Huge Chunk of Antarctic Ice Collapses

Yesterday, a massive chunk of Antarctic Ice – seven time the size of Manhattan – broke off and dropped into the sea.  Collapses such as this are unusual, and scientists say global warming is the cause, with further losses looming.  How much longer will our government resist bold action to confront the climate crisis?

The most dramatic early consequences of global warming are happening at the nation’s poles, and ice collapses such as this are the “canary in a coal mine,” a final warning if you will, for the rest of the planet.  Sea level rise will be the most direct result of rapid polar ice melt and ice shelf collapses, but the record droughts (and resulting food shortages), floods, heat waves, forest fires and storms we are now seeing are also the inevitable result of man-made global warming.

We can and all must do our part to change our lifestyles and conserve energy, but we must also have members of Congress who are going to fight to create the bold, national action that needs to happen.  Please support the campaign of one candidate who will fight for such changes – sign up for the Clark for Congress campaign updates (top right of the homepage), and volunteer to help build the campaign and spread our message.

For the full story on the Antarctic ice shelf collapse, click here.

The Iraq Occupation: $3 Trillion and Counting

Now starting the sixth year of our occupation of Iraq, Nobel-Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has done the math.  While Bush and most members of Congress won’t talk about it, the cost of the occupation is approaching — or has already exceeded — $3 trillion, and it’s dealing a devastating blow to our economy and to the government’s ability to pay for anything else.  Why does the Democratically-controlled Congress continue to approve the funding?  Why don’t they level with us about why they keep funding this disastrous occupation, and how we and our children (and grandchildren) are to pay for it?

(For cartoonist Tom Tomorrow’s ever-incisive take on the $3 trillion price tag, click here.)

The $3 trillion counts not on the monthly upfront operating costs –- now approximately $150 billion or more a year, approximately $200 billion a year if you include the failing (and even longer) venture in Afghanistan – but also the costs of caring for the tens of thousands of war wounded, many for the rest of their lives, the cost of replacing military equipment, the trillion dollars or more added to the national debt (since the war is being funded by borrowing),  and the numerous costs to our economy.  

Three trillion dollars is an unimaginable amount, which is perhaps why we don’t positively revolt upon hearing it.  But think of everything our government isn’t funding right now for health care, renewable energy research and development, mass transit and infrastructure repair, you name it.  Why is our Democratically-controlled Congress continuing to fund this madness, and bankrupt our nation?  It’s time to elect members of Congress who will stop it.

For the full article by Mr. Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, click here.

For the American Friends Service Committee’s “What Do You Know About Iraq?” quiz, click here.

New Studies Affirm – Carbon output must near zero in 20-30 years to avert gravest dangers

As a friend of mine recently noted, science usually lags behind reality, and politics is behind the science.  Well, science just took a big step forward in recognizing the urgency of the climate crisis with the release of two studies indicating that we must all but end carbon emissions in the next 20-30 years to avert eco-catastrophe.

The two studies were published in separate journals over the past few weeks, and were the work of scientists from a number of countries, including the United States.  As reported in the Washington Post, the studies relay a simple but dramatic message: “the world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero” if we are to prevent global warming induced eco-catastrophe.  As one of the reports’ co-authors notes, this implies “a much more radical change to our energy system than people are thinking about.”

What will it take for government to catch up to the reality of global warming?  There is only one candidate running for U.S. Congress from the state of Maryland –- and one of very few running for Congress anywhere in the country –- who is taking this challenge seriously, and who has serious proposals to create the bold changes we need from our federal government to confront the climate crisis.

Please sign up for the Clark for Congress updates, and volunteer to help us build this campaign.  Working together, we can change the climate in Congress.

For the full article on the new studies, click here.

Who wants a gas-free, non-polluting electric car?

President Bush has done it again.  In another one of his lame duck, deathbed conversions, Bush used a speech at the International Renewable Energy Center this past Wednesday to urge automakers to build fully electric vehicles.  “We want our city people driving not on gasoline but on electricity,” intoned Mr. Bush, repeating his favorite new mantra that the U.S. needs to “get off oil.”

It’s a great idea, of course, but it’s also tragically ironic, particularly coming from this president’s mouth — and not just because his own administration is simultaneously trying to prevent states from enacting their own higher fuel efficiency standards.  For what most Americans don’t realize is that we already had perfectly good zero emissions electric cars on the road ten years ago, and that the fledgling program was killed by oil companies, the automakers, and — surprise, surprise — the Bush Administration.

Electric cars were introduced in California in response to that state’s farsighted 1990 mandate that 10% of the cars on its roads be zero emissions vehicles by 2003. By all accounts these cars, and General Motors’ EV-1 in particular, were well engineered, reliable, fast, sporty and very popular with the few people able to lease one. Yet it wasn’t long before the automakers (including GM) and oil companies joined forces to pressure and ultimately sue the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which had issued the mandate.

It isn’t hard to understand the oil companies’ objections: cars that don’t require gas are their worst nightmare.  But even the automakers opted for higher profits in the short term by selling bigger, infinitely dirtier vehicles. General Motors shut down its EV-1 assembly line only one month after buying the rights to build the tank-like Hummer.

The motivation of the Bush Administration, with all its ties to the oil industry and big business generally, isn’t hard to fathom either, and in 2003 they joined the lawsuit against CARB, which revised the mandate shortly thereafter. In a way, it was the perfect symmetry — Bush’s Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, was President of the American Automobile Manufacturers Association when they initiated the lawsuit 7 years earlier.  (For the full story, watch “Who Killed the Electric Car?” It’s a must-see movie with an excellent website for anyone who cares about our planet.)

So now Mr. Bush, seven years into his administration, apparently wants us to have electric cars.  But does Congress?  It’s instructive in this regard to hear Congressional Democrats brag about their recent legislation to mandate higher fuel efficiency vehicles for the first time in more than 30 years — even though they are still giving automakers another 12 years to comply with the new standard, one that many other nations in the world are meeting or even exceeding right now.

Does this sound like a Congress eager for a zero-emissions electric car?  Could their foot-dragging have anything to do with the millions of dollars both Democrats and Republicans receive in contributions from oil companies that are literally rolling in money, our money?  The five major oil companies operating in the U.S. — ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips and ChevronTexaco — made a historic, staggering, obscene $116 billion in pure profit in 2007, and they are not shy about throwing that money around the halls of Congress.  (Nor, for that matter, are the automakers.)

Nonetheless, there are hugely compelling reasons for our federal government to immediately mandate the construction of zero-emissions electric cars.  One is the historically high and ever-increasing price of oil. Gasoline is expected to reach $4 a gallon this spring, further battering the average American and our faltering economy.  

An even more compelling reason is the crisis of global warming. Our nation and our planet are already suffering from the results of man-made global warming, including record droughts, heat waves, wildfires, polar ice melt, flooding and storms. (All of which are conveniently overlooked by the few remaining climate change deniers, such as GM Vice Chairman and product development chief Bob Lutz, who recently called global warming a “total crock of shit.”)  Given the fact that the climate crisis is growing worse at an accelerating rate, there is not a moment to lose in taking action.  And there would be few better ways to halt our wholesale burning of oil — one of the primary sources of the greenhouse gas emissions that create global warming — than a massive switch to zero emissions electric cars. Such a conversion would have other huge benefits as well, such as eliminating the raison d’être for our bloody and insanely expensive military presence in the Middle East.

Any automakers that say such a switch is impossible must be reminded that electric cars don’t need to be reinvented — they already existed ten years ago.  And that in the face of a different national emergency, in 1940, the American auto industry was able to shift completely from making passenger automobiles to making military vehicles in a lighting fast six months.  Just six months.  Surely with all our advanced scientific skills, American ingenuity and good old-fashioned determination we could do the same thing today, couldn’t we?

While American citizens need to do their part, including more car-pooling, using mass transit, and demanding zero-emissions cars from manufacturers, the moment cries out for leadership and real political courage from members of Congress.  It’s long overdue for them to demonstrate that their commitment to the American people and the planet we depend on for our very survival is greater than their shortsighted commitment to their corporate benefactors in the oil and auto industries.