A wave crashes over a seawall on the Atlantic Ocean during Hurricane Sandy in Kennebunk, Maine, on October 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

By now, you have undoubtedly seen the photos – Manhattan’s flooded streets and subway system, fallen trees in Massachusetts, debris littering beaches and towns up and down the Eastern seaboard. Sandy’s impacts were not only widespread, reaching from the Caribbean to Nova Scotia, but they were record-breaking in severity. It is no exaggeration to say that the effects of climate change are being felt – not tomorrow or in any other vague future – but right now. Today.

We have rounded up a selection of CLF’s articles on Hurricane Sandy, on climate change and on the connection between a warming climate and increasing weather volatility.

Here is a selection of our articles:

On Sandy:

• Sandy in New England: We Can and Must Change the Pattern of Loss – November 1, by John Kassel
• Change is Hard, Necessary: Rethinking Our Electricity Supply Post-Sandy – Nov 1, by Seth Kaplan
• The New Normal: A Post-Sandy Point of View - October 31, by Tricia K Jedele
• Brace for Impact – Heavy Weather Ahead (and a Changing Climate is Part of the Reason it’s Happening) – October 25, 2012, by Seth Kaplan

On Climate Change:

• Generation to Generation; Crisis to Crisis – October 24, 2012, by John Kassel
• The Price of Cranberries: Other Crops Rise & Fall With Changing Climate – October 16, 2012, by Malcolm Burson
• Wind Power Key to Solving Climate Change – October 4, 2012, by Diana Chace
• Cleaner Cars, Cleaner Air – October 1, 2012, but Sandy Levine
• Everything You Know Is Wrong: Growing the Economy Without Growing Electricity (and Energy) Demand – October 1, 2012 by Seth Kaplan
• Thune for Thought: Is Climate Change Really Happening or is it Not? – September 26, 2012, By Tricia Jedele
• Why We Do What We Do: Unfortunately Global Warming Is Real and is Having Real Effects Here and Now – October 31, 2011, by Seth Kaplan

On CLF’s Advocacy Work related to Climate Change:

• Support Grows for CLF’s Fight to Secure a Fair Review of Northern Pass – October 25, 2012 by Christophe Courchesne
• Why We Need to Fight For Cape Win. Now. – October 3, 2012, by John Kassel
• RGGI’s Results: Good For Our Climate, Economy, and Consumers – December 6, 2011 by N. Jonathan Peress
• We Can Get There From Here: Maine Energy Efficiency Ballot Initiative – December 5, 2011, by Sean
• Mahoney
• Regional Greenhouse Gas Program is a Win for the Economy and the Environment – So Lets Do More! – November 15, 2011, by Seth Kaplan

On Hurricanes:

• On the Anniversary of Tropical Storm Irene: Untold Stories of What Went Right
• On Irene Anniversary: Lakekeeper Looks for Lessons Learned – August 27, 2012, by Anthony Iarrapino

Thrill seekers at Hampton Beach in Hampton, N.H., on Oct. 29. Cheryl Senter For The Boston Globe

As Hurricane Sandy, the “Frankenstorm,” bore down on the East Coast Monday, the widespread and devastating impacts were immediately felt. With 30 deaths confirmed as of writing, 7 million people without power, and an anticipated $20 Billion in damages, the severity of the impacts cannot be exaggerated.

We have compiled a selection of great coverage on Hurricane Sandy’s impacts state-by-state across New England, as well as the connection between increasingly volatile storm systems and climate change.

On Hurricane Sandy and its Impacts:

• Superstorm Sandy: A State-by-State Snapshot – CBS News
• New England: Assessing Sandy’s Damages – The Weather Channel
• Hurricane Sandy in Photos: After Landfall — The Atlantic “In Focus”
• Northeast Suffers Huge Damage in Storm’s Path; Millions Without Power – NY Times
• Sandy: Photos of the Storm – Huffington Post
• Sandy’s Trail of Devastation — CNN
• Superstorm Sandy Smashes Records – Thingprogress.org

Rhode Island:

• Video: Sandy Sweeps Cottages Out to Sea in Rhode Island – turnto10.com
• Chafee: RI Coastal Communities Pounded by Sandy – newstimes.com

Massachusetts:

• Map: Power Outages Across Massachusetts – Boston Globe
• Photos: Hurricane Sandy’s Local Impact – Boston Globe
• Hurricane Sandy Leaves Hundreds of Downed Trees in its Wake – Boston Globe

Maine:

• Videos: Hurricane Sandy hits coastal spots in Maine – Portland Press Herald
• Mainers Breath Sigh of Relief After Dodging Worst of Sandy – Portland Press Herald

Vermont:

• VT Escapes Big Sandy Hit, Governor Offers Others Help – Boston Globe
• Unlike Most Places, Vermont Lucky With Sandy – Burlington Free Press

New Hampshire:

• New Hampshire Cleaning Up After Sandy, One death caused by storm – WMUR NH
• Widespread Power Outages Left by Sandy in N.H. – Seacoast Online

On Sandy, Hurricanes, and Climate Change:

• Watching Sandy, Ignoring Climate Change – The New Yorker
• State of the Science Fact Sheet: Atlantic Hurricanes, Climate Variability and Global Warming – NOAA
• After the Storm: The Hidden Health Risks of Flooding in a Warming World – the Union of Concerned Scientists
• 5 Things Hurricane Sandy Reveals About Global Warming – Popular Science

Members of NH's Congressional delegation are demanding that DOE Secretary Steven Chu (pictured) explain DOE's process for selecting the current contractor team working on the Northern Pass envrionmental review.

Two weeks ago, CLF exposed and brought to the public’s attention internal government documents showing that the Department of Energy (DOE) has illegally allowed the developer of the Northern Pass transmission project, Northern Pass Transmission LLC (NPT) to have significant and improper influence over the ongoing permitting process and environmental review of the project. After filing its concerns about the information with DOE, CLF issued a call to action, urging the public to join CLF in demanding that DOE replace the contractor team charged with preparing the crucial Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which was handpicked by NPT, with a new, unbiased contractor or internal team with no conflict of interest.

We’re pleased to report that the responses – your responses – to the revelations and our call to action has been remarkable.

In the past two weeks, more than 300 members of the public (and counting) filed comments with DOE demanding replacement of the contractor team and a new commitment to a fair and open permitting process for Northern Pass. (You can take action yourself and file your own comment via this link.)

Yesterday, in a joint letter to DOE, a group of nine organizations representing New Hampshire’s conservation community and the grassroots opposition to Northern Pass, along with more than 60 individuals, expressed their deep concerns about the information exposed by CLF and called for a new EIS contractor with no conflict of interest. (Coverage on NHPR here.)

In the past week, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Senator Kelly Ayotte, and Congressman Charlie Bass have each sent letters to DOE Secretary Steven Chu demanding that the matter be reviewed and addressed immediately. (Union Leader coverage here.)

• In her letter to Secretary Chu, Senator Jeanne Shaheen demands an “immediate, detailed response” from DOE to determine whether a conflict of interest exists, emphasizing that “in order for the public to have confidence in DOE and the outcome of any Presidential Permit application there can be no conflict of interest or appearance of conflict in the application process” and that “[a] loss of faith from stakeholders would be difficult, if not impossible, to restore. “
• Senator Ayotte’s letter urges DOE to review CLF’s concerns and highlighted the need to “make certain that the outcome of this process is perceived as legitimate and that the process remains transparent.”
• Congressman Bass is asking for a “detailed explanation of the DOE selection of the EIS contractor” in light of “the importance of this matter to the state of New Hampshire and the absolute necessity for a fair and transparent process for all stakeholders.”

It’s clear that the documents CLF disclosed provide only the part of the story of DOE’s mishandled process so far – we don’t know exactly what DOE did internally, in phone calls with NPT and others, or in closed-door in-person meetings. That’s why the members of the delegation are right that DOE owes them and the public a detailed explanation of what happened.

Since CLF’s detailed filing with DOE, we’ve actually learned more about the process from NPT than from DOE. In a letter sent to DOE last week, NPT admitted – rather than rebutted – the facts CLF has exposed. NPT admits that DOE directed it to conduct the contractor search, including the vetting of potential contractors for conflicts of interest .  NPT also admits that it – not DOE – drafted several key documents governing the environmental review and DOE’s arrangement with the contractor team. In effect, NPT admits its enormous, behind-the-scenes role and still can’t understand why anyone would have a problem with it. (We previously explained why NPT’s and DOE’s defensive responses to this effect were off the mark.)

NPT’s letter also publicly disclosed a crucial part of the story for the first time. According to a footnote in the letter, NPT was permitted to “rule out” the qualified environmental review teams at DOE’s own National Laboratories because their rates were higher than NPT wanted to pay. The fact that DOE deferred to NPT’s desire to keep down the costs of the federal environmental review of Northern Pass (even as it spends many multiples of market value to acquire properties in Coos County for the northernmost corridor for the project) is among the most troubling information we’ve yet obtained: if true, DOE did not even consider hiring its own experts to prepare the EIS. It’s hard to imagine clearer evidence that the contractor selection process violated the federal regulations requiring that that the choice be “solely” DOE’s or that the violation directly threatens the integrity and rigor of the environmental review.

Above all, the public’s responses to the revelations about NPT’s role in the DOE permitting process make crystal clear that New Hampshire deserves – and is insisting on – a truly fair, rigorous, and objective review of the Northern Pass project, not the deeply mishandled, applicant-driven process we’ve seen to date.

For more information about Northern Pass, sign-up for our monthly newsletter Northern Pass Wire, visit CLF’s Northern Pass Information Center (http://www.clf.org/northern-pass), and take a look at our prior Northern Pass posts on CLF Scoop.

Fifty years ago this week the world was gripped by the Cuban Missile Crisis, then unfolding. It was the low point, perhaps, of the cold war, a several-decade period in which hundreds of millions of people got used to the idea that absolute, global catastrophe could be just 20 minutes away.

Or at least we tried to get used to it. I recall being very confused, as a first-grader in the early 1960’s, about why sometimes when the alarm bell rang we quickly went outside, and other times we hunkered down next to the thick brick walls deep inside the school, and waited.

Fortunately, that catastrophe hasn’t happened. However, the mindset that most American baby-boomers grew up with – the entire world could change very drastically and permanently, during our lifetime if not during the afternoon – is still embedded in our psyches. It gave many of us nightmares when we were young.

We need to tap that well of concern, now. The world is changing dramatically. It’s happening more slowly than ICBMs delivering nuclear warheads over the North Pole, but it is speeding up. Everybody who goes outside knows that. Unlike the destruction-in-a-flash that many of us grew up imagining, it’s now change-within-a-decade, or change-by-next-growing-season. And we’re not only imagining. We’re seeing it.

So what’s an American Boomer to do? Wake up. Accept responsibility. Our resource-gobbling lifestyle has caused this mess. Suburbanization has wasted US resources for two generations. Change it, now. And use your still-massive influence to change regressive policies. It’s outrageous that both major candidates for President fully endorse dramatic expansion of drilling for fossil fuels. Don’t stand for that. Demand that we change course, and lead the world in doing so. If we don’t, large parts of our planet will become as inhospitable as we feared in our nuclear nightmares as children. Only then it will be a reality for our grandchildren and their children.

Then, set the table for the next generation, and get out of the way. The “Millenials” are intuitively heading in the right direction. Whether they are reacting to the ecological mess we are leaving them or the economic constraints they feel matters little: they’ve got the right ideas. They are investing their time and money locally.  They want smaller living spaces. They own fewer cars and use transit more. They are much more inclined toward sharing – cars, space, resources, goods, politics – than exclusive ownership. They are fond of repurposed goods.

And this is not just urban hipsters. All sorts of 20-somethings are living with their parents, shopping on Craigslist and launching businesses through crowd-sourced investment platforms like Kickstarter. They are revitalizing places across New England that Boomers and their parents left behind: from cities like Boston, Providence and Portland, to towns like Portsmouth, NH, Winooski, VT and Pittsfield, MA. They are eating food grown closeby by people they know. And all of this will create – in the decades to come – a way of living in New England that is healthier for all, lower-carbon, and more resilient to our changing climate than the way we have lived in this country since 1945.

It’s time. As the cold war has fizzled we’ve not been sure what would follow. Globalization, the rise of Petro-states, the incredible growth of China as an economic power, increasing inequality of wealth, climate change – these are centuries of chickens coming home to roost. There’s a lot going on. But at least it’s happening more or less in front of us, in the public eye, and in a way that offers opportunities to actually do something about it.

In that way, it’s a different kind of crisis than global nuclear annihilation. We all felt powerless to avert that. Perhaps that’s part of why it was so scary.The forces imperiling the planet now may be even more powerful, as they emanate from many different places and have quite a head of steam.

But they are not impenetrable. Smart, inspired and hopeful people all over are finding ways to bend those forces toward a better future. It is our responsibility, fellow Boomers, to help them.

I am reminded  of the story of the so-called Big A dam on the Penobscot River in Maine – a project that, after much debate, was never built.

Twenty five years ago CLF and others opposed this ill-advised project, advancing the then-novel argument that energy efficiency could satisfy the power needs of the time better than a dam that would have turned two outstanding reaches of river into a slackwater impoundment. A nice summary of the controversy and its context is here. The author, David Platt, a long-time journalist who covered the story, notes that it “became a fascinating discussion about energy, engineering, corporate power, the rising influence of non-corporate interests, the need to protect the environment, and the changing nature of the paper industry and the economy in Maine.”

A generation later, and amplified 1,000 times, that is our story – the story of our challenges and our opportunities at the beginning of the 21st century. At the end of this century we will and should be remembered as much for what we started as for what we stopped, as much for what we were for as for what we where against. At this time in history, while several generations – and people from many perspectives, not only the environmental movement – share the stage, it is imperative that we come together and get it right.

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Northern Pass Transmission LLC (NPT) reacted in the media (here and here) to news stories reporting that the federal review of the Northern Pass project has been tainted by DOE’s abdication of critical responsibilities to the project developer and permit applicant, NPT. It is frustrating, but not unexpected given what the document trail revealed, that DOE and NPT don’t see any problems with the permitting process to date.

DOE says that it exercised independent judgment in selecting the contractor team and considered other contractors for the job (while it won’t say which ones or how many, apparently absent a FOIA request, which – if CLF’s last request is an indication – could take as long as a year).

While it is clear DOE signed off on the new team, DOE is ignoring that its actions were wrong because of the undisputedly pervasive role DOE allowed NPT to play –with NPT’s counsel personally recruiting, assembling, and coaching the team, helping the team make its proposal to DOE, making a side agreement (of which DOE apparently has no copy) with the team setting the budget and schedule for the process, and actively helping to draft key DOE documents governing the environmental review.

Giving NPT this role and opportunity for influence is at odds with the core purpose of the legal requirement that any third-party contractor be chosen solely by DOE without meaningful participation by the permit applicant: the selected contractor must have no conflict of interest in favor of the applicant – even a perceived conflict of interest. Like DOE itself, the contractor must be seen by the public as an impartial, independent arbiter of the data, the facts, and the analysis contained in the environmental impact statement of the project. Here, the public can have no confidence that this will be true precisely because NPT was so instrumental in choosing the contractor team. The documents make clear that the contractor team owes its job to NPT. How can the public have any confidence that the team will fulfill its obligations indepedently, with no special treatment or preferences for NPT?

DOE’s other comment – that it is routine for applicants to be involved in selecting contractors – is merely an admission that DOE always handles permitting processes in unacceptably close coordination with developers. “We always do it this way,” is no excuse for illegal and improper conduct.

Indeed, it is telling that DOE has no comment on evidence of actual bias on the part of a senior member of the contractor team who – even before being hired – stated the position (one favored by NPT) that the Champlain-Hudson transmission project is not an alternative to be considered as part of the Northern Pass alternatives review. This evidence means that there is not only a risk of bias with the current contractor team, but that bias already has crept into the process – and on a critically important aspect of the environmental review.

By just adding CLF’s filing (PDF) to the pile of public comments received on the project to date, DOE appears to be following a strategy of bureaucratic defensiveness and imperviousness to public feedback – a strategy that is reflected in one of the most troubling documents CLF obtained, an internal email revealing that one of DOE’s principal priorities is to avoid “setting the precedent of backing down under the weight of public criticism.” If DOE continues on this path, as we say in our filing, “it would be fair for the public to conclude that DOE is not interested in meaningful public involvement and is incapable of reaching a legitimate final decision on the permitting applications that the President and Congress have entrusted it with faithfully reviewing on the nation’s behalf.”

For its part, NPT’s response reflects the absurd allegation that CLF merely is trying to cause delay. To the contrary, our filing with DOE implores the agency to fix the process now, before the permitting process begins again in earnest. Given that there are still several months before NPT says it will restart the process by filing a new northernmost route for the project, DOE has ample opportunity to cure deficiencies.    To be clear, every day of delay that has occurred to date is NPT’s doing – DOE has allowed NPT to drag out the federal environmental review for two years so that it can assemble a new northernmost route, without a definitive end in sight.

NPT also says CLF is trying to “preemptively discredit” the process. Of course, it isn’t CLF’s filing but instead DOE’s and NPT’s own actions, documented in black and white in the 22 exhibits to our filing, that are preemptively discrediting the process.

You can help CLF tell DOE – in only a few clicks – that its actions are unacceptable and that New Hampshire deserves a truly fair review of Northern Pass. Please take action now.

To learn more about this issue, take a moment to review our posts from earlier this week here and here.

For more information about Northern Pass, sign-up for our monthly newsletter Northern Pass Wire, visit CLF’s Northern Pass Information Center (http://www.clf.org/northern-pass), and take a look at our prior Northern Pass posts on CLF Scoop.

(photo credit: flickr/timtom.ch)

The new revelations of unfairness and bias in the federal environmental review of Northern Pass have struck a chord, garnering front-page coverage in the Union Leader and a story on New Hampshire Public Radio. You can join our fight for a fair review of Northern Pass. We have made it easy for you to take action and tell the United States Department of Energy (DOE) that New Hampshire deserves an unbiased process that follows the law – it will only take a couple of seconds. You can submit your comment to DOE here.

To understand what’s at stake in the wake of these developments, it’s important to take a look back at the history of where we’ve been and what we’ve been fighting for.

This week marks the second anniversary of the formal announcement of the Northern Pass project and Northern Pass Transmission LLC’s (NPT) application to DOE for a Presidential Permit. Shortly after the announcement, it became clear that DOE’s review of the project was off to a terrible start. DOE had selected a “third-party” contractor to prepare an environmental impact statement or “EIS” for the project – a crucial, comprehensive, and impartial study of the project’s environmental and socioeconomic impacts and its reasonable alternatives. But that contractor, Normandeau Associates, was the same firm that was on NPT’s payroll to advocate for the project’s approval during the state siting process, which will follow the federal process. This was a clear conflict of interest in violation of the regulations that govern federal environmental reviews.

After CLF and others objected to DOE’s hiring of Normandeau on the ground that the contractor had, NPT initially defended Normandeau’s dual role. Then, in an about-face, NPT terminated the arrangement, saying that:

[T]he strong expressions of concern by certain members of the public about the arrangement lead us to believe that continuing with this arrangement may cause the public to lack confidence in the objectivity and rigor of the ultimate environmental analysis of the project. That outcome obviously does not serve the interests of the project, any of the permitting agencies or the public.

It turns out, however, that our fight for fairness and integrity in the Northern Pass permitting process was only beginning. Over the last two years, CLF has advocated for a truly rigorous analysis of alternative technologies and strategies, a comprehensive review of the region’s energy needs, and a much more honest accounting of the current proposal’s impacts – on electric bills, the climate, our domestic renewable power industry, and natural resources in Canada – than the threadbare and misleading information NPT has provided to DOE and to the public. Along the way, CLF has encouraged members of the public to make themselves heard in the permitting process and sought improvements in that process.

After DOE announced it had selected a new, supposedly independent contractor team to prepare the EIS, CLF identified the potential for unfairness in DOE’s agreement with the contractor and encouraged DOE to fix the problems. We’ve been joined in this important fight by many, many other advocates, from the record crowds at DOE’s public meetings in March 2011, to passionate Granite-Staters on and off the project’s path, to our allies at other environmental organizations.

What we’ve now learned – that DOE has repeatedly abdicated its responsibility to control the process and that NPT has had improper influence over major decisions about the review – has deeply shaken our confidence in the process we’ve been fighting so hard to protect and improve. With NPT expected to announce a new northernmost route soon (now the end of 2012) and restart DOE’s review once again, we are at a new crossroads, just as we were at the process’s outset. Will the federal review of Northern Pass be the fair, objective, and open process that New Hampshire deserves? Or is the game rigged in the developer’s favor yet again?

Again, please join our fight. Take action now.

For more information about Northern Pass, sign-up for our monthly newsletter Northern Pass Wire, visit CLF’s Northern Pass Information Center (http://www.clf.org/northern-pass), and take a look at our prior Northern Pass posts on CLF Scoop.

DOE Headquarters, Washington, DC (Energy Department photo, credit Quentin Kruger)

A year ago, CLF asked the Department of Energy (DOE) for documents regarding its environmental review of Northern Pass – the major power-line project proposed by Northern Pass Transmission LLC, or “NPT.” We fought for an open, rigorous, and impartial permitting process that would independently scrutinize all elements of the Northern Pass proposal. We wanted to be sure that’s what New Hampshire and the region would be getting from DOE and its new contractor team, which is charged with preparing the ever-crucial environmental impact statement or “EIS” – the document that analyzes the proposed project, all reasonable alternatives, and all related environmental and socio-economic impacts.

On the surface, we saw some blemishes, but it appeared that, despite the potential problems (which we noted in a submission to DOE last October), DOE’s new contractor team would be substantially more objective than the original contractor, which had an obvious conflict of interest due to its dual role (incredibly) working for both DOE to prepare the EIS and for NPT in seeking to obtain state-level approval for the project.

It took nearly a year, but DOE finally sent us a large set of documents – emails, letters, and document drafts. The documents provide the first real window we’ve had into DOE’s handling of the process so far.

What they show is profoundly troubling: abdication by DOE of important non-delegable responsibilities to the permit applicant, NPT; and significant and improper influence over the permitting process by the permit applicant, NPT:

• NPT’s counsel – who was once DOE’s top lawyer and still appears to have extraordinary access and influence at DOE – handpicked the new EIS contractor team, with what appears to be minimal DOE involvement. Counsel for NPT acted as the new contractor team’s agent, recruiting the team, pulling together its submission of qualifications and a work plan proposal to DOE, and organizing a face-to-face meeting between DOE, NPT, and the team. It appears DOE conducted no real search of its own, in violation of governing regulations requiring that EIS contractors be chosen “solely” by DOE.
• A senior member of the new contractor team has already demonstrated that she is biased in favor of a narrow, NPT-preferred alternatives analysis. In an email included in the documents obtained by CLF, one of the new contractors opined that the underground Champlain Hudson Power Express project connecting Canada and New York City will not be considered an alternative to Northern Pass in the EIS. This is precisely the position expressed just one month earlier by NPT in its objection to CLF’s and others’ request for a regional energy study, which was based in part on DOE’s need to evaluate Northern Pass and Champlain Hudson together. The email was, ironically, intended to show that email’s author lacks a conflict of interest in working as an EIS consultant on the Northern Pass project and as a DOE consultant on the Champlain Hudson project.
• DOE allowed NPT to design the arrangement among DOE, NPT, and the contractor team, which was memorialized in a Memorandum of Understanding that, we’ve learned, DOE asked NPT to draft. It appears that DOE doesn’t even have a copy of the key agreement between NPT and the contractor team establishing the budget and schedule for the EIS.

Unfortunately, this pattern of NPT’s influence over the process is not unique to selecting and managing the project’s EIS contractors:

• DOE apparently reviewed and okayed NPT’s deeply incomplete permit application before it was even filed.
• DOE asked NPT’s counsel to write up the “purpose and need for agency action,” a crucial DOE determination that will help shape the scope of the EIS, including what alternatives to the current Northern Pass proposal should be studied. NPT’s draft was virtually identical to the version that then appeared in last year’s Federal Register notice announcing that DOE would prepare an EIS and kicking off the scoping process. In our scoping comments, CLF identified DOE’s “purpose and need” statement as illegally narrow.
• NPT and DOE have had private discussions, outside the public eye, about pending requests by stakeholders to improve DOE’s process. In the case of CLF’s and others’ request for a regional study of our energy needs, a request that became all the more important in the aftermath of the announcement of the Northeast Energy Link project last July, NPT’s counsel went so far as to give DOE talking points and supporting legal citations explaining why granting the request was “not warranted.” DOE’s decision on the request? As NPT would prefer, DOE hasn’t commissioned any regional study or EIS.

What should happen next? Yesterday, CLF filed extensive comments with DOE (1 mb PDF linked here, 10 MB .zip archive of exhibits here), laying out the evidence and requesting major changes in DOE’s environmental review of Northern Pass:

• First, DOE’s new contractor team has a clear conflict of interest, in violation of governing regulations that prohibit the use of contractors with “any conflict of interest.” The team apparently owes its new contractor job – and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in consultant fees – to NPT. To ensure the objectivity and integrity of the permitting process, the new contractor team needs to be replaced by a new contractor or qualified DOE team with no conflicts of interest, and without NPT’s involvement.
• Second, and more fundamentally, DOE needs to change course – now. New Hampshire deserves a fair, impartial, and rigorous review of Northern Pass. NPT, as the permit applicant, predictably would prefer an easy path to approval. It’s DOE’s legal obligation to control the process, promote meaningful public involvement, and safeguard its decision-making from bias and undue influence. In light of NPT’s failure to piece together a northernmost route, DOE has ample time to start again, with a more open and objective approach that would help to rebuild the public’s confidence in this important permitting process.

UPDATE: Help us tell DOE to fix the process by replacing the contractor team and instituting the fair, legally sound process that New Hampshire deserves. It only takes a few clicks. Take action now here.

For more information about Northern Pass, sign-up for our monthly newsletter Northern Pass Wire, visit CLF’s Northern Pass Information Center (http://www.clf.org/northern-pass), and take a look at our prior Northern Pass posts on CLF Scoop.

In 2011, CLF Ventures, the strategy-consulting arm of CLF, received a grant from the EPA to help two New England fishing/whale watching vessels replace the aging, inefficient engines on their vessels with cleaner-burning, more efficient four-stroke diesel engines. In this video, Captain Brad Cook of the Atlantic Queen II and Captain Chris Charos of Captain’s Fishing Parties reveal how the EPA grant and CLF Ventures enabled them to update their vessels’ technology, reducing emissions and substantially cutting their fuel use:

The EPA’s National Clean Diesel Funding Assistance program is designed to reduce air pollution and exposure to diesel fumes by covering up to 75% of the cost of an engine upgrade or repower. Replacing an outdated engine with the clean-burning technology used by Captain Brad and Captain Chris reduces asthma-causing particulate matter emissions by 63 percent and smog-producing nitrogen oxide emissions by 40 percent.

The program also cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions by improving efficiency and reducing fuel use by up to 14 percent. Fuel use is a serious concern for the fishing industry. A 2005 report published in AMBIO revealed that in 2000, the industry consumed about 13 million gallons of fuel, or 1.2 percent of global consumption. If the fishing industry were a country, it would be the world’s 18^th-largest consumer of oil—on par with the Netherlands. Fishing is also one of the only industry sectors to consistently become less fuel-efficient in recent years. With declining stocks sending fishermen farther from shore, this problem will only become more severe without significant investments and improvements in technology. Programs like EPA’s Diesel Emissions Reduction Program play an important role in greening the fishing fleet and helping to make fishing more sustainable.

The program isn’t just good for the environment; it’s also good for fishermen. A more efficient engine can save a fisherman 9,500 gallons of fuel per year, cutting fuel costs and increasing profit margins. Crew aboard these vessels reduce their exposure to harmful diesel fumes, which were recently classified as carcinogenic by the World Health Organization and placed in the same category as deadly toxins like asbestos and arsenic.  Consumers asking for sustainable options will appreciate the reductions in emissions and fuel use, too, and recreational fishermen and whale watchers aboard vessels with new engines can enjoy a quieter, cleaner ride.

Still, new engines can only go so far in cleaning up the fishing fleet. The industry is built on technology that made sense decades ago, when fuel was cheap, fish were more plentiful close to shore, and consumers weren’t demanding sustainable seafood choices. Down the line, greening the fleet will mean rebuilding it from the water up and introducing lighter, safer vessels that inherently use less fuel.

A New York Times opinion piece titled “Is Algebra Necessary?” caught my eye the other day. My first job out of college was teaching algebra to teenagers. I can still factor a quadratic equation, and I actually find it kind of fun. However, many students, at the high school and college levels, fail the required course in algebra and drop out. The eloquent author of the piece – an emeritus professor of Mathematics – argues that quantitative reasoning is essential, but mastery of algebra is an unnecessarily narrow measure of quantitative skill, and our society is poorer for excluding students who are befuddled by algebra.

In other words: a too-rigid insistence on a particular analytical technique (algebra) is tripping up people who “get it” (have a sufficient general grasp of quantitative issues), and we are worse off as a result.

In a recent edition of Rolling Stone, Bill McKibben beautifully demonstrates the importance of not getting tripped up on details, but firmly understanding the big quantitative picture. In “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” (which I highly recommend), McKibben avoids the trees and tells the lesson of the forest, in its blindingly obvious and powerful simplicity: We have to change dramatically, and quickly, to preserve the planet as we know it.

McKibben’s message stirs you deeply. It evokes an existential, even spiritual response. And it does so by appealing to our hearts and our guts. There’s enough math to convince our heads, but his message is not aimed at our heads. We know what’s going on in the world. We can feel it. McKibben knows that, and aims to connect with us where we feel things, not in the left side of our brains.

Which leads me to the question: does the environmental movement have the equivalent of an algebra requirement? Do we tacitly insist that everyone master the complex facts before they get involved? If so, should we? Does everyone need to be a left-brained, deep diver into the complexity of the debates, or is it sufficient that they feel strongly that it’s time to act, and are compelled to do so by their heart, their gut or their spirit?

This is somewhat uncomfortable terrain for us. Let’s acknowledge that. We have seen examples in the public realm of policy being based solely on faith, without regard to evidence from the real world. Sometimes this can be disastrous. And it is a rock-solid principle of our movement that policy must be based on sound science and evidence. All of that is entirely true and I would never veer from it.

But there are many people who could be our allies who are not, even though they know the same truth: we need to change in order to save the planet as we know it. And to avoid massive human suffering in the near future. And to protect species faced with extinction. And to deliver a more equitable world. And even to help promote a world better aligned with spiritual forces much larger than us.

Does our preoccupation with matters of the head prevent us from reaching those for whom matters of the heart and soul are more motivating? Is that our “algebra”?

My hunch is that as a movement we expect too much “head” and not enough “heart,” in general. We look for people who can “figure out” what to do next, and trust that if we can win people’s minds either their hearts will follow or we don’t even need their hearts.

What if we attracted to our movement people who appeal to the hearts of others, to begin with? Who see water pollution in the lower Mystic River in Boston, for example, not as an issue of discharge pipes and toxicity but as an issue of hunger and hope, exclusion and unity? What if we talked about climate change not as sea level rise and drought, but as a threat to our spiritual wellbeing?  Would we reach different audiences, and could they help us achieve our mission, having become part of us?

Recently I read two books, one new and one old, on the subject of environmentalism and spirituality, or at least environmentalism and much bigger, existential themes.

The first, Between God and Green, is by Katharine Wilkinson, who is a friend and former classmate of CLF staffer Ben Carmichael. The Boston Globe recently reviewed the book, saying:

Wilkinson tells a vitally important, even subversive, story at the heart of this carefully researched book. Over the past 30 years or more, even as the culture wars raged, an honest-to-God “evangelical Center” came to life in the political no-man’s land between the old-guard religious right and the secular liberal establishment. And as Wilkinson shows, one of the most significant expressions of that increasingly assertive center — as it seeks to broaden the “evangelical agenda” beyond abortion and sexuality to include global poverty, health, and social-justice issues — is a far-reaching environmental movement, based on the theology of “creation care,” and the effort by a new generation of moderate leaders to put climate change on the evangelical map.

I was struck by this more general observation by the author (p.8), about how messages grounded in spiritual terms can be more powerful than those aimed at the head, which we normally rely upon: “The guilt-based, fear-inducing messages that have often dominated can lead to paralysis rather than action, but religion is in the business of communicating a future worth fighting for. It can generate new meanings for climate change that drive engagement.”

The second book was Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. It is a true New England original – written in a snowy winter in the Berkshires (looking out at Mt. Greylock, in fact), also describing New Bedford and Nantucket in some detail, and expressing (it seems to me) the New England Transcendentalists’ view of the natural world and humans’ place in it. My colleague at CLF, Robin Just, like me, also just re-read this great fish tale and pronounced it “a strange and wonderful book.” I concur. It’s worth the time and investment, yielding sentences you stop and re-read several times, just for the joy of it. But I was arrested by this famous passage, from ch. 35, the Mast-Head, where Ishmael explores his spiritual connection to nature, high aloft in a crow’s nest on the mast, scanning the sea for whales:

. . . lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reveries is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space . . . forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. . . .

If we as an organization – and a movement – began appealing more to the heart, where would this take us? What would we do differently? What would it cost, and what returns can we expect?

These are tricky questions for us, but we have to pursue them. Otherwise, we will continue to fail to include large parts of our population in our movement, just like algebra may be excluding many who should be thriving in our society, and helping it thrive. The environmental movement needs a change of “heart.” We must not steer away from evidence-based, quantitative reasoning, but we must also reach out to people’s hearts. That’s where they feel their deep connection to nature and the planet.

At this unsettled and noisy time, it may be much easier to reach people’s hearts than their minds.