Actions now and coming soon

The Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters has sent out a red alert about another bad bill zipping through the state legislature they call the "Polluter Grab Bag." Assembly bill 600, according to the league's summary includes:

• Allowing developers to build on lakebeds. As if that isn’t bad enough, it also allows them to get that public land for free and restrict the public’s access to the lake!
• Removing protections for the 20% of wetlands that aren’t federally protected, allowing for more development on wetland-rich properties, like the land in the Penokee Hills where Gogebic Taconite wanted to build an open-pit iron mine.
• Allows each person who owns property on a lake to dredge up to three dump truck loads of lakebed sediment every year, destroying fish and other wildlife habitat.

The WI LCV will host citizens who wish to attend the bill's public hearing on Tuesday, January 5. If you are available to go, please register at their site. If you can't attend, consider contacting your state legislators about this bill.

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We have started planning for our community climate event which will be held in February or March. The idea for this event came from the meeting we had after the Dec. 12 climate rally. We hope to have a space where all the organizations, offices, and groups working on climate related issues can come together to share ideas, educate the community, and get new activists on board. We know there will be food, tables/booths, music, and a speaker. Stay tuned for more info. If you would like to help plan this event, please contact us. We are currently scoping out possible venues and dates. Our next meeting will be on Sunday, Jan. 10 at about 4:30 p.m.

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Thanks to the slow down in Bakken oil extraction, we have not seen as many oil trains passing through, but that may change. Irv has forwarded a recent article, OPEC revises U.S. shale durability upward.

Interestingly, a Dec. 27 Bloomberg article predicts that "U.S. oil production is about to suffer a record drop." We can only hope that this is the case.

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This Mother Jones article describes the businesses already queueing up to make money from climate change (and we're not talking about renewable energy companies). And while you're at that great site check out their 2014 story on The Great Frack Forward about China's booming fracking industry.

Filed under "mixed blessings" is the news that the Rotary Lights has had its most successful year ever. The good news is that more has been donated to area food pantries.

The bad news, though, is that it's probable that those donations have come at a cost of at least 28 TONS of extra carbon emissions.

(Using their estimate of 3 million LED bulbs on for about 5 hours a day for about 35 days, and assuming that 1,000 bulbs use between 60 and 80 watts of electricity (let's say 70), that would be a total of about 36,750 kWh total. Using the EPA's Carbon Footprint Calculator, if we plug in 36,750 kWh (3062.5/month) of Wisconsin electricity use, we get 56,783 pounds of emissions. Divide that by 2,000 and the estimate for just the lights alone (not counting the car emissions) is about 28.4 tons.)

So, is it worth 28 tons of greenhouse gas emissions to raise money and donations for the Hunger Task Force? Are there other non-polluting methods of encouraging people to donate food and money? If the Rotary Lights spawns other such endeavors, is that a good or a bad thing for the climate? Could we maybe pay them to REDUCE the number of bulbs they use?

Even if they've chosen to have this energy produced by renewables (the clean energy check off), there is no labeling electrons and whatever is used gets compiled into the projections for future use which drives the myth of increasing energy demand which makes giant, vulnerable, dangerous high voltage power lines look like a necessity and, in some cases, undermines states' own clean energy goals.

What do you think? Let's encourage the Rotary Club to make a carbon footprint reduction pledge for next year.   - cathy