LINKS: Full Green Ahead

ARTICLE: My Heart-Stopping Ride Aboard an Aircraft Carrier

FULL GREEN AHEAD

Damn the deniers, the doubters, and the bean counters. With Washington frozen solid on climate, the Navy is breaking the ice.

by Julia Whitty

I'M STRAPPED INTO my backward-facing seat on a COD, or "carrier onboard delivery" plane, the US Navy workhorse that ferries people, supplies, and mail to and from its aircraft carriers at sea. I cinch the four-point harness holding me in place. Then I cinch it some more. When it's as tight as it can go, an aircrewman walks by and yanks it so hard it squeezes the breath out of me. The hatch closes. Steam rises from the floor. Shit. I've watched the YouTube videos. I know what's coming. Takeoff, a 30-minute flight, then landing on the USS Nimitz, decks pitching, plane wings waggling, tailhook dangling from the underside of the aircraft to catch one of four arresting cables stretched across the flight deck. Since it's not hard to miss them all, the pilot will gun the engines at landing to enable an immediate relaunch. Which means that if he succeeds at trapping a cable we'll decelerate from 180 nautical miles per hour to zero in about one second...

Read more at Mother Jones.

APPEARANCE: Climate Desk Live in Washington DC

On Wednesday 27 February at 0930. To discuss Julia's cover story "Full Green Ahead" for the current issue of Mother Jones on how the US Navy is leading the charge into the 21st century on clean fuels and climate change—by navigating the tricky straits where national security and climate security intersect.

Through investments in biofuels, construction of a more energy-efficient fleet, forward thinking about issues like rising sea levels and a melting Arctic, and commitments to reduce consumption and reliance on foreign oil, the Navy is leading a vast energy reform effort to "change the way the US military sails, flies, marches, and thinks."

With Climate Desk Live host Chris Mooney and guests Ret. Rear Admiral David Titley,  former Oceanographer and Navigator of the Navy and director of Task Force Climate Change, Captain James Goudreau, Director of the Navy Energy Coordination Office, and Dr. D. James Baker, Director of the Global Carbon Measurement Program of the William J. Clinton Foundation and Former Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the Clinton Administration. At the University of California, Washington Center, 1608 Rhode Island Ave NW, Washington DC. View the invite here.