Environmental funders reassess climate change tactics: First base starting to look pretty good now

Oops, wrong first base photo!

Shortly after joining the Michigan Environmental Council in 2006, I became aware of an obscure public notice in the Federal Register soliciting comments on a plan for the U.S. Coast Guard to begin live ammunition training exercises with .50 caliber machine guns in 34 areas of the Great Lakes.

I tipped some journalists to the story, lighting the fuse for a maelstrom of protest that forced the Coast Guard to re-evaluate its plans. For a couple months, I invested a fair amount of time into helping spread public awareness of a plan that heretofore had been very, VERY quietly pursued.

At one point, a longtime veteran of the environmental movement asked, “so, who’s funding you for this?” When I replied no one was, she appeared befuddled, and perhaps a little put off.  It had not occurred to me that my work priorities should be dictated by funders. The most important work should get the most attention, right? Not necessarily.

As  this interesting article from Politico points out, the donors who fund environmental work call the shots … to a certain extent. And they are not happy about the results they’ve gotten from the money they’ve poured into addressing climate change during the past several years.

Federal Cap and Trade legislation that would have begun to address the issue crashed and burned. Amid the wreckage, environmental groups are regrouping to try and accomplish change on a piece by piece basis – fighting for better building efficiency standards, and stopping new coal plants, and investing in public transportation.

If this seems like a half-assed way to deal with the planet’s most important issue, it is. But it’s what we have. As the aforementioned Politico article notes, the environmental community has neither sufficent power to punish do-nothing politicians, nor the clout to reward the good ones.

Without that power – or a groundswell of public demand for action – there is little hope of the sweeping change that many of us would like to see.

Does that mean we don’t need visionaries laying out idealistic plans? No. But it means most of us need to hunker down and work for incremental change if we’re going to have something to show for it at the end of the day.

As President Obama’s Advisor Rahm Emanuel told an environmental funder, “Your DNA and my DNA are so different. I’m about trying to get to first base. You’re about trying to hit it over the fence.”

First base might sound like a crappy place to be when you’re so far behind.

But it beats striking out. And it might get funded.

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Newspaper correction of the month!

The New York Times carried a story on President Obama’s speech this week in which he called for the nation to reduce its oil imports by one-third over the next decade.

As Jon Stewart has pointed out Obama is the eighth consecutive president to call for such action. The first seven crashed and burned.

The Times apparently realized this a bit too late. They added this wry, pointed and somewhat deflating addendum at the bottom of their story:

Correction: March 30, 2011
A previous version of this article misstated how many of the president's proposals  to reduce the country's reliance on imported oil were new in his speech on Wednesday. None of them were, not one of them.

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It's official: Asian Carp have breached the last lock

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Asian Carp: Welcome to the neighborhood: I know better than to ask you not to **ck things up. At the risk of sounding biased against certain species (is it because they look different from me?) I wish you would have stayed in a neighborhood that's "more appropriate" for your type. I'm not very happy about your appearance here. Nor am I happy with the folks who could have tried harder to keep you out, including President Obama.

Sincerely, Hugh

NYT says enviros cooling on Obama; for Michigan and Gov. Granholm, it's deja vu

The New York Times had a piece yesterday about growing dissatisfaction with President Obama among environmental advocates.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/science/earth/18enviros.html?hpw

Among the reasons: Backing off on a carbon cap; enthusiastic support for so-called clean coal (an Orwellian moniker invented by the industry); new loan guarantees to push nuclear power forward, more offshore drilling and – I might add although I didn’t see it in the Times story – his refusal to slam the door on Asian Carp by closing the locks at Chicago.

The reactions are striking in the similarity to Michigan environmentalists’ reactions to Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Like Obama, she replaced an administration widely seen as hostile toward environmentalists and indifferent at best toward our natural resources. She, too, campaigned on strong and progressive environmental promises. And she, too, was the target of criticism when her results didn’t match her rhetoric.

Unmet promises are part and parcel of the job – political realities temper the grandest ambitions. But they also can be the result of a lack of conviction, lack of aggressiveness, or a lack of strategy.

I’m willing to give a President only 13 months into his tenure the benefit of the doubt.

But he loses me a little bit more every time he uses the ridiculous term “clean coal.”

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Down with Big Gov't renewable energy subsidies! Let go nuclear instead.......uh, oops!

President Obama is seeking $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants planned in Georgia. The guarantees put taxpayers on the hook for the money, should the venture fail or run over budget, which is a pretty good possibility.

http://theoaklandpress.com/articles/2010/02/16/news/doc4b7ab6e069874451200327.txt

So, I'm expecting to see conservatives and free-market proponents come out in force against this subsidy with the same fervor they assail subsidies for solar power or wind energy.

But, I'm not holding my breath.
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Asian Carp solution: More fishing!

Legislative hearings on the threat that Asian carp pose to the Great Lakes have been scheduled in Lansing.

http://www.mlive.com/mudpuppy/index.ssf/2010/02/asian_carp_hearing_in_lansing.html

The Frankenfish have devoured everything in their path on their way to Lake Michigan, now accounting for something like 90 percent of all biological life in the Illinois River.

Michigan and other states are trying to force a closure of the last locks standing between the carp and Lake Michigan http://www.stopasiancarp.com/. So far, President Barack Obama’s administration has been tone deaf to the appeal.

But maybe none of this is necessary.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s reliable policy experts have unveiled a truly free market solution: “More fishing could help ensure that the non-native carp do not overcrowd the native fish of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers.”

You just can’t make this stuff up.

http://www.mackinac.org/10633

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