The Climate Minute

The MCAN Climate Minute - News from Hotlanta, DC, and Boston

Good morning everybody and welcome to the MCAN Climate Minute(s).  (Old friend Susan suggested we're being misleading by calling this the Climate Minute, when in fact it's pretty close to the Climate Half-Hour.  We'll, that just doesn't have the zip of "Climate Minute," so we'll stick with that and thank you for sparing the time for our ramblings.) So Ted's back in New England after a few days in Atlanta at the USCAN annual meeting.  He's filled with new ideas and interesting tidbits, here are a few links to things we mentioned in the coversation: To find the Climate Reality Project's videos, go here.  They're YouTube videos and easily embedable and shareable, perfect to send to that Uncle Joe who just doesn't quite get it yet... We've also found definitions for solastalgia, and petcoke - one is the after-product of distilling dilbit and burned as coal would be, but 5-10% more carbon intensive, while the former is the psychological distress people feel about climate change and environmental destruction.   For extra credit, there's metallurgical coal, which is the stuff you need for steel -- which we will still need even if we move off coal power. Ted picked up a couple of new catchphrases in Atlanta, for instance: "Keystone Pipeline is a pipeline through the US, not to the US," and "Stop making electricity by burning stuff," and finally "We need a FAB treaty; Fair, Ambitious  and Binding" at the next Conference of the Parties meeting in Poland in 2013. For more information about the European airlines emission trading process, check this out. Vice President Biden spilled the beans on his opposition to the Keystone pipeline, telling an activist he was personally opposed but in a minority in the administration.  Recalling when the Veep jumped the gun and supported gay marriage before the President did, is this another Biden "gaffe" which will turn out for the best? Meanwhile, at home in Massachusetts the Boston City Council adopted a building energy labeling ordinance this week which will require commercial building owners to assess their energy use which will be publicly rated.  Building owners will get assistance in increasing their efficiency and tenants will get information that will help them make educated decisions about where they would locate.  For a good write-up of the benefits of such a program, look here. Old friend (perhaps we should say "long term friend") Gina McCarthy, the President's nominee for EPA administrator, had her nomination vote delayed when the republicans "took their ball and went home" and boycotted the committee vote to move her to full Senate consideration.  The nomination will move ahead (the threshold quorum is 10 votes, which is the number of democrats, but one was traveling), but this is just another example of the troubling polarization of congress. For the local events we mentioned, including the Somerville Depaving party this Sunday, check out our Climate Action Calendar. We've rescheduled our Climate Education Meeting on the state Clean Energy and Climate Plan and Green Communities Program for Wednesday, May 29th, at 8pm in the Arlington Senior Center. As always, it's been a pleasure sharing climate news and views with you.  You know, you can subscribe to our iTunes feed and get our podcasts automatically here.  Feel free to give us your thoughts on our Facebook page, or through old-fashioned email. You can donate and support the Climate Minute and all of MCAN's other climate change fighting activities by hitting that "donate now" button, or going to www.massclimateaction.net/donate. Remember, for climate activities near you check out our MCAN climate action calendar.  You can enter events as well as browse for interesting things to do. As always -- remember, for these reasons we have discussed, the United States must place a price on carbon.

The Climate Minute - James Hansen retirement edition

James Hansen retired from NASA, paving the way for him to expand his role in the climate debate, it's about time, jeez, you almost never hear from the guy...  Kidding aside, that's just one of the things Rob and Ted talk about in this issue of the Climate Minute.  From the wind swept expanses of the Athabasca tar sands fields to town meeting in Manchester Massachusetts, welcome to the MCAN Climate Minute. As always, click on the “MCAN Climate Minute” picture to the right to start the recording in a new window, or go to our iTunes page and download or subscribe to the podcast. Some links to go enhance your listening experience: James Hansen is retiring after 46 years in NASA service.  Congratulations to Dr. Hansen, and we're excited to see you expand your activism (if that's possible) for the good of of the planet. Dr. Hansen's predictions from 1981 prove to be pretty reliable, over thirty years later.  Maybe he was on to something, eh? Bummer given his predictions about the impact of Keystone XL on climate change. But the fight over Keystone isn't over yet.  We've provided what we hope is a handy guide to talking Keystone with your climate denier friends and maybe getting them to oppose the pipeline on non-climate grounds. The Mayflower, Arkansas spill is just the latest disaster involving tar sands.  Perhaps the most galling aspect of that spill is the fact that tar sands derived oil doesn't even pay into the trust fund that is being used to clean up the spill.  If that doesn't get people ticked off about the idea of transporting more tar sands through the country, I don't know what does. To top it all off, Exxon has been running the show in Mayflower, and even denying press access to the disaster. Chris Hayes, of "All In" on MSNBC has done some excellent shows about the Mayflower spill and Keystone recently, check them out (after you're done listening here, of course!). Closer to home, tempers are flaring over wind turbines, with folks in Kingston upset about turbine flicker(sorry, story's only available behind the Globe's paywall), and Falmouth voting at town meeting next week on whether or not to spend millions of dollars to take down their existing turbines. There is some good news at town meetings though, with Manchester-by-the-Sea, a town as pretty as its name would suggest, passing the optional Stretch Building Code earlier this week, and towns like Lunenburg, Framingham, and West Newbury coming up in the next several weeks. The Legislature is in hearing season, and while the hearing on the Oil Heat Efficiency program we talked with Natalie Hildt about earlier this week has been pushed off, the debate about the future of transportation funding in the Commonwealth will take place next week. Competing plans have been proposed by the Governor and Legislative leadership, and while the Governor's plan provides more support for the system and new projects not covered in the Legislature leadership's plan, the Legislative plan does contain taxes on gasoline and electricity that inch us ever closer to our favorite topic: the Carbon Tax! The Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance has many thoughtful posts about the competing plans and what they feel is truly needed for lasting transportation reform in Massachusetts. Spring also means the fight for the updated bottle bill starts over.  Tomorrow night there will be a great event in Arlington, "The Battle for the Bottle Bill," a night of comedy, music, and conversation about the new bottle bill legislation before become hill.  Go here for more information.  We've only been trying to to get those pesky water bottles and juice bottles taken care of for 16 years, maybe this is the year! The bladeless wind turbine, via Grist Let's end on a hopeful note.  Ted found a neat new invention -- a bladeless wind turbine.  Perhaps the power of the future will be generated by these machines and "wind turbine syndrome" and flicker will be a thing of the past.  Or perhaps Ted's suggestion of mass numbers of Crookes Radiometers generating our power a sip at a time will be our savior.  I don't know, but I'm not the one in the conversation with a patent to his name... As always, it's been a pleasure sharing climate news and views with you.  You know, you can subscribe to our iTunes feed and get our podcasts automatically here.  Feel free to give us your thoughts on our Facebook page, or through old-fashioned email. You can donate and support the Climate Minute and all of MCAN's other climate change fighting activities by hitting that "donate now" button, or going to www.massclimateaction.net/donate.  Much thanks to Maura from Quincy and Leo from Wrentham who helped support us last week! Remember, for climate activities near you check out our MCAN climate action calendar.  You can enter events as well as browse for interesting things to do. As always -- remember, for these reasons we have discussed, the United States must place a price on carbon.  See you next week.

Climate Hawk's Companion - How to improve oil heat efficiency

Much is made of Massachusetts' nation-leading energy efficiency programs, but there are still gaps in the system that need to be addressed. The rate-payer efficiency programs in Massachusetts provide excellent coverage of heating system upgrades for customers who heat with gas and electricity.  Unlike gas and electric customers, homes and businesses in Massachusetts that rely on oil heat currently have limited access to energy-saving programs. This Climate Hawk's Companion is a discussion with Natalie Hildt, a senior manager with NEEP, the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships.  Natalie explains an important new effort to achieve greater home heating oil efficiency through legislation currently up for debate on Beacon Hill.  Click the Climate Hawk's Companion logo to hear our conversation with Natalie.

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H. 2741 is legislation filed by Representative Frank Smizik and twenty other legislators that creates an oil heat efficiency program funded through a small (2.5 cents per gallon) charge on heating oil sales.  This is the same way the current gas and electric heating programs are funded, through surcharges on electricity and natural gas.

This small charge would fund a $20 million program which would fund efficiency work that would result in savings of $120 million per year.  In addition to the impressive savings the efficiency programs would produce, the program would add thousands of job providing energy efficiency services and help boost the local economy. It also addresses the rapidly aging fleet of oil heat equipment in the state: in Boston alone some 40% of all oil heating systems are more than 20 years old and terribly inefficient. Unlike previous attempts to set up a program for oil heat, this effort is endorsed by a wide variety of stakeholders, from efficiency experts to environmentalists and the Massachusetts Oil Heat Council, which represents oil dealers across the state. The legislation will be the subject of a hearing before the Joint committee on Revenue at 10:30am on April 9th in State House hearing room B-2.  For more information on how to testify or send a letter in support of this important legislation, check out the Mass Oil Heat Coalition's fact sheet: Action Alert Oilheat Efficiency in Mass - 4.1.13

The Climate Minute - Start By Doing What Is Necessary...

St. Francis Assisi is credited with the saying "Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible."  Timely words for climate activists from the Saint.  This week Ted and Rob discuss whether the President is doing what's necessary (never mind what's possible or impossible), and Ted waxes philosophical about the equinox while a new Pope gives environmentalists some hope. As always, click on the “MCAN Climate Minute” picture to the right to start the recording in a new window. To read more about the President's plans to address automobile-sourced greenhouse gas emissions, here is a good piece from the New York Times.  The other new initiative we discussed was the President's proposal to include greenhouse gas emissions impacts in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).  As former Massachusetts Energy and Environment Secretary Ian Bowles tweeted out earlier this week, Massachusetts has been requiring ghg impacts as part of the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act review since about 2007.  Naturally some legislative luddites are trying to get involved and block the President's proposal. For more on the President's Clean Energy Trust proposal, check out Climate Desk here.  On the worrying side of the ledger, you should read about the delay in new source review for coal plants which is a concerning development. As you're aware the vernal equinox is upon us, and while the thing about an egg standing its end is hogwash, it is a time to take note of.  The equinox actually occurred on the 20th, at  11:02am.  As Ted points out, the equinox is an occasion to re-orient ourselves with a view toward nature (and our place in it), something lost in modern times but celebrated throughout antiquity.  Any occasion which causes us to think about our place in the grand scheme of things is welcome, and should work to raise consciousness of environmental issues including climate change. The new Pope of the Catholic Church chose the name Francis, who is the patron saint of, among other things, ecology.  Pope Francis gave his first homily as Pope this Tuesday, and his speech touched on the importance of protecting the environment in a number of passages.  Here's perhaps the most direct:

The vocation of being a “protector”, however, is not just something involving us Christians alone; it also has a prior dimension which is simply human, involving everyone. It means protecting all creation, the beauty of the created world, as the Book of Genesis tells us and as Saint Francis of Assisi showed us. It means respecting each of God’s creatures and respecting the environment in which we live.

Hopefully he will continue to enunciate these sentiments to the world's 1.8 billion Catholics. Slate's gabfest had an interesting conversation about religion and modernity, which is fortuitously times given the equinox reminding us of our more nature-abiding past, and the installation of a new Pope taking the name of his church's most famous environmentalist.  I guess I would make the argument that a focus on conservation and environmental awareness is actually a move back toward older forms of faith and spirituality.  What do you think? In more temporal matters, Mayor Menino's proposal on building energy labeling will come up for a hearing on March 28th.  Larry Harmon wrote a very critical op-ed about the proposal in the Boston Globe, the state Department of Energy Resources has an illuminating white paper on the concept here.  Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP) has a very helpful report here. For more news about the pending "de-listing" of the Mt. Tom coal plant, go here.  The great news about DPU's order relative to the proposed new gas plant in Salem is here, and for more discussion about what the sale of Brayton Point may mean, check out here, and Conservation Law Foundation's excellent analysis of the economic circumstance of Brayton here.  Finally, to stay up on all the news regarding New England's remaining coal polluters power plants, friend "Coal Free Massachusetts" on Facebook. Reminder: The website Credo has made it easy to submit an electronic comment on the Keystone pipeline Draft EIS here.  They'll provide you with a generic comment text which you can change, and they'll electronically deliver the comment for you.  They have collected 160,000 signatures toward their goal of delivering 200,000 comments on the pipeline. Tom Friedman (apparently Tom Friedman's Column of the Week is a new Climate Minute feature...) wrote a column last Saturday on the political and economic benefits of carbon taxes. If you're looking for a great conference full of ideas on how you can make a difference in your community, you should check out the Massachusetts Sustainable Communities / Sustainable Campuses conference happening on April 24th at the Worcester DCU center.  More information is available here. Also, don't forget to come back and visit for more details on our April 17th meeting with state officials discussing the Commonwealth's Clean Energy and Climate Plan. It's been a pleasure sharing climate news and views with you as always.  You know, you can subscribe to our iTunes feed and get our podcasts automatically here.  Feel free to give us your thoughts on our Facebook page, or through old-fashioned email. Remember, for climate activities near you check out our MCAN climate action calendar.  You can enter events as well as browse for interesting things to do. As always -- remember, for these reasons we have discussed, the United States must place a price on carbon.  See you next week.

The MCAN Climate Minute - Protests and protestations.

Well, the Keystone protest in Washington is over and Rob and Ted are back at the pink and orange coffeehouse to compare notes about the march and try to figure out what's next. The protest created an interesting back-and-forth between several observers as to the most effective path forward for the climate movement, and we give our two cents. Also, some breaking news coming out of DC (well, breaking rumor) about the next EPA director has Massachusetts environmentalists a-flutter. As always, click on the “MCAN Climate Minute” picture to the right to start the recording in a new window. Here are some links to go along with our talk this morning. We've cobbled together some clips from the speeches and march. Forgive the amateur video, but, hey, we're amateurs at this... [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ_tp7RKJnY] The march caused a some folks to question the approaches required to fight climate change.  Apparently, Andy Revkin of the NY Times Dot.Earth blog was engaging in a little twitter back and forth during the march with Phil Aroneau of 350.org about the value of protesting Keystone, among other things, which naturally got some folks fairly ticked off. Revkin is more inclined not to draw a line in the sand on Keystone, as too much of a focus on Keystone hurts efforts to secure other carbon-reducing policies.  In crude terms, and as this little dust-up has been summed up by Dave Roberts of Grist, this is a fight between the Radicals and the Very Serious People (VSP). For my part, I believe Roberts is right when he states that protesting Keystone is not going to hurt any other action, why would it?  This isn't a zero sum game in which my marching around the White House precludes me from fighting for renewable energy in my town.... Rivken's piece got me thinking about the "grand bargain" that has been floated in certain quarters; would the community accept Keystone if it was paired with a carbon tax, but that seems to be a meme spouted mostly by people on the outside looking in, and not a serious discussion. Beyond Dave Robert's analysis that activism on Keystone doesn't preclude other solutions though is discussion of a clash of cultures in the climate movement.  Susan Cagle wrote a piece titled "At climate rally, some signs of fraying in a movement’s big tent" which played up VSP vs. Radical divide within the climate movement itself.  Cagle presented a vignette of a young person climbing a tree and being scolded by an older marcher for damaging the tree as well as the climate movement itself. She went on in the piece to interview a couple of the younger protesters who thought many of the Keystone marchers were being too passive, and that the climate movement has to move outside of the "mainstream" -- we can't be concerned about trees, or niceties  while the planet burns. Wen Stepehenson echoes this call in a recent Boston Pheonix piece exhorting climate change activists to be the new abolitionists, that the time to be reasonable is long since passed. For my part I believe the movement has to have many faces, from angry to hopeful, to be successful.  If we are to move the mass of people we have to present both the problem (Keystone) and the solutions (clean energy, energy efficiency, better zoning, local food etc etc etc). The young man interviewed in the Cagle piece was very frustrated, I understand that.  But there's useful frustration and there's wasted frustration.  When you say that you'd like to tell the President:

‘You fucking start this change or we’re going to do it ourselves,’” said Max. “We’re going to take over and cross this fence and walk over to that White House.”

Well.  Frankly, that's wasted frustration.  I'm sorry, but climate change cannot be solved by jumping the White House fence, swearing at the President, and getting shot by the Secret Service.  Our government may be made up of pandering captives of special interests, but it's the only government we got.  We're not going to solve this problem without government action, and that means getting political leaders on board.  And political leaders are notorious for finding the middle ground. Until we fix our government (through campaign finance reform, among other things), we're going to have to work within its limits. (Of course, it doesn't help that the President was golfing with Big Oil executives while the march was going on.) By the way, Roberts has a very good piece up this morning about "what's next" after the Keyston decision.  Take a gander at it here. Secretary of State Kerry made his first major foreign policy speech, and climate change featured prominently:

"So let’s commit ourselves to doing the smart thing and the right thing and truly commit to tackling this challenge," he said. "Because if we don’t rise to meet it, rising temperatures and rising sea levels will surely lead to rising costs down the road. If we waste this opportunity, it may be the only thing our generations are remembered for. We need to find the courage to leave a far different legacy."

Word coming out of DC has local hero Gina McCarthy will very soon be nominated for EPA Administrator.  The Washington Post thinks the nomination could come as soon as this Wednesday.  Having had the pleasure of working with Gina in two of her Massachusetts positions, I think she'd make an excellent Administrator, and has a wonderful ability to work with all parties to achieve significant environmental successes. Plus it's great having someone else with that accent in a position of power!  ("Cahhs in the market today...") In other cabinet news, many believe departing Sec. of Energy Stephen Chu will be replaced by MIT Professor Ernest Moniz.  Word of his potential nomination has some environmentalists concerned, as in the past Professor Moniz has supported fracking as a "bridge to a low carbon future."  Stay tuned... Remember - our annual conference is coming up March 10th at Northeastern University. You can read about the panels we're offering and the speakers who will be there here. Finally, Ted was smitten with Beasts of the Southern Wild.  For a deep read on its sociological and environmental importance, check out this article in the journal Southern Spaces. As always -- remember, for these reasons we have discussed, the United States must place a price on carbon.

MCAN Climate Minute - On Our Way to DC

Life is back to normal in New England after last weekend's snowstorm dumped about 24 inches or more on parts of the region.  Ted and Rob are getting ready to go to Washington for this weekend's Keystone XL protest, but there is other news, so settle in and let's talk about what's happening in Massachusetts and beyond relative to climate change this week. As always, click on the “MCAN Climate Minute” picture to the right to start the recording in a new window. Here are some links to go along with our talk this morning. The President laid down the law at the State of the Union this week; if congress doesn't act to pass a market-based carbon reduction program, he will use the power of his administration to act. Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe opines that the President's threat of increased regulation will drive legislators to embrace cap-and-trade programs, like the successful RGGI program.  You can read his editorial here, grab it before it goes behind the paywall. The President's speech ignited another round of supposition about a possible Carbon Tax-for-Keystone trade, in US as well as in Canada.  Would the President try and appease both the fossil fuel lobby and the environmental lobby by offering a deal on both issues?  Or would that just create two unhappy camps? In the midst of this discussion, Senators Barbara Boxer and Bernard Sanders have filed a "cap and dividend" bill to impose a carbon tax, and disperse (much) of the proceeds to taxpayers. The coming abdication of Pope Benedict presents a possibility for a new vigor about climate change from the Catholic Church.  A non-European pope, particularly a southern-hemisphere pope, may redirect Rome's attention on the planetary suffering that will ensue from Climate Change.  While the primary experience of climate conscious Catholics has been one of deafening silence, there are groups within the church paying attention to Climate Change. In other meteorlogical news (har har, couldn't resist) later today asteroid 2012DA14 will come as close to Earth as we're likely comfortable with.  2012DA14 will actually pass closer to the planet than the orbit of several satellites, and yesterday a meteor streaked across the sky in Russia, causing injuries to hundreds and causing quite a commotion. We mention this, not because unlike certain newsreaders on CNN we're trying to tie these events to climate change, but to point out that this is the "bright shiny object" syndrome that drives news coverage and media attention, while the inexorable march of climate change caused by human emissions of greenhouse gasses, goes if not mocked than underreported -- and has consequences orders of magnitude larger than 2012DA14 or that meteor over Russia! Fortunately there are some weather people paying attention.  Kudos to Boston's own Channel 5 meteorologist Harvey Leonard who explained very clearly and calmly that while you can't go and pin the development of a winter storm on climate change, the trend toward larger and larger storms is very clearly due to climate change and associated warming.  Good on 'ya Harvey -- we loved you when you were announcing school was out when we were kids, and we love you now. Thanks for listening, and here's a little gift.  Here's NPR's Bands that Should Be Bigger podcast with some links to great artists you should be listening to, particulary Adam Arcugai and Seryn. Remember - our annual conference is coming up March 10th at Northeastern University.  Register today to get the early bird rate! Well we'll see you in Washington, and as always -- remember, for these reasons we have discussed, the United States must place a price on carbon.

The MCAN Climate Minute – Snow Day Edition

Oh my goodness it's snowing!  Winter Storm Nemo is barreling down on New England bringing giddy weathermen (I swear I heard one giggling during his forecast) and between two and three feet of snow.  Being the good New Englanders that we are, Ted and I have stocked up on bread and milk, and are settling in to a leisurely MCAN Climate Minute for February 8, 2012.  As everything is closed and the Governor has practically ordered us to stay home from work today, we had some extra time to chat.  Get a coffee, toast up that bagel, and buckle in for a half-hour of local, state, and national climate talk on this week's MCAN Climate Minute. As always, click on the “MCAN Climate Minute” picture to the right to start the recording in a new window. Here are some links to go along with our talk this morning. The RGGI states have agreed to a new, lower carbon caps bringing the regional cap on emissions from stationary sources (read: power plants) from 165 million tons to 91 million tons in 2014 and 2.5% lower each successive year.  MCAN supported this lower number in our comments to RGGI, which you can see here. This of course isn't the final word, as the proposal has to be accepted by each state. We talked about new proposals to fund transportation infrastructure through various vehicle miles traveled (VMT) proposals.  Politico has a story about the bi-partisan discussions going on in Washington over the need to find new revenue sources for transportation funding.  For an interesting read on "pay as you drive" insurance, a related concept to VMT charges, and their potential impact on miles driven and thus climate impacts, check out this MIT and Conservation Law Foundation report. For an update about what's going on in Falmouth, there are several stories up on the net.  Here's a story that says the cost of removing the turbines could be as high as $11 million!  This story suggests that the average homeowner would face a tax increase of $53 to $66 per month.  Of course, there would ongoing costs to the town in terms of the lost revenue from electricity production.  Interestingly a cross section of responses on the Cape Cod Times facebook page show strong support for keeping the turbines. As I said on the podcast, I was at a meeting where some testimony was read from a Board of Health hearing in Cape Cod.  One person was recorded as saying the her sleep disturbances continued, even after the turbines had been shut off during the night time hours.  To paraphrase, "even the fact that they're there is enough to keep me awake."  In my humble, non-medical opinion -- that's not the fault of the turbines, and that doesn't seem to be a problem just taking down the turbines will solve... For information on buses available to DC for next weekend check out 350ma.org, and stay tuned to our Facebook page for any updates on where we'll be on Sunday the 17th. Well, I'm off to enjoy the snow.  We'll have a separate post up regarding our annual conference (with our announced Keynote speaker -- sorry, gotta listen to the podcast for that little tidbit) and another one about last night's presentation on the Waste-Climate Connection later in the day. Here's a little something to keep you chuckling though the shoveling... [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR7A7KRpMe8?rel=0] As always -- remember, for these reasons we have discussed, the United States must place a price on carbon.

Forward on Climate - the MCAN Climate Minute

Good morning from the pink and orange coffeehouse.  Certainly a heady week for climate activists; both the President and his designee for Secretary of State mentioning climate change as a compelling and high-level problem our government needs to address. These statements come mere weeks before the expected decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, fueling hope among the faithful that the President will do the right thing on the pipeline. In today's conversation Ted and I discuss Keystone, the some of the pressures on the President, and what we can do.  Click on the “MCAN Climate Minute” picture to the right to start the recording in a new window. Here's some further reading on some of the issues we touch upon in this week's Climate Minute. Darren Samuelsohn argues in Politico that the President will focus on smaller profile, administrative actions fully within his control instead of engaging a large-scale battle with Congress over new legislation. Comedian Jim Meyer has a deliciously sarcastic piece in Grist outlining the true story of how tar sands become usable oil and gasoline.  The facts are true, and the tone may be just the right thing to have it impact your favorite climate skeptic/denialist. ThinkProgress has the data, and wind beat everything else last year in terms of new installed capacity.  Your humble commentator must mea culpa though, I was off on the number of natural gas facilities represented by 8,700 MW of capacity -- it's really 94 (I thought it was more 10-15!), which means the average is 92 MW, which is a fairly small gas plant.  Most likely there were a large number of smaller "peaker" units sited, which may actually play an important role in our future energy mix as we rely more heavily on intermittant renewable sources like wind and solar. (And you'd much rather have natural gas peakers than diesel fuel peakers...) Keep an eye out for the Sierra Club's "100 Days of Activism."  You can follow their plans for events here.  For an interesting interview with Michael Brune, Sierra's national Executive Director, check out this NPR story. And this weekend is the Portland, Maine protests against Tar Sands pipelines through New England.  For more information on the events scheduled, check out 350MA.org. Tomorrow kicks off Brookline's 2013 Climate Week, and MCAN will have a speaker about the Waste and Climate connection at our next Climate Education meeting on February 7th in Lexington.  More information on the Lexington meeting, or our March 10th conference at Northeastern can be found on the MCAN Climate Action Calendar.  To register for the conference, go to the registration site here. For videos of the Northeastern University "open classroom" discussions on climate and energy, go here.  Next week's discussion in on mitigation and features MIT Sloan School professor Henry "Jake" Jacoby. For information about getting your town in the Solarize Mass program, check out their website.  The first deadline (for a submission of community interest) is Feburary 6th. Here's a non-podcast bonus (think of it as a Jon Stewart-esque "Moment of Zen"), check out this story about the gas flaring from North Dakota oil wells being seen from space. The story itself is an awful testament to waste, greed, and disregard for environmental consequences, but contains the following incredible video of the Earth as seen from the International Space Station. My, my does it look lovely from a distance. Too bad we get the up close view... As always remember, for these reasons we have discussed, the United States must place a price on carbon.  Have a great weekend. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip2ZGND1I9Q?rel=0]

The MCAN Climate Minute - Cliff Notes

Good morning from the pink and orange coffeehouse.  So, Fiscal Cliff averted, at least for the time being but what about the climate cliff?  Well, it's cold enough this morning that we're ready to declare victory over Global Warming... Just kidding!  This week we talk production tax credits, deathbed conversions, and the return of the Massachusetts legislature. Click on the “MCAN Climate Minute” picture to the right to start the recording in a new window. Here’s more information about some of the things we talked about in this edition of the Climate Minute: We touched on Rep. David Deier's "deathbed conversion" to climate believer from lousy climate voter in a blog earlier this week.  For a borderline wonky discussion of the wind production tax credit extension, check out PeakOil.com's writeup.  Dave Roberts over at Grist is proclaiming that 2013 will be a huge year for wind due to the extension of the credit and the equally cloudy outlook for the future of the credit. Governor Chris "Never a Dull Moment" Christie was reduced to blasting away in a press conference as the House dallied on Sandy relief. Thought we were free of fiscal cliff talk?  Well, only for a couple of months.  As The Economist points out Congress and the president merely put off a couple of thorny issues, including the debt limit and fund sequestration which are yet to be resolved. This does give us some hope that a future deal may include some form of carbon tax, which as Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker points out in an excellent new piece, is still gaining traction on both sides of the philosophical (if not political) aisle. For a more pessimistic view of what the Fiscal Cliff issue says about our (in)ability to deal with the Climate Cliff, Joe Romm has an excellent piece up at Climate Progress. Monday will see the release of the latest Transportation Finance Commission report detailing possible solutions to the state's transportation morass.  More funding is a generally accepted need for everything from the MBTA to the state's crumbling bridges and roadways.  The Governor says he will be keeping his powder dry until his State of the State address in a couple of weeks, but look for rampant speculation as to which increased taxes or new funding sources will be recommended. For more information and to sign up for buses to the Portland, Maine pipeline protest, check out 350MA's page here.  Check out the MCAN calendar for upcoming climate-related events including our January climate education meeting when it is announced, and for more information on the Northeastern University's "Climate Change. Challenges.  Solutions" open classroom series, go here.  In addition the Northeastern Environmental Law Society is hosting a series of evening lectures on climate and energy issues this winter as well. (Can you tell who's a proud alum?) A huge "thank you" to all those who donated in December helping MCAN achieve it's best donation month ever.  We're 18.75% to our goal of $40,000 for the 12 months from December '12 to December '13.  If you haven't been able to give yet, please consider clicking that big, blue button at the end of this post.  Your tax deductible donation will go help fight climate change on the local level throughout Massachusetts. Finally, we at MCAN extend our most heartfelt condolences to the family and loved one of Rebecca Tarbotton, the executive director of the Rainforest Action Network who passed away in a swimming accident in Mexico the day after Christmas.  She will be missed but her impact will continue to be felt for years to come. Well, that's it for this week.  As always -- remember, for these reasons we have discussed, the United States must place a price on carbon.  Have a great weekend, stay warm, and we look forward to talking with you again next week!