Join Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Me at a New York City Town Hall
Posted November 16, 2009 in Curbing Pollution, Moving Beyond Oil
Tomorrow night I have the honor of introducing Bobby Kennedy Jr. at a free event open to the public in New York City. Bobby will be talking about "Our Environmental Future," and I invite you to join us for an evening with America's most powerful environmental communicator.
It can be challenging to express the value of preserving the environment to a broader American public. Yet no one is more effective at this than Bobby.
Bobby has worked with NRDC for years, and I have seen time and again how he can captivate a roomful of people and inspire them to action. This is partly due to his famous oratory skills, but it is also a result of his passion, which becomes contagious.
Bobby is devoted to protecting our nation's commons--our lakes, rivers, wildlands, even our air--from corporate greed and dangerous pollutants. He is especially committed to ending the egregious practice of mountaintop removal mining for coal.
When Bobby describes his work in the field or taps into his extensive knowledge of energy-company practices, he vividly illustrates the hazards of our addiction to dangerous energy. When people ask him about nuclear power, for instance, he says, "I am all for nuclear energy if we can make it economical and safe. Right now it is neither. It is still the most catastrophically expensive method every devised for boiling a pot of water."
But Bobby doesn't just reveal the absurdities of our current energy policy. He points the way to a brighter future. He outlines the cleaner, more sustainable solutions that can power our economy without endangering our children's health or our natural legacy.
What are these clean energy technologies? Bobby will discuss them in his talk, and I will also describe them briefly myself.
Last week, I released my first book, Clean Energy Common Sense. A pocket-sized, 99-page, quick read, it is a concise overview of the dangers of climate change and the solutions that will end this crisis, jumpstart our economy, and strengthen our national security.
I will talk a little bit about the book tomorrow night, because Bobby and I both share a deeply held belief: Now, while our leaders are gathering in Washington, China, and Copenhagen to figure out how to confront global warming, Americans can do three things to create a more sustainable future--get involved, learn more, and take action.
You can start by coming to tomorrow night's event at Town Hall (123 W. 43rd Street). If you are interested in attending, you can found out more and RSVP at here or on Facebook.
Comments are closed for this post.
Comments
Dr. James Singmaster — Nov 16 2009 02:26 PM
NRDC along with WRI is pushing the "Clean Coal" with CCS fraud in China ignoring all the Switchboard postings by staffer R. Perks and others about all the messes of "Dirty Coal" that common sense shows can not provide clean energy. Has NRDC or WRI shown a way to handle the ash messes? Has either considered the scrub water dumping that Perks posted on on Sept. 28? Has either one considered the CCS hazards of escapes of large amounts of CO2 or the toxic and very flammable capturing chemicals being used? Does anyone at either have scientists that understand that fossil fuel as well as nuclear fuel keep pushing trapped energy into the biosphere to be causing more warming?
Clean energy alone will still be adding to its overload already in the biosphere. We have to get to clean renewable energy and beyond to some means of going energy negative. This can be done by converting our massive ever-expanding messes of organic wastes and sewage solids into charcoal using pyrolysis. Charcoal means the energy and CO2 released by burning by coal has been recaptured, if renewable energy is used to fire the pyrolysis. In pyrolysis done in a closed chamber without air, about 50% of the biocarbon present gets converted to charcoal with the other 50% getting expelled as a gaseous mix of volatile organic chemicals with some other gases. That mix can be passed through a turbocharger and then be collected
and refined to have a renewable fuel. Doing that with those messes will stop the unneeded remitting of GHGs into the biosphere that will occur due to natural biodegrading actions when the messes are dumped in landfills or go through sewage treatment plants.
Converting those messes into a resource is the way to go carbon and energy negative. We can not overcome the climate and energy crises until we find some way to go carbon and energy negative to reduce the overloads of each already in the biosphere.
Common sense says that if you have an overload off something causing problems, find a means of removing some of the overload and also to stop any process that adds more to the overload. Dr. J. Singmaster