Ever wonder just why climate change denialism is so prevalent even as hard evidence continues to mount that we are rapidly nearing a point beyond which massively destructive changes may be inevitable? There are, of course, numerous factors behind this situation. As researcher Peter Gleick observed in Forbes, “when scientific findings have big consequences for policy and politics, anti-science ideology and denial flourish.”

Think Progress reports that a new organization, Forecast the Facts, is attempting to insure that TV weather forecasters don’t contribute to this state of affairs. They are worried about the tendency of some forecasters to either ignore climate change or promote denialism in their role as trusted TV weathermen:

It’s a big problem: weather reporters reach millions of people every night, and right now they’re not telling their viewers the full story. We can change that. …

St. Louisians and others in Southeastern Missouri who live in range of KTVI-TV (FOX2) might be interested in the prominent position of that station’s Dave Murray on Forecast the Facts’ list of weather reporters who promote denialism. The report quotes Murray as saying that:

…he prefers to talk about climate change and weather cycles rather than global warming. Murray said, “The climate is always changing and has been since day one” and will continue to do so.

“We have been in a warmer-than-average pattern for the last 10 to 15 years,” said Murray. “That cycle is now just starting to flip to a colder-than-average pattern that will last 15 to 20 years, although there will be some blips in this pattern.”

The St. Louis Business Journal article from which the quote was taken surveyed several Missouri weather forecasters, and while none seemed as overtly denialist as Murray, several noted that they shy away from talking about global warming because it’s “controversial” (Eirch Aldrich, KOMU-TV, Columbia; Lisa Teachman, KMBC-TV, Kansas City; Zach Paul, KRCG-TV, Jefferson City).

It’s heartening to note that other Missouri weather forecasters are less worried about political fallout. Some, while they do not explicitly talk about global warming, do not dispute the concept, but quite legitimately note that they have little time and it is not always possible to relate immediate weather patterns to long-term climate change patterns. Fortunately, there are even some forecasters, like Cindy Prezzler (KSDK, St. Louis) and  Dave Sinder (KY3-TV, Springfield), who consider it appropriate to draw attention to the relationship between weather and climate change.

The divide between Missouri’s TV weather men and women is not unique.  Although the American Meteorological Society has formally come down on the side of the climate scientists, affirming anthropogenic, or man-made, global warming, a recent study finds that only about half of 571 weather forecasters surveyed believed that global warming is real and less than a third believe it is due to human activities.

There are numerous reasons for this divergence; a report on the subject in the New York Times suggested that a major reason might be the difference in the methodology used by meteorologists and that of climate scientists. The tools used to predict a blizzard over the period of a week are quite different than the methodologies used to analyze long term trends and build comprehensive predictive models.

The article also quoted several sources who believe that resentment may play a role. It suggests that TV forecasters – only about half of whom even have a four-year degree in meteorology – may experience “a little bit of elitist-versus-populist tensions” when confronted with dicta laid down by mostly academic climate scientists who operate very differently and who aren’t always respectful of the minutiae of predictive meteorology.  

Whatever the reason, the problem is serious because research also shows that up to 56% of Americans trust TV weather forecasters more than other sources on the subject of global warming. Consequently, it is important to address the problem of meteorologists who persist in misinforming the public while, as Forecast the Facts, notes, “their viewers are facing unprecedented heat waves, droughts, and flooding, which scientists say are fueled by global warming.” If policy shaped by those who are willfully or otherwise ignorant of the facts worries you, visit Forecast the Facts and see what others are doing and what you can do too.        

Eh, what a maroon:

@AriFleischer Ari Fleischer

This is freaky. The temp is dropping & the snown is sticking like crazy. Al Gore – get rewrite 6 hours ago via Twitter for BlackBerry

The mouthpiece for dubya’s administration gets it wrong. Again.

October 29, 2011 10:10 AM

Richard Muller and science the right didn’t want to see

….Muller and his team conducted a thorough review of all of the available information and discovered – wouldn’t you know it – that the scientific consensus is accurate. “Global warming,” Muller concluded, “is real.”

Remember, this research intended to prove the opposite. Muller and his team even took the most common arguments raised by climate deniers, putting them to the test to see if skeptics’ claims had merit.

But they still found that the scientists are right and the skeptics are wrong. “Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and the UK,” Muller and his team said.

The right, not surprisingly, isn’t pleased, especially after so many conservatives agreed to accept the results of Muller’s research.

But reality is stubborn, and doesn’t much care about the right’s preferences.

We knew that already.

Crossposted from Antemedius

“Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries. But question it we must.”

“The only thing that has actually remotely slowed down the relentless rise of carbon emissions over the last two to three decades is recession.”

— Tim Jackson

British Economist Tim Jackson studies the links between lifestyle, societal values and the environment to question the primacy of economic growth.

He currently serves as the economics commissioner on the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission and is director of RESOLVE – a Research group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment. After five years as Senior Researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute, Jackson became Professor of Sustainable Development at University of Surrey, and was the first person to hold that title at a UK university.

He founded RESOLVE in May 2006 as an inter-disciplinary collaboration across four areas – CES, psychology, sociology and economics – aiming to develop an understanding of the links between lifestyle, societal values and the environment.

In 2009 Jackson published “Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet”, a substantially revised and updated version of Jackson’s controversial study (.PDF, 136 pp.) for the Sustainable Development Commission, an advisory body to the UK Government. The study rapidly became the most downloaded report in the Commission’s nine year history when it was launched in 2009.

Filmed at TEDGlobal 2010, here is Tim Jackson’s economic reality check, a 20 minute talk he gave for the TEDGlobal audience…

I want you to imagine a world, in 2050, of around nine billion people, all aspiring to Western incomes, Western lifestyles. And I want to ask the question — and we’ll give them that two percent hike in income, in salary each years as well, because we believe in growth. And I want to ask the question: how far and how fast would be have to move? How clever would we have to be? How much technology would we need in this world to deliver our carbon targets? And here in my chart. On the left-hand side is where we are now. This is the carbon intensity of economic growth in the economy at the moment. It’s around about 770 grams of carbon. In the world I describe to you, we have to be right over here at the right-hand side at six grams of carbon. It’s a 130-fold improvement, and that is 10 times further and faster than anything we’ve ever achieved in industrial history. Maybe we can do it, maybe it’s possible — who knows? Maybe we can even go further and get an economy that pulls carbon out of the atmosphere, which is what we’re going to need to be doing by the end of the century. But shouldn’t we just check first that the economic system that we have is remotely capable of delivering this kind of improvement?

http://www.antemedius.com/files/flvplayer.swf

full transcript here…  

On May 16, 2009 a collaboration between the British medical journal The Lancet and University College London released the first UCL Lancet Commission report, assessing the impact of global warming on global health, and on populations.

Titled Managing the health effects of climate change (.PDF), the year long study highlights the threat of climate change on patterns of disease, water and food insecurity, human settlements, extreme climatic events, and population migration. The report also highlights the action required by global society to mitigate the health impacts of climate change.

“Climate change,” the report concludes, “is the biggest global health threat of the 21 century.”

The report presents the two distorted maps shown below  – density equalizing cartograms depicting a comparison of undepleted CO2 emissions by country for 1950-2000 versus the regional distribution of four climate sensitive health consequences (malaria, malnutrition, diarrhea, and inland flood-related fatalities).

expand image

The first image shows the world in terms of carbon emissions. America, for instance, is huge. So is China. And Europe. Africa is hardly visible.

The second map shows the world in terms of increased mortality — that is to say, deaths — from climate change. Suddenly, America virtually disappears. So does Europe. Africa, however, is grotesquely distended. South Asia inflates.

In Barack Obama’s commencement address Sunday May 17, 2009 at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, Obama exhorted the graduates to recognize that “that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a ‘single garment of destiny.'” and “Your generation must decide how to save God’s creation from a changing climate that threatens to destroy it.”

But the peoples of the world are not bound equally.

“Loss of healthy life years as a result of global environmental change (including climate change) is predicted to be 500 times greater in poor African populations than in European populations,” states the UCL Lancet Commission report bluntly.

In other words, for every million deaths related to climate change in Europe – and North America, btw – there will be five hundred million deaths in Africa and other countries.

……….

I have feet. They were free.

And though they sometimes smell, they don’t pollute.

Since the human race doesn’t seem to be able to get it together on using our heads, maybe if we all got together and used our feet more often, we wouldn’t have so many problems to think about?

Folks, fair warning. This is going to be a rant. I just saw a post at FiredUp! that got me worked up. The gist:

Roy Blunt, who declared during his U.S. Senate campaign that “there isn’t any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth,” has cosponsored legislation to completely eliminate the Environment [sic] Protection Agency.

Why am I so exercised by this same ol’, same ol’ posturing? I just finished reading Hot: “Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, by long-time climate reporter Mark Hertsgaard. It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, but it broke it all down, tracing the trajectory of changes that are already taking place, that cannot now be stopped, only mitigated. It painted a clear picture of the world my dear nieces and nephews and all the lovely children and grandchildren of my friends will have to face.

So what’s the world, literally, coming to? Nothing is absolutely, picture-perfect sure, of course, except that the world I know, that formed the experience of my father and his father will disappear. My beautiful California, the incomparable Central Coast where I grew up, is likely to dry up and blow away as the Sierra snow pack that waters the state continues to disappear. Low lying cities such New York and Miami will have to hustle to ward of the flooding that threatens them as sea level continues to rise. You doubt me? It’s already beginning to happen along the Atlantic seaboard. Island nations in the South Pacific are  already disappearing.

We will see more extreme storm activity, floods like this spring’s will be more commonplace – but may well alternate with equally debilitating droughts. You think Missouri farmers who oppose cap-and-trade have a point about somewhat higher immediate energy costs? When their farms are part of the new dust bowl, ask them if they maybe should have listened to the scientific Cassandras who carried the warning, instead of politicians on the energy industry dole, or those quislings who worry that climate change isn’t a winning political issue.  

Plants and animal species will die out or migrate, upsetting a biological equilibrium that has endured for millenia. Think there’s a problem with economic migration right now? Wait until whole populations are displaced by drought, flood, and loss of land mass. Think about starvation, disease and war in the underdeveloped areas, and diminished quality of life in the richer countries – nobody will get off free.

Do I really believe this or something like it will happen in the next 50 plus years? Absolutely – although the effects may be lessened if people begin now to plan on how to adapt to the coming changes – and to mitigate the rate of change. The weight of genuine authority, the word of people who have made the study of this issue their life’s work, is overwhelming.

For example, take the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, in the words of the Washington Post, “the country’s preeminent institution chartered to provide scientific advice to lawmakers.” A new report released by the National Research Council presents findings that indicate that:

Climate change is occurring, is very likely caused by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.

Guess ol’ Roy just decided to ignore these experts charged with making their expertise available to guide his decisions. But that’s par for the course – stop and think about who always disputes the effects of climate change and the need to address it? As the Washington Post observes, we have been misled, and the most prominent culprits are just too dumb to hide:

None of this should come as a surprise. None of this is news. But it is newsworthy, sadly, because the Republican Party, and therefore the U.S. government, have moved so far from reality and responsibility in their approach to climate change.

Seizing on inevitable points of uncertainty in something as complex as climate science, and on misreported pseudo-scandals among a few scientists, Republican members of Congress, presidential candidates and other leaders pretend that the dangers of climate change are hypothetical and unproven and the causes uncertain.

To put it in local terms, think about ex-insurance shill, Blaine Luetkemeyer, and his war against the IPCC. Or good ol’ boy auctioneer Billy Long and all the other clowns who, get this, voted to refute the fact of climate change.

And then there’s always the oil exec’s best friend, Roy Blunt. I hope he enjoys the thirty pieces of silver he got from his big oil cronies – because if there is actually something like an afterlife, I’m sure he’ll get a very warm, make that blistering, reception.

Today I got one of those emails filled with jokes that lots of folks like to pass around.  The topic was hard times and one joke caught my attention:  Times are so hard that Exxon-Mobil has had to lay off 24 congressmen.  

My response? If only we could be so lucky. Maybe we could get rid of Todd Akin, Billy Long, Sam Graves, Blaline Luetkemeyer and Vicky Hartzler, Missouri’s own House climate denialist squad, all avid students of the oil industry rule book, and, as FiredUp! reported yesterday, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, champing at the bit to vote to deny that climate change is taking place. Perhaps they’ll vote to deny that the sun comes up in the East tomorrow.

I don’t mean to say that all the members of this little group are actually in the employ of oil giants like Exxon – although Luetkemeyer does seem to be auditioning to be one of the official big oil lackeys in Congress. Many of them impress me as quite capable of patting themselves on the back for this vote because they are actually simple enough to buy into the anti-science, energy industry agenda also promulgated by more cynical players, such as our Senator Roy Blunt, who, hard times or no, will probably continue to rake in scads of big-oil money while toeing the line on climate change.  

No matter what their motivation, however, if these people are so willing to take a stand that is likely to have disastrous consequences for those of us who will still be around in twenty years – and which will certainly challenge our children and grandchildren – they ought to have some very explicit skin in the game.  It is one thing to gamble their grandchildren, but another when it comes to mine and yours, not to mention millions of children in nations whose parents never got to lobby know-nothing American politicians about what will happen to their world. Shouldn’t there be some really hard-core consequences for these fools who have decided to ignore or obfuscate scientific findings they and their patrons don’t like?

What I am proposing is that if, within, say, a twenty to thirty year period, starting this year, the predictions of climate science come to pass to such a degree that they can no longer be denied, and there has been no meaningful effort on the part of the U.S. to mitigate those effects, the legislators who stood in the way of mitigation should agree today that they will consent to step up and be tried for crimes against humanity – like the Nuremberg trials, but for climate denialists whose willful political behavior resulted in death and disruption of nations.They should have no problem with committing themselves to this course if they really believe the ersatz arguments of the denialists.

The need for such a contingency occured to me while I was reading an excellent book by the journalist Mark Hertsgaard, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth. Hertsgaard, who has been reporting on climate change for the past twenty years, draws upon the findings of climate scientists to paint a picture of the world with which his young daughter will have to cope – and it’s not pretty. As he puts it on his Webpage, we will see “… Chicago’s climate transformed to resemble Houston’s; dwindling water supplies and crop yields at home and abroad; the redesign of New York and other cities against mega-storms and sea-level rise.”

Hertsgaard makes the point that, because of the willingness of clowns like Luetkemeyer, Akin, Hartzler, et al., we have already gone past the point of no return. Drastic climate change will take place and there is nothing we can do about it – except keep it from getting worse by curbing CO2 emissions (mitigation), and preparing our infrastructure to adapt to the changes already in the pipeline (adaptation). If we do nothing, then total disaster. Already, though, no matter what we do, it is a sure thing that our children and grandchildren will inhabit an increasingly difficult environment.

If, as seems likely to be the case, nothing is done, the fools who led nations down the garden path ought to have to pay the price – and if they believe in their actions, they should stand up and put themselves on the line right now and commit to going on trial if they are wrong and their criminal ignorance results in pain, suffering and death. Surely they’ll be willing to put their money, so to speak, where their mouth is. Who wants to join me in asking Akin, Long, Graves, Hartzler, Luetkemeyer, and Blunt to take the pledge that they’ll be willing to personally pay the price if the course they are committing all of us to follow proves to be disastrously wrong?

In the past couple of weeks there has been a spate of newspaper articles reporting that the House passed Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer’s (R-9) budget bill amendement to deny funding to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which he characterizes as “engaged in dubious science.” I admit that I did not do a comprehensive survey, but few of the newspaper articles that I saw bothered to examine Luetkemeyer’s rationale for that belief.

This St. Louis Post-Dispatch article is typical. It summarizes Luetkemeyer’s assertions, briefly quotes another congressman, Rep. Henry Waxman,  who, predictably, criticizes Luetkemeyer, and leaves the issue there.  The reader can be forgiven for thinking that this is just another partisan squabble. Some articles actually get a quote from a scientist who, naturally, finds Luetkemeyer’s actions disturbing. But nobody evaluates the evidence either way.

For example, many of Luetkemeyer’s assertions about the IPCC hinge on his embrace of the “climategate” scam. In the Post-Dispatch article cited above he references the manufactured controversy to justify his claim that the IPCC is “nefarious”:

Scientists manipulated climate data, suppressed legitimate arguments in peer-reviewed journals, and researchers were asked to destroy emails so that a small number of climate alarmists could continue to advance their environmental agenda

Climategate gave rise to no substantive criticism of the IPCC findings  – just efforts to cast aspersions on the group’s impartiality, based on a few casual emails from IPCC participants at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU). The Post-Dispatch article said nothing about the fact that half a dozen investigations of the alleged wrongdoing have vindicated the scientists involved. Most recently, the U.S. Commerce Department Inspector General, who initiated an investigation into the Climategate accusations at the behest the the notorious denialist, Senator James Inhoffe (R-OK), concluded that:

In our review of the CRU emails, we did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data comprising the [Global Historical Climatology Network] dataset or failed to adhere to appropriate peer review procedures.

In his press release on the topic, Luetkemeyer also touts a report in which he says “more than 700 acclaimed international scientists have challenged the claims made by the IPCC.” Several news reports on Luetkemeyer’s legislation also mention his promotion of this report. The Dake Page, a science blog, describes the contents in less enthusiastic terms than Luetkemeyer:

… The report is the list of quotes and abstracts compiled by Marc Morano (a lobbyist funded non-scientist) when he worked for James Inhofe during Inhofe’s previous chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  While some of the scientists listed are in fact acclaimed, mostly they are in completely separate fields of study and have never done any climate research.  Others are not scientists at all.  And many of the quotes and abstracts have been edited to suggest positions many of the scientists say they do not hold.

It shouldn’t really have been too difficult to come up with this information. Especially since several of the “700 scientists,” such as Steve Rayner from Oxford, have very publicly repudiated the report and asked that their names, included without their permission, be removed.

The fact is that the basis upon which Rep. Luetkemeyer suggests we withhold vital support from the IPCC is easily demonstrated to be false. The real tragedy is that we desperately need the type of unified research effort that only a cooperative body like the IPCC can provide. Yet our press allows misguided and ignorant politicians like Luetkemeyer to besmirch its reputation with impunity.

Given the importance of the issue, would it have been too much to have expected the Post-Dispatch reporter to go just a little deeper? None of the facts above are hard to find or to verify. He wouldn’t have to say that Luetkemeyer is peddling hokum; he should just do a little more fact checking. We rely on newspapers for truth about what our leaders are doing and saying. Reporting what is authoritatively known about important questions – and climate change is indisputably important – does not constitute bias – unless you think that a bias in favor of the truth is wrong.

On the night of November 30/December 1, 2006, my husband and I lay in bed listening to ice crash from the roofs of the nearby houses. It had simply gotten too thick and heavy to resist gravity. Since the power lines in our neighborhood run through the woods behind our houses, we lost power of course. For a week. That’s not like losing it in the summer–which we had done the previous July for nine days. At least in the summer, it stays light later. It was so depressing in the evenings.

So I dreaded–assumed we were in for–another miserable week or more with this last storm. Didn’t happen. The den is warm, the lights are bright, and I just cooked dinner on our electric stove. Owing to the vagaries of winter storms coming from the South, the forecast was wrong. Mercifully. We got more sleet than freezing rain, so there were few power outages. We will have to take steps, though, because winter storms like this week’s are going to be more common.

Bill O’Reilly didn’t understand why climate change would mean more snow and ice storms, but Al Gore explained it to him.

Last week on his show Bill O’Reilly asked, “Why has southern New York turned into the tundra?” and then said he had a call in to me. I appreciate the question.

As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now and they say that increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming:

“In fact, scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe. Snow has two simple ingredients: cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow.”

“A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species.”

Whether O’Reilly gets it now, I couldn’t say. But I plan to look into a gas insert for our fireplace.

Tomorrow (Nov. 8 10) Repower America will give Peabody Energy an award – their state level Snake Oil Award for Public Deception. Peabody’s award will be presented at 12 p.m. at a red carpet event just outside 701 Market St., which, in case you don’t recognize the address, is Peabody Energy’s headquarters. You will be more than welcome to attend and join in what promises to be lively festivities.

To win the Missouri award, Peabody had to beat out such big-time polluters as Ameren. How did Peabody do it?  

Remember who won last Tuesday’s Senate election? Let me remind you – our new senator will be Roy Blunt, the same guy who in 2009 declared that “there isn’t any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth.” In other words, our new GOP Senator pits his knowledge of climate science against an overwhelming scientific consensus and is willing to bet our future on his conclusions.

Why is Blunt so cavalier about the science of climate change, not to mention the opportunities posed by green industry? It might have something to do with all the money from big oil and coal that he has received over the years. Among these contributors, Peabody Coal employees and political PACs enriched Blunt’s recent Senate campaign to the tune of $37,000 dollars, comprising one of his largest blocs of industry donations.

Get the picture yet? Peabody is a major source of campaign funds for Missouri and other coal state politicians; company lobbyists and front groups spent over $8.4 million to influence congress in 2008 alone. Repower America is just trying to give credit where credit is due:

2010 has been quite the year for environmental disasters caused by big oil companies and professional polluters. The depths to which the fossil fuel companies and their front groups have sunk this past year are unprecedented. Corporate polluters have hijacked our democracy, devastated our environment, denied the science of climate change and made record profits doing so. Repower America wants to expose the polluters for exactly what they are: Snake Oil Salesmen.

Thanks in part to energy interests like Peabody, we’re stuck for the next few years with the climate deniers, the Roy Blunts of the political world, deciding our energy policy and the result will not be pretty. Not only will there likely be no meaningful energy legislation during the next couple of years, plans are already underway for a full court press to neuter the EPA and the Clean Air Act. The honchos at Peabody Oil can rest easy in the knowledge that their dollars have been well-spent.

As for the national award, now that it is clear what the big oil and coal companies have to do to win the award – devastate the environment, poison the climate debate, and purchase politicians so that they can do so with impunity – it’s clear that Koch Industries is a natural as the national level winner, easily beating out such giants as Massey Energy and BP. Not only does Koch Industries get the big prize, the folks at Repower America have gifted them with their own commemorative Website, which catalogs the “lies and environmental offenses by Koch Industries and its owners, the brothers Charles and David Koch.” Visit the site, poke around and pick up some new information about the cynical efforts of the Koch boys to buy our government so that you can show the appropriate level of appreciation when you attend the award ceremony tomorrow.

( – promoted by Clark)

On June 29th, the St. Louis County Council gave the green light to updated residential building codes that will save homeowners hundreds in energy costs through new energy efficiency standards. St. Louis County is home to approximately one million residents, part of the Greater Metropolitan St. Louis area.

The savings are particularly beneficial for Missourians in the long term due to projected coal-generated energy costs rising faster than in other states.

Some facts to consider:

* 82.4% of Missouri’s power is coal-generated, while its only 50% nationwide

* US Residential Electricity prices have gone up 50% in last decade

The adoption of the new codes means that updated energy efficiency building standards will be in effect everywhere in St. Louis County that is unincorporated or in municipalities that look to the County for code enforcement. St. Louis County is home to over 90 municipalities, many of which enforce their own building codes. There is still work to do among those municipalities that perform their own code enforcement and have yet to adopt the updated energy conservation codes.

Although eventually near-zero energy buildings and ultra-low energy homes may be the ultimate sustainable solution, the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) establishes a set of minimum energy efficiency standards that will save homeowners on average between 12-15% energy usage.

The Energy & Cost Savings Analysis of 2009 IECC Efficiency Improvements from the Energy Efficiency Codes Coalition concludes,

“ICF International’s analysis estimates that homes built to the 2009 IECC standards will save 12.2% under the simple “prescriptive” method and could save 14.7% or more using the more complicated “performance-based” method.”

The City of St. Louis is not within St. Louis County, so this code adoption does not affect the city. There is, however, hope that the City of St. Louis will follow the lead of St. Louis County soon, as well as St. Charles County, which lies to the West of St. Louis County. St. Charles County has a population of approximately 350,000, and is one of the fastest growing counties in the country, which makes the adoption of energy efficient building codes extremely important.

Ultimately, “sustainability” means behaving in such a way as to preserve and protect the existing ecosystem for future generations to enjoy-leaving things just how you’ve found them.

On sustainability,

“There is abundant scientific evidence that humanity is living unsustainably, and returning human use of natural resources to within sustainable limits will require a major collective effort. Ways of living more sustainably can take many forms from reorganizing living conditions (e.g., ecovillages, eco-municipalities and sustainable cities), reappraising economic sectors (permaculture, green building, sustainable agriculture), or work practices (sustainable architecture), using science to develop new technologies (green technologies, renewable energy), to adjustments in individual lifestyles that conserve natural resources.”

Energy Efficiency is the fastest and cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote a cleaner and more sustainable environment. National groups like the Sierra Club, US Green Building Council and local ones, the Missouri Association of Accredited Energy Professionals (MAAEP) and the Home Builders Association of St. Louis and Eastern Missouri all support the new codes. Through the adoption of the 2009 Energy Conservation Code, energy efficient homes and businesses will make a substantive contribution creating a cleaner environment tomorrow.

Action Needed:

Click here and pledge to call Claire McCaskill and Kit Bond during the next three days, July 27-29, and let them know that inaction or timid half-steps to combat climate change is not acceptable.

Why?

Real, effective climate legislation, that is, legislation that mandates some form of carbon emission control is now officially dead for the present and perhaps the future. As Joe Romm of Climate Change puts it, “the mostly dead climate bill is now extinct.”

Naturally, the Democrats want to blame the Republicans, and they are right that the corrupt numbskulls on the Republican side of the aisle played their usual obstructionist role. But Republican obstructionism is not the whole story. This time around, the so-called brown dogs, including prominently our own esteemed Claire McCaskill, have to take their share of the blame:

… garnering 60 votes on a plan that caps emissions is a major challenge as long as Democrats such as McCaskill fear the electoral consequences.

To be sure, Obama and Reid also need some Senate Republicans to play ball if they’re going to get a climate bill across the finish line. But the amount of GOP support they will need is directly proportional to the number of Democrats they will lose. And Obama faces considerably more party discord on climate change than he did on health care or Wall Street reform because of deeply rooted regional concerns over energy policy

So you could certainly say without fear of contradiction that Claire McCaskill was instrumental in killing the climate bill. And while she has taken money from coal interests (about $10,000 out of $47,000 total from energy interests), it surely can’t be the case that this relatively tiny mess of pottage is is what prompted her to sell out her base. It is far more likely that she is simply afraid of the the political consequences if she takes a principled stand – afraid that if electricity prices or farm energy prices were to go up, she might be out on her you-know-what come 2012.

People in organizations like Repower America know that if we are to revive meaninngful climate change legislation, we need to keep the issue alive and let politicians like McCaskill know that while we’ll get their back when they do the right thing, we won’t forget when they let us down. More importantly, McCaskill is a co-sponsor of the Rockefeller bill that seeks to neuter the EPA’s emissions control rules. And, although, President Obama is poised to veto the bill if it passes, we have to let her know that supporting the coal industry in this way is not really winning hearts and minds at home.

In early days, before McCaskill learned to fear the Tea Party backlash, she was, as Michael Bersin reminded us last week, pretty upfront about her support for cap-and-trade. Such past statements suggest that McCaskill knows what the right thing to do is, but is just too timid to do it.That’s why Repower America is asking progressives, environmentalists, and anyone who is concerned about the pending climate disaster, to phone McCaskill tomorrow and remind her of what she already knows.

So by all means get mad. But also take action – click here and make a pledge that sometime during the next three days – July 27- July 29 – you’ll phone McCaskill – and poor, hopeless Kit Bond, for what it’s worth – and let them know that we demand real leadership to get us through this potentially disastrous environmental crisis.

Afterthought: You don’t even have to click and use the Repower America tools – just phone the fools and let them know the folks they work for aren’t too pleased.  Please. McCaskill’s number: (202) 224-6154; Kit Bond’s: (202) 224-5721.