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We Can Stop Climate Change. Yes, We Can!

Climate change may be happening, but we can stop it!

 That was the message loud and clear at the climate rally held yesterday in Washington, D.C., delivered by the 40,000 or more people who congregated around the Washington Monument before marching to the White House in the largest climate-focused rally in history.

Though the weather was absolutely frigid, the crowd could not have been more fired up. Parents and kids, students and seniors, people of all races and religions came together to demonstrate their love for the environment, their concern for their families and their communities, and their commitment to a cleaner, greener world.

The biggest focus was on President Obama, who made climate change a top priority in his recent State of the Union Address and who must decide whether or not to greenlight the controversial Keystone Pipeline, which would carry oil from Canada, across the U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico. Former White House green jobs advisor Van Jones told the audience from the state, "This will define your legacy, Mr. President." Indeed, it will.

 I marched with the Alaska Wilderness League, a terrific organization that's been leading the fight to keep oil drilling out of America's Arctic Wildlife Refuge for more than 15 years. AWL staffers dressed like polar bears carried signs reading Save the Arctic as we chanted, "What do we want? Polar Bears! What do they need? Ice!"

Moms and dads brought their children to the rally to demonstrate the impact that climate change is having on our families. In many parts of the world, poison ivy has gotten much worse because hotter than normal temperatures have created such ideal growing conditions for this noxious plant. Moms Clean Air Force was there, too, reminding us that the same fossil fuels that cause climate change are polluting our air, a big reason why so many more kids are suffering from asthma these days.

 Speaking of kids, they were everywhere at the rally: on their dad's shoulders, getting their pictures taken with the polar bears, clapping their hands in time to the music. It was great to see so many college students, too. In fact, they're the ones who led the "Yes, We Can!" chant when one of the stage speakers asked, "Can we stop climate change?"

Thousands of people traveled from far and wide to lend their voices to the rally crowd. When I boarded my local subway to get down to the event, the car was brimming with folks from as far away as Texas and Oklahoma, two states that are directly in the path of the Keystone Pipeline. At the Washington Monument, a woman from my home state of Michigan sported a big cut-out poster to remind us that an oil leak into an important river in the northern part of that state still had not been cleaned up. Meanwhile, rallies were happening in many other cities in the U.S., too. Mary Clare Hunt was among the 2,000 or more who turned up in Los Angeles to say "not" to climate change. You can read her report here.

Kids Drive Moms' Passion to Save Energy, Join Team ENERGY STAR

Using energy efficiently is the key to many of the health, environmental and even financial crises we face. Burning fossil fuels like coal and oil pollutes our air and water, contributes to asthma and other respiratory problems, and is a major cause of climate change. It's up to all of us to do what we can to make a difference, and most of us try to do our part, especially where our families are concerned. That job has gotten a little easier with the launch of Team ENERGY STAR, a new program to get kids and their parents engaged in simple actions that collectively can have a big impact.

The program has received a strong welcome from many moms who have made the connection between their kids' future and the energy we use. Here are some of the reasons why they care and what they're doing about it.

Exploding Coal Mines, Crashing Oil Tankers Make Clear the Need for New, Renewable Sources of Energy

Most of the time, the debate around fossil fuels centers on how much climate-changing carbon dioxide they generate when they're burned. But every once in a while, an event -- or a string of events -- occurs to remind us that the problems with oil and coal don't start when we set them on fire. They begin at the very beginning - - when we're mining the coal or transporting the oil. Fossil fuels are not just dirty to use; they're dirty and dangerous to mine and transport, which is why the sooner we switch to energy produced by the sun, the wind, and biomass, the better.

This point has been disastrously driven home by accidents of the last few days.  Four separate coal mine disasters in Chinawere followed by an oil tanker crash on the magnificent Great Barrier Reef.Then last week, 29 coal miners were killed when a mine in West Virginia exploded. 

Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virgina said on National Public Radio the day after that accident, "There will always be accidents."

He is right.  There will always be accidents, and most of the time, they'll have unacceptable consequences, including lives lost and precious environmental resources destroyed.

President Obama has thrown a lot of support behind developing a renewable energy economy for the U.S. but he is equally supportive of "clean coal," which many scientists and most environmentalists consider to be a fiction. He also favors expanding offshore oil drilling. And he's a fan of relaunching the U.S. nuclear power program, despite the potential for catastropic accident on the level of Three Mile Island or Chernobyl.

I believe this is wrong-headed. If any good can come of the recent disasters, it should be a renewed commitment to transition to renewable fuels as quickly as possible, not to expand our non-renewable fuel dependence.

We are throwing good money after bad and unnecessarily endangering human health and the environment with every decision we make to continue to rely on fossil fuels and dangerous energy sources like nuclear power.