scientists $10,000 each to publish papers which would undermine the UN climate change report due out today.

The report, which you may have read about by now, comes from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and is considered one of the world leading groups on climate change. And guess what? They've announced in their report that human activity 'very likely' causes global warming.

AEI has received more than $1.6 million from ExxonMobil, and former CEO Lee Raymond serves as AEI's vice chairman of the board of trustees, so you can sort of see why they're trying to bribe scientists.

There's almost too much to report on.

Firstly, in the good news category, a report is being released this week stating that scientific experts worldwide are very certain that humans cause global warming. The report comes from the Inergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists and bureaucrats from many nations.

This is a big step - this group, in 2001 was much more lukewarm (forgive the pun) about linking human activity to global warming, and about linking global warming to a set of natural disasters, like hurricanes. Obviously, this confirms what many of us have been saying all along, but it is a good step forward.

Secondly, everyone is talking about the Congressional investigation into White House censorship of global warming science. Rep. Waxman, of CA, has been leading the investigations, and they've turned up even more cases than we knew about previously. Evidently up until last year, all media requests with NASA went through the White House, and the White House also delayed the release of important data, and would often 'soften' reports coming from government scientists.

The Union of Concerned Scientists recently polled federal scientists, and found, "Almost 60 percent of the scientists who responded to the survey said they had personally experienced such an incident in the last five years, and those who said their work was most closely related to climate change experienced the most interference."

Lastly, it was reported today that an oil pipe in the Los Padres National Forest burst, spilling 200-300 gallons of oil into a nearby stream. Which is close to a California Condor sanctuary. The fact that we currently have a forest service amenable to allowing oil drilling in our national forests is a national disgrace, but that the oil company responsible said this, "We're good stewards of the environment and we take this seriously," is just offensive.