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February 16, 2007

CUB Holds Successful Lobby Day

Members of CUB's volunteer Board of Governors and Staff members journeyed to the State Capitol in Salem yesterday for a Lobby Day in support of CUB's Pro-Consumer and Clean Energy Agenda. At the top of the list of bills we are supporting is SB 373, the Renewable Energy Standards Bill, which would require that 25% of Oregon's electricity production be produced from clean, renewable sources by the year 2025. We also spoke with our legislators and key committee chairs regarding SB 461, the bill which would raise the amount of low-income energy assistance money offered from $10 million (which currently serves only about 23% of the need) to $15 million, with an index tied to inflation.

Our newest CUB Board member, Linda Tomassi, traveled down from Portland, along with long-time CUB Board member and supporter Fred Heutte. CUB Executive Director Bob Jenks and staff members Lowrey Brown and Shannon Floyd also drove that I-5 corridor (and, yes, we did carpool!). Already close at hand was Board member and Salem resident Steve Weiss. And coming from farther afield were Board Chair Doug Crow, from Mosier, and Board Member Hank Keeton, from Scotts Mills. Jeff Bissonnette, CUB's lobbyist and organizing director, is a fixture at the Capitol these days; he shepherded our group through a dozen or so meetings throughout the day with great efficiency and aplomb. And our newest intern, Thomas Balcom, an anthropology student at Willamette University, helped manage the many details of a busy day.

We wish to express our great appreciation to the busy lawmakers who took time to meet with us, and talk with us about these important bills. That list includes: Senate Majority Leader Kate Brown, Senator Jason Atkinson, Sen. Jeff Kruse, Senator Rod Monroe, House Speaker Jeff Merkley, Rep. Terry Beyer, Rep. Scott Bruun, Rep. Ben Cannon, Rep. Brian Clem, Rep. Diane Rosenbaum, and with special thanks to Senator Brad Avakian and Rep. Jackie Dingfelder, not only for their time yesterday, but also for their leadership roles in working to pass the Renewable Energy Standard. In between the meetings with legislators, the CUB group gave a statement to members of the Capitol press corps, met briefly with Public Utility Commission Chair Lee Beyer, attended the tail end of the Oregon Conservation Network meeting, and enjoyed some lunchtime sandwiches and cookies around a table that looked out on the Capitol back lawn.

The day went really well and feedback from Linda made us smile: "We were organized, educated, coordinated, fed, encouraged and delivered. I knew you were really good at what you did, Jeff, but knowing and seeing are very different things. Thank you. What we did today was important. Oregon's policymakers are obviously impressed with CUB's integrity and competence. I am proud to be part of such an amazing organization." We had a great CUB Lobby Day, learned a lot about the bills, the people and the processes of our Capitol, and hopefully made some strides in moving along the RES and low-income assistance from bills to state law.

Just as important as the CUB Board going to Salem to push our agenda will be CUB's grassroots members writing letters, making phone calls and sending e-mails to your legislators at key times in the process. That's where CUB's clout really comes from. Stay tuned for action alerts that will be coming as the legislative session really starts to heat up.

And if you want to come to Salem yourself to personally talk to your legislator, consider attending the Oregon Conservation Network Lobby Day on April 3rd. It's always a fun and empowering day, joining with a few hundred Oregonians from around the state. A key focus will be supporting the Renewable Energy Standard bill as well as other parts of the Clean Energy Agenda. To find out more about the OCN Lobby Day, contact Jeff Bissonnette at jeff@oregoncub.org.

Posted by Oregon CUB at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

February 07, 2007

Upgraded Possibility for Global Human Change

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a worldwide consortium of 2000 scientists and thinkers who have studied, synthesized and evaluated the scientific data available regarding climate change, have come out with their fourth report. In it, they have upgraded the probability that the changes we see in our climate are due to human activities, to over 90%.

The IPCC's first report came out in 1990. In the 17 years since then their knowledge base has grown, global changes have accelerated, and our understanding of this dilemma is coming of age, as are our strategies for addressing it. Young Britons who were just being born when the first IPCC report was released are now being readied to face the challenge: "As part of a year-long environmental education campaign to combat global warming, Al Gore's documentary will be sent to every secondary school in England, over 3,385 schools."

Beyond what each of us can do to address our own fossil fuel consumption, CUB is addressing the threat of global warming in the following ways:

1) We successfully opposed PacifiCorp's attempt to get PUC approval of plans to build 2 new coal plants, a major emitter of carbon emissions, linked to global warming. PacifiCorp has indicated it will issue a Request for Proposals on the coal plants anyway, so this battle is far from over.

2) We participate in utility resource planning at the PUC to ensure that investments in energy production are safe and stable for the long term, and this includes both environmental and financial impact on customers.

3) We are working in the Oregon Legislature to pass a Renewable Energy Standards agenda, which includes a 25% renewable power by 2025 component, along with common sense energy efficiency measures and extensions of tax credits to developers installing renewable energy sources.

4) We are working in the Oregon Legislature on a carbon agenda which would bring the issue of global warming to the forefront of discussions regarding state policy decisions regarding energy, where it belongs.

5) We advocate and inform on national issues that affect Oregon utility customers. For example, Congress has begun, suddenly with increased numbers and enthusiasm, to tackle clean energy issues. This is perhaps most apparent with the news, from industry newsletter Clearing Up, that "At least four key U.S. Senators made it clear last week that they believe the war against global warming should begin with the utility industry ... Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) ... and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) ... said they plan to introduce a bill this week that focuses solely on reducing emissions from the electric utility industry. The measure ... would cap carbon dioxide emission from power plants at 2001 levels by 2015." The article goes on to say that Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Sen. Barbara Boxer, both Democrats from California, have each introduced their own clean energy bills aimed at decreased greenhouse gas emissions.

A Boston Globe columnist claimed in a column today that to cap emissions was "to arrest economic growth." We think this "economy or the environment" setup is a false choice, since a healthy economy on an unlivable planet is not a realistic win. We agree also with Lewis & Clark Economics Professor and Founding Director of the Greenhouse Network, Eban Goodstein, that this is a false choice, because addressing the challenges of global warming and other environmental issues can create opportunities for economic growth.

One of the burgeoning clean energy industries is obviously wind power. The status of another, solar energy, was discussed recently in the Northwest Energy Coalition's Transformer: "PVs have become big business, with about $7 billion in worldwide sales in 2004. Manufacturing costs plummeted about 30 percent from 1999 to 2003, although demand is so great that local dealers have seen rising sales prices over the past year for the hard-to-come-by panels." Although the Coalition concedes that installation costs for solar can still seem comparatively high to fossil-drenched First World consumers, still, they say that "Given the historical improvement in technology, it is quite likely that solar PVs will soon be the least-cost choice for utilities serving many sun-drenched cities."

CUB hopes to help steer such positive alternatives to "business-as-usual" fossil fuel electricity production into reality. We aren't the United Nations -- we're just trailblazing Oregonians, but we have upgraded the probability that the changes in energy production that we seek are possible, to over 90%.

Posted by Oregon CUB at 04:08 PM | Comments (0)