The 50 state strategy includes blue states, too.

Been helping out with Jamie Eldridge's congressional campaign recently.  (MA-05 special election to replace retiring Marty Meehan.)  The "Democratic Primary" (Mass-speak for "general election") is this Tuesday 9/4.  Campaign reminds me a lot of two campaigns I volunteered for in '06: Lamont primary and Shea-Porter (NH-01).  I'll tell you about Shea-Porter in a few, but here's why it reminds me of Lamont '06.

Like Lamont, Eldridge is a true-blue progressive running in a primary.  He's the only candidate in the race who: 1) supports single-payer universal health care 2) has opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, 3) supports a moratorium on new coal plants.  He also supports GBLT marriage equality, wants to strengthen unions and to roll back the Bush tax cuts, wants to defend Social Security and Medicare.

Eldridge is running a people-powered campaign and has actively engaged the netroots.  He's a lot better than any of the other candidates, and is exhibiting precisely the kind of behavior we want to reward.

And now its crunch time, and he needs our help.  

But since its a primary, I want to say a few things right off the bat:

There are several hundred, maybe a few thousand, diarists and commenters here at DailyKos.  Some are brilliant writers.

This diary is not aimed at any of them.  

Rather, it is intended for the lurkers-- the silent majority of the 100,000+ registered users (and possibly greater number of occasional readers) who read but to not write.  I suspect this group out numbers the writers by 5 or 10 to 1.

I want to try to tell you how much you are missing.

I lurked for 2 1/2 years before breaking my silence about six months ago.  I started to write both to practice persuasive writing (I haven't done this since college, and was pretty rusty), and to try to advocate for ideas I believed in.

The biggest benefit of delurking came as something of a surprise.

You lurkers are seeing just the tip of the DailyKos iceberg.  You do not see much of what makes DailyKos DailyKos.  

I'm going to tell you about a quick and easy-to-implement program that will reduce both oil use and city traffic, bring large benefits to public health, and get people where they need to go faster than before.

But I'm not going to tell you that it will have zero cost.

Instead, I'm going to tell you it will cost less than nothing.  It won't add any new items to city budgets.  It may result in additional sources of revenue while reducing some city budget items.

The program is to introduce very cheap bicycle rentals located at kiosks around the city.  It will have the blessing of local government, but be run by a for-profit company.  After signing up online, you'll unlock bikes with your credit card, ride to your destination, and lock them back up again.

The program has been implemented on a large scale in Lyon and Paris, and on a somewhat smaller scale in Vienna, Brussels and Cordoba.  The results are excellent so far, and similar programs are being considered by London and Seoul.

A few American cities are beginning to experiment with this.. but it is time for us to get serious.

"The only thing Antwan ever touched of mine was my hand, when he shook it at my wedding...  But when you little scamps get together, you're worse than a sewing circle."  Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction

This diary follows a rumor's spread through the conservative blogosphere.  It begins with a story about how a persistent conservative blogger found a minor (but genuine) error in a NASA dataset, and how that error was promptly acknowledged and corrected.  This story was told by the original blogger a few days ago, and then retold by other bloggers (with improvements) and again by other bloggers (with more improvements).  

By yesterday, we could read on A-List conservative blogs that "global warming hype" is largely derived from a Y2K bug, that the the new information is being suppressed by the media, and that someone had possibly launched an attack on the original blogger's web site to prevent the truth from getting out.

We'll start at the beginning by looking at the underlying science; what the error was, and why it matters.  And we'll see how that science got lost in successive retellings, even as sensational (but false) details were added.

Cancer is a terrible disease.  And yet, most cancerous cells are destroyed by the immune system before they grow into a life-threatening tumor.  But sometimes, for reasons we still don't understand, the immune system never recognizes the threat posed by the growing cancer.

Q. Why haven't Americans defended our freedoms as the Bush administration has visibly eroded them?  Previous generations spent months tramping through woods and swamps to defend theirs.  Why is it that so many of us cannot even be bothered to carry protest signs on sunny streets, or write letters to the editor, or knock on doors, or make phone calls?

After years of wondering about this, I now think I understand.

A. For all previous generations of Americans, freedom had a concrete meaning.  One could see others who were not free (in Eastern Europe, on the slave plantations).  We have no such examples.  As a nation, we have forgotten the meaning of the word-- to often, it means "cheap gas" or "low taxes."  Why bother to defend what you can no longer understand?

Because many of us have forgotten what freedom is, we can no longer recognize when it is threatened.  Our society's political immune system has been disabled.

This is a plea for help masquerading as an environmental diary.  If DailyKos can help Mem from Somerville get on TV, I'm hoping it can help me out with a local political/environmental issue.

Rail Trails (old, unused railways converted to linear parks) are a Global Warming Golden Bullet, in that they make a small but solid contribution to decarbonizing (by taking cars off the road) and have several unrelated benefits.  They promote public health (people in walkable, bikable communities get more exercise) and community (people with natural places to congregate together do so more frequently).

This diary discusses pros and cons of Rail Trails.  My reasons for writing it are that 1) I am hoping to find someone who can answer to some specific questions, 2) I am looking for personal anecdotes of people's experience with Rail Trails.

If you want to shoot a werewolf, you'd better use a silver bullet.  Regular bullets just won't do the trick.  But that's about all silver bullets are good for.

The term "silver bullet" has come to mean a new technology or practice that will easily cure a major prevailing problem.  

In discussions about energy, Global Warming and Peak Oil, we are constantly reminded (rightly!) not to waste our time looking for silver bullets.  Instead, we are advised to look for "silver BBs"-- a whole bunch of modest improvements which may collectively solve the problem.  

I want to suggest a new metaphor.  I think we should fight Global Warming with Golden Bullets.
 

Golden Bullet (n):  A partial solution to Global Warming that saves or earns money for someone (preferably me).

Framing policies as golden bullets makes them easier to sell.  And while silver bullets don't exist, Golden bullets are everywhere...

Negawatts (reducing energy use through conservation) is the cleanest and often the cheapest energy source, beating wind, solar and nuclear.  

Since early 2006, my family has reduced our electricity use by about a third.  This has required no major lifestyle changes (although some minor ones).  It cost nothing-- and, going forward, it will save us hundreds of dollars per year.  

Dick Cheney notwithstanding,  conservation is a key aspect of a sound energy policy.  In fact, government statistics show that if every American household made the same proportionate reductions as us, we'd reduce total US electricity demand by over 10%-- enough to reduce American coal consumption by about 25%-- making an enormous dent in greenhouse emissions.

And if we were to try harder, or spend a bit of money, we could reduce emissions a lot more.  But here's what we did so far:

This is a picture of the Northern Lights (the Aurora) high over Alaska.
:

See those vertical lines?  They are the key to a clever idea that might solve the problem of Global Warming.

I live in a smallish town in the Northeastern US.  For years, I have wondered how we would be affected by Global Warming.  Obviously, it will get hotter.  But will it get dryer?  Wetter?  More storms?  Droughts?

The Union of Concerned Scientists released an excellent report some time ago, and I've kept my eyes open, but information has been hard to find, and many of my questions have been unanswered.

And then several weeks ago, the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released (warning: 10MB PDF) the Regional Climate Impact section of their final report.  Chapter 11.5 deals with the impact on North America.

Gosh was I surprised.

And not in a good way.

Jan Karski was a Catholic in the Polish underground who infiltrated a concentration camp in 1942 dressed in the stolen uniform of a Camp guard.   He also infiltrated the Warsaw ghetto, and learned of the full horror of the Holocaust.  He escaped to the West, and the Polish ambassador arranged a meeting with Justice Felix Frankfurter, (who was both a Jew and a close confidante of FDR).

Karski spent half an hour explaining, in gruesome detail, what he had seen.  There was a long pause when he finished.  Then Frankfurter said

"A man like me talking to a man like you must be totally frank. So I must say: I am unable to believe you."

The Polish Ambassador lept to his feet and strenuously protested that Karski was not lying.

Frankfurter replied, in a soft voice filled with resignation, "Mr. Ambassador, I did not say this young man is lying. I said I am unable to believe him. There is a difference."

The meeting ended awkwardly, and nothing came of it.

I've been thinking about this incident a lot as various IPCC reports on Climate Change are released.

When the national government fails to lead, cities and states can pick up the slack.

Yesterday, Cambridge, MA announced the Cambridge Energy Alliance,  a $100m energy efficiency program.  Gov. Patrick calledit "a new model for energy efficiency that should be replicated by communities across the Commonwealth" and kicked in $2m to make that happen.

A newly created non-profit group will work with homeowners, businesses and other building owners to identify opportunities to save energy and provide low- or no-cost loans to implement solutions.  Sound familiar?  It should.  Energize America's Home Efficiency Act contains many of the same ideas.

Overall, there is so much good about this program that I barely know where to begin.

Its crunch time for Energize America.  As requested, in just over 60 hours, we will deliver our proposed Acts to our sponsor in Congress.  So we need help from dkos more than ever.

Below the fold is a new version of the Net Metering Bill (formerly known as the Join the Grid Act).  It incorporates changes suggested by the community in comments to my diary on the previous version.

This will be the last chance for the dkos community to review this Act before it heads to Congress.

Also, we're going to be changing the title one final time.. please vote for your favorite title below.

As A Siegel wrote in Re-Energizing ... ENERGIZE AMERICA, theEnergize America team (and all of Daily Kos) has been asked by a senior member of Congress to develop elements of a plan for introduction as legislation in Congress.

Below the fold is a draft of part of the plan that we will introduce.  This part concerns Net Metering, and includes the work of 5 or 10 team members.

Now its over to you.  We need comments and criticism-- the plan must be delivered within a few days.  What works?  What doesn't?  What can be improved?  

Remember... A senior member of congress has offered to listen to our community.  That doesn't happen every day.

Let's take advantage of this opportunity, people!

The Bible tells us that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for their immorality.  Christians often interpret this as sexual immorality (and homosexuality in particular).  Jews interpret this differently, believing Sodom was destroyed for other types of immorality.  Consider, for example, their method of practicing charity (according to the Talmud, as quoted here):

If a poor man happened to come there, every resident gave him a dinar, upon which he wrote his name, but no bread was sold to him. When he died, each came and took back his dinar.

It is all too easy to find parallels to the sins of Sodom in contemporary America-- and I'm not talking about anything sexual.  Instead, I want to focus on something much less sexy: regulation of the electricity market.

There is a little story that goes something like this:  Modern society is utterly dependent on the constant availability of electricity.  Since you can't build a reliable system from unreliable parts, electricity must be generated from the most reliable electricity sources: coal, nuclear, natural gas and hydro-electric power.  These are all "always on" power sources, and most can be turned up or down as electricity demand grows or shrinks.  On the other hand, weather-dependent sources like solar or wind are too unreliable to play much of a role in our grid.

Its a nice story, and it forms the basis of our entire approach to generating electricity.  Unfortunately, almost everything after the first sentence is wrong.

As A Siegel wrote in Re-Energizing ... ENERGIZE AMERICA, theEnergize America team (and all of Daily Kos) has been asked by a senior member of Congress to develop elements of a plan for introduction as legislation in the Congress.  I am working on the Smart/Net Metering Act.

Briefly, this Act will 1) allow anyone to sell power to the grid (boosting the renewable energy and energy storage industries), and 2) give everyone Smart meters, allowing them to precisely monitor (and thus reduce) their electricity use.  The price of electricity will depend on when it is bought, not who sells it.

Some of us have been discussing the current draft of our Bill and what's right/wrong with recently proposed HR 729.  The consensus is that our community can do better than HR 729.

Much better.

Let me tell you how.

Many suburban towns raise essentially all of their revenues from local property taxes.  This is unfortunate-- if they taxed energy use instead, they could raise the same amount of revenue while reducing energy use and the problems it causes.  It is time to consider replacing property taxes, at least in part, with taxes on the use of electricity, natural gas and heating oil.  This tax shift will give homeowners strong incentives to conserve more, and dramatically decrease the payback time on energy efficiency improvements (insulation, better appliances) or renewable energy generators (solar panels or wind-turbines).  Unlike most other taxes, taxpayers would have some control over how much they are taxed: by improving their property and conserving energy, they could significantly reduce their own tax bills.  Finally, much of the money spent to improve efficiency will be recycled back into the local economy, providing new jobs in energy efficiency and alternative energy.