Dr Sammons meets with Marty Boeckel

Bill Sammons (pictured), Duff Badgley and I met with Marty Boeckel, North Dakota Senator Dorgan’s State Director for the Western Division. Marty was very interested in what we all had to say, and was quite open in telling us she really hadn’t heard much about biomass before she met us.

Bill explained that using incineration of biomass to generate electricity and calling it renewable energy makes climate change worse.  He provided the Senator’s office with materials documenting that biomass burning emits fifty percent more CO2 per megawatt than burning coal, but that biomass incinerators are not covered by the ACESA cap and trade bill, and their emissions are not limited by EPA.  The ACESA bill penalizes coal for its CO2 emissions but biomass gets a free ride.  In addition, Bill, a pediatrician, explained that biomass emissions include particulates, NOx an ozone precursor, and that these air pollutants cause asthma, respiratory failure and heart disease.  Yet, under ACESA, Americans are forced to subsidize these incinerators.

Duff and Bill explained the other ways in which ACESA does more harm than good.  The meeting was productive and Climate SOS appreciated the chance to meet with Senator Conrad’s staff.

On the Road; Rural American Bus Stop

Somewhere in the Heartland…

Day Six: Bill and Duff meet with Evan Bayh’s Regional Staff

Rejoined Bill to meet with Evan Bayh’s Regional Director for Indianapolis. Left not really getting a feel for what Bayh is looking for, or isn’t looking for, in a climate bill. We’ll see if contact info. for Bayh’s D.C. staff comes our way. For sure, Bayh’s staff knows what SOS is about: KILL THE BILL.

Tomorrow we meet with Richard Lugar’s staff. Lugar is our lone Republican senator.

Day Five: Chicago to Indiana; Train Rant

TOUR DAY FIVE
In transit day. Not real pleasant. Chicago’s Union Station is one of the underground bomb-shelter-inspired train stations. Plus mobs of people. The train from Chicago to Indy was going fine until–screech!–we halted for an hour to wait for a freight train to dawdle about the tracks owned by–guess who?–the owner of the freight train. This was at midnight. If we are to have a post-Climate Crisis civilization (not a sure thing at all, I suggest) then passenger rail transport in the U.S. will play a radically greater role than it does now–and be freed from the obscene neglect and under-funding that makes it a bad joke today. End of rant.

ND: Duff, Bill, and Susan meet with Conrad and Dorgan’s Staffers

Bill Sammons, Susan and I finally met for the first time ever in continental breakfast room of Days Inn in Bismarck and plunged into planning for our first meeting–starting 90 minutes later. Bill was crisply organized with presentation packages for seven senators arranged in manila envelopes.

Both meetings went well, better than I had expected. Kent Conrad’s State Director and Byron Dorgan’s Deputy State Director each talked candidly about the energy and environmental challenegs they face in North Dakota. And it turns out Bill graduated from Exeter with Kent Conrad back in… (the same year I graduated from another east coast prep school). Both staffers engaged with our presentation, asked a lot of questions.

We focused quite a bit on wind power. Several large windfields line the highway between Minot and Bismarck. I outlined our KILL THE BILL strategy: (1) kill it committee; (2) kill it with a filibuster; (3) try hard not to let it come to a vote on the floor of the senate. Both promised to send us contact info for the energy advisers for the senators in D.C. Conrad’s director already has. She liked Bill’s suggestion for SOS to meet with energy advisers in D.C.

Bill left to fly to Indiana. Susan and I took to the bus to Minot. The man behind Susan asked her to hold his goldfish bowl (full of fish) while he got situated. She did. The man next to him told Susan about his mother working in an ND factory making wind turbine blades. Energy stories everywhere.

A mad, mad dash to make the train in Bismarck. We just did. We were the last two aboard. Whew!

North Dakota Sky

This was shot from the van that took a few of us from Bismarck to Minot. I was told by a bus rider behind me that the land along the route had been mined for coal and then “put back the way it was.” The other guy behind me said, “how can that be???” He was the guy who asked me to hold his fish.

The EPA CO2 Endangerment Finding

TOUR BLOG: Day Three

North Dakota’s promise and lethal challenge were both on display today along my 100-mile bus route from Minot to Bismarck.

Lethal Challenge: The highway went past the entrance to a large surface coal mine. The crane used to bucket the coal from the earth was simply the biggest piece of machinery I have ever seen. Its boom thrust up toward the clouds as if it owned them, too. In masterful stillness (today is Labor Day), the crane dominated the landscape.

But this machine provides the ore that powers the generators that make the electricity that keeps most North Dakotans alive. Not just warm and comfortable—but alive. Pull the plug on coal today, and many in North Dakota would face a life-and-death reality.

Keep the coal mines in operation and the rest of the planet faces a life-and-death reality.

The Promise: My bus sped past two wind turbine farms. The first, just south of Minot, was a lonesome, two turbine affair. See the picture. The second, another 50 miles south toward Bismarck, arrayed hundreds—maybe thousands—of wind turbines in an alley that stretched to the hazy horizon. Wow. These sleek, blue-and-white, three-bladed machines looked like they had been dropped from the future onto the endless Dakotan wheat fields. Their huge blades seemed to turn slowly from a distance—an illusion that can lure birds to their death. But an exotic, new crop necessary for human civilization is growing from the fertile grounds between Minot and Bismarck.

Climate SOS Tour: Blog Post #2

Climate SOS Tour, Day 2, Montana:  Seattle Team Reports from the Rails

Climate SOS Team Leader Duff Badgley left Seattle via train and on Sunday night posted this blog as his train travelled towards North Dakota where he will meet up with the Massachusetts Team members.  They will meet with North Dakota Senators Dorgan and Conrad’s staffers on Tuesday in Bismarck

Duff writes from the Montana prairie 9/6/09:  No cell reception in Montana today, after I moved from the mountains to the plains. No email, no press contacts, no website tending, no organizing…not unwelcome after the mad dash to get ready for the Tour.

So, I am a train tourist cutting through Montana’s vast ranches and rolling range.

I spy errant, pickup-truck-sized oil wells rhythmically pumping their black stuff from the unsuspecting prairie. I spy distant mountains where Nez Perce Chief Joseph finally surrendered, saying “I will fight no more, forever.” I spy hawks and deer and turkey buzzards, a coyote and elk, and cattle. In the hamlets of Cut Bank and Shelby and the more sizable Havre (pronounced “Haver”), I eavesdrop onto people’s back porches and front yards. Traveling by train is intimate. (more…)

Climate SOS Tour Blog Post #1

The methane news in the MIT paper yesterday terrifies. Methane is likely escaping from the sea floor at a rate 1 million times faster than previously thought. One million times!

What are we going to do?

Are we going to let Big Oil, Big Coal and Corrupt Big Greens give us cap-and-trade and business-as-usual?

If you are among those of us who shout “NO!”, then join our Tour blog. Help us KILL THE BILL in the senate where cap-and-trade is spawning under Barbara Boxer and John Kerry.

The Climate SOS Tour to KILL THE BILL reaches Minot, ND tomorrow night (9/6), then gathers in Bismarck, ND for a pair of meetings with senate staffs on Tuesday, 9/8. We will meet with the State Directors of Sens. Dorgan and Conrad–and tell them the compelling environmental reasons to kill the senate cap-and-trade bill.

We are traveling by train and bus to ND, IN, AR, and OH during our campaign.

Let us hear from you!

Duff
9/5/09 from eastern Washington state.