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Mayors Alvarez and Bower Host MB Green Event

Posted on 26. Aug, 2010 by Howard Salus in Climate, Education, Environment, Green Business, Green Events, Products

Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez and City of Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower host first Mayors’ Green Initiatives for Economic Growth Workshop and Trade Show

Mayor Matti Herrera Bower, Mayor Alvarez and Greater Miami Convention & Visitor’s Bureau President and CEO William Talbert

Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez and City of Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower hosted the first Mayors’ Green Initiatives for Economic Growth Workshop and Trade Show on Wednesday, August 25, 2010, at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

“This workshop and trade show exemplifies how developing relationships between residents, businesses, community based organizations and government – all stakeholders in taking action to make a difference – can ensure we are doing what is necessary for a sustainable future,” Mayor Alvarez said.

More than 450 green exhibitors and attendees from as far as Tallahassee participated in the day-long event. Participants were able to meet one on one with representatives from governmental agencies and private businesses to learn more about green business practices, green lodging certification and economic development opportunities.

The workshop was a collaboration between Miami-Dade County, the City of Miami Beach, the State of Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), Greater Miami and the Beaches Hotel Association, the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Environmental Coalition of Miami & the Beaches (ECOMB), and several private companies.

For more information about Miami-Dade County’s green programs, call the Office of Sustainability at (305) 375-4790.

Following Senator George LeMieux

Posted on 14. Aug, 2010 by Howard Salus in Climate, Environment, Green Business

By Andrea Cuccaro, 1Sky Florida Organizer, 786-925-1151


1Sky Clean Energy Patriots Followed Senator George LeMiuex Around All Week
Monday in front of the Chamber of Commerce in Palm Beach, Florida, Senator George LeMieux spoke about the need to support small businesses, as Florida is primarily a small business state with “no fortune 100 companies” housed here. When he was finished, I was the first person to shoot my hand up in the question and answer session. I introduced myself as a representative of Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and thanked him for his thoughtfulness on our economy and his support for clean energy initiatives, which he had also mentioned in his speech. I also asked him if, considering all of his support for clean energy and for small business, if he would support a cap on carbon which would generate revenues from Big Energy and distribute them to clean energy businesses which are primarily small and growing. The senator talked a long and good game about supporting the Lugar’s bill, and tax breaks for clean energy, but ultimately clarified that he does not support a price on carbon as he has been informed that this would cause a 35 percent increase in energy costs. In his answer, he also identified himself as a staunch supporter of investing in nuclear power, which he defined as the “cheapest clean energy” source on the market. While we would not define nuclear as clean from the environmental costs in terms of water and waste, as well as the health costs of Leukemia traced to neighbors of transmission lines and reactors, it’s also important to point out that nuclear is actually really expensive, and that according to a study from Duke University, solar is less expensive than nuclear now. Solar power is on a trajectory to become less and less expensive and the year 2010 is the year in which it surpassed nuclear as a more affordable option.
The most important takeaway from this day was that U.S. Senator LeMieux came out publically against a cap on carbon. This was the first time climate solutions advocates heard the senator take a position. While the senator supports clean energy tax breaks and investments, all of which will jumpstart our green economy and curb carbon emissions, climate solutions advocates like 1Sky are disappointed he does not support a cap. A cap on carbon is the only way to ensure we can control cutting greenhouse gases within the timelines we need, in the timeframes outlined by scientists- between twenty and forty percent reductions below 1990 levels of greenhouse gases by 2020. A cap and price  on carbon that covers all the major pollution sources in the economy would be ratcheted down each year to insure further reductions over time, and to reinvest revenues from Big Oil and Dirty Coal companies into local growing small businesses in clean energy.
There seems to be little justification for the senator to take this position but to point to his ties to Big Oil and Dirty Coal corporate interests. Florida clean energy advocates have delivered between fifteen thousand and twenty thousand signatures at minimum regarding this issue over the past year and still the senator has acted the wrong way. We are now experiencing the warmest year on record. A giant ice sheet just broke off of Greenland. Melting fresh water ice sheets in the North Atlantic is a consequence of warmer temperatures that scientists have long said could lead to an ice age. When the cold fresh water floods the North Atlantic ocean, the temperature of which is made warmer by the gulf stream current which flows with temperatures from the South Atlantic, the fresh water could reach a lot of the stream and push heavier salt water lower, along with its warmer temperatures. The most dire possible result? A sudden ice age in northern Europe and North America.
Clean energy business leaders have met with the senator’s staff over the past year to inform him of the necessary policy incentives for business growth, anda transition from fossil fuels which create a blanket of heat trapping gases in our atmosphere, to a clean and green economy.
He stated concerns that big energy companies would pass on costs to rate paying consumers. Yet, policy makers can create controls to prevent that. While the senator believes costs for consumers could rise 35 percent, studies from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office discuss that the average rise in costs would be $175 per year for family households.
1Sky and partnered advocates have followed him around the state this week, starting with the Chamber of Commerce breakfast on Monday in Palm Beach, two Wednesday town hall meetings in Orlando and Tampa, a rally outside his Miami office Thursday, and advocates at an event he spoke at in Ft. Lauderdale on Friday. Everywhere he went, we had activists to ask him, “Will you support a cap on carbon now?”

DECLARATION OF FOSSIL FUEL INDEPENDENCE

Posted on 18. Jun, 2010 by Howard Salus in Climate, Environment

By Barry Silver

Barry Silver is founder and co-chair of the Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition, Rabbi of Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor, environmental attorney, and former State Representative of Florida.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one species to dissolve the bonds that have connected it with fossil fuels and to assume among all living beings on Earth a more responsible and harmonious station, a decent respect for the beauty and majesty of all life forms requires that we declare the reasons which impel this separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all species are fashioned exquisitely, that they have evolved through natural selection with awe inspiring adaptations which render them spectacularly well suited for survival, and integral to the survival of all life on Earth, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are the right to live in a clean and unpolluted environment.  That to secure this right, responsible governments derive their just power from concern for the planet, that whenever any government becomes destructive of this goal, whether through deliberate acts, recklessness, indifference or greed, it is the right and the responsibility of homo sapiens to abolish the political careers of such individuals and replace them with wise leaders who will institute new policies that will protect us from ourselves.  Prudence will dictate that policies long established will not easily be changed due to the corrupting influence of money, power and greed upon elected officials, but when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to subject us to domination by profit driven and environmentally oblivious corporations and to subject us to intolerable risks of devastating ecological harm, then it is the right, it is the sacred duty of all people to throw out such individuals and to replace them with wise and thoughtful leaders.  Such has been the patient suffering of all life on Earth, and such is now the necessity which constrains us to vote for new leaders and institute new policies to protect our future.  The history of government is a history of consistent injuries and usurpations of nature, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny of fossil fuel interests and environmentally destructive corporations over our economy, our political institutions and our ecosystems.  To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

1.   We have allowed our scientific and technical achievements to far outstrip our wisdom in knowing how to responsibly use these technologies.
2.   Humans have become the most dangerous species ever to inhabit planet Earth, and now pose an unprecedented risk to all other living beings on the planet.
3.    We have treated mother Earth as our private sewer and garbage dump, contaminating the air, polluting the land, and poisoning the seas with our wastes and fossil fuels.
4.    We have treated all other species as commodities to be consumed, used and exploited without regard for their feelings and dignity as unique and precious life forms.
5.   Our addiction to fossil fuels has caused significant and unnatural climate change and poses an immediate and devastating threat to all future life on this planet.
6.     Due to our carelessness, we have left a despoiled planet to our descendents.

We therefore solemnly declare our commitment to seek to be free and independent of fossil fuels by the year 2020, and to respect our home planet.  In support of this Declaration, and with a firm reliance upon our species’ survival instinct, we mutually pledge our lives, our fortune and our sacred honor.

(Editor’s Note: Your comments below would be appreciated)

A Note From Bill McKibben

Posted on 10. Mar, 2010 by Howard Salus in Climate, Education, Environment, Green Events

350.org is getting to work in 2010. Will you join us?

1) Sign up early to host a work party 10/10/10.

2) Watch an audio slideshow about our plans for the year.

Dear Friends,

Well, no one said it was going to be easy.

Last year, thanks to many of you, we built up enormous momentum for climate solutions. The global day of rallies you pulled off on October 24th turned out to “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history,” according to CNN, with 5200 actions in 181 countries.

And in Copenhagen that translated into 117 countries–most of the world’s nations–supporting a tough 350 target.

But it didn’t translate into political victory. The biggest polluters wouldn’t go along. So we still have work to do.

In fact, our slogan for 2010 is “Get To Work.” Get to work to start changing our communities, and get to work to make our leaders realize that they actually need to lead. We’ve sifted through thousands of your emails from all over the world, and come up with an action plan for this year that we think may break the logjam and get us moving. But only, of course, if we act together to make it happen.

The first date to mark on your calendar: October 10. Working with our friends at the 10:10 campaign, we’re going to make the tenth day of the tenth month of the millennium’s tenth year a real starting point for concrete action. We’re calling it the 10/10 Global Work Party, and in every corner of the world we hope communities will put up solar panels, insulate homes, erect windmills, plant trees, paint bikepaths, launch or harvest local gardens. We’ll make sure the world sees this huge day of effort–and we’ll use it to send a simple message to our leaders:  “We’re working–what about you? If we can cover the roof of the school with solar panels, surely you can pass the legislation or sign the treaty that will spread our work everywhere, and confront the climate crisis in time.” 10/10/10 will take a snapshot of a clean energy future — the world of 350 ppm — and show people why it’s worth fighting for.  It’s not too early to sign up here:  www.350.org/oct10

Every nation is not created equal in this climate crisis, of course. If we can’t get the biggest polluters and the biggest economies to change, then we’ll never win. So we’re going to focus some particular attention on China, the United States, and India with a Great Power Race–college and university campuses will compete to see who can come up with the most, and the most creative, climate solutions. We hope friendly competition will help governments see that they have a lot to gain by diving into clean energy–and a lot to lose by missing this opportunity.

And we’ll keep figuring out ways to apply political pressure where it counts–in the U.S. Senate, say, where we’re joining a group of our best allies in backing the proposed Cap-and-Dividend approach that would stop letting big polluters  pour carbon into the sky for free. In other parts of the world, we’ll hold more of the climate leadership workshops that produced so many great leaders last year.

And as the next UN conference approaches in Mexico in December, we’ll stage the largest piece of public art in the planet’s history–a reminder that we have to bring passion to bear along with science and economics if we’re going to move this process.

We know, from the calls and emails we’ve been getting, that people all over the world are ready to go to work. We think this plan can increase the odds of real action. We know that we have no choice. When, years down the road, the next generation asks what we did to save the planet, we want to be able to say: “We rolled up our sleeves and got to work.”  There’s no guarantee we can beat the rich and powerful interests that we’re up against–but thanks to you we’ve got enough momentum to have a real chance. Let’s use it now.

Onwards,

Bill McKibben and the 350.org Team

P.S. We’ve learned that there’s great power in pictures, and so we decided to make an audio slideshow that walks through our plan for 2010 and how we got here.  Please watch it here, and share the piece with family & friends by spreading this link:  www.350.org/audio-slideshow. Also, please forward this message far and wide–2010 needs to be a year of unprecedented growth for this movement.

P.P.S. We want to know what your reaction is to the plan for 2010–will you share your ideas and thoughts with the Global 350 Facebook Community by leaving a comment in the latest message? ( www.facebook.com/350.org)

Mother Nature Network Posts it’s Top Lists

Posted on 03. Jan, 2010 by admin in Business, Climate, Environment, Global News, Products, featured

Mother Nature Network Posts it’s Top Lists

Straight from MNN:

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