The summary at the top of this blog post sums it all up:

In 2009, Neil Young released Fork In The Road, an album which is dedicated to the Lincvolt project that transformed his classic Lincoln Continental into a hot zero emissions vehicle that gets 100 mpg. In this paean to the LincVolt project, Karen Barry also asks, if a 1959 vehicle can be green, what is stopping all current vehicles from achieving the same goal?

This is not the first time that Mr. Young has put himself out on the scene as an important environmental voice.  Back in the 1970′s on his classic album “On the Beach” he presented mankind as a vampire preying upon the earth in the song Vampire Blues.   A decade and a half later in his big hit “Rockin’ in the Free World” he sarcastically bragged about humanity having “Styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer . . . fuel to burn and roads to drive”.

The explosion at a nearly-completed power plant under construction in Connecticut illustrates the direct dangers inherent in harnessing fuels like natural gas.  The accident occurred during the “purging” of the gas lines that were to provide the fuel for the plant – an activity of concern to some observers who believe it to be an unsafe practice, and even  has elicited investigation by the government regulators who oversee such plants.

The workers who lost their lives, or were injured, in the explosion, and their families, should be in the thoughts and prayers of all.

We should never forget that the power that we use to operate our homes, offices and wireless devices does not come free – and sometimes we pay that price with something more precious than mere money.  The implications and impacts of our flipping a switch and plugging in appliance are rarely visible but they are very real.

While the overarching environmental challenge of our time continues to be global warming we can’t loose sight of the need to confront the other air pollution that threatens the public health.  For those of us who fighting against dangerous pollution from coal fired power plants like Salem Harbor in Massachusetts this is not news – but the fact that a bi-partisan group of U.S. Senators (there is a phrase you don’t see much !!) have filed legislation to address this pollution is significant.   Exactly how good a bill is this?  We don’t know as they haven’t released the text and the devil (and god) are in the details.   But it is good to see our Senators paying attention to coal plant pollution !

Meanwhile, Tricia Jedele who runs CLF’s office in Rhode Island is helping to move ahead an effort to focus on the old school environmental value of waste reduction.  Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.  And she points out that the U.S. EPA have produced a very convincing report on how this classic brand of environmental action is good for the climate – bringing us back to global warming again . . .

If you’ve ever tried to calculate your “carbon footprint“–the measure of the greenhouse gas emissions you create directly or indirectly as you live your life–then you know that your footprint grows larger and larger with each trip you take on an airplane.  Like the cars we drive, the planes we fly in burn lots of fossil fuels and emit greenhouse gases as a result. 

Scientists say jet airplanes also contribute to global climate change through the “contrails” they leave in their wake and the effect this has on how the sun’s earth-warming radiation is trapped in our atmosphere.

This photo from NASA shows how the particles and condensation--contrails--left in the wake of jet airplanes effect cloud formations that attract and trap the sun's radiation thereby contributing to harmful climate change.

 According to a forthcoming study from Standford engineering professor Mark Jacobson, “commercial aircraft flights have contributed between four to eight percent of global surface warming since air temperature records began in 1850.”  You can read more about the complex scientific interactions that cause this warming here.  In the meantime, let’s focus on the ways in which the professor thinks the airline industry and the flying public it serves can start to fix the problem.

First, we can reduce the amount of fossil fuels we need to burn per flight by reducing the weight of airplanes and the cargo they carry.  The lighter the plane, the less greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuel it needs to burn.

Second, airlines must switch to hydrogen-based fuels that result in emissions that don’t create the same contrail problems caused by carbon-based fuels in use today.  Hydrogen-based jet fuels are already being used for the space shuttle, but it will cost lots of $ and take some time before they can be safely developed and widely deployed in the world’s commercial airline fleet.

(Of course the third option is that we all fly a lot less, but that’s a topic for another post).

So what does this have to do with baggage fees?

My hope is that fees for extra bags help us rethink how much we take along on trips.  If we travel lighter to avoid paying the fees, then the plane doesn’t need to burn as much fuel to get us there.  Those extra outfits, pairs of shoes, etc. come with an environmental cost.  Confronting that cost in dollars and sense is one way to get us to start changing our habits and expectations surrounding airline travel

Airlines are thinking “green” with these new fees, but not necessarily in the environmental sense.  To them it is all about the $$$.  Nonetheless, if we are going to get serious about slowing global warming and all its disastrous effects, then airlines must be able to seize on new more efficient technology that will reduce the negative climate imapcts of air travel.  Let’s make a deal with the airlines: We’ll live with the higher fees, if they are willing to up investment in new cleaner technology.

The authors of the book The Rising Sea summarizes their conclusion that prudent planning for waterfront communities assumes a sea level rise of seven feet in a post on the Yale environment 360 website.

Chilling stuff, especially for those of us who remember when early iterations of this work nearly ten years ago labeled New Orleans as the American community most vulnerable to sea level rise and catastrophic storms.

They identify Florida as the most vulnerable place in the United States to sea level rise and aggressively argue that building new high rise developments on the waterfront is a big mistake.

In a web video interview (transcript) Rob Bradley, Director of International Climate Policy at the World Resources Institute, makes the following observation about the difficulties and challenges around the international climate negotiation process:

Well, some of the problems that occur are down to the sheer complexity of climate change as an issue. It’s too politically charged for the technocrats, but it’s way too technical for the politicians. You know, very often ministers come in and they’re handed, by their subordinates, simply too long and difficult a list of questions to get to grips with. But it’s true that the U.N. as a process offers a lot of challenges of its own and we saw some fairly ugly scenes really towards the end of Copenhagen. It operates by consensus. You’ve got every country in the world in the room and, in principle at least, if one of them disagrees with what’s happening they can block it more or less indefinitely. And so you have groups of countries, in many cases fossil fuel exporters who probably don’t see it in their interest to have a strong deal on climate change, objecting and preventing the process from moving forward. Confusingly, they were sometimes allied with countries like some of the small island states who objected on the grounds that the deal was not nearly ambitious enough and who obviously face an existential threat. But nevertheless, a process in which you’re trying to get all of that group of countries with such an incredibly diverse set of interests to agree on something is a process that is always going to raise problems.

It is worth reflecting on Bradley’s point that odd alliances have developed in the international climate negotiation process between fossil fuel exporting countries (like Saudi Arabia) who are trying to obstruct progress at every point and “small island states who objected on the grounds that the deal was not nearly ambitious enough and who obviously face an existential threat” (like the Maldives, Tuvalu and Kiribati) and to think about the equivalent phenomena here in the United States.

In the United States House of Representatives, when the Waxman-Markey climate legislation came up for a vote there were two distinct groups who voted no – the largest group were members of the Republican party and a handful of Democrats who objected to the bill as either unneeded or too extreme.  The vocal leader of this group was Rep. Joe Barton of Texas.   Barton’s skepticism about climate science and the proposed mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is deeply reminiscent of similar sentiments coming from representatives of nations like Saudi Arabia in the international climate negotiating process (this is not just a Western view, an eloquent Lebanese blog has spoken out about Saudi Arabia’s approach to climate).    The other, much smaller, group of members of Congress (about 3  Democrats) who opposed the bill did so because it was not ambitious and aggressive enough. The most vocal of these Members of Congress is Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

The next stop for climate legislation in Washington is the floor of the US Senate.  There is little doubt that the science denying opponents of progress will be led there by Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, angry enemy of all climate legislation.  It is not clear if there will be a “left wing” in the Senate – objecting to the legislation because it doesn’t go far enough.  It is notable that some of the most aggressive supporters of climate legislation in the Senate have publicly supported the Kerry-Boxer legislation that most closely parallels the Waxman-Markey bill.  Whether that coalition can support the legislation that may emerge as a result of discussions between Senator Kerry of Massachusetts and Senator Graham of South Carolina remains to be seen.

At the end of the day what really matters is that we take all the action we can to address this most systemic of economic, environmental and public health challenges as quickly as we can.   The debate and process needs to be truly and open and those with concerns about the science should be heard but the denial-for-denials-sake we see coming from Saudi Arabia and Messrs. Barton and Inhofe should not derail progress.  The desire for maximum action from the island nations is, in contrast, a truly admirable impulse and we must rise towards it as much as possible but not curse ourselves just because we can not do all that is needed immediately.

Determined journalist from Renewable Energy World takes the time in a long form NPR/radio style podcast to dig into this important topic.   If you are deeply ideologically committed to either “cap and trade” or to a carbon tax you should not listen to the last 5 or 10 minutes – or maybe you should . . .

Former NY Times Reporter Andrew Revkin – now Senior Fellow at the Pace University Center for Applied Environmental Studies while still writing and moderating the NY Times Dot Earth blog – provides a good overview of how the media has fundamentally under reported the climate story drawing upon this cool diagram.

This is the challenge of addressing such a large and systemic problem – how do we sustain focus, interest and energy around an issue that by definition is global, long term, pervasive and does not have a signal moment of crisis.

As the dust settles after the turbulent outcome of the COP-15 climate summit in Copenhagen a few things are clear:

No one is completely happy with the outcome.  Even President Obama described what he hammered out as being a “first step” and “not enough” to avoid disaster describing the Accord he worked out as the beginning of a process.

The climate change denier community (and people playing that role in the US, Europe, Israel, etc… should be very nervous about the fact they are in close alliance with Saudia Arabia) must be upset at the reaffirmation  that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced in order to avoid  dangerous global warming – a conclusion that relies upon the mountain of science showing that global warming is very real and very dangerous.

Some leading voices like Joe Romm and commentators share the “glass 2/3′s full” interpretation of the Copenhagen Accord presented by the President and applaud the fact that Accord was worked out by the U.S. and China (with Brazil, India and South Africa) and then embraced by others – seeing it as a good thing for international climate discussions and negotiations to be headed down a new path of bi-lateral discussions between large emitters and among smaller groups of nations and away from the UN structure that has been in place since the 1992 Rio Summit.  Robert Stavins at Harvard University and David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council argue that the UN process can and will continue augmented by these new side negotiations.  (Update 1/7/2010 – Robert Stavins has developed this argument even farther.)

Other important voices like Bill McKibben see this change in the process and nature of climate negotiations as a disaster – part of a complete collapse of political and moral will by a President and Administration that should know better.  A related perspective is the view that the Copenhagen outcome shows that the “the elites are not up to the job of saving the world.” Follow the links in that last piece if you want to see some really terrifying analysis of the world that we are headed to if only current pledges and agreements for emissions reductions are met.

To hear these two different interpretations collide check out McKibben and Doniger on the “On Point” public radio show on December 22, 2009.

And what Andrew Revkin calls the “Copenhagen blame game” is now a full scale global enterprise.  With British Columnist George Monbiot blaming the US (and President Obama) personally, Chinese and British officials savagely attacking each other in the press on the question of China’s role at Copenhagen and officials of the European Union laying blame on the developing nations and the US.

So what do we know and what should we (those of us not playing in the titanic global climate game) do?

The answer for CLF is clear.  We need to continue with our work to make New England, the region in which we work, a replicable model of real and affirmative change for the better.  We need to purge our electricity system of old, high emissions coal fired power plants, we need to fight to make highly efficient use of energy in homes and buildings, we need to ensure that our forests are healthy and do their many jobs, including capturing carbon out of the air, and we need to foster clean effective transit and massive deployment of renewable energy.   Our goals are right out there for all to see as is the way in which you can support our work.

Clearly there is a powerful need for global and national action to protect our climate.   And while those epic struggles play out, and we do what we can to shape the outcome, we must not waver in our resolve to advance a climate protection agenda here in our region, our states and in our communities.  We can argue about how far we have come – but it is very clear that we have far to go.