Senate climate bill: What’s inside for wild places
There’s a joke here in town that D.C. is Hollywood for ugly people; meaning that the celebrities we see out on the town are not beautiful movie stars, but rather average looking politicians and appointees. Well, it felt like a red carpet event this morning in the shadow of the Capitol dome as a team of Wilderness Society staff and interns gathered with over a hundred other supporters for the release of the Senate’s clean energy and climate bill.
Standing on stage with veterans and other notables, Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry officially unveiled the Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act — with a star-studded cast including Senators Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall, Mark Udall, Benjamin Cardin, Frank Lautenberg, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, Sheldon Whitehouse and Amy Klobuchar.
Today marks the beginning of a long fight in the Senate for a bill that will put us on the right course for reducing dangerous heat-trapping pollution and building a clean energy economy. Of note, the Clean Energy Jobs bill goes beyond the House-passed climate and jobs bill (known as ACES) in two key areas:
- The 2020 greenhouse gas reduction targets are bumped up from 17% of 2005 levels to 20% (meaning a lot less pollution will be dumped into our skies).
- The EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas pollution is retained (meaning the Agency can still exercise its Supreme Court-approved authority as a backstop).
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Managing Climate Change Impacts on Land and Wildlife
In addition to the many provisions that will jumpstart clean energy development and deployment of energy efficient technologies, The Clean Energy Jobs bill also contains important provisions for coping with the current and ongoing effects of global warming on our natural resources.
As you know, global warming is already impacting treasured landscapes across the country. As temperatures and precipitation patterns shift, landscapes and communities will come under increasing stress. Resource managers need additional resources to monitor changes and devise and implement coordinated strategies that build ecosystem resilience in a warming world.
Under the heading “Climate Change Safeguards for Natural Resources Conservation,” the Clean Energy Jobs bill outlines a national strategy for addressing impacts from global warming on our public lands as well as a distribution scheme for state and federal agencies.
Taking into consideration the fact that different agencies have different areas of expertise, and the reality that ecosystems do not recognize agency jurisdictions, the bill calls for a national adaptation strategy that coordinates a multi-agency response to the impacts of climate change. From CEQ to FWS to EPA to BLM, an alphabet soup of key agencies will be charged with hammering out how best to cope with the impacts of climate change on our nations wildlands.
Additionally, states are to complete adaptation strategies that must be approved by corresponding federal agencies — further building upon the focus on planning and coordinated implementation. Integrating the latest science into resource management decisions is at the core of the Natural Resources Adaptation section — as evidenced by the legislation’s requirement that the USGS’ National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center and NOAA’s National Climate Service work together to provide decision-makers with information necessary to address the effects of climate change.
Absent from this draft is any auction allowance allocation for natural resource funding — which will be hashed out during the markup process and subsequent floor debate. The Wilderness Society will continue working to ensure these provisions get funded.
photo: Staff and interns at Senate Climate Bill launch with Senator Merkley (D-OR).
Wilderness Experts View All >
Sam Goldman
Sam has been with The Wilderness Society since Fall 2007. He came most recently from M+R Strategic Services in Washington, DC where he worked with national environmental groups to improve their online campaign work and field organizing capacity. Before that, Sam was the Assistant National Field Director for U.S. PIRG where he covered a variety of issues including the fight to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
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Comments
Simulus funding excludes energy R and D - suppression?
--- On Sat, 10/10/09, Gary Vesperman wrote:
From: Gary Vesperman
Subject: [NEC-Forum] Simulus funding excludes energy R and D - suppression?
To: "NEC-Forum"
Date: Saturday, October 10, 2009, 9:15 AM
The Nevada Governor's Energy Office has received $36 million in federal stimulus money to spend on job-creating energy projects. So far, three Energy Office jobs have been funded.
BTW, the unemployment rate in Las Vegas is about 14%.
Gary Vesperman
--- On Sat, 10/3/09, Gary Vesperman wrote:
From: Gary Vesperman, "Bob Coffin" , "Dan Geary" , "Lorayn Walser" , "Pete Konesky"
Subject: Simulus funding excludes energy R and D - suppression?
To: "Hatice Gecol"
Date: Saturday, October 3, 2009, 7:57 AM
Each of the separate 50 states will receive a share of energy-related stimulus funding. A small percentage like 3% should have been allocated to development of energy inventions in order to provide jobs to inventors, scientists, and technicians. If each state had been unrestricted with its own individual allocations, we would have reasonably expected some creative useful results out of the cumulative basket of all 50 states individually developing energy inventions.
My energy invention suppression book which is linked below thoroughly documents the U.S. Government's decades-long viciously thorough suppression of new energy inventions. That energy stimulus funding EXPLICITLY excludes energy R and D suspiciously appears to be another instance of energy invention suppression.
Gary Vesperman
9/29/09, Pete Konesky
From: Pete Konesky
To: "Gary Vesperman"
Cc: "Susan Gerhardt"
Date: Tuesday, September 29, 2009, 10:19 AM
Dear Mr. Vesperman.
The stimulus funding that has been received and the pending funding that the energy office hopes to receive is explicit in the projects that the funding may be used for. Particularly excluded from the energy office projects are those involving R & D. These types of projects ( R & D) will have separate funding notices that would be open to other organizations to apply for funding on specified R & D activities on a competitive basis. Thank you for your interest in furthering Nevada's energy independence.
Peter Konesky
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Gary Vesperman [garyvesperman@ yahoo.com]
Sent: Saturday, September 26, 2009 4:57 PM
To: Hatice Gecol; Pete Konesky; Bob Coffin; Dan Geary; Lorayn Walser
Cc: Susan Gerhardt; Robert Goodman
Subject: Energy inventions for Nevada stimulus funding?
I suggest that some of the energy inventions described in my energy reports linked below be considered for funding with federal stimulus money.
"Power Sources for Regional Fixed Guideway". I submitted this comment to the record of hearings that were conducted for a proposed mass transit train traversing the Las Vegas, Nevada metropolitan area from Henderson to North Las Vegas. For link, see http://www.padrak. com/vesperman/.
http://freeenergyne ws.com/Directory /NuclearRemediat ion/Vesperman/ has my list of over two dozen methods of neutralizing radioactive waste. Additional methods are briefly described in http://freeenergyne ws.com/Directory /NuclearRemediat ion/. Dr. Santilli’s method plus an explanation of the suppression of radioactivity neutralization methods are available at http://www.nuclearw asterecycling. com/. Robert A. Nelson’s survey “Transmutations of Nuclear Waste” is at http://www.rexresea rch.com/articles /nukewa.htm.
My compilation of "Advanced Technologies for Foreign Resort Project" is in http://www.icestuff .com/~energy21/ advantech. htm and http://www.linux- host.org/ energy/advantech .htm. It contains descriptions of approximately 50 energy-related inventions.
The 123-page fourth version of my compilation of 95 energy invention suppression cases is available at www.energysuppressi on.com where a small encyclopedia of energy invention suppression cases and activities is maintained by Sterling Allan and his friends. The file is also accessible at www.byronwine. com (do Find for Vesperman),
http://www.theorion project.org/ en/research. html#research_ papers, and http://www.aero2012 .com/en/papers. html. Other sites can be found by entering in google Vesperman suppression. Additional energy invention suppression information is in http://www.commutef aster.com/ klooz.html and
http://blog. hasslberger. com/2007/ 03/pogue_ hydrogen_ stories_of_ supp.html.
I have additional ideas for energy research not included in these reports.
I suggest that the Nevada prisons be enlisted to manufacture patented energy inventions. The prisoners would learn useful skills, accumulate personal funds to draw on when released, and the bill for operating prisons would be offset by energy invention profits. The argument that prisons would be unfairly competing with private enterprise is muted by the patents protecting the energy inventions.
I am a member and a co-founder of the New Energy Congress. The NEC has accumulated a list of approximately 100 unconventional energy inventions that appear to be verified as having merit.
I am optimistic that I and my network of several dozen brilliant energy inventors and researchers can rescue Nevada from its energy predicament.
Gary Vesperman
588 Lake Huron Lane
Boulder City, NV 89005-1018
702-435-7947
garyvesperman@ yahoo.com
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