USCAP lobbies for cap and trade, but due to the obvious conflict of interest (i.e. the government now owns 80% of AIG), they are pulling out.
You may remember in Dec. 2007, Rising Tide spoofed USCAP with a hoax website saying that the lobbying group was calling for an 80% reduction by 2050 and a moratorium on new coal fired power plants.
Obviously, USCAP wants nothing of the sort, and I’m not convinced the government does either.
These three words must become the GUIDING PRINCIPLE OF OUR LIVES for the next 16 DAYS.
We face a failing economy, a faltering climate, and a world of increasing anxiety & insecurity.We also know exactly how to shift to a just and prosperous economy powered by clean energy…and this Power Shift will only happen if OUR generation works and fights for it.
Power Shift 2009 is the moment our generation will arrive, and jumpstart what history will look back on as nothing short of a civilizational revolution. We each have only one mind-numbingly simple job for the next 16 days:
BUTTS IN SEATS.
So here’s what to do:
Recruit like crazy between now and Saturday.Talk to friends, have friends talk to friends, go to classes, go to clubs, and DON’T STOP EVEN IF YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT LOGISTICS.They will work out.
Register as many Power Shifters as you can at www.powershift09.org by this Saturday at midnight PST, to get the $40 dicount rate.Use this discount code: p0wersh1ft.
Concerned this job is too hard?Afraid you’re not up for it?Fretting over logistics?I assure you, none of your doubts will matter in 16 days, let alone a year from now.What WILL matter a year from now is whether we look back and see that THIS was the moment we brought together a movement of courageous, determined young people strong enough to turn the tide.
Need some perspective?Take a second to remember whose shoulders you are standing on.Women were jailed for years fighting for the right to vote.Blacks were beaten and firehosed for standing up for their rights in the segregated South.People walked so long for the March on Washington the bottom of their shoes wore out.
Every generation must rise to its challenge, and this is ours.We have the chance to live the most meaningful lives that have ever been lived…and it starts with butts in seats.
I often think about where the next backlash against the No Coal Movement is going to manifest next. Sometimes it’s the pro-coal front groups following coal activists on Twitter and spamming our blogs. Sometimes it’s disgusting “clean coal” ads. It’s manifested in a pretty ugly way in West Virginia as community activists like Maria Gunnoe have faced threats of property destruction and physical harm.
West Virginia’s local media seems to be on board with the pro-coal agenda as they engage in character assassination of prominent activists joining the fight.
Fox News (albeit locally) is acting as the propaganda arm of the coal industry and attacking non-violent activists for taking a stand. Their is a long list of violent tactics using firearms and vehicles against local WV activists that actually put lives at stake and rarely do we hear about that on Fox’s airwaves.
It would be nice to get a little truth out of the Fox News’ of the world for a change, although at this point I’d settle for a regular segment called the “No Coal Zone” featuring Mike Roselle for a little fair and balanced reporting.
The Brookings Institution officially unveiled a new proposal yesterday calling for “a new paradigm in energy innovation” at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The proposal, which was developed for over a year and is one of the most in-depth proposals for new energy R&D out there, calls for an “order of magnitude” increase in federal energy R&D investment and proposes a new model for clean energy technology research and commercialization: establishing a national network of regionally-based “Energy Discovery-Innovation Institutes” (e-DIIs) to serve as hubs of distributed research linking the nation’s best scientists, engineers, and facilities and effectively combining the forces of academia, government and industry.
This report urges two major changes in U.S. energy policy. First, it calls for an order-of-magnitude increase in federal investment levels for energy R&D, as a necessary step to matching the enormous scale of the nation’s energy problem with massive efforts to develop market-ready technological solutions. Second, it argues that the complexity of the nation’s energy challenges require that the nation make use of decentralized, multidisciplinary, collaboration-oriented new research paradigms better able to integrate scientific research, technology development and commercialization, and the production of human resources across a broad range of scientific, technological, economic, behavioral, and public policy considerations.
This past weekend the Billionaires for Coal threw a surprise party for Dominion at their Richmond, VA HQ.
Billionaires for Coal rally in support of Dominion Power’s dependence on coal
At noon on Saturday, February 7, approximately fifteen individuals identifying themselves as ‘Billionaires for Coal’ assembled in front of Dominion Power’s downtown offices to ostensibly voice their praise for the company’s many coal-fired power plants. Dressed in formal attire and sipping lemonade from Martini glasses, the group chanted pro-coal, anti-environment slogans and held signs expressing similar sentiments. In addition to rousing recitations such as, “Up with sea levels, up with profits,” the mid-day merriment included a live bluegrass performance by ‘The We Love Money String Band’ who frequently reassured their audience that they’re “only in it for the money.”
Addressing recent displays of opposition to Dominion’s proposed Wise County coal plant as well as the escalating presence of anti-coal activism on an international scale, Stan Sneezley, an alleged billionaire from Harrisonburg said. “I feel offended and assaulted by all of these people talking about asthma and climate change and their children’s future. These people obviously don’t care about me and my money at all! I say if a few million kids have to wheeze a little for me to breath easy, then so be it! I’m rich!”
The theatrical display at the corner of 8th and Cary bewildered and amused passing motorists and pedestrians. Though the group’s signs and chants kept on message with the façade of billionaires celebrating their controversial investments, leaflets distributed to on-lookers shed a different light on the events of the day. These half-paged documents revealed that the demonstration was in-fact organized by Blue Ridge Earth First! (BREF!), the same environmental organization that twice erected blockades of Dominion’s Tredegar St. headquarters in the Spring and Summer of last year, and participated with a number of groups in a blockade at the construction site of Dominion’s newest coal-burning power plant in Virginia’s mountainous southwest corner last September. Citing the impacts of mountain-top removal mining operations on Appalachian communities and coal’s role as the chief cause of climate-change among other grievances, the leaflets declared that BREF! holds a no-compromise opposition to all new coal-fired power plants. The leaflet also stated that the organization will continue it’s efforts to halt the Wise County plant, now in construction and planned to be operating by 2012, using “every tool in the activist tool-box” including civil disobedience and other forms of non-violent direct intervention.
Breaking character, Luis, an Earth First! activist from Charlottesville put it plainly, “Coal is dirty, dangerous and deadly. The public knows it and our political representatives are beginning to reflect our concerns on the matter. The one and only reason that companies like Dominion are still pushing for new coal plants is money. We know that from the mining, to the processing, to the burning and waste storage, coal is hurting people and the environment. By continuing to pursue a new coal-fired power plant in Wise County, Dominion is saying that the wealth of it’s investors is more important than the health and well-being of that area’s residents.”
What would it mean for the biofuel industry (or all new energy, for that matter) to be bought up by oil companies? I ask the question because VeraSun Energy, an ethanol company facing bankruptcy, received a bid this week from Valero Energy Corporation, an oil company.
Big oil companies have been working hard to re-define themselves as energy companies – evidenced by British Petroleum‘s transformation to Beyond Petroleum and Chevron’s Will You Join Uscampaign.
This could be a good thing or a bad thing. My first thought is, “great, it’s about time these big companies got in the good energy business!” But then I think of how they’ve run the oil business, and I get a bit nervous.
I’m also reminded of a loophole that Conoco-Phillips and Tyson tried using to get bio-diesel tax credits for putting a little turkey offal in with the old fashioned fossil oil. (Hats off to Congressman Lloyd Doggett for nipping that one in the bud.) Who knows what oil companies could do with some creative accounting and whatever biofuels-related money ends up in the stimulus bill.
From Rickshaws to Road Bikes: A Journey to Stop Climate Change from Michigan
I’ve been a cyclist nearly my whole life. My family has pedaled across lower Michigan three times, and my brother would rather ride 45 minutes of hills on his home-made fixed gear than drive 15 minutes to class. Are we crazy? Maybe, but last summer as I was biking through the cornfields of East Lansing, I knew I wanted to bring together my passion for biking and my motivation to fight climate change. Serendipitously, that very night I first heard about the Trek to Re-Energize America.
Spending last semester in Bangladesh, the effects of climate change took on a new light. I met the farmers whose land might be totally flooded in 10, 50, or 100 years. I met their wives and children. What a cruel joke that a country that pales in comparison to America’s carbon emissions now must suffer the consequences. Coming back to Michigan, climate justice has become more than a cause to me; it is for the Bangladeshi children who can’t go to school because of flooded roads, the farmers who lost their crops in a cyclone, and the strong women who are fighting to keep everything from falling apart. It is for the rickshaw pullers, for whom biking is not a pleasure, but a desperate way to subsist in poverty. This summer, I will be biking for them. Continue reading ‘The Trek to Re-Energize America: Michigan Gears Up’
Charlie Young is a 16 year-old climate activist from the UK. He recently went to the World Economic Forum to push economic and political leaders on climate action and wrote this report on his experience in Davos.
I’ve left the World Economic Forum with a new understanding of what we can do. The clockwork of the decision making infrastructure was briefly exposed to me, and I was forced by logic to change my perception of those in power.
Many of my fellow activists have argued that we need to destroy the system in order to avert catastrophic climate change. I found that idea difficult, as it seems to me that the WEF is here to stay. It is not going to be destroyed by campaigners refusing to be involved. Surely we have more power by getting inside, using the access to hold politicians to their promises, push for real solutions, and help design concrete plans for moving forward?
Make no mistake, it is vital to highlight the bad judgements of our decision-makers and pressure them to move in the right direction. But that alone won’t solve the problem. Don’t we need carrots as well as sticks?
In Davos, I found that some politicians and business leaders really do care. But how can a CEO of a multinational act without loosing their job? I’m not saying they’re all saints – they’re not. Yet, rather than try and put all our eggs in one basket, we can give them a platform, a mandate, to do the right thing.
And it’s not all down to ‘them’ either. As unaffiliated individuals we have a tremendous power to facilitate change on the ground. My mission statement is pretty much the same as the WEF’s: ‘to better the state of the planet’ only we have little structure or vested interests hindering our progress.
It’s ironic. As an activist I’m now trying to help the government. I am going to mobilise the public so that rather than the unlikely event of the government being forced into submission, those who want to make the right decisions can. Granted, we can’t just sit and clap and hope for good – nothing will happen. We need to make it politically feasible, or better, politically attractive.
How great would it be if government could gain votes by acting on climate change?
Let’s make that happen. Let’s supply solutions. Let’s keep going and bring this movement forward!
Even if you don’t know who Glenn Beck is, because you might have the good sense to avoid blowhard talking heads on Fox News, he seems to think he knows who we are. He thinks the youth climate movement are “Hitler Youth”, brainwashed by Al Gore to lead us into fascism.
Glenn Beck said: “Well, tonight — oh dear, this may not go well — when I finish this story, some may believe we’re on the way to the Hitler Youth … Are we having the new Hitler youth? Is that what this is? The new Hitler youth? I’m sorry, that’s so politically incorrect. The new green guard.” Source
You can see his scaremongering for yourself, recorded by Crooks and Liars:
Well, I know who and what Glenn Beck is. Glenn Beck is a bigoted, paranoid liar who will stoop at nothing to smear and destroy those who he sees as foes to the voodoo economics and dirty energy companies his ideology supports. He is a fossil fool and he should be exposed as one.
For a sampling of his smears and lies:
The first environmental justice advocate elected to congress, Keith Ellison, also was the first Muslim representative. Rep. Ellison was a mentor to me and a proud American who has stood up against the excesses of the Bush Administration. What did Glenn Beck ask him, when Keith went on his CNN show?
“With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, ‘Let’s cut and run.’ And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.’ And I know you’re not. I’m not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.” Source
Glenn seems to enjoy labeling environmental activists as fascists or communists or socialists, referencing Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, saying “It’s like Hitler” and denied Global Warming by using fossil fuel funded ‘experts’ on numerous occasions. Source
He also lied about oil production from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, claiming it would produce seventy times more than it could and decades earlier. Source
The fact that someone who is a serial liar and slanderer has such a prominent position in our media shows how far we have to go. Glenn has a right-wing radio show, and has a national cable TV show. If you want to express how disappointed you are that Glenn Beck would smear the diverse and independent youth climate movement, that draws from communities across this country, from indigenous youth to evangelical youth.
What can you do?
You can email his producer, stu@glennbeck.com, to express your disappointment. In fact, I think Glenn Beck is a very good candidate for Countdown on MSNBC’s Worst Person in the World. Feel free to nominate him here: countdown@msnbc.com
