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Students tell Penn State they want Kyoto now!

Never let it be said that college students are only interested in cheap booze and the latest episode of My Super Sweet 16. OK, it can be said about some people (hello, freshman roomie), but never let it be said about these folks:

Penn State green group EcoAction has been pressing uni-prez Graham Spanier for two years to lower greenhouse-gas emissions and get PSU in compliance with Kyoto (Now!). Last month, the group staged a sit-in in the guy's office (and also, clearly, outside, as seen in the photo above from It's Getting Hot in Here). They also delivered about 4,500 signatures of support, including a string of thousands of signed letters delivered via a human chain into his office. Apparently, in a recent campaign, they planted 4,000 red and orange flags along a campus green area to represent the 4,000 students (10 percent of the student body!) supporting their cause -- in the process making a nice statement about wind power and creating a can't-miss-it visual display. Kudos, kids!

And speaking of creative visuals, 41 student teams recently competed in a sustainable design competition sponsored by the EPA and held on the National Mall. The P3 award -- for People, Prosperity, and the Planet -- includes funding up to $75,000 for the students to see their ideas to fruition.

The winning teams and their ideas, below the fold:

Kick the Oil Habit

To see a much more convincing and frightening video, head over to Kick the Oil Habit, a new campaign just launched by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. (Robert Redford will announce the campaign tonight on Larry King Live.)

For my part, I think they rely a little to heavily on gas-price hysteria on the problem page and ethanol on the alternatives page, but then, I don't have millions of dollars to research and craft these things, so I should probably defer to their judgment.

Let's hope it goes somewhere.

(Maybe Ana can drop by later and share more details about how the campaign was conceived and what its goals are.)

Environmentalism goes local

It's certainly not the first piece on environmentalism going local, but this WSJ story has some good stuff on rural and agricultural activism in particular. And I didn't know this:

The Sierra Club, based in San Francisco, has more than doubled the number of its local community organizers nationwide to about 100 from 40 over the past four years, while keeping its lobbying presence in Washington flat over the same time.

Move Thyself: Post script: The thievery capitulation

As if this guy didn't already have enough interesting stories about decades spent cycling essentially nonstop around the world, here's one more:

And so it begins

Al Gore mentions "relapse."

Update [2006-5-17 10:14:32 by David Roberts]: In other Gore news, the Competitive Enterprise Institute is launching a full TV ad campaign against him "global warming alarmism" a week before Gore's movie opens. Think Progress has the lowdown on CEI.

Americans and Climate Change: The perfect problem

"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.

Below the fold is the first half of the introduction to part one, which describes how global warming is a "perfect problem."

This Land Is Poorly Managed Land

BLM accused of not preserving cultural sites Hundreds of millions of acres of public lands are going unprotected, with their historical artifacts undocumented, as the Bush administration focuses Bureau of […]

Corporations going green: The fifth horseman or the winning horse?

David pointed out that a common thread in the recent Wal-Mart discussion was anger over dilution of the organic label by corporate finagling. Underlying the labeling issue, and a part of so many environmental discussions, is environmentalists' ambivalence towards corporate involvement in any pro-environmental action.

Today the NYT gave me the perfect segue to this topic by devoting a whole section to the "business of green." There's tons of great stuff in there, worth many discussions, but I'll just pull one quote from the article "Companies and Critics try collaboration."

If politics makes for strange bedfellows, global warming, endangered forests, dwindling water supplies and scary new technologies have made for even stranger ones. Environmentalists and corporations are engaging in a new spirit of compromise.

For some of us, that quote is the canary in the coal mine, singing out loud that the environment has been sold out. For others it is a signal that we've entered a new era of environmental progress.

Pombo gets no love

Remember that absurd website hosted by the House Resources Committee (read: Dick Pombo)? The taxpayer-funded one that slanders the entire environmental movement as greedy alarmists? Environmentalists are irritated about it. Pombo, as is his wont, doesn't give a damn:

"It's all part of the policy debate," Pombo said. "Hey, these groups can't scream that my site is political and turn around and say their stuff is educational. They can't have it both ways."

This is stupid. Nobody would ever see the website if people didn't make a fuss about it. It deserves mockery, nothing else.

In happier Pombo news, Defenders of Wildlife recently released a poll (press release; PDF summary) showing that if the election were held today, Pombo would LOOOOOOOOSE! Ahem.

A major factor in Pombo's drop in support is the fact that a majority of voters now believe that he "puts corporate interests over the people's interest."  53% of voters believe that the above description describes him well, while only 30% say it does not describe him well.

And remember, this is in a deeply, deeply Republican district.

I wonder how much of this is attributable to the general decline in Republican popularity, how much to events, and how much to the campaign by green groups. Some signs point to the latter -- these numbers are sharply down from last September, and Pombo now boasts some of the worst re-elect numbers of any Republican incumbent. Says the summary:

Why are mayors so much smarter than national pols?

On May 10-11, the U.S. Conference of Mayors held a National Summit on Energy and the Environment (press release). They put together a document of best practices (PDF) developed in their various cities. And they agreed to develop a Energy/Environment Conservation Action Agenda (they sure do love capital letters, those mayors) to be released at their annual meeting in June. Here are six steps to be included in the agenda:

1) Invest more money in transportation options including public and mass transit, bike paths, etc.

2) Encourage at the local, state, and federal level the building or rehabilitation of more energy efficient buildings in both the public and private sector.

3) Encourage automakers to make more energy efficient cars as well as encouraging individuals to buy vehicles that are more energy efficient including alternative fuels, hybrids, and plug- in hybrids.

4) Encourage more investment in renewable and alternative energy through additional incentives.

5) Encourage more mixed-use development to allow people to have more walkable communities.

6) Encourage the public and private sector, as well as citizens, to do their part in conserving energy.

Bizarrely sensible.

I suppose it's to be expected that city leaders are somewhat wiser and more judicious than national politicians -- there's more direct accountability and fewer opportunities for media posturing. But we're talking several orders of magnitude here. Why the massive disconnect?

(via EB)