Thursday, August 13, 2009

Climate Progress

limate Progress

Climate Progress


NYT: An Upbeat Fed Views Recession as Near an End

Posted: 13 Aug 2009 07:10 AM PDT

Certainly if Obama's economic policies were not working, it would be all that opponents of climate and clean energy legislation would be talking about it.  But it would appear those policies — and the Feds — are, as the NYT reports in its lead story:

Almost exactly two years after it embarked on what was the biggest financial rescue in American history, the Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that the recession is ending and that it would take a step back toward normal policy.

Though the central bank stopped well short of declaring victory, policy makers issued their most upbeat assessment in more than a year by saying that the downturn appears to have hit bottom and that consumer spending, financial markets and inventory-building by corporations all continued to stabilize.

"Economic activity is leveling out," the Fed's policy-making committee said Wednesday after a two-day meeting, adding that inflation would remain "subdued for some time."

Again, it may not be fair, but the likelihood of climate legislation passing the Senate depends critically on such seemingly unrelated matters as whether the Senate can pass health care reform and what the state of the economy  in November or January or whenever they vote on bill (see "Unemployment rate drops for first time in 15 months").

The government's preliminary estimates show that the economy's downturn slowed markedly in recent months, shrinking only 1 percent in the second quarter compared with 6.4 percent in the first. The rate of job losses has slowed sharply as well, though the nation still lost 247,000 jobs in July.

The most recent forecasts by Fed policy makers say that the economy will begin an unusually slow recovery in the second half of this year and pick up speed only gradually in 2010. Even if all goes according to plan, the Fed envisions that unemployment will climb from its already high level of 9.4 percent and average as much as 9.8 percent through the end of 2010.

Rising productivity rates in the United States are giving the Fed more maneuvering room to keep borrowing costs low without aggravating inflation. The productivity of workers, the amount produced per hour of work, shot up at an annual rate of more than 6 percent in the second quarter and has been climbing throughout the recession.

That is unusual for an economic downturn, but it means that wages have more room to climb before employers start to raise prices for their goods and services.

I'll discuss messaging the recovery when it is further along in the fall.

Game changer 7: Tim Wirth and John Podesta on Natural Gas, A Bridge Fuel for the 21st Century

Posted: 13 Aug 2009 06:04 AM PDT

Previous posts in this series (see links below) have focused on how the unconventional natural gas opportunity changes the game for low-cost climate action.  This post, by former Senator Tim Wirth and CAP CEO John Podesta, first published here, offers a variety of proposals for tapping this new resource in an environmentally responsible manner.

Summary

Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel—it produces less than half as much carbon pollution as coal. Recent technology advancements make affordable the development of unconventional natural gas resources. This creates an unprecedented opportunity to use gas as a bridge fuel to a 21st-century energy economy that relies on efficiency, renewable sources, and low-carbon fossil fuels such as natural gas.

Despite the potential energy, economic, and security benefits of natural gas, the recently House-passed American Clean Energy and Security Act, H.R. 2454, does not include enough opportunities to expand its use. The Center for American Progress and the Energy Future Coalition therefore propose a number of policies that would increase the use of natural gas and low-carbon energy sources while providing additional protection for our climate and communities.

Electricity

  • Establish incentives to retire aging, inefficient, dirty coal-fired power plants, and replace them with renewable and low-carbon electricity.
  • Create a renewables integration credit to offset specific costs associated with producing high levels of renewable energy and to reward going beyond the renewable electricity standard.
  • Establish a dedicated incentive for development and deployment of "dispatchable" renewable energy to build markets for electricity storage technology.
  • Require that the carbon price and other costs are included when determining the dispatch order for moving electricity onto the grid to prioritize natural gas and other clean electricity.
  • Expand carbon capture-and-storage provisions to include other permanent storage technologies in addition to geologic sequestration. Ensure that carbon capture and storage research and deployment efforts include retrofitting existing coal- and gas-fired power plants.
  • Remove regulatory barriers to recycling waste heat and power.

Transportation

  • Expand the market for natural gas as a heavy-duty transportation fuel by increasing incentives for gas-powered buses and heavy trucks.
  • Create incentives for communities to develop bus rapid transit systems that employ buses fueled by natural gas.

Clean natural gas development

  • Conduct a comprehensive analysis of the impact of natural gas production on air, water, land, and global warming. Include a compilation of best practices and recommendations for new state safeguards.
  • Support public disclosure requirements on the release of toxic chemicals used during the production of natural gas.
  • Expand the Natural Gas STAR program where natural gas producers voluntarily capture and resell methane—a potent greenhouse gas—instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. Current participants make money on these methane sales. Medium and large emitters must undertake this practice.

Research

  • Conduct research on more efficient turbines, storage of renewable electricity, and other technologies that would generate no- or low-carbon energy.

Download the full memo (pdf)

Related Posts:

British coal industry flack pushes geo-engineering "ploy" to give politicians "viable reason to do nothing" about global warming. Is that why Lomborg supports such a smoke-and-mirrors approach?

Posted: 12 Aug 2009 07:00 PM PDT

Everybody from global warming delayer Bjorn Lomborg to the country's worst science writer seems to be embracing geo-engineering schemes these days.  Geoengineering is "the intentional large scale manipulation of the global environment" to counteract the effects of global warming — such as injecting massive amounts of soot or mirrors into the air.

But why would you choose an experimental combination of chemotherapy and radiation therapy that might make you sicker if your doctors told you diet and exercise — albeit serious diet and excercise — would definitely work (see "Geo-engineering remains a bad idea" and "Geo-Engineering is NOT the Answer")?

Well, desperation drives some people to contemplate extreme things, and climate scientists are increasingly desperate to prevent the catastrophe we face on our current path of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions (see "Desperate times, desperate scientists").

But why do people who don't believe anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real or would be catastrophic push it?  Richard S. Courtney, British coal industry flack  (see bio here), is one such denier who spreads disinformation on various blogs (including this one today).   As BigCityLib informs us, Courtney recently made this remarkable admission:

I am firmly convinced that dangerous AGW is not a problem and cannot become one.  However, I do think the possibility of the geo-engineering should be supported.  My reason for this is a political ploy and I explain it as follows….

The politicians need a viable reason if they are to back-off from this commitment to the constraints [of GHGs] without losing face.

The geo-engineering option provides the needed viable reason to do nothing about AGW now….

This suggested political ploy is not fanciful and it has precedent.  Opponents of the nuclear industry have objected that there is no "safe" method to dispose of nuclear waste.  The nuclear industry has responded by asserting that the waste could be vitrified.  A practical method for the vitrification still remains to be developed, but assertion of the possibility of the vitrification has been sufficient to overcome objections to nuclear power in several countries for nearly 40 years.

Fool me once….

(See also "Geoengineering and the New Climate Denialism.")

Geo-engineering remains a dubious set of schemes — literally smoke and mirrors.  Science advisor John Holdren told me in April that he stands by his long-standing critique:

"The 'geo-engineering' approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects."

Now uber-delay Bjorn Lomborg is embracing geo-engineering — and NYT's John Tierney is flacking that work (here).  What a surprise!

RealClimate just published an outstanding response, "A biased economic analysis of geoengineering" by Prof. Alan Robock.  Since Robock gave the best talk I ever heard on geo-engineering (here), and since this post is an excellent primer with numerous links, I am reprinting it below (with his permission):

Bjorn Lomborg's Climate Consensus Center just released an un-refereed report on geoengineering, An Analysis of Climate Engineering as a Response to Global Warming, by J Eric Bickel and Lee Lane. The "consensus" in the title of Lomborg's center is based on a meeting of 50 economists last year. The problem with allowing economists to decide the proper response of society to global warming is that they base their analysis only on their own quantifications of the costs and benefits of different strategies. In this report, discussed below, they simply omit the costs of many of the potential negative aspects of producing a stratospheric cloud to block out sunlight or cloud brightening, and come to the conclusion that these strategies have a 25-5000 to 1 benefit/cost ratio. That the second author works for the American Enterprise Institute, a lobbying group that has been a leading global warming denier, is not surprising, except that now they are in favor of a solution to a problem they have claimed for years does not exist.

Geoengineering has come a long way since first discussed here three years ago. [Here I use the term "geoengineering" to refer to "solar radiation management" (SRM) and not to carbon capture and sequestration (called "air capture" in the report), a related topic with quite different issues.] In a New Scientist interview, John Holdren, President Obama's science adviser, says geoengineering has to be examined as a possible response to global warming, but that we can make no such determination now. A two-day conference on geoengineering organized by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences was held in June, 2009, with an opening talk by the President, Ralph Cicerone. The American Meteorological Society (AMS) has just issued a policy statement on geoengineering, which urges cautious consideration, more research, and appropriate restrictions. But all this attention comes with the message that we know little about the efficacy, costs, and problems associated with geoengineering suggestions, and that much more study is needed.

Bickel and Lane, however, do not hesitate to write a report that is rather biased in favor of geoengineering using SRM, by emphasizing the low cost and dismissing the many possible negative aspects. They use calculations with the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE) economic model to make the paper seem scientific, but there are many inherent assumptions, and they up-front refuse to present their results in terms of ranges or error bars. Specific numbers in their conclusions make the results seem much more certain than they are. While they give lip service to possible negative consequences of geoengineering, they refuse to quantify them. Indeed, the purpose of new research is to do just that, but the tone of this report is to claim that cooling the planet will have overall benefits, which CAN be quantified. The conclusions and summary of the report imply much more certainty as to the net benefits of SRM than is really the case.

My main areas of agreement with this report are that global warming is an important, serious problem, that SRM with stratospheric aerosols or cloud brightening would not be expensive, and that we indeed need more research into geoengineering. The authors provide a balanced introduction to the issues of global warming and the possible types of geoengineering.

But Bickel and Lane ignore the effects of ocean acidification from continued CO2 emissions, dismissing this as a lost cause. Even without global warming, reducing CO2 emissions is needed to do the best we can to save the ocean. The costs of this continuing damage to the planet, which geoengineering will do nothing to address, are ignored in the analysis in this report. And without mitigation, SRM would need to be continued for hundreds of years. If it were stopped, by the loss of interest or means by society, the resulting rapid warming would be much more dangerous than the gradual warming we are now experiencing.

Bickel and Lane do not even mention several potential negative effects of SRM, including getting rid of blue skies, huge reductions in solar power from systems using direct solar radiation, or ruining terrestrial optical astronomy. They imply that SRM technologies will work perfectly, and ignore unknown unknowns. Not one cloud has ever been artificially brightened by injection of sea salt aerosols, yet this report claims to be able to quantify the benefits and the costs to society of cloud brightening.

They also imply that stratospheric geoengineering can be tested at a small scale, but this is not true. Small injections of SO2 into the stratosphere would actually produce small radiative forcing, and we would not be able to separate the effects from weather noise. The small volcanic eruptions of the past year (1.5 Tg SO2 from Kasatochi in 2008 and 1 Tg SO2 from Sarychev in 2009, as compared to 7 Tg SO2 from El Chichón in 1982 and 20 Tg SO2 from Pinatubo in 1991) have produced stratospheric clouds that can be well-observed, but we cannot detect any climate impacts. Only a large-scale stratospheric injection could produce measurable impacts. This means that the path they propose would lead directly to geoengineering, even just to test it, and then it would be much harder to stop, what with commercial interests in continuing (e.g., Star Wars, which has not even ever worked).

Bickel and Lane also ignore several seminal papers on geoengineering that present much more advanced scientific results than the older papers they cite. In particular, they ignore Tilmes et al. (2008), Robock et al. (2008), Rasch et al. (2008), and Jones et al. (2009).

With respect to ozone, they dismiss concerns about ozone depletion and enhanced UV by citing Wigley (2006) and Crutzen (2006), but ignore the results of Tilmes et al. (2008), who showed that the effects would prolong the ozone hole for decades and that deployment of stratospheric aerosols in a couple decades would not be safe as claimed here. Bickel and Lane assert, completely incorrectly, "On its face, though, it does not appear that the ozone issue would be likely to invalidate the concept of stratospheric aerosols."

With respect to an Arctic-only scheme, they suggest in several places that it would be possible to control Arctic climate based on the results of Caldeira and Wood (2008) who artificially reduce sunlight in a polar cap in their model (the "yarmulke method"), whereas Robock et al. (2008) showed with a more realistic model that explicitly treats the distribution and transport of stratospheric aerosols, that the aerosols could not be confined to just the Arctic, and such a deployment strategy would affect the summer Asian monsoon, reducing precipitation over China and India. And Robock et al. (2008) give examples from past volcanic eruptions that illustrate this effect, such as the pattern of precipitation reduction after the 1991 Pinatubo eruption (Trenberth and Dai, 2007):

With respect to cloud brightening, Bickel and Lane ignore the Jones et al. (2009) results that cloud brightening would mainly cool the oceans and not affect land temperature much, so that it is an imperfect method at best to counter global warming. Furthermore Jones et al. (2009) found that cloud brightening over the South Atlantic would produce severe drought over the Amazon, destroying the tropical forest.

They also ignore a huge class of ethical and world governance issues. Whose hand would be on the global thermostat? Who would trust military aircraft or a multi-national geoengineering company to have the interests of the people of the planet foremost?

They do not seem to realize that volcanic eruptions affect climate change because of sulfate aerosols produced from sulfur dioxide gas injections into the stratosphere, the same that is proposed for SRM, and not by larger ash particles that fall out quickly after and eruption and do not cause climate change.

They dismiss air capture ("air capture technologies do not appear as promising as solar radiation management from a technical or a cost perspective") but ignore the important point that it would have few of the potential side effects of SRM. Air capture would just remove the cause of global warming in the first place, and the only side effects would be in the locations where the CO2 would be sequestered.

For some reason, they insist on using the wrong units for energy flux (W) instead of the correct units of W/m^2, and then mix them in the paper. I cannot understand why they choose to make it so confusing.

The potential negative consequences of stratospheric SRM were clearly laid out by Robock (2008) and updated by Robock et al. (2009), which still lists 17 reasons why geoengineering may be a bad idea. One of those important possible consequences, the threat to the water supply for agriculture and other human uses, has been emphasized in a recent Science article by Gabi Hegerl and Susan Solomon.

Robock et al. (2009) also lists some benefits from SRM, including increased plant productivity and an enhanced CO2 sink from vegetation that grows more when subject to diffuse radiation, as has been observed after every recent large volcanic eruption. But the quantification of these and other geoengineering benefits, as well as the negative aspects, awaits more research.

It may be that the benefits of geoengineering will outweigh the negative aspects, and that most of the problems can be dealt with, but the paper from Lomborg's center ignores the real consensus among all responsible geoengineering researchers. The real consensus, as expressed at the National Academy conference and in the AMS statement, is that mitigation needs to be our first and overwhelming response to global warming, and that whether geoengineering can even be considered as an emergency measure in the future should climate change become too dangerous is not now known. Policymakers will only be able to make such decisions after they see results from an intensive research program. Lomborg's report should have stopped at the need for a research program, and not issued its flawed and premature conclusions.

References:

Jones, A., J. Haywood, and O. Boucher 2009: Climate impacts of geoengineering marine stratocumulus clouds, J. Geophys. Res., 114, D10106, doi:10.1029/2008JD011450.

Rasch, Philip J., Simone Tilmes, Richard P. Turco, Alan Robock, Luke Oman, Chih-Chieh (Jack) Chen, Georgiy L. Stenchikov, and Rolando R. Garcia, 2008: An overview of geoengineering of climate using stratospheric sulphate aerosols. Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. A., 366, 4007-4037, doi:10.1098/rsta.2008.0131.

Robock, Alan, 2008: 20 reasons why geoengineering may be a bad idea. Bull. Atomic Scientists, 64, No. 2, 14-18, 59, doi:10.2968/064002006. PDF file Roundtable discussion of paper

Robock, Alan, Luke Oman, and Georgiy Stenchikov, 2008: Regional climate responses to geoengineering with tropical and Arctic SO2 injections. J. Geophys. Res., 113, D16101, doi:10.1029/2008JD010050. PDF file

Robock, Alan, Allison B. Marquardt, Ben Kravitz, and Georgiy Stenchikov, 2009: The benefits, risks, and costs of stratospheric geoengineering. Submitted to Geophys. Res. Lett., doi:10.1029/2009GL039209. PDF file

Tilmes, S., R. Müller, and R. Salawitch, 2008: The sensitivity of polar ozone depletion to proposed geoengineering schemes, Science, 320(5880), 1201-1204, doi:10.1126/science.1153966.

Trenberth, K. E., and A. Dai (2007), Effects of Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption on the hydrological cycle as an analog of geoengineering, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L15702, doi:10.1029/2007GL030524.

Tim Johnson (D-SD) supports climate and clean energy bill

Posted: 12 Aug 2009 05:20 PM PDT

http://www.ncmtv.org/gala/vips/i/us_tim_johnson.jpgOkay, Senator Johnson (D-SD) may have had a Probability of a Yes Vote of 87% to Nate Silver (see "Epic Battle 3: Who are the swing Senators?").   But others, like E&E News (subs. req'd), had him as a straight fence sitter with the likes of John McCain (R-AZ) and Richard Lugar (R-IN).

So it is a reasonably big deal for him to come out now and endorse a strong climate and clean energy bill.  Here is his full piece, "Climate Change Bill Could Bring Jobs, Prosperity and Clean Air":

How many times have you heard experts cite the fact that South Dakota is the fourth windiest state, but only ranks 20th in actual installed wind energy generation? Soon the Senate will consider climate change legislation that could finally help South Dakota to live up to its wind generating potential and capture the benefits of a cash crop that is just blowing across our landscape.

In fact, the wind energy potential in South Dakota can put us in a leading position to reduce our nation's dependence on foreign sources of fossil fuels and get America running on clean energy.

This is a chance to invest in American ingenuity and help our country become a global leader on clean energy that can jumpstart our economy. We can grow our economy and reduce the demand for oil, much of which is imported and drives up our trade deficit while enriching hostile foreign governments.

South Dakota's growing clean energy economy has added good-paying jobs at an annual job growth rate of 7.9 percent over the past decade. A new federal policy that drives demand for wind power will sustain these jobs and create more of them.

As a consequence of the forward-looking 2007 Energy Bill that boosted renewable fuels production and reformed fuel efficiency rules for cars and trucks, our consumption of petroleum-based gasoline is predicted to decline by over 1 million barrels per day below the country's daily total in 2007. In addition, it helps pick up the pace on ethanol and looks at next generation biofuels, such as switchgrass, wood waste and other non-grain feedstocks, which helps both East and West River, South Dakota. It also included a tax credit that, in our neck of the woods, can help build wind turbines and start harnessing that energy potential.

Simply put, that means we already have a plan in place that moves us toward consuming less oil and more homegrown biofuels while making our cars and trucks more energy efficient. But that is just one step. When it comes to energy, we should be open to new ideas that help our economy and invest in America.

Now some will throw their hands up and say we just can't do this now or they will try to cite worst case scenarios and cost projections far beyond what the non-partisan groups have told us clean energy incentives will actually cost. These scare tactics just present a status quo approach that leaves us all vulnerable to oil spikes in a global market and high gas prices that crush family budgets like we saw last summer.

Energy prices are going up with or without any comprehensive policy changes from Congress. The question is: are we sending more of our hard earned money to Big Oil and oil rich countries or are we investing in our own backyards?

Technology and alternative ways to produce energy need long-term planning. For South Dakota in particular, with so much untapped potential for wind energy generation and renewable fuels production, a more progressive national energy policy could be just the step that will finally transform that economic potential into actual jobs, economic development, and opportunity for people and communities across our state.

This fall, the Senate is likely going to take a fresh look at a comprehensive energy bill focused on clean energy incentives. I am optimistic we can turn energy potential into reality and help create new job opportunities at home by producing more clean energy in the United States.

Hear!  Hear!

NAM makes case for stronger climate bill, forecasts 20 million new jobs, $9 trillion GDP growth by 2030 under American Clean Energy And Security Act

Posted: 12 Aug 2009 03:15 PM PDT

gigo.gifA "new" study by the National Asssociation of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation rehashes their analysis of the Lieberman-Warner Climate bill (see "Wrong Again 2: Delayers cry wolf with same old Garbage In, Garbage Out economic model").  And both are just a rehashing of the analyses of the Clean Air Act sulfur trading program that were proven wrong by reality, which is to say by the ingenuity and technology of entrepreneurs.

But what is fascinating about the GIGO analysis by NAM/ACCCF is that even though they ignored the key cost-containment provisions in the climate bill — including virtually all of the international offsets and the strategic reserve — they still found that 20 million new jobs will be created in the United States by 2030 and GDP will be some $9 trillion higher, as Brad Johnson shows in the post below first published by Wonk Room.

So NAM has ironically made a solid case for strengthening the bill, for limiting the international offsets and setting a high ceiling price — since the climate bill manages to achieve these outcomes even with NAM's absurdly high price estimate for  carbon allowances in 2020 of up to $60.  Even EIA, which uses a similar economic model as NAM/ACCF (but less biased assumptions, although EIA also ignored the strategic reserve), found a permit price in 2020 of $32 (see here), which was about double what EPA and I project and 50% higher than CBO's projection.

A new analysis of the economic impact of clean energy legislation forecasts powerful job and economic growth through 2030. The analysis of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), commissioned by the right-wing National Association of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF), finds that 20 million new jobs will be created in the United States by 2030, even under high-cost assumptions:

NAM ACES Job Chart

Similarly, NAM found the gross domestic product of the United States would increase by $9 trillion by 2030 from current levels. To be more precise, the analysis estimates $9.1 trillion in growth under its low-cost scenario, and $8.9 trillion under its high-cost scenario, versus $9.5 trillion in growth under its baseline scenario.

This analysis, conducted by the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), uses the same economic model as the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), but with "input assumptions provided by ACCF/NAM":

SAIC is a policy-neutral organization. SAIC executed the NEMS/ACCF-NAM 2 model in this project using SAIC's and ACCF/NAM's interpretation of the bill, and input assumptions provided by ACCF/NAM. The modeling was performed independent of EIA. Analysis provided in this report is based on the output from the NEMS/ACCF-NAM 2 model as a result of the ACCF/NAM input assumptions. The input assumptions, opinions and recommendations in this report are those of ACCF and NAM, and do not necessarily represent the views of SAIC.

These "input assumptions" for the deployment of the ACES carbon cap-and-trade market include:

– International offsets are limited to 5%. ACES allows 50% of offset use to come from international offsets.

– Wind energy deployment limited to 5 to 10 GW per year for the next twenty years. In reality, 8.5 GW in new American wind power was deployed in 2008, even without the incentive of a carbon market.

NAM also made unusually pessimistic assumptions for the deployment of biomass electricity generation and the use of banking provisions by polluting corporations. These assumptions lead to a carbon allowance price of $123 to $159 per ton of carbon dioxide in 2030. This price is more than twice as expensive as the estimates of the EIA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Congressional Budget Office.

Essentially, NAM is assuming that American companies will be unable to deploy clean energy and energy efficiency technologies in a timely fashion. It's odd that the National Association of Manufacturers is so gloomy about its members' ability to build the clean energy economy. Even so, its analysis finds vibrant economic growth while global warming pollution is kept under control.

Update At Get Energy Smart Now, A. Siegel notes:

Yet again, the SAIC team has stepped away from taking responsibility from this work: "Don't blame us, we just ran the model, we take no responsibility for what went in and what comes out." In modeling, one of the standard abbreviations: GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. . . . For example, there is no valuing of improved health due to reduced fossil fuel pollution. There is zero valuing of how improved health of workers means lower absenteeism and therefore higher productivity. There is zero valuing of reducing the risks and impacts of catastrophic climate change.

Update The Media Matters Action Network asks about SAIC: "Would A 'Policy-Neutral' Organization Spend $20 Million On Lobbyists?"

Portland Maine talk, August 18th

Posted: 12 Aug 2009 12:35 PM PDT

I will be speaking Tuesday, August 18 at the The Gulf of Maine Research Institute, 350 Commercial Street, Portland.  Reception starts at 6 pm, talk at 7 pm.

Here is the full event release from the sponsor organization, the The Natural Resources Council of Maine (with RSVP info):

Climate Action and Clean Energy Now Gulf of Maine Research Institute

Climate Action and Clean Energy Now — A View from the Center of the National Debate

Climate expert Dr. Joseph Romm, author of Hell and High Water and the editor of the most widely read climate blog in the country (http://www.climateprogress.org/) will speak on the movement toward a clean energy future on Tuesday, August 18, at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland.   Please join us for a reception from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m., with the presentation to follow at 7:00 p.m.

The event is free and open to the public.  We encourage you to register online to help us with planning.

This event is one of 50 events to celebrate NRCM's 50 years protecting the nature of Maine.