The Future is Green

Saving Polar Bears in the Bedroom: Free Endangered Species Condoms

You can't make this stuff up.

On Valentines Day the Center for Biological Diversity began distributing 100,000 free condoms in all 50 states using a volunteer army of some 3,000 dedicated souls. Their effort, called Endangered Species Condoms, is designed to educate people about the ways unsustainable human population growth is driving many species to extinction at a cataclysmic rate.

The condoms come in a variety of colorful wrappers featuring pictures of endangered critters, with slogans like, "Wrap with care . . . save the polar bear," and "Hump smarter . . . save the snail darter." Honest to god, I swear I'm not making this up.

According to the organization, their volunteers range from "ministers to grandmothers to healthcare providers to college students and biologists." Each package contains two condoms packaged with original artwork, facts about overpopulation and the extinction crisis, and suggestions on how the human population can be stabilized.

More power to them, I say. Visitors to the program's web site can enter a drawing to win a lifetime supply of free condoms. I wonder how they determine exactly how many you'll need.

Stop buying nonsense from climate change skeptics on a snowy evening

I have a splendid view of snowy treetops outside my living room windows. It is lovely to sit here in my nice warm apartment and watch the sweep of easy wind and downy flake falling lazily from the sky. But it is becoming harder to enjoy the view.

Every time it snows I can just hear climate change skeptics licking their chops, smug in their certainty that we are dumb enough to believe the continued existence of winter disputes overwhelming evidence that the planet is warming.

Must we continue, every time it snows, to ask if there is some mistake in the consensus among 97% of the world's climate scientists? No one who has read any of the literature believes that a warming planet means the end of winter.

As Thomas Friedman, writes in today's NY Times, "The fact that it has snowed like crazy in Washington — while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada, while Australia is having a record 13-year drought — is right in line with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever; others will become drier than ever."

Friedman's column, Global Weirding Is Here is worth reading.

Affordable Clean Energy Technology: China’s Sputnik

Dateline: 20,000 feet, somewhere over Michigan

At the outset, let me confess that I am, as I write this, doing just about the least green thing a person can do – flying. Yes, I did buy carbon offsets to ameliorate some of the environmental harm wrought by my round-trip flight to Denver. But it is increasingly hard to fly without anxiety over the outsize greenhouse gas emissions resulting from air travel. The fact that I am flying there to speak about energy efficiency at the Energy & Environmental Buildings Association conference does very little to relieve my sense of unease.

But that’s not really what I want to write about today.

Instead, I would direct your attention to Thomas Friedman’s Op-Ed piece in today’s NY Times. China, he argues in it, as he often has, is gearing up to make renewable energy technology the growth engine of its economy. In doing so, the Chinese will leapfrog America’s fledgling efforts in that field much as the Soviets left us in the dust (at least temporarily) by launching Sputnik in 1957. Unless we make massive investments in science, technology, education and infrastructure as we did upon entering the space race, he warns, we will find it difficult to catch up.

“China’s leaders, “Friedman writes, “mostly engineers, wasted little time debating global warming. They know the Tibetan glaciers that feed their major rivers are melting. But they also know that even if climate change were a hoax, the demand for clean, renewable power is going to soar as we add an estimated 2.5 billion people to the planet by 2050, many of whom will want to live high-energy lifestyles.”

Quoting Lester Brown, author of Plan B 4.0, (highly recommended, btw) he tells us that, while the US has been the world leader in wind generation to date, “by the end of this year China will bypass us on new wind generation so fast we won’t even see it go by.”

China’s embarkation on a path of clean power development and innovation, Friedman concludes, “is the Sputnik of our day. We ignore it at our peril.”

The full text of Friedman’s column can be found here. Definitely worth reading.

And please, next time you travel, buy carbon offsets. While being very far from the kind of investment in clean energy we need to make as a nation, it does help finance clean energy and carbon mitigation projects and it doesn't cost very much. CarbonFund.org and TerraPass.com are two excellent web sites that will help you calculate and offset your carbon footprint.

A Wonkish Post About the Waxman-Markey Bill, a.k.a. the American Clean Energy and Security Act

Just back from Atlanta, where I spent four days at the Renewable Energy Markets conference sponsored by CRS, the Center for Resource Solutions.

One of the most striking things about the conference was the acknowledgement by virtually every speaker that a great deal of the clean energy landscape is about to change. Congress is on the verge of passing (we hope) some version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), also known as the Waxman-Markey bill. (The Senate version of the bill is called the Bingaman bill, but don’t let that confuse you).

Though far from perfect, ACESA is a significant step forward in the effort to reduce our dependance on fossil fuels and to curb global warming. The bill will mandate that greenhouse gas emissions be reduced by 80% (from 2005 levels) by the year 2050. That’s ambitious goal to be accomplished in 40 years, but it’s far from impossible. Still, many would argue that it is not ambitious enough.

One of the most crucial features of this 1,200 page bill is a cap-and-trade system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is the same model that has been highly successful in reducing acid rain, so we know the mechanism to be effective. Simply put, energy producers would first be required to limit their greenhouse gas emissions to 2005 levels, and then gradually reduce emissions each year as the cap is ratcheted down.

Opponents of cap-and-trade claim that the costs will be prohibitive. But experience has shown that the successful acid rain reduction program in the US has been far less costly than originally predicted. And the European Union currently operates under a cap-and-trade system with virtually no negative economic consequences, according to an analysis by MIT.

More importantly, what opponents fail to consider, and should be reminded of at every opportunity, is that the cost of inaction will dwarf the cost of addressing climate change. I am always amazed when professed fiscal conservatives ignore financial consequences that will occur after the next election cycle, let alone in their children’s lifetime. This is conservatism? I call it irresponsible. But I digress.

But back to ACESA. One of the bill’s flaws, which could be easily fixed, is that neither the House or Senate versions contain a provision for protecting the voluntary market for renewable energy credits (RECs). (Click here for more detail on renewable energy credits).

While utilities in 30 states must buy RECs to comply with state mandates for clean energy, called Renewable Portfolio Standards, many organizations voluntarily buy RECs as part of a corporate commitment to environmental responsibility. Some of the largest voluntary buyers of RECs include Intel, PepsiCo, DuPont, Staples, Alcoa, Cargill Dow, Delphi Corporation, and scores of others who have offset from 4% to 100% of their conventional electricity usage. To date, voluntary REC purchases have been responsible for over 50% of all new renewable energy development in the US. Voluntary purchases in 2007, alone, account for 18.1 Megawatt hours of clean energy capacity. It’s a big success story.

A simple change in the bill’s language could rectify this shortcoming. It would take someone far more wonkish than I to explain this adequately, but passing this bill is a crucial step towards tackling climate change. I urge you to write, call, or email your Senators and Representatives to say you support passage of ACESA, and that it should be amended to provide added protections for the voluntary REC market.

New Film, The Age of Stupid, asks Why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?

The Age of  Stupid, a powerful new British drama/documentary film about climate change, is having its Unites States premier on September 21 and 22 in theaters in every state. (You can find a list of theaters and show times, and order tickets here.) The film stars Oscar-nominated actor, Pete Postlethwaite, as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching 'archive' footage from 2008 and asking: why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?

Within 48 hours of the film's British launch at Tate Modern on September 1, 10,000 people, including Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, all of the cabinet, and the leaders of the UK's three main political parties all signed a pledge to  cut the UK's emissions by 10% in 2010.

Franny Armstrong, director of The Age of Stupid and founder of the environmental organization 10:10 said: "It's amazing that within 48 hours of the campaign's launch, the leaderships of the three main political parties have committed to cut their carbon emmissions by 10%. Who said people power was dead?

The premiere will be simulcast live from a solar powered tent in New York City to over 400 movie theaters at 7:30 PM ET (6:30 PM CT/ 5:30 PM MT/ tape delayed 8PM PT) and will include a live pre-show from the green carpet including Kofi Annan, Gillian Anderson, the film's director Franny Armstrong, and star, Pete Postlethwaite, and other luminaries from around the world including Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, and Ed Miliband, the UK Minister of Energy and Climate Change.

Mark your calendars and order your tickets now, and let me know what you thought of the film.

Water crisis? What water crisis?

The other day I mentioned to my mother that I've been studying the global water crisis. She replied, "There's a global water crisis?"

Now, my mother reads a newspaper every day, the Baltimore Sun. She listens to NPR. Most mornings she watches the Today Show, and every evening she watches at least one TV news program. Every Sunday at 9:00 AM she watches CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood, followed by 60 Minutes in the evening.

And she doesn't know that there is a global water crisis.

It seems clear that the media is doing a singularly bad job of getting this story out. Yet 12 million people die each year due to lack of access to clean water. A child dies every six seconds for lack of access to clean water. The WorldWatch Institute has called water scarcity "the most underappreciated global environmental challenge of our time." No kidding.

Pollution, climate change, and population growth all contribute to a problem that, if left unchecked, will result in water scarcity for two thirds of the world's population by 2025. By 2030, according to the UN, more than half the population of large Third World cities will have no access at all to water or sanitation services.

But this is not just a Third World problem. Huge swaths of the United States are currently facing severe water shortages. Maude Barlow writes in Blue Covenant that in 2007, " Lake Superior, the world's largest freshwater lake, dropped to its lowest level in eighty years. . . . California has a twenty-year supply of freshwater left. New Mexico has only a ten-year supply. Arizona is out: it now import all of its drinking water."

Barlow also notes that the U.S. Geological Survey found that "the parched Interior West is probably the driest it has been in five hundred years." This is more than a drought. We are running out of water.

The water crisis is complex and of vast proportion. I'll be writing more about it in the coming weeks, both about the effects that are being felt around the world, and what we can do about it. In the meanwhile, Google "global water crisis" and check out one or two of the 44 million hits you'll find there. And, for heaven's sake, stop letting the water run while you brush your teeth.

TELL THE SENATE TO FIX CLIMATE BILL LOOPHOLES

I just did something to help secure a clean energy future for the United States. It took exactly 30 seconds. Maybe 25 seconds. You can, too.

All you have to do is visit the EarthJustice web site where a simple, easy-to-use form will enable you to send a letter (already written for you - how thoughtful is that!) to your senators asking them to support the climate bill passed by the House recently.

THIS IS IMPORTANT.

It is also important to ask the Senate to fix a couple of shortcomings in the House version in the bill.

A recent editorial in the New York Times (see below) explained what the Senate must do to strengthen the bill.

Why is it so important to write to your senators? EarthJustice explains:

Your senator is hearing daily from opposing voices, among them far-right bloggers and talk radio hosts, who do not believe global warming is real and want to keep our nation hooked on dirty fossil fuels. It is time for us to demand that the Senate act swiftly to combat global warming and usher in an era of clean renewable energy. The world cannot wait. The Senate must craft a bill that sets science-based caps on carbon emissions.

Please visit EarthJustice today and send a letter to your senators. It only takes 30 seconds. While you're at it, why not ask ten friends to do the same.

NY TIMES EDITORIAL, "CLIMATE LOOPHOLES"

Published July 21, 2009

The House’s approval of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill earlier this month was a remarkable political achievement and an important beginning to the task of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But in all the last-minute wheeling and dealing, the House bill acquired two big loopholes that the Senate must close.

The first loophole involves coal-fired power plants. Coal is the world’s most abundant fossil fuel — producing more than half the electricity in the United States — and also its dirtiest, with twice the carbon content of natural gas.

The House bill would limit emissions from coal-fired power plants in two ways. It imposes a cap on emissions from all industrial facilities that tightens slowly over time. It also sets tough performance standards on new power plants permitted after 2009, requiring emissions reductions of 50 percent or more. The bill would help underwrite advanced technologies capable of capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground.

The bill does not, however, impose any performance standards on existing power plants. And it explicitly removes these plants from the reach of the Clean Air Act. This is a mistake. The overall cap on industrial emissions will not be fully effective for a long time, and, meanwhile, the government should be able to impose lower-emissions requirements on the older, dirtiest plants.

There is little doubt that the Clean Air Act authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency to require existing plants to reduce emissions by, say, using cleaner fuels or increasing efficiency. But the House bill says otherwise, at least when it comes to carbon dioxide. The Senate must fix this problem by writing standards for existing plants into its bill or restoring the E.P.A.’s authority to do so. The old plants simply cannot be let off the hook.

The second loophole involves the tricky matter of offsets.

Climate Policy: An Affordable Salvation, says Paul Krugman of the NY Times

Paul Krugman, the NY Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist, provides  a clear, concise explanation in today's paper of why action on climate change is not only affordable, but a very good way to stimulate the economy. Calling a spade a spade, he labels denials of climate change "junk science," and predictions of economic disaster resulting from doing anything about it "junk economics."

Citing a recent MIT study of the cost of climate change proposals, he concludes that, contrary to what many conservatives assert, the cost to consumers, while not zero, would be quite modest. But ultimately, he explains, adopting strong climate-change policy will "create major incentives for new investment — investment in low-emission power plants, in energy-efficient factories and more."

His column, which is well worth reading, is reprinted below. And you can link to his blog here.

An Affordable Salvation

by Paul Krugman

The 2008 election ended the reign of junk science in our nation’s capital, and the chances of meaningful action on climate change, probably through a cap-and-trade system on emissions, have risen sharply.

But the opponents of action claim that limiting emissions would have devastating effects on the U.S. economy. So it’s important to understand that just as denials that climate change is happening are junk science, predictions of economic disaster if we try to do anything about climate change are junk economics.

Yes, limiting emissions would have its costs. As a card-carrying economist, I cringe when “green economy” enthusiasts insist that protecting the environment would be all gain, no pain.

But the best available estimates suggest that the costs of an emissions-limitation program would be modest, as long as it’s implemented gradually. And committing ourselves now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump.

Let’s talk first about those costs.

The price of risk: Taxpayers pay the costs of both financial and climactic melt-downs

Thomas Friedman's column in the NY Times on March 31 correctly points out the similarities between the current economic mess and the progressing climate crisis. In both cases we have been operating under a system that rewards small numbers of individuals while all of the risk is borne by taxpayers.

The answer, he argues, is to place more realistic prices on the risks associated both with financial instruments and environmental impacts.

Friedman writes, "Just as A.I.G. sold insurance derivatives at prices that did not reflect the real costs and the real risks of massive defaults (for which we the taxpayers ended up paying the difference), oil companies, coal companies and electric utilities today are selling energy products at prices that do not reflect the real costs to the environment and real risks of disruptive climate change (so future taxpayers will end up paying the difference)."

We have become "addicted to cheap coal," he continues, "that makes for lower electricity prices today but spits out toxic greenhouse gases that have to be paid for by future generations tomorrow"

The full text of his article is below.

THE PRICE IS NOT RIGHT
by Thomas Friedman

"I don’t expect much from the G-20 meeting this week, but if I had my wish, the leaders of the world’s 20 top economies would commit themselves to a new standard of accounting — call it “Market to Mother Nature” accounting. Why? Because it’s now obvious that the reason we’re experiencing a simultaneous meltdown in the financial system and the climate system is because we have been mispricing risk in both arenas — producing a huge excess of both toxic assets and toxic air that now threatens the stability of the whole planet.

Just as A.I.G. sold insurance derivatives at prices that did not reflect the real costs and the real risks of massive defaults (for which we the taxpayers ended up paying the difference), oil companies, coal companies and electric utilities today are selling energy products at prices that do not reflect the real costs to the environment and real risks of disruptive climate change (so future taxpayers will end up paying the difference).

Whenever products are mispriced and do not reflect the real costs and risks associated with their usage, people go to excess. And that is exactly what happened in the financial marketplace and in the energy/environmental marketplace during the credit bubble.

Exxon-funded scientist says CO2 emissions are good for us and we need more

Opinions, it has been said, are like a certain part of our anatomy associated with elimination - everybody has one. That, I suppose, might explain the bizarre testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last week by Physicist, Dr. William Happer of Princeton University. Happer offered the opinion that we are actually in a CO2 famine - compared with Earth's atmosphere of 80 million years ago - and that increased CO2 emissions would actually be good for mankind.

Happer's testimony, part of which you can see below, drew an incredulous response from the committee's chairwoman, Senator Barbara Boxer who said, "I don't even know how to say this, but a lot has happened since then," before noting that conditions on Earth 80 million years ago were probably not something we would find particularly pleasant today. Boxer later noted that Happer is Chairman of the George C. Marshall Institute, which receives a large part of its funding from Exxon. Hmmmmm.

Happer claims that Earth, during the Pleistocene era (which was actually from 1.8 million years ago to about 10,000 years ago - NOT 80 million years ago) had many times more CO2 in the atmosphere than it does now, and that, as a result, the planet prospered.

In fact, CO2 levels in the Pleistocene - the period when the the planet was much colder and glaciers reached their furthest limit - were roughly 200 ppm (parts per million). Today's atmospheric CO2 level is about 386 ppm.

80 million years ago, by contrast, during the Cretaceous Period, when CO2 levels were 3.7 to 14.7 times the modern pre-industrial value of 285 ppm, the climate was very hot. Ice sheets had melted and sea levels were 120m higher than today. This map, published last year in the journal, Science, shows what the world would look like today with sea levels similar to those of 80 million years ago. The dark blue areas would be completely under water.

Perhaps Dr. Happer would prefer it that way, but I suspect most of us would not.

Back by popular demand: Stephen Colbert on greenwashing by oil companies

There's nothing I can possibly add to this. Just watch and enjoy.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Prescott Oil Loves the Earth

Power Shift 2009: 10,000 students headed to Washington this weekend to support climate and clean energy policy

Last week, in a post called, "Giant Asteroid on Collision Course With Earth" I blogged about my frustration at the apparent apathy regarding the climate crisis. So I am especially happy to report that an event called Power Shift 09 is bringing 12,000 students to Washington, D.C. this weekend to tell Congress they demand rebuilding the economy and reclaiming their future through bold climate and clean energy policy.

Power Shift '09 is a project of the Energy Action Coalition, which sponsored Power Shift '07 in November of 2007, bringing over 7,000 youth from around the country to Washington, DC area for a long weekend of climate learning and action. Then, on Monday, November 5 over 3,000 of these youth descended on Capitol Hill where they rallied and met with their Senators and Congresspeople to demand bold political action on climate change. Much the same thing is planned for this weekend.

The Energy Action Coalition is made up of 50 student groups from around the country who are demanding to be heard about the future of the planet they are about to inherit. Kudos to all of them. More about that in a future post. For now, please visit the Power Shift '09 website and show your support.

There's still no such thing as clean coal: The Coen brothers' new video for This is Reality.org

If you're a fan of the Joel and Ethan Coen (The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?) or if you're just fed up with the coal industry's laughable attempts to portray itself as pro-environment, you'll get a kick out of this new video by the Cohen brothers - the latest in a series of clever 30 second commercials produced by ThisIsReality.org to debunk the myth of clean coal technology.

There is still no such thing as clean coal.

Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip. Approaching the tipping point on climate change

This brilliant animated film by Leo Murray was just brought to my attention and I wanted to waste no time in posting it here. It does a masterful job of explaining, in lay terms, exactly how close we are to a tipping point, beyond which it may be impossible to prevent the most catastrophic consequences of global warming.

I urge you to watch this lovely, engrossing, terrifying, yet ultimately empowering short film and then send five or ten friends back here to see it for themselves. Ask them to do the same once they've seen it.

Gentle readers, this is not hyperbole. I wish it were, but it's not. We are dangerously close to a point of no return. It is still possible to pull back from the precipice, but that will require lots and lots of people demanding action and refusing to take no for an answer.

This is a matter of survival. The need to act is urgent. We ignore it at our peril.

p.s. You can see the film's script, along with references for all the science behind it here.

Giant asteroid on collision course with Earth!

Okay. Now that I've got your attention, I have a question for you. If a mile-wide asteroid actually were heading for planet Earth, how much media attention do you think it would get?

The answer is obvious. It would be the lead story in every news broadcast, and would appear above the fold on the front page of every newspaper in the world until either; a. it struck, or b. scientists figured out how to prevent it.

And in the second instance, what portion of our resources, human and otherwise, would we devote to implementing plans to avert such a catastrophe? Would anyone ask if it was worth the money?

Yet this is exactly analogous to the situation we currently face. The climate crisis is potentially no less dire than the effects of a civilization-disrupting asteroid impact. So where are the headlines? Why are we not more worried?

This week I had the opportunity to speak to a group of college students at the University of Hartford. Their visual communication class had just completed a project designed to encourage their peers to act more sustainably and I was invited to critique their work. There were posters and other materials advocating things like changing light-bulbs, driving less, conserving water, and several other worthy ideas. Some of the work was quite good, with catchy slogans and attractive graphics. But I couldn't bring myself to give them much of a pat on the back for their efforts.

Changing light bulbs is all well and good, but I wanted to change the subject. Why aren't you more angry, I asked them. You are about to inherit a very fucked-up planet and you should be really pissed off. You should be marching in the streets. You should be organizing protests, sit-ins, moratoriums. You should be taking over the administration building and demanding change. You should be furious.

I am a child of the 60's, I told them. When I was in college the Vietnam war was raging. It was all we could think about. Students everywhere were united in opposition to the war. We were consumed with rage. We were mad as hell and we weren't going to take it anymore.

A whole generation took to the streets, staged protests - some peaceful, some not - and demanded change. And it wasn't only students. Millions of people raised their voices in unison and were heard. Activism played a major role in ending American involvement in that war. Nixon and Kissinger would have continued to prosecute the war but it became clear that the country would no longer support it. When people make enough noise, (enough being the operative word) government has no choice but to respond.

So why are we so passive about global warming? If left unchecked, the cost in human suffering will be no less than from any war. It will be greater. Where is the anger? Where are the protests? Are we sheep?

Baaaaaa.

Personally, I blame the media. During the Vietnam era disturbing images of war appeared in every newspaper every day. Every night on TV we saw flag-draped coffins bearing the remains of young Americans being disgorged from airplanes. Back then the media did its job - we were not allowed to forget for a single day the cost of war.

There was something else, too. It felt personal. Very personal. I and millions of young men of my generation were subject to the draft. Like everyone else, I knew there was a very real possibility I might suddenly find myself on a battlefield in southeast Asia. Once there it was not at all unlikely that I might be killed, or worse, have to kill others. I was lucky, though.

Students today have nothing so tangible to concentrate the mind. But the threat to their future is, if anything, greater. Had I been sent to Vietnam there was a better than even chance that I could have returned home to resume a normal life. But none of us will be able to escape the consequences of a warming planet.

When are we going to do something about it?

Save a tree and get a Kindle for free (sort of)

I've been wanting a Kindle electronic reader for some time but didn't want to spend the money. But when the new, slimmer, sexier-looking Kindle 2 was announced recently I started looking into the economics again and noticed something pretty interesting. The thing could pay for itself.

How? I’ll tell you.

Home delivery of the New York Times costs me $45.93 per month. Instead, I could get the Times delivered electronically to my Kindle for $13.99 per month -- a savings of $31.94. So my annual savings would be $383.32. A new Kindle 2 costs $359.00. Hmmmm.

Not only that, but the paper doesn't always arrive as early in the morning as I would like, and I often have to go outside in the cold, rain or snow to get it. And then there are all those messy piles of newsprint laying around waiting to be recycled.

On top of all that, I would personally be saving one tree per year. Now, that may not sound like a lot, but it adds up. And even though most newsprint comes from trees that are farmed, there are still serious downsides to the practice, like increased erosion and water quality issues. Also, making paper produces significant amounts pollution. Then there is the energy used trucking the trees to the paper mill, shipping the paper to the printer, running the printing presses, shipping the finished newspapers to distributors, newsstands, my driveway, etc.  The Kindle is starting to look like a pretty good deal to me.

You can click here if you want to know more, or order one from Amazon.com.

Q: What is the most important number on the planet? A: 350.

Many of the worlds leading scientists now say that the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is 350 ppm (parts per million). Our atmosphere is currently at 386.92 ppm - up from 310 ppm fifty years ago and 280 ppm a century ago. This trend urgently needs to be reversed or we'll be cooked - literally.

An organization called 350.org has created a very cool little video to communicate this concept in 90 seconds with zero words. Worth watching.

It's time for NAHB to get serious about climate change

I have a love/hate relationship with the National Association of Home Builders. As a longtime member of NAHB I appreciate many of the services they provide, including their tireless advocacy in Washington. But I've occasionally felt some of their positions were wrong-headed - attempting to protect home builders from regulations that would benefit home buyers.

Case in point - about which I am quietly fuming: While the NAHB pays a great deal of lip service to improving energy efficiency in homes, at the 2008 hearings of the International Code Council in Minneapolis, NAHB successfully lobbied for the weakening of proposed new energy standards under the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC).

According to the blog, Green Building Advisor, the so-called the so-called Thirty Percent Solution — which would have required homes built in 2009 to be 30% more energy efficient that homes built in 2006 —  was defeated after vigorous opposition from representatives from the NAHB. The Thirty Percent Solution was supported by a wide coalition of organizations, including the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Association of State Energy Officials and the Energy Efficient Codes Coalition.

The weakened regulations that were finally passed only require a 12.2% improvement in energy efficiency. The results will be still less effective becauseu the IECC codes are only sporadically enforced around the country.

I think it's an outrage. When are we going to get serious about fighting climate change?