American Forum Op-Ed

ALABAMA FORUM

By Pat Byington

AMERICAN FORUM

By Laurie Mazur

By Riane Eisler

The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference makes evident potential catastrophic effects of climate change, including its enormous economic and human tolls. It also clearly shows how poor nations in Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and island states will suffer most from the inevitable floods, droughts and other weather disasters.

But there’s more that needs to be made clear in Copenhagen. If we look closely, there’s a hidden truth with huge implications that we must bring to the attention of conference delegates to ensure that allocated funds actually protect those most vulnerable to these natural disasters.

Studies show that women are 14 times more likely to die in natural disasters. One heart-rending study of a Bangladesh flash flood found that 90 percent of casualties were female. Many factors contributed to this high casualty rate, all were avoidable. A woman’s role in this Southeast Asian nation, as in most of the Middle East and parts of Africa, is one of dependency -- so of course, these Bangladeshi women were not taught to swim. But perhaps the most important factor was that they lived and died in a culture where women are so rigidly controlled that they aren’t permitted to leave their homes without being accompanied by a male family member. When the flash flood occurred, they sadly stayed and drowned.

Such cultural restrictions are inhuman, not only to women, but to children. Yet, their implications for any Copenhagen climate pacts are still generally ignored.

Also ignored are studies showing that when women become involved in disaster-response planning and training there are far fewer casualties -- not only of women, but of children and the elderly. One study even found no casualties when women engaged in disaster-response preparedness.

It’s incumbent upon us to bring this information to the attention of U.N. officials such as Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and to official national delegations and nongovernmental groups attending the Copenhagen meeting.

In contributing funds for disaster training and response, the U.S. should insist that a sizable portion be given to women’s organizations. This is essential if our monies are to be used effectively and equitably.

We can use the Copenhagen conference as a way of changing restrictive traditions that are egregious human-rights violations (forbidding persons to leave their home alone is a form of house arrest!). We can also help the U.N. carry through on its promise to institute gender architecture mainstreaming. This will promote equal partnership between men and women, and show that when we speak of democracy and human rights, we really mean it.
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Eisler is the author of “The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics” and president of the Center for Partnership Studies.
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Copyright (C) 2009 by the American Forum. 12/09

by Sarah van Gelder

As the Copenhagen Climate Summit approaches, some world leaders predict there will be either no deal or one so weak that it will be virtually worthless.

Little wonder. Climate change could be one of the toughest issues the world has ever faced, less because of the technical challenges than the politics. That’s why the growing climate movement is so important to watch. Its success could determine if world leaders feel enough heat to take action.

What makes the politics of this moment so challenging? Unlike other critical issues, this one requires that we take action, based on science, before we see much damage. If we wait until the effects of long-term pollution are fully felt, climate scientists tell us, we will have passed critical thresholds that will make it difficult, if not impossible, to turn down the global thermostat.

Even now, these changes do more than cause occasional heat waves, droughts, and monster storms. As the effects of greenhouse gas pollution accelerate, millions of people will experience flooding, rising seas, crop failures, food shortages and drought conditions like those of the dust bowl era.

Still, it’s not too late. Climate scientists say we can yet avert the direst consequences if we halt the increase in pollution by 2015, then bring it down sharply. That means taking action now.

Yet, politicians worldwide have short-term reasons to pass this hot-potato issue off to future generations. After all, “cheap” coal-fired electricity offers high profits for a few companies and their shareholders, while the resulting climate damage is distributed to other people around the world.

And dealing with the crisis requires massive investments toward a transition to clean energy. While such investments will benefit economies in the long run, in the short term they will cost taxpayers money. And entrenched, powerful interests — from the oil and gas industry to mega-banks — use their money and connections to push for government handouts to subsidize business as usual. Some are even funding the think tanks and AstroTurf front groups that foster confusion and doubt about climate science.

In poorer countries, citizens want economic growth. They demand it. They want the cars, airline trips, big houses and high energy use we’ve grown accustomed to in the U.S. And without seeing the wealthier countries stepping up, they won't allow their governments to reduce carbon emissions.

Although every community, every nation and every family stands to lose without action on global warming, the political leaders gathering in Copenhagen to negotiate a climate treaty haven’t felt heat from their own citizens -- at least not yet.

The good news is that around the world there are climate heroes, those doing what they can -- putting up solar panels, standing in the way of coal plants, cutting their own household carbon footprints and promoting the clean energy technology we need.

And the pressure is mounting from those who want action. Young people, for instance, are mobilizing into a powerful force for change. Unlike the leaders meeting in Copenhagen, they know they will have to live with consequences of failing to avert climate chaos. These young people are lobbying, they are getting trained in green jobs, and they are building a movement they say is simply about survival.

Don’t underestimate these youths. Their energy and hard work helped elect the country’s first African-American president.

But it isn’t only the youth who are stepping up. People in all sectors of society are coming to see that our elected officials can’t get the job done unless they feel the heat at home. That puts a special responsibility on Americans. The world is waiting for leadership from the U.S., the country with one of the highest rates of greenhouse gas pollution. The future of our planet may hinge on whether “we the sovereign people” of the U.S. insist that our leaders step up to this global threat and lead the world toward a viable agreement.
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Sarah van Gelder is executive editor of YES! Magazine www.yesmagazine.org, which has just published a special issue on climate action.
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Copyright (C) 2009 by the American Forum. 12/09

MISSOURI FORUM
By Liz Forrestal and Caroline Ishida

We are gratified that Gov. Jay Nixon has returned Mark Templeton to his job as Director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Templeton was an unfortunate victim of the recent controversy over elevated levels of the bacterium E. coli in the Lake of the Ozarks. But this flap has distracted from a far more troubling problem: the insufficient monitoring of ALL Missouri waters.

Along with many others, our organizations were dismayed to learn of the serious oversight and bungling of mid-level officials in both the DNR and Governor’s office. The miscommunication between these two offices was inexcusable and deserved to be investigated. Moreover, we completely agree that the lake’s beaches should have been closed to protect public health. But the origins of E. coli in the lake -- and what that says about the water quality monitoring and enforcement program at DNR – should be front and center in this discussion. Furthermore, a large-scale cleanup at the lake like the one Nixon announced is merely a band-aid solution to a larger water quality monitoring and enforcement problem all over the state.

At the root of the problem is that funding for DNR’s water quality monitoring and enforcement program is completely insufficient to protect the health of our waters. General revenue support for DNR was gutted by the Blunt administration, and permit fees have not been raised in more than a decade, even for inflation. These are the problems that should be at the center of the E. coli discussion, and they started well before the arrival of Templeton.

Missouri Coalition for the Environment has commented on hundreds of industrial and point-source pollution discharge permits in the state in the past few years, and a few glaring themes have become obvious about the DNR that Templeton inherited. First, different DNR regions set different limits for dischargers, oftentimes the pollution limits in permits are not adequate to protect water quality, and there is inadequate DNR enforcement of permit limits, renewal, and water quality violations. Second, there is also inadequate enforcement of non-point source pollution, like stormwater runoff from parking lots, building sites, and homes (a large source of E. coli at the Lake).

Gov. Nixon has pledged to undertake and follow-through on the cleanup effort at the Lake of the Ozarks, but we urge him to make this the beginning of a larger cleanup of the water program at DNR.

Missouri must provide adequate funding to the permitting program, take a serious look at septic systems and stormwater runoff, and ensure that permit writers and monitoring and enforcement officials are doing a thorough job upholding Missouri’s Clean Water Law and the federal Clean Water Act.

The Lake of the Ozarks is far from the only water body in this state that needs serious attention from DNR. Without resolving some of the systemic problems, a piecemeal solution that just focuses on the lake alone, is not truly going to protect Missouri citizens or give them confidence that their state officials have public and environmental health and well-being at the center of their agendas.
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Forrestal is the executive director for Missouri Votes Conservation. Ishida is staff attorney for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment.
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Copyright (C) 2009 by the Missouri Forum. 11/09

By Ed Smeloff and Scott Denman

Too much heat and too little light are being generated right now inside the Washington, DC Beltway on the issue of global warming. Some electric utilities and allies in the coal and nuclear industries claim that only coal or nuclear reactors can meet future energy needs and combat global climate change. They say there is no other way.

However, beyond the Beltway there is clear evidence that there is another way. There is a prosperous new direction – without using more polluting coal or building more expensive, dangerous nuclear reactors.

This “third way” takes advantage of America’s vast – and easily recovered – energy efficiency ‘reserves’ and dramatically expands reliance on a wealth-creating mix of advanced and renewable energy technologies.

Quietly, but steadily, one major U.S. utility, California’s Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), has spent the last 20 years demonstrating that this “third way” powers economic growth, is easier on the family pocketbook, and slashes air pollution.

Despite its odd sounding acronym, SMUD’s success – now spanning two decades – is a model for other cities, states and indeed, for Congress. SMUD’s path to success began in 1989 when Sacramento voters closed the problem-plagued and expensive Rancho Seco nuclear reactor. SMUD's citizen leaders then embarked on an ambitious and remarkably productive, utility-led, energy efficiency and green energy initiative.

Since the vote to shutdown their troubled reactor, Sacramento’s industries, commercial businesses, residents, and nonprofit institutions, have benefited from consistently lower electric rates than California’s major utilities. Close collaboration with customers is a key to SMUD’s comprehensive energy efficiency programs and renewable energy development, ranging from detailed audits of industrial facilities to incentives for miserly refrigerators and compact light bulbs. SMUD even enabled local manufacturers to “co-generate” electricity for the community together with the steam needed for their industrial processes.

Moody’s Investor Service, Wall Street’s fiscal watchdog of U.S. utility performance, rates SMUD higher than or equal to other U.S. utilities that operate nuclear reactors. In June, Moody’s warned that: “The likelihood that Moody’s will take a more negative rating position for most issuers actively seeking to build new nuclear generation is increasing.”

On the cost side of the energy equation, a new, comprehensive academic report from Vermont Law School (VLS) on the prospective economics of new reactors underscores Moody’s wariness of embracing a new generation of reactors. The study, conducted by Dr. Mark Cooper, found that efficiency and renewable energy cost estimates average 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, while the cost of electricity from new nuclear reactors is estimated in the range of 12 to 20 cents per kilowatt-hour. VLS’s analysis concludes that, “the additional cost of building 100 new reactors, instead of pursuing a least cost efficiency-renewable strategy, would be in the range of $1.9-$4.1 trillion over the life of the reactors.”

Congress and the American people have heard this story before – promises that nuclear power is a solution to America’s energy needs. In fact, nuclear power continues to be a fiscal black hole; looming as a fool’s gold solution to the growing real threat posed by global climate change.

Many states “get it” and are now implementing SMUD-type programs. More than two dozen states have legislated or passed referenda requiring that utilities provide a specific percentage – typically ranging between 10-30 percent of their electricity supply – to be generated by sustainable energy resources by a certain date. Nearly 1,000 mayors of cities like Denver, Chicago, Portland, Austin, and Salt Lake City, representing tens of millions of Americans, have signed the Mayor’s Initiative on Climate Change, pledging to use sustainable energy resources to power their jurisdictions to prosperity.

Nevertheless, Beltway cheerleaders for the nuclear and coal industries are trying to force us, the taxpayers, to give away tens of billions more in shaky loan guarantees. This scheme shifts responsibility for failed nuclear projects onto the backs of the American families and businesses -- despite the conclusion of the Congressional Budget Office that 50 percent of such nuclear reactor loans will likely default.

The nuclear industry and their lobbyists want us to take the risk while they pocket the profits. New nuclear reactors would lead us deeper into national financial debt, and weaken our economy.

Congress must look outside the Beltway and adopt practical and profitable solutions like Sacramento did 20 years ago. It’s time to make energy efficiency, wind, geothermal, biomass, and solar power the cornerstone of America’s energy future.
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Smeloff is a developer of utility-scale solar projects for SunPower Corporation and the former president of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. Denman is an energy policy consultant and the former executive director of the national sustainable energy advocacy coalition, the Safe Energy Communication Council.
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Copyright (C) 2009 by the American Forum. 10/09