The MCAN Climate Minute - You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Good morning everybody and welcome to the MCAN Climate Minute. We come to you this week via the wonders of Skype, but we've got our homebrew in the pot and we're sufficiently caffeinated to bring you this week's Climate Minute. Big week in Massachusetts, as announcements and good news abound. First, the state was able to announce that they have met their solar power goals ahead of schedule, as over 250MW of installed capacity has gone online since setting the goals in 2007. That figure should reach 400MW this year or early next, and the Governor has announced a new goal of 1,600MW by 2020. For a map of renewable energy sites in the Commonwealth, check out the Museum of Science's interactive map here.  (Note though: it's not complete, there's a certain 1.6MW facility in my town that doesn't seem to be on the map...) The state's new goal would be easily met if every community was like Dartmouth, Mass, which leads the state in 9.28MW of capacity, beating out every other town in the state. In other good news the state unveiled their Greenhouse Gas Dashboard.  The site provides interesting and valuable data about the state’s emissions profiles and good historical comparisons of the various drivers of ghg emissions.  The site provides useful information to policy makers as they make sure the state’s Clean Energy and Climate Plan is working to accomplish the strict requirements of the Global Warming Solutions Act. On the national front, a new poll out suggests that over half (58%) of Americans link extreme weather to climate change.

It's got a reputation as the originator of "McNews," but USA Today has a fairly in-depth series on climate change and particularly its impact on rain extreme weather that's a good read for newbies to climate change.  Check it out here.

You may recall us talking about the Keeling Curve and the Mauna Loa observatory several weeks ago.  Well, it's on our radar screen again as news comes out that we're very close to hitting a new milestone.  In the next month it's expected that the observatory will being getting sustained readings of over 400ppm of CO2.  This is just another sobering milestone on the planet's climate journey.

This being the 2010's, the observatory has a twitter feed of daily numbers, follow it here. For charts on any scale from the last week to the last 50 years, you can check out UC San Diego's Scripps Insitution of Oceanography's site here.

We reflect on some larger issues in today's podcast, including a discussion of a perpetual carbon future.  This was inspired by an article in The Atlantic that looks at a world that never moves beyond petroleum.

Of course we know that's not going to happen, and climate change will force further restrictions on fossil fuels.  That has it's own set of consequences, including the considerable threat to traditional fossil fuel companies whose values are currently based on petroleum, gas, and coal reserves that (we hope) can never be exploited.

Two big things to think about: who actually owns fossil fuel stocks? (Answer: if you've got a pension or a mutual fund -- probably you.)  And, what's going to happen when those restrictions on fossil fuels we're all working toward are actually put in place?  Here's an interesting (and sobering) article on the potential coming carbon bubble.

(Of course you can get out of fossils entirely through divestment and socially responsible investing.  Our good friend Eric Packer at Progressive Asset Management specializes in these kinds of investments.)

So, what's going on locally? The authors of the proposed carbon tax for Massachusetts, State Representative Tom Conroy (Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury) and State Senator Mike Barrett (Lexington, Bedford, Concord etc.) will be at Cary Memorial Library tomorrow, Saturday, May 4th, along with an experts in the field (including Kerry Emmanuel of MIT) who will provide background on the issue including how it works and the economic impact. Tom and Mike will provide more information on their proposal. State Senator Will Brownsberger and State Representative Dave Rogers will also be part of the panel discussion. Saturday night is also Earth Night, a great event put on each year by the Environmental League of Massachusetts.  The evening starts at 8pm at the Back Bay Events Center.  Here's their website for more information. Finally, we've rescheduled our Climate Education Meeting on the state Clean Energy and Climate Plan and Green Communities Program for Wednesday, May 29th.  We will be announcing the location next week, hope to see you there! As always, it's been a pleasure sharing climate news and views with you.  You know, you can subscribe to our iTunes feed and get our podcasts automatically here.  Feel free to give us your thoughts on our Facebook page, or through old-fashioned email. You can donate and support the Climate Minute and all of MCAN's other climate change fighting activities by hitting that "donate now" button, or going to www.massclimateaction.net/donate. Remember, for climate activities near you check out our MCAN climate action calendar.  You can enter events as well as browse for interesting things to do. As always -- remember, for these reasons we have discussed, the United States must place a price on carbon.