Environmental Voter Lobby Day to be held in Baton Rouge on May 19th.

This event will also feature the kickoff of the the Louisiana Briefing Book. This is an opportunity to meet fellow activists, learn about the legislative process, show our state legislators that we care about the environment and that let them know that we vote. The briefing book kickoff is an event you don't want to miss.

Feel free to bring a friend and pass this invitation on. Car pooling may be available from your area. Please sign up for this event and register for your lunch seat by emailing cleanenergy2008@msn.com or call Leslie March at 985-871-6695. Please provide your name, email address or contact number. All participants are asked to wear business attire.

Download the flyer.

Louisiana's Mulch Madness

Cypress forests are the state's best defense against hurricanes. So why are loggers clear-cutting the last trees?

Dean Wilson slams forward the throttle on his 18-foot aluminum bateau—a flat-bottom skiff that he welded together himself—and catapults us downriver. It's April and I'm in the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest swamp—1.4 million acres (roughly 10 times the size of Chicago) wedged between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico in southern Louisiana... Read More>>

So begins an article featured in the March/April issue of Mother Jones magazine.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/03/louisianas-mulch-madness.html

Got You Tube?

The Sierra Club does. Check out the Club's You Tube page. You might even learn a thing or two; like how to install a programmable thermostat, or a low flow shower head or how to compost in your own backyard. Good stuff just in time for Earth Day.

Light pollution bad -- light control good

The Highland Road Park Observatory in Baton Rouge is hosting a series of
free lectures on light control.

As one of the few (if not only) observatories in the country open free of charge every weekend of the year, HRPO staff and volunteers have the wonderful job of showing the Sun, the Moon, stars, planets, comets and other celestial objects to families and individuals from around the city and elsewhere. HRPO’s 20-inch reflector has been used to discover over fifty asteroids.

However, over the last few years the light control problem in East Baton Rouge Parish has grown worse, hindering our ability to image these objects—especially deep-sky objects such as clusters (groups of stars gravitationally bound to one another) and nebulae (enormous patches of gas and dust in interstellar space). It’s questionable whether, at this point in time, the Baton Rouge skies would be dark enough to allow one to discover those same asteroids.

On 18 April the lecture will focus on uncontrolled artificial light’s hindrance of stargazing.

On 25 April Claire Coco, manager of the Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Center, will speak on the lack of light control’s effect on the nocturnal habits of wildlife.

Finally, the 2 May lecture will attempt to put the financial cost in perspective.

All the lectures are Fridays at 7:30pm and will last from thirty to sixty minutes. After each talk, visitors will learn steps they can take to halt, and possibly reverse, the amount of excessive light in their neighborhoods. They will also, weather permitting, view objects through our new 16-inch reflector; Mars and Saturn will be out.

Here is the flyer (88 Kb PDF) for this lecture series.

HRPO is sponsored by BREC, LSU’s Department of Physics and the Baton Rouge Astronomical Society.

Thanks,

Christopher Kersey
Manager, Highland Road Park Observatory
13800 Highland Road
Baton Rouge, LA 70810
(225) 768-9948

observatory@brec.org
www.bro.lsu.edu

Welcome to our new Senior Regional Representative

Sierra Club Friends – On behalf of the staff of the Sierra Club’s Southeast Office, I would like to welcome Jill Mastrototaro as our new Senior Regional Representative – Manager (Northern Gulf Coast). Jill will manage the delivery of our programs within the states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. She will begin her service to the Sierra Club effective March 10 and will be based in New Orleans, LA. Our office in Baton Rouge, LA will then be closed.

A native of Connecticut, Jill has also spent the past decade residing in the New Orleans, LA area. Over the past eight and a half years Jill has led advocacy and outreach efforts for the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation in southeast Louisiana’s 10,000-square mile watershed.

Jill’s experience includes monitoring and lobbying state and federal laws including the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, spearheading a coalition to protect cypress forests, launching a campaign on sprawl using multiple media outlets, leading the state’s first effort to quantify wetland loss from unplanned development, and creating and implementing regional strategic conservation plans.

Her successes include leading a broadly based coalition in getting Wal-Mart to stop the purchase and sale of cypress mulch harvested or manufactured in Louisiana, thwarting proposals such as cell towers, subdivisions, or a 10,000-acre airport in ecologically sensitive areas, protecting already stressed waterways from receiving millions of gallons of wastewater effluent, and mobilizing hundreds of volunteers to protect natural resources.

Jill has authored a myriad of resources such as, A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting Wetlands in the Pontchartrain Basin, and more recently, Growing Smarter: Guidelines for Low Impact Development in the Pontchartrain Basin, which have engaged and trained thousands of citizens. Jill is the founding Vice-President of the Land Trust for Southeast Louisiana, the only grassroots-based, land conservation group active in the state, and she chairs the Land Committee, negotiating land acquisitions and to-date securing $100,000 in endowment funds. She also is working to create a regional Gulf Coast network of land conservation groups. Jill serves on the board of Smart Growth for Louisiana, a non-profit working to encourage responsible land use throughout the state.

She holds a Masters Degree in Environmental Policy from the State University of New York – College of Environmental Science and Forestry (Syracuse, NY) and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Environmental Science from the University of Rochester (Rochester, NY).

We hope that you will join us in welcoming Jill to the Sierra Club family.

Thanks!

Regards – Jim Price, Southeast Staff Director, Sierra Club

Will our world become a "Storm World"?

Is the Earth becoming warmer due to human activity? Almost certainly. Are typhoons and hurricanes becoming stronger and more frequent because of global warming? Believe it or not, the jury is still out on that one. In his excellent new book "Storm World", New Orleans born author Chris Mooney presents both sides of the still raging debate about whether human induced global warming is in fact causing stronger and more frequent cyclones.

One reason that there is a debate at all about storm intensity and frequency is that we have only since the early 1970's had the ability to monitor our globe via satellite. Before then the data that we would need to prove conclusively that storms are more frequent and intense, is simply too incomplete to be entirely useful.

The full title of Chris Mooney's book, "Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming", tells you that it is not just about climate science but also about the politics of warming, a topic which is not easily ignored.

The Sierra Club even gets a mention on page 225 where Casey DeMoss Roberts, former chair of the New Orleans Group, is quoted as saying that she became a "climate refugee" because of Katrina.

This book is important because it lays out both sides of the debate for the reader to come to his or her own conclusion. Which is interesting in that the author himself begins the book as a neutral observer but by the end seems pretty convinced that storms are getting stronger and more frequent even though the evidence is still inconclusive.

A review of the book on realclimate.org:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/storm-world/

Other books by the author: "The Republican War on Science".

A Hummer that gets 60 miles per gallon!!?? You must be joking!

No we aren't. This interesting tidbit comes from fastcompany.com and tells the tale of Johnathan Goodwin dubbed the "Motorhead Messiah" because he takes the largest, heaviest vehicles available and retrofits them to increase the gas mileage of these monstrous behemoths to match their physical size. LARGE.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/120/motorhead-messiah.html

Predictions for our warming planet are coming true

The recent increase in wildfires in California are just one of many predicted effects of a warming planet.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-romm/global-warming-and-the-ca_b_69695.html

Industry goes after Leslie March

Clearcutting cypress cannot be justified

Timber industry spokesperson Buck Vandersteen's inaccurate data and personal attacks demand that I set the record straight ("Best practices used in managing our forests," Oct. 4). There is no justification for clearcutting cypress, our state tree, because nearly 80 percent of the trees will never regenerate once they are cut. Indeed, many cypress swamps logged up to 100 years ago have not regrown. These trusted data come from scientists and the U.S. Global Change Program. Big Timber often claims growth based on the controversial data that compared cypress "apples" in 1991 to "oranges" in 2005.

The Save Our Cypresses Coalition - of which Sierra Club is a member - supports conservation easements and other ways of compensating landowners for protecting cypress. Cypress forests are our best natural storm protection, and they are the natural legacy we will leave for future generations. Instead of mocking my passion, Vandersteen should help lead our state toward responsible stewardship of our cypress forests.

LESLIE MARCH
SIERRA CLUB
MANDEVILLE

The letter that started it all:
http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071004/OPINION03/710040310/1014/OPINION

Dirty Power coming to a power plant near you

Louisiana Environmental Action Network and Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper

PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release For more information: Leslie March, Sierra Club, (985) 249-1160 John Atkeison, Alliance for Affordable Energy (504) 208-9761 or (302) 345-0607 Aaron Viles, Gulf Restoration Network, (225) 615-0346 Marylee Orr, Louisiana Environmental Action Network, (225) 928-1315 http://sayyestocleanenergy.org

Polluting $1.5 Billion Entergy Plan Challenged: Little Gypsy Project Will Mean Big Pain for Ratepayers BATON ROUGE - Today community groups rallied in opposition to Entergy's plan to pass the costs of its "Little Gypsy" re-powering project on to Louisiana's ratepayers. Entergy plans to replace its current power plant, which burns natural gas, with a plant that burns coal and petroleum coke, a refinery waste product. The Alliance for Affordable Energy, Louisiana Environmental Action Network, Sierra Club, and Gulf Restoration Network challenged the proposal at a Louisiana Public Service Commission hearing in Baton Rouge. The groups are opposed to the plant's greatly increased contribution to global warming, its higher toxic load on the environment, and the high costs the plan will impose on ratepayers. "Burning coal produces twice as much greenhouse gas pollution as burning natural gas," says John Atkeison, director of Climate and Clean Energy Programs for the Alliance for Affordable Energy. "This means that Entergy will be imposing the hardship and costs of accelerating global warming on Louisiana and the world if they switch from natural gas to coal and coke." "Little Gypsy is already a financial boondoggle," says Karen Wimpleberg, chair of the Alliance for Affordable Energy, "$500 million more since the original estimate they gave the Public Service Commission. Yet they want ratepayers to prepay the bill. This is a terrible risk for ratepayers but a sweet deal for shareholders." While utilities normally can recover the costs of a plant after the project is complete, Entergy is seeking to pass the costs of Little Gypsy on to its customers before it even begins construction. In the months since Entergy's announcement of the project, the estimated cost has already increased by 50 percent. Long-term costs for the ratepayers will likely increase as well since the proposed fuel switch will increase the plant's emissions of the pollutants responsible for global warming - just as Congress prepares to penalize such pollution. Louisiana stands at particular risk from global warming; if such warming continues unchecked, rising sea levels are projected to increase flooding and accelerate the loss of the state's coastal wetlands. Such risks have prompted Florida's Public Service Commission to reject proposals for new coal-fired power plants. "Louisiana should follow Florida's lead," says Aaron Viles of the Gulf Restoration Network. "We've seen what global warming means for the Gulf; it should be clear we need action to address global warming, not more pollution to make the problem worse." Leslie March, chair of the Delta Chapter of the Sierra Club says, "The PSC is composed of elected officials, and it's time for them to consider the best interests of their constituents. We've jointly launched www.sayyestocleanenergy.org so the public can remind the PSC that South Louisiana is ground zero for climate change impacts, and it is time to shift away from dirty energy sources like coal." Coke and coal are vastly dirtier fuels than natural gas, contributing to smog and other pollution that causes asthma and a variety of other respiratory diseases. "Louisiana has cheaper, cleaner, better alternatives to satisfy its energy needs," says Marylee Orr of Louisiana Environmental Action Network, noting that simple, inexpensive measures to increase energy efficiency could sharply reduce Louisiana's need for electricity and that investment in renewable energy could boost the economy and create jobs. # # # Atchafalaya Basinkeeper Dean Wilson 225-692-4114 Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper Paul Orr 225-928-1315

Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper | P.O. Box 66323 | Baton Rouge | LA | 70809

Cypress Trees of the Gulf - are getting some press

More specifically the destruction of the Cypress Trees of the Gulf is getting some press. The following blog post is from the Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/agitpop/cypress-trees-of-the-gulf_b_62563.html

We can't argue with this great idea

How about a blog devoted solely to clean technology, electronic or otherwise? As our world gets more enamored with all things technological, we burn a lot more fuel to power it all. Good Clean Tech . com bills itself as "The Independent Guide to Ecotechnology" for a good reason. They "aim to provide you with news, tips, advice, and ideas about how to do more with less." Now that's an ideal that we ought to all aspire to.

http://www.goodcleantech.com/