FROM: THE WHITE HOUSE
April 22, 2015
FACT SHEET: Celebrating Earth Day with New Steps to Protect People, Places and Local Economies from Climate Change
Today, in celebration of Earth Day, President Obama will visit the Florida Everglades, where rising seas and other climate change impacts are endangering one of the nation’s most iconic landscapes – and increasing risks to the State’s $82 billion tourism economy. To coincide with the President’s trip, the Administration is highlighting the value of special and vulnerable places like the Everglades and announcing new steps to protect the people and places climate change puts at risk.
The President has made clear that no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change. The effects of climate change can no longer be denied or ignored – last year was the planet’s warmest year recorded, and 14 of the 15 hottest years on record have happened this century. All over the country, Americans are already facing devastating impacts – from severe floods to extreme heat to increased risk of asthma attacks. These impacts pose major economic, public health, and national security threats. Climate change is also affecting some of the most iconic places in our country, from disappearing glaciers in Glacier National Park to dying Joshua Trees in Joshua Tree National Park. These kinds of losses affect the tourism economies of towns and cities across the country that depend on sharing America’s natural splendor with the world.
That’s why President Obama has taken historic action to cut the carbon pollution that drives climate change and protect American communities from the impacts, including setting the first-ever national limits on carbon pollution from the power sector, making a landmark joint announcement with China to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and supporting smart investments in resilient infrastructure. Under the President’s leadership, the Federal Government has also made significant investments to protect and restore the special places that Americans depend on but that are threatened by pollution and climate change, including the Great Lakes, the Gulf Coast, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Everglades.
In the Everglades alone, the Administration has invested $2.2 billion in restoration efforts, with the President’s 2016 Budget proposing nearly $240 million more. In addition to protecting the primary source of drinking water for more than a third of Florida’s population, these efforts are helping ensure that the Florida Everglades – a major driver of the local economy – are resilient to effects of climate change like saltwater intrusion and invasive species.
Highlighting special places and protecting communities from climate change
From diminishing snowpacks to more severe wildfires, climate change is impacting natural landscapes across the country and threatening an outdoor recreation economy that each year generates $646 billion in consumer spending and 6.1 million direct jobs. In Florida, impacts like sea level rise are threatening some of the State’s top tourist attractions, including the Everglades and Florida Keys, with estimated revenue losses of $9 billion by 2025 and $40 billion by the 2050s.
Recognized worldwide as a unique and treasured landscape, the Everglades is a perfect example of the threat we face from climate change, including rising sea levels that result in shoreline erosion and increased flooding. As the seas rise, salty ocean water travels inland, threatening the aquifers that supply fresh drinking water to Floridians, destroying natural habitats, and starving Everglades National Park of freshwater that also serves as the primary source of drinking water for more than a third of Florida’s population. Already, the park’s characteristic mangrove trees – the largest protected mangrove forest in the northern hemisphere – are retreating inland. The changing conditions in the ecosystem are also displacing native animals and plants like tropical orchids, some of which are only found in south Florida.
In addition to their cultural, recreational and historic value, our national parks play a significant role in our economy. And even as climate change threatens their landscapes, national parks play an important role in preventing the worst impacts of climate change. In celebration of Earth Day, this week the Administration is announcing new steps to recognize the value of these special places, as well as actions to protect the people and places climate change puts at risk, including:
Calculating the Value of National Parks Tourism to the U.S. Economy. Today, the National Park Service (NPS) is releasing a new report that shows that every $1 invested by American taxpayers in the National Park Service returns $10 to the U.S. economy. In 2014, a record 293 million National Park visitors spent $15.7 billion in communities around National Parks, providing a $29.7 billion benefit to the U.S. economy and supporting 277,000 jobs.
Calculating the Value of National Parks for Storing Carbon. Today, the NPS and the U.S. Geological Survey are releasing a new report that for the first time calculates the value of National Parks for storing carbon and mitigating climate change. The report concludes that national park lands in the lower 48 states store 14.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, and that providing this service is valued at more than $580 million each year.
Investing in National Parks. Today, NPS is announcing $26 million for restoration projects at national parks around the country, including $16 million from non-governmental partners. These Centennial Challenge Grants are part of a multi-year effort to prepare for the National Park Service Centennial next year, including a Find Your Park Campaign to connect a broader audience to public lands and President Obama’s Every Kid in a Park initiative that will give every fourth grader and their families free access to national parks and all federal lands and waters for a full year, beginning this Fall.
Designating a New National Historic Landmark Near the Everglades. Today, the Department of the Interior and NPS are designating the Marjory Stoneman Douglas House in Miami, Florida as the Nation’s newest National Historic Landmark. Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s seminal book, The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), marked a significant turning point in the environmental movement, and the Friends of the Everglades organization she founded had a central role in the conservation and restoration of the Everglades. National historic landmarks provide opportunities for Americans to make personal connections with our Nation’s cultural and historical heritage and can help drive tourism and boost local economies.
Designating National Park Week. On Monday, President Obama signed a Proclamation designating this week National Park Week and encouraging all Americans to use and enjoy the unparalleled public lands that belong to all of us.
Providing a Flood Mapping Tool to Help Communities Prepare for Storms. On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that a flood exposure risk mapping tool, originally developed for New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, has been expanded to cover coastal areas along the entire U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico. This Coastal Flood Exposure Mapper allows users to select their location and view how local populations, infrastructure and natural areas would be affected under a variety of flood scenarios, with the goal of helping communities reduce their vulnerability to current flood risks. This expanded tool is included in the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit called for in the President’s Climate Action Plan.
Making Key Landscapes Resilient to Climate Change. On Tuesday, the Interior Department, U.S. EPA and NOAA announced four landscapes – in southwest Florida, Hawaii, Puget Sound and the Great Lakes—where agencies will focus their efforts with partners to conserve and restore important lands and waters and make them more resilient to a changing climate. These Resilient Lands and Waters projects will build climate resilience in vulnerable regions and enhance carbon storage capacity, focusing on increasing coastal resilience, developing coastal wetlands and marine conservation areas, protecting drinking water for urban areas, providing wildlife habitats, and preventing threats like flooding and invasive species.
Partnering with farmers, ranchers and forest land owners to reduce GHG emissions. On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will announce new voluntary actions it will take in partnership with farmers, ranchers and forest land owners to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions and support President Obama’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
Showing posts with label EARTH DAY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EARTH DAY. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Friday, April 17, 2015
NSF ARTICLE ON PROBLEMS WITH SOME GREEN LAKES AND RIVERS
FROM: NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Earth Day is on the horizon. But is 'greener' always better?
Not when it's the bright green waters of algae-fouled lakes and rivers
Going green. On Earth Day and every day, being "greener" is linked with good things like lowering your carbon footprint and eating locally-grown foods.
But not when it comes to drinking or swimming in the bright green waters of lakes fouled by algae, says Hans Paerl, an environmental scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In freshwater lakes around the world, such algae blooms often result from an overabundance of what's known as cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae.
Cyanobacteria form widespread, very visible blooms that look like blue-green paint or scum floating on the water. They may be toxic to humans and other animals.
These filamentous bacteria clump into mats that cover a lake's surface from one shore to the other, using up oxygen in the water and eventually turning the lake's depths into a dead zone.
From Lake Taihu, China, to Lake Erie in the U.S.
It was June 2007, and water spouting from kitchen faucets in Wuxi, China, was pea-soup green. The water came from Taihu, China's third largest lake.
Cyanobacteria obscured the surface of the 900-square-mile lake and quickly overwhelmed the intake plant for the city of Wuxi's drinking water.
Chinese officials scooped 6,000 tons of algae from Taihu and diverted water from the Yangtze River to flush the lake. However, says Paerl, the bloom persisted. "It was fall when it finally abated."
Two weeks into the bloom, Paerl was in China, leaning over the side of a small boat to take samples of Taihu's scum.
He discovered that the algae is similar to that found in blooms in North Carolina's ponds, rivers and estuaries, and in many larger bodies of water such as Lake Erie, Lake Victoria and the Baltic Sea.
"Nowhere are the blooms worse than on Taihu, however," says Paerl, whose work is funded by an NSF Dimensions of Biodiversity grant. "Habitat for fish, crabs and other aquatic species is becoming endangered."
Ten million people also depend on Taihu for drinking water, fisheries and tourism.
Lake Erie on the border of the United States and Canada faces the same challenges.
In 2011, a record-breaking bloom of similar cyanobacteria to the species that plagued Taihu smothered Lake Erie, turning it a bright-green that showed up on satellite images.
At the bloom's peak in October, it expanded to more than 1,930 square miles, three times larger than any Lake Erie bloom on record.
New "recipe" for controlling algae blooms
The "recipe" for controlling the problem, says Paerl, "has been to reduce phosphorus finding its way into lakes from sources on land like fertilizers. That's based on the long-standing paradigm that phosphorus is the key nutrient limiting freshwater algae blooms."
But another element, nitrogen, flowing into lakes and rivers is increasing more rapidly than phosphorus. "It's led researchers to question whether both nitrogen and phosphorus should be controlled to stem the tide of proliferating algae blooms," says Paerl.
Lake Taihu, he says, is a "looking glass" for addressing such nutrient overenrichment and toxic algae blooms.
"Our NSF Dimensions of Biodiversity project is determining what roles specific nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus play in the frequency and extent of algae blooms in lakes, and how they affect these ecosystems."
Data from experiments on the relationship between nutrients and algae blooms are being used to formulate a nutrient reduction management strategy. Scientists hope it will lead to the control of blooms in Taihu and other lakes.
The goal, Paerl says, is to find new ways of ensuring sustainable uses of lakes prone to blooms.
Other scientists involved in the research are Wayne Gardner of the University of Texas, Ferdi Hellweger of Northeastern University and Steven Wilhelm of the University of Tennessee.
"Harmful cyanobacteria blooms caused by excessive phosphorus and nitrogen are threatening freshwater lakes worldwide," says Simon Malcomber, lead NSF program director for Dimensions of Biodiversity, which is supported by NSF's Directorates for Biological Sciences and Geosciences.
"This research shows the importance of taking a holistic approach to understanding harmful cyanobacteria blooms," says Malcomber. "Only with an ecosystems approach can long-term successful sustainability strategies be formulated."
Chain of events links land and lake
The complex chain that leads to algae blooms in freshwater begins not in lakes but on land.
Farmers often overfertilize their fields. The excess fertilizer, laden with nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen, washes into creeks and rivers, where it's eventually carried to lakes.
"Nitrogen is necessary for increasing crop yields," says Paerl, "but plants are inefficient at taking it up. More fertilizer is often added than plants need."
Only a fraction of the nitrogen applied to soils ends up in crops; in some regions, it's less than 20 percent. The rest is on the loose.
When the excess eventually reaches freshwater, it fertilizes aquatic algae such as cyanobacteria--just as it encourages plants on land to grow. The algae proliferate, becoming massive blooms.
As the algae die, they fall to the lake's bottom and are digested by microorganisms. The process removes oxygen from the water, creating low-oxygen "dead zones," fish kills and tainted waters.
Extreme algae blooms: The new normal?
Are algae blooms in lakes around the world a new normal?
Scientists are working to find answers.
"This important work is linking the diversity and identity of algae with nitrogen cycling and harmful algal blooms in heavily affected freshwater lakes," says Mike Sieracki, Dimensions of Biodiversity program director in NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences.
This week at an NSF-funded workshop--Global Solutions to Regional Problems: Collecting Global Expertise to Address the Problem of Harmful Algal Blooms--researchers discussed the current science on algae blooms, and identified knowledge gaps in bloom prevention and mitigation.
"We hope that this workshop will lead to strategies to mitigate future blooms in waterbodies in the U.S. and around the world," says Bill Cooper, program director in NSF's Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems.
Meeting topics included the biology of bloom-forming species, environmental factors underlying bloom formation, sensor development in bloom detection, prediction of blooms, and best practices for control.
"New nutrient reduction strategies," wrote Paerl and colleagues in the journal Science in October 2014, "should incorporate point and non-point sources, including nitrogen removal in wastewaters, optimization of fertilizer application, and erosion controls.
"An investment in joint phosphorus and nitrogen controls will counter the very high costs of harmful algal bloom events and the losses of freshwater resources worldwide."
It's the only way, Paerl says, to keep blooms of cyanobacteria and other algae in check. When it comes to lakes and rivers, streams and ponds, "going green" means anything but.
-- Cheryl Dybas, NSF
Earth Day is on the horizon. But is 'greener' always better?
Not when it's the bright green waters of algae-fouled lakes and rivers
Going green. On Earth Day and every day, being "greener" is linked with good things like lowering your carbon footprint and eating locally-grown foods.
But not when it comes to drinking or swimming in the bright green waters of lakes fouled by algae, says Hans Paerl, an environmental scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In freshwater lakes around the world, such algae blooms often result from an overabundance of what's known as cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae.
Cyanobacteria form widespread, very visible blooms that look like blue-green paint or scum floating on the water. They may be toxic to humans and other animals.
These filamentous bacteria clump into mats that cover a lake's surface from one shore to the other, using up oxygen in the water and eventually turning the lake's depths into a dead zone.
From Lake Taihu, China, to Lake Erie in the U.S.
It was June 2007, and water spouting from kitchen faucets in Wuxi, China, was pea-soup green. The water came from Taihu, China's third largest lake.
Cyanobacteria obscured the surface of the 900-square-mile lake and quickly overwhelmed the intake plant for the city of Wuxi's drinking water.
Chinese officials scooped 6,000 tons of algae from Taihu and diverted water from the Yangtze River to flush the lake. However, says Paerl, the bloom persisted. "It was fall when it finally abated."
Two weeks into the bloom, Paerl was in China, leaning over the side of a small boat to take samples of Taihu's scum.
He discovered that the algae is similar to that found in blooms in North Carolina's ponds, rivers and estuaries, and in many larger bodies of water such as Lake Erie, Lake Victoria and the Baltic Sea.
"Nowhere are the blooms worse than on Taihu, however," says Paerl, whose work is funded by an NSF Dimensions of Biodiversity grant. "Habitat for fish, crabs and other aquatic species is becoming endangered."
Ten million people also depend on Taihu for drinking water, fisheries and tourism.
Lake Erie on the border of the United States and Canada faces the same challenges.
In 2011, a record-breaking bloom of similar cyanobacteria to the species that plagued Taihu smothered Lake Erie, turning it a bright-green that showed up on satellite images.
At the bloom's peak in October, it expanded to more than 1,930 square miles, three times larger than any Lake Erie bloom on record.
New "recipe" for controlling algae blooms
The "recipe" for controlling the problem, says Paerl, "has been to reduce phosphorus finding its way into lakes from sources on land like fertilizers. That's based on the long-standing paradigm that phosphorus is the key nutrient limiting freshwater algae blooms."
But another element, nitrogen, flowing into lakes and rivers is increasing more rapidly than phosphorus. "It's led researchers to question whether both nitrogen and phosphorus should be controlled to stem the tide of proliferating algae blooms," says Paerl.
Lake Taihu, he says, is a "looking glass" for addressing such nutrient overenrichment and toxic algae blooms.
"Our NSF Dimensions of Biodiversity project is determining what roles specific nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus play in the frequency and extent of algae blooms in lakes, and how they affect these ecosystems."
Data from experiments on the relationship between nutrients and algae blooms are being used to formulate a nutrient reduction management strategy. Scientists hope it will lead to the control of blooms in Taihu and other lakes.
The goal, Paerl says, is to find new ways of ensuring sustainable uses of lakes prone to blooms.
Other scientists involved in the research are Wayne Gardner of the University of Texas, Ferdi Hellweger of Northeastern University and Steven Wilhelm of the University of Tennessee.
"Harmful cyanobacteria blooms caused by excessive phosphorus and nitrogen are threatening freshwater lakes worldwide," says Simon Malcomber, lead NSF program director for Dimensions of Biodiversity, which is supported by NSF's Directorates for Biological Sciences and Geosciences.
"This research shows the importance of taking a holistic approach to understanding harmful cyanobacteria blooms," says Malcomber. "Only with an ecosystems approach can long-term successful sustainability strategies be formulated."
Chain of events links land and lake
The complex chain that leads to algae blooms in freshwater begins not in lakes but on land.
Farmers often overfertilize their fields. The excess fertilizer, laden with nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen, washes into creeks and rivers, where it's eventually carried to lakes.
"Nitrogen is necessary for increasing crop yields," says Paerl, "but plants are inefficient at taking it up. More fertilizer is often added than plants need."
Only a fraction of the nitrogen applied to soils ends up in crops; in some regions, it's less than 20 percent. The rest is on the loose.
When the excess eventually reaches freshwater, it fertilizes aquatic algae such as cyanobacteria--just as it encourages plants on land to grow. The algae proliferate, becoming massive blooms.
As the algae die, they fall to the lake's bottom and are digested by microorganisms. The process removes oxygen from the water, creating low-oxygen "dead zones," fish kills and tainted waters.
Extreme algae blooms: The new normal?
Are algae blooms in lakes around the world a new normal?
Scientists are working to find answers.
"This important work is linking the diversity and identity of algae with nitrogen cycling and harmful algal blooms in heavily affected freshwater lakes," says Mike Sieracki, Dimensions of Biodiversity program director in NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences.
This week at an NSF-funded workshop--Global Solutions to Regional Problems: Collecting Global Expertise to Address the Problem of Harmful Algal Blooms--researchers discussed the current science on algae blooms, and identified knowledge gaps in bloom prevention and mitigation.
"We hope that this workshop will lead to strategies to mitigate future blooms in waterbodies in the U.S. and around the world," says Bill Cooper, program director in NSF's Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems.
Meeting topics included the biology of bloom-forming species, environmental factors underlying bloom formation, sensor development in bloom detection, prediction of blooms, and best practices for control.
"New nutrient reduction strategies," wrote Paerl and colleagues in the journal Science in October 2014, "should incorporate point and non-point sources, including nitrogen removal in wastewaters, optimization of fertilizer application, and erosion controls.
"An investment in joint phosphorus and nitrogen controls will counter the very high costs of harmful algal bloom events and the losses of freshwater resources worldwide."
It's the only way, Paerl says, to keep blooms of cyanobacteria and other algae in check. When it comes to lakes and rivers, streams and ponds, "going green" means anything but.
-- Cheryl Dybas, NSF
Thursday, July 10, 2014
REMARKS BY SECRETARY KERRY AT ECOPARTNERSHIPS SIGNING CEREMONY IN BEIJING, CHINA
FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Remarks at EcoPartnerships Signing Ceremony
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Great Hall of the People
Beijing, China
July 10, 2014
Well, State Councilor Yang and all of our ecopartners today who traveled so far in order to sign these landmark agreements, we are delighted to be here. I was sitting here, thinking, listening to the State Councilor -- the amazing journey we have traveled in very few years.
I was in Rio in 1992 for the first Earth Day for the Earth Summit, when we first began to discuss, globally, the challenge of climate change. And even five years ago, when I was in the United States Senate, I would not have imagined that we would have been standing here in Beijing, joining together in this kind of initiative. And the reason we are here is because the science is growing so significantly, and coming back at us not just with the truth of what was predicted, but coming back in greater quantities, faster than anybody predicted.
And so, it is no secret that China and the United States have a very special role to play together in combating climate change. Our words and our actions will set the tone. Either we create the momentum to galvanize global action in order to deal with this, or we risk a global catastrophe. That is the science. You can't be half pregnant on this. If you accept the science, and it tells you what is happening, you have to also listen to the people as they give us warnings about what will happen if we don't take action.
All of us in this room recognize that governments cannot meet this challenge alone. And that is why we are harnessing the ingenuity and the innovation of the private sector, universities, civil society, in order to promote economic growth, energy security, and environmental sustainability. And our EcoPartnerships program is a tremendous jumping-off point to help us do exactly what we need to do in those three objectives.
Some of you here are working on biofuels and battery storage technology. Some of you are focused on reducing air pollution in ports, and promoting low-emission cities, creating city planning that works on sustainability and efficiency, and also developing clean technologies. But all of you are turning a singular challenge into a moment of great opportunity.
The former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, my friend -- I had the privilege of serving with him -- Speaker Tip O'Neill, had a terrific saying, that all politics is local. Well, our ecopartnerships are applying the Tip O'Neill doctrine to climate. If you want to make progress globally, start locally.
And I will just share one example. The Center for Climate Strategies in the United States has been working very closely with the Global Environmental Institute in China in order to develop ideas for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And the Center has already worked with 36 states in the United States on ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and it is transferring these best practices to Chinese provinces. It is doing so directly. In the next three years, the partnership will develop 30 low-carbon plans across China. And that is exactly how we are going to make the most progress in this fight.
Now, it is easy to get caught up in the conventional wisdom that says no big change is going to be able to happen without big bureaucracies, big government, big decisions. But, frankly, a lot of us have learned in the last 20 years that you've got to begin somewhere.
I still remember participating, back in 1970, in the first Earth Day in the United States of America. On that day, 20 million Americans came out of their homes and demonstrated, because they didn't want to grow up drinking water that came from pollution from local dumps, or from toxic chemical sites, and so forth. We had no Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 in America. We had no laws preventing paint from being used in people's homes or on babies’ cribs that was lead and could do injury, if not death to those children. We had no one that was safeguarding our public drinking water. Polluters were even dumping medical waste directly into the oceans. And by 1970, our rivers were so dirty that, famously, one particular river in one of our states actually caught fire.
The explosion of our activism at that moment in time, on that very first Earth Day, was people-driven, local citizens demanding something better. And that first Earth Day led, ultimately, to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, signed into law by Richard Nixon; the passage of the Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act; the Safe Drinking Water Act; the Marine Mammal Protection Act; the Coastal Zone Management Act; and the EPA, itself. So, I have seen the power of grass roots action, of local efforts becoming magnified and ultimately creating action at a larger, federal level. And I see that same kind of drive, that same kernel of innovation, and of demand for a difference right here, today.
What one country does with respect to the environment impacts the livelihoods of people in other countries. And what we all do to address climate change will now determine the kind of planet that our children and our grandchildren will live on. That is not a question about who wins and who loses. If you tackle climate change and you lead the way to a clean energy future, the fact is it is win-win-win: win for China, win for America, and win for the world. And today, these ecopartnerships are a signal to everybody that we are serious, we are on our way, and we intend to seize the opportunity. Thank you. (Applause.)
I was in Rio in 1992 for the first Earth Day for the Earth Summit, when we first began to discuss, globally, the challenge of climate change. And even five years ago, when I was in the United States Senate, I would not have imagined that we would have been standing here in Beijing, joining together in this kind of initiative. And the reason we are here is because the science is growing so significantly, and coming back at us not just with the truth of what was predicted, but coming back in greater quantities, faster than anybody predicted.
And so, it is no secret that China and the United States have a very special role to play together in combating climate change. Our words and our actions will set the tone. Either we create the momentum to galvanize global action in order to deal with this, or we risk a global catastrophe. That is the science. You can't be half pregnant on this. If you accept the science, and it tells you what is happening, you have to also listen to the people as they give us warnings about what will happen if we don't take action.
All of us in this room recognize that governments cannot meet this challenge alone. And that is why we are harnessing the ingenuity and the innovation of the private sector, universities, civil society, in order to promote economic growth, energy security, and environmental sustainability. And our EcoPartnerships program is a tremendous jumping-off point to help us do exactly what we need to do in those three objectives.
Some of you here are working on biofuels and battery storage technology. Some of you are focused on reducing air pollution in ports, and promoting low-emission cities, creating city planning that works on sustainability and efficiency, and also developing clean technologies. But all of you are turning a singular challenge into a moment of great opportunity.
The former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, my friend -- I had the privilege of serving with him -- Speaker Tip O'Neill, had a terrific saying, that all politics is local. Well, our ecopartnerships are applying the Tip O'Neill doctrine to climate. If you want to make progress globally, start locally.
And I will just share one example. The Center for Climate Strategies in the United States has been working very closely with the Global Environmental Institute in China in order to develop ideas for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And the Center has already worked with 36 states in the United States on ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and it is transferring these best practices to Chinese provinces. It is doing so directly. In the next three years, the partnership will develop 30 low-carbon plans across China. And that is exactly how we are going to make the most progress in this fight.
Now, it is easy to get caught up in the conventional wisdom that says no big change is going to be able to happen without big bureaucracies, big government, big decisions. But, frankly, a lot of us have learned in the last 20 years that you've got to begin somewhere.
I still remember participating, back in 1970, in the first Earth Day in the United States of America. On that day, 20 million Americans came out of their homes and demonstrated, because they didn't want to grow up drinking water that came from pollution from local dumps, or from toxic chemical sites, and so forth. We had no Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 in America. We had no laws preventing paint from being used in people's homes or on babies’ cribs that was lead and could do injury, if not death to those children. We had no one that was safeguarding our public drinking water. Polluters were even dumping medical waste directly into the oceans. And by 1970, our rivers were so dirty that, famously, one particular river in one of our states actually caught fire.
The explosion of our activism at that moment in time, on that very first Earth Day, was people-driven, local citizens demanding something better. And that first Earth Day led, ultimately, to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, signed into law by Richard Nixon; the passage of the Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act; the Safe Drinking Water Act; the Marine Mammal Protection Act; the Coastal Zone Management Act; and the EPA, itself. So, I have seen the power of grass roots action, of local efforts becoming magnified and ultimately creating action at a larger, federal level. And I see that same kind of drive, that same kernel of innovation, and of demand for a difference right here, today.
What one country does with respect to the environment impacts the livelihoods of people in other countries. And what we all do to address climate change will now determine the kind of planet that our children and our grandchildren will live on. That is not a question about who wins and who loses. If you tackle climate change and you lead the way to a clean energy future, the fact is it is win-win-win: win for China, win for America, and win for the world. And today, these ecopartnerships are a signal to everybody that we are serious, we are on our way, and we intend to seize the opportunity. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thursday, October 31, 2013
SECRETARY OF STATE KERRY'S REMARKS TO GREENING EMBASSIES FORUM
FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Remarks to the D.C. Greening Embassies Forum
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
October 29, 2013
Thank you. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. I apologize. Thank you. I apologize for running a little bit late, and I was catching up on old times outside there with Denis Hayes and Jeanne Shaheen and a few people. Forgive me for that, but I’m glad to be here. Alaina, thank you – there you are – for the incredible work that you’ve been doing as the Director of the Department’s Office of Policy, Rightsizing, and Innovation. And I want to thank all of you for taking time to come here and be part of our Earth Day Network/Embassy/State Department effort here. And I’m particularly happy that you all had a chance to hear from Denis Hayes to start with.
Denis and I go back – he just reminded me – 43 years, to 1971, 1970 and the first Earth Day. First thing I did, sort of, politically when I came back from Vietnam back in 1969, then going into 1970, was help organize Earth Day in Massachusetts. And I think one of the first speeches I ever gave anywhere – I was terrified in some school somewhere – was about the environment and Earth Day way back then. And since then, I was New England chairman of Earth Day 20-year anniversary in 1990, and we had a million people come out along the Esplanade in Boston and we literally painted Star Drive green – literally – with an obviously environmentally friendly, erasable paint. (Laughter.) But it was fun and we had this incredible Earth Day show on the Esplanade and it was very, very exciting for everybody who took part in it.
And then of course, those of us who took part in Earth Day are fond of reminding people that the result of that event – where 20 million people came out of their homes to speak to the country, and particularly their elected representatives – the result of that was that we created a political movement that actually held people accountable. The first thing that political movement did was not just end on the one-day event and coming out, but became part of campaigns across the country and targeted the so-called “dirty dozen,” the 12 worst environmental votes in the United States Congress.
And I am happy to tell you that seven of the 12 were defeated in that 1972 election, the result of which was that immediately, Congress took about – responding to the fact – whoops, looks like the environment has electoral power; we’d better do something. And therefore, the Clean Air Act was passed, the Clean Water Act was passed, the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed, Marine Mammal Protection was passed, Coastal Zone Management was passed, and we actually created the Environmental Protection Agency that we didn’t even have in America until Earth Day sparked that sense of conscience.
So people being involved makes just an enormous difference. And I regret to say that a lot of people then went home thinking, “Oh, my God, we’ve done it. It’s worked.” And of course, we haven’t done it. It hasn’t yet worked. We face this enormous challenge still in front of us with climate change and energy and energy policy and energy uses. And that’s what brings us here today.
I’m also glad to know that Jon Powers was here and I gather you already heard from him. Jon Powers and I met about maybe close to 10 years ago now right after he came back from a lengthy tour of duty in Iraq, and he has been significantly engaged in public life and public endeavor, and I’m delighted that he is now our Federal Environmental Executive and working on these issues.
And of course, my great, great friend and colleague Jeanne Shaheen from New Hampshire, my neighbor as well as my friend, who is one of the leading voices in the Congress on the subject of energy and has done a terrific job of helping to push that agenda, was one of my real collaborators in our efforts to try to pass a climate piece of legislation.
So this forum, if I can just say to everybody, on greening embassies is a part of the continuum that I’ve – of the effort that I’ve just described to you, and it’s the perfect way to really mark World Energy Day. And it’s also the second birthday of the State Department’s own Bureau of Energy Resources. So we think this is a good moment to be here to talk about this particular subject. And it is clear that if you’re serious about talking about energy policy and serious about doing something about climate change, one of the first places that you start is in dealing with buildings.
Why? Because amazingly, the energy used to power buildings accounts for about one third of all global energy demand and regrettably almost 40 percent of all of our associated CO2 emissions. So buildings contribute to global climate change and buildings are a huge source of pollution as a consequence of that. The fact is that they emit more carbon and more pollution than all of the cars, trucks, planes, and – cars, trucks, trains, and airplanes. That’s it. (Laughter.) What more do you want? (Laughter.) So by greening our embassies, we are really taking one other important step in the effort to try to contribute to a larger effort with buildings around the world.
So let me just quickly remind you why this is so important. I am amazed after all these years that we’re still struggling here in a very educated country to get a lot of people to embrace and understand why this is not a matter of theory, a matter of mere policy, but a matter of urgency for life itself on the planet as we know it. And the IPCC report that was recently released that assessed where we are in climate change now and what science continues to tell us about climate change is underscored by saying to you that it is documenting that everything that scientists predicted 20 and 30 years ago is now coming true at a faster rate and to a greater degree than was predicted.
Now if people can’t draw a sort of reality curve out of that, we’re in serious trouble. Because everywhere you see these consequences. You see it in less winter in places that used to have winter. You see it in millions of acres of forest that is destroyed in Canada and Colorado, Montana, various places because a pine bark beetle now lives that didn’t use to live as long because it doesn’t get cold and wipe it out when it used to. You can see it in all kinds of ways, in the migration of certain kinds of plants and species that are now migrating further north where it’s colder. You see it in our fisheries, where certain fish have migrated to different places and stocks have changed. You see it in the Arctic with the melting of the ice.
You see it in the Himalayas with the continuing diminution of glacier, the critical glaciers that not – that feed a mere 2.5 to 3 billion people on both sides of the Himalayas and are essential to some of the greatest rivers in the world. But as those begin to dry up and change, you have to ask yourself: What’s life going to look like with the numbers of refugees or the food dislocation and the question of food security and all the things that are linked to it?
So heat waves are becoming more prevalent. We’ve only had the 10 hottest recorded years in the last decade in all of our recorded weather history and the warmest of the 10 in the last two years. And yet, people sort of want to be oblivious to this fact, despite the fact that scientists are telling us in 6,000 peer-reviewed reports that we are responsible for what is happening, we are contributing to it very significantly through human choices.
Now, 6,000 peer-reviewed reports say yes. Zero – zero – peer-reviewed reports say no or contribute to the theory of denial. And yet, we have people, even in the United States Senate, who stand up and deny. So we have work to do and we have to undertake to try to do whatever we can – without legislation, if that’s what it takes, through executive authority, through our own decisions – to try to make the choices that will make a difference in this.
And so I don’t think it’s ever been more important to talk about our energy future than it is right now, for a lot of different reasons.
And incidentally, one of those reasons is that at a time of enormous costs, when legislators are looking for savings, what greater savings could there be than to transition to cleaner energy and alternative energy uses that wind up saving you money in the long term?. I know of companies in the United States – a friend of mine happens to run one of them – who will go to a business and say to the business, “I’m going to save you money and it’s not going to cost you anything until you start to pay me from the savings that I give you.” So they finance the entire retrofit of a particular building. It doesn’t cost the company or a government agency anything to do it. And indeed, they’re making millions of dollars by virtue of the savings and the percentage they get of the savings while the rest of the savings go to the company or the government agency. It’s such common sense, it really defies imagination that people aren’t able to say, “Why aren’t we doing that everywhere?” Think how many people you could put to work in the doing of this, not to mention how fast you would move towards energy independence or towards the reduction curve that we’re supposed to be on with respect to climate change.
So energy policy is not just about energy policy. It’s about climate. It’s about the environment. It’s about economic policy. Energy policy is the biggest single market we have ever looked at. The market that made America rich, and a lot of Americans rich, and saw every single quintile of American income earner go up in the 1990s, that market was a $1 trillion market and it had 1 billion users. It was called the tech market – computers and so forth. The market we’re looking at today for energy is a $6 to $9 trillion market with 4 to 5 billion users today, and it will go up to some 9 trillion – 9 billion as the population grows in the next 20, 30, 40 years. That’s the biggest market we’ve ever seen.
Now, a lot of competitors of the United States understand this. You see the Chinese racing towards certain technologies and implementation. You see Europe, India, others, but we’re still dawdling because we have this political-ideological divide that is unwilling to embrace the realities of what needs to be done. Investment in this energy sector is expected to reach nearly $17 trillion between now and 2035, and that is more than the entire GDP of India and China combined.
So I think energy is at the heart of any of the choices that we face going forward, and adopting cleaner and more efficient practices is critical to empowering us to be able to make the right choices to deal with this challenge. But it’s also a huge opportunity for us to get it right with respect to how we behave with our buildings. And so we need to make a whole set of choices. We need to do things like make the most of programs like the U.S. Low Emissions Development Strategies, known as the LEDS program. We need to pursue development around the world in a way that is sustainable, environmentally sound. The World Bank is here and represented. The World Bank is increasingly making specific choices about energy as a critical decider in their decision as to where and how they will invest in various parts of the world.
We also need to make much more progress through the Clean Energy Ministerial. We need to take advantage of initiatives like the Connecting the Americas 2022 initiative or the Power Africa initiative, and develop critical energy infrastructure linkages in regions that have been unconnected for far too long. But we also have to make sure that as a lot of countries struggle to become part of the global affluence that they see in many parts of the world and the growth that they see in many parts of the world that the only choice in front of them is not the choice of making the same mistake that we made that we’re now trying to undo. It is 20 countries that have made the fundamental difference with respect to what is happening in climate change today, 20 countries. The United States and China represent slightly shy of 50 percent of all emissions that are harming us. And when you add India and Indonesia and another group of countries, you very quickly get to a percentage with a small number of countries that could have a profound impact if we were making a different set of choices.
So the idea behind the State Department’s Greening Diplomacy initiative is pretty straightforward. And I’m proud to report that the Department today operates more than 35 LEED-certified buildings globally and we have another 30 buildings in the works. So we are putting our choices where my mouth and other people’s mouths are these days. And I’m happy to say that our embassies overseas obviously are some of our most important facilities, and I don’t want anybody to think other than the first priority for us is, needless to say, the safety and the efficiency and security for our personnel. But our embassies ought to also reflect the very best of American design architecture, and they ought to reflect our commitment to sustainability and to technology. They are the model of American innovation in this field and they reflect our deep commitment to responsible environmental stewardship. So through the use of new and efficient technologies, they not only send a message about our commitment, but they also save the American taxpayer a lot of money if it’s done properly.
Today, more than 100 American embassies are finding new ways to power their facilities, reduce carbon pollution, reduce energy costs through the League of Green Embassies. And in Sri Lanka, for example, we’re using solar panels to power the residences for Embassy personnel. In Oman, we have replaced mechanical cooling towers with new ones that use less energy and less water. In Helsinki, we are working towards renovations that would enable us to light the Embassy exclusively with LED bulbs, and that, coupled with strategies to dim electric lights when there’s enough light outdoors – enough daylight available, which that part of the world is significant for about six months – that will save the Embassy an estimated 50 percent in current costs.
Now we’re not alone in doing these things. Last year, more than – there’s some representatives here from other embassies – I thank you for coming – more than 75 foreign missions here in Washington signed an agreement to find ways to incorporate clean energy technologies and energy efficient services into their day-to-day operation. And these important upgrades represent more than the energy that each individual building uses. This I call the ripple effect. It’s part of what I talked about when I opened up my comments to you about Earth Day 1970.
And I’ll just leave you with this homegrown example of what can be done. I’m very proud of the work that my wife Teresa has done in Pittsburgh. That’s her hometown, Pennsylvania. And the industrial boom of the 20th century literally was choking that city in the 1960s, ‘70s, and turning it black. Buildings were just covered in soot from the industrial power that Pittsburgh represented. And coal-fired power plants and steel mills and so forth were all costing people quality of life in that city. And so at some point, the local philanthropists, the business leaders, the public health groups, and government organizations said we got to change this, we got to take matters into our own hands.
And so they launched what is now known as the Pittsburgh renaissance, homegrown. And the first green office design project in the city, I’m pleased to say, was the redesign of the Heinz family offices, done completely with all sustainable goods and supplies. And the result of that initiative and that leadership now sees Pittsburgh home to more than 70 green buildings, an award-winning convention center that is completely self-sustainable, likewise, off the snow and rain water, so – waste water, et cetera. And so it sets an example for what is possible.
As the world now contemplates the UN Climate Conference in Warsaw next month, and then leading up to the 2015 conference in Paris, we, all of us – and I can assure you this Department will be and I will be – laser-focused on how we are going to step up our response to the reality of the threat that climate change poses to all of us. We don’t need to wait till Paris. We can take immediate complementary actions in all of our nations, and those actions will send a ripple through the cities of the world from Pittsburgh to Paris to Penang. And all of it, in the end, will not only contribute to a healthier, greener, more sustainable planet; it will contribute to a more vibrant and employable and prosperous planet. And it will most significantly contribute to our efforts to live up to our obligations to future generations and to all of us individually as stewards of this planet.
So thank you very much for being part of this. Appreciate it. (Applause.)
Remarks to the D.C. Greening Embassies Forum
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
October 29, 2013
Thank you. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. I apologize. Thank you. I apologize for running a little bit late, and I was catching up on old times outside there with Denis Hayes and Jeanne Shaheen and a few people. Forgive me for that, but I’m glad to be here. Alaina, thank you – there you are – for the incredible work that you’ve been doing as the Director of the Department’s Office of Policy, Rightsizing, and Innovation. And I want to thank all of you for taking time to come here and be part of our Earth Day Network/Embassy/State Department effort here. And I’m particularly happy that you all had a chance to hear from Denis Hayes to start with.
Denis and I go back – he just reminded me – 43 years, to 1971, 1970 and the first Earth Day. First thing I did, sort of, politically when I came back from Vietnam back in 1969, then going into 1970, was help organize Earth Day in Massachusetts. And I think one of the first speeches I ever gave anywhere – I was terrified in some school somewhere – was about the environment and Earth Day way back then. And since then, I was New England chairman of Earth Day 20-year anniversary in 1990, and we had a million people come out along the Esplanade in Boston and we literally painted Star Drive green – literally – with an obviously environmentally friendly, erasable paint. (Laughter.) But it was fun and we had this incredible Earth Day show on the Esplanade and it was very, very exciting for everybody who took part in it.
And then of course, those of us who took part in Earth Day are fond of reminding people that the result of that event – where 20 million people came out of their homes to speak to the country, and particularly their elected representatives – the result of that was that we created a political movement that actually held people accountable. The first thing that political movement did was not just end on the one-day event and coming out, but became part of campaigns across the country and targeted the so-called “dirty dozen,” the 12 worst environmental votes in the United States Congress.
And I am happy to tell you that seven of the 12 were defeated in that 1972 election, the result of which was that immediately, Congress took about – responding to the fact – whoops, looks like the environment has electoral power; we’d better do something. And therefore, the Clean Air Act was passed, the Clean Water Act was passed, the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed, Marine Mammal Protection was passed, Coastal Zone Management was passed, and we actually created the Environmental Protection Agency that we didn’t even have in America until Earth Day sparked that sense of conscience.
So people being involved makes just an enormous difference. And I regret to say that a lot of people then went home thinking, “Oh, my God, we’ve done it. It’s worked.” And of course, we haven’t done it. It hasn’t yet worked. We face this enormous challenge still in front of us with climate change and energy and energy policy and energy uses. And that’s what brings us here today.
I’m also glad to know that Jon Powers was here and I gather you already heard from him. Jon Powers and I met about maybe close to 10 years ago now right after he came back from a lengthy tour of duty in Iraq, and he has been significantly engaged in public life and public endeavor, and I’m delighted that he is now our Federal Environmental Executive and working on these issues.
And of course, my great, great friend and colleague Jeanne Shaheen from New Hampshire, my neighbor as well as my friend, who is one of the leading voices in the Congress on the subject of energy and has done a terrific job of helping to push that agenda, was one of my real collaborators in our efforts to try to pass a climate piece of legislation.
So this forum, if I can just say to everybody, on greening embassies is a part of the continuum that I’ve – of the effort that I’ve just described to you, and it’s the perfect way to really mark World Energy Day. And it’s also the second birthday of the State Department’s own Bureau of Energy Resources. So we think this is a good moment to be here to talk about this particular subject. And it is clear that if you’re serious about talking about energy policy and serious about doing something about climate change, one of the first places that you start is in dealing with buildings.
Why? Because amazingly, the energy used to power buildings accounts for about one third of all global energy demand and regrettably almost 40 percent of all of our associated CO2 emissions. So buildings contribute to global climate change and buildings are a huge source of pollution as a consequence of that. The fact is that they emit more carbon and more pollution than all of the cars, trucks, planes, and – cars, trucks, trains, and airplanes. That’s it. (Laughter.) What more do you want? (Laughter.) So by greening our embassies, we are really taking one other important step in the effort to try to contribute to a larger effort with buildings around the world.
So let me just quickly remind you why this is so important. I am amazed after all these years that we’re still struggling here in a very educated country to get a lot of people to embrace and understand why this is not a matter of theory, a matter of mere policy, but a matter of urgency for life itself on the planet as we know it. And the IPCC report that was recently released that assessed where we are in climate change now and what science continues to tell us about climate change is underscored by saying to you that it is documenting that everything that scientists predicted 20 and 30 years ago is now coming true at a faster rate and to a greater degree than was predicted.
Now if people can’t draw a sort of reality curve out of that, we’re in serious trouble. Because everywhere you see these consequences. You see it in less winter in places that used to have winter. You see it in millions of acres of forest that is destroyed in Canada and Colorado, Montana, various places because a pine bark beetle now lives that didn’t use to live as long because it doesn’t get cold and wipe it out when it used to. You can see it in all kinds of ways, in the migration of certain kinds of plants and species that are now migrating further north where it’s colder. You see it in our fisheries, where certain fish have migrated to different places and stocks have changed. You see it in the Arctic with the melting of the ice.
You see it in the Himalayas with the continuing diminution of glacier, the critical glaciers that not – that feed a mere 2.5 to 3 billion people on both sides of the Himalayas and are essential to some of the greatest rivers in the world. But as those begin to dry up and change, you have to ask yourself: What’s life going to look like with the numbers of refugees or the food dislocation and the question of food security and all the things that are linked to it?
So heat waves are becoming more prevalent. We’ve only had the 10 hottest recorded years in the last decade in all of our recorded weather history and the warmest of the 10 in the last two years. And yet, people sort of want to be oblivious to this fact, despite the fact that scientists are telling us in 6,000 peer-reviewed reports that we are responsible for what is happening, we are contributing to it very significantly through human choices.
Now, 6,000 peer-reviewed reports say yes. Zero – zero – peer-reviewed reports say no or contribute to the theory of denial. And yet, we have people, even in the United States Senate, who stand up and deny. So we have work to do and we have to undertake to try to do whatever we can – without legislation, if that’s what it takes, through executive authority, through our own decisions – to try to make the choices that will make a difference in this.
And so I don’t think it’s ever been more important to talk about our energy future than it is right now, for a lot of different reasons.
And incidentally, one of those reasons is that at a time of enormous costs, when legislators are looking for savings, what greater savings could there be than to transition to cleaner energy and alternative energy uses that wind up saving you money in the long term?. I know of companies in the United States – a friend of mine happens to run one of them – who will go to a business and say to the business, “I’m going to save you money and it’s not going to cost you anything until you start to pay me from the savings that I give you.” So they finance the entire retrofit of a particular building. It doesn’t cost the company or a government agency anything to do it. And indeed, they’re making millions of dollars by virtue of the savings and the percentage they get of the savings while the rest of the savings go to the company or the government agency. It’s such common sense, it really defies imagination that people aren’t able to say, “Why aren’t we doing that everywhere?” Think how many people you could put to work in the doing of this, not to mention how fast you would move towards energy independence or towards the reduction curve that we’re supposed to be on with respect to climate change.
So energy policy is not just about energy policy. It’s about climate. It’s about the environment. It’s about economic policy. Energy policy is the biggest single market we have ever looked at. The market that made America rich, and a lot of Americans rich, and saw every single quintile of American income earner go up in the 1990s, that market was a $1 trillion market and it had 1 billion users. It was called the tech market – computers and so forth. The market we’re looking at today for energy is a $6 to $9 trillion market with 4 to 5 billion users today, and it will go up to some 9 trillion – 9 billion as the population grows in the next 20, 30, 40 years. That’s the biggest market we’ve ever seen.
Now, a lot of competitors of the United States understand this. You see the Chinese racing towards certain technologies and implementation. You see Europe, India, others, but we’re still dawdling because we have this political-ideological divide that is unwilling to embrace the realities of what needs to be done. Investment in this energy sector is expected to reach nearly $17 trillion between now and 2035, and that is more than the entire GDP of India and China combined.
So I think energy is at the heart of any of the choices that we face going forward, and adopting cleaner and more efficient practices is critical to empowering us to be able to make the right choices to deal with this challenge. But it’s also a huge opportunity for us to get it right with respect to how we behave with our buildings. And so we need to make a whole set of choices. We need to do things like make the most of programs like the U.S. Low Emissions Development Strategies, known as the LEDS program. We need to pursue development around the world in a way that is sustainable, environmentally sound. The World Bank is here and represented. The World Bank is increasingly making specific choices about energy as a critical decider in their decision as to where and how they will invest in various parts of the world.
We also need to make much more progress through the Clean Energy Ministerial. We need to take advantage of initiatives like the Connecting the Americas 2022 initiative or the Power Africa initiative, and develop critical energy infrastructure linkages in regions that have been unconnected for far too long. But we also have to make sure that as a lot of countries struggle to become part of the global affluence that they see in many parts of the world and the growth that they see in many parts of the world that the only choice in front of them is not the choice of making the same mistake that we made that we’re now trying to undo. It is 20 countries that have made the fundamental difference with respect to what is happening in climate change today, 20 countries. The United States and China represent slightly shy of 50 percent of all emissions that are harming us. And when you add India and Indonesia and another group of countries, you very quickly get to a percentage with a small number of countries that could have a profound impact if we were making a different set of choices.
So the idea behind the State Department’s Greening Diplomacy initiative is pretty straightforward. And I’m proud to report that the Department today operates more than 35 LEED-certified buildings globally and we have another 30 buildings in the works. So we are putting our choices where my mouth and other people’s mouths are these days. And I’m happy to say that our embassies overseas obviously are some of our most important facilities, and I don’t want anybody to think other than the first priority for us is, needless to say, the safety and the efficiency and security for our personnel. But our embassies ought to also reflect the very best of American design architecture, and they ought to reflect our commitment to sustainability and to technology. They are the model of American innovation in this field and they reflect our deep commitment to responsible environmental stewardship. So through the use of new and efficient technologies, they not only send a message about our commitment, but they also save the American taxpayer a lot of money if it’s done properly.
Today, more than 100 American embassies are finding new ways to power their facilities, reduce carbon pollution, reduce energy costs through the League of Green Embassies. And in Sri Lanka, for example, we’re using solar panels to power the residences for Embassy personnel. In Oman, we have replaced mechanical cooling towers with new ones that use less energy and less water. In Helsinki, we are working towards renovations that would enable us to light the Embassy exclusively with LED bulbs, and that, coupled with strategies to dim electric lights when there’s enough light outdoors – enough daylight available, which that part of the world is significant for about six months – that will save the Embassy an estimated 50 percent in current costs.
Now we’re not alone in doing these things. Last year, more than – there’s some representatives here from other embassies – I thank you for coming – more than 75 foreign missions here in Washington signed an agreement to find ways to incorporate clean energy technologies and energy efficient services into their day-to-day operation. And these important upgrades represent more than the energy that each individual building uses. This I call the ripple effect. It’s part of what I talked about when I opened up my comments to you about Earth Day 1970.
And I’ll just leave you with this homegrown example of what can be done. I’m very proud of the work that my wife Teresa has done in Pittsburgh. That’s her hometown, Pennsylvania. And the industrial boom of the 20th century literally was choking that city in the 1960s, ‘70s, and turning it black. Buildings were just covered in soot from the industrial power that Pittsburgh represented. And coal-fired power plants and steel mills and so forth were all costing people quality of life in that city. And so at some point, the local philanthropists, the business leaders, the public health groups, and government organizations said we got to change this, we got to take matters into our own hands.
And so they launched what is now known as the Pittsburgh renaissance, homegrown. And the first green office design project in the city, I’m pleased to say, was the redesign of the Heinz family offices, done completely with all sustainable goods and supplies. And the result of that initiative and that leadership now sees Pittsburgh home to more than 70 green buildings, an award-winning convention center that is completely self-sustainable, likewise, off the snow and rain water, so – waste water, et cetera. And so it sets an example for what is possible.
As the world now contemplates the UN Climate Conference in Warsaw next month, and then leading up to the 2015 conference in Paris, we, all of us – and I can assure you this Department will be and I will be – laser-focused on how we are going to step up our response to the reality of the threat that climate change poses to all of us. We don’t need to wait till Paris. We can take immediate complementary actions in all of our nations, and those actions will send a ripple through the cities of the world from Pittsburgh to Paris to Penang. And all of it, in the end, will not only contribute to a healthier, greener, more sustainable planet; it will contribute to a more vibrant and employable and prosperous planet. And it will most significantly contribute to our efforts to live up to our obligations to future generations and to all of us individually as stewards of this planet.
So thank you very much for being part of this. Appreciate it. (Applause.)
Monday, April 23, 2012
MILITARY MEMBERS AND FAMILIES HELP ON EARTH DAY TO CLEANUP TRASH
Japan (April 21, 2012) Chief Yeoman Ken Vinoya, center, helps gather trash at the Misawa Fish Port. Misawa Air Base service members and family took part in an Earth Day cleanup in the local community, and helped remove several tons of refuse. (U.S. Navy Photo by Senior Chief Mass Communication Specialist Daniel Sanford/Released)
Misawa CPO 365 Helps Conduct Beach Cleanup
By Senior Chief Mass Communication Specialist Daniel Sanford, Naval Air Facility Misawa Public Affairs
MISAWA, Japan (NNS) -- Members of the Navy Misawa CPO 365 Program spent the morning cleaning up the local Misawa Fish Port, April 21.
The event was in coordination with the 42nd annual observance of Earth Day, a global event filled with activities highlighting environmental concerns and issues.
More than 30 Misawa Air Base chief petty officers (CPOs) and board-eligible first class petty officers worked together to help the community pick up trash and help beautify the areas in the local community.
"Were here this morning to help out our host country and Mother Nature," said Chief Navy Counselor Todd Wean, who hails from Sarasota, Fla. "The members of CPO 365 do monthly community relations projects together anyway, so it seemed like a good fit for us to combine our effort in the community, while also helping out the environment in the process."
The cleanup is always one of the largest environmental awareness projects in Misawa with several tons of refuse being collected and removed from the fish port.
"We have a great relationship with the local community, and they are very open, receptive and helpful to service members living here in Misawa," said Chief Cryptologic Technician Collection Erika Haws, who originally hails from New Orleans, and serves as the Navy Misawa CPO 365 community relations coordinator. "It's nice to return the favor, and help make this area even more beautiful than it already is."
Besides, the CPO 365 members, many more Misawa service and family members were also on hand to help with the cleanup. Misawa cub scouts, girl scouts and numerous other base groups and organizations joined CPO 365 in their effort.
"It's nice to see folks of all ages come on out from the base and take ownership in the local community," said Wean. "We love Misawa, and this is just one small way that we can make it an even better place to be stationed and live."
Friday, April 20, 2012
DOJ VOLUNTEERS MARK EARTH DAY BY HELPING OUT AT MARVIN GAYE PARK
FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Friday, April 20, 2012
Department of Justice Volunteers Mark Earth Day with Community Service at Marvin Gaye Park
Marking the ninth annual Earth Day Service Celebration today, Acting Associate Attorney General Tony West and Assistant Attorney General Ignacia S. Moreno marked a day of service, commending volunteers from the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD), Washington Parks & People and the DC Green Corps as they continue work on environmental restoration projects near the Community Greening Center in Marvin Gaye Park in Northeast Washington, D.C.
“As a nation, we have taken great strides since the first Earth Day more than 40 years ago, from the landmark environmental legislation of the 1970s to recent efforts to address greenhouse gas emissions,” said Acting Associate Attorney General Tony West. “The story of Marvin Gaye Park’s renewal is an inspiration. Over the past decade, volunteers have removed countless tires and bags of garbage from this area, cleared and reopened miles of trail and streams, and planted thousands of native trees and shrubs. Earth Day provides an opportunity for us to reflect on and celebrate this progress, but it also reminds us that there is much left to be done.”
In her remarks, Assistant Attorney General Moreno said: “Today, on the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and resulting massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we remember the 11 lives that were tragically lost. We also are reminded that our natural resources are precious and that we must continue to protect these resources and the communities across the nation who rely on them for their livelihood. The Department of Justice will continue to vigorously enforce the federal civil and criminal environmental and natural resources laws that protect our air, land and water from pollution and that preserve our natural resources for the use and enjoyment of generations to come.”
Assistant Attorney General Moreno also announced this morning the publication of ENRD’s Fiscal Year 2011 Accomplishments Report. The full report, which details the division’s work across the nation during FY2011, is posted at www.justice.gov/enrd/Current_topics.html . Among other things, the report details the civil and criminal enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws, resulting in immeasurable benefits for human health and the environment derived from significant reductions in emissions and discharges of harmful pollutants. Other results detailed in the report show:
· Over $625 million in civil and stipulated penalties, cost recoveries, natural resource damages and other civil monetary relief, including almost $420 million recovered for the Superfund.
· More than $10.9 billion in corrective measures through civil court orders and settlements – the highest injunctive relief in any fiscal year to date.
· 52 criminal cases against 77 defendants, obtaining nearly 53 years in confinement and over $31.2 million in criminal fines, restitution, community service funds and special assessments.
A core mission of the division is the strong enforcement of civil and criminal environmental laws to protect our nation’s air, land, water and natural resources. The division’s mission also includes vigorous defense of environmental, wildlife and natural resources laws and agency actions; effective stewardship of our public lands and natural resources; and careful and respectful management of the United States’ obligations to American Indian tribes and their members, including litigation to protect tribal sovereignty, rights and resources. Also in 2011, with colleagues in the Civil Division, ENRD attorneys continued to play an instrumental role in the litigation that followed the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
2012 will mark the ninth consecutive Earth Day service celebration at Marvin Gaye Park. ENRD has devoted over 5,500 hours of employee time to planting trees, removing trash, laying sod and gardening.
“It's a real honor to have ENRD staff back again this year,” said Washington Parks & People Director Steve Coleman. “Their inspiring dedication and hard work have helped these communities to create a beautiful lasting legacy of environmental reclamation, justice and opportunity for all in this stream valley.
The Community Greening Center is a neighborhood-based nursery for plants and trees as well as an environmental education resource center located near the intersection of 51st Street and Nannie Helen Burroughs Ave., N.E. ENRD volunteers broke ground on the Greening Center last year together with Washington Parks & People and volunteers from the DC Green Corps. This is the first native plant tree staging area in the city.
This year, ENRD volunteers were joined by graduates from the DC Green Corps urban forestry job training program. Tree planting will take place at a nearby public housing complex and on a hillside in the stream valley. Planting trees will provide shade for green space for residents and children who play in the area and more stormwater capture for the stream valley, which is part of the sub-watershed of the Anacostia River. Volunteers will also be adding irrigation systems to the Community Greening Center.
The DC Green Corps, based at the Marvin Gaye Community Greening Center in the Watts Branch sub-watershed of the Anacostia River, will provide a city-wide gateway to 50 different green career tracks in urban and community forestry and forest-based ecosystem and watershed restoration. Helping under-served sub-watershed communities across the city, the Green Corps job program will focus on environmental justice, sustainable native reforestation, riparian buffer planting, invasive removal and green controls of urban systems, such as storm and sewer flows. The Green Corps and Center will develop a referral system to help participants connect to jobs through a wide range of agencies, professional and trade associations, trades, professions and industries.
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