If you’ve been walking around near Stamp today, you may have seen the curious sight of our dear Senator Ben Cardin clad in Spandex. A cardboard cut-out version of him that is. You’ll find him next to a MaryPIRG table announcing National Call-In Day for Global Warming Solutions. And why is he dressed this way?
“Because we want him to be a superhero for global warming!” said Brian Lentz, campaign director.
The group is organizing an effort to flood the senator’s office with calls demanding stronger targets in the Senate version of the Climate Energy Bill, which is currently being drafted in committee.
While MaryPIRG may be after the politicians, other environmentalists are after your behinds. That’s right: they’re coming for your toilet paper. David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post has the story:
It is a fight over toilet paper: the kind that is blanket-fluffy and getting fluffier so fast that manufacturers are running out of synonyms for “soft” (Quilted Northern Ultra Plush is the first big brand to go three-ply and three-adjective).
It’s a menace, environmental groups say — and a dark-comedy example of American excess.
The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. They want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods.
It's not easy being green.
After all the grandstanding on climate change at the United Nations on Tuesday, President Obama returned home to find some very real challenges awaiting him in Congress. According to the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Power:
How’s this for awkward timing? As President Barack Obama tries to persuade leaders of other countries gathered at the U.N. and G-20 meetings that the U.S. will take action on climate change, senators in both parties are moving to limit the steps his administration might propose to fight climate change.
At issue are two amendments to a huge government spending bill nearing a vote in the Senate that would pare the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate various industries’ greenhouse-gas emissions.
At least General Electric seems to be on board with President Obama’s renewable energy goals. Martin LaMonica with Cnn.com reports:
In 2011, the energy giant expects to produce solar panels made with cadmium telluride, a thin-film solar cell material, said Michael Idelchik, vice president of advanced technologies at GE Global Research at the EmTech conference here on Wednesday.Solar at GE is a relatively small part of its sprawling energy portfolio, which covers everything from nuclear power plants to natural gas turbines. But GE expects that solar has the potential to grow rapidly, as its multi-billion dollar wind business has done over the past five years.
“Solar is definitely the next wind for us. It’s not there yet but it’s moving very rapidly,” said Idelchik. Solar is more expensive than wind right now, but GE expects that renewable energy mandates will help drive growth and bring costs down, he said.
Today on campus:
- Today and tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., meet by the Campus Creek near Comcast Center to learn abour rain gardening: planting and maintenance, preservation of Maryland native meadow plants, creek bank vegetation restoration and invasive plant management.
- Transfer students – get to know each other and learn about campus resources today in the Charles Carroll room at Stamp at 3:30 p.m.