Hill Heat

• Adam Gardner – Guster guitarist, singer and founder, Reverb
• Don Endres – CEO, VeraSun
• Steve Gatto – CEO, Bioenergy LLC
• Nathanael Greene – senior policy analyst, Natural Resources Defense Council

Nathanael Greene posts on the hearing:

As I said I would in my last post, I testified yesterday before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming as part of a hearing on biofuels. And Adam Gardner of Guster was sitting there on the witness panel with me. In fact he spoke first and probably the most eloquently.

Adam and his wife started Reverb, a non-profit that helps bands green their tours by helping them use biodiesel in their buses, offsetting carbon emissions, setting up educational eco-villages outside of concerts, and other cool stuff. During his oral testimony, he talked about about how people from band members to students were getting inspired and taking action but also looking to Congress for leadership. I would assume that the transcript of this statement and his written testimony will be available on the Committee web site (link above) soon, I would recommend them to anyone worried about “kids these days” or generally feeling pessimistic.

(If you’re feeling down, don’t read the latest Global Environmental Outlook from UNEP. Here’s a quote from the press release:

It salutes the world’s progress in tackling some relatively straightforward problems, with the environment now much closer to mainstream politics everywhere. But despite these advances, there remain the harder-to-manage issues, the “persistent” problems. Here, GEO-4 says: “There are no major issues raised in Our Common Future for which the foreseeable trends are favourable.”

In addition to Adam's testimony you could also read my recent post on optimism and environmentalism.)