PA MUST GO RENEWABLE TO CREATE JOBS AND FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING

Harrisburg must immediately make adopting renewable energy and efficiency as Pennsylvania’s energy policy to create jobs and fight global warming.

Political paralysis in the face of mounting evidence that global warming is causing dustbowls, extreme weather, and rising sea level is simply unacceptable.   If Harrisburg does not act, it will be committing the worst intergenerational injustice of all time.

Ending the $2.9 billion fossil fuel subsidies PA gives each year and moving quickly to renewable energy and efficiency will create 21st century jobs, keep our energy dollars in the state, and have many other positive effects.  With dustbowls, extreme weather and sea level rises as the alternative, the only sensible action is to stop subsidizing fossil fuels immediately.

Scientists are finding that the planet is nearing “tipping points” beyond which humans will not be able to control runaway effects of global warming. Pennsylvania is the world’s 18th largest economy. What Harrisburg does will have a significant impact on whether or not we tip our climate system past recovery. The science is clear, if humans continue to ignore the evidence and burn fossil fuels, there is a strong chance the planet will become uninhabitable.

Let’s do something about it.  Create jobs, clean up our air and water, and preserve a livable planet for our children.  Let’s go renewable, and let’s do it now.

Here are some important references to the latest science:

Global warming close to becoming irreversible-scientists

Nature Strong Evidence Manmade Unprecedented Heat Rainfall Extremes

Has Global Warming Caused a Quantum Jump in Extreme Weather?

Here’s the press release that I sent out, which got posted in one place.  After the release, I’ll put some links to the sobering reality that we are living, yet ignoring.

NEWEST GLOBAL WARMING SCIENCE DEMANDS ACTION

NEW FREEDOM – Democratic candidate for State Representative Linda Small of New Freedom calls for decisive action in light of the many recent scientific studies showing man made global warming is an immediate threat and coming close to irreversible.

“Scientists are loud and clear; global warming is here, the effects are catastrophic, and we risk irreversible, runaway warming if we continue business as usual. It is incumbent on everyone in the political arena, both elected officials and those seeking office, to learn the most recent science and act NOW. Studies and experience show that moving to a renewable energy based economy will create jobs and help the economy. There is no excuse to subsidize fossil fuels while global warming threatens our children’s future.”

Small calls for these immediate actions: end the $2.9 billion a year in Pennsylvania subsidies to fossil fuels corporations immediately. Put a price on carbon, consider joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative states. Enact a carbon tax or carbon fee and dividend plan. Encourage renewable energy production with a feed in tariff system and support a Property Assessed Clean Energy program to help fund solar expansion. Expand conservation and efficiency programs to reduce energy demand.

“Our current political system is paralyzed by corporate funded deniers who have drowned out the 97.5% of climate scientists raising the alarm about the dustbowls, extreme weather and rising seas caused by people putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Republicans are following the deniers lead at all costs, and Democrats are lulled into an incremental approach based on older science which suggested we had more time. Both approaches are disastrous,” Small says. “There has never been a threat like this in our history. If politicians and the media choose to ignore climate change, this and future generations will struggle with a very different, unstable world where it’s hard to grow food and people are on the move as dustbowls expand and seas rise.”

Linda Small, 51, retired as a Navy Master Chief Petty Officer (E-9) weather forecaster. She is running for State Representative for the 93rd district.

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That’s the press release, and sadly, it didn’t generate any inquiries about why I make such a strong claim.  Since  you’re still reading, I’ll give you some links to see for yourself.

Global warming close to becoming irreversible-scientists

Nature: Strong Evidence Manmade ‘Unprecedented Heat And Rainfall Extremes Are Here … Causing Intense Human Suffering’

March Madness: ‘This May Be An Unprecedented Event Since Modern U.S. Weather Records Began In The Late 19th Century’

This really is a matter of life and death.   On an individual basis, we must all conserve and move to renewable energy, because our future, and that of our children, depends upon it.  But that’s not enough.  We must stop our government subsidies of fossil fuels, and let renewable energy, conservation and efficiency compete on a level playing field.  Today.

Gov Corbett and the Republicans are creating an alternate reality by insisting that they can’t tax corporations fairly for fear of increasing taxes.  Indeed, Republicans want to give tax money to corporations.  PA Tax Breaks May Lure Shell\’s Ethane Cracker Plant (To be clear, a tax break is the same as taking tax money from Pennslvanians and giving it to someone.  Tax breaks can be a fine tool, but giving them to huge corporations like Shell distorts the free market and is harmful.)

These revenue sources have been discussed for years, but corporate lobbyists and compliant politicians have successfully argued to push the tax burden to the middle class via income, sales and property taxes.  With these revenue sources, Pennslvania does have enough available resources to put local government workers and teachers back to work.

Cut the Delaware loophole, which allows 3/4 of PA corporations to avoid paying any  corporate net income tax.  In addition to ending this advantage for corporations over small businesses, estimates are this could bring in hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Put a real tax on Marcellus Shale gas drillers.  In addition to sales and property tax breaks for the industry, the newly enacted “impact” fee is much lower than the industry pays in other states.

Stop the $2.9 billion in PA subsidies for the fossil fuel industry.  $2.9 billion is more than 10% of the PA state budget, and would go a long way to restoring proper funding for public education. Pennsylvania Fossil Fuel Subsidies: An Overview

Retailers keep 1% of our sales tax in PA as an incentive to make timely payments.  Considering we are well into the computer/internet age in 2012, cut that back as proposed and generate around $70 million a year.  It all adds up!  Pennsylvania Republicans back proposed changes to \’Delaware loophole\’ that moves profits out of state

Tax smokeless tobacco, like 49 other states do.

It is time Pennsylvania met its responsibility to properly fund education and maintain infrastructure.  It is time we acknowledge what economic history shows us, that government spending has a role in a successful economy.  Now is the time for Pennslvania to require corporations to contribute a fair share, and end the corporate tax subsidies which come at the expense of the middle class.  Pennsylvania has the resources to invest in its children readily available.  Making that investment will help bring back jobs and boost the economy.  What are we waiting for?

NEW FREEDOM – Democrat Linda Small of New Freedom announces her candidacy for Pennsylvania’s 93rdState House District.   Despite theconfusion caused by the changing district lines, the issues stay the same.  Here is what Small says we must do to help the 93rd district and Pennsylvania prosper:

“Cut corrupting corporate money from politics. Let small business and renewable energy companies create jobs. Invest in our children. Restore state funding for education and lower property taxes.  Get real about global warming, because we are damning our children to a future of dustbowls, heat waves and flooding rains. “

Small, 51, retired as a Navy Master Chief Petty Officer (E-9) weather forecaster. “With my weather forecasting experience, I see that global warming is following the worst case projections. In 40 years the US southwest will be a dustbowl if we don’t act. It will be harder to grow and harvest food, among many severe consequences. Acting now creates jobs in renewable energy and conservation, helps the economy, and cuts pollution from fossil fuels.”

Small strongly believes that Harrisburg is making harmful budget cuts that will cost taxpayers far more in the future. Studies show that investing in education pays huge dividends down the road. The state funding share for education must go back to 50%, taking the burden for funding education off of local homeowners and property taxes.

Corporate influence over lawmakers stifles the free market by producing rules that favor large corporations over small businesses. Pennsylvania must end special treatment for corporations, and allow small businesses to compete in a true free market and create jobs.

Small is aware that highlighting global warming is rare in the political discussion. However, she believes that the only reason to run for office is to make a difference. Global warming is the most important challenge of our time, and corrupting corporate money in politics is the only reason we are not acting to meet it.

She is not accepting money to run for office. She will answer to only the voters if she is elected. She has a website, www.smallforstaterepresentative.com, which links to Facebook and Twitter so that voters may learn about her.

The fact that the EPA is acting now is good, but its a great example of government bureaucracy coming in late. Homeowners have been asking for help for years. Water testing is expensive, especially when one doesn’t know exactly what to test for. The average homeowner doesn’t have that kind of money.

The state and federal government must start testing wells before, during and after drilling. Relying on corporations with strong motives to deny any problems puts our citiziens at risk.

PA should have a strong Marcellus Shale tax. Taxpayers should not have to pay for testing, nor for the time of our court system where the corporation will seek every advantage and delay.  PA also needs to stop any new wells until the industry proves it can drill the wells it has now safely. Homeowners should not have to find themselves without clean water and fighting billion dollar corporations for their property rights, and a PA DEP entralled with Marcellus Shale corporations for their right under the Pennslvania constitution to clean water.

Cabot would have us believe that all of these homeowners water wells went bad coincidentally, for natural reasons. They are using the classic denier tactic, perfected by the tobacco industry and used by corporate polluting interests to this day, of saying the EPA doesn’t understand the science, or there’s not enough science. Meanwhile, the state DEP has not been rigorously testing wells, as it should have all along. That would have protected Cabot, by the way, if Cabot had been blameless.  It certainly would have helped the citizens DEP is supposed to be serving.

It is time PA government remembers that it exists to serve real people, especially those who don’t have the power to protect themselves against the huge corporate money machines of the Marcellus Shale gas drillers.  It is way past time a fair Marcellus Shale tax is imposed on the drillers, who are harming Pennslvanians every day despite their pious protests to the contrary.  It is time to put an end to Marcellus Shale corporations drilling new gas wells until they can prove they can do so safely.  It is time to take the burden off of homeowners living in rural Pennylvania to protect their property rights and the clean water they had before the Marcellus Shale gas drillers fracked their land and their lives.

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Speaking of trying to fight corporate money… PA Marcellus Shale Lobbyist Disclosure Some daunting numbers on the money these corporations have to throw at our legislators.  Average people can’t buy the access the drillers have.  That needs to stop.

Picture of Our Changing Ocean by Joan Kohorst

This is immoral. 10 Marine Species on the Brink of Mass Extinction Due to Ocean Acidification

We know how to stop it. We know going all out to conservation and renewable energy creates jobs, stops our dollars going to foreign countries, cleans up pollution that literally kills tens of thousands of people each year. Yet we tolerate it because our fossil fuel corporations want to profit from every last drop of oil and gas.

Along with the devastating forecast for global warming, we are ensuring that by 2050, less than 40 years from now, we and our children will face a much more hostile world.  It will be harder to find food.  The food we are used to getting from the ocean will be gone or dying.  The food we used to grow with ease will be much harder to get as drought and flooding rains cause havoc.  Science of Global Warming Impacts

Where are our politicians?  Where are the parents?  One reason I write this blog is in hopes of helping to spark the outcry that causes action to head off the worst of the crisis we are causing.

97% of scientists are telling us human caused global warming is happening, and its effects are many and scary.  It is ludicrous to take the risk we are taking with our and our children’s future.

Let’s get going on a renewable energy plan right now.  It will, quite simply, be a lifeline for our children.

More information:

The Real Debt We are Passing to the Next Generation

The Great Oyster Crash

I have a niece and nephew.  They, and I’m guessing you, can’t afford their own lobbyists.  I owe it to them, and you,  to try to fix the mess that’s been created.

I am going to ignore political conventional wisdom to follow the polls and the corporate money interests.  I will highlight the most important political issue of our time, one that is affecting us now and will be vividly evident in less than 40 years.   We are putting our children into a very difficult positon.  Parents should be outraged at the risk we are taking with their future well being.  Global warming is real, getting worse, and its more than just hot summers.  My experience as a Navy weather forecaster showed me the importance of looking at the data, and the global warming forecast is sobering.

Global warming and ocean acidification are not only happening, but they are happening more quickly than forecast, and they follow the WORST CASE SCENARIO.  Global warming isn’t just warmer temperatures.  Global warming is a new Amercan dustbowl in just 40 years, and it’s starting in Texas right now.  Global warming is flooding rains at times, like York County and Glen Rock saw last year.  Global warming will make it harder to grow food.  Global warming makes the economy more uncertain, as we have to recover from more extreme weather disasters.  Check out this link and decide for yourself if we have the right to take even a small risk that this will not happen.  An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces

This must be part of our political discussion.

The details are not yet final, but the picture is getting more clear. Redistricting moved the 169th district to York County. There will be a special election and a regular election for the seat. The special election will be to fill out the term until the winner of the regular November 2012 is seated as usual next year. So the special election will go on at the same time as the usual election preparations go on.

As the details are set, I’ll update you.  I look forward to meeting the people of the 169th and working to make a difference!

Here’s a newspaper article with more information on the election.  2 Dems join special election race for 169th District

Here is the new list of municipalities in each district.  http://aws.redistricting.state.pa.us/Redistricting/Resources/GISData/Districts/Legislative/House/2011-Final/PDF/2011-Final-Plan-House.pdf

More on ocean acidification here:  The Real Debt We Are Passing to the Next Generation

We say we care about people in America. We say that nothing is more important than the health and well-being of our children. We say that we value our senior citizens. Yet what we do is the opposite. Poor air quality is something we create. We have the technology to create clean energy, or better yet, to conserve so we don’t have to use any energy. We choose not to do so. People suffer.

One very logical outcome of PA’s Marcellus Shale fracking gas rush will be more air compressors and air pollution. Other shale areas have seen their air quality worsen to the levels of Los Angeles.   EPA considering new air-quality rules for fracking sites

PA will have more poor air quality days if we don’t allow clean renewables like solar and wind a level playing field.

The cost of renewables is falling quickly. Technology to store renewable energy is getting closer. PA needs to drop it’s $2.9 billion in fossil fuel subsidies right now.   PennFuture Report Shows Dirty Fuels Get $2.9 Billion Per Year in Subsidies in Pennsylvania

The Pennsylvania constitution gives us the right to clean air. It is past time we honor that right and clear the air for everyone.

PA Constitution Article 1 Sec 27 from PA DCNR website quoted below:

Article I, section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution provides as
follows:

Sec. 27. Natural Resources and the Public Estate

The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of
the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.
Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the
people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the
Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the
people.

This amendment, which was adopted in 1972, encompasses two basic principles.
First, Pennsylvanians have a right to a decent environment, and second,
Pennsylvania government has a trusteeship responsibility to protect that
environment on behalf of future generations.

The statute that creates the Department of Conservation and Natural
Resources, as well as the statutes that the Department is charged with
administering, implement this amendment.

How many deaths per job/dollar will we accept? We have technology available to avoid these deaths.  With this bill, the House ignores the economic return of clean technology and healthy Americans.  As for the deaths we know will occur, I suppose we can invoke Scrooge’s observation that they best do it quickly.    The US Senate will likely stop this bill, and the President has vowed to veto it.  Luckily, we won’t see this pass this year.

I don’t say this lightly, but conservatives have sold their souls.  They worship corporate power and money over everything else.  Here is a Union of Concerned Scientists look at the actual costs to babies health and in $:  TRAIN Act Colossal Waste of Money One highlight:  “Not only are EPA regulations critical to protect our health, but multiple cost benefit analyses have shown them to be incredibly cost effective. In its most recent annual report to Congress, the Office of Management and Budget concluded that the benefits of major EPA regulations far exceeded their costs. Between October 1, 2000 and September 30, 2010 estimated total annual benefits ranged from $82 to $551 billion, while costs ranged from $23 to $29 billion.”

I find the logic, morality and math of not allowing corporations (or anyone else, for that matter) to spew health-harming pollution at will into our neighborhoods compelling.  A “conservative” does not agree.

Here is one conservative view, which apparently comes from the alternate reality world, where there are no health consequences to pollution.  Any job is a good job, and the economic benefits to society of clean technology are outweighed by the perceived costs to fossil fuel providers:  http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/mkibbe/key-vote-yes-on-train-act

Rep. Todd Platts (R) PA-19 voted for CORPORATE interests over our health and the economy.  If we continue to elect him and folks like him, this law will pass, and real people will suffer. Here is a link to the vote:  http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/roll741.xml

We need to find some way to pull “conservatives” away from the corporate dollars and back to working for “WE, the people.”  We need to take science seriously, and not pitch it aside when it clashes with the narrow greed of the few.   We should lose fossil fuel jobs to renewable energy jobs- both from a free market and a public health perspective.  It’s time the fossil fuel folks get cut free from government and taxpayer support and pay their share.  That includes paying to stop the pollution they are spewing onto you and your family.

Read/watch here:  Sun Keeps Beer Cold

Now that this critical component of our energy needs has been addressed by renewable energy, hopefully it will be better accepted by those who have resisted it. The business owner expects an 8 year payback on his system. Looks like better odds than many Wall St. investments these days. Plus, consumers get to pick up a cold one at any time.

Cheaper Beer with Solar?

With zero energy costs after 8 years, maybe the beer prices will be lower, too.   Lots of wins are possible with renewable energy!

GOP wants expensive energy…and beer too

PA Gov. Corbett and many Republicans distinctly dislike renewables, however, and want PA consumers to get their energy from Marcellus Shale gas.  (Corbett quietly turning off the lights on renewable energy )  Here’s the problem I see with that concept.  Besides the known air pollution problems, health effects ( Wyoming Air Pollution Worse Than Los Angeles Due To Gas Drilling ) and potential water pollution, with Marcellus Shale gas Pennsylvanians will have to keep paying the corporations until the last bit of gas is taken from the ground, and then find another energy source to pay for.   Citizens will have to pay for the health problems caused by the drilling, which sadly are getting swept out of view while the Marcellus PR machine fights for the industry.  On the plus side for some politicians, but on the negative for our government, the gas $ translate into healthy campaign donations.

Solar Beer the Better Choice

So, all things considered, from an economic, environmental and democratic standpoint, solar and wind look better for Pennsylvania all the time.

Something to consider over your solar powered cold beer.