Environmentalist Bill McKibben has been campaigning for the last few weeks to get solar panels put back on the roof of the White House.
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From a press release this morning:
McKibben has been in back and forth negotiations with the White House for the last 48 hours to push for them to accept the panel and show they have a plan to get solar back on the White House roof — a California solar company, Sungevity, has already offered to install a new set for free. As of Thursday morning the Administration has offered to meet with McKibben and his team and says they are discussing the proposal to put solar back on the White House roof.
Folks like McKibben, A Siegel, and others have been tireless advocates for clean energy. It is nice to know that we may (finally) be making a difference & scoring an important victory with regards to this issue.
“We keep hearing, ‘We’ll see’ and ‘It’s complicated,’” McKibben said. “Compared with the other things Obama has to do, it seems relatively easy.
You can’t filibuster the roof.”
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350.org has done so much great work to get people active on climate issues. Will you take a moment to support their latest efforts?
This achievement will be an important symbol to the world that the United States is committed to realizing the environmental and economic benefits of clean energy.
Sign the petition to pressure President Obama to replace the solar panels removed by Reagan 3 decades ago.
We thought our leaders should have a chance to get personally involved too, which is why we’re today launching a special campaign aimed just at them.
Each one has a roof over their heads–in India at the Rashtrapati Bhavan; in Mexico they call it Los Pinos, and in Washington it’s the White House.
Those roofs need solar panels–and we hope they’ll go up on October 10, just as around the world people are taking practical action in their own communities. It’s remarkably easy to send a message to your leader–just click here for instructions:
Sign the petition to tell World Leaders to Put Solar On their nation’s prominent government buildings.
But that’s not all.
We have just over 2 months before 10/10/10 when there will be global action to raise awareness about the urgency of climate change. Ideas For Your 10/10 Work Party
#2 Go Solar
Working on a solar project is a great way to demonstrate the clean energy future right in your community. Whether its installing a solar panel on a local school, building a solar cooker for your community, or putting a solar hot water heater on your house–it is a great way to work with the planet, not against it.
Get involved today to find or organize an event in your area.
Another new aspect of this movement:
The Solar Bill of Rights
Sign their petition which has received over 20,000 sigs in its first 2 weeks:
In the midst of some of the worst energy disasters in America’s history—the Gulf oil spill, the coal ash sludge in Tennessee and the West Virginia coal mine explosion—lawmakers in Washington haven’t listened to the American people.
Sign the Solar Bill of Rights today and this fall SEIA will march to the U.S. Capitol and deliver your name, and thousands of others, to key Congressional leaders and the Obama Administration, urging them to enact policies to expand the use of solar energy in the United States.
Learn more details about the Solar Bill of Rights and the policies needed to deploy more solar in the U.S.
If you do nothing else today, make sure you watch this video.
And if you are REALLY SOOOOOooo busy that you can’t take 4 minutes to watch the whole thing, then start at the 3-minute mark and watch to the end from there.
This item encompasses everything our project stands for:
The best way to save the planet is to keep laughing!
I am a bona fide DFH (dirty effin hippie).
I am coming clean, just don’t ask me to take more than the minimum number of showers required to be tolerated in our modern world.
With that said, now more than ever, the DHF ethos is proving to have been right all along. Organic foods, once a fringe boutique food item, can be found at Walmart. Going green, once popular only amongst frogs, is now cooler than ever amongst image-conscious people and corporations alike. Climate change, once just a theory known as the greenhouse effect, is now a scientific fact backed by 98% of the world’s scientists, and 100% or the population of non-stupid people worldwide.
The final hurdle of our eleventy-bazillion mile barefoot hippie high hurdle marathon in the little fact that even the most granola-filled and hippified amongst us still burn oil. Lots of oil.
The good news is that the solution is simple and has served mankind just fine for millennia: WALKING
The 2nd national park in the U.S. remains one of the nation’s greatest legacies over 100 years later. People from across the globe seek things that cannot be found elsewhere on Earth; few leave disappointed.
Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights. All is divine harmony.
Below I will share a few more photos, quotes, and bits of advice for anyone hoping to visit in the near future.
This week in climate changeis a new weekly series devoted to climate change and related news. The hope is that we can engage in constructive debate about the issues raised by the topics presented, and coalesce around the action items proposed each week.
The diary for now will appear Wednesday afternoons, around 1PM Pacific.
THE LEDE
Fortunately nothing major happened this week, so there is no top story about which we should be concerned.
Everything is just peachy in the world, and climate change is closer than ever to being solved. Americans have made necessary sacrifices in their own behaviors so that we are energy self-sufficient and our national carbon footprint is offset by our aggressive tree-planting campaigns.
The time of rejoicing is upon us.
Nothing to see here…
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And for anyone who for the past week was in a cave, under a rock, with your fingers in your ears, these Dkos tags might lead you to find views contrary to the opinions stated above.
Climate change will do more than make life on Earth a bit warmer. Even a 5th-grader can tell you that. The problem with people like James Inhofe is that they are not smarter than 5th-graders.
If things don’t change (for the better) quickly, we are looking at major die-off of the world’s trees. If the trees go, we are not far behind.
The high heat that accompanied the recent drought was the underlying cause of death for millions of pinyon pines throughout the Southwest, according to new research.
The resulting landscape change will affect the ecosystem for decades. Hotter temperatures coupled with drought are the type of event predicted by global climate change models. The new finding suggests big, fast changes in ecosystems may result from global climate change.
OK folks, for anyone you might know who still foolishly says, “BRR! Global warming, my ass”, politely remind them that weather and climate are not the same thing. The warmest day in recorded history occurred this past weekend. This fact is true no matter how much snow you may have shoveled that day.
This short video (h/t greenman3610) uses recent footage and science to clearly show even the most intransigent troglodyte the errors of their ways.
A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor reports that at least 10% of organic coffee farmers in northern Latin America alone have given up and are returning to producing coffee with chemicals.
Ya know, warm & fuzzy, a glass of warm milk, a warm-hearted person, etc.
But the gruesome truth of climate change is this: Our planet’s supply of fresh water is disappearing.
Weather patterns differ from region to region. But what lies beneath is the terrifying reality that more often than not, erratic weather cycles are causing weaker rainfall & hotter heatwaves that sap the moisture from the earth.
