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Stein to jump into gov race with Green-Rainbow bid

By Jim O’Sullivan / State House News Service  Thursday, January 7, 2010

Dr. Jill Stein plans to join the race for 2010 race for governor, running as a Green-Rainbow candidate and pushing the issue of universal health care, posing a challenge to Gov. Deval Patrick’s left flank.

Stein told the News Service late today that she plans to formally announce her campaign later this month. Her candidacy will further complicate a field that already has two major Republican candidates, a state treasurer running as an independent, and Patrick, the Democrat seeking reelection.

“I am very excited to offer voters a real choice for change,” Stein told the News Service in an interview. “We’re looking at three candidates for governor who have very similar opinions on a variety of key issues. It’s very important that voters have a second choice.”

Continue reading Dr. Jill Stein throws her hat into 2010 gubernatorial race
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December opened up with another escalation in Afghanistan. Then there was the sabotage of binding carbon reductions in Copenhagen. On Christmas Eve, there was the Insurance Company Entitlement Act masquerading as health care reform.

By the end of the month a sharp debate had broken out in the progressive media and blogosphere. The number of progressives airing their nagging doubts about the wisdom of putting all their eggs in the basket of the Democrats reached a critical mass.

It is not enough to say that Obama and the Democrats have betrayed progressives, or that, as always, the path to change begins with grassroots mobilization. A critical part of the solution is a progressive third party. Without the political independence of progressives, both major parties ignore progressives who are left holding their nose and voting for the Democrats as the lesser evil.

All the doubts in the back of progressives’ minds are coming into sharp focus. The recycled Bushies and Clintonites appointed by the administration. The trillions for war and Wall Street while unemployment, foreclosures, and economic stagnation deepened. Single payer “off the table.” Card check union recognition abandoned. Complicity in Bush-era war crimes by refusing to “look back” and prosecute. New crimes committed with the continuation of extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, torture by proxy, targeted assassinations, indefinite detention, habeas suspension, state secrets, military commissions, and warrantless wiretapping. Tacit support for the Honduran military coup. “Secret” wars in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. The list goes on.

Continue reading 2010: Third Party Time for Progressives and Independents?
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Standing in a Home Depot in Alexandria, Va. on December 15th, President Obama announced that weatherization is “sexy.” Despite efforts to erase unsavory mental images, American curiosity was piqued about energy efficiency.  People are seeking info on rebates and tax credits for improvements to save money and cut greenhouse gas emissions, while exploring additional support on the state level.    

A big green bubble of money is headed right for us.  Care should be taken to ensure it doesn’t pop and leave us with an expensive mess.

Massachusetts has been a national leader in energy efficiency policy since 1997 when state law required electric companies to offer efficiency programs to ratepayers.  On July 2, 2008, Governor Patrick signed the Green Communities Act, which required electric and natural gas companies to file energy efficiency plans every three years.  The Department of Public Utilities (DPU) ensures that energy efficiency programs “are delivered in a cost-effective manner capturing all available efficiency opportunities, minimizing administrative costs to the fullest extent practicable, and utilizing competitive procurement processes to the fullest extent practicable.”

In March of 2009 The Zero Net Energy Buildings Task Force, also established under the Green Communities Act, outlined a strategy for growing the energy efficiency sector in “Getting to Zero.”  This report guides universal adoption of zero net energy buildings for new residential and commercial construction by 2030.  It also outlines goals and hurdles for retrofitting existing buildings for increased energy efficiency.

“Getting to Zero” identifies 5 barriers to growing the retrofit industry, which are echoed in the more recent federal report from the Vice President’s Middle Class Task Force October 2009 “Recovery through Retrofit;” a simpler, less ambitious, version of our state-level publication.

#1 The high upfront cost of effective energy efficiency improvements to the homeowner.

#2 The lack of a consistently and well-trained energy efficiency workforce.

#3 A lack of building performance information to provide reliable projections for financing and marketing energy efficiency improvements.

#4 Building operator and occupant behavior can undermine building improvements.

#5 Regulatory and permitting barriers can stall and prevent retrofitting projects.

Continue reading Are the stimulus jobs too “green” ?
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I’ve never actually made a New Year’s Resolution. Those resolutions I have made only had a habit of fluttering out of bar-room windows on ensuing Saturday nights during that magical time between midnight and three in the morning when indulgences can be purchased for the price of a beer, a wink, or a basket of wings. And most resolutions are woefully narcissistic anyway: I’ll quit smoking, I’ll lose the spare tire, and, per the Commandments, I’ll do my darnedest to stop coveting my neighbor’s goods, wife, and ass. But by and large, I’ve never really been much interested in a New, Improved Me. And at my age, I’m basically a greased pig doing 180s on the frozen downward slope to the grave anyway.

But I am very interested indeed in a new, improved state, country, and globe, because-despite the rose-tinted images that trawled across your TV screen on New Year’s Eve-we’re rapidly turning all three into godforsaken shitholes….

Continue reading Happy Green Year: Be It Resolved…

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At best flawed, at worst chaotic.

That was the verdict of Gordon Brown, Britain’s Prime Minister, on the world leaders’ protracted photo-op in Copenhagen. “[A] worse-than-nothing deal slapped together in the last two hours,” is how Greenpeace blogger mikeg describes it.

By now it’s clear that the hard work of the NGOs and activists didn’t pay off the way many had hoped. Absent an international agreement, national and state-level responses are now essential, and here in Massachusetts we have the opportunity of the 2010 state elections to open up a policy space around real, Green climate-change solutions.

As we Greens gear up for the elections we need to assume the role of Official Opposition in Massachusetts (a role the Republicans abdicated long ago) and start subjecting the Democratic government’s policies to strict scrutiny.

Let’s start with the Democrats’ flagship climate-change measure, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). This cap-and-trade scheme is what the Governor and the legislative leadership point to in answer to questions about their commitment to tackling climate change. But what do schemes like RGGI actually do, other than enrich carbon speculators?

I know one thing RGGI does: It provides a cloak for companies like GDF Suez to hide behind. GDF Suez is the energy giant that owns the coal-burning power station at Mount Tom in Western Massachusetts, a facility that emits more than one million tons of CO2 every year. At the beginning of December I wrote the company’s CEO, Gerard Mestrallet, asking him to switch from coal to renewables at Mount Tom. His answer, which arrived a couple of days ago, explained to me that GDF Suez participates in RGGI.

Well, that’s all right then.

Among the myriad problems that cap-and-trade schemes generate is the one Mr. Mestrallet’s letter represents; the problem of allowing major polluters to pose as public-spirited world citizens. It’s time to put RGGI under the microscope and hold the Democrats accountable.

Continue reading Chaos Theory
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Green Mass Group is an effort by concerned global citizens (who happen to live in the state of Massachusetts) to build an online community that will engage in a political discourse that is rooted in reality and steeped in compassion.

We have seen the word “Green” robbed of its meaning and we will use this site to reclaim it.

The Green movement is an ecological movement, based on the idea that the whole human experiment is part of nature and not separate from it. Human systems are subject to nature’s laws whether we like it or not. Human endeavors are inextricably linked to our biosphere. Our health and well-being is intricately connected to the health and well-being of plant and animal species across the planet. Our economic, social, and political systems cannot change this simple fact — they must reflect it.

Continue reading Taking back “Green”, taking back the planet
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