ValleyWatch

September 8, 2015 – Various Artists

Published on Sep 4, 2015
Offical Love Song To The Earth Lyric Video directed by Jerry Cope and Casey Culver produced by Jerry Cope & Toby Gad, Nature Cinematography by Louie Schwartzberg
Featuring Vocal Performances by Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow, Fergie, Colbie Caillat, Natasha Bedingfield, Sean Paul, Leona Lewis, Johnny Rzeznik, Krewella, Angelique Kidjo, Nicole Scherzinger, Kelsea Ballerini, Christina Grimmmie, Victoria Justice, Q’orianka Kilcher

Every time the song is purchased, streamed, or shared, the royalties go directly towards the efforts of Friends of the Earth to keep fossil fuels in the ground and lower carbon emissions, and to the work of the U.N. Foundation to inspire international action on climate change.

Now we need you to lend your voice to the Earth and help catapult the Love Song into a global hit. Because it’s our world.

For more information
http://lovesongtotheearth.org

Full lyrics

This is an open letter
From you and me together
Tomorrow’s in our hands now Find the words that matter
Say them out loud
And make it better somehow Looking down from up on the moon
It’s a tiny blue marble
Who’d have thought the ground we stand on
Could be so fragile

Chorus (1st)
This is a lovesong to the Earth
You’re no ordinary world
A diamond in the universe
Heaven’s poetry to us
Keep it safe, keep it safe, keep it safe
cause it’s our world It’s not about possessions, money, or religion
How many years we might live ?
When the only real question that matters is still
A matter of perspective
Looking down from up on the moon
You’re a tiny blue marble
Who’d have thought the ground we stand on
Could be so fragile

Chorus ( 2nd)
This is a lovesong to the Earth
You’re no ordinary world
A diamond in the universe
Heaven’s poetry to us
Keep it safe, keep it safe, keep it safe
cause it’s our world Continue reading →

August 29, 2015 – by John Walke at the Natural Resource Defense Council

Lobbyists for polluting industry and their political allies are increasingly resorting to misrepresentation and fear mongering to oppose national health standards that deliver on the law’s guarantee of safe air for all Americans. I follow yesterday’s post by continuing to examine the series of recurring falsehoods that comprise this dirty air campaign.

Misrepresenting Industry Compliance Costs. The dirty air campaign’s leading complaint is that the compliance costs to reduce industry’s own air pollution is excessive. These complaints invariably lead back to a single, discredited report bought by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Independent economists have rightly characterized this report as “insane” and “unmoored from any economic reality.”

One central reason for that insanity is the NAM report assumes future smog compliance costs 1,000 times higher than actual cleanup costs today: $500,000 to reduce a single ton of nitrogen oxides (NOx) pollution in NAM’s made-up world, versus $500 today to reduce one ton of NOx from power plants, for example. The report imagines these insanely exaggerated costs by choosing to draw an analogy to a short-lived 2009 economic stimulus program called Cash for Clunkers that was designed to assist Detroit automakers during the recession–not serve as a cost-effective smog control program. In fact no one ever treated the stimulus program as a smog program.

Nonetheless, the NAM report resorts to assuming these hyper-inflated costs based on a cartoonish world where states and municipalities would turn to “Cash for Clunkers” as their preferred control strategy, in order to reduce smog-forming air pollution rationally and cost-effectively. Indeed, the NAM report compounds this insanity by assuming that an economic stimulus program for vehicle turn-ins will set the future control costs for all smog-polluting activities across the U.S. economy, not just for vehicles but for industrial facilities and consumer products and any other regulated combustion activity.

Back in the real world, proven ozone control technologies and measures in use today will be the very first ones deployed by jurisdictions newly declared to be out of compliance with a safer standard. These measures are cost-effective and any rational regulator or regulated entity is going to take advantage of them. NAM’s cost claims don’t pass the red face test.

Misrepresenting Impact of Safer Air Standards. A second favored falsehood from the dirty air campaign is to pretend that the air quality in the nation’s national parks is “pristine” today. Industry then argues that safer smog health standards must be irrational if even some national parks won’t meet the safer standard. Continue reading →

August 5, 2015 – by Brad Plumer at VOX

It’s easy enough to describe the basics of the Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s sweeping new policy to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from America’s power plants. Heck, we can do it in a single paragraph.

The EPA is giving each state an individual goal for cutting power plant emissions. States can then decide for themselves how to get there. They can switch from coal to natural gas, expand renewables or nuclear, boost energy efficiency, enact carbon pricing … it’s up to them. States just have to submit their plans by 2016-2018, start cutting by 2022 at the latest, and then keep cutting through 2030. Oh, and if states refuse to submit a plan, the EPA will impose its own federal plan, which could involve some sort of cap-and-trade program. Done.

When the dust settles, EPA expects US power plant emissions will be 32 percent lower in 2030 than they were in 2005. A significant cut, though still just a tiny piece of what’s needed to halt global warming.

RelatedObama releases his most ambitious climate policy yet — the Clean Power Plan

So then why does the rule need to be 1,560 pages long? Because that synopsis above still leaves tons of questions unanswered. How did the EPA actually come up with each state’s emissions target? Why does every state have a different target? What, exactly, can states do to cut emissions? What if they want to work together? If states refuse, what sort of federal plan gets handed down from on high?

The Clean Power Plan does not include industrial boilers like this one at Alcoa in Warrick County, IN. Those were dealt with in a previous rule making. © 2010 BlairPhotoEVV

This fine print will matter a lot. So, for those curious about how the rule actually works, here’s a more detailed step-by-step guide to what EPA is doing:

1) The EPA is setting individual emissions goals for 47 states

This is a key starting point. There isn’t a single nationwide policy here. Instead, the EPA is setting different targets for 47 states — that is, 47 separate state goals for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 2030.

Why just 47 states? Vermont and Washington, DC, are exempt because they don’t have any large fossil fuel or electric power plants, so there’s nothing to cut. Meanwhile, Alaska and Hawaii aren’t covered under the rule for now because the EPA is still mulling how to deal with their unique grid situations. The agency says they’ll get regulated eventually.

2) State emissions goals are set by a complicated formula

So how did the EPA actually set each state’s target? This part is a tad more complex, and it’s completely different from how the agency calculated state goals in last year’s draft proposal of the Clean Power Plan. I’ll walk through the broad steps involved:

— First, take stock of the nation’s fossil-fuel power plants. The EPA started by tallying up all the coal, oil, and natural gas power plants across the United States, placed them into two broad categories, and then figured out their average emission rates in 2012 in each of the country’s three main electric-grid regions.

More-

Go to original 

 

August 3, 2015 – President Obama and USEPA. Editor’s note: Due to a surgical recovery period, Valley Watch is allowing EPA and the President to speak for themselves about the Clean Power Plan. It should be noted that already, Indiana Governor, Mike Pence has announced his intention to ignore this important rule and proposes to continue the state’s reliance on old dirty coal plants instead.

For more information go to: https://www.whitehouse.gov/climate-change

July8, 2015 – by John Blair, valleywatch.net editor.

Update: Further research has shown that the Beacon Street monitor in Ft. Wayne had a 24 hour average on Sunday, July 5 of a huge 84.75 µg/m3 with a high of 405.53 µg/m3. Editor’s Note: How can a state agency whose purpose is the protection of health for Hoosiers so blithely disregard these phenomenal levels of pollution? It almost defies reason and logic.

July 4th is a day set aside for celebration, a national holiday in the midst of summer, a time for reflection on our freedoms. It is also a time when fireworks light up the evening sky both as community celebrations and, in fireworks crazy Indiana, a time for every man, woman and child to have their very own displays in their own backyards.

Yes, it is also a time when kids get their fingers blown off and this year one stupid man decided to set off a mortar shell from a perch on top of his head and blew up his head when the shell was launched. But explosive safety aside, fireworks also present a conundrum when it comes to environmental health.

This year that conundrum got pretty out of hand in Indiana. Monitors across the state (few as they are in number) recorded high to extremely high levels of fine particles from the evening of July 3 to the end of July 5.

It is the job of the Indiana Department of Environment Management to issue air pollution “alerts” when levels of so called criteria pollutants reach levels that are considered “unhealthy” for both “sensitive” populations as well as the public at large. But this year, IDEM and most local agencies that are suppose to protect citizen health completely dropped the ball and ignored the extremely high levels of fine particles that permeated Hoosier air for nearly three days.

Keith Bauges, head of IDEM’s Office of Air Quality is not only a Global Warming “denier” but feels that alerts should be issued only after the fact.

US EPA, after dealing with politics and a hostile congress set the level of pollution that is considered unsafe at 35µg/m3 as a 24 hour average. That was a “compromise” standard set by the administration of George W. Bush although it is clear science that levels lower than that can impact human health especially for people who suffer from a wide array of respiratory disease.

In other words, when the level reaches 35µg/m3 air quality is not good and breathing it could be harmful to some people’s health. As it goes higher, more people are impacted in an linear progression.

This past weekend, levels recorded at one monitor on the west side of Indianapolis called the “West 18th Street Monitor” fine particles rose to a whopping 280 µg/m3 at 1 AM on July 5 and remained high throughout the day and evening averaging 75.15µg/m3, twice the 24 hour standard. A day before, on July 4, fine particles averaged 44.35µg/m3 also well above the standard, topping out at 256.47 µg/m3. Continue reading →

June 18, 2015 – by Sarah Pullman Bailey in the Washington Post. Editor’s note: Valley Watch, Inc. and ValleyWatch.net are 100% secular and we endorse no particular religion over another. You may download the Encyclical in full at the bottom of this story.

Pope Francis is calling for an “ecological conversion” for the faithful in his sweeping new encyclical on the environment. In “Laudato Si,” or “Be Praised” (or “Praised Be,”) he warns of harming birds and industrial waste and calls for renewable fuel subsidies and energy efficiency.

Here are some of the key passages people will read closely, everything from climate change and global warming to abortion and population control.

1) Climate change has grave implications. “Each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see, because they have been lost forever,” he writes.

2) Rich countries are destroying poor ones, and the earth is getting warmer. “The warming caused by huge consumption on the part of some rich countries has repercussions on the poorest areas of the world, especially Africa, where a rise in temperature, together with drought, has proved devastating for farming.”

3) Christians have misinterpreted Scripture and “must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures.”

4) The importance of access to safe drinkable water is “a basic and universal human right.”

5) Technocratic domination leads to the destruction of nature and the exploitation of people, and “by itself the market cannot guarantee integral human development and social inclusion.”

6) Population control does not address the problems of the poor. “In the face of the so-called culture of death, the family is the heart of the culture of life.” And, “Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion.”

7) Gender differences matter, and “valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different.”

8) The international community has not acted enough: “recent World Summits on the environment have not lived up to expectations because, due to lack of political will, they were unable to reach truly meaningful and effective global agreements on the environment.” He writes, “the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics. But I am concerned to encourage an honest and open debate so that particular interests or ideologies will not prejudice the common good.” And, “there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago.”

9) Individuals must act. “An integral ecology is also made up of simple daily gestures which break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness,” he writes. We should also consider taking public transit, car-pooling, planting trees, turning off the lights and recycling.

10) By the way, why are we here on Earth in the first place? “What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?” he writes.

papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_en

June 16, 2015 – by Peter Sinclair and the Yale Climate Forum. Editor’s note: Valley Watch is a secular organization although some of our most active members are very active in their own faiths. We are, however, looking forward to Pope Francis’ upcoming encyclical on June 18, that will spell out for Catholics the very real problems with climate and pollution. 

Peter Sinclair, offers this provocative video  in advance of the encyclical to show the thinking of some theologians prior to the release. 

June 3, 1015 – by Jean Webb, Valley Watch board member

What’s holding Evansville back from taking advantage of the newer, cleaner, cheaper electric generating technologies? I’d answer Vectren, our state government, and ratepayer indifference.

Evansville’s electricity is generated by 96% coal. Coal may be cheap, but the controls to clean up the air and water from its wastes are very expensive. Other cities are now able to thrive with affordable clean energy. Why not us?

Want an example? According to a January 2014 rate survey, the Portland, OR residential ratepayer paid $63.34 for a 500kWh bill; whereas the Evansville ratepayer paid $83.77 for that same 500kWh bill. Portland ratepayers can also chose to power their houses with renewable energy, a mix of 98% wind, 1% geothermal, and 1% solar. The extra cost for the average household to go with renewables is approximately $7.00 a month. I would love that option! I could be 100% renewable in Portland and still pay less than what I pay Vectren!

Vectren does have a “power purchase agreement” with the Fowler Ridge Wind Farm in White and Benton Counties and Benton County Wind Farm in Benton County, IN to supply 80 megawatts of energy to the Vectren System. . Photo © 2015 BlairPhotoEVV

Vectren’s stance is that they don’t need new capacity, so they aren’t adding renewables. And, since they are still entitled to recovery on the coal plants and all their related pollution controls, the ratepayers would have to pay for both the old and new generating units. Ouch! Why do we have to keep paying for what we don’t want?

That’s where our State government comes into play. Utility lobbyists managed to hi-jack our state into passing Senate Bill 251 in April 2011. That Bill allowed utilities to keep upgrading the old coal plants and keep charging ratepayers for the upgrades without any rate hearing to allow customers to comment. That Bill is why we are still in debt for old technology that prevents us from moving ahead into the future. It’s the ratepayer equivalent of massive student loans that can never be discharged in bankruptcy.

So, Vectren is sitting smug, knowing they will be paid for a product we don’t want. And, they helplessly say – sorry, renewables are just too expensive.

Let’s let Vectren know LOUDLY that their lobbyists may be clever, but we want clean renewables NOW. We want them at an affordable price.   We want them to STOP spending on old technologies and passing that cost onto us.

If you agree, please share this post on your Facebook page.

May 16, 2015 – by Dennis Gage in the Fauxton Report

The forces of darkness (aka investor-owned Utilities) have been plotting a coordinated nation-wide assault on rooftop solar since 2012. Battles have already been waged in a number of state legislatures with the Utilities winning (and consumers losing!) all too many of them. Those wins were all secured with the help of special interest money.

One such battle took place in Indiana in 2015, with the first round being won by consumers due to strong grassroots opposition to a blatantly sweetheart deal for the Utilities. However, this “win” was by a decision, at best, and the Utilities ARE bound to come out swinging in the next round in 2016.

The mission of The Fauxton Report is to shed light on the Utilities’ war on rooftop solar and on the scourge of special interest money in our political system. Tune in to The Fauxton Report frequently for further episodes and updates.

Power to the People!