Yesterday, President Obama conceded that the energy bill in the Senate may not include a cap on carbon. This is a part of a shift in the White House to focus on jobs and the economy rather than complex and arduous campaign issues like health care and climate change. During the president’s question and answer session yesterday, Obama responded to a statement that placed energy efficiency, conservation and renewable energy before cap-and-trade and “avoid negative impacts on our economy.” Obama stuck to his talking points from his state of the union address by saying that cap-and-trade is a market-based solution that has worked in the past. But he also admonished for the first time that the jobs and efficiency portions of the energy bill may be separate from a cap-and-trade bill.

"The most controversial aspects of the energy debate that we've been having: the House passed an energy bill and people complained that, 'Well, there's this cap-and-trade thing,'" Obama said, according to a White House transcript. "We may be able to separate these things out. And it's conceivable that that's where the Senate ends up."

It’s been a little over a year since an environmental catastrophe 100 times larger than the Exxon-Valdez spill hit a Tennessee town of just over 5,000 people, and the regulations promised to prevent it from occurring again are still being debated. Coal ash – a carcinogenic mixture of heavy metals like arsenic, lead and selenium – spilled over 300 acres, burying fifteen homes and contaminating a river in Kingston, Tenn. Coal or fly ash, which is the waste leftover from burning coal, isn’t defined as a hazardous material and its disposal isn’t regulated by the EPA. During EPA director Lisa Jackson’s senate confirmation hearing last year, she told Senator Barbra Boxer that she’d consider regulating coal ash.

Let's Raise a Million, one of our star Action Grantees, just had a fantastic summer distributing over over 5,000 lightbulbs and 3500 water conservation kits to Atlantan neighborhoods.  

The Atlanta Workforce Development Agency, Let’s Raise A Million (LRAM), Sustainable Atlanta and the Department of Watershed partnered up to start the Atlanta Mentorship Program for Sustainability (AMPS) . The program not only provided free energy saving light bulbs and low-flow water kits to modest mean residents throughout the city (particularly in communities like Ashby Park, Magnolia Park, Chappell Forest, Overlook Atlanta and Mozley Park), but also trained 20 Mayor’s Youth Program participants to install them.  It is estimated that the initiatives of LRAM and AMPS have saved the city of Atlanta over $4 million in energy and water consumption.

The participating students were trained and supervised by college students from LRAM, a student-led urban ecological project, and recipient of Campus Progress "Action Grant". This initiative was housed by the Atlanta Workforce Development Agency (AWDA) and was responsible for training the 20 youths to install the energy-saving devices.  In an increasingly environmentally-conscious world, AMPS and AWDA's mission is to develop and cultivate an adequate pool of qualified employees for a growing business market. This means focusing on training in energy conservation device installation and maintenance. 

Once again, today's youth loudly proclaimed that the answer to our problems lies in efficiency, not ethanol.

A group of High Schoolers beat out over 250 college students in a Shell competition to build the most efficient car. 

This competition is yet another example that we already have all the technologies we need to fix much of our little 'carbon problem'. If a bunch of high schoolers can build a 2,843 mpg car, I'm pretty sure giant corporate car manufacturers can figure out how to reach 30 mpg by 2020 (our current fuel efficiency goal and Europe's present standard). 

 The government needs to stop lavishing Archer Daniel Midland, Cargill, Peabody, Massey, Ford, GM, Chrysler and other traditional corporate overlords with research money for ethanol, advanced coal, and nuclear waste disposal. It is time that the government invest in technology deployment and forcing corporations to stop wining and adopt the most recent efficient technologies. 

 This switch from R&D to technology deployment will have widespread effects, from drastically and quickly reducing our Greenhouse Gasses to reducing the financial burden on low income families due to increases in energy prices.

 So-called "Generation Q" is leading, will our predecessors follow our leadership and enthusiasm or will they continue in their own path leading to our doom?

Here in South Africa, the theme of the past month has literally been conserve or die, as power failures across the country are leading to forced energy-saving nationwide.

Things are getting interesting here, as every day the power goes out for at least 4 or 5 hours in most parts of the country. This is leaving Eskom, the corporation in charge of SA power, running in circles attempting to save energy.

This is also forcing South Africans to look at energy conservation in ways that most Americans cannot yet dream of.

Due to political gridlock in Congress over provisions in the Energy Bill, it now seems that Senate and House reps are so scared of not passing a bill that they are again (as they did with ENDA) at risk of passing a less than mediocre piece of legislation. 

PETA is drowning blogs with their assertion that meat is the biggest cause of global warming. This seems to be the biggest lifestyle change story tied to climate change in months. I’ll quip that they’ve exaggerated their conclusions to jump onboard the climate gravy train with other big time NGOs and nonprofits. Despite that I whole heartedly support the abolition of corporate slaughter houses and think that people should reduce or stop eating meat, especially from corporate farmed, genetically modified, antibiotic laden animals. What was refreshing about PETA’s message was that finally a group is saying that change can’t happen without Americans rethinking their lifestyle.

Let’s look at the framework of our current environmental discussions. They typically fall into a few oft repeated and mixed together varieties. The subjects I hear most about are new technology, clean cars, clean energy, and of course how much we are screwed. I don’t see any of these discussions as being fruitful toward the end goal of stopping our planet from burning.

So invading the Hotel George wasn’t the “cakewalk” we all thought it would be. But I my search for a free lunch wasn’t going to turn into a quagmire on my watch. Remembering that Zeta Phi Beta wasn’t all that was going down at the Hyatt Regency a few blocks away, I headed back to the old stomping grounds of the Campus Progress National Student Conference where I had some connections with the wait staff.

I walked through the nifty automatic turnstile door and then it hit me like an Ace of Base song. I saw the sign. And it opened up my eyes. I saw the sign.

With the eleventh straight day of record-high gas prices yesterday and no relief in sight before millions of cars flood the roads for Memorial Day Weekend traveling, the House voted to approve stiff penalties for those found guilty of gasoline price gouging. The bill’s supporters claim it’s a measure for “consumers being ripped off at the pump” by oil companies, but I’m hesitant to go along with the either-you’re-with-working-class-Americans-or-you’re-with Big-Oil rhetoric.