Audio

• Andrew Revkin talk Bucknell U. 31 Januaray 2008, part of Focus the Nation teach-in. Revkin is a New York Times science reporter. Audio starts with President Brian C. Mitchell's presentation of new green measures at Bucknell.
• Step It Up in Lewisburg held 14 April 2007 in Soldiers' Memorial Park, Lewisburg

Click here to see LAN report and photos of 14 April 2007 Step It Up event on Step It Up website.

Here is Katherine Straub's speech presented at Step It Up event:

"What brings us all here today is the need for change.  Because right now, every time we turn on our lights, every time we drive our cars, every time we take a hot shower, eat something cold from the refrigerator, fly on an airplane, we are responsible.  We are responsible for the planetary crisis that brings us here today, global warming.  We, as Americans, have emitted, and continue to emit, the vast majority of global warming pollution into the world’s atmosphere.  And without a change, we will continue to do just the same.

 What I think many of us want is to be able to drive our cars (sometimes) and turn on our lights (sometimes) without sending greenhouse gases into the air.  We want to live our lives knowing that we are not dooming our children and grandchildren to live on a planet ravaged by heat waves, rising seas, droughts, floods – disasters that could have been avoided if we had just done something, if we had just acted.

So the question is: How can we drive our cars and turn on our lights without polluting the atmosphere?  And the problem is that right now, we don’t really have many choices allowing us to do those things.  Let me ask you this: What kind of gas mileage does your car get?  Unless you have a Prius, it’s probably less than 30 mpg.  When you bought your car, did you feel like you had much of a choice as to what fuel economy you were getting?  When you bought your car, how many vehicles were even on the market that got more than 30 mpg?  Did you know that the Ford Model T got 25 mpg?  100 years later, we’re still getting the same gas mileage as the Ford Model T.  Did you also know that U.S. auto manufacturers can’t sell their cars in China because they don’t meet Chinese fuel efficiency standards?

 Another question: Do you have a choice as to how your electricity gets generated – do you get to choose whether your electricity comes from coal, or natural gas, or nuclear, or wind, or solar?  Not really.  Especially if you’re served by PPL, you don’t.  You pay for what they provide, which in PPL’s case, is primarily coal and nuclear.  Other electricity distributors allow their customers to pay a surcharge to invest in renewable energy sources like wind and solar.  But PPL?  You can’t even pay them to invest in renewable energy.

 To solve the global warming crisis, we need to stop emitting greenhouse gases into the air.  The main greenhouse gas we talk about is carbon dioxide, which is produced whenever something is burned.  Whether you’re burning gasoline in your car’s engine or burning logs for a campfire or burning coal to generate electricity, CO2 is produced.  How long does this CO2 last, once it’s in the atmosphere?  Around 100 years.  And for every moment of those 100 years, that CO2 is warming our planet.  CO2 is called a greenhouse gas because it traps the heat energy that the Earth is trying to send back into space, to keep its temperature in equilibrium.  If the heat can’t get out, if it gets absorbed by greenhouse gases on its way back into space, the planet warms up.  This is happening right now.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that recent global temperature increases are, with 90% certainty, caused by humans, caused by the greenhouse effect.

Think about this.  Did you drive here today?  If you did, your car emitted CO2.  That CO2 will still be in the atmosphere, somewhere, in the year 2100.   Think of all the things you’ve done today that produced CO2.  Did you take a hot shower this morning?  CO2.  Did you turn on your lights?  CO2.  Did you use your toaster?  CO2.  All of that CO2 will still be here in the year 2100.  In the year 2100, when most of us will be long gone, the carbon we helped put into the atmosphere will still be warming the Earth.

Ok, so it’s not that we want to pollute, right?  It’s not like each one of us wakes up each morning trying to think of evil ways to destroy our planet.  The problem is that right now, we don’t have many low-carbon choices.  Especially low-carbon choices that are affordable.  Sure, we can all pay carbonfund to offset our carbon emissions by planting trees, or generating wind energy (and I do highly recommend this!), but unfortunately, these actions don’t really solve the problem.  Solving the problem means getting the auto industry and the power companies to give us low-carbon choices, so that we can still drive, and shower, and have cold food without polluting our atmosphere.

Clearly, based on our experiences in the last few decades, automakers and power companies are not going to voluntarily invest in clean technologies and renewable energy sources.  They just don’t see it as being in their own financial best interest.  (Whether they’re right or not is a different question.)  Back in the early 70’s, when Congress mandated that fuel economy in passenger cars should double between 1975 and 1985, the auto industry kicked and screamed and said it could never happen, they would be driven out of business.  They weren’t.  The same thing happened with seatbelts, air bags, and catalytic converters.  Surprise, the auto industry is still selling cars.

So what we need right now is a mandate.  We need Congress to mandate that auto manufacturers make more efficient cars, we need Congress to mandate that power companies generate electricity with zero or low carbon emissions.  What kind of a mandate do we need?  Scientists tell us that if we are to avoid reaching a climate “tipping point” – when really catastrophic, irreversible climate change begins – we need to reduce carbon emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by the year 2050.  That’s a huge reduction, one you might not think is achievable.

 But just like fuel economy in the 70’s and sending a man to the Moon in 1969, of course it’s achievable.  There are so many ways we can reduce our carbon emissions – all we need is a mandate to get started.

The specifics: there are 2 bills circulating in Congress right now that do propose to cut carbon emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.  The bill in the Senate is sponsored by Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer, and the bill in the House is sponsored by Henry Waxman.  Please urge your Senators and Representatives to support these important bills, so we can get started on kicking our carbon habit.

 There are also two global warming bills circulating in Congress that we should not be supporting: first, Tom Udall and Tom Petri’s bill, and second, Jeff Bingaman and Arlen Specter’s bill.  Both of these bills also address global warming pollution, but neither one of them actually decreases carbon emissions.  Udall-Petri caps emissions at 2009 levels and holds them constant, and Bingaman-Specter actually allows emissions to increase.  It would be a tragic loss for the climate change movement if one of these bills were enacted rather than the tough legislation proposed by Sanders or Waxman.

 In closing: Yes, it’s important to reduce your own carbon emissions (there’s a handout here that tells you 10 ways to do that).  Drive less, eat local, change your light bulbs to compact fluorescents.  It’s also important to use your consumer purchasing power to support hybrid vehicles and clean energy.  But if we want a solution that’s going to put this country on the right path, the path to lessening our global warming impact as well as the path to energy independence, we need to urge our legislators to act now, and to act boldly: 80% reductions by 2050."

           By Kathy Straub, Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Susquehanna University.

Click here for info from World Resources Institute by John Larson comparing Global Warming Legislation in the 110th Congress.