Beyond Coal - Coming Clean

All posts tagged "Beyond Coal"

November 13, 2013

A Single Tragedy, a Global Crisis

There's still a lot we don't know about Typhoon Haiyan and its aftermath, but we know enough: thousands dead and many more still in danger. A staggering 9.5 million people were affected by the storm. Six days after Haiyan hit, rescuers still haven't been able to reach dozens of cities and towns, some of which were virtually obliterated.

Here's what we can do today: Contribute to one of the many relief organizations that are responding to the tragedy.

Was Haiyan the largest typhoon ever to make landfall? Does that even matter? To see how monstrous the storm really was, just look at this image that shows how it would have appeared off the U.S. East Coast. Apologies in advance for any nightmares this gives you.

Ironically, even as the people of the Philippines began the grim job of digging out from the destruction, delegates from nearly 200 nations were gathering in Poland for the 19th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. By 2015, they hope to have an international climate action agreement to replace the now-expired Kyoto Protocol -- with the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 3-4 degrees F above preindustrial levels.

Once upon a time, in a world before storms like Haiyan, Sandy, and Katrina, it seemed reasonable to pin our hopes on a UN climate agreement or on a U.S. cap-and-trade bill. You have a problem, you sign a treaty or pass a bill and consider it solved. We no longer live in such a world. Climate disruption is already killing thousands, and scientists tell us that we're on a path for much worse. There are times when the human race seems like an emphysemic smoker who has a heart attack, pops an aspirin, and reaches for another pack.

Right now, the people of the Philippines need humanitarian aid. But ultimately, we owe them -- and ourselves -- another commitment: We must eliminate the fossil fuels that are -- let's not mince words -- killing our planet.

It's not that we're doing nothing to achieve that goal. We're doing it as individuals by choosing clean energy options like electric cars and solar panels. We're doing it as communities by fighting to retire coal plants or pass fracking moratoriums. We're doing it in our cities, as when Los Angeles committed to replace coal with clean energy by 2025. We're doing it regionally, as when -- just a couple of weeks ago -- the leaders of British Columbia, California, Oregon, and Washington signed the Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy to reduce emissions and transition toward renewables. And, yes, we're doing it nationally and internationally, as when the Treasury Department reaffirmed last month that the U.S. will end financial support for new coal projects overseas.

But we're still not doing what we already know we need to do quickly enough. In a world where we should be going out of our way to tackle this climate crisis, we're still exporting natural gas, considering tar-sands pipelines, and patting ourselves on the back for figuring out clever ways to drill more oil.

We can take two greater lessons from the horror of Typhoon Haiyan. One, the tragedy that has touched the Philippines today could have happened anywhere on this troubled planet. Two, this is but a foretaste of the misery we will call down upon ourselves if we fail to muster the kind of resolve that Winston Churchill did when called to lead his nation to victory. How will we succeed? By pursuing a 100 percent clean energy future "with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us."

The alternative? There is no alternative.

Posted at 02:36 PM in Beyond Coal, Clean Energy Solutions, Dirty Fuels (Oil), Natural Gas | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 28, 2013

Unhappy Anniversary

A year has passed since Sandy, the second-costliest storm in U.S. history, slammed into the Eastern Seaboard, causing $65 billion in damage. On the day of this unhappy anniversary, though, we can't really say the disaster is behind us. Thousands of families are still unable to return to their homes. Some people have lost everything, including the hope of getting it back.

The destruction from Sandy wasn't even the only extreme-weather disaster during the past year. Colorado is still reeling from a triple whammy of drought, wildfires, and then unprecedented floods that forced thousands more to evacuate their homes.

What's going on? These terrible events are consistent with what climate scientists have told us to expect from a warmer climate: wetter (and therefore more powerful) storms in some places; hotter, prolonged droughts in others. Our planet is a complicated and surprisingly sensitive system. Radically altering inputs such as the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is like letting a toddler randomly start flipping switches in the cockpit of an in-flight 747. How many switches do you think can be safely flipped? I'd hate to find out.

Although nothing could justify the devastation and heartbreak caused by Sandy in the East or by the fires and floods in the West, there has been one positive result. We've reached a tipping point in public concern about climate disruption. No longer does this issue seem like something that will happen in a distant future and to someone else. Even if we haven't experienced extreme weather firsthand, we know someone who has.

What can we do about it? First, we have to kick that kid out of the cockpit. We need to reduce and ultimately eliminate the carbon pollution that is altering our atmosphere and disrupting our climate. We've made progress, too. Last year, greenhouse gas emissions reported to the EPA by polluters reached their lowest level in almost 20 years. At the same time, clean-energy technologies like wind and solar are growing exponentially -- faster than anyone could have guessed just a few years ago.

And yet, it's still not fast enough. The disaster that is runaway climate pollution won't begin to subside until we stop burning fossil fuels entirely and start running our economy on 100 percent clean energy. We can do that, too, but it won't happen through wishful thinking. We need to act. President Obama's climate action plan, although not perfect, includes the first-ever action by the EPA to limit climate-disrupting carbon emissions from their single biggest source: power plants. While standards for gas plants still need to be strengthened, the new standards would clean up new coal power plants, and the agency is planning to propose similar standards for existing power plants next year.

No one can stop the next superstorm, mega wildfire, or 1,000-year flood. But we can get behind stopping the pollution that's disrupting our climate. Tell the EPA right now: We need the strongest possible safeguards against industrial carbon pollution from new coal and gas-burning power plants.

Posted at 02:10 PM in Beyond Coal, Clean Energy Solutions, Dirty Fuels (Oil), Natural Gas | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 24, 2013

How to Build a Clean-Energy Future

By now, we know what to expect if we fail to act on climate disruption: more severe storms, wildfires, droughts, and destruction. To avoid that future, we have to make stopping carbon pollution a priority.

But at the same time, people are also realizing that this is more than an urgent challenge -- it's a fantastic opportunity. We have the chance to do something that's never been done: build a society that is 100 percent powered by clean energy. Instead of being daunted, we should be thrilled.

When he laid out his Climate Action Plan last summer, President Obama touched on both the challenge and the opportunity ("I want America to build that future"). Then, last month, the EPA unveiled one of the most important elements of that plan: proposed safeguards to reduce carbon pollution from new power plants. The new standards are a huge step toward meeting the challenge, but they also show that we still have a ways to go when it comes to seizing our historic opportunity.

The good news is that these safeguards set the first national limits on the amount of carbon pollution that can be emitted by coal-fired power plants, which are our single biggest source of that pollution. Tough standards for carbon pollution will not only address climate disruption but also prevent life-threatening air pollution like toxic mercury, dirty soot, and the smog that triggers asthma attacks, so this is really good news indeed.

The not-so-good news is that the standards reveal the current limits of President Obama's vision. Because the standards do nothing to reduce carbon pollution from natural-gas-fired power plants, they stop short of going "all in" on clean energy. By giving natural gas a free pass, the president's policies haven't really committed to a clean-energy future.

To reach that future, we (and the president) need to do more than move beyond dirty fuels like coal, gas, and oil. We need to move beyond pessimism -- the kind of thinking that limits our ambition and our willingness to fight for big ideas.

Once that happens, we'll have reached the true tipping point for clean energy. The change won't be linear: As we get bigger inventories of clean energy, the costs will come down and renewables will go head to head with fossil fuels everywhere -- and they'll win.

We're already seeing that begin to happen in places like Southern California, where a new gas plant was shelved because solar came in cheaper, and in Colorado, where the state's largest power provider plans to triple the amount of solar and wind that's coming online because it's cheaper and more reliable than gas or coal.

Although these carbon pollution safeguards will be a partial victory, the ground we gain will never be lost. That's the great thing about clean-energy progress. Once we leave fossil fuels behind, we will never go back. No one will tear down wind farms because they're nostalgic for fracking in our watersheds. People won’t rip off solar panels because they miss having mercury in their tuna or asthma inhalers for their kids.

Not only are the EPA's proposed new carbon pollution safeguards taking us a step closer to the future we want, they also are building momentum for another, even greater step: proposed carbon pollution protections for existing power plants, which are due in the middle of next year.

You can help. After a delay because of the federal government shutdown, the EPA has begun holding a series of listening sessions across the country to solicit "ideas and input from the public and stakeholders about the best Clean Air Act approaches to reducing carbon pollution from existing power plants." Find out here if there's a session near you. If there is, speak up! Let the EPA know that the only way to go "all in" on a clean-energy future is to put polluting fossil fuels behind us for good.

Posted at 09:00 AM in Beyond Coal | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 08, 2013

Coal by Numbers

Great news: In the past three years, 150 coal-fired power plants either have been retired or have announced a retirement date. Plant number 150 was Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Massachusetts. Like lots of people, I enjoy tracking things by the numbers. If you have a quantifiable goal, reaching a big round number is a good time to reflect both on how far you've come (and still have to go).

For the Sierra Club and our local, regional, and national allies, reaching this milestone of 150 coal plants means that we're further along in our campaign to get America completely off coal-fired power by the year 2030 than almost anyone believed possible just a few years ago. To put it in perspective, just three years into a 20-year campaign, we've already secured the retirement of nearly 30 percent of the nation's coal-fired power plants.

The most important numbers, though, don't tally the number of coal plants retired. They tell us how our world will change simply by not burning coal. Much of that change can be measured by what won't occur. With 150 fewer coal plants, 4,000 Americans won't die as a result of coal pollution each year. More than 6,300 heart attacks and 66,600 asthma attacks will never happen. Americans won't have to pay $1.9 billion in annual health costs. As for the personal suffering and heartbreak that those 150 plants will no longer cause -- I don't think there's even a number for that.

Something we can measure, though, is the positive change to our nation's energy future. As we've retired 60,493 megawatts of coal power, we've also added more than 32,800 megawatts of clean energy like wind and solar -- enough to power the equivalent of 9 million American homes. Across the country, this growth in clean energy is creating local jobs -- nearly 200,000 so far -- while providing clean, affordable energy and dramatically reducing the carbon pollution that threatens our climate.

As far as we've come, though, and as much as we've accomplished, I'm even more excited about the future beyond coal plant number 150. The transition from coal is gaining momentum for several reasons. First, the grassroots movement that is the heart of the Beyond Coal campaign is gaining strength and diversity as entire communities realize they can cast off the curse of coal. Second, the steadily falling cost of renewable energy resources such as wind and solar has made it even easier to replace coal with clean, non-polluting power. And last but not least, the long-overdue regulation of carbon pollution from old, out-of-date coal-fired power plants is going to tilt the energy economics even more decisively toward cleaner sources.

The Beyond Coal campaign could never have reached this milestone so quickly without the hard work and passionate dedication of many, many people -- all of whom deserve to feel proud about what we've accomplished together -- and even prouder about the great things we're going to do next. You can count on it.

Posted at 09:00 AM in Beyond Coal | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 25, 2013

Coal's Days of Future Passed

Now that the EPA has released its draft carbon pollution standard for new power plants, coal apologists -- those who are left, anyway -- are doing their best chest-clutching Fred Sanford impressions.

Why is no one taking their cries of doom seriously? Because coal already had no future. In the 21st century, investing in a new coal-fired power plant makes as much sense as building a typewriter factory. The market has already decided that coal is no longer competitive.

In Colorado, Xcel Energy wants to triple the amount of utility-scale solar power on its grid while also adding another 450 megawatts of wind power. For the first time, the utility says, it's finding that new solar projects are bidding cheaper than coal and natural gas.

It's not just Colorado. Nationwide, the price of clean energy sources has plummeted compared with coal. The cost of wind is down 50 percent since 2009, and solar panels are down 80 percent since 2008. That trend will only gain momentum.

Michael Yackira, CEO of NV Energy, said earlier this year that "coal is not part of the long-term future of Nevada… we think the costs are too great, the environmental concerns and the costs associated with those environmental concerns are too great." The heads of major energy providers like American Electric Power and Duke Energy have also signaled the end of new coal-fired power plants in the United States.

The writing has been on the wall since at least 2009, when the global head of asset management at Deutsche Bank said that coal was "a dead man walking."

At this point, it's more like a crawl. "There aren't any new coal plants being built now," said Warren Buffett earlier this year. "You'll see wind, you'll see solar." Goldman Sachs recently forecast that Asian demand for coal would weaken and downgraded its price projections for international coal, and Citibank joined them in their analysis.

But even if the new carbon standards only confirm an existing trend, they're still both important and extremely welcome. They show that the United States is serious about its commitment to reduce carbon pollution. Even more important, they show that the Clean Air Act is still effective at protecting Americans from dangerous air pollution.

Posted at 08:25 AM in Beyond Coal, Clean Energy Solutions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 09, 2013

For Coal, the End Is Near

You can still find people who say they believe coal has a future. By and large, though, they're the same people who believe their future is in coal.

Perhaps that's just human nature. The more you think you stand to lose, the harder it is to accept -- much less embrace -- progress. That's why Western Union walked away from the telephone, Microsoft fumbled the Internet, and Sony ceded the LCD display industry to upstart Korean rivals.

Soon, everyone will find it hard to believe that we ever thought generating power by burning coal was a good idea. We say coal's "dirty," but that one adjective covers everything from water pollution to mercury poisoning to childhood asthma to climate-disrupting carbon emissions. Coal contributes to four out of the five leading causes of death around the world. If coal-fired power plants had never existed and someone proposed building the very first one today, the public outcry would be deafening.

Thankfully, two developments in the 21st century have sealed coal's fate. First, we have begun holding utilities accountable for some of the health and environmental costs of burning coal (the Obama administration's determination to limit carbon pollution from both new and old coal plants is the culmination of this trend). Coal was never cheap if you considered the health and environmental costs. Second, we have begun to realize there are better, smarter ways to meet our energy needs -- particularly through renewable technologies and better energy efficiency.

Of course, since coal-fired power plants are our biggest source of carbon emissions, maintaining the delusion that coal can compete against cleaner energy sources necessitates dismissing the science behind climate disruption. The Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity has gone so far as to convince (with the aid of copious campaign contributions) more than 150 Republican members of Congress to sign a "No Climate-Tax Pledge" that effectively requires them to vote against any legislation that addresses climate change. That helps explain why, according to a just-released report from the office of Representative Henry Waxman, Republican congressional members representing districts that suffered the most extreme warming last year nevertheless cast anti-climate votes more than nine out of ten times.

How long can these politicians successfully put the interests of polluters ahead of their own constituents? Especially when, compounding the irony, 75 percent of our wind-energy capacity is in congressional districts represented by Republicans (at least for now). In the long run, democracy, justice, and common sense will trump ideology.

Sooner than anyone could have imagined only a few years ago, coal's defenders will find themselves firmly on the wrong side of history. I believe we will not use coal for energy at all within the next couple of decades. When that day finally comes, it won't be the end of a "war on coal," but of coal's war on all of us.

Posted at 02:46 PM in Beyond Coal | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 25, 2013

Back in the Game

This afternoon, I had a short meeting with President Obama that left me more convinced than ever that he's serious about tackling the climate crisis. Sure enough, later under a sweltering sun at Georgetown University, I watched him calmly and forcefully restate the case for taking action on the climate crisis in one of the most important speeches of his presidency. He also outlined a Climate Action Plan that will help curb carbon pollution, develop clean energy sources, promote energy efficiency, and assert American global leadership on climate issues. Taken together, the new policies directly address what the president rightly calls "the global threat of our time."

Coming on the heels of an unprecedented string of extreme weather disasters, the plan recognizes that we must work on both the causes and the consequences of climate disruption.

But the two most significant commitments the president made were bona fide game-changers: First, he said that he will use the full authority of the Clean Air Act to limit air pollution from both new and existing power plants. Second, he declared that he will not approve the Keystone XL pipeline if it harms the climate, because to do so would not be in the national interest.

The science on Keystone's potentially catastrophic effect on climate could not be more clear. The rejection of this carbon pollution pipeline will be a major climate disaster averted.

Coal-fired power plants, however, are a disaster that has persisted for far too long and, as I listened to the president's speech, I shared the exuberance of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal activists and so many others in the movement who have fought to end this injustice. Coal-fired power plants are currently responsible for nearly one-third of U.S. carbon pollution; although only a decade ago, that share was greater than one-half. The recent and welcome decline in U.S. carbon emissions to 1986 levels is the result of a decade-long trend away from using coal to generate electricity. Extending clean-air standards to older coal plants, many of which have been polluting for decades, will speed that trend. Not only will this significantly reduce our carbon pollution, but it will also save tens of thousands of lives, since the plants emit many other toxic air pollutants, from sulfur dioxide to mercury.

To meet the challenge of the climate crisis, however, we must do much more than simply celebrate the end of the Coal Age -- we need to hasten a new era of smart, clean energy, energy efficiency, and the jobs that support them. Here, too, the president's plan lays out a practical vision for the future. The president is justifiably proud that generation of renewable energy from wind and solar doubled during his first term; now he has committed to seeing it double again. One of the ways his administration will make that happen is by responsibly siting more renewable-energy projects on public lands. The goal is to install enough such projects to power 6 million homes by 2020.

Other major initiatives will promote energy efficiency in both the public and private sectors, begin the critical work of developing a "smart grid" energy infrastructure, raise the bar on fuel economy standards for heavy-duty vehicles, and tackle the problem of climate-polluting hydrofluorocarbons and methane. Leakage and flaring of methane, which currently accounts for 9 percent of U.S. carbon pollution (and has a global warming potential that is more than 20 times greater than carbon dioxide), is one of the reasons why natural gas doesn't deserve its reputation as a "cleaner" fossil fuel.

Is everything in the Climate Action Plan workable -- or even a good idea to begin with? Of course not. Some ideas, like pursuing "clean coal" technology, investing in nuclear power, fracking, and building overseas markets for U.S. natural gas are either wrong-headed or dead ends. On balance, though, the plan offers a way for our nation to move forward strongly. Even if not every path offered is a good one, it's never been clearer what our destination must be -- and that this president wants to get us there.

Beyond the president's specific commitments, however, the most important takeaway from his speech is that he is determined to "personally own" this issue. That means taking responsibility in the face of what he has called a "moral obligation." He is far from alone in recognizing such an obligation. A national poll earlier this year found that 93 percent of Americans agree that we have "a moral obligation to future generations to leave them a planet that is not polluted or damaged."

Although the president's desire to save the planet certainly resonates with environmentalists like myself and the Sierra Club's 2.1 million members and supporters, that alone can't account for the overwhelming support of more than 90 percent of the American population. Our "moral obligation to future generations," though, is a different matter. If I ever need to get re-energized about fighting the climate crisis, all I need to do is look into the eyes of my kids. I know the same is true for President Obama. His exact words today: "As a president, as a father, and as an American, I’m here to say we need to act."

The president's plan may one day be seen as a critical turning point, but let's not forget that this struggle is far from over. The president himself emphasized that this will be a long and rocky road. In the near term, at least, powerful special interests will continue to throw up roadblocks and obstacles at every turn. Congress, for its part, has resolutely and shamefully shirked its own moral obligation. What matters today, though, is that President Barack Obama has reasserted his leadership on climate with both words and deeds. For that, he deserves both our deepest gratitude and our whole-hearted support (and here's where you can send it to him).

Hope is back in the game. Let's win it.

Posted at 02:12 PM in Beyond Coal, Clean Energy Solutions, Dirty Fuels (Oil), Dirty Money (Oil), Green Transportation, Natural Gas | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 01, 2013

Six Months After Sandy

If all goes well, my parents will finally get to return home today. They live on the New Jersey Shore, on Chadwick Beach Island, next to Barnegat Bay. My brother, sisters, and I all grew up in the house, which my dad built with my uncle, almost fifty years ago.

Six months ago, Sandy took it apart.

By the time it hit the eastern seaboard, Sandy was an unusual hybrid of a post-tropical cyclone and an upper level low system. "Superstorms" like Sandy could develop without the influence of climate disruption, but warmer ocean temperatures and a shifting jet stream unquestionably have increased the odds. The scariest thing about Sandy is that such a freak of weather may no longer be so freakish.

A new norm of extreme weather is a daunting prospect. In Sandy's case, the damage to my childhood home was part of the worst U.S. natural disaster since hurricanes Katrina and Rita -- much more than $50 billion in damages and at least 72 deaths. But Sandy also destroyed something intangible -- our complacency. No longer can we assign the consequences of climate disruption to some distant future. When Sandy struck, the future rose with the sea and smashed into us head on. The question it left behind was this: What do we do about it?

For the past 100 days, Sierra Club members and supporters have answered that question loudly and clearly. We gathered in Washington, D.C., for the largest climate rally in history. We held town hall meetings and grassroots rallies across the country. And we helped send more than a million messages to Barack Obama -- telling him that we want bold action on climate disruption.

For his part, the president answered Sandy's challenge by talking about the climate crisis in his strongest words yet, both in the State of the Union and his inaugural address.

The president's words were welcome, but words will not be enough. Here are five critical actions we need him to take:

Reject the toxic Keystone XL pipeline.
Protect our water from coal plant pollution.
Close loopholes on fracking and protect our wildlands from oil and gas development.
Finalize strong standards for cleaner tailpipe emissions.
Move forward with standards against industrial pollution.

Each of these actions is within President Obama's power right now. If he's serious about addressing climate disruption, not one of them is optional.

Meanwhile, we have to keep our own voices raised. If you haven't added yours yet -- you can do it here. Together, we will move forward on climate -- and we need our president to lead the way.

Posted at 03:10 PM in Beyond Coal, Dirty Fuels (Oil), Natural Gas | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 21, 2013

A Big One for L.A.

We are going to get the United States off dirty fuels and onto clean energy. Of course, it won't happen overnight nor everywhere at once. Our success will come from winning hundreds, if not thousands, of victories -- big and small.

This is about one of the big ones.

Tomorrow, I'll be in Los Angeles to watch as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa officially announces that, within 12 years, the City of Angels will be entirely coal-free. Currently, L.A. gets almost 40 percent of its power from two old and notoriously dirty out-of-state coal plants -- the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona and the Intermountain Power Project in Utah.

It's impossible to overstate the significance of this announcement from the second-largest city in the U.S. But getting rid of coal is only part of the story. Los Angeles is also leading on clean energy.

Two years ago, L.A. was the first city in California to hit 20 percent clean energy. The city's new CLEAN LA Solar program (which allows local businesses, residents, and organizations to install renewable energy projects and sell the power they generate back to the utility) is the largest program of its kind in the nation. It's also expected to create 4,500 jobs and nearly $500 million in economic development for the city.

More jobs will be created as the city ramps up its already impressive energy-efficiency efforts. When the EPA released its annual ranking of cities with the most Energy Star certified buildings last week, Los Angeles topped the list -- as it has for the past five years.

Certainly, much of the credit goes to Mayor Villaraigosa. When he took office eight years ago, Los Angeles was getting almost half of its power from coal and only three percent from clean energy. When you fly into LAX and see hundreds of square miles of rooftops soaking up the Southern California sun, it seems obvious that rooftop solar is a huge opportunity for L.A. But it took a mayor with vision and determination to make it happen.

I'm proud to stand by Mayor Villaraigosa as he announces a coal-free Los Angeles on Friday. You can join us -- the event will be live-streamed. In the meantime, let the sun shine!

Posted at 12:59 PM in Beyond Coal, Clean Energy Solutions, My Generation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 06, 2013

The Day We Move Forward on Climate

On Sunday, February 17, I'll be joining tens of thousands of Americans in Washington, D.C., for Forward on Climate -- the largest climate rally in U.S. history. Our goal is to convince President Obama to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, but we also are asking him to make that decision the cornerstone of a positive, solutions-oriented climate legacy for his second term.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've spoken with thousands of Sierra Club members and supporters, all across the country, who are fired up about the rally because they know we're on the frontline of the movement to stop climate disruption. But this is more than a battle to stop something bad -- it's a fight for something better. That's because we're also on the cusp of a clean energy revolution that will transform our nation, slash carbon pollution, and turn this climate disaster around. We need President Obama to commit to that fight with all the ambition and determination he can bring.

The clean energy technologies we need to reverse climate disruption already exist. They are affordable, competitive, and ready for primetime. Already, we've doubled our wind power to 60 GW (enough to power nearly 15 million homes), and we generate five times more solar power than we did just a few years ago. That's explosive growth, but we're just getting started. Renewables can power America, and they can do it without climate-polluting gases or any other kind of pollution.

Here's how President Obama can make that happen:

First, he must follow through and build on one of the biggest accomplishments of his first term: Holding polluters accountable for the costs of their pollution to our health, to our economy, and to our climate. That means directing the EPA to finish the job it has already begun on cleaning up power plant pollution, including carbon and mercury pollution from new sources, coal ash, and cross-state air pollution.

Second, President Obama needs to master the art of saying "no" -- and making it stick -- to bad ideas that would condemn future generations to the effects of runaway climate disruption. His final decision on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will be only the first big test of whether he he's truly serious about climate change. There's no excuse for blasting the mountains of Appalachia to scrape the last bits of coal, drilling in our Arctic wilderness, building export terminals to ship coal and natural gas overseas, or continuing to allow the proliferation of under-regulated fracking for oil and gas.

Third, the president needs to permanently shift the debate about our public lands from "how can the mining and drilling industries best exploit them?" to "how can their true owners -- the American people -- most benefit from them?" For more than a century, we've allowed oil, coal, and other extractive industries to treat our public lands as their personal piggy banks. That must stop for two reasons. First, and most obviously, because the toxic pollution that results is hurting us and destroying our climate. Second, because the climate change that we've already locked ourselves into is going to put intense pressure on all of our public lands and remaining wilderness habitats, which means we need to preserve as much as we can while we can.

Fourth, the president must do all he can to help preserve the hard-won momentum for renewable energy and energy efficiency of his first term. Start by promoting innovative financing and investment avenues that make it easier for individuals and businesses to install clean energy and adopt energy-efficiency measures.

Finally, we must recognize that the effects of climate disruption are already here in the form of droughts, deadly heat waves, wildfires, and powerful storms. We need to protect communities from these climate disasters and plan a robust and just response for those that do happen.

The president can take these important, specific actions right now to show the American people -- and the world -- that he's serious about the climate crisis. But they're not enough. The final thing we need is both the most crucial and the most intangible. We need Barack Obama at his absolute, formidable best.

We need the Barack Obama who was able to inspire millions to believe in the possibility of change and the power of hope. We need that leader to passionately and eloquently show the American people that solving the climate crisis is not a burden but an incredible opportunity. We need him to inspire a nationwide groundswell for clean energy, energy efficiency, and a 21st-century economy. And we need him to bring every iota of his considerable political skill to bear on forging bipartisan solutions to curbing carbon pollution, and to call out those who persist in trying to hold us back.

When the president talks about the destructive power of a warming planet, no one has to wonder what that destruction looks like. We've seen it -- from the hurricane-ravaged Northeast to the drought-stricken Midwest to the fire-scarred West. It's all too real and scary. But it's hope and change -- not fear or doubt -- that will win the day. See you in Washington on the 17th.

Posted at 07:43 AM in Beyond Coal, Clean Energy Solutions, Dirty Fuels (Oil), Dirty Money (Oil) | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)