Mass Greens

Three Lessons from the Third Berkshire

2011-10-20T13:58:00.000-07:00

We lost the special election in the Third Berkshire District, albeit narrowly (one percentage point). But within the defeat, to misquote Winston Churchill*, there were several successes. By learning from these successes – and from the overall defeat – we can build stronger Green campaigns that will turn our candidates into legislators and our policies into law. What follows is not a complete post mortem, but a brief overview of three lessons we can learn about electoral communication.

1. Communication is an Exchange

An experienced professor once explained to me, in a nutshell, one of the reasons his service-learning program was so successful: “We meet our students where they are,” he said. Over the years he went on to show me what he meant by that phrase, and his praxis now informs my approach to electoral communication.

So how do we go about meeting voters where they are? Many GRP members care passionately about combating climate change, democracy, eradicating inequality and injustice, and transforming capitalism. Understandably, those are the issues we want to talk about. But those are not the issues most voters want to hear about. Or rather, those are not the issues they want to hear about from people running for State Representative. Even if their understanding of the role of a legislator is somewhat inchoate, regular voters know that State Representatives deal with state-level issues, such as the amount of money the state dedicates to their kids’ schools.

Does that mean we should ignore the big issues like climate change, poverty, and the iniquities and inequities of one-party domination? No. Should we talk down to people? Again, no. It simply means that we have to present our message in such a way that voters can perceive it through their pre-existing lenses. We can only learn about those pre-existing lenses by conversing with voters and really listening to what they have to say; not by commissioning phone polls, but by engaging in authentic one-to-one conversations and then reflecting on them.

From our conversations on the doorsteps and front porches, we learned that our target voters cared deeply about bringing jobs to the district and resented the fact that the last two state reps walked away from the task of representing them and straight into something more lucrative. So that is where our conversation with the voters went next. Here is the front of a postcard we sent to those target voters to let them know we were listening and shared their priorities.

2. Teach Republicans to Vote Tactically

A few days before the special election, we sent a mailing to 1,100 households with registered Republicans who had voted in the November 2010 election. Its message was simple (see the front of the postcard below) and it may have helped sway some Republicans. Nevertheless, on election day the Republican candidate received about 900 votes. If just one hundred or so of those votes had come our way, we would have won.

It was obvious from the outset that the Republican candidate was not going to win. So, from a rational-choice perspective, it is unfathomable that 900 people would give him their votes. After all, these were individuals who did not want to see a Democrat win, but acted in a way that they should have known would increase the risk of a Democratic victory. For at least some of them, lack of information may have played a role in the decision. They may have perceived our bald assertion that the Republican could not win as self-serving propaganda. Presenting them with independent verification might have made a difference and encouraged them to vote tactically.

In future races where the Green has a better chance of beating the Democrat, we need to persuade Republicans to vote tactically. We need to learn how to deliver the two-horse-race message more effectively.

3. Known Unknowns

But among a few Republican voters, our message may have backfired and so enraged them that it redoubled their resolve to go out and vote Republican (a vote-and-be-damned attitude). How do I know this? I don’t, and I know that I don’t. It is, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, a known unknown. This brings me to my final point: We need well-designed campaign evaluations.

Our party needs to invest in the kind of surveys and focus groups that will enable us to learn from our mistakes in a more rigorous, fact-based manner. Our analysis has to become less anecdotal and more analytical. Analyzing the effect of our campaigns on voting behavior is much more difficult than program evaluation in some other areas. For example, determining whether an advertising campaign aimed at reducing cigarette use among teenagers did, in fact, help reduce teenage smoking is relatively straightforward compared with learning what it was, in particular, that persuaded un-enrolled women voters aged 30-50 to vote for a particular candidate.

Voting certainly sends a message, but the message it sends is blunt, ambiguous, and inarticulate. Teasing out the intent of the voter presents a challenge, but the growing discipline of program evaluation offers us a choice of tools for doing just that. As a party, we need to use those tools so that we can learn what it is that voters are telling us when they engage in the act of voting.

*“We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations. But there was a victory inside this deliverance, which should be noted.” Winston Churchill, 1940, regarding Dunkirk.

The Commonwealth's first Green legislator?

2011-07-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

Mark Miller and family

Disclosure: I am Mark Miller's campaign manager.

On October 18 voters in Pittsfield, Western Massachusetts, will choose a new State Representative. The candidate who came in a close second in November 2010, Mark Miller, was gearing up to run again even before the news broke that the incumbent was stepping down to take a lifetime position in the court system. Now Mark Miller could be just 88 days away from becoming the state's first Green legislator.

At the last election Mark ran as a Green and won 45% of the votes, a solid foundation for building a successful special-election campaign. He's a Green who knows that enacting Green policies requires winning power and that winning power involves more than vision and passion; it demands dogged determination and effective communication. Mark happens to have been a newspaper editor, so he knows a thing or two about communicating. Add to that the fact that he's lived in Pittsfield his whole life and has great name recognition and we have most of the ingredients that constitute a recipe for electoral success.

Even just one Green legislator would be a game-changer in Massachusetts politics. Although Massachusetts has had independent state representatives in the recent past (e.g. William Lantigua) we have not had legislators from so-called third parties since the 1850s. So when Mark asked me to manage his campaign I jumped at the opportunity.

At least two Democrats are seeking their party's nomination, and after September 20 (primary day) we'll know which one will be running against Mark. There may be a Republican and an unenrolled candidate as well. We'll know for sure in the next few weeks. In the meantime, we're gathering signatures, canvassing door-to-door, and pumping out direct mail. In that sense -- and that sense only -- we're engaged in politics as usual: the retail variety.

Questions/comments: peter@petervickery.com

Democrats and Greens vote for coal phase-out and beat-back-fracking bills

2011-06-05T17:44:00.000-07:00

The Massachusetts Democratic Party has voted in favor of two measures that would move Massachusetts beyond coal toward a clean-energy, green-jobs economy.

At their annual convention in Lowell, on Saturday, June 4, the Democrats agreed to add a commitment to phasing out coal-burning and to regulate hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to the party's official Action Agenda. The nationwide organization Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) led the effort.

Tim Carpenter, PDA's director, said he was delighted at the result. "Today the Massachusetts Democratic Party showed its determination to combat global warming and to building a post-carbon economy for Massachusetts," said Carpenter. "One step forward on the jobs front and another step forward in the struggle against climate change."

The following day, Sunday, June 5, Greens in Western Massachusetts also voted to endorse the bills. By a unanimous vote, the Pioneer Valley Green Rainbow Party declared its support for the coal phase-out and fracking proposals.

The bill to phase out coal burning in Massachusetts, HB 2612, filed by Representative Lori Ehrlich (D: Marblehead) would set 2020 as the deadline for the state's remaining coal plants to either repower to cleaner energy or retire. If a power company chooses to retire a facility instead of converting it, a Community Repowering Fund would help the affected workers and their communities in the transition.

Peter Vickery, a volunteer with the Massachusetts Sierra Club, which sponsored the bills, said that the proposal would help Massachusetts prepare for the inevitable: "This bill offers a clear, step-by-step approach to transitioning away from coal to clean energy. Coal's days are numbered and coal-plants are closing down across the country." Referring to the leaked news of plans to close the coal-fired power station in Salem he added, "We don't want any more communities blindsided. So let's start planning now."

The second measure that the Massachusetts Democrats added to their Action Agenda was HB 3055, the bill State Representative Sean Garballey (D: Arlington) filed to regulate fracking, the process energy companies use for extracting natural gas from shale formations. It involves pumping chemical-laced water underground at high pressure. Recent news reports disclosed that thousands of internal documents from the EPA, state regulators and drillers showed that the fracking process creates dangers to the environment and health that are greater than previously understood.

"Most of the electricity we generate in Massachusetts comes from natural gas," said Tim Carpenter. "We just want to be able to switch on our lights without poisoning someone's drinking water. Is that asking too much?"

The so-called Beat Back Fracking Bill would require energy utilities that generate electricity from natural gas in Massachusetts to disclose the chemicals their suppliers used during the natural-gas extraction process. It would also require them to certify that the process did not contaminate drinking water.

"In 2005, Congress decided to exempt fracking from the federal Safe Drinking Water Act," said Peter Vickery. "Why? Because industry lobbyists persuaded Congress that fracking should be a matter for the states not the federal government. If Congress and the energy companies already agree that the states should step in, what are we waiting for?"

Green jobs? Oh, right...

2011-05-20T06:39:00.000-07:00

Mount Tom's owner, GDF Suez, has more good news for renewable-energy workers. So long as those renewable-energy workers are in Europe, of course. The company is investing in three new wind farms in the English Channel in partnership with the nuclear-power company Areva. I don't begrudge Europeans their economic recovery, but I have to ask: How do we bring some of those green jobs to Western Massachusetts?

Part of the answer is public policy. Just as renewable-energy action plans in the member states of the European Union are spurring job creation across the Atlantic, more action on the part of our state government would help. To that end, on Wednesday, May 18, a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature heard testimony about two Sierra Club-sponsored bills that would (1) move Massachusetts beyond coal toward a clean-energy economy and (2) regulate hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Later that day I spoke with Steve Hoeschele on his new TV show, Mass Political Action, about why we need to phase out coal, beat back fracking, and generate jobs. If you follow the link to watch the show, don't let the 10 seconds or so of black screen at the start put you off!

My testimony to the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy explained the link between HB 2612 (the coal phase-out bill) and HB 3055 (the beat-back-fracking bill) which is this: Under 2612, power companies have until the year 2020 to either retire their coal-burning facilities or repower them to renewable energy or to natural gas. If they choose natural gas, perhaps as a step toward generating electricity from hydrogen, they have to meet HB 3055's new public-health standards. Under 3055, the companies would have to publicly disclose the chemicals used in the natural gas extraction process and certify that the process didn't poison people's drinking water.

Right now we get about half of our electricity from natural gas. It emits less CO2 than coal, but the natural-gas extraction process (fracking) has serious public health impacts. So HB 3055 requires power companies to certify that they didn't pollute drinking water while bringing their natural gas to the surface. If you'd like to know more about the dangers of fracking, you can skim this recent congressional report. Be sure you're sitting down, by the way.

Generating green jobs in Massachusetts means leveling the playing field between renewables and fossil fuels. That involves forcing power companies to internalize more of the costs society as a whole has been paying for dirty air and polluted water. When the new EPA regulations come into effect they should do just that -- stimulate green jobs -- as this report from the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, explains. Disclosure: I'm working at PERI but had no part in writing the report.

While the EPA regulations will help, we shouldn't expect much more from Washington, D.C., in the near future (see previous Mass Greens blog posts). But in the absence of federal legislation, there are steps we can take here in Massachusetts to accelerate the shift from fossil fuels to clean energy, e.g. enacting HB 2612 and HB 3055. That's what Steve Hoeschele and I discuss on the show, so please check out the interview on Mass Political Action -- or selected highlights -- and let me know what you think.

Credit where it's due

2011-05-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

Readers of a nervous disposition should steel themselves: I am about to pay the Republicans a compliment, and not the back-handed variety. The following compliment in no way absolves the Republicans of responsibility for denying both the patriotism of their opponents and the reality of climate change; for their attempts at disabling the EPA while enabling the deranged, delusional birthers; for denying public funding to public broadcasting; for subpoenaing labor-studies professors for studying labor; for toadying to oil moguls while stripping seniors of medical insurance; and for likening anything that looks even vaguely like universal healthcare to incipient communism, blatant fascism, or both. With that caveat, I now proffer my compliment. Well done, Republicans, for fielding more than 80 candidates for the Massachusetts House of Representatives in last year’s legislative elections.

For about ten years I have been complaining about the opposition-shaped gap in Massachusetts politics, pointing to the paucity of Republican legislative candidates as evidence of the party’s pusillanimity. Over the course of a decade I grew fond of telling audiences that in the national league of contested elections, Massachusetts ranked 49th out of 50, just one up from North Carolina or sometimes Alabama. It was one of my favorite lines, suitable for almost any occasion. Whatever solution I was hawking – proportional representation, public campaign financing, voting Green – I could always count on the Massachusetts GOP for the problem. But now the Republicans are back in the active-opposition business, and I shall have to come up with new material.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, the number of districts with more than one name on the ballot dwindled to around 30%. That really was quite anemic, I think you’ll agree. Things picked up a little in 2004, when John Kerry ran for President and then-Governor Mitt Romney – in an effort to keep Massachusetts Democrats busy in their home state and out of swinging (in the electoral sense) New Hampshire – persuaded a host of Republican legislative candidates to offer themselves up in a mass martyrdom mission.

With his money, good looks, and box-office appeal Mitt Romney inspired local Republicans. Or he begged, berated, and bludgeoned them, depending on who you talk to. Either way, in 2004 he helped put more Republican names on the ballot than the electorate had seen for years. Then Romney moved on to a bigger stage, leaving the GOP crowd bereft. The role of square-jawed leading man did not lie vacant for long, however.

Like Dean Cain succeeding George Reeves as Superman, Scott Brown took over from Mitt Romney as the man who could inspire relatively large numbers of Republicans to run for seats in the General Court (a feat no less impressive than seeing through solid objects and bending steel bars). Scott Brown’s special election victory at the beginning of the year reminded them that in a state where 50% of the voters are unenrolled, Republicans actually can win, even though 90% of the state legislators and 100% of their federal counterparts are Democrats. Of course, it helps when 45% of the voters stay home on election day, as they did on January 19, 2010.

Scott Brown has worked wonders for democracy in Massachusetts. Yes, he is a climate-change denialist who voted to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from protecting the environment. And yes, he wailed like a baby when the League of Women Voters pointed this out (judging by his ads you’d think they’d waylaid him in a dark alley, mussed his hair, and given him noogies). But it is Scott Brown we can thank for the novel sight of the letter R on ballots in half the state’s House districts last fall.

Having praised the Republicans, I now have no qualms about congratulating my own party – the Green Rainbow Party (GRP) – for its performance in the 2010 legislative elections. Scott Laugenour in the Fourth Berkshire District, facing a popular and diligent Democratic incumbent, walked away with 18%, a more than respectable basis for his next effort. Meanwhile, in the neighboring Third Berkshire District, the Green-Rainbow Party’s Mark Miller took an astonishing 45% of the votes. This is worth restating for emphasis: The Green candidate won 45% of the votes.

These results from the Berkshires are impressive, but they are not victories, and I am not going to blow them out of proportion. However, “proportion” is a word that comes to mind in this situation, together with the word “representation.” Countries with proportional representation reward political parties with seats in the legislature in return for much less than 18% of the votes, let alone 45%.

When they appear on the ballot, Greens in Massachusetts win a higher proportion of the votes than Greens in most European countries, even countries where Greens are not simply opposition backbenchers but partners in coalition governments. What the GRP results in the Berkshires suggest is that if Massachusetts had a fairer electoral system, the Greens would have no difficulty winning seats in the Legislature.

But, of course, Massachusetts has the same voting system it has had since 1855, namely plurality voting in single-member districts, and Greens have to play by the rules as they are, not as we would like them to be. Yet even within the constraints of the current voting system, Greens can win. For example, in 2002, John Eder of the Maine Green Party won a seat in the state legislature and held on to it for two terms. Yes, the voters of Portland, Maine, using the same voting system we use in Massachusetts, elected a Green. It happened, and it can happen again.

Now the Republicans are running and winning, it may only be a couple of cycles until they erode the Democratic supermajority, leaving the two major parties with a roughly equal number of seats in the House. In that situation, just one or two seats would put the GRP in a pivotal position, holding the balance of power. In other words, an ongoing Republican resurgence in Massachusetts could be good news for Greens. Hence the compliment.

Write your Senator

2011-04-07T18:19:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week Senator Scott Brown voted to block the EPA from combating climate change. The EPA wants to move ahead and cut the amount of carbon dioxide that power companies pump into the atmosphere, but Senator Brown voted for two amendments that would have stopped the EPA in its tracks. While Massachusetts citizens are demanding action for clean energy and green jobs, their senator is aligning himself with the faction of his party that wants to just stand idly by. We need to change the way Senator Brown votes in future.

So let's each and every one of us write him a letter. Yes, I'm suggesting that you write him an authentic, personal letter. I'm not talking about a mass-produced form letter. I mean an old-fashioned, pen-and-ink, this-is-what-I-think letter.

Why? Because one of the dirty little secrets of mobilization and advocacy campaigns is that the generic letters and emails have relatively little impact on politicians. All they prove to elected officials and their aides is that the sponsoring organization has a big mailing list and staff that are adept at writing persuasive emails; persuasive enough to prompt members to spend a minute or two online filling in the name and address fields and clicking "send."

But a genuine, individual piece of correspondence containing the original, unique thoughts and feelings of a committed and passionate human being -- a human being who votes -- explaining why the senator should support the EPA? That would be different.

I'll be writing my letter shortly. And on Thursday, May 5, 7:00 p.m., I'll be sitting down with a group of Sierra Club volunteers at the Media Education Foundation, 60 Masonic Street, Northampton to write another one. If you would like to join us, please bring the following: a pen, paper, envelope, postage stamp, and your passion for clean air.

In the meantime, here's the address of the man who voted to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases:

Senator Scott Brown, 2400 JFK Federal Building, 15 New Sudbury Street, Boston MA 02203

Please write him and let him know why his votes were just plain wrong, and why you expect him to vote the right way in future.

Greens poised to lead state government

2011-03-27T16:49:00.000-07:00

Young Greens celebrate in Stuttgart

After an election campaign that tackled the nuclear issue head-on, Winfried Kretschmann looks set to become the first Green premier in the European Union.

With almost a quarter of the votes, the Greens in the German state of Baden-Wuerttember not only out-polled their Social Democrat allies but also helped defeat the conservative Christian Democrats.

To check out the party's YouTube channel, which includes some of its election ads, click here.

GDF Suez: Green in Europe

2011-03-13T20:29:00.000-07:00

GDF Suez, the energy giant that owns the coal-burning power station at Mount Tom, Holyoke, is getting greener.

In addition to winning the Gigaton Award last year from the Carbon War Room, GDF Suez has picked up the World Carbon Finance Market award in the category for renewable energy project developers. Gerard Mestrallet (pictured) and his team deserve credit for taking strides in the right direction by building up the proportion of electricity they generate from renewables.

The steady greening of GDF Suez means more than plaudits in the press. It spells good news for workers in the clean-energy sector.

But only if they happen to live in Europe.

For example, GDF Suez has just entered into a deal for photovoltaic modules. The winner of the multi-million dollar contract? Bisol, a Slovenian company.

The agreement complements the pholovoltaics research GDF Suez has been undertaking through a subsidiary. The subsidiary is called Photovoltech and you'll find it in the town of Tienen, which is in Belgium.

In addition to solar energy, GDF Suez invests heavily in wind. The company is spending approximately 10 billion (yes, billion) Euros to build an offshore windfarm. Where? Near Saint-Nazaire, in northern France.

Later this year GDF Suez will unveil another wind farm. In the words of the GDF Suez website, this one will be big enough to "spare 145,000 tons of CO2 per year from being spewed into the atmosphere!" The location? Haute-Pays, France.

One of the GDF Suez's sources of renewable energy on this side of the Atlantic is its cluster of windfarms in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, Canada, which together generate over 700 megawatts of electricity. As a result of ordinary wear and tear, the turbines need an upgrade.

A quick glance at a map reveals that Prince Edward Island is not all that far from Massachusetts. But workers in Massachusetts, home to the pioneers of wind-energy, didn't stand a chance. Instead, GDF Suez awarded the retrofit contract to Moventas, a Finnish company.

If any clean-energy workers in Belgium, France, Finland, and Slovenia happen to be reading this, please accept my sincere congratulations. I'm glad that your elected officials, unions, and entrepreneurs had the foresight to work together so effectively, investing in green-skills education and training over many years. We in Massachusetts don't want to take your jobs and livelihoods away from you.

But surely there's something in the realm of renewable-energy that GDF Suez can do in Holyoke, Massachusetts. As we ponder a post-coal future for Mount Tom, let's look at leveraging both Holyoke's and GDF Suez's green credentials in ways that bring in new jobs and tax dollars.

For example, wouldn't Mount Tom be the perfect place to build a wind-hydrogen village like the one in Prince Edward Island, perhaps in partnership with municipally-owned Holyoke Gas & Electric?

After all, why should all the good green jobs go to Europe?

Click here for YouTube version.

Activists call Mt. Tom power plant's future into question - News

2011-03-03T20:14:00.000-08:00

Activists call Mt. Tom power plant's future into question - News

How new EPA regulations will affect Mount Tom

2011-03-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

After reading a claim in the Republican newspaper that Mount Tom can already meet all current and future regulations I submitted this letter to the editor:

A recent letter about Mount Tom power station (Tuesday, March 1) makes some valid points that nobody would dispute. For example, the plant provides good jobs and significant tax revenue for Holyoke. And repowering the plant to natural gas may not be practical, not least because it sits on a flood plain.

But the assertion that there are no future regulations the plant cannot meet is way off the mark.

The Environmental Protection Agency is issuing new regulations that amend something called the Air Transport Rule. Under the new rule, in 2014 Mount Tom will be allowed to emit no more than 245 tons of sulfur dioxide, a chemical that damages people's lungs and exacerbates respiratory illnesses. Last year -- even with the Turbosorp system in operation and the plant running at 60% capacity -- Mount Tom emitted 2,129 tons of sulfur dioxide. So three years from now the plant will have to reduce its sulfur dioxide emissions by 1,884 tons. Similarly, the plant will have to bring its nitrogen-oxide emissions down from 287 tons to 185 tons, a drop of more than 100 tons a year. Right now, Mount Tom is simply not equipped to do that.

We all want to safeguard existing jobs and generate new ones, and we all want to boost Holyoke's tax base. So we (the community, plant employees, plant-owner GDF Suez, and elected officials) need to plan a post-coal future for Mount Tom, one that creates clean energy and green jobs. And the time to start planning is now, before the new regulations come into effect.

2011-02-01T19:45:00.000-08:00

What connects Holyoke, Massachusetts, with floods in Australia, and explosions in La Preciosa, Colombia? The answer is coal.

As the January flood waters subsided in Australia the governor of the state of Victoria, medical researcher Professor David de Kretser, pointed the finger directly at climate change. Referring to the spate of record-breaking climate events de Kretser commented “everyone says this week [is a] one in 100, one in 200 years [event] but they are happening pretty much more frequently now.”

Australia’s Greens went further, connecting a few more dots between coal-burning, ocean temperatures, and flooding. In the months preceding the floods record heat had warmed the seas off northern Australia leading to increased evaporation and rainfall, explained the Greens. Then, pointing out that coal is a major contributor to climate change, party leader Senator Bob Brown called on the coal-mining companies to pick up the tab for the flood recovery and other climate-related disasters via a 40% surtax on their profits.

“We know that climate change is due to the burning of fossil fuels, primarily coal,” said Brown. “I’ve called on the Australian Government to ensure that the tax on super profits on the coal industry [should] be levied in full to help the country pay for future flood, bushfire and drought disasters caused by climate change.”

There is no sign that the Australian government will adopt Senator Brown’s proposal, which is hardly surprising in view of the fact that last year when the Prime Minister, Labor’s Kevin Rudd, tried to impose the same tax the mining companies spent $20 million to defeat him. Mr. Rudd is now the former Prime Minister, by the way.

But the floods have certainly had an impact on the availability – and, therefore, the price – of coal. Because flooding inundated so many coal mines and railroads in Australia, the price of coal rose 4.5% in the first week of January. Rising coal prices were good news for mining companies like the one that owns La Preciosa mine in northeastern Colombia, where management has long been cutting corners on safety measures. An explosion (the second in four years) tore through the mine at La Preciosa on Wednesday, January 26, killing 21 mineworkers. Today (Tuesday, February 1) another blast killed five more miners, this time at La Escondida coal mine, north of Bogota, Colombia.

Last year, more than 100 Colombian coal-miners died at work. Just five weeks into 2011, the death toll already stands at 26. Other than the ties that bind us all together as humans, what do these deaths in Colombia have to do with us in Massachusetts? The connector is coal: The coal we burn at Mount Tom, Holyoke, comes from Colombia.

How does the coal get from Colombia to Massachusetts? Helpfully, the Wall Street Journal provides the names of the major companies that own coal mines in Colombia. One of them is BHP Billiton, an Australian company that dedicated $4 million to crushing Kevin Rudd’s surtax proposal. BHP Billiton’s shares were up 0.8% today. Others include Xstrata (up 1.26%) and Anglo American (also up by more than 1%).

As connect-the-dots puzzles go, this one is not very elaborate. GDF Suez imports Colombian coal from companies like BHP Billiton. It burns the coal in power stations like Mount Tom, Holyoke. A lackadaisical approach to workplace safety in Colombia leads to the deaths of miners, and a cavalier attitude to climate safety leads to floods in Australia. What are the common factors joining the Australian and Colombian tragedies? We are. And we are doing something about it.

Let’s ponder the dots connecting our Massachusetts campaign for climate justice to the floods in Australia and the struggle for workers’ rights in Colombia. When we join the dots together and look at the picture, we see that ours is a just cause.

If you want to take action right now and do something to stop GDF Suez burning coal at Mount Tom, sign this petition in support of the Act to Phase Out Coal-Burning in Massachusetts. The proposed law would force power companies to move beyond coal, either by retiring their coal-burning plants or repowering them to run on cleaner energy.

Will signing an online petition fix the problem? No. But it's one step. And if you would like to do more, let me know: email peter@petervickery.com.

COAL COUNTRY: Thursday, Feb. 24

2011-01-29T13:52:00.000-08:00

Colombian mine explosion

2011-01-26T19:14:00.000-08:00

“Ana Luz Acosta, a relative of miner Jorge Lara, sheds tears outside La Preciosa mine in Sardinata, northeastern Colombia, Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2011. Lara is among 20 miners feared dead after an explosion believed to have been caused by a methane gas buildup rocked the underground coal mine early Wednesday. Methane gas was also believed to be the cause of an explosion at the mine in 2007 that killed 32 miners.” Image and caption, Associated Press.

Most of the coal we burn in Massachusetts – including the coal burned at the Mount Tom power station in Holyoke – comes from Colombia. So we have a very real connection to the miners at La Preciosa coal mine in Sardinata, Colombia, where an explosion has claimed twenty-one lives.

I am trying to identify workers' organizations that we in Massachusetts can work with to support the injured miners and bereaved families. So far I've contacted the United Mineworkers of America, Justice for Colombia, and the Colombian branch of the International Labor Organization. As soon as I have any news I'll post it.

In the meantime, if you know of any other organizations likely to have on-the-ground links to the community near La Preciosa, please tell me (peter@petervickery.com) and I'll help spread the word.

The struggle of the coal-miners of Colombia is intimately bound up with our campaign for climate justice. Let's show some real solidarity.

Op-ed in Daily Hampshire Gazette

2011-01-05T10:29:00.000-08:00

Plea to coal plant: Burn gas, not coal
by Peter Vickery & Dick Stein
Daily Hampshire Gazette, Wednesday, January 5, page c1

News of the planned closing of the Salem Harbor coal-fired power station has leaked out. Could something similar happen to the coal-burning power station at Mount Tom in Holyoke, on the upper Valley’s doorstep?

Tighter regulations and rising prices are pushing power companies away from coal, so almost every week somewhere in America a coal-plant is shutting down. If the company that owns Mount Tom (GDF Suez) follows the national trend, the plant’s days may be numbered. Because of the damage coal does to children’s lungs and the impact it has on the climate, some people might rejoice.

But we would certainly not be among them, much as we want to see a speedy transition from coal to cleaner energy. Why not? Because in addition to electricity, Mount Tom generates some real and much-needed benefits for Holyoke, benefits like jobs and taxes. Last year, the City of Holyoke took in almost $2 million from the plant, which provides employment for more than 50 local people. If the jobs and taxes disappeared, Holyoke would suffer, and neighboring communities would feel the knock-on effects.

We need to keep Mount Tom open, minus the coal. Moving from coal to renewable energy is an urgent priority. Climate change is starting to bite – the outgoing year, 2010, was the second hottest since records began – and coal makes up about one-third of our country’s output of the main cause of human-made climate change, CO2. So we can get serious about tackling climate change, or we can carry on burning coal; but we can’t do both.

Can we move Mount Tom away from coal while protecting existing jobs, creating new ones, and keeping those tax dollars flowing for Holyoke? Fortunately, the answer is yes we can. One option is to repower Mount Tom from coal to natural gas. Although natural gas is a fossil fuel, it emits much less carbon dioxide than coal, which is why some states (like Minnesota and Colorado) are requiring utilities to switch from coal to natural gas.

At this point, unfortunately, wind and solar energy are not by themselves feasible substitutes for coal at Mount Tom. It would take many more wind turbines than the landscape has room for – or about 300 football-fields worth of solar panels – to generate 146 MW of electricity. But with natural gas, Mount Tom could produce three times as much electricity as it produces now and at a fraction of the carbon cost. With higher profits from increased sales, GDF Suez could afford to absorb the upfront expense of repowering the plant. By the way, this is a company that is investing $2 billion (yes, billion) in a coastal wind park off northern France.

Natural gas could be an interim stage in the process of moving Mount Tom away from coal, a stepping stone on the path to 100% renewable energy. There are downsides, certainly. Getting natural gas out from underground through the process of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” for short, can contaminate drinking water. Crazily, in 2005 Congress exempted fracking from key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. But instead of waiting for Congress to come to its senses and reverse itself, Colorado has also moved to close the loophole and written its own regulations to keep drinking water safe from the side-effects of fracking.

Natural gas is by no means a perfect solution. But as a stop-gap measure, it has merit so long as we follow Colorado’s example and ensure that the gas companies extract it responsibly and safely. This step-by-step approach, using natural gas as a bridge from coal to renewable energy, could create hundreds of jobs, both in the construction and green-tech sectors. Just expanding the gas pipeline (currently operating at full capacity) would involve new jobs. Refitting and reconfiguring the site, replacing the coal boilers with high-efficiency gas turbines, would involve hundreds more.

Is it practical to repower a coal-fired plant to natural gas? Yes, it’s happening not just in Colorado and Minnesota but much closer to home. The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, repowered from coal to natural gas and now boasts a system that doesn’t waste energy the way a coal boiler does. When a power station burns coal, only some of the energy goes toward making electricity. The rest gets wasted. In contrast, UMass now uses that energy to heat offices, classrooms, and dorms across the campus.

Unemployment is high and the climate crisis is deepening, but we can do something very practical to meet those challenges right here in the Pioneer Valley by taking the UMass example and scaling it. Repowering Mount Tom from coal to cleaner energy would protect existing jobs, create new ones, maintain Holyoke’s tax revenue, and help get the climate back in balance. Good news for Holyoke and the surrounding communities; good news for GDF Suez; and good news for our climate. That’s not just a win-win solution. It’s a win-win-win.
To make it happen, our elected officials need to engage GDF Suez in dialog, and it is up to active citizens to nudge them.

In the coming months, we look forward to a grassroots coalition of community organizations joining together to get our political leaders and GDF Suez talking to each other about a clean-energy, green-jobs future for Mount Tom. Let’s not wait for any nasty surprises.

the most powerful Green in the world

2010-08-25T06:07:00.001-07:00

Meet Adam Bandt, the new Green member of Australia's House of Representatives and arguably the most powerful Green in the world.

Bandt won his seat from the governing Labour Party in last Saturday's inconclusive election, which left no party in overall control, and he now finds himself in a pivotal role. A few seats short of a majority, Labour has to look to Adam Bandt and the handful of independent members of parliament in order to stay in power.

Why do I call Bandt the most powerful Green in the world (other than because of my penchant for hyperbolic headlines)? Because Australia's greenhouse gas emissions in 2009 were 537 million tonnes, "the largest amount per person of any developed country," according to the Sydney Morning Herald (May 28, 2010), and the sole Green legislator is uniquely positioned to ensure that the next government takes a big bite out of the country's GHG output. Coal is at the root of Australia's growing CO2 discharge, and a one of the main issues in the general elections was a proposed tax on coal profits. With his leverage, Bandt could force Labour to increase the coal-tax rate and push Australia away from coal and toward renewables.

So Adam Bandt, age 38, Ph.D., labor-lawyer turned legislator and a vocal supporter of marriage equality, has real power. Acquiring, maintaining, and using political power is the purpose of electoral politics, a fact lost on too many candidates of all stripes. But Bandt is one Green who is not afraid to use the word "power." See for yourself in his short campaign video.

In two minutes, Bandt defines himself, his party, the voters, and the issues. It's a masterful piece of persuasive advocacy, in my opinion, and I would welcome your comments on Bandt's message and how he presents it. In particular, I hope you'll notice the tried-and-trusted rhetorical devices.

brownout

2010-07-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

So, no federal climate-and-energy bill until after the November elections.

As you may have read, the Democratic leadership shopped the carbon-cap bill around the Senate, did a head count, discovered that the Republicans didn't like the bill, and decided to let it go.

Oh well, thank goodness it's not urgent (please forgive the sarcasm).

Where does our own Senator Scott Brown stand on climate change? It's hard to tell. Yesterday evening, during a Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) meeting in Worcester, I called Nat Hoopes, the senator's legislative assistant in DC, and left a voicemail asking whether Senator Brown would support a comprehensive climate-and-energy bill. No word back yet.

According to UCS, when he was a state senator Scott Brown was pretty good on environmental issues. But (as I blogged) during the special election candidate Brown claimed that climate-change was something scientists had yet to reach agreement on. Now, I suspect, he's moved on to full-blown denialism, especially since he voted for an amendment that would have stripped the EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases. But I live in hope and would welcome a reassuring call from the senator's office.

Do you share my curiosity about Scott Brown's voting intentions? Would you like to know whether he would support a carbon-cap bill that would bring clean-energy jobs to Massachusetts?

Here's the number to call: 202 224 4543. Ask for Nat Hoopes, Senator Brown's legislative assistant who is handling the issue. If you do manage to speak with him, please let me know.

On the Beach

2010-07-13T14:58:00.001-07:00

We Vickerys are creatures of habit, especially when it comes to our summer holidays. We go to the same place every year, namely Bethany Beach, Delaware. Not exactly Biarritz, I know, but it's walkable, not too overbuilt, and family friendly.

During this year's trip to Bethany Beach we decided to attend the nearest 350.org Hands Across the Sands event to protest offshore drilling. The organizer was a high-school student, which was encouraging. She told us the start time and gave us clear directions. All we had to do was walk about one quarter of a mile up the beach to the rendezvous point, join hands with other climate-action types, pose for a few photographs for uploading to the Hands Across the Sands website, and head home for lunch with a warm glow of worthiness.

Moving two adults and three kids along a quarter mile of sand is a straightforward task (it's just Bethany Beach, not the Oregon Trail) and we should have accomplished it in under 15 minutes. We set off at 10:45, aiming to be there for the great hand-holding ceremony on the dot of 11 o'clock. But before we'd reached the garden gate Pixie (12) decided she had to change footwear (flip-flop issues), and then -- when we were properly under way -- Arthur (5) noticed several pieces of driftwood in need of protracted inspection, and Peter (43) spotted dolphins out in the bay and how can you not stop to watch the dolphins? Needless to say, ours were not among the Hands that joined across the Sands.

We had the best of intentions but we dawdled, foot-dragged, and failed to take note of time slipping away. Do I need to spell out the moral of the climate-change parable?

We can tackle climate change or we can carry on burning coal. We can't do both. As the latest issue of Union of Concerned Scientists publication Catalyst points out, "coal-fired power plants are the United States' largest source of heat-trapping emissions." And the time to march away from coal is not tomorrow, but yesterday. Vickery-style footdragging is not an option.

Fortunately, the legislature of Minnesota can boast greater alacrity than the Vickerys. Back in 2001, it told the state's power giant, Xcel Energy, to clean up its act. With their eyes on Xcel's coal-burning plants the state's lawmakers established a body to supervise the company's reduction of global-warming gases. Last year the company unveiled one of the results: a power station that used to burn coal but now uses natural gas. You can read more about the coal-to-gas conversion here.

By the way, Xcel also runs a hybrid solar-and-coal power station in Grand Junction, Colorado. Did it come up with the idea all by itself? No, the Colorado legislature passed a law -- predictably christened "the Clean Air - Clean Jobs Act" -- mandating the change. Despite opposition from the mining industry and some labor unions, lawmakers instructed Xcel to retire, repower, or retrofit its coal-burning stations, and switch to natural gas or other low/zero emission energy sources.

To recap, the state legislatures of Minnesota and Colorado have compelled the power companies that do business in their states to quit burning coal. Is the coal industry crying foul and predicting catastrophic consequences, e.g. electricity prices going through the roof, unaffordable heating bills, puppies with frostbite, etc.? Of course. But the power companies are complying and converting their power stations from coal to less harmful fuels.

Our commonwealth is host to a dozen coal-burning plants, including Mount Tom in Holyoke, a facility that belches a million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. Here in Massachusetts we burn coal from mountain-top removal sites in West Virginia (mining without miners), and surprisingly perhaps, even more of it from Colombia. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists' 2008 figures, Colombia supplied 83% of the coal burned in Massachusetts. So it's not as though our coal habit is helping keep American coal-miners employed.

As the Xcel story shows, it is perfectly feasible to convert power stations from coal to other energy sources. The technology and know-how are there. The only other essential ingredient is political will.

Colorado and Minnesota are leading the way, forcing the power companies to do what they won't do of their own accord. Is our overwhelmingly Democratic state legislature racing to pass a similar measure here in Massachusetts? Don't bet on it. You'd be safer putting your money on the Vickerys making it to a beach protest on time.

Gold Medal for Gall

2010-02-19T09:15:00.000-08:00

First, my apologies to the neighbors: Watching the Winter Olympics the other night I think I uttered a sound somewhere between a Lindsey Vonn triump-shriek and a Howard Dean scream. What was the cause of my outburst? Was it Yevgeny Plushenko's haircut; Apollo Ohno's annoying little beard; or the dearth of Olympic-level Welsh snowboarders? No, it was the coal commercial.

What glued me to my seat during the the commercial break (the point at which I usually head to the kitchen) was a coal ad that managed to combine carbon sequestration with a soldier serving overseas. I couldn't quite connect the dots but, after my initial high-decibel response, I reflected on the sheer scale of the achievement and raised my beer in a salute to the spin doctors of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, the fossil-fuel front group. Riding high on their success in snagging $3.8 billion of our money in last year's stimulus bill, the coal industry has pulled off the truly Olympian feat of bracketing their climate-changing, asthma-inducing product with athletics and heroism.

Climate vandalism as athletic patriotism; I hadn't thought of it that way before. If I was in charge of medal distribution, they'd get a gold for gall.

But I'm not in charge of medal distribution, nor am I in charge of tax-dollar distribution. That's the remit of the Democratic Congress and White House, which recently treated their fossil-fuel and tree-burning allies to a few bucket-loads of loot while underwriting loans for the nuclear lobby. For example, they're giving $1 billion to the coal industry to build a new "clean coal" (sic) plant in Illinois and $8 billion in federal loan guarantees for two new nuclear reactors in Georgia. That's spreading the wealth around, all right.

On a happier note, before settling down with the family to watch the Winter Olympics I had been at a Green Party meeting in Amherst where two statewide candidates, Jill Stein (running for Governor) and Nat Fortune (running for State Auditor), made the case for voting GRP in the November elections.

When a member of the audience asked Jill what we should do about the coal-burning power station at Mount Tom, her answer was simple and direct: "We need to close it down."

Amen to that.

NOT THE COMFY CHAIR!

2010-02-07T05:50:00.001-08:00

The number of Britons who acknowledge the reality of climate change has fallen, according to a recent BBC poll.

I shall be offering no prizes (repeat, no prizes) for guessing the source of climate confusion in the land of my birth. But if you guessed "oil companies," give yourself a pat on the back.

ExxonMobil is one of the fossil-fuel giants behind a network of right-wing think tanks successfully pushing climate-change-denialism into the popular media, says the UK's Independent newspaper.

The bright side? It's not only Americans who are falling prey to corporate-sponsored climate-change denialism. Apparently a British accent is no predictor of intellectual ability or an indication of inherent authority after all, although any of my students (or offspring) who happen to have stumbled across this blog should disregard that last comment. I really do know best.

In the face of the Right's success in making climate-change denialism part of the debate among grown-ups who ought to know better, how should green social democrats respond? One option is to continue supporting Democratic office-holders who talk a good game about climate-change solutions but vote for decidedly dodgy cap-and-trade non-solutions like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). For a strong indictment of carbon-trading I recommend Mark Schapiro's "Conning the Climate" in the current Harper's Magazine.

Another option, popular among Democratic activists and voters alike during the senatorial special election, was to take what I think of as the Comfy Chair Option. My goal in this post is to urge readers to renounce that option and all its works. But I do understand its appeal.

After a decade of directionless Democratic supermajorities in Massachusetts and a year of Democratic under-achievement at the national level, many Bay State progressives are feeling disappointed, disaffected, and distraught. Yes, there is a welcoming home waiting for them in the Green Party, but even I (a Green with the zeal of the convert) have to admit to a continuing dearth of legislative candidates and active local branches. And on the path from Democratic to Green is the comfy chair of alienation.

Some contributors to the Dem blog BlueMassGroup are having a healthy and robust debate about the merits of fighting on within the party as opposed to supporting third-party candidates, among them my friend Leo Maley, who managed my successful 2004 campaign for Governor's Council. One of Leo's observations that jumps off the screen is that the 25 open seats in this year's legislative elections present progressives with an opportunity to change the dynamic of the State House for the next decade.

As the manufacture and dissemination of news increasingly becomes the preserve of the major corporations, it becomes even more important to jump into the public arena and stay there, particularly the part of the arena dedicated to electoral politics. Whether progressives devote their resources to fighting on within the Democratic Party or to taking it outside by joining the Greens matters less than their decision to shun the comfy chair.

I would like some of those 25 districts Leo mentions to end up in Green hands, but in the absence of Green candidates that hardly seems likely. On the other hand, potential Green candidates reading this should note that it's not too late to take out papers. Or persuade a friend to run. Or if you're sticking with the Dems and yo're in one of those 25 districts, support the greenest social democrat in the race. Anything but the comfy chair.

By the way, regular readers may have noticed that whatever the question I happen to pose in Mass Greens, the answer is usually "run for office as a Green." So stay tuned for my upcoming post "What should we do about the Celtics ranking 29th out of 30 in rebounding?"

Green: Not Brown

2010-01-17T12:48:00.000-08:00

Tuesday's special election presents a challenge to Greens. At difficult times like these I turn for guidance to the words of Woody Allen, who wrote:

"One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

When I go into the booth at the North Amherst fire station after work on Tuesday, I intend to vote for despair and utter hopelessness. In other words, I'm voting for the Democrat.

In reality I didn't have to think too long and hard about it. Scott Brown is a global warming denialist who opposes marriage equality. To quote another great humorist, VP Joe Biden, let me say that again (after a dramatic pause, looking straight into the camera): Scott Brown is a global warming denialist who opposes marriage equality.

Slam dunk, as we Americans say.

I shall be casting my vote simply to keep Scott Brown out of the U.S. Senate. I would vote for Scott Brown's Democratic opponent even if it was Stewie Griffin, Family Guy's diminutive evil genius bent on world domination. I would slap Vote Stewie bumper stickers all over my car, max out on contributions to the Stewie for Senate Committee, and make GOTV calls for Stewie until hoarse. Part of me wants to move to Brown's Norfolk, Bristol and Middlesex state senate district so I can vote against him there too. In real life, I will even go so far as to vote for Martha Coakley.

In an IRV election with a Green in the race would Martha Coakley get my first preference? No. But this isn't an IRV election with a Green in the race. It's a choice between a Democrat, a libertarian sailing under the Independent flag, and (in case you weren't paying attention) a global warming denialist who opposes marriage equality.

On Tuesday, please join me in voting for despair and utter hopelessness. Early and often.

Recent correspondence

2009-12-18T13:55:00.000-08:00

Just before the holidays I received a letter from Gerard Mestrallet, head of GDF Suez, in response to my request that the company switch from coal to solar at Mount Tom. Here is an excerpt of Mr. Mestrallet's letter:

"Because... equipment to control the emissions of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) only exists today in R&D environments and not of the size of an industrial plant, GDF SUEZ instead participates in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a ten-state market-based effort aimed at reducing CO2. The company purchases allowances to account for any CO2 emitted at Mt. Tom through an auction, proceeds from which are then invested in renewable energy projects, energy efficiency, and other clean technologies."

Yes, cap-and-trade; the darling of the fossil-fuel peddlers and their apologists on Capitol Hill and Beacon Hill alike.

As I've mentioned before, relying on cap-and-trade to fix the climate is like relying on subprime lending to fix the meltdown. This video from the Story of Stuff Project and Climate Justice Now! (which I found via the Institute for Policy Studies) explains why cap-and-trade schemes like RGGI do nothing to ameliorate climate change.

In addition to the letter from Gerard Mestrallet, I received an email from Ingrid Nestle, a Green member of the German parliament. I had written to Ms. Nestle about anti-coal activism in Brunsbuettel, where GDF Suez is planning a new coal-burning power station. Although the issue has not been the deciding factor in parliamentary elections, Ingrid Nestle said, the candidates and parties that oppose coal happen to have been successful. And, she explained, the grassroots movement behind the anti-coal candidates is on a winning streak:

In all existing locations that are home to coal power plants in Germany there is heavy resistance towards new coal power plants. The protests are supported by several political parties, citizens initiatives, environmental organizations, churches and trade unions. These protests have in the past resulted in repeated successes; the construction of several power plants fell through. Most recently, the new construction of a hard coal power plant in Lubmin (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) was effectively prevented. The Danish energy company, Dong Energy, pulled back all of its development plans after it failed to successfully negotiate licensing procedures, among other factors.

Our counterparts in Germany are winning! This is welcome news, and an inspiring note on which to start 2010. So let's keep the pressure on GDF Suez and its major shareholder, i.e. the French government, to switch Mount Tom from coal to solar.

It could happen here

2009-12-15T17:48:00.000-08:00

If you've been watching events in Copenhagen, maybe you're asking yourself "How do we get from protests to power?" It's a particularly poignant question in one-party Massachusetts.

Steven Hill's new book Europe's Promise discusses the way Europe practices democracy, and the twenty-something Green legislator Ingrid Nestle provides one noteworthy example of the difference.

When the people of Brunsbuettel, Germany, learned that energy giant GDF Suez was planning to build a coal-burning power station in their town they made their opposition felt in at least two ways: through demonstrations and through the ballot box. They voted Green in sufficient numbers to send the party's Ingrid Nestle to the Bundestag (Germany's national legislature).

Climate-change activists in Massachusetts can demonstrate, but can they vote for the party that truly represents them? Most of the time the answer is no, because in Massachusetts usually only one party -- the Democratic party -- fields candidates. Germany, in contrast, has learned that democracy is a game for more than one player.

Germany, like most European countries, encourages multi-party democracy by using proportional representation (PR). This ensures that the number of legislative seats a political party gets reflects the proportion of the votes it won in the election. So if a party wins 10% of the votes it gets 10% of the seats. Earlier this year the German Greens won 10% of the votes nationwide and ended up with 68 seats in the 622-member Bundestag.

Is the Democratic-controlled Massachusetts Legislature likely to do the Greens (and the voters) the lemming-like favor of switching to PR? Let's not devote too much time and mental energy to pondering that one; not when we have better things to do, like tackling climate change, the recession, and the healthcare crisis.

No, the plurality system -- in all its debate-suffocating, supermajority-perpetuating glory -- is with us for the foreseeable future. The Democratic leadership is not going to change the voting system just because PR is fairer, any more than it's going to enact single-payer healthcare just because it's in the Democratic party platform. By the way, there's a reason they call it a platform: A platform is useful for getting on a train, but when the train leaves the station, bound for Beacon Hill, the platform stays where it is.

Returning to the Greens, could they win seats in the Massachusetts Legislature without PR? Based on the experience of some so-called third parties in other places with the same winner-take-all, single-member-district plurality voting system that we have, I think so.

For example, let's look at Britain's Liberal Democrats. Working within an electoral system like ours, a system biased in favor of the two big-tent parties (Labour and Conservative), the Liberal Democrats have boosted their presence in the UK's House of Commons from a mere six seats in 1951 to today's total of 62. In the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly (similar to state legislatures in the US) the Liberal Democrats have become natural coalition partners, sharing government portfolios and helping shape policy.

How did the they do it? Partly by luck, of course, like so much else in politics. But also as a result of planning and foresight: by campaigning around issues their grassroots supporters were passionate about about, from the apparently mundane to the almost esoteric; by building up their base in diverse communities, from blighted inner cities to middle-class suburbs and far-flung Scottish islands; by targeting their resources on winnable seats; by forging electoral non-compete agreements with allied parties; and, above all, by taking the long view.

In the immediate post-War years the Liberals had almost vanished. Back then the standing joke was that the parliamentary Liberal party could caucus in a telephone booth. But they clung on, and in 1964, with the charismatic Jo Grimond at the helm, their share of the nationwide vote climbed to 11% and their number of seats in Britain 635-member House of Commons to nine. In 1974 they won 19% of the votes, which (due to the vagaries of the plurality voting, single-member-district system) translated to just 14 seats.

But by 1997 the Liberal Democrats had 46 seats, and after next year's general election they may well hold the balance of power.

Britain's Greens have yet to win a foothold in the House of Commons, but that looks set to change next year. Thanks to PR, the Green party of the UK already has one member of the European Parliament, Caroline Lucas, and she is on track to make history by winning the party's first seat in the House of Commons.

How did the Greens in Britain get to this point? With a few variations, in a similar way to the route the Liberal Democrats took. Click here for one of the party's election videos, by the way.

Closer to home we have the Vermont Progressive Party, which has eight seats in the state legislature. Like the Massachusetts Greens, the Vermont Progressives are fighting for farmers. In 2006, for example, their bill on GMO (genetically modified organisms) which aimed to protect small farmers from the agri-giants, passed both houses before succumbing to the governor's veto.

What kind of voting system does Vermont have? The same as ours: plurality voting in single-member districts. If the Vermont Progressive Party can win seats without PR, so can our state's truly progressive party, the Greens.

Yes, it could happen here.

German Greens Fight GDF Suez

2009-12-09T16:05:00.000-08:00

The town of Brunsbuettel in the German state of Schleswig Holstein is already home to a nuclear reactor, so when GDF Suez announced plans to build a coal-burning power station there as well locals took to the streets in protest. Hundreds of people -- and a lot of tractors -- rallied to send GDF Suez a message. As the slogan says: For you, Money. For us, dirt and disease.

At the forefront of the fight against the proposed coal plant were Ingrid Nestle and Konstantin von Notz (pictured right) legislative candidates for the Green Party. Echoing our German allies, I hope Greens in Massachusetts can crank up the noise against GDF Suez's coal-burning facility at Mount Tom.

Because the entity that owns the controlling stake in GDF Suez is none other than the French government, I have asked the French consul in Boston to pass on a message to his bosses in Paris: Stop burning coal at Mount Tom! I put it more politely than that, of course.

If you would like to add your voice, here's the consulate's email address: consulat@consulfrance-boston.org

Just a little off the top

2009-12-06T10:20:00.000-08:00

After the last posting several Mass Greens readers emailed me to let me know that they were writing Gerard Mestrallet (CEO of GDF Suez, the company that owns the coal-burning power station at Mount Tom, Holyoke) urging him to switch Mount Tom from coal to solar.

If you have written your letter already I extend a big, heartfelt thank you. If my request has slipped down or off your to-do list, here are three more reasons to join the campaign to stop the world's biggest energy giant from burning coal at Mount Tom: Donetta Blankenship and her two kids.

Watching the coal train roll through Amherst on its way to Mount Tom, I have sometimes wondered where the coal comes from. So when I picked up the current edition of Yes! magazine I was happy to learn that there is a way to trace at least some of the coal to its source. I typed in my zipcode and discovered my connection to Rawl, West Virginia, home of Donetta Blankenship and her two children.

Donetta lives with the consequences of Massey Energy's mountain-blasting activities including dust, debris, and a sludge impoundment (a vast pool of toxic waste). Her kids have asthma, and their drinking water contains elevated levels of arsenic, lead, and other toxins. Donetta says,

" [the water] runs out of the pipe like tomato soup; thick with orange sediment."

With mountaintop removal, companies like Massey Energy can mine coal with out coalminers. Instead of paying people a decent wage to go undergound and dig out the coal seam by seam, they just blow the tops of the mountains like the one near Doetta Blankenship's home. First, of course, they cut down and burn all the trees. Then they dump the debris -- rocks and topsoil that used to constitute the mountaintop -- into the streams and river below.

One of the two mountains in the image at the top of this post is Mount Greylock, here in Western Massachusetts. The other is in Rawl, West Virginia. You will notice that the summit of the Rawl mountain has vanished, replaced by a scarred wasteland.

Can you imagine what the Berkshires and the Holyoke Range would look like if we treated them the way our energy-providers treat the mountains of West Virginia? I really don't think we would stand for it, and I think we would fight back. That's what communities like Rawls are doing, demanding an end to mountaintop removal and a switch to clean, renewable energy.

Our electricity comes from places like Rawl, West Virginia, and the ordinary working people of Rawl -- families like Donetta Blankenship's -- are paying the price. One way to show solidarity with their struggle is to demand that GDF Suez switch from coal to solar at Mount Tom.

Click here for a video that shows the impact we are having on the people and landscape of Rawl, West Virginia. But before you click, please set aside 15 minutes to write GDF Suez. Here's the address again:

Monsieur Gerard Mestrallet
GDF Suez
22 rue du docteur Lancereaux
Paris 75392
France

Merry Christmas, Monsieur Mestrallet

2009-11-25T12:28:00.000-08:00

December has arrived so I am gearing up for Christmas.

I'm what Richard Dawkins would call a cultural Christian, as opposed to a Christian of the religious variety, which means (among other things) that I celebrate Christmas. I do so with such gusto that I start listening to Christmas carols several weeks before Thanksgiving, even though the other members of the household consider this borderline felonious.

I mention this because I'm about to ask you for a Christmas present. Do not be alarmed. All it will cost is fifteen minutes of your time, the price of one sheet of paper, an envelope, and an air-mail stamp. I am asking you to write a letter to Gerard Mestrallet, CEO of GDF Suez, the company that owns the coal-burning Mount Tom power station, asking him to convert Mount Tom from coal to solar.

Last March about 40 climate activists gathered at Mount Tom and made the same request, but so far we haven't heard back. Now that the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research has published a report predicting that by the end of this century ocean levels will have risen enough to threaten some of the world's biggest cities, the time seems right for us to send a reminder.

Regular readers of Mass Greens may recall that GDF Suez is one of the biggest energy companies on the planet. In fact, according to the corporate website, GDF Suez is the "No. 1 independent power producer in the world." Another claim the company's website makes is this:

By helping to prevent climate warming, preserving fossil fuels and natural resources, and promoting environmentally friendly energy, GDF Suez is working to control the impact of its own activities and those of its customers on the environment.

Here's one more quote, this time on the subject of solar power:

[GDF Suez will] take all measures to increase the share of this
clean, renewable energy in its energy mix, by being active across the value chain: from research to the construction and set up of facilities.

Hmm. Last March we gather at Mount Tom to demand that GDF Suez stop burning coal, and suddenly (eight months later) the company starts touting its commitment to climate-change solutions. Coincidence? Well, yes!

But while we can't claim credit for changing the hearts and minds of the energy giant's leaders, we can seize the opportunity to hold them to their "we're-ever-so-green" propaganda. Earlier today I wrote a short letter to Gerard Mestrallet asking him to transform Mount Tom from a coal-burning plant to a solar facility. I cited the claims on his company's website and compared them with his company's actions here in Western Massachusetts where it pumps over a million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. I told that him that the company's work on photovoltaics in Belgium is something to be proud of, but that exacerbating global warming via Mount Tom is not.

I am under no illusions that he will take my advice. But nor do I imagine that the people who run energy companies will get serious about climate-change solutions without us (the active citizens) pushing them.

If we had a Green governor in Massachusetts, or a Green speaker of the house, it wouldn't be left to active citizens alone to do the pushing. Monsieur Mestrallet and his colleagues would be receiving correspondence on State House letterhead and getting the message that if GDF Suez wants to do business in Massachusetts it had better switch from coal to renewables a.s.a.p.

But we don't have any Greens in the State House (yet) so the job falls to Greens -- and small-G greens -- outside the State House to send the message. Lyndon B. Johnson once said that being president involves telling people to do what they should be doing without the president having to tell them to do it. I think the same applies to active citizenship.

So let's tell Gerard Mestrallet to do what he should be doing. By way of an early Christmas present to yours truly, please send your letters to:

Monsieur Gerard Mestrallet

GDF Suez
22 rue du docteur Lancereaux
Paris 75392
France

Time to Start Running

2009-11-20T17:38:00.000-08:00

Who should be running for the Legislature next year? Click here for my suggestion:

Lima Uniform

2009-11-12T06:10:00.000-08:00

"Stop your vessel. You are running into danger."

That's what the signal flags Lima and Uniform mean.

And those signal flags should be flying from the flagpole at the Massachusetts State House, where the ruling Democrats are gearing up to auction off over 28,000,000 (yes, twenty-eight million) tons of CO2 pollution permits next month.

The energy companies that buy the permits through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) acquire the legal right to dump 28,000,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere during the year 2010.

Auctioning pollution permits through cap-and-trade schemes is a Wall Street approach to the climate crisis, akin to trying to dig our way out of the recession using mortgage-backed securities. It just won't work.

For example, are those energy companies doing what NASA climate scientist James Hansen has called for, i.e. phasing out coal? No, at least not so far as I could tell last time I drove past the coal-burning plant at Mount Tom.

And last time I checked what scientists are saying about sea levels rising because of climate change, the news was not good. The current rate of increase is 0.75 mm per year according to the BBC's report based on the latest edition of the journal Science. Burning more coal is one sure way to keep pumping up those sea levels.

The Beacon Hill Democrats need to understand that we can get serious about tackling climate change or we can carry on burning coal, but we can't do both. Encouraging speculation in CO2 pollution through the RGGI scheme reveals not only a lack of seriousness, but an irresponsible roll-the-dice approach to the most serious crisis our species has confronted. Fortunately, the voters are paying attention to the Lima Uniform signal flags even if their state reps and senators are not.

What the Legislature has failed to catch up with is the shift in public opinion that Christine MacDonald describes in the current edition of E Magazine (Why the End May be Coming for Coa l), writing that "a sea change has taken place in the last few years, as the media has focused more attention on the debate and the public has become better acquainted with coal's dark side."

Instead of using discredited Wall Street methods that help enrich the coal-burning energy giants, the Legislature and the Executive should be rewarding and encouraging the people who are doing the most to tackle climate change here in Massachusetts: our small, locally-owned green businesses and our organic farmers.

If clean-energy activists are right about the sea change, the Democrats on Beacon Hill had better start paddling hard to catch the tide. On the other hand, perhaps a few of them should jump overboard and make room for some Green legislators.

Green Wedge

2009-11-04T08:21:00.000-08:00

Regular readers are used to me going on about how we need a Green presence in the Legislature, a kind of Green wedge. Well, I am increasingly confident that over the next few election cycles the Greens are going to pull it off.

Curious about how the GRP will do it? Come along to the party's statewide convention on Saturday, November 21, 9:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. at Tilton Hall, Clark University, 950 Main Street, Worcester.

You don't have to be a registered Green to attend (but you do in order to vote during the afternoon business session) and you can sign up to attend the convention right here. If you're thinking about joining the party, the convention is a wonderful opportunity to meet like-minded, action-oriented people and to dip your toe in the water of Green politics.

By the way, Scott Laugenour, the Massachusetts Greens' membership director, made some important corrections to my Join the Party posting. He pointed out that would-be Green candidates (like me) do not, in fact, win the magic G after their names on the ballot by choosing the Green Party USA designation. So there goes my reason for opting for Green Party USA over the GRP! Thanks to Scott I went to Amherst town hall yesterday and registered as a GRP voter.

For the full story please check out Scott's post.

Pre-Convention Thoughts

2009-11-03T14:40:00.000-08:00

In the run-up to the GRP convention on November 21, I have been thinking about how our 2010 candidates should strike the right balance in talking about climate change. We want our campaign to be prescriptive as well as descriptive, by which I mean we want to offer real solutions in addition to explaining the nature of the emergency. We don't want to scare people. Or do we?

Greens in other places are wrangling with this issue and coming up with innovative approaches. For example, check out this video from the Australian Greens, called Climate Code Green. If you're so inclined, please let me know what you think.

Join the Party

2009-11-02T16:43:00.001-08:00

I am delighted to hear that Greens are already coming forward to run in the 2010 legislative elections, so here's a tip for anyone thinking of joining the candidates club.

Running for office as a Green requires registering as a Green voter. If you're already a registered Green, no problem. But if you're registered as a Democrat or Unenrolled, now is the time to switch.

Switching to Green is a two-step process. Stage one is easy. All you have to do is go to your city or town hall and let the election officials know that you want to change your party affiliation. Stage two is a little more complicated because it involves a choice; you have to let the election officials know which of the two Green designations you're opting for.

Yes, there are two Green designations in Massachusetts: the Green-Rainbow Party (GRP) and the Green Party USA. When I defected from the Democratic party I opted for the latter, mainly because if you run for office under the Green Party USA designation you get the letter G after your name. In contrast, the GRP designation enjoys (if that's the right word) the letter J.

One of these days I plan to run for office again, and I would like to make things as easy as possible for the voters. I'll be reaching out beyond the core of registered Greens to people who have traditionally voted Democratic, voters who are used to seeing the letter D after their chosen candidate's name because (at the risk of laboring an obvious point) D is the first letter of the word Democratic. It would be a reasonable assumption on their part that the Green candidate's name will be accompanied by the first letter of the word Green, i.e. G.

Persuading large numbers of traditionally Democratic voters to vote Green will present challenges aplenty before the voters enter the polling booth, so I don't want anything -- and I mean anything -- putting them off at the very last moment. For those wavering voters who won't decide how they will vote until they are actually holding the pen over the ballot I would like to remove as many deterrents to voting Green as possible, including the cognitive dissonance that could set in at the sight of the word Green followed by the letter J.

For me, then, there are advantages to registering as a G. On the other hand, registering as a J makes you part of the GRP, a political party with almost 7,000 registered voters (compared with the Green Party USA's tally of roughly 1,000 Massachusetts voters) an infrastructure and a respectable electoral track record. For example, in 2006 the GRP's nominee for Secretary of the Commonwealth, Dr. Jill Stein, won more than 350,000 votes and the GRP nominee for Treasurer, James O'Keefe, did nearly as well with about 320,000.

Winning over a quarter-million votes in Massachusetts was a significant achievement and I think it's safe to say that in 2010 the GRP will do even better if it contests any of the statewide offices. So for Massachusetts voters on the lookout for an organized, on-the-ground Green presence the GRP is the only game in town. Another reason for registering J as opposed to G is the ability to participate fully in the GRP. For historic reasons, full voting membership in the GRP is not open to people who, like me, are registered G.

My advice in a nutshell: If you're completely and utterly hung up on the silliness of the J issue or simply cannot bring yourself to join a party with the word "rainbow" in its name, register G. Otherwise, tell your voting officials that you would like to affiliate with the GRP. Either way, now is the time to turn Green. If you look in the mirror and see a Green join the party.

Flagging Popularity

2009-10-25T12:42:00.000-07:00

With just 10% of the seats in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the Republicans don't usually rock the boat. In fact, aside from the yawning deficit, mounting unemployment, and soaring healthcare costs, the Massachusetts ship of state is on even keel, so up on deck it's smiles all around. Speaker DeLeo looks satisfied with his tame opposition, and Minority Leader Brad Jones's Ten Percenters show no signs of unseemly ambition (e.g. the desire to win more seats).

But in a startling turn of events on Beacon Hill last week the Republicans filed a bill (news enough, you might say) requiring public-school students to learn "the proper etiquette, correct use, and display of the [U.S.] flag." Not necessarily a bad idea but probably redundant: By the time they reach high school I think most students have worked out that in politics the correct use of the flag is to drape yourself in it.

So that was the big Republican legislative achievement last week. You will recall that last week culminated in the International Day of Climate Action, and thousands of Bay Staters marked the event by demanding political action to bring atmospheric CO2 down to the reasonably safe level of 350 parts per million. What kind of bills would a real opposition party have filed last week?

Here's one suggestion: a bill adopting California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) immediately. The LCFS limits CO2 emissions from energy plants to 500 grams per kilowatt hour, deterring the power companies from burning fossil fuels and enouraging them to switch to genuine renewables. The European Union adopted California's LCFS in 2008 but here in Massachusetts the Democrats are still only thinking about following suit with the process not scheduled to even get under way until early 2010.

A responsible opposition -- a real opposition -- would push the Democratic-controlled Legislature to adopt the Low Carbon Fuel Standard today, with an emergency preamble so that it could take effect immediately. Instead, we get a bill about flag education.

It doesn't have to be this way, but for so long as the only other political party in the Legislature is the Republican party, Massachusetts politics will continue to suffer from an opposition-shaped gap. We can fill that gap with Green legislators, and to get Green legislators we need brave Green candidates who will run grassroots, shoestring campaigns against well-known incumbents with bulging warchests. Any volunteers?

Greens: Fighting for Farmers

2009-10-19T16:30:00.000-07:00

If Michael Moore's latest film has got you worried that Congress is giving all our money to the meltdown-makers on Wall Street you can breathe a sigh of relief. It isn't all going to Wall Street; much of it is going to the fossil-fuel industry.

The Environmental Law Institute's recent study (Estimating U.S. Government Subsidies to Energy Sources: 2002-08) describes how our senators and representatives coddled the major greenhouse-gas emitters even while the enormity of global warming was growing clearer by the day. The study demonstrates that between 2002 and 2008 the fossil-fuel industry raked in subsidies totaling $72 billion. In other words, even after scientists established the reality of climate change beyond reasonable doubt Congress kept on transferring enormous sums of public money to private entities that willfully damage the public interest.

Seventy-two billion dollars: That's a lot of money. What if we made a similar investment in genuine renewables (not fake solutions like biomass and cap-and-trade carbon gambling programs)? With an investment on that scale we could transform our lives for the better and pull the CO2 in the atmosphere back down toward 350 ppm.

This is do-able. One recent report in Scientific American claims that we can switch from fossil-fuels to 100% renewable energy in ten years, making a clean break with goal, oil, and gas. At the same time we could be investing in organic farming, which is a reliable and productive method of capturing carbon according to another study, this one from the Worldwatch Institute.

Sequestering carbon through organic farming is good news for all of us, and Green politicians need to get out front, leading the demand for greater investment for our region's organic farmers. There are hundreds of organic farmers working the land in our part of the world (e.g. the members of NOFA), fighting climate change and feeding us at the same time. They should be able to count on Greens as active, vocal allies.

Spending $72 billion on coal and oil is the height of fossil-foolery. Let's put that folly behind us, and start investing in the land and the families who farm it responsibly.

Greenwash Gremlin's October Surprise

2009-10-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

Two surprises have come my way so far this month. First there was the news from the activists at Stop Chewing Carbon that the proposed biomass-burning facility in Greenfield would produce more CO2 per megawatt hour than the coal-burning Mount Tom plant in Holyoke but would still qualify for taxpayer assistance. Then came the news from Associated Press that Saudi Arabia is looking for public assistance too, just in case the world becomes less dependent on oil.

While stories about energy corporations getting tax breaks and other incentives under the guise of "green energy" may raise my ire they fail to raise either of my eyebrows nowadays. The AP story about Saudi Arabia joining the dole queue, on the other hand, sent both eyebrows upward and nearly triggered a coffee-out-the-nose event. As a forty-something I clearly remember the effects of the 1973 oil embargo and, seven years later, the Saudi government's expulsion of Her Majesty's ambassador to Riyadh in protest at a British TV drama called Death of a Princess, so I have no illusions about the regime. But not even in my most cynical of moods had I ever imagined the oil-rich theocratic oligarchy asking for a hand-out.

The outrageousness of the Saudi request has me at a loss for words, other than to ask myself whether, with billionaires posing as victims and tree-burners dressed up as tree-huggers, Halloween came early this year. But I do have a public-policy suggestion for countering greenwashing here in Massachusetts.

What is the appropriate response when companies tout themselves as green in order to qualify for public funding? Part of me wants to march into court armed with Chapter 26, Section 91, of the Massachusetts General Laws and force them to stop, one by one. After all, what is the point of having a law against false advertising if we don't use it?

The other part of me (the saner part, I think) wants to file legislation that would set sensible conditions for providing electricity in Massachusetts and our neighboring states. My proposed interstate compact would create an incentive for power companies to switch to genuinely renewable energy. How? By prohibiting the fossil-based alternatives.

If a corporation wants to sell power to the people of New England it would have to prove that the power came from a non-fossil source. In other words, the only way an energy provider could do business in New England would be for it to get out of fossil fuels completely and into renewables a.s.a.p. The compact would involve the six New England state governments acting together -- with each state punching above its weight -- to take on the power moguls.

I think it's worth a try. What do you think?

More Choices, More Voices

2009-09-10T13:40:00.001-07:00

Voter choice in Massachusetts? Any color, so long as it's blue.

"Any color, so long as it's black," Henry Ford reputedly said about the Model T.

And here in Massachusetts you can vote for whichever party you want, so long as it's the Democratic party.

If you would like more choices, this blog's for you because it discusses a measure that would make it easier for people from other political parties -- yes, there really are other political parties in Massachusetts -- to run for office. The measure is Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) and if the hardworking activists at Voter Choice succeed, you will see a question about IRV on the 2010 ballot.

IRV (a form of ranked-choice voting) lets voters rank candidates in order of preference, allowing you to vote for the party you like most without accidentally helping the party you like least. Let's say you're one of those people who wants to vote Green but worries about wasting your vote and letting in the Republicans. IRV resolves your quandry.

In a three-way race between a Democrat, a Republican, and a Green you could rank the Green first and, by ranking the Democrat second, know that your vote will not give aid and comfort to the Republican. Imagine that: an election where the choice was not simply between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Why do we need IRV in Massachusetts? To bring us a step closer to multi-party democracy and all its attendent benefits, such as decision-makers having to meaningfully engage with a wider range of public policy proposals (e.g. single-payer healthcare). Why am I saying that Massachusetts does not qualify as a multi-party democracy? Because year after year, the vast majority of elections go uncontested giving the Democrats a free ride and, as a result, all the statewide offices (state and federal) and 90% of the seats in the Legislature belong to the Democrats.

Although nearly all the elected officials in Massachusetts are Democrats, it's not as though most of the voters are. In fact, half the voters in Massachusetts are registered independents. There are plenty of Republican and Green voters around too.

So why the no-choice elections and one-party state? Part of the answer is the plurality voting system, which rewards the already-dominant party and punishes challengers, especially challengers from so-called third parties. Plurality voting works well when there are just two parties, but if three or more parties field candidates the system operates like a roulette wheel, a roulette wheel tilted in favor of the major party.

For example, let's think the almost unthinkable and imagine an election where three parties run for every seat in the 160-member Massachusetts House of Representatives. In each and every district the voters would have a choice of Democrat, Republican, or Green. Obviously, in these unprecedented circumstances the poll workers would need to carry smelling salts to revive the stunned voters (and one another).

And if the election itself wasn't peculiar enough, the outcome could be positvely staggering; because even if the Republicans won 44% of the votes statewide and the Greens won 10%, the Democrats -- with just 46% of the votes -- could still win every seat in the House. So long as the Democrats, with the aura of incumbency, eked out a bare plurality in each and every district they would sweep the board, even though most people had voted for a different party.

In other words, the Greens could win 10% of the votes and 0% of the seats. This is the perversity of plurality voting in single-member districts, and it helps explain the reluctance of many potential Green candidates to step up to the plate.

A better way to elect legislatures, in my opinion, is through proprtional representation* but right now nobody is trying to put proportional representation on the ballot in Massachusetts. What we do have a chance to put on the ballot is IRV and if the question makes it to the ballot and most voters say Yes, the new law will go into operation for the 2012 elections. And then who knows what might happen. We could be awash with candidates, swimming in an ocean of democracy.

But first things first. To get the question on the ballot, the organizers need to gather 90,000 signatures over the next few weeks with a maximum of 16,000 signatures coming from any one county. No easy task. So if you'd like to get involved, please visit the Voter Choice website.

* If you'd like to discuss proportional representation, come see me after class.

Mass Budget

2009-04-15T20:15:00.001-07:00

Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo has unveiled the Democrats' proposed budget. The abridged version? Cuts to local aid and ongoing subsidies for the health-insurance industry. The party that brought you the corporate bail-outs at the federal level has its own state-level remedies here in Massachusetts.

GDF Suez: Responsible Corporate Citizen

2009-03-30T19:30:00.000-07:00

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1--PARIS: GDF Suez, owner of the coal-burning Mount Tom power station in Holyoke, Massachusetts, today announced a radical plan to tackle global warming. The company has adopted a new policy requiring that all GDF Suez smoke stacks will be green -- literally.

"Nobody can accuse us of standing still in the face of the climate crisis," declared Gerard Mestrallet, CEO of the European power giant. "If anybody doubts our commitment to green energy, they can check out Mount Tom. From now on, every molecule of the one million tons of CO2 that Mount Tom emits annually will pass through an undeniably green chimney."

Political leaders were swift to welcome to the announcement.

"I'm proud that Massachusetts is in the forefront of the green energy revolution," said local Senator Stan Rosenberg. "This is yet more evidence of our leadership role."

The senator unveiled plans to pick up the GDF Suez idea and run with it by expanding the green-painting program across the commonwealth. "In the next legislative session I will be filing a bill that would mandate green paint on all coal-burning power stations in Massachusetts," said Senator Rosenberg, "by 2050."

Governor Deval Patrick also chimed in with praise for the GDF Suez action. "Yes it's your broken climate, and it's your broken energy policy, " said the Governor, "but there's no getting around the fact that Mount Tom is now a very pretty shade of green. It was all my idea, by the way."

Brown: The New Green

2009-03-12T12:27:00.000-07:00

If you read the March edition of the magazine Ode you will find a brief interview with Nick Rosen, who complains that manufacturers, marketers, and advertisers have hijacked the word green. "They have made 'green' into a fashion item. Now everything is green."

As for a remedy to the corporate co-option of green, what does Rosen suggest, with his tongue (I assume) in his cheek? Simple. Adopt a new color, brown, which the advertising industry would never want to hijack because of its earthy connotations.

Rosen has a point. In the language of trademark law, the green brand has become both diluted and tarnished. It is no longer a helpful indicator of a product's or service's origins, ethos, or bona fides. To misquote Richard Nixon, we are all greens now. Even BP is green (do you like their new logo?) notwithstanding being up to its corporate neck in the Alberta oil sands, an extraction project that some real Greens have dubbed the biggest environmental crime in history.

Surrendering the word green to BP and its ilk and starting over with brown would be one way to deal with the problem, I suppose, but it is far from the only way. An alternative to such abject pusillanimity is for Greens to vigorously police the word green the way a business would protect its trademark, sending cease-and-desist letters to companies that claim to be green but really aren't. This idea has the one, but important, disadvantage of being utterly impractical for reasons that are too numerous to go into.

Another alternative to surrender is to fight back, not with legally baseless threats of trademark-infringement litigation, but through what Anne Elizabeth Moore calls mocketing.

I recommend the book Unmarketable, by the way. In the interests of full disclosure I must reveal that (a) I have no connection to Anne Elizabeth Moore or to the New Press, other than having read and enjoyed Unmarketable, and (b) I receive absolutely no commissions, fees, kickbacks, or even free merchandise for plugging the book.

So, on the subject of Green resistance through the medium of mocketing, I leave you with this thought. April 1st, also known as Fossil Fools Day, is just around the corner. Any suggestions?

Big-Box Swindle

2009-02-25T19:05:00.000-08:00

Before I write anything else, let me plug a book well worth reading: Stacy Mitchell's Big-Box Swindle. The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses, available at independent local bookstores such as Odyssey Books, South Hadley, and Food for Thought Books, Amherst.

In my last post I railed against our government subsidizing road-building, because the subsidies constitute a huge donation of our money to the fossil-fuel and auto industries and to the other corporations that benefit from sprawl. Big Box Swindle takes a hard look at the many ways policy-makers have served as the little helpers for the mega-retailers, diverting public resources to the private sector, in particular those parts of the private sector that do the most to impoverish our sense of community and humanity.

On the subject of Big Box Swindle, and picking up where my last post left off, let's remember that when politicians talk about "investing in roads and bridges" they are talking about laying down more bitumen, or asphalt. Bitumen is a form of petroleum composed of ancient algae and other living things. Millions of years ago, while alive, these plants and creatures absorbed sunlight. Unleashing the energy from that ancient sunlight releases CO2 that has been stored underground since the days long before our early shrew-like ancestors were dodging the dinosaurs.

Refining, or cracking, the bitumen requires heat from other fossil fuels and releases more ancient CO2 into the twenty-first century atmosphere, thereby exacerbating global warming. If mining and refining bitumen is damaging the climate, why do it? Because bitumen is so profitable. In addition to blacktop, the fossil-fuel industry can use bitumen to produce gasoline and a culture based on car-worship needs both; gas to put in the cars, and asphalt to drive them on.

One simple sentence from an article in ContractJournal.com, the site for Construction Industry News, explains why the price of bitumen is volatile and why it accounts for about a quarter of new road costs:

As oil prices have gone up refineries have found it more economical to crack bitumen for further oil, meaning there is less of the material available.

So whether it's turning the bitumen into gas or into asphalt, the industry makes a profit. For so long as we keep buying its products, it simply can't lose. The only people who lose out are those of us who need a liveable climate for ourselves and our children. While that would seem to include the people who run the fossil-fuel industry and their enablers in the world of policy-making, there's no getting around those short-term profits.

By the way, the nearest source of bitumen is the Alberta oil sands, where the fossil-fuel industry is committing what some environmentalists have called the biggest environmental crime in history. I don't have the stomach to dwell on the enormity of the crime, so please click the link in the preceding sentence if you're curious as to where the blacktop on your street comes from.

To summarize, investing in new roads and bridges means extracting more bitumen, enriching the fossil-fuel industry, perpetuating a car-centric culture, releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere, cooking the climate, and leaving our kids a planet unfit for human habitation. Which is one way to spend our money, I guess. But I believe there's a better way, one that allows us to look our kids in the eye.

Instead of subsidizing the corporations that got us into this mess, we can invest in cooperative independent businesses and local organic farms. We can oppose the land-use laws that encourage sprawl and, instead, enact better bylaws. We can stop building new roads and start reviving the old natural trade arteries, our waterways. We can stop buying power from the polluters and start generating our own power locally through wind, solar, and micro-hydro. We can relocalize and turn our communities into resilient, self-reliant transition towns, ready for a post-carbon era.

That's better than another WalMart, right?

Stimulating Global Warming

2009-02-11T07:52:00.001-08:00

With the economy and climate in crisis, how could burning more coal and building more nuclear weapons possibly help? That's a good question to ask Congress.

Physicians for Social Responsibility(PSR) points out that the Senate version of the so-called stimulus package includes $50 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear power and coal liquification. That's in addition to $2 billion for "near-zero emissions" coal-fired power plants and $1 billion for the Department of Energy's oxymoronic "Clean Coal Power Initiative." The Senate also wants to give $1 billion to the National Nuclear Security Administration.

PSR is asking citizens to call 202-225-3121 and tell their Representatives in Congress to get these gifts to the nuclear and coal giants out of the package.

Other big beneficiaries of the public-spending splurge are the auto-and-road lobby and the big-box stores that depend on auto-centric policies. As Greens, we know that our country's car culture is unsustainable. In the words of James Howard Kunsler, discussing what he calls "the fiasco of suburbia", we have made urban sprawl the basis of our economy.

So how could spending billions on roads possibly steer us toward re-localization? That's a good question to ask our state legislators.

Today's Boston Globe looks at the scramble for federal cash going on at the state level. There are about 4,500 "infrastructure projects" -- primarily roads -- on our elected officials' collective wish list. Great news for the oil companies and Wal Mart, but not so great for our friends and neighbors trying to run farms and small businesses. What we should be doing is re-localizing our economy by investing in local agriculture -- the center of a sustainable infrastructure -- not bailing out the big-box retailers.

Call the State House (617-722-2000) today and tell your state representative and senator to use public money to tackle the climate crisis instead of making it worse by building more roads.

N.I. Greens Call on Minister to Quit

2009-02-09T13:38:00.000-08:00

Northern Ireland's environment minister is trying to stop the UK government from running advertisements that urge people to reduce CO2. The mister, Sammy Wilson, said that he does not believe that human-made GHG emissions are the main source of climate change.

The Green Party's Brian Wilson (who shares the minister's last name but not his views) has called on the him to step down. Brian Wilson, who represents the Green Party in Northern Ireland's legislative assembly, called the comments "grossly irresponsible" and is sponsoring a motion for the mister's removal.

“While the minister is entitled to his own views, he is not entitled to ignore the overwhelming scientific evidence that man made climate change exists," said Brian Wilson in a press release.

The Greens won their first seat in the assembly in 2007.

Australian Greens Connect the Dots

2009-02-08T19:02:00.000-08:00

Wildfires tearing across Australia have claimed more than 1oo lives. Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Greens, told the BBC: "It's a sobering reminder of the need for this nation and the whole world to act and put at a priority our need to tackle climate change."

Senator Brown said he joined 21 million other Australians "in putting an arm around those people who have survived this fire".

The fires come as South Australia experiences its worst heatwave since 1908 with temperatures in excess of 100F. Extreme weather conditions are one of the manifestations of the global climate crisis, as Australia's climate change minister explained recently.

"All of this is consistent with climate change, and with what scientists told us would happen," said Senator Penny Wong. Eleven of the hottest years in recorded history have been in the last twelve, Senator Wong told reporters.

Welcome

2009-02-08T12:43:00.000-08:00

This is the blog for Greens in Massachusetts. If you're registered G for Green Party, J for Green Rainbow, U for Unenrolled -- or even if you're a Green trapped inside the body of a Democrat -- this is your forum.

There is an opposition-shaped gap in Massachusetts politics, and it's a gap that Greens need to fill. With 100% of the statewide offices and 90% of the Legislature in Democratic control, democracy is in trouble in Massachusetts. For those of us who have a vision of a more democratic, pluralistic, sustainable society, this entrenched one-partyism is a problem. Mass Greens is part of the solution.

The usual rules of online etiquette apply. Keep your comments on point. No profanity, no flaming, and no personal or ad hominem attacks.