another winter without snow?

New Canaan Advertiser, Thursday, January 24, 2008 Page 6A

EcoMan
By Richard M. Stowe

Warming warrants greater attention

Dateline: January 11, 2008
Location: New Canaan
Time: 2:00 p.m.
Temperature: 55
Average January High: 38
Average January Low: 19
Record January Low: -18

I know what you’re thinking: What is the record January high? Well, that was set last year (2007): 69.

Try to imagine a new record low being set this year.

The latest climate change research reveals that Greenland’s glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously thought.

60 minutes re-broadcast its hour-long The Age of Warming on Sunday evening. It’s well worth the time to read the transcript, or watch the video at the Age of Warming link - (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/30/60minutes/main2631210.shtml)

Warmer winters is a growing concern among Olympic skiers and professional hockey players, such as Andrew Ference, the Boston Bruins defenseman, who is seeking a commitment from the entire National Hockey League to go carbon neutral.

Winter athletes have joined concerned citizens in requesting that “our leaders (to) freeze and reduce carbon emissions now” in an online petition (http://www.stopglobalwarming.org).

There’s a national organizing effort called Focus the Nation (http://www.focusthenation.org/). Focus the Nation is assembling a mass teach-in on global warming solutions for America at schools and churches in communities across the United States on January 31, 2008. Focus the Nation website lists New Canaan Country School and St Luke’s School as participants. At New Canaan Country School 4th graders will talk about global warming at their weekly assembly and at home will ask each one of their families to switch at least one fixture from incandescent to compact fluorescent (cfl). Upper school students (grades 7 – 9) will screen the 2% solution on January 30th.

OK, now, back to presidential politics.

Question: In 2007 how many times did Sunday talk show hosts - Tim Russert, George Stephanopoulos, Bob Schieffer, Wolf Blitzer and Chris Wallace - mention global warming?

Answer: 3 plus 24 global warming related questions (12 by Tim Russert, 5 by George Stephanopoulos, 4 by Chris Wallace, 3 by Wolf Blitzer).

Question: How many presidential campaign questions did these 5 hosts ask in 2007?

Answer: 2484

According to Gene Karpinski, President of the League of Conservation Voters these statistics were culled by reading the transcripts of every one of the five Sunday morning talk shows and every debate that one of the aforementioned journalists was associated with in 2007.

That was in 2007, the year the International Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize! And, let’s not forget that Vice-President Al Gore, a former presidential nominee, won the Nobel Peace Prize, too.

Question: Who asked those questions in which they mentioned global warming?

Answer: Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday asked two questions and Wolf Blitzer of CNN asked one question.

Question: Who didn’t mention global warming in any of their questions?

Answer: Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’s Face the Nation, asked zero out of 238 questions; Clinton protégé and former Clinton senior advisor on policy and strategy, George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s This Week, asked zero out of the 726; Tim Russert, host of NBC’s Meet the Press asked zero out of 755 questions.

The League of Conservation Voters believes global warming warrants more coverage by these Sunday talk show hosts.

If you agree with that position, LCV has set up an online petition for you to register your support: http://www.whataretheywaitingfor.com/

This is how the remaining Presidential candidates, who serve, or have served in Congress, line up in terms of the League of Conservation Voters lifetime voting record rating on environmental issues.

Senator Barack Obama 96%
Representative Dennis Kuchinich 92%
Senator Hillary Clinton 90%
Senator John Edwards 59%
Representative Ron Paul 30%
Senator John McCain 26%
Senator Fred Thompson 12%

The candidate’s positions on energy and global warming are spelled out at http://www.lcv.org/voterguide/

Keep it green.

Presidential primary speculation

New Canaan Advertiser, Thursday, January 3, 2008

Ecoman
By Richard M. Stowe

As December gives way to January, New Years Resolutions chatter has been upended by discussions about the leading presidential candidates, the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary.

There’s the intrigue generated by Huma Abedin, Senator Hillary Clinton’s supernatural presidential campaign’s “traveling chief of staff,” who was featured in the August issue of Vogue.

Then there’s the cell phone calls taken on stage by Rudy Giuliani from his third wife Judith, whom he met in 1999 at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar.

If you plan to vote in the 23-state February 5th super primary and you would like to choose a presidential candidate whose views and values align most closely with your own, visit the site http://www.glassbooth.org/.

From a climate change perspective, keep in mind that only three candidates participated in the first ever-global warming debates in November: Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich.

Thursday January 3rd (the same day as the Iowa Caucus) presents an opportunity for New Canaan drivers to learn about modern roundabout design as an alternative to traffic signals. Part I of an Interactive Web Seminar will take place from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Board Room of Town Hall (2nd floor).

And at 10 a.m. (after a 9:30 a.m. coffee) on January 8th (the same day as the New Hampshire primary) George Hawkins will give a must see presentation at Darien Community Association 274 Middlesex Road entitled Cowboys, Spacemen and a Theory of Almost Everything: How Responding to Global Warming Connects to Traffic Jams, Housing Prices, Property Taxes and the Flood in My Creek.

Mr. Hawkins is a 1983 summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. Currently Mr. Hawkins is Director of the District (of Columbia) Department of Environment (http://ddoe.dc.gov/ddoe/site/default.asp?ddoeNav=|31003|)

When I met Mr. Hawkins a few years ago at a New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Miami, Florida he was serving as Executive Director of New Jersey Future (http://www.njfuture.org/), a smart growth non-profit advocacy organization.

Prior to that he was executive director of Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association. Since 1999, he has been a visiting lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he teaches environmental law and policy for the Princeton Environmental Institute.

Happy New Year! Let’s keep it green.