MailStopper Didn't

I promised an update on Tonic MailStopper, which I signed up for in May 2009. This is a service which claimed to stop up to 90% of your junk mail in 90 days. Unfortunately, I haven't noticed a dramatic decrease in the amount of junk mail I get. However, there are a couple of caveats. The biggest one was stated by the company itself when it sent customers an email in November '09: "We finally looked in the mirror and admitted to ourselves that we can’t change the junk mail industry." MailStopper has changed their name to Precycle and their service to a package of "two energy efficient light bulbs, a reusable bag and a junk mail reduction product that eliminates only what we can guarantee will be eliminated." There are also no recurring charges unless you move. Precycle costs $43 total.

The other caveats, at least with the old system, are that you had to go onto MailStopper's web site to identify some of the junk mail that you didn't want in order for them to stop it. They did stop some advertising mail automatically, and did most of the difficult work for you. I'm sure I could have done more to reduce junk mail by going into my account and requesting specific places not send me mail. Another caveat: we get a lot of solicitations for charitable donations, which, depending on how charitable you're feeling, you might or might not classify as junk mail. Again, I could reduce these by going into my account and specifying which ones I didn't want mail from. But I didn't. A final caveat: I didn't quantify how much junk mail I got before or after paying for the service, so I'm just going by my memory, and memories are far from perfect.

If you're so inclined, I encourage you to try Precycle, or 41 pounds, which charges $41 for 5 years, or ecocycle if you want to do it yourself for free. I'd be interested to know how well any of these work for you. As always, I'm also interested in your ideas and practices for reducing our contributions to global warming. Thanks, and
Stay cool,
Bonney

Operation Climate Vote and ECI Teleconference

Sorry to have been absent for so long! Many of you know I had a bicycling accident Jan. 12 and was laid up for a couple of weeks. I'm much better now--thanks for all your calls, emails, thoughts and prayers. Fortunately, no car was involved--I just fell, apparently.
Here's a couple of things we can do right now about climate change. Go here to join the Environmental Defense Action Fund's 100,000 letters campaign for a strong climate action bill to pass the Senate. They have 50,000 letters already-let's help them get the rest of the way by writing letters and spreading the word about their campaign.
The other thing we can do is to get in on a teleconference the Evangelical Climate Initiative is having on Tuesday, Feb. 16 at 11 am Eastern Time. The conference call will feature a preview of what could happen this Spring regarding climate change legislation and how we can help. If you're interested, email alaushkin@creationcare.org to find out more or RSVP for the teleconference. I'm interested just to find out what the Evangelical Climate Initiative is, but I have to work then. If you find out more, let us know by leaving a comment. Be careful out there, and
Stay cool,
Bonney

Some good news, and some fun

Here's some good news and fun to counteract the rather disappointing news coming out of Copenhagen so far: last week, after years of inaction, the EPA finally determined that greenhouse gas emissions, which cause climate change, endanger human health and welfare. The move is necessary to allow EPA regulation of global warming pollutants. At the same time, the EPA also proposed regulation of the largest sources of carbon emissions. EPA's actions should prod Congress to pass laws that cap greenhouse gases. A climate change bill has passed the House of Representatives, but a similar bill has languished in the Senate while health-care reform is debated. So, before you go full swing into Christmas, solstice, or Kwanzaa (or right after Hanukkah's over), please thank the EPA for these actions by clicking here. Please change the message so that it says what you want it to. And email your members of Congress to let them know you still support strong climate action despite all the tactics of the global warming deniers and those who are fighting to preserve the status quo. There is an excellent sample letter here, which can be sent to your Senators and representatives with the click of a mouse, that states clearly why the fuss over the stolen climate emails doesn't change the facts of global warming or their seriousness. Again, please change to suit your needs.

If you have a slightly sick sense of humor like I do (and don't object to violence to out-of-season vegetables), check out this funny video from Green Thing.

The New Mexican says they're deciding when to print my piece, so look for it this Sunday or the next and I'll link to it when it's published.

Resolve to do all you can to fight climate change in 2010. In the meantime, take the above actions, then relax and enjoy the rest of your holidays. I'll post again in the new year.
Stay cool,
Bonney

Don't be fooled by deniers

Not one, but two opinion pieces in the Santa Fe New Mexican last Sunday are full of falsehoods and misleading statements about climate change. I will address these fully in response to the New Mexican, which I'll either excerpt or provide a link to on this blog, but in the meantime you can find facts and links to more information to counter most of the spurious claims in the New Mexican pieces in this piece by Scientific American. Remember, 97% of US climate scientists, the scientists who actually study this subject, agree that global warming is real and that it's caused by humans. Our National Academy of Sciences under George W. Bush, along with the academies of science of 10 other nations, agreed that the evidence for climate change and humans' role in it was strong enough to warrant fast action by governments. Update: The US National Academy of Sciences, along with the Academies of Science of 12 other industrialized and emerging nations, signed a statement in June 2009 including the following quotes: "Climate change is happening even faster than previously estimated,""The need for urgent action to address climate change is now indisputable," and "Limiting global warming to 2°C would require a very rapid worldwide implementation of all currently available low carbon technologies. The G8+5 should lead the transition to an energy efficient and low carbon world economy." When we are faced with such great consequences and quite substantial evidence, do you think we should wait until the consequences are so dire that they can't be denied? The people who live on various islands and in the polar reaches, not to mention many species of plants and animals, are already facing dire consequences. By the time the consequences are in the faces of the rest of us, because the ocean and the natural world absorbs CO2 and heat and delays these consequences, scientists tell us it will probably be too late to avoid a world far different from the one that civilization evolved in. Do we really want to let a minority of vocal deniers, some of whom have been paid by oil companies to delay government action, confuse us into losing our chance to save ourselves and thousands of other species? Would you rather prepare for a catastrophe that might not happen, or not prepare for a catastrophe that is actually already happening, but not yet to most of us?

Should You Buy Carbon Offsets?

After encouraging you to offset your Thanksgiving travel by using one of the offset programs at the bottom of the homepage, I did more research. Carbon offsets, which are shares of projects you can buy that cancel out your greenhouse gas emissions for various activities, are controversial. Responsible Travel, one of the first travel companies to give travelers the option of buying offsets, canceled their program in October because they believe that offsets do more to soothe consciences than reduce CO2 output. We do need to ask ourselves whether we're buying offsets to assuage a guilty conscience, or whether we're using them when we've reduced our carbon footprint as much as we can. If you just have to take a flight, buying an offset will reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions if the offset is real. Here's where things get dicey. Michael Wara, a professor at Stanford Law School and former climate scientist, says "we don't know" how many offset projects really reduce CO2 emissions. The hardest part is knowing whether a project would have been done without offsets helping to pay for it. My take is that it's very unlikely that all offset programs would have been done without offset money, so you are paying for some greenhouse gas reduction. Since it's an imperfect mechanism, it's not a great conscience-soother, so don't use it for that. With these cautions in mind, I've changed the links at the bottom of this page to only include carbon offset programs that serve individuals and are retailers for the Climate Action Reserve, which has strict requirements that projects are real, permanent, and additional, and includes independent verification. I encourage you to reduce your carbon footprint as much as you can (see the list of "10 Things" below), look at these sites, and then offset your holiday travel and other activities as much as you see fit. Going through the process will also make each of us more aware of how much greenhouse gas our different activities produce. Please share any thoughts, facts, or questions you have about offsets, and
Stay cool,
Bonney

Tell Senate to Pass a Strong Climate Bill

As you may know, the US House of Representatives passed a climate bill in June, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). We've been nagging our Senators meanwhile to do likewise, and it's time to nag them again. Click here to find your Senator and call, write, or email urging them to pass the strongest climate legislation possible. Until both houses pass a bill and the President signs it, there can be little progress on an international treaty, which is why world leaders delayed expectations this week for a strong new treaty to reduce global warming to come out of the Copenhagen talks. Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer introduced a climate bill on Sept. 30 that we should support. It needs strengthening, as lucidly outlined by Margie Alt of the Huffington Post blog site. Alt points out that we could achieve a 26% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 just by investing in energy efficiency, which costs less than we're spending on energy now! We need to do more than this, and there are lots of options other than turning to nuclear energy, which is very expensive and creates waste that's radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Nuclear energy and offshore oil drilling are both being discussed in the Senate. Drilling for oil and burning coal cause global warming, they don't solve it, although sequestering CO2 from fossil fuels is an interim solution. Call or write your Senators now to urge them to pass the strongest climate legislation possible without relying on nuclear or coal. If you're traveling for Thanksgiving, have safe travels and offset your travel with the programs at the very bottom of this page! I'll post again in 2 weeks.
Stay cool,
Bonney

This Isn't About Climate, But It's Unbelievable

I have to take a moment to post this unbelievable bit of info that I found buried in a UNICEF report. They sent me a nice email about buying stuff for the holidays to support their programs (which is a fine idea, along with giving them money) and about tracking progress on child nutrition. I was intrigued by the statement that "80 percent of all chronically undernourished children are found in just 24 countries." After following a link, I came to this report on Tracking Progress on Child and Maternal Nutrition. On page 15, there's a world map that has a red circle on each country. The size of the red circle is proportional to the number of children in that country who are moderately to severely stunted because of hunger (they call it undernutrition now). But look--there's a pretty good-sized red circle on the U.S.! Now go to page 104. There's the top 24 countries in terms of numbers of stunted children. And look! The US is number 42 with not 714 children as I thought at first, but 714,000 children WHO ARE STUNTED BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TO EAT. This is 3% of all children under 5 in one of the richest countries in the world who are "below two standard deviations from median height for age of the WHO Child Growth Standards." We are doing only 2 percentage points better than Iran, the same as Ukraine, and worse than Chile and Croatia! TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW THAT THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!