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During the spring of 2010, hundreds of climate advocates from Maine to Oregon, Florida to New Mexico, joined to go to their congressional leaders' offices and demand that we protect the Clean Air Act -- so that it can continue to protect us.
They spoke up for clean energy, green jobs, the Clean Air Act, but most of all for creating a sustainable, prosperous clean future for ourselves and future generations. This video is just a taste of those actions. Read more about The Storms at http://www.1sky.org/stormblogsDuring the spring of 2010, hundreds of climate advocates from Maine to Oregon, Florida... more
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The following guest post is by Gillian Caldwell, campaign director of 1 Sky. She originally posted this on 1Sky's blog.
Last night, I went to hear what President Obama had to say at a Gen44 event organized by the Democratic National Committee (note that I took time off from 1Sky to attend the event because 1Sky is a 501(c)(3) organization and we can’t -- and don’t -- do any electoral work).
Anyway, I happened to catch President Obama on a rope line and decided on the fly to challenge him on the mythology of clean coal since our base has been so concerned about his repeated calls for clean coal (and nuclear and oil drilling) alongside real renewable energy solutions. My partner Louis captured the exchange on his iPhone.
Here is what happened and a transcript as best as I can put it together since the audio isn’t great, especially on my voice -- although Obama comes through loud and clear and we have our work cut out for us!
We shake hands, I grab President Obama’s hands with both of mine and look him straight in the eye:
Me: It’s got to be renewable energy. No more clean coal. [Inaudible: It’s a unicorn. It doesn’t exist.]
Obama: I disagree with you. I disagree with you. We are not going to get all our energy from wind and solar in the next 20 years…
Me: Let the market do it. Let the market do it. Can't the market make the investment? [Inaudible: It’s hundreds of billions of dollars (we’d be investing in "clean coal" in the House version of the bill)]
Obama: They can’t do it. The technology’s not there. I’ve got a nuclear physicist in my Department of Energy who cares more about climate change than anyone and he will tell you you can’t get it done just with that -- so you’ve got to have a transition period to do all this other stuff. Don’t be stubborn about it!
Me: It’s about getting the votes [inaudible: in Congress isn’t it?]
Obama: This is not a votes matter, This is a technological matter. It really is. I have looked into it.
Me: We’re running a national campaign and people are really upset about this –
Obama: I know everybody’s….listen, if I could do it all with wind and solar I would! We can ramp it up. That's what we're working on.
So what was really going on here in this brief exchange between me and President Obama with the noisy bugles in the background?
We were talking past each other, for one thing.
President Obama was making two points:
We can't kick our dirty coal habit right away. It's going to take some time -- he has said at least 20 years.
Because we aren't going to get rid of coal immediately, it's worth it for the federal government to invest in carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology , to make coal cleaner for now.
Generally speaking, we agree with his first point. Some persuasive arguments have been made that we can get rid of coal in the next 10-20 years but right now almost half of our electricity comes from coal, and retiring those old dirty plants won't happen overnight. That's why we agree with the President that our clean energy transition must start immediately. As President Obama has said, "it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America."
However, we disagree strongly with the President's assertion that the federal government needs to help bail out America's aging coal industry by footing the bill for carbon capture and sequestration technology as they limp into the 21st century.
Here are a few reasons we think the federal government should hold off on CCS investments:
Thanks to recent energy efficiency investments under the Recovery Act -- and the potential for further investment in the near term -- new generating capacity for power may not even be necessary until we're ready to start retiring dirty old coal plants.
We should try to get the biggest "bang for our buck" out of new capacity we add to our electricity mix. Renewable sources of electricity, like wind energy, are currently sold at one third the price of even the rosiest CCS projections. Not to mention, investments in renewable energy create four times more jobs than comparable investments in fossil fuel infrastructure.
If we want to win the clean energy race, we need to lead the way in the most promising renewable energy solutions, like wind and solar, not a band aid for the aging coal industry that hasn't been pulling its weight. In 2009, China made record investments in renewable energy, dramatically increasing its renewable energy manufacturing capacity, and practically doubling their wind power capacity. Despite the inflated claims about China needing CCS technology, they are investing their public funds in wind, not CCS. As the East Coast Greenway Alliance's Executive Director Dennis Markatos-Soriano tells us, the global wind power market grew 37.5% in 2009 -- which was supposed to be a down year for renewables! If wind can keep up this growth rate another couple years and solar can get back to 2005-2008 rates, they will easily provide all new electricity demand needs globally by 2015.
Finally, unlike new clean energy technology, which is an emerging industry with little political power, the coal industry has been manipulating American politics for years. Like the banks, the coal industry has been in the business of reaping short term profits at the expense of the American people's health and economic viability in the emerging clean energy economy. The coal industry has not been doing their part to modernize their operations, and are instead asking the American people to foot the bill, to keep their operations economically viable. Over the past several years, the coal industry has reaped $17 in in profits for every $1 invested in CCS research. In the meantime, they've managed to lobby congress to secure over $1.9 billion over several years on CCS projects - none of which are fully operational. What's more, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) members have annual advertising budget of over $45 million. ACCCE members combined have annual profits on order of $50-$60 billion, but have collectively invested only $3.5 billion (.pdf) over the last several years
Simply put, CCS isn’t an investment the federal government should be making – because it’s risky and we shouldn’t take big risks with taxpayer dollars. We especially can’t afford to be making risky investments in the context of the biggest recession since the depression. According to Joe Romm at the Center for American Progress, even the most optimistic modeling for CCS costs place it at 3 times the cost of wind power. On average, it will take longer to build CCS capacity as well. It takes about a decade to get CCS projects from the drawing board to operation. Google, which has a strong technology team working on the route to a clean energy future, says we don't need CCS .
The President has been talking a lot lately – and rightly so – about the fact that the United States is falling behind in the race for a clean energy future. But we should be investing in renewables, like wind, solar, and geothermal.
If you are interested in some straight up myths and facts on the oxymoron that is "clean coal," see this analysis by Greenpeace.
So President Obama: Don’t be stubborn about it, or we will be! Don’t waste billions of dollars in federal funding propping up the dinosaur energy infrastructure of coal, nuclear and oil. Focus on investing in the renewable energy of the future and let the private market take the risks if CCS is such a great investment.
Let’s keep up the pressure: Call your Senators now and tell them we need a real renewable energy package to tackle climate change.
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1Sky's goal is to build a diverse, society-wide mobilization that will convince our federal government to take bold action by 2010. To identify the steps that our leaders need to take in order to shift our nation away from climate change and toward the prosperity of a green economy, we've engaged a network of leading scientists and economists to create the 1Sky Solutions. Click on any of the solutions below to learn more.The following guest post is by Gillian Caldwell, campaign director of 1 Sky. She... more
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leahl
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The New York Times is reporting news that's a bummer to swallow:
Officials of several European countries have cited what they see as a lack of political will on the part of the United States to adequately address climate change. The American reluctance to accept any agreement that would require legally binding and internationally enforceable targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could doom the, they said.
Really: so...what is happening between the desire for the every day person wanting to make sure they have a happy and healthy planet for to pass onto their to their children? (rhetorical question: don't feel obliged to reply). Hasn't this all been said a million times before? It's beginning to feel like a lot of "blah blah blah." But the message is clear: (blah blah blah) You need to tell your political leaders how you think they should be managing the issues. (blah blah blah). I know, you've heard it all before. (Blah blah blah). I"m sick of it to (picking up the phone now) blah blah blah. (dialing my Representative). (Blah blah blah) (every phone call or email equals 1,000 people calling in) (blah blah blah).
Soo.. don't just sit there. What are you going to do about it?
Great orgs who will help you make contact: 1sky and the energy action coalition.The New York Times is reporting news that's a bummer to swallow:
Officials of... more
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leahl
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As I packed in preparation to visit my family this summer, I fantasized about what awaited me: long days nothing to do but stare at the water, swim, and read my book from start to finish, with no interruptions.
I settled on Adam Werbach’s recently published book, “Strategy for Sustainability.” Adam’s book proved to be more inspiring than the title suggested, and I appreciated his linguistic prowess in between stats, facts, and bullet points while discussing a new corporate paradigm for sustainability. So I was content until I made one fatal flaw, I watched the movie Twilight. I instantly borrowed the second book in the series, and my obligatory moments of reading turned into rapid-fire-steal-every-moment-I-can-away-from-the-family-I-traveled-across-the-country-to-visit so-I-can-find-out-what’s-going-to-happen-next.
Truth be told, I’m a sucker for vampire stories. So when my mother inquired about my fascination, I was a tad shocked by what flew from my mouth: Not an explanation that the stories are...well…hot, but rather a tirade on and how the modern day vampire story is just a metaphor for the sustainability challenges of our time. Who knew?
There is a theme that runs through all of the modern day vampire stories: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, and True Blood all revolve around a central character who is inherently torn to fight their true nature: which is to kill in order to survive. The modern day vampire stories all have central characters who have found a new way to survive in the world, a way which is different than their predecessors’.
1. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the vampire Angel buys blood from the hospital and keeps it in his fridge (and then protects Buffy the vampire slayer and kills bad vampires).
2. In the Twilight series, the Cullen family turns “vegetarian” (i.e. they only eat animals and not people).
3. In True Blood, the vampires eat True Blood, a blood substitute developed in Japan.
Yet at the end of the day, they are all still life sucking murderers fighting that bad part of themselves that’s very nature is designed to kill bodies and destroy souls.
The stories get exciting when the main heartthrob is tortured by the fear that the nature of what he is will kill the thing he loves most. In Buffy, Angel loves Buffy, in Twilight, Edward loves Bella, and in True Blood, Bill loves Sookie. As much as these male vamps desire their female morsels…I mean, mortals… if they give in to their truest desire…which is to suck their blood…they will either destroy them by killing them, or destroy their truest essence by killing their soul and transforming them into a vampire.
I think I love this story because in so many ways (not to be melodramatic or anything), I live this story. Every day I fight my impulses in the name of saving the planet as we know it. The story of the times we live in is that the nature of our culture and society is to consume past the point of sustainability; yet if we continue to give in to our desire to consume, we will either destroy or transform the world we live into something that lacks the soul that we fell in love with in the first place.
As we feed our desires for food, travel, beautiful clothes, big houses, fast cars, the latest technology, we create more. The more we create, the more we consume. The more we consume, the more we kill.
And we are killing off the things I love most. The oceans are filling with plastic debris at an alarming rate and changing the food chain cycles of the ocean. Samples from the ocean are coming up with more plastic particles than plankton.
TED Talks - Charles Moore: Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
We are wiping our asses with virgin forests.
We are in the midst of the 6th mass extinction (the first mass extinction caused by humankind).
So it’s a hell of a lot more fun to read the Twilight series than one more article about dolphin slaughter, polar bears drowning, local rivers filled with dead fish, virgin forests decapitated, or sharks on the verge of extinction.
Whatever you call it, global warming or climate change, the question remains, how will we fight our internal nature? I just learned that my diet creates a larger carbon footprint than my travel. If I didn’t know better, I’d say our modern society is breeding one helluva mega coven of vampires.
But are we dealing with a case of nature vs. nurture? Are we true vampires? Vampires are turned into soulless blood sucking beings against their will. Is our society and capitalistic systems constructed in such a way that forces us into being something our original nature never intended us to be? It is easy to point to the majority of aboriginal and native tribal life styles, from which we all originate, as being more aligned with living sustainable living practices: aka insuring that the planet would be able to continue to feed and house future generations.
But I am horrified when I examine the impact of just the first few hours of my day. I wake on my eco-friendly mattress but the wood my bed is made from probably comes from the South America. My night clothes, a gift, were made in China and have the sweat of child labor and and the weight of a heavy carbon foot print on them. I reach for water from a glass from Pier One imports (I contacted them via twitter inquiring about how their productions cycle: the informed the glasses I own were hand made in China, but when I asked about their carbon offset program: no answer). I get dressed with clothes that are mostly from consignment stores, so at least I am reusing, but am still knowledgeable that the garment industry has a complex supply chain that has a significant carbon footprint. I walk though the house, aside from the most recent layer of non toxic paint I put on myself, it is mostly made with toxic processes.
I drink water from the tap, which comes from the Hetch Hetchy damn and reservoir in Yosemite National Park. The damn that buried the Hetch Hetchy Valley was once described as "a wonderfully exact counterpart" of Yosemite Valley, and therefore "one of nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples." So this is what I think of when I water my garden. I take great pleasure in the orchids that we have (instead of cut flowers) that are more than likely flown in from Hawaii, make a shake that includes organic bananas (at least I’m not poising the workers that harvest them) and then I hop on my bike which was manufactured in Taiwan, and casual car pool to work. I then get a cup of peets coffee, which while sustainably harvested, but still comes from half way around the world, and the I…well, you get the point.
Nearly everything I touch feels like it has a destructive element to it, either it was made via unfair labor, used the land through unsustainable practices, has a mammoth carbon footprint, or is dangerous to throw away. It makes me feel like… a monster. A vampire monster to be exact, sucking the life and soul out of this planet just in order to sustain my own life.
Perhaps I can find hope in learning a few lessons from the champions of the vampire world. You know the ones, the vampires who overcame their nature to kill and who use their super powers to protect what they cherish and hold dear to them (see how reading Twilight has become an important part of my research for this blog post?).
There are several key lessons I take from the vampire stories that may be the key to saving the world as we know it:
Lesson 1: Vampires have had time to learn from their mistakes, and act on what they learn. With time on their side, the vampires’ ability to live forever provides plenty of time to ponder and learn from their mistakes. They have to do what we do not: live with the consequences of their actions for eternity. Every champion character is able to fight his true nature because the price they would pay if they gave in to it their desires is too high.
Lesson 2: The vampires who are creating a whole new way of life are “younger” vampires. They are usually the 100-500 year-old vampires that make major changes (with a few exceptions of course). It would seem that it is easier to develop new habits when you haven’t had the old habits for thousands of years. The new environmental organizations popping up are showing great promise, addressing the climate crisis with unprecedented energy and unique collaborations. 350.org, The Energy Action Coalition and 1Sky are just a few of the inspired groups that have recently emerged.
Lesson 3: At the end of the day, the vampires decided to change their “true nature” so they can live with the people they love, rather than live a lonely and isolated life. Lets get real, we all need motivation, and love is a great motivator. The modern day vampire show doesn’t show us much about how the vampires transitioned from being evil blood sucking murderers to developing the will power and self control it takes to become the “good vampire,” but it does show us that not wanting to kill what you love most is a great motivator to stay "clean."
If I were to activate a super power it would be to learn from and act on the mistakes of our the past generations at hyper speed. Can Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, can Jack jump over the coal powered smoke stack?
When given the chance to choose, the mass majority of people on the planet choose to consume everything that is available to them. It is a conscious choice to want less. But now we are having to develop a new skill: saying no in the face of plenty.
So I’ll leave you with some good news: Air pollution is decreasing, there is an army of people dedicating their lives to saving the planet, and there is more information available that points to the problems and the solutions than ever before.
So remember the millennial mantra: More is killing us: less will sustain us.
And remember the vampires: if they made conscious decisions to find new alternatives to sucking blood and killing the things they desire, than so can we.
Related links:
Sarah Haskins in Target Women: Vampires (video)
Toxic bananas (video)Gavin Newsom Talks About San Francisco's Leadership in the Sustainability Movement (video)
Sustainable Agriculture
Burning Man Green Man (video)
Joe takes on Green Fest (video)As I packed in preparation to visit my family this summer, I fantasized about what... more
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http://www.themediaconsortium.org/2010/03/12/weekly-mulch-politics-confuse-public-perception-of-climate-change/
By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user Victius, via Creative Commons License.Americans don’t know what to think about climate change anymore. A few years ago, the public more or less trusted the science that said human activity was raising global temperatures, but now that Congress and the Obama administration have hemmed and hawed about climate issues, we’re not longer so sure.
Forty-eight percent of Americans—more of us than ever before—believe that reports of global warming are “generally exaggerated,” according to a new Gallup poll. Climate science hasn’t changed, so it’s not crazy to look at these numbers and think that conservatives’ incessant critiques of climate change may be working.
A perfect political storm
These shifts in opinion started around 2008. Aaron Wiener at the Washington Independent argues that the politics of climate change are driving American opinions about the reality of global warming. The percentage of Americans willing to put the blame for climate change on humans is about equal to the percentage of Americans still behind President Barack Obama’s agenda, he notes.
“What was once a broad moral and scientific issue is now a centerpiece of the Democrats’ legislative agenda,” he writes.
Republicans have taken a political stand on climate change, too, one that reinforces the message that we can afford to ignore global warming. At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum links the Gallup numbers to confusion about Copenhagen and to negative “Climategate” stories about a few climate scientists’ unprofessional emails.
But taking a wider view, Drum points out another big problem: “The Republican Party has largely decided that climate change simply doesn’t exist. It’s a hoax,” he says.
Green xenophobia
It’s also politically convenient for a party that throws a tantrum every time the president produces a policy idea. But in another corner of the right’s world, conservatives are eager to defend the country’s environment against the burden of immigration.
Jamilah King reports for ColorLines that Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), which is linked to a conservative anti-immigrant group, is warning that immigration “is pushing our country deeper into ecological deficit.”
King refutes this notion, citing reports that population and pollution are not directly linked. “In fact, newly arrived immigrants are probably among the most ecologically friendly folks around,” she writes. “They’re more likely to use public transportation and less likely to waste food.”
Impacts of climate change
Conservatives who’d prefer that immigrants stay on the other side of the border would do better to worry about Republicans’ studied blindness to climate change. Without action, global warming could send waves of people north, as places like Mexico grow warmer and can no longer support the same amount of agriculture.
Inter Press Service lays out some of the detrimental effects of climate change on poorer countries, particularly on the female half of the population. Women are more vulnerable to the natural disasters that accompany global warming, and the tasks that they take on, like collecting water and firewood, will grow harder as water becomes more scarce.
Overall, Thalif Deen reports, “The negative fallout from climate change is having a devastatingly lopsided impact on women compared to men.”
Slow Senate progress
The Senate is trying to move forward on climate change legislation. A key group of Senators met this week at the White House with President Obama, but coming out, the legislators had only “vague observations” to share about progress, according to Mother Jones’ Kate Sheppard.
Part of the problem with the Senate’s process is that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) have already said that they’ll likely discard the sort of cap-and-trade provisions that the House bill used to regulate carbon emissions. From an environmental point of view, the Senate is getting close to doing nothing at all.
“It’s really clear that whatever attains 60 votes in the US Senate at this stage in the game is at best an extremely incremental step forward,” Gillian Caldwell, campaign director at the environmental group 1Sky, told Sheppard.
The new progressive energy
The Senate seems more eager, along with President Obama, to embrace nuclear energy as a climate solution.
“I happen to be one of the Senators who’s concerned about waste,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said at a recent summit, reports TPMDC. “But most progressives in the Senate believe nuclear power is part of the solution at this time.”
“If we don’t expand nuclear power, there are going to be more coal plants and more oil plants,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) added. “Nuclear power has been accepted as part of the solution [to climate change] among progressives.”
Considering the political will the Senate has been able to muster behind climate legislation, one might as well believe that reports of global warming are “greatly exaggerated.” After all, you’d think that if there was a potentially catastrophic threat looming in the future, our elective representatives might want to, you know, do something about that.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.http://www.themediaconsortium.org/2010/03/12/weekly-mulch-politics-confuse-public-perce... more
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1Sky Policy Coordinator Jason Kowalski breaks down the most successful piece of environmental legislation to date, the Clean Air Act (CAA). After some background he discusses the current attack on the CAA and why we need to protect it now more than ever.1Sky Policy Coordinator Jason Kowalski breaks down the most successful piece of... more
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David Ngatae, Chairperson of the Cook Islands Climate Action Network, spoke to 1Sky's Gillian Caldwell on the island nation Tuvalu’s intervention at the Copenhagen climate talks requesting a formal group to negotiate a binding treaty.David Ngatae, Chairperson of the Cook Islands Climate Action Network, spoke to... more
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Staff and supporters from 1Sky, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and other ally groups joined in front of the White House on December 4th to urge President Obama to show strong leadership during the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
Climate activists from across the United States have been sending in artwork over the last several weeks sending messages of climate action. These works were displayed in front of the White House before being used in a giant aerial photo and then delivered to the Obama administration.
1Sky Campaign Director Gillian Caldwell gave these remarks during the rally.Staff and supporters from 1Sky, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and other ally... more
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It's time to "Make Art for Climate" to urge the President and our leaders to step up their efforts for strong climate legislation. In line with the creative spirit of October 24, people all across the country will make art to urge Obama to travel to Copenhagen. If you want to hold a "Make Art for Climate" gathering with friends, neighbors, and family, sign up at http://www.1sky.org/ArtIt's time to "Make Art for Climate" to urge the President and our... more
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Sign up to host your own 1Sky Climate Action Party, where you'll bring together people from your community to call your senators and plan your October 24th event pushing for Senate and international action on climate. You've stepped up to be a climate leader in the past, so we're counting on you. Create your own Climate Action Party today!Sign up to host your own 1Sky Climate Action Party, where you'll bring together... more
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On Wednesday, October 29, Nobel Laureate Al Gore will speak to young people nationwide in a live webcast that kicks off Power Vote's final push this election to galvanize climate voters in demanding a clean energy future in the United States.
Please RSVP for this important event here:
http://www.powervote.org/gore
Gore will speak about the role of young people in RePowering America and why it's so important that we get as many climate voters as possible to turn out on November 4th at our country's most important battle ground: the ballot box.
Here are the details:
* WHAT: Al Gore webcast on RePowering America and the 2008 Election
* WHEN: Wednesday, October 29th, 8:30 pm Eastern
* RSVP: http://www.powervote.org/gore (or find a local viewing party)
We need our elected officials to know there are millions of young people for whom green jobs, a clean energy economy, and the securing of our climate is a top priority. That's why the Power Vote campaign has partnered with the We Campaign and 1Sky to host and spread the word about this event. Even more importantly: we are all working together to Get Out the (Power) Vote on November 4 and give voice to more climate voters at the polls than ever before.
This webcast is an extraordinary opportunity for people across the country - both young and old - to come together and build an even bigger, stronger clean energy movement in the days before this historic election. We hope you'll join us.
Please RSVP to watch Al Gore's webcast, and take a moment to share this email with your friends and contacts:
http://www.powervote.org/gore
On Wednesday, October 29, Nobel Laureate Al Gore will speak to young people nationwide... more
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