Daily Score Blog

I guess I’ve known all along that introducing a baby into the family meant introducing a whole slew of stuff into our lives—much of it bulky, expensive, and—often—plastic.

But I'm fighting all the media and social cues to go on a shopping spree at Babies R Us. Instead, my husband and I decided to buy only one or two essential items new, like a state-of-the-art super-safe car seat. But, for the most part we’ve managed to “go green” as we’ve outfitted ourselves for pregnancy and parenthood—from used maternity clothes to garage sale furniture and non-material shower gifts. Our goal has been to reduce, reuse, and recycle—and to save money while we’re at it.

Here are three tricks that have worked for us:

There have been a couple new developments since I last wrote about the US Chamber of Commerce and its whacked out stance on climate change (basically, denial and roadblocking important legislation):

First, Nike stepped down from the Chamber board of directors while keeping its membership in the group.

Second, Apple split with the Chamber.

And as Grist points out, the Chamber has tried to do damage control, without changing its opposition to clean-energy legislation. And, the New York Times editorial page pronounced that “no organization in this country has done more to undermine [climate] legislation.”

Furthermore, hundreds of business executives descended on Washington this week in support of a clean energy economy, including Starbucks, HP, Ebay, Duke Energy, Levi Strauss, Cliff Bar, Avista, Exelon, PG&E and many others. Calling for investment in American jobs instead of global warming pollution, the CEOs participating in the Business Advocacy Day for Jobs & Competitiveness -- an effort organized by the new We Can Lead coalition -- are telling the Senate to take action with strong climate legislation like the Clean Energy Jobs Act introduced last week by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA).

So, our question remains...Which Northwest company will be the next to step up and condemn the Chamber's heavy-duty lobbying against smart climate and energy policy? Lobbying being done in members' names?

Ahem, Microsoft...? Grist's Jonathan Hiskes met with Microsoft’s chief environmental strategist, Rob Bernard.

Microsoft has never been considered an environmental leader, but it’s got a decent climate policy on paper. It opened an energy-efficient data center this summer that could lead to significant energy savings, particularly if the company finds ways to use the innovations in larger server labs.

Given all this, why is Microsoft a Chamber member? Bernard told me Microsoft takes climate change very seriously and tried to distance the company from the Chamber’s climate shenanigans. “The views expressed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce do not reflect Microsoft’s position on climate change and we are not participating in their climate initiatives,” he said in a followup email.

Kudos to Hiskes for asking the tough questions. I would think Microsoft employees would be asking those too--or employees at Amazon, Boeing, or Costco for that matter.

Meanwhile, as part of SEIU’s ongoing campaign to shed light on the extreme positions of the US Chamber of Commerce, they put together this video highlighting the recent high-profile exodus for the Chamber’s "backwards position on climate change."

We'd like to see some Northwest business leaders willing to leave the Chamber with an achy breaky heart too.

Right! And toxic sludge is good for you. And coal is clean. And unicorns are real. And cigarettes don’t cause cancer. And pigs can fly.

We’ve heard it before. Denying climate science has been a tactic all along to stall action on climate and energy. But now there seems to be some muscle—or at least some money—behind a campaign called “CO2 is Green,” which has launched an advertising push attempting to undermine not only the US Environmental Protection Agency's recent ruling that CO2 should now be classified as a pollutant, but, also—and more immediately dangerous—to derail the forthcoming vote in the Senate on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.

According to Guardian.co.uk, a former oil industry executive has stumped up some of his cash to pay for television advertisements to be shown in Montana and New Mexico. Here’s the transcript of the ad (see it on YouTube):

Congress is considering a law that would classify carbon dioxide as pollution. This will cost us jobs. There is no scientific evidence that CO2 is a pollutant. In fact, higher CO2 levels than we have today would help the earth's ecosystems and would support more plant and animal life. Please take action. Contact your senator and congressman today and remind them CO2 is not pollution and more CO2 results in a greener earth. Go to CO2isgreen.com, because we all need CO2.

We all need CO2. It's true. It's the quantities that matter.

So, why Montana and New Mexico? The ads urge voters to contact Montana’s Senator Max Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman and the second-most-senior Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee. Baucus is in a uniquely powerful position on climate issues and in past has backed bills to cap emissions and allow companies to trade pollution allowances. New Mexico is home to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D). A half-page ad by CO2 is Green ran in Monday's Washington Post.

The group's founder, H. Leighton Steward, says that higher carbon dioxide levels would spur more growth of plants and trees. But he’s no biologist. He’s the former vice chairman of Burlington Resources, a Houston-based oil and gas company bought by ConocoPhillips in 2006, received more than $600,000 in fees, stock and options for being a director of another oil firm, EOG Resources. He received the American Petroleum Institute's Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement in 2001 and remains an honorary director of the oil industry lobby group. “I'm not getting a penny for this,” said Steward, who has reported he owned oil company stocks but no coal stocks. “It's just something I thought people should know.”

Uh huh.

According to the Washington Post, Steward (the name itself is rife with irony) has joined forces with Corbin J. Robertson Jr., chief executive of and leading shareholder in Natural Resource Partners, a Houston-based owner of coal resources that lets other companies mine in return for royalties. Its revenues were $291 million in 2008. They have formed two groups -- CO2 Is Green designated for advocacy and Plants Need CO2 for "education"—with about $1 million. (They are trying to establish legal charity status for Plants Need CO2.)

The Guardian’s Leo Hickman, points out that the ads are ripe for spoofing, but there’s a catch :

It's certainly tempting to laugh it off. (For extra merriment, visit the "CO2 is green" website and read the “Why do people believe these myths?” section: "They have been misinformed by people that benefit financially from propagating the myth." Oh, the irony.) But the advert is also a juddering reminder there are still powerful, influential forces straining every last sinew and dollar they possess to deny that rising CO2 levels are a problem. That such efforts should so easily be traced back to oil industry operatives is not wholly surprising, but sobering nonetheless.

It is funny -- in that depressing kind of way. So, if you laughed at first but now you’re choking on all this like I am, here’s some medicine to help you feel better…

Earlier this month, Duke Energy, Alcoa and Alstom all pulled out of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, an industry group whose ads have asserted that the House climate bill would make energy unaffordable. "We thought [the bill] had evolved in ways to be affordable for our customers," said Duke spokesman Tom Williams.

And, as I wrote late last week, a group of large corporations -- including New Mexico utility PNM Resources, California utility PG&E, power generator Exelon and Nike -- have all denounced the US Chamber of Commerce's opposition to climate legislation.

So, there is true green out there in the corporate world. Bright green, in fact. The oil lobby ads just remind us that some “green” looks a lot like slime.

Let's just hope voters in New Mexico, Montana, and elsewhere can smell the difference.

Image courtesy of boardwalker, Flickr.com.

Oregon’s Nike already publicly broke with the Chamber for this very reason. Nothing from Microsoft or Amazon yet. But a few others are peeling away. Just this week, New Mexico's largest utility made the break:

The Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) is dropping its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the business group's stance on climate change. Earlier this week, PNM criticized the Chamber of Commerce, saying, "We believe the science is compelling enough to act sooner rather than later, and we support comprehensive federal legislation to meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect customers against unreasonable cost increases."

See, that wasn't so hard!

Pacific Gas and Electric, a large California utility, said Tuesday that it is pulling out of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because it disagrees with the chamber's aggressive opposition to climate-change legislation...Chief executive Peter Darbee had written a letter criticizing the chamber's recent demands that the Environmental Protection Agency hold a "Scopes Monkey Trial" to prove the science behind climate change.

"We find it dismaying that the Chamber neglects the indisputable fact that a decisive majority of experts have said the data on global warming are compelling and point to a threat that cannot be ignored," Darbee wrote.

That's two big western utilities in a matter of days. Now, the question is, who's next?

Just as Verizon takes some heat for sponsoring an anti-Waxman-Markey rally (and concert) in West Virginia, Sightline asks where Northwest businesses stand when it comes to public policy to curb climate change--on the sidelines or in the game.

Our op-ed appeared in the Puget Sound Business Journal last week. Here it is in a nutshell.

The nation’s largest business lobby, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to hold public hearings on climate science. Chamber officials say it would be “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century,” complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who, ostensibly, would rule on whether humans are contributing to dangerous climate changes.

The fact is, the scientific “trial” is long over.

Will the chamber’s 3 million business members go along with this stale and politically motivated attack on science? In this national courtroom, will Northwest members of the chamber—Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, and others — stand up to the public’s cross-examination?

The national chamber has long campaigned against President Barack Obama’s climate and clean-energy policies. For this reason, a few leading members, including Oregon’s Nike, have publicly broken with the association. Others remain silent. Despite strong corporate positions on the need to address climate change and efforts to green their business practices and products, most of our homegrown industry giants are keeping mum in the political arena—where it matters most.

Standing on the sidelines of the debate in state legislatures and in Congress—and in the court of public opinion—can be as damaging as standing in the way.

Click here to read the whole thing.

According to two news stories today, the contents of my fridge -- a six-pack, open bottles of wine, dregs from last week's farmers' market and leftover stir-fry -- might help power my house some day.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur has invented a system that makes ethanol out of old beer, wine and other waste kitchen products. My favorite part: the still doubles as a fuel pump for your car!

Also in the Bay Area, a pilot program is using leftovers to make electricity. Food scraps from 2,300 restaurants and grocery stores are collected and pumped into tanks at a local wastewater treatment plant, where microbes do their stuff. The decomposing food releases methane, which is used to make electricity. (A catch: Forks, oysters, and plastic bags are big problems.)

But since I don't eat out that much, I was more interested in the beer-to-energy solution.

The Northwest is currently undergoing another jag of “extreme weather” to complement the huge snowfalls of last winter. All of this has prompted many people to seek air conditioned relief or simply hide in their basements. Perhaps some desperate souls are huddled by their refrigerators. It’s definitely not an efficient use of the fridge, but 103 degrees is hot, hot, hot. Luckily, many of the appliances we use to keep ourselves or our food cold are regulated for energy efficiency.

 And, this summer, the Department of Energy (DOE)  is engaged in a new review of many appliance categories that will continue through 2011. It will likely result in higher efficiency standards for our big household appliances. This review process is partially in response to a lawsuit a few years back that charged that the Department of Energy had failed to do its duty under federal laws passed in 1975 and 2005 to review and update appliance energy standards.

If you want to get folks to cut their energy use, you don't necessarily have to raise rates or hand out fluorescent light bulbs. Just let them know how much juice the Joneses are using. An article in the Atlantic Monthly reports that giving utility customers information on how much power they used compared to their neighbors drives down consumption.

The strategy was devised by Robert Cialdini, a social psychologist from Arizona State University and expert in tweaking human behavior through what he calls "peer information" (as opposed to peer pressure). 

A company called Positive Energy, at which Cialdini is the chief scientist, has created software that measures energy usage by neighborhood. Here's how it's used:

Results are sent to consumers on behalf of their local utility, praising you with a row of smiley faces (you’ve used 58 percent less electricity than your neighbors this month!) or damning you with none (you used 39 percent more electricity than your neighbors in the past 12 months, and it cost you $741 extra).

In Positive Energy’s reports, a once-intangible bit of social information—how much energy you use relative to your neighbors—is made tangible. Now you can find out not just what people in the same city are doing, but what people in your neighborhood, living in the same-size houses, are doing...

The approach was tested in Sacramento. How'd it work?

The Oregon Employment Department found 51,402 green jobs in the state in 2008, based on a survey of both public and private employers. The construction industry accounted for 17 percent of the state’s green jobs, and the most common occupations were carpenters, farm workers, truck drivers, hazardous materials workers and landscapers. Overall, green jobs made up 3 percent of Oregon’s total employment, or about the same number of people working in the state’s private hospitals. (A study in Washington found 47,194 green jobs, with farm workers, electricians, construction laborers and carpenters topping the list.)

As in Washington, the greatest number of “green” jobs were actually what we’d traditionally think of as blue-collar, but with a sustainable edge. And many pay well, with at least 64 percent earning more than the state’s median wage.

So what sorts of jobs did industries self-report as "green"? Carpenters working on home weatherization, an herbsman at an organic dairy, truck drivers for compost and biomass companies, asbestos removal workers, a crew leader doing riparian restoration, an auto parts dismantler at a salvage yard, sorter at a recycling plant, people who sell solar panels, retail clerk at an organic nursery, technicians monitoring salmon and firefighters removing hazardous fuels.

This helps explain a question we had: How could Oregon, with its smaller population, have produced even more green jobs than Washington? Is the state really that much better at it?

Gov. Chris Gregoire touted Washington's increasing numbers of green jobs and expanding use of renewable energy before a Senate committee on Tuesday. She urged lawmakers to pass climate change legislation, taking pains to spell out the link between new jobs and clean energy.

In testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works plus the Subcommittee on Green Jobs and the New Economy she described the state's approach:

"Our energy strategy is a job creation strategy. In 2007, when we adopted a set of climate change goals related to reduced greenhouse gas emissions and reduced fuel use, we also set a goal to triple the number of green jobs we had in the state – to reach 25,000 green jobs by 2020. Less than two years later, we can point to 47,000 green jobs right now. Our green jobs are growing much faster than predicted."

And she said she's not alone.

The days when emissions levels and energy policies in China and India were held up as excuses by the rest of the world's economic leaders for doing nothing about climate and energy seem to be over--almost. (Some reasons why the China argument doesn’t pan out, here, here, and here – and here are some compelling reasons why climate solutions can be a boon to the economy rather than a strain.)

Today, in global talks, in the Senate, on the street, you still hear a murmur here and there about "not doing anything until India and China sign on." And this previously pervasive attitude, however obsolete, may already be coming back to bite the long-industrialized nations of the West. Indeed, the big honchos in the West may find themselves borrowing and begging for new technologies that China has been busy perfecting all along.

Or maybe we'll just be sulking about the fact that China's economy is happily unhitched from the fossil fuel rollercoaster long before ours...

Could it be that China is winning the clean energy race? Here are some tidbits gathered by MicCheck Radio and Sightline that make the case:

Federal stimulus funding has allocated more dollars to support the goals of low income weatherization programs and create green jobs. Agencies in the Northwest now have to figure out the most effective way to mobilize those resources to meet those goals.

To learn more about how the dollars are affecting the work of community action agencies in the region I spoke with Chuck Eberdt of the Opportunity Council in Bellingham and Rand Berke of the Community Action Program of Oregon, a community action agency in Salem. Neither Eberdt or Berke come across as pessimists about their programs or the stimulus money. Instead they both talk about these challenges like the professionals that they are; looking under the hood thinking about ways to make it run better.

Both Eberdt and Berke are looking for ways to fix the bottleneck created with the doubling of funds in their budgets and a short time to spend the money. As an article in today’s New York Times agencies are scrambling to ensure funds intended to support more production and more savings for low income families get where they are needed most.

Last week I heaped praise on Portland’s plans to revise their city building codes to encourage family-friendly courtyard housing.

This week, I am feeling the same way about another set of changes being considered that would make it easier to generate clean energy and reduce runoff in urban neighborhoods. A package of changes called the “Green Bundle” is being reviewed this summer by the City of Portland. The Planning Commission will have a hearing on the proposed changes on August 25. 

Among many other nifty urban clean energy ideas like solar panels and green roofs, the Bundle would “allow small-scale wind energy systems to exceed Zoning Code height limits, either as stand-alone towers or when incorporated into building architecture.”

Lots of money is flowing from all levels of government to support energy efficiencies. But how much of that money is going to create green jobs that pay well and benefit families that need retrofits and weatherization the most – and who can least afford both the upgrades and the burden of inefficiency?

The good news is that at the local and national level labor unions and vocational programs are starting to train workers to get the skills they need to get green jobs.

One in which geothermal energy is heating greenhouses that help produce a pesticide-free application for strawberry patches, almond orchards and mint fields. The same hot water helps brew beer, raise tropical fish, melt snow off downtown sidewalks and sell homes in Klamath Falls' Hot Springs neighborhood. And renewable energy is just one plank of a plan to help right the rural area's economy by focusing on more sustainable business lines.

I don't know what Kool-Aid the region's newsrooms were serving this weekend, because it was one of several stories that reexamined iconic Northwest conflicts -- the timber wars and salmon recovery -- and found pretty constructive solutions.

That's not to suggest there hasn't been plenty of real fight to write about. And I'm no fan of self-serving "good news" stories pitched to make someone look good or mask actual problems. But as a journalist, it's also possible to get so bored with old narratives that you fail to see how the world has moved beyond them in interesting ways.

The Oregonian story isn't exactly a good news story anyway. It's about a place where unemployment hit 15 percent. Sure, there's a little positive spin about the "Sustainable Klamath" brand. But the story manages to offer a real - and surprising - portrait of a community that's thinking about its future and making investments so history doesn't repeat itself.

Check out the rest of the Northwest's top 10 sustainability headlines at Sightline Daily, or get the news delivered via email each morning by clicking here. All of today's news can be found here.