Linda Schuch is a business success story. She is the co-owner of the Island Seafood Market in St. Petersburg, Florida. In the year since its opening, the restaurant has gathered a steady following of locals. While the Market originally opened as a fish market that served the occasional sandwich, its tasty options and devoted ownership have led to a need to expand the restaurant.

Did I say Shuch is a business success story? Make that “was” a business success story. Because the Gulf Oil Spill is ruining her venture. Schuch speaks in the video of how proud she was to make a success of her first year in business but admits ruefully that a five year plan, for someone dependent on fishing in the Gulf, is probably a waste of time. She concedes that she may have to move back to Pennsylvania, where she was raised. Multiply her sad story by hundreds of thousands or millions, then add in the sad stories of dead birds, turtles, and alligators.

As long as I’m altering my wording, make that “Gulf Oil Gusher”, not “Spill.” A spill is something the baby does with his milk. Rick Roberts made that observation when he and Schuch and another Gulf Coast resident, Linda Hawkins, were in St. Louis. The three of them have been visiting various states under the auspices of Repower America, working to convince people that the Gulf Oil Gusher is not a regional problem but a national one and that, above all, we need a comprehensive clean energy plan.

Linda Hawkins, who was raised in the New Orleans Ninth Ward, who lost everything to Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and who saw the destruction of Katrina, spoke about the difference between those natural disasters and this much more destructive man made one. Then she described how Louisiana differs from the other Gulf Coast states. Texas is the only one of the five with a diversified economy. Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, where most of the population is near the water, are tourist or retirement destinations. But Hawkins said that Louisiana’s beaches are working beaches. Cajun fishermen, whose forbears left Canada in 1755, bring in shrimp, oysters and blue crab. They are closed down now. Fishing and the industries that depend on the offshore oil rigs support the economy. Louisiana, like the tourist states, is reeling. Many people are talking about which spouse will have to leave the Gulf Coast for work in another state and which spouse will stay home with the kids. Suicides are up. Animal shelters are overwhelmed with pets that people can’t afford to feed.

All the recent damage done by BP to Louisiana is on top of damage already done by our need for oil. Hawkins points out that 25 percent of the oil the U.S. imports comes in through canals built in Louisiana–canals that have destroyed coastal wetlands.

Despite the horrors of the Gusher, the three Gulf Coast residents know that most Americans don’t see the problem as anything affecting them. They don’t understand how the ripples from the economic devastation will spread to them, and they don’t see that if the U.S. had focused on clean energy forty years back, we’d have avoided this Gusher–not to mention wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’d have saved the trillions lost to those wars and thus had more money to deal with the recession that the bank profiteers caused.

Hawkins, Schuch, and Roberts have spent time lobbying Congressmen for a comprehensive clean energy plan. I asked them what their sense of the reaction in Congress was. Rick Roberts, a fishing conservation advocate, responded:

“When we were in Washington, it was interesting because the people that we spoke to from Ohio said, ‘Well, you know, it’s the people in Missouri, it’s the people in Nebraska, it’s the people in Michigan, they don’t really see this as being a problem that they have.’ Right. If you can’t make them aware of that, then the solution is not going to happen because those senators will vote for anything other than spending money on our regional problem.

The sense I got of it is that November is rapidly approaching, and the Democrats are running scared. When we were there, I got the impression that that news cycle [talk about the oil spill] was gonna shift out of focus very shortly and that they didn’t want to light on it. So they didn’t want to, like, say ‘Yes, we’re very concerned.’ What they said was ‘we’re doing all we can’–all the time thinking ‘Well, in a couple of days this’ll be over,’ right?

No, it won’t. Not only will the damage to the Gulf continue, not only will those wasteful wars continue, but the planet will keep on heating up. While our senators dither. Paul Krugman’s recent column examines the failure to pass strong climate legislation, blaming it on the campaign by energy companies to derail anything that would interfere with their profits. He sums up with this:

Greed, aided by cowardice, has triumphed. And the whole world will pay the price.

A sign held by a protester outside an Exxon-Mobil shareholders meeting said: “NO PLANET NO DIVIDENDS.”

The oil companies refuse to face that. Their greed focuses their sights on short term profits. Claire doesn’t get it either. Her cowardice makes her focus on saving her butt in 2012. Apparently, whoever told Rick Roberts that the people in Missouri don’t see the Gulf Oil Gusher as their problem has taken a look at Claire McCaskill’s chicken hearted abdication to the forces of greed and ignorance on the paramount issue of our time.

It’s a sure thing that Kit Bond will respect the GOP love affair with Big-Oil and King-Coal, not to mention his party’s general policy of obstruction when it comes time to consider the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act – just consider his absurd response to new EPA clean air regulations. Claire McCaskill, on the other hand, may hew to her Republican-not-so-light line, but, given her recent actions in regard to clean energy initiatives, it’s just possible that she may be coming around to understanding that CO2 emission control is part-and-parcel of getting to where we need to be, and that she needs to take a few risks and show some innovative, forward-looking leadership to help us get there.

It is surely this possibility that has led organizations like  Repower America and Clean Energy Works to lobby as hard as they can to bring Senator McCaskill on board. Which brings us to a conference call earlier this morning organized by Clean Energy Works. The call, which consisted of brief presentations from Missourians representing political, business, farm, and military interests, fleshed out four compelling arguments for passing the American Power Act (and, I hope, for improving that flawed proposal):

Clean energy alternatives are here right now: This point was made forcefully by Steve Flick, Board President of Show Me Energy Cooperative, “a non-profit, producer owned cooperative founded to support the development of renewable biomass energy sources in West Central Missouri.” The Cooperative has used “stable biomass” as the basis for a “bio-pellet” that can be used for heat as well as to create electricity – recently the KCP&L utility company purchased the pellets to try them out as an alternative to coal for generating electricity.

Better yet, given McCaskill’s concern that Missourians not “get the short end of the stick” economically, bio-pellet production has the potential to increase farm income. One of the goals of the Cooperative, for instance, is to  “provide additional revenue streams for farmers and producers for their products by utilization in biomass energy production.”

Clean Energy is politically viable: State Senator Joan Bray (D-24) observed that the public is ahead of the policy makers and wants the transition to clean energy now. She noted that the Massey coal mine disaster and the current catastrophic BP oil spill have brought home to Americans the costs of doing nothing. The public expects action not dithering from a congress that, according to Bray, doesn’t seem to be able to “walk and chew gum at the same time.” This argument might reassure our politically cautious McCaskill, especially since it is supported by some recent polling (see also here).

McCaskill, who professes to worry about the impact of precipitate action on the business climate, should also be receptive to Bray’s observation that Congress must make prompt decisions about energy for economic reasons as well, since businesses need to be able to rely on known rules if they are to plan intelligently.

Clean Energy makes us more secure: Jack Hembree, a U.S. Army veteran from Springfield and a member of Operation Free discussed the fact that because most of our oil comes from the Middle East – only 3% of our consumption is supported by domestic oil production – we will have no choice but to continue our military involvement in the region until we can move to clean energy. Listening to Hembree, it occurred to me that since McCaskill claims to support our troops, given the role of oil in putting them in harm’s way, how can she do other than to vote for the American Power Act?

Clean Energy has no downside: Ralph Bicknese, of Hellmuth & Bicknese Architects in St. Louis offered this formula for evaluating the real costs of our energy sources: just ask what happens when things go wrong.

Coal? Produces coal ash that ends up in unlined and unregulated sludge ponds. And what’s wrong with that? Think about toxic chemical byproducts seeping into your water, not to mention spills – remember what happened in Kingston Tennessee?

Oil? If I need to spell the downside out, you’ve been living in a cave for the last four decades.

Nuclear? As Bicknesse put it, when Nuclear goes wrong, it goes very wrong. Think Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and then think abut the problems inherent in storing poisonous waste with a half-life of a couple of millennia. Not to mention that power from nuclear energy is expensive. It’s a dangerous energy source and it’s not cheap.

Wind, solar? Maybe there are some little implementation problems but nothing that can go catastrophically wrong – no downside at all really. Biomass? essentially no downside that can’t be easily dealt with.

Given Senator McCaskill’s obvious understanding of at least some of the issues, as she articulates them on her Website, if she continues to walk backwards, as she did in her response to the proposed EPA regulations, we must demand that she tell us just why the considerations above do not convince her to not only support, but work to improve the American Power Act. So go call her – let her know that if she does the right thing, we’ll have her back in 2012.

So how can Missourians celebrate Earth Day tomorrow in a way that will have real impact? The answer is easy if you live in or near St. Louis or Kansas City: join Repower America and other “clean energy patriots” at a rally outside Claire McCaskill’s offices in those two cities (find information about St. Louis rally here; Kansas City information is here). Alternatively, Repower America will also host call-in events in Kansas City and St. Louis  (click on the cities to volunteer or get information).

At the call-in events, you can volunteer to do outreach to other Missourians and enlist them to, in turn, contact Senators McCaskill and Bond, and tell them how much they want them to support strong clean energy legislation. If you just want to contact one of our senators to deliver the message yourself, you can phone this Repower America number and ask to be patched through to either senator: 1-877-9-REPOWER (9-737-6937).

Why are these events important? We can take it as a given that Senator Bond is unlikely to change his stripes and support meaningful clean energy legislation any time soon, but it is still important for him to hear that many of his constituents do want congress to limit carbon emissions and invest in clean-energy jobs for Missouri.

As for Senator McCaskill, we have recently seen that she may be beginning to get the message that clean energy can mean growth and jobs for Missouri, as well as being essential to continued American competitiveness since other countries are rapidly jumping on the band-wagon. Nevertheless, she needs to know that we support her shifting position, and that we will have her back if she follows through and does what’s right – which includes measures to restrict carbon emissions.

In case you yourself want more reasons about why clean energy is important to Missourians specifically – apart from the general “save the world” issues involved with climate change – just take a look at any of these three fact sheet prepared by Repower America, “Clean Energy Potential in Missouri,” “Clean Energy Jobs in Missouri,” and “How Clean Energy Will Help Missouri’s Farmers.” And then, if you are able, make it on over to one of the Repower America rallies tomorrow or volunteer for one of the phone-in events right away.  Happy Earth Day!

Both literally and figuratively things are heating up. First, of course, there is the fact that last winter was overall, despite several winter storms, the warmest on record. So it’s good to be able to report that, according to Gretchen Wieland of  Repower America, things are also heating up on the legislative front with the Senate energy bill from Senators Kerry, Graham and Lieberman scheduled to debut later this month.  

As Wieland explained to me during a telephone call, this means that the activities of the two organizations that make up Repower America, the Alliance for Climate Protection and the Climate Protection Action Fund, are heating up as well. They  have a lot of work to do to educate voters and build support for strong clean energy legislation.

In Missouri this means that for the last thirty-four days staff have been coordinating volunteers to make daily visits to one or another of Senator Claire McCaskill’s Missouri offices. The goal is not only to persuade the Senator to support strong energy legislation, but to urge her to take a proactive role in helping to shape it when it is considered in the Senate. This effort will continue until Earth Day on April 22. Undaunted by McCaskill’s recent skittishness when confronted with the possibility of EPA emissions regulation or  cap-and-trade legislation, Repower America is hoping that McCaskill will do the right thing once she “does the numbers” and is convinced of the economic benefits of clean energy for Missourians.

Repower America staff have also been organizing educational meetings with local groups, small business people, and staff from state agencies such as the Bureau of Agriculture to explain the goals of the legislation, and to counter some of the misconceptions that some of our Missouri Republican “cap-and-tax” bamboozlers have been trying to spread. Voters have to support clean energy – it’s a rare congress person who’ll go out on a limb to support unpopular legislation.

But Repower America can’t do it alone – they could use your help. The plan is for this intense bout of lobbying to culminate with a massive call-in event starting April 20 and lasting until Earth Day on the 22nd. Anybody can call the Repower America office during this time and be patched through to their Senators’ offices.  The number to call is 1-877-9-REPOWER (9-737-6937).

Repower America is, of course, aware of the rumors that the Senate bill is full of “bipartisan” compromises that could hobble its effectiveness. Wieland stated that their analysts will go into action the minute that the bill is is released, pouring over each line of the content so that the organization can shape its lobbying response accordingly. The goal is to ensure that the final Senate legislation is at least as strong as the ACES (The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) legislation produced in the House – or that when the bills are reconciled, the most important provisions, real regulation of carbon emissions for instance, are not lost.

“Going To The Wall.”

It’s a familiar expression. It means putting out the ultimate effort for family, friends and comrades, regardless of the consequences, without considering failure as an option.

The Alliance for Climate Protection and the Climate Protection Action Fund have teamed up to initiate a new ad campaign based on their joint project at the Repower America Wall, an interactive site where anyone can post a video or photo, and send an audio message to their congress persons about the importance of clean energy. The first iteration of the campaign will use testimonials from residents of four states, Arkansas, Indiana, Maine, and Missouri, and will be widely broadcast in order to reach as many people in those states as possible, with a goal of persuading them to contact their Senators and urge them to take positive action on pending clean energy legislation. Other states will be emphasized in later weeks.

This campaign comes not a moment too soon. The bad guys have gotten a big head start and have, so far, done a bang-up job of painting the whole issue as the hysterical ramblings of a few out-of-touch environmentalists whose obsession with a fantastical climate change scenario could cost lots of Missourians, particularly farmers, their livelihoods – claims that seem to have already had the desired effect and turned the spines of many of our Democratic legislators to quivering jelly.

The outstanding question is how effective the Repower America campaign will be in the face of what will, no doubt, be a massive corporate onslaught against any meaningful energy legislation. In a conference call today, Garrett Russo from the Alliance on Climate Protection attempted to address this issue, describing the Wall and the ads as a way to level the playing field and enable “everyday” Americans to speak out and be heard in an environment which, especially after the recent Supreme court decision on corporate political spending, now privileges big money over individual citizens.

During the call, two Wall contributors from each of the four targeted states spoke briefly about why reforming our energy policies is important to them. Reasons included sustainability arguments, quality of life concerns – clean air makes for healthy humans – and worries about the effects of fossil fuel dependency on national security. The predominant theme, though, was job creation, as seen in this ad from the group of three that will be shown in Missouri:

A retired official of the Maine AFL-CIO, Ed Gorham, talked about the steady loss of manufacturing jobs that the U.S. has experienced over the past decades, and pointed out that the transition to green energy could create thousands of new jobs to take their place. La Donna Appelbaum of St. Louis, a small business owner, stressed the importance of transitioning to a cleaner, sustainable energy source in order to create jobs and enable small businesses to survive. Gretchen Wieland, Missouri Communications Director of Repower America, described the potential importance of the wind turbine industry, both as a source of energy and as a source of new manufacturing jobs in Missouri. She claimed that clean energy industries could create 29,000 new jobs in Missouri.

The ads themselves are vague about specifics – but that is inherent in their nature; they are, after all, a “branding” exercise, intended to create a perception that job creation and clean energy go together. But because there are claims to the contrary out there – Kit Bond’s report, Yellow light on Green Jobs, was indirectly alluded to by one reporter, it will be interesting to see if this approach proves effective.

Part of the answer may lie in the media response.  For example, the Bond report’s conclusions are highly questionable, but as long as media figures, such as the reporter on the call, cite the report without questioning its sources – without even indicating that the report has generated controversy – it’s going to be a hard slog ahead.  

This site has been known to criticize Claire McCaskill–twice in two days last week, in fact (Uh, Claire, you got to dance with them what brung you and Claire never fails to disappoint, does she?). We take no joy in attacking one of our own. We’d so much rather be able to praise her. So herewith are some words of commendation from a progressive who has worked with her and her team. Andy Levine of RepoWEr America talked to me about Claire’s attitude toward the upcoming clean energy legislation:

hotflash: Tell me what you know about Claire McCaskill’s attitude toward the energy bill.

Andy Levine: (inaudible) a kind of studied neutrality about it. It’s what you’d expect out of Senator McCaskill. She is, uh, she’s sharp. She’s gonna want to really get into the issue in a detailed kind of way and know what’s going on on all fronts. They’ve had some concerns they’ve talked about before in costs and jobs. And a lot of those we kinda feel have been allayed, or at least we’ve been able to have good dialogue. And they’ve been able to see that the bill is or at least the frameworks for the bill aren’t gonna do those, the worst case damages that they’ve heard about from the other side.

One of the more recent concerns that she’s talked about has been with the creation of an entirely new financial market, which, you know, there would be under cap and trade that’d create a new market for trading carbon permits back and forth. To me, that signals that she’s ready to engage. You know, when she starts putting the auditor hat back on, that typically means that she really is going to get into an issue, she’s thinking about it in the way that she thinks about things, and hopefully it means that she’s gonna be a participant and make this a better bill and help pass it.  

hotflash: And what is she afraid of as far as the market, in the market?

Levine: Well, you know, I think one of the things you do have to watch in creating a cap and trade system is making sure that you’re not adding a whole new set of unregulated ways for people to trade back and forth with these permits instead of buying and selling the permits. She wants to make sure that that doesn’t turn into, you know, similar to, something similar to the energy markets in the early 2000s where you had Enron running blackouts. And, you know, she wants to make sure it doesn’t turn into derivatives. So, you know, to me it’s, it’s constructive criticism. It’s not a sink-the-bill criticism.

hotflash: What do you think about her criticism from last summer–I think it was last summer–about not wanting to put ourselves at a disadvantage with countries like India and China, if they’re not …

Levine: Well, you know, I think Copenhagen has gone a long way to address that. I think that we’ve seen the developing world really want to engage on this. And, you know, for whatever part everybody played, at the end of the day an agreement came out of that conference. And, I think, what she’s seen also is that this bill has the kind of components to it that are not going to put American jobs at risk, that are in fact going to create new jobs in this country. You know, the efficiency provisions that are in this bill and job creation provisions that are in this bill really make it a win/win for us and are not gonna, you know, they’re not gonna put people at risk. And we’re not gonna see big, you know, increases in our energy costs and we’re not gonna see the kind of doom and gloom scenarios that the Republicans and frankly some of the bigger energy companies have been pushing on this. So, you know, she’s seen that. She’s had the chance to  see through some of those, you know, red herrings. And I think now that she’s seen that this is a good framework, that it is a good, you know, a good bill that is being crafted, you know I think that if she can get in and do some work on the fiscal end of it, then she’s gonna be a part of the team and help move it forward. But that’s our hope, that’s our hope.

hotflash: I certainly hope so. Yeah, yeah.

Levine: She’s certainly been an honest broker the whole time with us, though. She’s given both sides the time of day. And I feel like, you know, they’ve been utterly fair with everybody and, you know, upfront with their concerns. As long as they keep acting, you know, in that kind of a manner, I feel like it’s gonna move forward in the right way and hopefully get her on the team.

hotflash: Okay. Just fill me in a little bit, if you wouldn’t mind, about your remark that after Copenhagen that concern about the jobs issue as far as China …

Levine: Well, it’s not even just that. I mean, first of all you had, you know, the concern last summer was that China and India aren’t gonna engage, they’re not gonna be part of the process, and we’re gonna take this big step and then nobody else is gonna take the step with us. Well, we’ve seen that to be incorrect. I mean, even in the months leading up to Copenhagen, the Indians were lobbying hard to get a bill moving, to get the United States participating in this. The (inaudible) foreign minister told Senator Clinton, Secretary Clinton, pardon me, that they want the Americans to lead. They want us to lead and, you know, we take a step, they’ll take a step with us. And the Chinese engaged heavily at Copenhagen. Now, they, you know, they shaped the process to meet some of their own domestic goals, but at the end of the day you had an agreement that had to come out with the United States and China on board, for anything to happen. And I think when you look at that, when you also look at the provisions that are in this bill already, some of the language being used to talk about, you know, protections for certain domestic industries, you know, you look at some of the efficiency targets that are in there and some of the job growth potential, I think she’s starting to see that this is not going to be a big, you know, punishment to American industry. But, in fact, it’s going to be a way to help American industry modernize and hopefully stay more competitive globally than we would have without it.

hotflash: Thanks, Andy.

Levine: Yep.

“…I will ask those among my fellow citizens who share my sense of urgency to join in asking President Obama and the leadership of the United States Senate to set a deadline of April 22, 2010 — the 40th anniversary of Earth Day — for final action of US legislation.”

God love him, Al Gore just keeps on ticking like an old Timex watch.  The more the fossil fuel flunkies dump on him, the stronger his message gets. According to his citizen action group polls show that the majority of Americans recognize the need for climate protection despite the insane blatherings of the likes of S. Palin, the Washington Times and Sen. James “save our oil” Inhofe.  

Knowing that it will have to be the younger generation that forces us to wake up and smell the roses before they disappear, I am giving my 20-year-old granddaughter Al Gore’s book for Christmas (after I take notes from it !)

On page 189, there’s a photo of pine trees in Colorado that are dead and dying because the winters have not been cold enough to kill off the mountain pine beetle larvae. More than 600,000 acres of forest are now more brown than green. When my husband and I checked into a hotel in Winter Park last summer, the clerk handed us a flyer explaining and apologizing for the ugly destruction of Colorado forests.

Who is going to apologize to the millions of human beings being displaced by rising sea levels and destructive storms?  How can anyone deny what thousands of scientists all over the world know and continue to learn about the future of our planet if we don’t jam the brakes on carbon dioxide and other dangerous emissions?

I’ve purchased several copies of the National Geographic Special, Six Degrees Could Change the World and am lending them out, showing them to small groups at libraries, and giving them as gifts to teachers.  

Most of us can’t remember the facts, statistics, etc., but no one can watch this film and forget the images of fires in Australia, dusty cattle ranches in Nebraska and ocean waves swallowing up Wall Street (gives a whole new meaning to “bail out,” doesn’t it?)

I don’t for a minute think I’m going to stop global warming, but I’m sure as hell not going down without a fight.