Author: Grist – the Latest from Grist

by Umbra Fisk

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by Umbra Fisk

Editor’s note: In his book Food Rules, Michael Pollan
declares, “Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it
yourself.” The idea is that by cooking at home, you’ll avoid all the
unpronounceable chemicals found in store-bought junk. And even though
you might gorge on it, you can only eat as much as you made—and it
takes hands-on effort, not just a trip to the supermarket, to procure
more. In that spirit, we offer DIY Junk Food, the recipe column for
those who want to get their hands dirty in the kitchen before enjoying
some sublime junk.

Dearests, did I whet your junk food junkie appetites with today’s DIY organic Twinkies video? Thought I’d send in a little culinary backup via the written recipe in case you didn’t catch all my measuring, molding, and mixing in the vid. These pair pretty keenly with a nice, tall glass of organic moo juice. Enjoy!

Hostessly,
Umbra

Homemade Organic Twinkies
Adapted from Chow’s recipe

3 large organic eggs, separated
1/3 cup organic granulated sugar
1/3 cup organic all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon aluminum-free baking powder
1/2 teaspoon organic vanilla extract
Vanilla Cream (see recipe below)

Arrange a rack in the middle of the oven, and heat oven to 325 degrees. Butter and flour the
wells of the baking pan (or your own little homemade Twinkie pans, per today’s video); set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer with whisk attachment, beat egg yolks on
medium speed, adding sugar a little at a time, until mixture is thick and light
in color, about 5 minutes. In a separate large bowl, whisk egg whites until
medium peaks form. Fold whites into yolk mixture until well incorporated. Sift
flour and baking powder into batter, and fold just until incorporated. Mix in
vanilla extract.

Divide batter evenly among the baking pan wells (or your own little DIY pans) and bake until cakes spring
back when touched, a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, and
cakes are golden brown, about 20–22 minutes.

Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes; then loosen from the sides by
running a knife along the edge of the pan. Invert onto a rack, remove cakes,
and cool completely. While cakes are cooling make Vanilla Cream.

Once cakes are cool, flip each over, and with a (reusable!) straw or the end of a spoon
make three incisions running the length of the cake. Scoop Vanilla Cream into a
pastry bag fitted with a medium-size plain tip (or snip the corner off of a
small plastic bag—you can wash and reuse later).

Place the tip into each incision, and press cream into the incisions until
full. When cakes are completely full, turn them back over and serve.

Makes 8 cakes, you lucky duck. Eat up!

Vanilla Cream

4 ounces organic mascarpone or cream cheese, at room
temperature
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and scraped, seeds reserved (or 1 teaspoon
organic vanilla extract)
3 large organic egg whites
2/3 cup organic granulated sugar

Combine cheese, vanilla bean, and seeds (or vanilla extract) in a
bowl and mix until cheese is soft and ingredients are evenly combined; reserve.

Simmer 1 inch of water in a medium pot. Combine egg whites and sugar in a
medium mixing bowl. Make a double boiler by placing the bowl with the egg
mixture over the pot of simmering water. (Do not let the bottom of the bowl
touch the water.) Whisk egg mixture continuously until it reaches 110 degrees, about
2 minutes. Remove from heat.

Place mixture in a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment and whisk on
medium speed until it has doubled in volume, about 5–7 minutes. (The egg
mixture should be glossy and hold a soft peak.) Add cheese mixture and beat
just until smooth. Cover mixture with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use.

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by Tom Philpott

President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton celebrate healthcare reform. Will food reformers ever get to celebrate a wide-ranging policy victory? Photo: White HouseWhat follows is the first of a two-post series.

“This is what change looks like,” declared a triumphant President Obama after the House had narrowly passed an historic healthcare-reform bill.

What would change look like for food and ag policy? Over the remainder of Obama’s term loom two major legislative fights that pertain to food. The first one is school-lunch reauthorization, which is now being considered in the Senate ag committee (which I discussed recently here.) The other is the farm bill, due to expire and be reauthorized in 2012.

Ahead of those fights, what lessons can the sustainable food movement learn from healthcare reform?

Never pretty: a bill becomes a law
For lessons on food policy, let’s take a brief look at what happened with healthcare.

On its winding path to law, healthcare reform nearly plunged into the abyss several times. In addition to right-wing ideology that equates publicly funded healthcare with jackboot Stalinism, the reform effort faced massive lobbying from the health industry. In 2009 alone, the industry spent a jaw-dropping $540 million on lobbying, OpenSecrets.org reports. That’s more than any other sector tracked by OpenSecrets, except a catch-all one called “miscellaneous business.”

As for campaign contributions, the health industry gave candidates a healthy $167 million in the 2008 election cycle—more than any other business interest group besides all-mighty finance.

Such outlays evidently buy considerable influence in our nation’s capital. It’s little wonder that the final legislation preserved the power of the insurance industry in our healthcare system. Indeed, in some ways, the reform package expanded that power—uninsured people will be compelled to buy insurance from a private company, with no “public option” available. And the industry will take in public subsidies to help buy care for low-income people. In other ways, of course, the industry saw its power weaken—no longer can insurers drop policyholders when they get sick, or deny new customers for pre-existing conditions.

On balance, the industry decided it could maintain its monumental profitability under the proposed regime: in its reckoning, the mandate, combined with subsidies and the death of the public option, outweighed the new restrictions on denying care. The political blogger Matt Yglesias reckons that industry groups got “85 percent of what they wanted” in the final bill.

And yet, despite that display of might, as a result of the legislation, 32 million uninsured Americans will eventually have access to affordable healthcare, if things work out as intended.

So healthcare reformers had a goal: affordable healthcare for all. And an obstacle: a large, politically connected industry that had minted money for years for gouging consumers on coverage and denying care to sick people. Somehow, the reform movement managed to largely achieve its goal (or so I am assured by observers who followed the story closely), without directly contradicting the interests of the industry it was pitted against.

For me, two questions emerge. First, is that what change looks like from here on out? In other words, do people who want fundamental policy reform have to figure out strategies that leave incumbent industries—even unsavory ones—in place? And if so, what would such a reform look like in the case of, say, the next farm bill?

Another powerful, well-connected industry
Like health insurers, the $1 trillion U.S. food industry is highly consolidated: a relatively small number of massive players dominate. A single agrichemical firm, Monsanto, essentially owns the market for genetically modified corn, soy, and cotton seeds—and is a major player in herbicides. A handful of transnationals—namely, Tyson, JBS, Smithfield, and Cargill—produce the great bulk of our meat. Two globe-spanning companies—Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland—trade most of the corn and soy grown by U.S. farmers. Four companies control nearly half of the U.S. grocery market—and the biggest of them is Wal-Mart, with its 20 percent market share. And so on.

Like the health industry, the food industry isn’t above investing some coin in Washington influence. Agribusiness spent a cool $132 million on lobbying in 2009, OpenSecrets reports—modest by health-industry standards, but not chump change, either. Agribusiness interests donated $65 million to candidates in the 2008 cycle—again, much less health, but not trivial either.

All of which is to say: a hugely powerful installed base of companies likes the food system just the way it is, and will fight in Congress to preserve its prerogatives. So my question is, what kind of real reform agenda could be pushed that would bypass the opposition of this group?

While I ponder that question for the second post on this topic, please add your comments below.

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Blowin’ in the wind: The true meaning of ‘ag unity’

by Josh Nelson

Several folks have already taken note of this but I wanted to add a few thoughts.
Mark Perry at the American Enterprise Institute seems to be inadvertently making the case for climate change legislation.  First, he lists a series of things environmentalists predicted would happen assuming business-as-usual levels of pollution.  Then, using this chart, he shows that four major sources of air pollution have decreased significantly since 1980.

Perry gives all of the credit for these environmental victories to improvements in energy efficiency.  But as Matthew Yglesias points out, he got it all wrong:

In the real world, what happened is that we passed environmental laws, and conservatives argued that they would destroy the economy. And yet here’s the economy, undestroyed. And here’s the environment, cleaned up.

Bradford Plumer explains how this played out:

Okay, but why do we suppose pollution just magically dropped like that? Perry claims it’s because the United States got richer. Here’s another possibility: In 1970, Congress amended the Clean Air Act to tackle, among other pollutants, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and lead (the new rules were slowly phased in over the next decade). Most notably, the law acted to phase out lead from gasoline by the mid-1980s. And lo and behold, it worked—you can see a sharp drop in lead emissions over that period (with a few further steps needed after that). It was a massive public-health success story.

Indeed.  And the EPA also took a variety of other measures to minimize emissions of the pollutants in question during the time period shown in Perry’s chart.
In addition to Perry’s remarkable cognitive dissonance, what stuck out to me about his argument was that one key air pollutant he failed to include was carbon dioxide.  Here is what atmospheric CO2 looked like over the same period of time:

And as Brian Merchant writes, “America grew more prosperous while curbing pollution … only with powerful regulations firmly in place—and there’s every reason to think the same trend would occur with the adoption of controls on greenhouse gas emissions.”  Here are concentrations of the four pollutants Perry looked at, plus carbon dioxide, over the same 1980-2008 period.

The key difference, of course, is that while the four air pollutants on the left have been subject to federal legislation and regulations limiting their emissions for several decades, the air pollutant on the right has not been subject to the same treatment.  Yet, at least.

Originally published at EnviroKnow.

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by Jesse Jenkins

South Africa’s finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, has an op ed in the Washington Post that illustrates the multi-faceted challenges facing developing nations as they struggle to provide the affordable access to modern energy needed to pull citizens out of poverty.  The piece highlights the current tension between such objectives and simultaneous concerns about the environmental and climate impacts of energy development.

With South Africa’s economy growing rapidly—it’s expanded by two-thirds since 1994, when Nelson Mandela first took office—the nation’s demand for energy has grown apace. As Gordhan notes, “Millions of previously marginalized South Africans are now on the grid.” And that’s a very good thing.

Consider that not having access to affordable, modern energy sources, particularly electricity, means no access to potable, running water; it means having to burn dung and wood and other primitive biofuels to provide cooking and indoor heating; and it means sputtering kerosene lamps as the only source of light after the sun goes down.

The human toll of such energy poverty is incredible. According to the World Health Organization, solid fuel use causes 1.6 million excess deaths per year globally, especially among women and children, while waterborne disease is one of the leading global killers, ending the lives of over 3 million annually—again, many of them young children—who lack access to clean and safe water supplies.

Image source: WHO

Don’t forget, as well, that the constant time requirements of collecting water and fuel keeps most women and children in energy poor nations locked out of the empowerment and opportunity that comes from a basic education and participation in the trade economy.

It is not an exaggeration to say that energy poverty fuels a cycle of poverty and death that can only be broken through access to affordable sources of modern energy—particularly electricity.

But as the economy has grown and access to modern energy has begun to end the cycle of energy poverty for millions of South Africans, there, “as in other major emerging economies, [energy] supply has not kept pace,” Gordhan writes.  “To sustain the growth rates we need to create jobs, we have no choice but to build new generating capacity—relying on what, for now, remains our most abundant and affordable energy source: coal.”

And therein lies the dilemma.

Given the challenges of financing major capital projects like power plants in the midst of the Great Recession, South Africa and the national utility, Eskom, have turned to the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the European Investment Bank for assistance in financing new electric power stations.  But their $3.75 billion loan request to the World Bank ($3 billion for a major new coal-fired power plant and $750 million for new wind and solar facilities) now “faces stiff opposition,” according to Gordhan.  The reason?  Concerns about the effect of new coal-fired power plants on the destabilizing climate.

Gordhan explains:

South Africa takes climate change and the need to reduce fossil fuel emissions extremely seriously … If there were any other way to meet our power needs as quickly or as affordably as our present circumstances demand, or on the required scale, we would obviously prefer technologies—wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear—that leave little or no carbon footprint. But we do not have that luxury if we are to meet our obligations both to our own people and to our broader region whose economic prospects are closely tied to our own. South Africa generates more than 60 percent of all electricity produced in sub-Saharan Africa. Tight supplies are not just a problem for us.

The simple fact is, without access to clean and cheap energy sources, developing nations like South Africa will continue to turn to coal.  They must, as the challenges of ending energy poverty and pulling millions of their citizens out of poverty demands it.

As I’ve written before, until clean and cheap energy sources are available for deployment on a massive scale, developing nations like South African will remain stuck in the Development Trap: forced to either sacrifice climate and ecological security in the name of development and poverty alleviation or to condemn countless millions of citizens to energy poverty in the name of climate protection.

Breaking out of this untenable position is the urgent challenge of the century.  The only way out of the Development Trap, and the only route to sustainable development and an end to pervasive energy poverty is to make clean energy cheap. On that front, the world can’t afford to delay.

Anything else is ultimately counter-productive, ineffective, or even cruelly unjust, a point that Minister Gordhan appears keenly aware of:

A question that has to be faced is whether stunting growth prospects in our region will in any way serve the goal we all share of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions over the long term. Whatever paths we take toward that goal, whether shifting to renewables and nuclear, or finding ways to keep harmful gases out of the atmosphere once created, the journey will inevitably be costly, requiring massive investments in technology, research, and re-engineering the ways in which we live and do business. It will also require a true spirit of consensus and collaboration.

Neither of these requirements will be well served by hampering the transitional measures that developing countries like ours need to take to get themselves on sustainable growth tracks and generate the resources they need to play their part in preserving our planet.

We must make clean energy cheap.  There is no time to waste.

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by Grist

Remember last year when Grist said, Screw Earth Day? (What with every day being Earth Day, yadda yadda yadda.) Well, our fine and funny MILF video celebrating, er, loving your mother the right and wrong way, has been nominated for a Telly Award, which honors the “very best in video, film, and commercials.”

Thanks, Telly, we like to think we’re the very best too. Why? Because we have the very best readers who will vote for us, of course. (Nudge, nudge.)

You know the drill, baby, drill. Go here: http://www.youtube.com/tellyawards and search for “Grist.” Click on that hot pair of earthy legs, and give us a big ol’ thumbs up. Thank you and thanks to your mom for all the votes!

For a refresher, relive the Earth Day screwing below:

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by Tyler Falk

Thinking I’d catch some of the conservative side-show after health care passed, I moseyed over to Glenn Beck’s website to find out when the healthpocalypse will destroy “our” America. But I found something even more shocking.

More evidence for Beck’s closet treehugging is coming to the surface. Colbert slammed Beck a few weeks ago for his crisis garden advertisement, and now subliminal messages for local food and energy independence, under the guise of post-apocalyptic survival necessities, are popping up all over his site.  

Call it what you want, Glenn. But we can see who’s side you’re really on. Check out these ads on solar energy generators and crisis gardens:       

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by Erik Hoffner

Severine von Tscharner Fleming, farmer and director of the film The Greenhorns.

Severine von Tscharner Fleming is the director of the forthcoming film The Greenhorns and founder of the crucial new young farmer organization of
the same name. Here’s her no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners perspective on the
young farmers movement. Make no mistake, this woman is dedicated and smart—and
she’s recruiting.

Q. What is
Greenhorns all about?

A. It’s about the community of young farmers in this
country. We are a nonprofit organization that works to promote, recruit, and
support young farmers. Mostly what we do is produce media—print resources, new
media, and programming for young farmers. Recently, there has also been an
emphasis on events.

Q. Did it
come about before or after the film?

A. The whole thing started with the film, with the
idea that we’d better document this glorious and burgeoning movement, and share
the excitement with more young people who might be inclined to enter
agriculture professionally. But soon we realized that making a movie takes a
long time, and that we’d better start communicating in other ways as well. So
we started a wiki for relevant resources, a blog for news
and video ephemera, then we got a weekly radio show and podcast on
Heritage Radio Network, we began to tweet, etc.

Q. What are
you growing, and where? What got you going in ag?

A. Last season, my friends Michelle, Anya, and I, with
help from my little brother Charlie, ran our own farm, smithereen farm, in the
Hudson Valley of New York. We planted an
orchard, raised pigs, rabbits, laying hens, a few fowl, and about three-quarters of an acre
of vegetables, flowers, and herbs. 
We sold to three fancy restaurants, an organic grocery store, and a farmers
market. We also dried 2,000 marjoram plants and sold them to Formaggio Kitchen,
a fancy food store in Cambridge, Mass.

Farming is pretty much the love of my life. Back in
college I was part of a posse starting the Pomona College Organic Farm, a very
guerilla project, a permaculture fruit orchard with permanent raised beds. We
had such a wonderful time building that farm, hustling hoses, hauling mulch,
hosting work/harvest parties—but we had quite a trouble convincing the
college of its merit. Goes to show the changing climate for agriculture
within the groves of academe, because the farm is now on the college’s admission
tour!

This coming season I’ll be working on my friend
Dina Brewster’s farm The Hickories in Connecticut. It’s a 200-family member organic CSA with fruit, vegetables,
and meat. Dina is a bad-ass young farmer, ex-poetry teacher, and sage
greenhorn.

Q. I did
several farm apprenticeships in the 1990s, but was unable to figure out how to
get some land of my own that I could afford. Is access to land still an issue?

A. Access to land is a major issue!  In our guidebook, we
have a list of 20 different pathways to tenure and some institutions that deal
with the legal details. There is also a report put out by Farmlasts with relevant insight.

Q. Advice?

A. First step: manufacture some magic! You’ll soon
figure out the particular troubles accessing land in the community you want to
farm—but basically it’s a lot easier to find land in smaller towns away from
major cities. It’s of course a lot easier if you have cousins or uncles who own
some land, and it’s also a lot easier if you are friendly, responsible,
hardworking, and lucky!

Here in the Hudson Valley of New York where I live,
many young farmers face “land drama.” As a result, Greenhorns is
partnering with our local County Extension to host a meeting and produce a
series of papers about expectations and “best practices” in leasing
between non-farming landowners and beginning farmers. In this valley and in
many other metro-foodsheds, we’ve got to figure out how to navigate the relationship
between real-estate value and farm business viability.

Q. Are the
new young farmers you know thinking about the macro or micro? Do they want to
feed the country, feed themselves, or is it both?

A. Think globally, farm locally. Dominated as our food
system has become by the mega-consolidation of poultry, beef, dairy, and hogs, the
government has got to crack the monopoly. Our role is to replace that monopoly
with a mosaic of small and medium-sized farms and food businesses. That means
more new processing plants, cheese makers, butchers, bakers, candlestick
makers, more locally owned grocery stores, more entrepreneurship at all levels,
and more protagonism within those businesses.

It took Monsanto 20 years to consolidate their hold
on our seed supply, and it’ll probably take us 20 years to shake that monkey,
but that is only half a professional lifetime for my generation.

Q. Any
highlights from the recent Drake Forum on Beginning Farmers in D.C. to
share?

A. Thanks to Matt Russell and Drake University Law
Center for providing such a resonant national venue for a conversation about
beginning farmer issues. I presented about the National Young Farmers’ Coalition and
Greenhorns, and on Saturday night got to screen a sneak peek of our film.

As proud as I was to raise my voice on the same
stage as Agriculture Secretary [Tom] Vilsack and Sen. [Tom] Harkin, I was prouder still
of the strong community of young farmers, activists, and organizers that
swirled the lobbies and corridors. The beginning farmer posse, the folks of my
generation who have staked their lives on rebuilding our food system, seeing all
of their twinkling eyes all together was my highlight.

Secretary Vilsack said, “It’s not just that
what we’ve been doing the last few years to support farmers and rural
communities hasn’t been working. It’s that what we’ve been doing for the last
few decades hasn’t been working.”
He also said that 45 percent of the armed services are folks coming from rural
America. Translated: Our agricultural system has become broken to the point
where the opportunity to serve in uniform is more promising than the opportunity
to serve your country food. My
question for Vilsack: If people born in rural areas can’t afford an education without
joining the Army, how about the USDA providing educational debt forgiveness for
farmers?

Q. You’re a
charter member of the newly forming Young Farmers’ Coalition. What excites you
about it?

A. Well, our first order of business was getting the
legal framework set up. Our website is up and now we are recruiting young
farmer leadership from all the states in the union to represent. I’m especially
excited at the idea of getting a sponsor so we can hold a national congress
with loud music.

Q. When I
took a beginning farm business course in the late 90s, it was the first time I’d
ever heard of such a thing. Now farm training programs are all over the place, and
the USDA is stepping in with $17 million in grants to 29 such programs as part
of its Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP). So it
seems like a great time to get into in ag! Have you plugged into these sorts of
opportunities or programs?

A. Yes indeed. And Greenhorns is actually getting
money from the BFRDP! Amazing that punky grassroots ninjas like us would
qualify. But we do, because we provide services, communication, marketing, and
training resources to beginning farmers and have become a snappy little node in
the beginning farmer world. Here in the Northeast, our partnership with Cornell
Small Farm Extension, Farmlink, Farmnet, Farm Viability, Heifer International,
NOFA NY, Future Farmers of America, and a few others is designed to enhance
regional training opportunities.

Q. What plans
do you have for enhancing educational opportunities to help new farmers get
going?

A. Our main task is to help with networking and
producing a series of posters for classrooms about farming, generating
web content for even younger aspiring farmers, bringing young farmers into
classrooms, screening the film, brainstorming with partners about how to
organize/map beginning farmer service providers using a GIS framework, partner
with relevant educational groups like Farm-Based Education Association and
Grace Foundation to produce materials for K-12 teachers, and just generally
make a cultural ruckus about young farmer rockstars around the country.

Q. The map at the Greenhorns site is a nice way to see where new farms/farmers are popping
up.

A. Our plan for the map is quite ambitious, but we’re
still fundraising for it so I don’t want to spill the beans yet. Any ninja web
designers with ideas, please be in touch, [email protected].

Are you a young farmer?  Join the map! 

Q. What’s
the connection between farming and empowerment?

A. Jefferson knew. Washington knew. The new agrarian
movement knows.

Farmers make sugar from sunshine. Farmers work at the interface of the wildness in
our landscape. Farmers are the foundation of our economy. Farmers are fiercely independent, self-reliant, and
accountable to their relationship with place. Farmers are good at identifying bullshit.

Q.Young
farmers face big challenges as they plug into the food system, but what kinds
of advantages do they have?

A. We have the advantage of youth. Brave muscles, a
fierce passion, and probably pretty savvy marketing insights. We have the
advantage of eager eaters, dilapidated (but standing!) barns, plus sophisticated
e-networks to access seeds, nursery stock, rare livestock breeds, training
opportunities, season extension technologies, etc. We also have the advantage
of dozens of institutions founded by our elders like organic certification
bodies, regional sustainable-ag groups and networks, and land trusts. We have a
generation of wise, thoughtful, and experienced mentors willing to teach us.

We
have a country that needs us to step to the plate, swing that pick, and plant
the future—now!

The
Greenhorns site is where the young farming movement can be found, and its podcast is a great way to hear how new young farmers are making their way in the
world. It’s just one of many solid farm and slow-food podcasts available from
the Heritage Radio Network.

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by Jonathan Hiskes

Without getting all pundit-y, can I suggest that it wouldn’t hurt progressives to celebrate more? Others have done a better job than I can explaining what a big deal health-care reform is. I’ll just add: if you need a break from fretting about climate change, or ocean acidification, or agribusiness and school lunches, or the fate of clean-energy legislation in Congress … take a day off from all that and savor today’s victory.

President Obama today at the signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act:

Our presence here today is remarkable and improbable. With all the punditry, all of the lobbying, all the game playing that passes for governing in Washington, it’s been easy at times to doubt our ability to do such a big thing, such a complicated thing, to wonder if there are limits to what we as a people can still achieve. It’s easy to succumb to the sense of cynicism about what’s possible in this country. But today we are affirming that essential truth, a truth every generation is called to rediscover for itself: that we are not a nation that scales back its aspirations, we are not a nation that falls prey to doubt or mistrust.

Enjoy today. Then we can get back to work.

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Scientists: BPA has widely contaminated the oceans

by Ashley Braun

Are your arms tired of holding up frequent-flyer guilt? Don’t like the hassle of gassing up a personal blimp? Doubtful about the pie-in-the-sky eco-claims of recreational space tourism?

Same here. That’s why we’re on cloud nine over the launch of JetLev, which allows you to fly by the seat of your wetsuit with the ease of a rocket and the carbon emissions of a small motor boat. It’s personal transportation for the wet jetsetters.

Via James Fallows of The Atlantic.

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by Agence France-Presse

Photo: Cyril PlapiedPARIS – France is to abandon its planned carbon fuel tax, which aimed to curb global warming, members of parliament quoted the prime minister as saying on Tuesday.

A tax would have to be introduced at a European level in order “not to harm the competitiveness of French companies,” Francois Fillon was quoted as saying by several MPs of the governing UMP party who attended a meeting with him.

The carbon tax would have made France the first big economy to tax harmful carbon emissions, aiming to encourage French consumers to stop wasting energy.

The government was forced to amend it after its proposals were rejected by the high court in December, days before it was to kick in—an embarrassing setback for President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The court ruled then that too many exemptions created inequalities and unfairly placed the burden of cuts on a minority of consumers.

Its ruling prompted the government to respond with fresh safeguards for businesses, but Fillon on Tuesday stressed the risk of a competitive disadvantage to them if the tax were introduced only in France.

Speaking after the UMP was badly beaten in regional elections seen as a punishment vote for Sarkozy, Fillon said the government’s reform priorities were “growth, jobs, competitiveness, and fighting deficits,” the MPs told AFP.

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by David Roberts

Sens. Kerry, Lieberman, and GrahamPhoto: Wonk RoomIn the wake of health care reform passage, the question du jour seems to be: what next? The Senate doesn’t have a ton of time before mid-term elections bring Silly Season (not that any season is free of silliness in the Senate). A number of issues are tapping on the glass. Next up is financial reform; after that, the top contenders seem to be immigration and climate, though the nebulous “focusing on the economy” is always hovering. (Because immigration and energy, like health care, have no economic impact.)

I don’t know what Reid will choose. The CBO probably won’t be finished scoring Kerry-Graham-Lieberman’s bill for five or six weeks, which, depending on when they finally unveil it, could be late May or June. Hell, maybe financial regulation and immigration can both be done by then! Cause of how fast the Senate is.

Anyway, I think this what’s-next talk is obscuring a more interesting and consequential dynamic. I’m talking about the tension between John Kerry and Jeff Bingaman over whether to pass a comprehensive bill or an “energy-only” bill. They’re supposedly going to meet with Reid to fight it out today.

When I talked to Bingaman in September, he hedged carefully on the question of whether the energy bill reported out of his Energy Committee should be passed separately from, possibly instead of, a carbon pricing bill:

Well I favor passing energy legislation, and of course we reported a significant energy bill out of our committee earlier this year. I hope we can bring that up and proceed with it. I also support dealing with greenhouse gas emissions more directly through a cap and trade system. That legislation has not yet come out of committee. It will be up to the majority leader whether we combine those two, or do them separately, and I’m not really in a position to make that decision. But, I would like to see us do both, and do both this year if possible. If we’re not able to do both, I’d like to see us do all that we can do this year.

Jeff Bingaman

Now, according to Lisa Lerer at Politico, Bingaman isn’t just leaving it to Reid—he’s lobbying aggressively for his own bill:

Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman and Democratic Policy Committee chair Byron Dorgan have been fiercely lobbying Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to take up the energy-only bill approved by the energy committee last June. The two met with Reid last week to argue for their legislation, which includes no cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

Their pitch to Reid is pretty obvious: the energy-only bill, the committee’s American Clean Energy Leadership Act (ACELA), already has demonstrated bipartisan appeal. Don’t attach it to that nasty, contentious cap-and-whatever! Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.

But the KGL bill isn’t perfect, and ACELA isn’t that good. Passing only ACELA would be a huge disappointment, for reasons I’ve been over before. Hell, passing KGL’s carbon pricing piece with ACELA would be a disappointment. Relative to the complementary energy and efficiency policies in the House’s bill, the American Clean Energy & Security Act, ACELA is just too weak. As I argued the other day, in the next 5-10 years it’s more important to get strong clean energy and efficiency provisions than to get any particular cap or carbon price.

The very best outcome here would be for Reid to insist on a comprehensive bill and for Bingaman to a) sign on to the effort, and b) commit to substantially strengthening ACELA. But that’s not necessarily likely. Bingaman doesn’t trust that KGL can get through this year, and he doesn’t want to see the bill he invested so much time and political capital in wither on the vine.

We’ll see whether Kerry can do for Reid and Bingaman what Pelosi did for Obama and Reid on health care reform—stiffen their resolve and keep their sights set high.

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by David Roberts

Now that health care reform is out of the way (praise f’ing Zeus!), what’s next for the Senate? Several issues are jockeying for attention: jobs, financial reform, immigration, and others. More than one senator has said that there’s just no time to get to climate and energy this year, especially after the protracted and divisive health care fight.

Now, finally, it looks like there’s some pushback. Last Friday, Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, co-signed by a broad and diverse selection of Senate Democrats, expressing strong support for passing comprehensive climate and energy legislation this year.

“Our lack of a comprehensive clean energy policy hurts job creation and increases regulatory uncertainty throughout our economy,” Udall writes. “Businesses are waiting on Congress before investing billions in energy, transportation, manufacturing, building and other sectors. … We need to take action in order to lead the emerging sectors that will drive our economic recovery.”

Interestingly, the co-signers include several crucial moderates and fence-sitters, including Casey, Begich, Tester, Stabenow, and Cantwell. This is a positive sign that, divisions aside, real appetite remains in the Democratic caucus for tackling this issue.

Here’s who signed:

Tom Udall (N.M.)
Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.)
Michael Bennet (Colo.)
Kay Hagan (N.C.)
Ron Wyden (Ore.)
Mark Begich (Alaska)
Sherrod Brown (Ohio)
Tom Harkin (Iowa)
Tom Carper (Del.)
Mark Udall (Colo.)
Al Franken (Minn.)
Debbie Stabenow (Mich.)
Jeff Merkley (Ore.)
Patty Murray (Wash.)
Ted Kaufman (Del.)
Ronald Burris (Ill.)
Bob Casey Jr. (Pa.)
Mark Warner (Va.)
Maria Cantwell (Wash.)
Arlen Specter (Pa.)
Jon Tester (Mont.)
Amy Klobuchar (Minn.)

Here’s the letter [PDF].

Aaaand now of course I see that Darren Samuelsohn at E&E already scooped me on this. Damn him. At least he’s behind a pay wall!

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by Tom Laskawy

No refined sugar is good for you—but HFCS seems to be significantly worse. Photo: Nafmo on FlickrThe long-running, contentious debate over the dangers of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) may be approaching a conclusive end—one not likely to please those sensitive souls over at the Corn Refiners Association.

While there has been extensive evidence that fructose is harmful to human health and associated with metabolic diseases like diabetes and liver problems, the fact is that plain old table sugar is itself 50 percent fructose. HFCS does have a higher concentration of fructose at 55 percent but it’s close enough to table sugar that most experts continue to dismiss claims that HFCS is on its own more dangerous. And certainly the claim that the introduction of HFCS in the ‘80s directly led to the current obesity epidemic continues to be a highly controversial view.

A massive missing piece in this debate has been an absence of research directly comparing the effects of HFCS and table sugar (as opposed to pure fructose and glucose sugars, which is typically how the research has been conducted).
Thanks to a group of researchers at Princeton, however, that missing piece may just have been found (via Science Daily):

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.

“Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests,” said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. “When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese—every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.” [Emphasis added.]

It may not seem like it at first blush, but this is blockbuster stuff. It appears to be a carefully conducted study—note Dr. Hoebel’s point that they fed the rats HFCS at “levels well below those in soda pop”—and one that should give anyone who has been dismissing previous evidence regarding HFCS serious pause (and not the kind that refreshes).

For all the talk about similarities between HFCS and sugar, there are differences. The researchers note that the fructose in HFCS, though present at only slightly higher levels than in table sugar, is chemically unbound and thus more freely available to the body. Perhaps this aspect of the sweetener is what is causing the now documented metabolic reactions. This revelation is a shoe that I have been predicting might drop, if only someone would get around to it.

Still, this study doesn’t change the fact that we still eat way too much sugar in all forms. But we now have at least some scientific evidence to suggest that without having pumped ourselves full of HFCS over the last 30 years, the American waistline (and its liver and blood chemistry) would look very very different. It also suggests that the food industry’s insistence in putting HFCS and other corn-based sweeteners in virtually every food product on supermarket shelves was deeply misguided.

As an added bonus, I’ll direct your attention to this recent Nightline segment on the dangers of fructose. It features UCSF Pediatric Endocrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig, whose [in]famous hour and a half lecture on fructose and its role in obesity has rather surprisingly and thanks to Youtube become a bit of an Internet sensation. And just to be clear, Lustig is no fan of fructose. In fact, he expresses his support to the somewhat skeptical Nightline correspondent for an age limit on soda purchases. Take a look.

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by Grist

Robert Egger has a lot going on in his head. Just ask him. 

As a nonprofit entrepreneur, a serial searcher for ordinary people doing extraordinary things, a deeply deep thoughts kind of guy, Egger gives us something to ponder every week.

We ask. He yaks. We listen. And now you can, too. Listen to Egger’s single-breath exposition on the Prodigal Generation. Trust us, it’s the most entertaining few minutes you’ll spend today.

Egger is founder and President of the D.C. Central Kitchen,
the nation’s first “community kitchen,” where
unemployed men and women learn marketable culinary skills while donated
food is converted into balanced meals. Since opening in
1989, the DCCK has distributed over 20 million meals and helped 700 men
and women gain full-time employment.

Robert currently leads the V3
Campaign, which educates politicians to the economic
contributions of America’s nonprofit sector.
Robert speaks nationally and internationally on hunger and
homelessness, social enterprise, and nonprofit unity. For a complete
list if speaking engagements, or to access Robert’s op-ed, podcasts,
videos, or blogs, please go to www.robertegger.org.

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by Tom Philpott

In “Chewing the
Scenery,” we round up interesting food-related video from around the
Web.

———-

Here’s a smorgasbord of videos to get your week started right.

• After a brutal winter, spring has finally arrived, at least officially (it remains stubbornly cold and wet up here in the N.C. mountains). Let’s start with an earnest paean to the farmers market, from Cooking Up a Story, reporting from Portland.

• Now, let’s get a little wonky. Also from Cooking Up a Story, organic seed breeder Frank Morton gives a short, lucid explanation of what hybrid seeds have meant historically. The agrichemical industry got interested in taking over the seed business long GMOs came along; what attracted Monsanto, et al, was the proliferation of hybrid seed techniques after World War II. Saved hybrid seeds don’t come up “true”—i.e., a seeds from a hybrid butternut squash will not likely grow more butternut squshes. That characteristic makes farmers reliant on suppliers year after year. The rise of hybrids wiped out regional seed-breeding programs, which used tp generate locally adapted strains. Morton explains it all well.

•Let’s move from wonky back to earnest, then onto the deliciously absurd.

I’ve long respected and admired of former Gourmet editor and New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl (evidence here.)

She was masterful at editing Gourmet, because she knew how to maintain the gauzy fantasy world of “good living” proffered by glossy food mags, while adding to it an impressive focus on the political, ecological, and social dilemmas around food. She pursued both zealously; she could run a spread on something like “Provencal spring brunch,” featuring impossibly beautiful models noshing roasted asparagus and aioli in rustic splendor; and a few pages later, drop in a blunt article on slavery in Florida tomato country. For her, there was no contradiction here; she took both aspects of the magazine quite seriously.

In her Twitter feed, Ruth gives her “good living” side free reign. It’s as if her id had commandeered a laptop and a Twitter account. A few days ago, she saw fit to inform the world that ….

Slicing rhubarb, ruby fruit falling from the knife, fresh green scent rushing upward. Outside a purple finch flies past the window.

Here’s another choice sample:

Good night. Hot kimchi, slicked with chiles. Smoky, sweet grilled beef in crisp lettuce. Sake. Slow stroll home down electric streets.

I’m choosing these at random; they go on and on. Anyway, I’m not the only one who marvels at these haiku-like evocations of epicurean bliss. Anthony Bourdain, the food world’s punkish jester, has also taken note, as the video below shows.

And here’s Ruth herself, proving that she’s a good sport, taking note of Bourdain’s having taken note:

Meanwhile, an anonymous genius has gone to the trouble of creating a Twitter feed that mashes up Bourdain’s irreverence with Reichl hyper-reverence. Known as @ruthbourdain, this feed deserves a wide following. Its most magnificent tweets are not printable in a family online environmental rag. Long live @ruthreichl and @ruthbourdain!

 

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by Grist

Photo: Roy LoweWe love birds. They’re beautiful. They do really cool things
like building elaborate nests—without thumbs! And they can fly. What’s cooler
than flying? Okay, maybe X-ray vision, but
still. We love birds. Which is why we were stricken—though not surprised—by
the recent State
of the Birds [PDF] report from
Cornell University’s famed Ornithology Lab.

If we may summarize, the state of our feathered friends is:
sorry. Climate change-related pollution, rising sea temperatures and sea
levels and more threaten many of America’s 800 avian species. The prospects
are especially dreary for Hawaiian island species and for sea birds like the
albatross. The future doesn’t look too rosy for coastal shorebirds, forest
birds, or arctic and alpine dwellers either. Oy.

Anyway,
we’ve assembled photos of some of the most threatened species as a way to
remind us of what we’ll be missing if we succeed in driving them all to
extinction. 

Canvasback Duck

Photo courtesy of Jack Jeffrey

This handsome migrator has a taste for wild celery and a distinctive sloping profile the envy of other, less slopeful ducks.  He summers and sluts around as far north as Alaska, where he really can see Russia on a clear day.  In the winter, he rehabs from his bacchanalian interlude in the Betty Ford of bird habitats: U.S. coastal blue states and in the Mexican sun. Hang in there, Canvasback, we love your style.

 

King Rail

Photo courtesy of USFWS

This consummate romantic lives up to his French name (Rale
elegant) by wooing his intended with food, the Creole food of his Gulf Coast
habitat, mais oui. One
legendary overachiever caught seven crayfish in two hours and fed five of them
to his mate. He totally got
laid.

Sadly, disappearing wetlands are disappearing the King
Rail, though he is holding on in the swamps of Louisiana and Florida. The adult King Rail molts completely after nesting and is
flightless for nearly a month. Here’s hoping we can keep him flying the rest of the time.

 

Akohekohe

Photo courtesy of Jack Jeffrey

Location. Location. Location. You’ll get rainforest canopy permanently shrouded in clouds and mist, situated precisely between 5,000 and 7,900 feet, and bathed in up to 275 inches of rain per year. That’s the good news if you’re a flashy nectar forager on the northeastern slope of Maui’s Haleakala Volacano. The bad news? Mosquitos are out to get you with their avian flu germs and the damn feral pigs are destroying your neighborhood from below.

Akohekohe’s are tough birds, however, hanging out on the endangered list since 1967. Loud, aggressive, dare we say, bossy, they may chase away other nectar-seeking species, but they don’t turn their beaks up at caterpillars, flies, spiders, and other invertebrates. For food, that is.

You’d think that kind of flexibility would stand these birds in good stead. And yet, between climate change, the pigs, the mosquitoes and invading plant species, the Akohekohe is still just hanging on to its endangered status. Extinction is the last rung on that ladder.

 

Northern Bobwhite

Photo courtesy of USFWS

Here’s a little bit of advice for Mister Bob White: when you’re a popular game bird in the eastern U.S. and Mexico, do not run around loudly calling your own name. Seriously. You’re acting like our crazy Aunt Ida.

Lucky for these small, chicken-like birds, they reproduce like bunnies. When weather and habitat are friendly to them, a single pair can produce two or more broods in a single season.  Impressive. Unlucky for them, habitat is a lot less friendly than it used to be.

Profligate procreators that they are, and fairly resilient to normal hunting pressure, Bobwhites can, however, be wiped out entirely.

Time to ramp up an evolutionary mutation pronto, Bob. Learn to shut yer trap.

 

Laysan Duck

Photo courtesy of Roy Lowe

Talk about your close calls. This duck lives on one small island in Hawaii , the one you’ve never heard about. At one point its survival rested on a single surviving female: a nocturnal, sedentary girl who eats almost exclusively brine flies, which are themselves highly susceptible to drought.

You think this movie ends badly, and it still could. But for now, if you find yourself on Laysan Island and see a small duck, at night, rooting around a supersaline lake, you can bet dollars to donuts it’s a Laysan. The female quacks and the male whistles, in case you’re curious.

And there are a few more where that one came from. An ‘insurance’ population on Midway reduces the chance of a catastrophic event wiping out the entire species, since it is unlikely that a disaster would strike two islands simultaneously. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

 

Black Oystercatcher

The way we see it, if you’re gonna have a big nose, make it flaming orange and put it too good use. The Cyranos of the bird world, black oystercatchers use their signature beaks to hammer or pry open their favorite bivalves—mussels, limpets, whelks and the eponymous oysters, but only rarely.

Stocky oystercatchers prowl rocky coastlines from southern Alaska to Baja, California on their pale pink legs. But those legs won’t be long enough if, as expected, climate change raises sea levels and submerges the bird’s natural foraging and breeding grounds.

 

Ptarmigan

Photo courtesy of David Benson

Life’s a bitch in the krummholz, especially in winter. The krummholz, as we all know, is an unforgiving alpine zone where the white-tailed ptarmigan makes its home. With feathered toes, camo plumage and a really sedentary lifestyle doth the ptarmigan survive the krummi winters. (It inhabits alpine regions from Alaska to New Mexico.)

But warmer weather associated with climate change threatens the krummholz and other alpine regions and thus our white-tailed ptarmigan.

Number one energy-saving tip from this smallest member of the grouse family which, btw, poops about 50 times a night: avoid flying.

 

Black-footed Albatross

A black-footed Albatross soars above another bird. Photo courtesy of Eric VanderWerf

The black-footed albatross is a very large seagoing bird that hails from the Hawaiian Islands. “From” is the key word there, because albatrosses spend most of their time at sea. Pairs mate for life, even though they only see each other some two months out of every year. Talk about fidelity.

At aloha time, adults head back to the great briny, where they sniff out (literally) their fav food: flying fish eggs. The pelagic albatross drinks sea water and cries out the excess salt through glands in its eyes. Their greatest enemy is marine pollution and drift nets, which trap and kill hundreds each year.

 

Avocet

Photo courtesy of John Bedell

With a buff-colored neck (at breeding time), long legs, a graceful upward sweep to its bill, and a bundle of eccentricities, the avocet is all Hollywood. These birds can change the pitch of their calls to make it seem like they’re moving a lot faster than they really are. When faced with a predator, some avocets extend their wings and teeter towards the bad guy like they’re tightrope walking. All those zany tricks may not save the avocet, however. It wades the shallows of marshy wetlands that are fast disappearing before the great bulldozer of human development.

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by Jake Schmidt

All regions of the world show an overall net negative impact of climate change on water resources and freshwater ecosystems.

Today is World Water Day—a day established to recognize the importance of water to the nations and people of the world. Nearly one billion people around the world don’t have clean drinking water and 2.6 billion still lack basic sanitation. So the challenge confronting the world today is daunting and critical as clean water sustains life (and lack of water makes life difficult). And it will be made worse, with the impacts on water projected under global warming.

Some signs of the water impacts from global warming are already occurring today in the U.S. and around the world (as you can see in this great photo collection). For example (a brief overview is available in the IPCC summary on page 27):

Deserts are spreading, fueling armed conflict and putting families on the move in places like Sudan, Kenya, and Somalia. Concern about armed conflicts from global warming has led to the creation within the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency of the Center on Climate Change and National Security, to assess the national security risks posed to the United States by widening desertification; rising sea levels; population shifts and increasing competition for food, land, and fresh water.
The Oceans are acidifying (as NRDC has summarized). Over the last 250 years, oceans have absorbed 530 billion tons of CO2, triggering a 30 percent increase in ocean acidity. Researchers predict that if carbon emissions continue at their current rate, ocean acidity will more than double by 2100.  Acidification threatens the future of ocean protein sources which is a major concern since the oceans currently provide around 17 percent of the protein that humans consume—and as the world is struggling to feed the current population any disruption is very problematic.
Sea level is rising. Higher temperatures are expected to further raise sea level by expanding ocean water, melting mountain glaciers and small ice caps, and causing portions of Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets to melt. The IPCC estimates that the global average sea level will rise between 0.6 and 2 feet in the next century (as discussed in this post). This would cause: huge populations to be at risk as a lot of the world’s population lives on or near coasts, land loss, increased vulnerability of coastal areas to flooding during storms, disrupting water supply through “saltwater intrusion,” etc. (as this U.S. government site highlights and as you can see in this photo collection).
Water everywhere but not always when it is needed, in quantities that can be used, and in places that need it. Heavy precipitation events are more likely as a result of global warming which can cause severe flooding. Snow cover area is projected to contract as are a number of glaciers (as you can see in this photo collection) around the world which is a major concern as many population centers of the world depend on melting snow and glaciers for their freshwater, supply of water for agriculture, and electricity from hydropower (e.g., billions of people in Asia depend at least partially on Himalayan meltwater). And as I recently discussed Amazon rainforest is still very susceptible to dieback due to climate change.
Agriculture production? Water is critical for agriculture production, so any change in the pattern of rainfall (e.g., later wet seasons, heavier rainfall, droughts, etc.) can have a significant impact on ability of the world (and key countries) to feed humans. Global warming’s impact on agriculture varies by region but could have serious impacts in a number of regions (as the IPCC highlights), including in the U.S. (where the predicted damage is estimated to be $950 billion by 2100).       

So if any of these potential impacts on water resources from global warming are of concern to you, then Water Day (or any day for that matter) is a good day to take some key steps to help avoid these stresses on water, including:

Tell Congress to increase funding for global clean water;
Tell your senators to reject a dangerous attempt to weaken the Clean Air Act;
Tell your senators to pass a strong climate and energy bill now; and
Help us keep track of the actions that countries are taking as a part of the Copenhagen Accord.

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by Todd Woody

At a dinner this week in San Francisco, I found myself
seated between Matt Golden, co-founder of energy efficiency retrofitter Recurve—the startup formerly known as Sustainable Spaces—and Cisco DeVries,
co-founder of Renewable Funding, the Oakland outfit that pioneered municipal
financing of residential solar arrays.

The hot topic was Home Star—aka Cash for Caulkers—the
proposed $6 billion federal energy efficiency rebate program now wending its
way through Congress. The bill is being cast as a way to fight climate change,
lower energy bills for 3.3 million homes and create an estimated 168,000 sustainable
green jobs in a recession-wracked nation.

No surprise that a coalition of environmentalists, labor
groups, and businesses have hitched their star to Home Star, including Home
Depot, Dow Chemical, the Sierra Club, and the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and
Refrigeration Institute.

About $3.6 billion of Home Star cash would be devoted to
“Silver Star,” a program designed to quickly roll out basic energy efficiency
improvements by providing up to $3,000 in rebates per household for such things
as insulation and sealing doors and windows.

The Gold Star part of the program offers $3,000 for every 20
percent in energy savings that result from retrofits, up to a maximum of
$8,000. Under Gold Star, homeowners
could undertake more extensive energy efficiency retrofits as well as install
renewable energy systems such as solar arrays.

Both programs would cap the rebates at 50 percent of a project’s
cost.

“This program is designed to rapidly create jobs but also a
long-term American industry,” Golden said a couple days after the dinner during
a press conference held in advance of Congressional hearings Thursday. “We have
an opportunity to contribute to energy independence and meet our climate goals.
The construction industry is in the realm of a Depression. These are 100
percent American jobs.”

It’s winning rhetoric but what I wanted to know was this: with billions of dollars in federal subsidies potentially flooding the energy
efficiency market, how do you ensure that retrofits are done properly and that
the climate change dividend gets paid?

Talk to old-timers who lived through various solar subsidy
programs back in the 1970s and ‘80s and they’ll bemoan the shoddy operators
that tried to cash in on the market, giving legitimate companies a bad name.

Golden takes pains to emphasize that Home Star energy
efficiency retrofits will be audited to ensure “the American taxpayer is
getting their money’s worth.”

The details of those audits remain to be worked out but some
high-tech tools could help make sure those caulking guns shoot straight.

Over the past year there’s been a proliferation of home
energy management software from companies like Google and Microsoft as well as
startups such as AlertMe and Tendril.

New Microsoft Hohm software provides real time data on home energy useThe idea behind services like Microsoft’s Hohm and Google’s
PowerMeter is to give homeowners data—in real time for those whose utilities
have hooked up smart meters—on their energy use. That way they can pinpoint
where they may be wasting electrons, whether through bad habits or
electricity-hogging appliances, and adjust their behavior accordingly.

I asked Microsoft executive Troy Batterberry whether Hohm
could play a role in Home Star to monitor electricity usage before and after a
retrofit and quantify the energy savings from various improvements.

“Absolutely and it’s a question we get from our utility
partners,” said Batterberry, who runs the Hohm program. “We’re going to have
mountains of data that we can use to verify, say, what the expected savings
will be when a person puts in a new high efficiency heat pump or air
conditioner.”

“Home Star could ignite the use of this type of tool,” he
added.

Such programs could also come in handy in helping retrofit
firms identify energy hogs in a home.

Dan Reicher, director of climate change and energy program’s
for Google.org—the search giant’s philanthropic arm—discovered that feature
of the company’s PowerMeter energy management software when he began using it at
his home.

“Literally with PowerMeter, everyone discovers something
about their home they didn’t know about,” Reicher told me during a recent visit
to Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters. “In my case I had an old gas furnace
but decided that given we don’t have a lot of cold weather around here it
didn’t make a lot of sense for me to replace it. What I didn’t realize was that
the furnace had an ancient electric motor.”

Once Reicher started using PowerMeter he began to notice
spikes in his home’s electricity usage every time the furnace came on. After
some investigation he discovered the culprit was the old inefficient motor that
pushed hot air through the house’s ductwork.

Such data could help make those Home Star dollars go even
further by providing at least a partial roadmap of a home’s energy efficiency
weak spots before the guys and gals with the caulking guns show up at the front
door. And assure taxpayers that their dollars are well spent.

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Kerry-vs.-Bingaman power struggle lurks beneath ‘what next?’ question in Senate

Open letter to Sens. Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman: a bipartisan path forward on energy and climate

by David Roberts

Health care reform has passed and Obama will sign it into law Tuesday. By the end of the week, most experts forecast at least twelve katrillion thumbsucking “what does health care reform mean for X” pieces. This is one of them.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden react to health care voteWhite House

First, politics aside, this is the largest expansion of the social safety net and the most significant social legislation in over forty years. Millions of lives will be improved and hundreds of thousands of premature deaths avoided. As Jon Chait says, Obama has already secured his place in history. So there’s that.

Secondly, Nancy Pelosi is a G. Not only did she push the entire Democratic establishment to stiffen its collective spine after Scott Brown’s victory; not only did she masterfully and implacably whip votes for health care reform; under her leadership, the House has passed major progressive legislation on health care, climate change and energy, financial reform, and economic stimulus, to say nothing of many other smaller efforts. Were the U.S. a unicameral parliamentary system like most developed democracies, this past year would have changed the course of history and Democrats would have secured a generational majority. But: the Senate.

Thirdly, speaking of the Senate, climate legislation can’t do what health care reform did. The only reason HCR is headed to the president’s desk is that the Democrats had a 60 vote majority in the Senate prior to Scott Brown’s election on Jan. 19. By then the Senate had already passed the bill (which in itself counted as a miracle). The key to the bill’s ultimate success was that the House agreed to vote through the Senate’s bill as long as the Senate made some modifications via a process called budget reconciliation, which only requires a 51 vote majority. In other words, at every stage the bill has proceeded on a party-line vote.

Now that there are no longer 60 Dems, that’s not even theoretically possible (not that it was ever realistic on climate). No more major bills can pass on a party-line vote. If Republicans maintain their extraordinary party unity and blanket opposition, no more major bills can pass at all. In the end, Republicans couldn’t stop HCR, but they can stop the climate bill, and they know it. Of course Sen. Lindsey Graham has been cooperating on climate, but he has said in recent weeks that using reconciliation for HCR would “poison the well” for subsequent efforts. Graham himself has a good deal of personal credibility tied up in climate legislation, so he probably won’t bail, but he hasn’t yet elicited any commitments from his fellow Republicans, and lots of them will be feeling mighty grumpy for the next few months.

There will be lots of talk about how this victory builds momentum and fortifies resolve for Democrats. Given a taste of victory, they’ll be fired up to do more. Maybe that will be true. But the level of fired-uppitude among the Dem base, or House Dems, or Obama, is ultimately beside the point. The problem has always been, and remains, the Senate. Conservadems have been saying for months that the Senate has already done one big thing this session, and, goodness, what do you want from them? Financial reform is next on the docket. Then possibly immigration. You want them to do climate too? HHHHHhhhhhhh. [Sound of teenage-style sigh.]

Anyway, HCR passing is an enormous accomplishment. But to pass a climate bill of comparable scope, there would have to be the same kind of patient, sustained effort from Dem leadership in the face of setbacks and prognostications of failure. Only it would have to be faster (time is running out). It would have to secure Republican support for a major Dem initiative, which would be a first in Obama’s term. It would have to coax even more nervous Dems in conservative states from no to yes. It’s just a more difficult hill to climb.

Tell you what, though: pass the nation’s first climate bill alongside health care reform and Obama’s Dem majority will take its place beside FDR’s as American history’s most consequential. Maybe, if nothing else, this weekend’s victory will open Senate Dems’ eyes to that possibility. It’s a nice thought—even nicer, some might argue, than winning the next election.

Related Links:

Permission to take a worry break, enjoy the health-care victory

Kerry-vs.-Bingaman power struggle lurks beneath ‘what next?’ question in Senate

Coalition of 22 Democratic senators urges floor vote on climate bill this year