The Climate Minute - Leadership needed, apply within...

President Obama was in town this week stumping for local US Senate candidate Congressman Ed Markey, a climate stalwart in the House.  The President was met by a number of Keystone XL protesters, which has gotten Ted and Rob thinking about the President's leadership on climate change, among other things.  For more to read about that issue, and the other stuff we talked about, check out the links below. With the President in his second term and free from future elections many were hoping he would use his political capital to aggressively address climate change.  His lack of action over Keystone however, has some folks worried.  Here's ThinkProgress' take.  Al Gore has joined the growing number asking that the president move beyond rhetoric to action. The President needs to lead, and not hide from bullying insults like “job-killing regulations”. It is too late in his tenure to fool around… In an interesting twist, some 1.5 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions can be traced to fossil fuels extracted from federally leased public lands!  Forget the tar sands, US public lands are responsible for some 42% of all the coal produced in the United States.  Seems like a good place to start reductions... On the plus side, the administration recently began using a higher "Social Cost of carbon" calculation when determining the cost effectiveness of new projects and regulations. Why does it matter? Because the U.S. government uses it to assess the costs and benefits of regulatory action. The higher the social cost of carbon, the more action can be economically justified.  We discussed this this earlier this week, wondering why the administration would choose to do this pretty much below the radar screen. In Keystone news, a new Goldman Sachs report finds that without Keystone XL, lower tar sands prices and higher transport costs will result in the cancellation or deferment of tar sands expansion projects.  This again highlights how the State Department's analysis was flawed and argues against allowing the pipeline. Also this week the International Energy Agency released a report detailing CO2 emissions from power production in 2013, and their findings sound yet another alarm. Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA, and one of the world's most respected energy experts, told the Guardian that greenhouse gas emissions were continuing to rise so fast that pinning hopes on a replacement for the Kyoto protocol would set the world on a path to 5C of warming, which would be catastrophic. The IEA has calculated that making clean energy investments sooner would be cheaper than leaving them until after 2020. About $1.5 trillion should be spent before 2020 to meet climate targets, it found, but if the investments are left until after 2020 it will take $5tn to achieve the same results. Unfortunately the Boston Globe thought the story didn't rate the first page, so Ted sent in a letter.  Read our blog post about it here. Remember, were here for coherent and sustained coverage..we try to provide some kind of connection between the various events…sort of like the Sports or Business page or Ideas section of Globe! Along those lines, we recommend Chris Mooney's "Point of Inquiry" program.  Here are a couple of interesting issues, "environmental moderate" who laud fracking and Keystone,  Michael Levi, and our favorite Bill McKibben. For more about organic farming as geo-engineering, check out this Grist piece.  And here's the PBS NewsHour series on food we discussed on the podcast. As Ted talked about, he's got a serious mancrush on Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.  The Senator's been making almost weekly floor speeches regarding climate change.  Here's one from last month.  For all of the Senator's work on climate change, check out his site here. Finally, we contemplated Robert F. Kennedy's words on the nature of human happiness.  For a discussion of his speech, and snippets of audio, check out this Climateprogess piece.   RFK was assassinated 45 years ago last week, but while his references are a little dated it is sadly easy to insert new ones... Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans. Dr. Halina Brown of Clark University sounded a similar theme in her speech at MCAN's conference in Worcester in 2010.  Part 1 of her speech is here on YouTube. Stuff to do: For more about the 350Massachusetts "People's Action Assembly on the Climate Crisis" on Sunday, June 30th in Worcester, check out their Facebook page here. For more about the Boston Mayoral Candidate's Environmental Forum on July 9th at Suffolk Law School check out our calendar note here. 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.