The time has come to decide who you will vote for in the 2008 U.S. election. Before I start it should be perfectly clear for everyone that reads this that I am not an American citizen and thus have no right to vote in the election. But, I do have the right to voice my opinion about the candidates and their political stances.

So, who should you vote for? Which one of the candidates is best fit to lead, Barack Obama or John McCain? For me, and the rest of the world, the choice is pretty obvious. Barack Obama should, and needs to be the next President of the United States of America.

When it comes to environmental, energy and climate issues, only Obama stands out as the strong and aggressive candidate with a detailed and comprehensive plan to tackle these problems.

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Photo credit: masonvotes

Sarah Palin, Republican candidate for the Vice Presidency and running mate with John McCain, ignores basic climate science by claiming that climate change is not man-made and that weather patterns are to be blamed instead. And during an interview in Las Vegas two days ago Sarah Palin couldn’t name a single man-made cause that contributes to climate change.

Q: I’ve also heard you hint that you do think there might be some man-made causes that are contributing to this. Can you describe what those are?

PALIN: Right, well what I have said about this is really the debate at some point, had better shift to, no matter the cause, whether it all be attributed to man’s activities or just the natural cycle of climate changes in our earth’s history. We have seen this before.

Watch the interview below: (more…)

I belong to a Melbourne-based Climate Action Group called the Yarra Valley Climate Action Group (YVCAG) which is very active in public education through public meetings, participation in public demonstrations and by providing a series of very well-referenced Climate Emergency Fact Sheets on its website. Thus people confused by the vehement and dishonest denial by climate sceptics can use the YVCAG resource and discover what top climate scientists and top scientific bodies think about the accelerating global warming crisis by consulting “Climate Emergency: what top world scientific experts say“.

Our local Climate Action Group is variously linked to scores of like-minded Climate Action Groups around the Continent and Commonwealth of Australia through two umbrella organizations, namely the Climate Emergency Network and the Climate Movement. However our efforts at public education are negated by the Power of Money. Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter with coal exports currently worth A$55 billion per annum; about 92% of Australia’s electric power comes from fossil fuel burning; and the Australian coal industry is worth in total about A$100 billion annually – with the coincident reality that Australia resolutely ignores the disproportionate impact it is having on the Earth’s environment through its world-leading annual per capita Domestic and Exported fossil fuel-derived CO2 pollution.

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photo credit: James Bird

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration renewable energy now accounts for more than 10% of the domestically-produced energy in USA during the first half of 2008. Most of the energy comes from renewable energy sources such as biomass/biofuels, geothermal, hydropower, solar and wind.

This number can be compared to the 11.98% of energy that nuclear energy contributes to in USA. According to the SUN DAY Campaign the total consumption of nuclear power dropped by 1% during the first half of 2008 while the renewable energy increased by 5%.

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photo credit: Nrbelex

George Monbiot says that the motor industry has long sabotaged eco-innovations and that they are now demanding billions to cut its carbon emissions. The green subsidy for car makers, Monbiot says, is just a disguised corporate bail-out.

“Their sabotage of green technology has been both subtle and comprehensive. The film Who Killed The Electric Car? shows how the manufacturers, working with oil companies and corrupt officials, sank California’s attempt to change vehicle technologies. Having bumped off battery power, they persuaded the federal government to pour money instead into hydrogen vehicles, aware that the technological hurdles are so high that a cheap, mass-produced model might never be possible. Electric cars, by contrast, have been ready for the mass market for almost a century. The $1.2bn that the US government is spending on research and development for hydrogen cars - like the €2bn pledged to the same quest by the European Union - is a subsidy for avoiding technological change.”

Continue to read over at the Guardian.

On December 12, 1991, Lawrence Summers, the chief economist for the World Bank, wrote an internal memo that was leaked to the British publication the Economist on February 8, 1992.

DATE: December 12, 1991
TO: Distribution
FR: Lawrence H. Summers
Subject: GEP

‘Dirty’ Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

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The former unknown Alaskan Governor who is now running mate with John McCain and, maybe, soon even Vice President of the USA has been awarded the 2008 Rubber Dodo Award.

It is the Center for Biological Diversity that this year gives their unflattering Dodo Award to Sarah Palin. Why? Because she “has sought to remove endangered species act protection for the polar bear, suppressed and lied about state global warming studies, and denied that global warming is caused by greenhouse gas emissions.”

“Governor Palin has waged a deceptive, dangerous, and costly battle against the polar bear” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Her position on global warming is so extreme, she makes Dick Cheney look like an Al Gore devotee.”

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The image below shows why offshore drilling won’t help to lower energy or gas prices in USA. The data comes from the US Energy Information Administration.

The EIA doesn’t expect any oil production from offshore drilling until around the year 2017. And that it won’t reach peak production until around 2030, and then it would only produce 200,000 barrels of oil per day (marked in yellow below). “This would supply a meager 1.2% of total US annual oil consumption (just 0.6% of total US energy consumption)”.

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Al Gore and the We Campaign is fighting big oil and their “drill, drill” message with a new TV ad. The new TV ad will be aired on national cable TV, and if they raise enough money they will also air it on 60 Minutes and 20/20 this coming week.

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Jacob from the blog Force Change tells us that Sarah Palin supports mining in Bristol Bay, which could threaten salmon, bears, and caribou. He lists three other major anti-green policies from Sarah Palin and comes to the conclusion that her “overall position towards the environment is quite poor.”

Gristmill also has a lengthy post about Sarah Palin and her record on issues related to energy and the environment. For example they list Sarah Palin’s support to build a natural-gas pipeline from Alaska’s North Slope and her suggestion to eliminate Alaska’s gas tax.

Gristmill also lists several quotes from Sarah Palin and from people who have reacted to her nomination. Such as this one from Gene Karpinski, the President of the League of Conservation Voters:

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