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KW: Changing the order to put my Walt Whitman project last, and an important nuclear issue first!
Long Island Climate Solutions Network
Updates from members, coming events, and news
II. Beware! Senate Bill 2191 would subsidize the nuclear energy industry
Submitted by Peter Maniscalco
The nuclear industry is trying to hide a $544 BILLION subsidy in Senate Bill 2191 sponsored by Lieberman-Warner. Please call your senators (the senate switchboard # is 202-224-3121) asap and notify both senators of your opposition to this bill and its outrageous subsidy for the nuke industry. Please share this with your email lists. If you don’t understand why nuclear power will NOT lessen the impact of climate change, please email or call me.
III. International Sustainability Conference in Michigan
David Alexander, LICSN member and founder of PlanetThoughts.org, an environmental news and analysis Web site concerned with the ways we relate to the planet and our environment, will be in Grand Rapids , Michigan from Friday to Sunday for the International Sustainability Conference (SustainabilityConference.org), meeting with international and local speakers, and giving his own talk twice on “Online Environmental Activism”.
Check his Web site for posts on topics such as “Let’s Use Our Power of Thought”, “Are We Enron? Plea for a New Economy”, “Population: The Final Challenge”, and other carefully thought-out writing — with relevant videos attached to each piece!
IV. Gary Minnick – Gosolar.com
The “SunShack” rolling solar education center is available for daytime events. It will be a big hit and may be an asset to your cause. Visit Go Solar to see the new SunShack.
V. Kenny Luna
Last year Kenny Luna pitched his idea for the Great Copy Epidemic. Now he has finished his first online competition. Check out the results at www.greatcopyepidemic.com. You can also see his treehugger story at http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/famed-scientist-great-copy-machine-epidemic.php
(From the top)
I. Video: May 31st – Celebrate Walt Whitman’s birthday with silence
Celebrates Walt Whitman, Long Island environment, and nature in general. Includes scenes of the beach at Robert Moses State Park . Three Reasons that a Climate Sanity activist will like this video:
- It encourages people to turn off all machines and electricity for 15 minutes. (Besides the annual 15 minutes worth of no electricity, makes you think about how many machines we usually have on.)
- It celebrates nature in a way that will encourage people to value nature more and destroy it less.
- It is a neat and easy homemade video on a environmental/philosophical topic. What kind of video could you do to make people reflect on climate change?
(If you want a nudge or tips, give Kimberly a call or e-mail. (631) 422-4702
votewilder@yahoo.com
VI. Upcoming Events
Thursday, June 5 from 7 PM – 8:30 PM. LIPA Seminar: Energy efficiency, conservation, Solar Power, & Geothermal energy for your home. Presented by The Riverhead Town Energy Advisory Committee at the Riverhead Free Library.
June 12, 7pm Solar Energy Education. Learn how Solar Electric and Solar Hot Water works, and how much you can save on oil and gas. A staff member from The Solar Center, will be presenting information specific to LIPA customers as well as tax incentives and how it works. GO GREEN and reduce your carbon footprint! For more information, call 516-938-6152 or see www.starflowerexperiences.org. Location: Melville Branch of the Half Hollow Hills Library at 510 Sweet Hollow Rd, directly across from the Sunquam Elementary School (between Rt 110 and Old Country Rd).
VII. News Stories
1700 Scientists and Economists Call for Swift Climate Action in Washington. Press Release, Union of Concerned Scientists, May 29, 2008. “More than 1,700 of the nation’s most prominent scientists and economists released a joint statement [just days before the Senate begins debate on the Lieberman-Warner climate bill] calling on policymakers to require immediate, deep reductions in heat-trapping emissions that cause global warming… The statement [letter, endorsers and personal quotes, PDF, 68 pp] concludes that the United States should reduce global warming pollution ‘on the order of 80 percent below 2000 levels by 2050’ and that the first step should be reductions of 15 to 20 percent below 2000 levels by 2020. The statement calls on the United States to set an example and bring nations together to meet the climate challenge.”
How Much Do You Really Want to Save on Gas? By Kimberly Palmer, USN&WReport, May 28, 2008. “With the price of gas approaching, and in several regions exceeding, $4 a gallon, some drivers are getting creative to reduce their bill… Here are some of the best tips, collected from around the Web, on how to reduce your bill: Lighten up… According to [DOE], carrying an extra 100 lbs. reduces a vehicle’s fuel economy by up to 2%… Carpool… RideSearch and eRideShare can get you started… Comparison shop… GasBuddy [and] GasPriceWatch let you look up the stations near you and find the one offering the cheapest fuel. Get sleeker. Roll up your windows and remove that luggage rack and you’ll improve your aerodynamics, suggests a blogger at Open Travel Info… Reward yourself… Money$martLife compares the various [rebate] offers and recommends Discover’s Open Road card and American Express’s Blue Cash, which offer up to 5% cash-back rewards on gas purchases. Reduce horsepower… Visit the mechanic. Replacing a clogged air filter for around $20 increases fuel efficiency by up to 10%… An engine tune-up can increase a car’s mileage by up to 4%… Just coast. Here’s a real sign of desperation… The Money Kings recommend turning your engine completely off [when going downhill]. That way, you can take advantage of the car’s momentum… But [AAA] warns against the dangers of this technique.”
Honda to Sell New Hybrid Next Year. By Yuri Kageyama, AP, May 21, 2008. “Honda will sell a new, improved and affordable gas-electric hybrid in the U.S. , Japan and Europe starting in early 2009, underlining the Japanese automaker’s commitment to ‘green’ technology, the company president said Wednesday… The new hybrid’s name was not yet disclosed. It will be a five-door sedan seating five passengers.”
Hybrids: The High Cost of Replacing Batteries. By Keith Naughton, Newsweek, May 27, 2008. “What happens if the battery on your hybrid goes dead? These cars, after all, have been on the road in America for eight years, racking up hundreds of thousands of miles… Toyota , Honda, and Ford all say that hybrid battery failures are extremely rare. [The warranties for each cover the first 100,000 miles in most states – 150 miles for California , and Toyota and Honda have announced plans to cut battery replacement cost now at $3,000 and $3,400 respectively. However, they will remain expensive and when shopping for used hybrids,] there aren’t many mechanics who know how to tell is a hybrid battery is running out of juice.”
By Ken Ward, Grist, May 20, 2008. Our present agenda, focused on U.S. domestic emissions and anything-is-better-than-nothing, has more in common with the pre-war II policies of isolationism and appeasement… The people sitting on folding chairs in low-carbon-footprint workshops are much more sophisticated than they were a few years back… What we have going for us is truth and righteousness. What we need is a disciplined, committed climate core. Both are compromised if we keep flogging flimsy policy that cannot solve the problem.”
NY’s LIPA Throws Switch On Nation’s 1st Superconducting Cable
April 30, 2008. By Jonathan Shieber. DOW JONES NEWSLETTERS. Last week the Hauppage, N.Y.-based Long Island Power Authority threw the switch on a half-mile test project that is the first transmission cable system to run in a commercial grid in the U.S. “The real value of super-conducting cables is that (they have) three to five times the load-carrying capability that a conventional cable would have,” said Bruce Germano, vice president of retail services at the Long Island Power Authority. ” The $58.5 million Long Island project was backed in part by the Department of Energy and used high temperature superconductor wire provided by the Devens, Mass.-based American Superconductor Corp. (AMSC) in a cable system made by Paris-based Nexans SA (4444.FR). The DOE spent about $27.5 million to get the cable installed as part of its work to modernize the U.S. electric grid, through its Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability.
Touting Green-Collar Jobs. By Bryan Walsh, Time, May 27, 2008. “They all love green-collar jobs. Obama promises to spend $150 billion over 10 years to create 5 million new green collar jobs. Clinton references the term repeatedly on the trail, and says her energy plan will create millions of new green-collar jobs as well. McCain is less willing to cite numbers, but he too assures campaign audiences that action to decarbonize America ‘s economy will produce ‘thousands, millions of new jobs in America .’… Phil Angelides… chair of the Apollo Alliance, defines a green job [as follows]: ‘It has to pay decent wages and benefits that can support a family. It has to be part of a real career path, with upward mobility. And it needs to reduce waste and pollution and benefit the environment’… Angelides notes that between now and 2030, 75% of the buildings in the U.S. will either be new or substantially rehabilitated. Our inefficient, dangerously unstable electrical grid will need to be overhauled. The jobs that will go into that kind of work can be green collar — provided that the government adopts the kind of policies that incentivize environmentally friendly choices… Environmentalism has usually been the reserve of the elite — but we’ll never have the power to tackle global warming unless we create a coalition that extends well beyond traditional white-collar greens. Touting green-collar jobs can convince skeptical, blue-collar Americans that they have an economic stake in curbing climate change.”
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