I would call for a boycott if I thought we'd have any material left

The governments of 113 countries, including our own, agree that the observed rise in global temperatures is "unequivocal."

The Los Altos Town Crier, though, not so much:

There may not be consensus that Earth’s atmosphere is warming, but that’s not keeping governments, groups and individuals from taking decisive action to assess their energy consumption and adopt sustainable strategies in conservation for the future of the planet.

As Earth Day, April 22, approaches, event coordinators are encouraging citizens to deluge Congress with phone calls on that day, insisting that lawmakers enact legislation promoting renewable energy and carbon-neutral buildings and calling for a moratorium on new coal-burning plants.

I don't believe Hell exists, but if it does, I can only imagine there's a special circle reserved for these people.

The Town Crier's brave stand against the Kyoto Protocol

Boooo!

Politically correct, yes, but practical?

It's not often the Town Crier actually comes out against anything. It backed the war in Iraq using a sports cliche that it got backwards. It stayed entirely silent when a confessed child molester awaiting sentencing was free to visit local elementary schools. This is no knee-jerk reactionary opinion page -- it takes something that's really wrong to garner criticism from the Town Crier. Gay kids qualify, of course. But efforts to stem global warming? This should be interesting.

The Los Altos City Council’s Jan. 22 decision to allocate $14,600 to begin investigating what the city can do to reduce air pollutants comes across – initially – as the right thing to do in this era of CO2 emissions consciousness.

Please enlighten us as to why it isn't.

As part of the recent action to evaluate current greenhouse gas emissions at the city level, the council directed Mayor Val Carpenter to add her signature to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.

Didn't they realize that Mountain View already did this? Shouldn't we just freeload off of their efforts -- we do it for everything else.

It seems politically correct to take this action. But from a practical standpoint, we wonder about the priority and direction of the effort, and whether the study is money well spent.

Zing! It's politically correct! I knew it was a bad idea. Q.E.D.

First, the study is only to determine the current emissions levels in city-operated vehicles, wastewater operations and other sources within the city of Los Altos. This seems like a good first step, but the net needs to be cast citywide. We think the $14,600 could be better used on a marketing campaign beyond city government to reach the community at large, to get people out of their vehicles. Walk-to-School days are fine but not nearly enough.

They better make it more than $14,600, given that the town newspaper consistently belittles the importance of climate change and has in the past advocated against enforcement even of existing parking restrictions.

Will the commendable volunteer energy that has pushed through this first effort be able to take the emissions information and use it to enact change, particularly given the city’s slim budget?

Let’s imagine that the study concludes in part that Los Altos police vehicles emit a high level of air pollutants. The council then recommends that level be lowered as part of the “Cool Los Altos” philosophy. Would this mean replacing an entire fleet of vehicles with more environmentally friendly ones to the tune of millions of dollars?

First of all, asking rhetorical questions is not the same thing as making an argument or taking a position. How in God's name do people give them awards for this sort of garbage? (That's not rhetorical, by the way, I'm really curious about the thought process that leads to the determination that this is good writing.)

Secondly, yes. As in, yes, it might mean that, if the emissions inventory suggested that this was a cost-effective place to make reductions. It's easy to imagine that it would be, considering that the city already spends money replacing its fleet periodically. Mountain View, for example, has rules in place that prioritize emissions reductions when fleet vehicles are being replaced.

We want to lower greenhouse gas emissions as much as the next city. But such thinking also needs to take into consideration bottom-line costs and available funding to address any recommendations.

Hard-hitting stuff there TC. Way to be the voice of reason. It was looking for a minute like the Los Altos City Council might run off spending money willy-nilly on environmental protection.

While the lobbying to get this part of the plan through was clearly effective, it failed to offer any examples of likely action to take. It would be easier to support this project if we had some examples, now, of possible solutions. We shouldn’t need an emissions study to come up with those ideas. We need a task force that is working on it – which is the only thing the city didn’t decide to do.

It's an INVENTORY. You measure things first, then you decide where best to place your effort. That said, here's a suggestion: stop killing trees to print this drivel.

Given a lack of direction and available budget, is this another study that leads to nowhere (most likely created by a new cottage industry)?

Hmm, after reading that cutting parenthetical aside, I am reconsidering my concern about climate change. It's all just a cottage industry lobbying effort. Exxon was trying to tell us all along, but we didn't listen.

Focus the 'Tos

Today is "Focus the Nation," a national teach-in on global warming. It comes amidst a lot of exciting progress on climate change at UCLA Law. Last week's law review symposium highlighted some of the best idea for addressing the problem. The school announced that it had received a $5 million gift to open the country's first center for climate change law. A group of students has embarked on an effort to personally comply with the Kyoto Protocol. And I even got to meet one of the impostor Jonathan Wieners. (Details to follow in another post).

But this blog is not about the nation, the globe, or even UCLA Law. It is about the 'Tos, which joined the party last week.

Thanks to the efforts of Kacey Fitzpatrick and the other folks behind Cool Los Altos, our city has pledged to meet the Kyoto Protocol by 2012. This seems like it will require rethinking, among other things, how much we want to continue use free public parking to subsidize driving. I'm not optimistic that we will necessarily pull it off -- at least so long as council member and blog whipping boy Ron Packard believes that the only thing Los Altos should do about the great challenge of our time is promulgate weak revisions to the building code. But at least it will be nice to know that we inspired Iraq.

The Town Crier vs. Global Warming

Remember that poll a few years ago in which viewers of Fox News overwhelmingly believed that we had found WMD's in Iraq and that Al-Qaeda had a working relationship with the Iraqi government? Of course you do.

Somebody should poll Town Crier readers and see how they stack up.

A deliciously hypocritical letter from Edward Kelley in this week's issue continues the paper's campaign against the truth.

Regarding Amy Wright's letter published May 16: I would like to ask Ms. Wright to identify the source for her claim that global warming is a subject for which "nearly all scientists worldwide are in agreement."

It's one thing to throw out such a statement to rebut articles you don't like, but it's another to back them up with source material.

My understanding of the subject is that scientists worldwide are far from agreeing that humans are responsible and that global warming is a phenomenon that occurs naturally over millions of years.

I can only assume that Kelley appended his own source material to his letter. Notwithstanding what Kelley incorrectly calls his "understanding," the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says human activity is causing global warming.

(Here is the original letter, a response to the Town Crier spilling ink on a global warming denier, a "certified consulting meteorologist," sponsored by publisher Paul Nyberg's South Peninsula Area Republican Coalition. He happened to be appearing in a cafe, previously owned by Nyberg, downstairs from the paper's office.)

Blame the Beef

If you've been reading the news about global warming lately in the UK, you'd think Ryanair and other low-cost airlines are to thank for the beautiful weather the UK has seen for the last two years. In the US, you'd probably think it was all those jerks in Hummers or big power plants that are melting the glaciers.

However, what the mainstream media has yet to cover is the fact that there is a much larger culprit (and possibly a more influential lobby) at work here. Cows. That's right those four-stomached bags of methane and all the processing it takes to get its flesh to your plate accounts for 18 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions.

Let's put this in persepective. Low-cost "bad-guys" like easyJet and Ryanair along with their larger competitors (who are the real winners from all the bad press and new taxes slapped on air tickets) are responsible for only 2.5 percent of global emissions. Fossil fuel consumption from automobiles only amount to 5 percent.

What I'm curious about why there is so much attention on travel-related emissions and virtually none on the cattle industry. I'm not saying everyone needs to be vegetarian, but just eat less beef, that's all. That's a lot easier than telling someone not to go on vacation, right? And we can certainly forget about scientists coming up with "cures" for gasy cows.

So maybe a more effective solution would be taking aim at reducing beef consumption rather than transport, particularly when ecologically-friendly transport alternatives are slow in coming.

Supreme Court: Global warming exists (Scalia: So does farting)

Q: How is Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens like Rich Harden's elbow?
A: Everything is riding on their continued health.

Stevens' majority opinion in Massachusetts v. EPA was the subject of today's talk at UCLA Law by Pat Gallagher, legal director for the Sierra Club and national hero. (PDF version here). The case, one of two high court victories for the forces of good on Monday, held that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. If the EPA refuses to do so, it must justify the decision based on Clean Air Act concerns about health and welfare.

It may not sound like such an earth-shattering decision, but, as Gallagher said, "this result exceeded our wildest dreams."

After all, Chief Justice John Roberts fell only one vote short of getting an official ruling from the Supreme Court that the science behind global warming is uncertain. (Antonin Scalia wrote a separate dissent to say that, if CO2 is an air pollutant, "[i]t follows that everything airborne, from Frisbees to flatulence, qualifies as an ‘air pollutant.’” Seriously, he wrote that.)

However, as Vin Scully would say, Gallagher might have been looking at the opinion more with his heart than his eyes. In particular, he downplayed the significance of Stevens' discussion of Massachusetts right to sue on behalf of its citizens (under the doctrine of parens patriae). Stevens made a strong case that Massachusetts will lose state-owned coastal land as a result of rising sea levels, constituting enough of an injury for the state to bring suit. The dissenters argued, poorly, the science is not clear, the U.S. is not to blame for rising sea levels, an China and India are not signatories to the Kyoto Protocol. The EPA also argued that the Bush administration has done enough to respond to global warming, but that didn't seem to get much traction.

But the dissent may have got the better of the weird and nerdy debate about parens patriae. Gallagher said he didn't know what to make of that discussion, and suggested it was just dicta (a legal term meaning, roughly, mental masturbation). Most likely, Stevens included this justification so that he could get a majority to agree on the standing issue and move on to the larger question. As a result, the case seems unlikely by itself to broaden standing for individuals under environmental laws as much as Gallagher and others would like.

Still, two very important results flow from this decision. First, even though the Bush EPA will drag its feet and ultimately do nothing, the next administration will now have the authority to regulate CO2 (which could be necessary if Congress stalls). Second, despite automakers' attempt to spin the decision, they are going to have a hard time arguing that California's emissions laws conflict with federal fuel economy law.