So I’m sure you’ve noticed I’ve blogged A LOT about the Clean Energy Town Hall meeting I’ve had a lead role in organizing. Congressman Steny Hoyer is also the House Majority Leader, which makes him one of the most powerful men in the country. He has a big say over what the climate change bill looks like. The main point is if you live in Maryland, you should to the meeting come if you can(you can find the details in many places in the above link). If you don’t live in Maryland, well originally I would’ve had to say too bad. But now, if you can’t make it to this huge event, you can watch it LIVE online at 6:30 pm, Monday May 11! This might seem standard to some people, but if I can successfully pull off the live feed, this will be the first live broadcast on The Dernogalizer! If I fail miserably(and it looks like the html is flipping me off), CCAN has a feed as well. Also, if you’re watching, look for a young guy in a suit holding a microphone in front of people who ask questions. That would be me.
May 10, 2009
EPA Chief: Environmental Justice
I came across an article about how EPA chief Lisa Jackson was talking about how neglect for the environment adversely impacts minority communities for a variety of reasons. This really resonated with the two part series of columns regarding diversity and the environmental movement. They are here, and here. The link to the article on Lisa Jackson’s comments is right here. I’m going to also paste the article below for your reading.
EPA chief calls for environmental justice
Saturday, May 09, 200
BY SPENCER GAFFNEY
PRINCETON BOROUGH — The federal Environmental Protection Agency needs to address the systemic environmental issues facing America’s poor, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a speech yesterday at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.
“I see it as part of my essential mission to show all Americans that the Environmental Protection Agency works for them,” said Jackson, the first African-American head of the EPA.
Jackson said that long-term environmental issues can devastate a community if left unchecked, leading to a cycle of pollution and poverty in the country’s poorest neighborhoods.
“If there is unchecked pollution, if there is littering, then that will lead to additional pollution, additional littering,” said Jackson. “Businesses won’t invest in that community, not even if you pay them to do so.”
Jackson also said that President Obama would reject the “false choice” between the economy and the environment, and said that the president would see the environmental sector as an economic opportunity.
“The opportunities are there to create green jobs,” said Jackson, “in places in our county where both the green and the job are absolutely vital.”
Jackson cited an initiative in the president’s Recovery Act to weatherize low-income housing as an example of the compound benefits of the green sector.
“The idea was more than just to make that housing green, which is very important, but to put 80,000 Americans to work at the same time that it saves their families hundreds of dollars a year in energy bills,” Jackson said.
Improving environmental conditions in underprivileged areas can have widespread positive effects on areas beyond the immediate community, said Jackson. As an example she described the affects of polluted air in urban settings on health-care costs.
“Think about the people who get sick at two or three times the average rate from air pollution because the air pollution in their neighborhoods on hot summer days is so severe,” said Jackson. “They’re often the same people that predominately, because of their income, get their health care from emergency room. So it drives the cost of heath care up systemwide.”
The new generation of environmentalists, said Jackson, will include people who often times don’t consider themselves environmentalists, drawing from their own personal experience. Jackson was in the upper ninth ward of New Orleans visiting her mother when Hurricane Katrina struck and said the experience changed her mother’s views on environmentalism.
“My mother never understood why I decided to become an environmentalist; she sent me to school to be a doctor,” said Jackson. “Today she can make as compelling an argument about stream buffers as I can. Today, my mother is an environmentalist, whether she knows it or not.”
Princeton President Shirley Tilghman introduced Jackson and commended the Princeton graduate for her work for environmental justice.
“Lisa Jackson was and is committed to reaching out to what she describes as communities of color, communities that might be poor, that otherwise are disadvantaged or that otherwise haven’t had a seat at the environmental table.”
Tilghman said she wasn’t surprised to see the large number of students in the audience.
“If there is a single issue that galvanizes students of this generation, it is issues surrounding the environment,” said Tilghman.
UMD Climate Action Plan Recommendations
The University of Maryland has been drafting a climate action plan for the last 18 months, ever since my student group on campus UMD for Clean Energy convinced UMD’s president Dan Mote to sign the Presidents Climate Commitment. The draft of this plan has been on the university’s sustainability website here. While its landmark that my school is serious about drafting a plan and working on implementing it, some students have concerns regarding the plan which we wanted to address. We got together one evening and made a list of recommendations about how we thought the plan could be made more effective, or areas that we were skeptical about. I’m going to post these recommendations below, although in order to understand where we’re coming from it would be useful to read the draft of the plan on the sustainability website, which I gave you in the above link. I think the main idea to take away from these recommendations and this entire plan even if you aren’t a policy junkie is that just passing an initiative or making a commitment isn’t enough. You have to do a lot of research, planning, and commit funding in order to follow through, and it doesn’t all happen overnight. However, if you do these things right, it can work.
Questions:
·Why are there additional strategies? Were these the ones that were politically unpalatable? They must become part of the CAP!
·What sort of contract can we do now that will reduce emissions from the Co-Gen plant? Do we have a plan for increasing efficiency and decreasing carbon intensity of the biofuel CHP plant?
Recommendations
General:
·Include stronger benchmarks for assessing progress toward targets
·Work with the Office of University Relations to establish a lobbying plan aimed at ensuring the passage of ambitious state energy/climate regulations.
·Explicitly define carbon neutrality in the CAP. Clarify what criteria qualify a carbon neutral development, a carbon neutral building, a carbon neutral event, etc.
·Ensure that we receive certifiable emissions reductions.
·Prioritize the procurement of local or internal offsets.
·Add a Human Relations strategy to the CAP. Implementation and enforcement of this plan will inevitably require the creation of new staff positions in multiple departments.
Administrative Policies
·Draft and implement an environmentally/socially responsible investment policy. This policy should guide University’s endowment priorities. The University must recognize that while environmental procurement policy is a significant step, moving beyond the products themselves to assess the environmental responsibility of the producer s is ultimately the most responsible, environmentally sound practice.
·Establish best practice policies for efficiency design that go beyond LEED standards. (ie. for warehouses, small extensions to buildings)
·Negotiate the University’s contract with Pepsi Co. to eliminate sales of bottled water to Good Tydings Catering services.
Power and Operations
·Make local renewable energy procurement a top priority. The benefits of renewable locally produced electricity have ancillary benefits in buffering the university from outside price volatility.
In order to achieve 15% reductions by 2012 a much greater investment in energy efficiency is required. Consideration must be given to the public popularity and cost effectiveness of how energy efficiency upgrades.
Prioritize retrofits for University Residence Halls. 50% of undergraduates live in on campus housing that is widely known to have outdated, inefficient, and uncomfortable heating and cooling conditions. Retrofits to older residences halls could significantly improve the quality of life for on-campus students, the environmental reputation of the University, and the public image of the University (to incoming students and their parents).
Transportation
·Account for food materials transport in transportation emissions.
·Re-explore the idea of a surcharge to offset air travel emissions. Commission a panel of faculty ,researchers, and administrators will to develop a means of offsetting emissions that is compatible with departmental budgets and grant funding sources
Solid Waste
·Composting should no longer be managed by Dining Services. Work with Waste Management to contract with local and reliable composting vendor.
·Make the expansion of composting to University Good Tydings Catering a top priority.
Education and Research
·Highly consider the creation of an internal committee of faculty to research and recommend embodied energy values for carbon neutral construction/development.
·Assist the Student Sustainability Council/SGA in the creation of a Student Sustainability Curriculum Advisory Committee that will lead student focus groups and commission student input
·Prioritize collaboration with undergraduate student research/consultant teams in programs such as QUEST and Gemstone
Financing the Plan
·Expand the financing plan by developing financing plans for each section of the action plan.
Immediately begin to assess the financing options for the technology and construction/conversion of the Biomass CHP plant. Given the proportion of emissions reduction expected to come from this technology, this must be a top priority.
Matt Dernoga
The Dernogalizer 