June 19 , 2008

Cleveland, OH: With a giant wind turbine representing America’s clean energy future as a backdrop, the Sierra Club and United Steelworkers today jointly endorsed Barack Obama as the change America needs.

Carl Pope, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, America’s largest grassroots environmental organization, Leo Gerard,  the leader of America’s largest industrial union, and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown highlighted the stakes in this year’s election

“We believe Senator Obama is the change our nation needs – he is the change we need, the leader who will put America on the path to a clean energy economy that will create and keep millions of jobs, spur innovation and opportunity, make us a more secure nation, and  help us solve global warming,” said  Pope..

http://www.sierraclub.org/endorsements/2008/obama/

Press Release:
http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/releases/pr2008-06-19.asp

Flat-Panel Displays Devour Power, Even Before Add-Ons; Energy Star Blurs the Picture

By REBECCA SMITH
The Wall Street Journal
December 13, 2007; Page D1

Prices for big-screen television sets are dropping, but the cost of home entertainment may still be headed up. That is because the fancy screens shoppers are lugging home this holiday season consume far more electricity than their old-school predecessors.

Consider that a 42-inch plasma set can consume more electricity than a full-size refrigerator -- even when that TV is used only a few hours a day. Powering a fancy TV and full-on entertainment system -- with set-top boxes, game consoles, speakers, DVDs and digital video recorders -- can add nearly $200 to a family's annual energy bill.

Most consumers aren't made aware of extra energy expenses when they are shopping for a TV. Energy Star tags, a government program that identifies the most energy-efficient models, won't begin flagging the greenest televisions, when turned on, until late next year. Currently, Energy Star judges energy consumption only in standby mode, limiting its usefulness.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119751487989925779.html

TIM DICKINSON
Rolling Stone

Posted Jun 20, 2007 12:49 PM

"That's a big no. The president believes . . . that it should be the goal of policymakers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one."

- Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary responding in May 2001 to whether Bush would ask Americans to curb their first-in-the-world energy consumption

Earlier this year, the world's top climate scientists released a definitive report on global warming. It is now "unequivocal," they concluded, that the planet is heating up. Humans are directly responsible for the planetary heat wave, and only by taking immediate action can the world avert a climate catastrophe. Megadroughts, raging wildfires, decimated forests, dengue fever, legions of Katrinas - unless humans act now to curb our climate-warming pollution, warned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "we are in deep trouble."

You would think, in the wake of such stark and conclusive findings, that the White House would at least offer some small gesture to signal its concern about the impending crisis. It's not every day, after all, that the leading scientists from 120 nations come together and agree that the entire planet is about to go to hell. But the Bush administration has never felt bound by the reality-based nature of science - especially when it comes from international experts. So after the report became public in February, Vice President Dick Cheney took to the airwaves to offer his own, competing assessment of global warming.

"We're going to see a big debate on it going forward," Cheney told ABC News, about "the extent to which it is part of a normal cycle versus the extent to which it's caused by man." What we know today, he added, is "not enough to just sort of run out and try to slap together some policy that's going to 'solve' the problem."

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slide show -- "Inside the Bush Administration’s Denial Campaign Against Climate Change," here.

'Disastrous Effects' of Global Warming Tipping Points Near, According to New Study

By BILL BLAKEMORE
ABC News
May 29, 2007

Even "moderate additional" greenhouse emissions are likely to push Earth past "critical tipping points" with "dangerous consequences for the planet," according to research conducted by NASA and the Columbia University Earth Institute.

With just 10 more years of "business as usual" emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas, says the NASA/Columbia paper, "it becomes impractical" to avoid "disastrous effects."

The study appears in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Its lead author is James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

The forecast effects include "increasingly rapid sea-level rise, increased frequency of droughts and floods, and increased stress on wildlife and plants due to rapidly shifting climate zones," according to the NASA announcement.

[continued]

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post
Wednesday, January 10, 2007; Page A01

Last year was the warmest in the continental United States in the past 112 years -- capping a nine-year warming streak "unprecedented in the historical record" that was driven in part by the burning of fossil fuels, the government reported yesterday.

According to the government's National Climatic Data Center, the record-breaking warmth -- which caused daffodils and cherry trees to bloom throughout the East on New Year's Day -- was the result of both unusual regional weather patterns and the long-term effects of the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

"People should be concerned about what we are doing to the climate," said Jay Lawrimore, chief of the climate monitoring branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Burning of fossil fuels is causing an increase in greenhouse gases, and there's a broad scientific consensus that is producing climate change."

The center said there are indications that the rate at which global temperatures are rising is speeding up.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/..

The Sierra Club is a bi-partisan conservation organization which uses candidates' records, LCV (League of Conservation Voters) scores which tally these records, interviews, and other qualifications to make endorsements through a meaningful process. Thank you for your time in looking over these endorsements, and in going to the polls to vote tomorrow, November 7th. Here are Sierra Club's endorsements:

NO on Amendment 3, which would sabotage the citizen initiative process
YES on Environmental Lands Program for Charlotte County
Jim Davis for Florida Governor
Skip Campbell for Attorney General
Bill Nelson for U.S. Senator
Christine Jennings for Congressional District 13
Dual endorsement of Dick Loftus and Joan Fischer for Charlotte County Commissioner, District 4. They both exhibit good environmental stances.

Thank you for voting.

Eric Ernst
Sarasota Herald Tribune
9/22/2006

No one likes taxes. But if there were ever a good tax, it's on the ballot in Charlotte County in November.

It would amount to $32 a year for the owner of a $185,000 home (with homestead exemption), and the money would be used to buy environmentally sensitive land.

The county did not want to compile a list of prospective properties for fear that owners would jack up prices or speculators would swoop in to grab the land.

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