Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement
Put together a slideshow of images from the Capitol Climate Action.
Remember, there are lots of ways to stay involved past this action, and even in the last couple days, people have been mobilizing & taking action and others facing repression.
p.s. the original slideshow had different music that youtube did not allow. check it out here.
Cross-posted from Yes! Magazine. Jake Blumgart is a guest blogger for YES! and an editorial intern for The American Prospect and Campus Progress Magazine.
Coal was the target of the mass action that blockaded the Capitol Hill power plant on March 2nd. It was specifically mentioned by movement visionary Van Jones in his speech, and it was the subject of multiple panels and workshops. Although many attendees had conflicting views on movement ideology and tactics, no one even played devil’s advocate for “clean coal”. During one panel, a speaker asked the packed room, “Who here believes in clean coal?” Not a hand went up.
It’s not often that I post a link to a Fox News or Economist article, as both news sources that often blur the line between editorial content and objective reporting. Today I’m happy to report that The Economist has given up hope in the false promise of clean coal. Check it out:
Politicians are pinning their hopes for delivery from global warming on a technology that is not quite airtight
Read the full article from The Economist print edition: Mar 5th 2009
Speaking of getting arrested to stop coal, apparently 3,000 blocking the streets of DC doesn’t scare the government but one volunteer driving home a granny does. Head to the March 14th March against TVA, to show TVA that this is unacceptable. Remember, TVA is a government run company.
On Thursday, March 5 United Mountain Defense member Matt Landon was arrested by TVA police while giving a ride home to an elderly disabled Swan Pond resident, Eva Hewitt. The two were returning from the Tennessee Environmental and Conservation public meeting held earlier that day where Eva was one of several community members who spoke at a citizen’s press conference about health concerns relating to the TVA disaster.
Continue reading ‘Volunteer Arrested at TVA Disaster Site for Driving Grandmas Home’
At 8:30 this morning Alliant Energy, a subsidiary of Interstate Power and Light, announced its plans to abandon construction of a 649 MW coal plant in Marshalltown, Iowa. The decision comes only 6 days after the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) agreed to extend the public comment period from 30 to 90 days and add 5 public meetings after receiving hundreds of emails, postcards and letters from people throughout the state in response to a call for action from groups including the Sierra Club, Iowa Interfaith Power & Light, and Iowa Global Warming. The extension of the comment period forced Alliant to confront the economic reality that this coal plant just is not a good investment.
The Marshalltown plant was the last remaining proposed coal plant in Iowa. In early January, LS Power/Dynegy decided to discontinue efforts to build a new coal plant in Waterloo.
In early 2007, Interstate Power and Light spokesman Scott Drzycimski announced a plan to construct a 600 MW coal-fired plant outside of Marshalltown, IA. The project was to be headed by Alliant Energy, one of IPL’s subsidiaries, and would create 65 permanent jobs and 1,000 temporary ones over the span of its construction. Alliant’s announcement today cited the current economic climate, a recent ratemaking decision by the Iowa Utilities Board, and impending federal future greenhouse gas regulations.
Continue reading ‘Another One Bites The Dust: Coal Victory in Iowa!’
Campus Progress published a new Crib Sheet and it’s about green jobs! If you haven’t checked it out yet, our Crib Sheets section is a place where young progressives can post short informational blurbs about the issues they care about. Look around for past cribs, and let me know if you’d like to add one yourself.
Here is an excerpt from the Green Jobs crib:
Environmentalists see the stimulus as an opportunity to spur a revolution that will transform America’s old, gray, industrial economy based on coal, oil, and other dirty fossil fuels, into one that runs on clean, renewable energy. While green initiatives make up less than one-eighth of the stimulus bill, the chatter is all about green jobs, green infrastructure, and green energy. Green, green, green. But what exactly green jobs are and how such an infrastructure can be implemented are some of many questions that have yet to be answered.
Read the rest here!
Originally posted at WattHead – Energy News and Commentary
Joe Lucas has a hard job. He’s the PR huckster that heads up the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, the front group that shills for the coal industry.
As you can see in the video below, no matter how many times he watches “Thank You for Smoking,” Lucas just can’t quite pull off the irresistibly charismatic charm of Aaron Eckhart’s Nick Naylor, the movie’s lead character who spins Big Tobacco’s lies so effortlessly. To be fair, when your industry keeps bumbling around, letting off billion gallon toxic coal sludge spills, indescrimantly blasting the tops off of entire mountains, and buying off West Virginia judges, it’s hard to stay ahead of reality.
While he can’t pull off the style, Lucas sure is taking notes from Big Tobacco when it comes to his talking points: in an interview on CNN last night, Mr. Lucas refused to answer a simple yes or no question about whether or not the burning of coal contributed to climate change.
His answer? “I’m not a scientist.” Nice dodge!
Well Joe, neither am I, but I can read, and I’m pretty sure the science is in. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which I’m pretty sure includes two or three scientists) stated with greater than 90% certainty that greenhouse gas emissions like the CO2 spewed from coal plants causes climate change. Check out the video below the fold (Lucas’s BS is about 2:00 mins in)…
Continue reading ‘“Clean” Coal and “Healthy” Cigarettes – Coal Industry Huckster Won’t Admit Burning Coal Causes Climate Change’
Around 1:30 today, just three days after the Power Shift Conference and Capitol Climate Action in Washington, DC, and less than a week after Raleigh County Circuit Judge John A. Hutchison granted Massey Energy’s Temporary Restraining Order against Mike Roselle and other members of Climate Ground Zero, a new group of protesters took action to bring a halt to mountaintop removal mining on Massey Energy’s Edwight mining site above Marsh Fork Elementary in Sundial, WV.
Building upon the momentum of the conference, the growing movement against mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining and the urgency of protecting the children at Marsh Fork Elementary from the pending danger of a massive dam failure of the Schumate sludge impoundment above the school, activists were once again arrested during a protest on the Edwight MTR site. This time however, was different.
Photo credit: Shadia Fayne Wood
Parecía una película. Me senté en una sala con unas cuarenta personas mientras muchas más seguían llegando. La sesión trataba sobre formas de Acción Directa No-Violenta (ADNV). Aprendimos lo que deberíamos hacer si la policía se nos acerca o si están a punto de arrestarnos, cómo deberíamos hablarle a la policía, lo que es ilegal o no en Washington y cuáles son nuestros derechos. Aprendimos de todo.
It seemed like a movie. I sat in a room with about 40 other people, and more and more came in during the session. The session was on Non-Violent Direct Action. We learned what we should do if the police get close to us or if they are about to arrest us. How we should talk to the police. What was illegal or not in Washinton, D.C., and what are our rights. We learned it all. Continue reading ‘El Último Día en Washinton-¡Ayuda! / The Last Day in Washington-Help!’
I spent the past few months (the last two weeks in Washington D.C.) working with an incredible group of organizers, trainers and activists on the Capitol Climate Action. On Monday, after a greatly successful weekend of outreach and training (our buildup trained almost 2,000 people in non-violence action tactics) at Power Shift, we turned out 3,000+ students, environmentalists, people of faith, front line community members and many others to risk arrest at the Capitol Power Plant.
While the police made no arrests as we overwhelmed every entrance to that plant and they barricaded themselves in it, I am without a doubt that we took the No Coal/Climate Justice movement to another level. Continue reading ‘Beyond the Capitol Climate Action’
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