For the first time the U.S. Government is moving to manage, and reduce, the amount of Greenhouse Gas emissions from Heavy and Medium Duty vehicles (which means trucks and buses).  These regulations “have the potential to reduce GHG emissions by nearly 250 million metric tons and save approximately 500 million barrels of oil over the life of vehicles sold during 2014 to 2018” One of the two public hearings on this proposal will be right here in our backyard at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, 575 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, (their fair city) Massachusetts 02139–4896.  More information on the hearings are available online.

In the movies the best tools for fighting off zombies are torches, flamethrowers or the odd chainsaw.  When confronting climate zombies a more sophisticated approach is called for. Political and financial tools, like the massive clean energy business mobilization that saved the California Global Warming Solutions Act, are very important. So are efforts to bring to bear unexpected and powerful cultural forces, like military leaders, on the problem. Information and evidence rebutting nonsense, like the ideas that scientists have swung from thinking there is global cooling to global warming or that climate science is all new and manufactured, is essential as well.  Joe Romm, who runs the influential Climate Progress blog has an excellent compilation of material pushing back on those myths.   Some highlights: Yes, I know everybody used to read more…

Articles in this morning’s Boston Globe and Salem News describe an important shift in the status of Salem Harbor Station and highlight the need for ISO New England (ISO-NE) to go beyond the analyses it has done in the past so that it can finally identify an alternative that will actually solve the reliability issue that has dogged efforts to retire the plant since 2003.  That is the subject of the recent protest filed by CLF asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to require ISO-NE to perform an expedited analysis of the alternatives and establish a timeline for implementation. ISO-NE’s failure to identify solutions that will relieve the need for Salem Harbor Station has resulted in decisions that will cost ratepayers up to $18.5 million in above market payments in read more…

The following is a special edition of CLF’s e-News.  To receive this kind of carefully screened (no spam here!)  information and to support CLF join today. We at CLF watched last Tuesday’s elections with great interest, and in some cases, trepidation. Our ability to be effective in our work is greatly enhanced when there is real leadership on environmental issues at the state level, especially when federal leadership is lacking. With some exceptions, New Englanders chose with their votes to continue the environmental progress we are making in our region. Now that the dust has settled, we are pleased to bring you this special post-election edition of our e-news. Below, you will find a state-by-state forecast of how the election results are likely to help or hinder our and others’ read more…

Please Join CLF and our many organizational partners, including VPIRG, VNRC, VT League of Conservation Voters, Democracy for America, and Toxics Action Center, at the Vermont Environmental Action 2010 Conference. What: Environmental Action is the largest grassroots activism conference in the state of Vermont. The conference provides an excellent opportunity for environmentalists, community leaders, and local activists to come together, learn from experts, and network with one another. This year the conference will have 26 workshops on a wide range of environmental issues and organizing skills from Using Free Internet Tools for Online Organizing to How to Bring Solar to Your Community. Where: Vermont Technical College, Randolph, VT When: 8:30-5:30 You can register online here. If you come, please drop by my workshop at 3:15 Tools and Action to Protect Vermont’s Water read more…

Local Activists from Salem Alliance for the Environment (SAFE) and HealthLink are hosting a Forum this Sunday that will expose the true costs of burning coal at plants like Salem Harbor Station.  The heat is on Dominion Energy to shut down Salem Harbor Station to allow the City of Salem and Massachusetts to usher in a clean energy economy that will provide sustainable and equitable jobs without jeopardizing public health or the environment.  Anyone who is interested in moving us towards a Coal Free Massachusetts should attend this event to find out more about the toll coal fired power plants take on communities from mining through burning and finally the disposal of ash. For more information on how you can get involved check out the SAFE and HealthLink websites  CLF’s take read more…

Governor-elect Paul LePage’s rhetoric on the campaign trail was alarmingly anti-environmental. Even more problematic is a pervasive sense that he simply doesn’t “get it” – doesn’t get the concept of sustainability, doesn’t get the economic value of a strong and vibrant environment and doesn’t get Mainers abiding conviction that ours is a unique state that merits strong efforts to maintain. read more..

There has been a significant development in the long running saga of the Salem Harbor power plant, one of the major targets of CLF’s Coal Free New England campaign. On October 5, Dominion Energy, the plant’s owner, quietly filed what is known as a Permanent Delist Bid with ISO New England (ISO-NE), the operator of the New England electricity system and markets. The filing commits Dominion to permanently withdraw Salem Harbor Station from the forward capacity market, the key market where power plants, and other resources like energy efficiency, are paid to be present, available and ready to meet the electricity needs of the region. What does this mean? By filing to permanently withdraw Salem Harbor Station from the forward capacity market, Dominion is signaling that it does not believe read more…

Dr. Jeff Masters, the co-founder of the Weather Underground website is the voice of climate sanity in the meteorologist world.    He has consistently noted, as he did in this post from last March,  how the models used by climate scientists make predictions about how winter storms are going to change in a warming world that are deeply consistent with what we are seeing unfold before us: General Circulation Models (GCMs) like the ones used in the 2007 IPCC Assessment Report do a very good job simulating how winter storms behave in the current climate, and we can run simulations of the atmosphere with extra greenhouse gases to see how winter storms will behave in the future. The results are very interesting. Global warming is expected to warm the poles more read more…

At an event Wednesday afternoon in New Bedford, Governor Patrick, Congressman Frank, Mayor Lang, Secretary Bowles, Senator Montigny, DOER Commissioner Phil Giudice and a host of other local, state and federal officials together announced that New Bedford’s South Terminal will be developed as a deepwater port to serve the Cape Wind project and other offshore wind projects to follow. It was a rare chance to celebrate the progress that has been made in bringing the nation’s first offshore wind project to fruition after so many years.  And it was striking to see longshoremen side-by-side with electrical workers, environmental advocates, renewable energy industry stakeholders, politicians and former politicians, such as former New Bedford Mayor John Bullard who long has championed the benefits of wind power — on land and offshore alike. read more…