Amid skyrocketing oil, gasoline, coal, and electricity (coming to a neighborhood near you) prices, 2008 offers Americans quite serious and stark choices between knowledgeable, impassioned, and thoughtful candidates when it comes to findaing paths toward a prosperous 21st century economy, on the one side, and Fossil-Fool candidates focused on tightening our shackles to the ever-more costly (pollution, financial, otherwise) and archaic oil-coal based energy system.

Possum was an easy, albeit sentimental, choice for membership in the ranks of the Energy Smart Act Blue page.  A fellow blogger, concerned about energy and environmental issues, who has dedicated himself to Crashing the Gate to bring more sensible policy-making, including on energy and global warming, to Washington, DC.

Join me after the fold for some indications as to why.

The Progressive Democrat Newsletter grew out of the frustration of the 2004 election. So I have bene doing this almost exactly three years. And boy are my arms tired! (sorry!) Having organized protests against the Republican Convention, I found I had a core of activists who needed some encouragement after Bush "won" re-"election". My carefully thought out suggestions as to where we could go from that defeat led to this more-or-less weekly newsletter.

This week I discuss Global Warming (mainly with references to Daily Kos diaries) and a neat little way you can help feed people while building vocabulary. I also do a roundup of local progressive events for places where I have the most readers over the last couple of weeks. Don't forget to visit an advertiser or two and if you want more, please visit Culture Kitchen.

The Washington Post featured a local high school's green renovation in Titans of Ecology, which began

At the brand-new T.C. Williams High in Alexandria, a modern "green" school, students say the environmentally friendly design has led to a serious lifestyle change: They can't doze in class anymore because sunlight pours in from practically every angle.

Going green means more attentive students ... at least, fewer students napping.

This one of those benefits from Going Green, being more environmentally and energy sensitive (aware) when building, that many don't realize.  

Putting aside all the environmental benefits (real benefits), being Energy Smart, Environmentally Smart is, well, simply being smart.

"The majority of the world's designers
 focus all their efforts
on developing products and services
 exclusively for the
 richest 10% of the world's customers.

Nothing less than
a revolution in design is needed
to reach the other 90%."
 

We focus our resources (time, money) too often on solving problems and doing things for those who already have the resources leaving out, literally, billions of people from the equation.

Just a few days remain for getting to the Design for the Other 90% exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt museum in New York City ... an exhibit that helps show how it does not have to be this way.

To carry the book openly or to stash it away, that is a question one faces when reading Dave Praeger's Poop Culture:  How America is Shaped By Its Grossest National Product.  That is an unusual reaction when reading something that, at its core, deals with a quite serious subject and deals with it well. And, that discomfort proves one of the core points of the book -- about how American (and much of modern) culture seeks to suppress understanding and discussion of what is, at the end of the day (or whenever you hit the can or release gas or ...), one of the most shared human experiences (after, perhaps, breathing ...).

Reading this book provided an interesting experience, ranging from outright laughter to points that challenged thinking about daily activities to squeamish discomfort about the subject matter.  I learned, in some ways too much, about feces and humanity's relationship with it.  

But this series, this review, is about Energy ... and, well, poop and energy and what we can learn from Poop Culture ...

Energize America, the people-powered plan for a sustainable energy future, has evolved.  Evolved from unknown bloggers sharing concerns about mounting energy problems, to a blogger community developing a holistic approach, to the blogosphere working with Congress to develop specific legislative approaches to help deal with the nation's challenges.

In Chicago, at  YearlyKos 2007, three of these people came together to review the process, discussing achievements to date, and laying a path into the future.

This diary focuses on the material presented by Jerome-a-Paris,

From Nowhere to Vegas

There are many tremendous technologies, processes, and such out there that can help us move toward a prosperous and sustainable energy future.  These range from urban bike programs to energy efficient public housing to finding out just how easy it is to cook with the sun. Or, as advertised here, Frying in the Sun.

ANNOUNCEMENT  There is a major Solar Cooking Demonstration in Washington, DC, by the US Senate Friday afternoon, 27 July. Information within the diary.

Sometimes we learn in rather interesting ways.  Well, to give credit where credit is due, I bumped into Rollerblading glimpse of the future which explained how roller-blading in the Google parking lot led to early awareness that something was up when it came to Google and PHEVs, as solar panels were going up over parking spots with plugs hanging from the roof structures.

And, well, Arjuna's roller blading might have given him knowledge of something that could truly change the globe.

The Senate is considering, amid all the energy legislation, instituting a nation-wide renewable power standard (RPS).  

Oh ... boring ... the snores have begun ...

No

Actually

CRITICAL to moving toward a prosperous and sustainable energy future.  

Take two minutes ... just 2 minutes ... to write your Senators to urge them to support a minimum of a 15 percent RPS by 2020 ...

Confused, follow over the fold to learn more about RPS and why they matter.

We can't afford as a nation to be stupid about paying for health care anymore. alizard, 6 May 2007

Global Warming skeptics often focus on the messenger, Al Gore, rather than listening to the message. We should hope -- although perhaps could expect -- that the same thing will not occur with the  Clinton Global Initiative's (CGI) Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program.

As per Energize America's Energy Smart Communities concept (but, to be honest, $billions ahead of EA2020), this initiative will make real progress in terms of reducing energy use while, at the same time, creating a greater capacity for energy efficiency in the private sector around the globe. Notably, the CGI claims that this program will double the annual investment in building energy efficiency globally.

Energy will be one of our number one issues in coming years. The conflicting pull of increased demand overwhelming our grid and the need to cut carbon emissions to battle global warming before our 10-year window has passed. Both of these conflicting needs are critical needs and we have to find a way to address both.

As most who open this diary are already aware, my passion is clear ... helping my/your family, my/your community, my/your nation, my/our world find a path toward a prosperous and sustainable energy future. A path that will help us (US) navigate the dangerous seas of the Perfect Storm combination of Peak Oil and Global Warming.

What follows is part of the concepts that the next President should embrace ...

When most Americans look to biofuels, we see an opportunity for domestic sources of energy to replace some part of the oil we currently import.  We see a chance for American farmers to make money from the millions of miles we travel by car, instead of those funds going to dictators and terrorists.  We see a chance to use a fuel whose carbon content is recycled from one crop to the next, not released into the atmosphere after being sequestered for tens of millions of years.

But we don't see it the way the Bush administration see it.  To their eyes, ethanol looks like another way to relax environmental rules.  

As President Bush promotes ethanol as a green alternative to gasoline, his administration is quietly relaxing environmental rules for dozens of new corn-to-fuel refineries sprouting up across the nation.

Energize America is chock full o' cool.   There are great ideas in the plan to expand solar, wind, and other renewable sources.  There's support for much improved conservation, and there are R&D targets that could take us to the next generation of clean power and keen cars.

However, this is the part that's...eh, not so sexy.  But it's important.

In a plan that's all about making sure America has all the energy it needs for the future, this is one part of the plan that's about putting restrictions on an existing domestic energy resource.

This is where we outlaw mountaintop removal coal mining.