It’s Getting Hot In Here

Update from previous posts 1, 2, and 3.

17 activists in southern West Virginia have committed civil disobedience to stop mountaintop removal, believing that it is bad for people, the economy, and the environment, and must be stopped. As of early this afternoon, all 17 are out of jail (but still need help – donate to the legal defense fund!).

Legally speaking, I agree with them. The Necessity Defense is a little known and rarely used approach to ‘crimes’ one was forced to commit. The required elements for a successful Necessity Defense are:

1. A defendant was faced with a choice of evils and chose the lesser evil.
2. A defendant reasonably anticipated a cause-and-effect relationship between his conduct and the harm avoided.
3. A defendant acted to prevent imminent harm.
4. There were no legal alternatives to violating the law.

Any legal experts or enthusiasts out there think there might be a case? Coming from Columbus, Ohio, I wonder what OSU President Gordon Gee would think, as he sits on the Board of the corporation responsible for much of this, Massey Energy.

Paris, 25.05.09

The ‘Action Factory’ has officially completed its first action in Europe, outside the ‘Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate’, also known as the MEF. Supported by Avaaz.org, the ‘Action Factory’ in Europe is one of two in the world – the other starting up in Washington DC in a few weeks – where youth climate activists will spend the next three months in an intensive activist environment, churching out hard-hitting political actions, aimed at getting the best possible global agreement in Copenhagen this December.

The first six ‘Youth Action Fellows’ (Leon from New Zealand, Blaine and April from the US, Sara from Sweden, Anna from Australia and Benka the amazing multi-lingual Frenchman) organised and orchestrated the event in Paris today, joined by a crowd of 20 local Avaaz members who responded to an email call-out for attendance.

But wait, there’s more

The singer in this video is the grandson of Sidney Moye, who was among the 17 folks were arrested on Saturday, protesting mountaintop removal and the presence of unstable 9 billion gallon toxic waste coal slurry dams that, if it fails, would kill over 1,000 people. Also in the video is West Virginian hero and former congressman, and former WV Secretary of State Ken Hechler (the only congressman to march with Marin Luther King, Jr.) (born in 1914) (architect of the Mine Health and Safety Act) — who wanted to be arrested, but the authorities refused. 

9 of those were taken into prison with a $2,000 cash bail each — despite the fact that the fine for trespassing is a maximum of $100.  Activists raised over $10,000 in 24 hours to release 5 of our heroes, the rest will spend at least 3 days in jail, hopefully to be released tomorrow. 

For more updates or to donate towards legal efforts, visit www.mountainjustice.org

Continued from my previous post.

A 25-person crew has been working hard to support 17 line crossers, lockdowners, and sludge canoers. We still need to bail out 4 people at $2,000 each, and have got over 40 mouths to feed. Shameless plea for money :0)

Be part of ending mountaintop removal: ban its combustion in your community, volunteer in Appalachia, and donate to Coal River 17′s legal fund.

Full updates at MountainJustice.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MAY 23, 2009
CONTACT: Sludge Watch Collective 304-854-7372

Update: Update 5:23 PM- Nine protesters are still in custody. Two are being held for the action at the Brushy Fork dam, seven for the line crossing at Pettus. Police have informed jail support that bail will be set at $2,000 each- $18,000 needs to be raised in total. Please donate to the bail fund now!!!

COAL RIVER VALLEY, WV– Activists are engaged in two separate civil disobedience actions this morning as part of the continuing campaign to end mountaintop removal. 9 people have locked themselves to mining equipment on a Patriot Coal mountaintop removal mine on Kayford Mountain and another team of activists has spread a 20×60 foot banner on the surface of Massey Energy’s Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment near Pettus, W.Va. The activists are part of a coalition that includes Mountain Justice, Climate Ground Zero and concerned individuals.

At noon today, more protesters are expected to converge at the gate to the Brushy Fork dam with hundreds of pairs of shoes to represent the number of immediate deaths should the dam fail.

More details to follow. Video, still images and breaking news will be posted continually to www.mountainjustice.org.

I was one of the 12,000 amazing individuals who attended Power Shift ’09, and I can honestly say it was life changing—I’ve already changed career paths. While I was enjoying the great company, excellent panels, and awesome music, I was also totally immersing myself in the environmental movement. I put my contact information on anything I thought I could help with, and lo and behold Danny Chiotos gave me a call right before my Spring Break to ask if I’d be willing to try and schedule a meeting with my district’s House representative, Nick Rahall. I accepted the challenge, telling myself this would be a great way to prove to anyone that I am seriously committed to making a change in West Virginia.

Obtaining a meeting with Congressman Nick Rahall seemed like a fruitless endeavor, so one can imagine my surprise when my short, fairly informal request received a response from his scheduler only a couple days later. Once the initial shock wore off, I got in touch with Danny, knowing he would know what to do next. He helped spread the word to other organizations including OVEC and the Coal River Wind Project, while I worked on getting more Marshall students involved. In the end we had six people at the meeting: Bob Kincaid and his wife Annette, Robin Blakeman, Lorelei Scarbro, Danny, and myself.
Continue reading ‘Meeting with Congressman Nick Rahall’

If all foreign offset provisions in the Waxman-Markey climate bill are used, the cap and trade regime would spend nearly three times more money overseas for carbon offset programs than it would invest in home-grown clean energy industries, technologies, and job creation.

Last week, our analysis showed that Waxman-Markey would, on average, invest between $6 to 9 billion annually in clean energy technology and energy efficiency between 2012-2025. These funds would be raised by auctioning a cumulative total of 8.4 billion emission allowances. This stands is contrast to the $41 billion in allowances that would be given to polluters each year, and it is far less than the $15 billion President Obama has promised for clean energy R&D.

But how do these clean energy investments stack up against Waxman-Markey’s spending on international offsets? The bill would allow polluting firms in the U.S. to finance emissions reductions overseas instead of reducing their own global warming pollution. The number of U.S. emissions that could be covered by foreign offsets every year is one billion tons, however, if too few domestic offsets are available, this number could rise to 1.5 billion tons. Breakthrough Institute analysis shows this could allow U.S. emissions to rise through 2030.

If all 1.5 billion foreign offset provisions are used each year between 2012-2025, this adds up to a cumulative total of 21 billion emission allowances. That’s 2.5 times times the allowances provided for clean energy during that period (8.4 billion). The table below compare allowances and potential funding under these scenarios, and the graph compares annual funding at an average allowance price of $15.

Continue reading ‘Waxman-Markey Could Give 2.5 Times More Money to Foreign Offsets than U.S. Clean Energy’

At the heart of the nearly thousand page long climate change and clean energy bill being debated in the U.S. House of Representatives this week is a “cap and trade” mechanism aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

However, a provision in the bill, known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454 or “ACES”), allows polluting firms in the U.S. to finance emissions reductions overseas in lieu of reducing their own global warming pollution and may allow American emissions to continue to rise for up to twenty years, according to new analysis from the Breakthrough Institute.

The provision allows power plants, oil refiners, and other polluters regulated under the bill’s cap and trade program to use up to one billion tons of international emissions reductions, or “offsets,” to be used instead of reducing their own emissions each year. The bill also allows up to one billion tons of additional offsets each year, sourced from sectors of the U.S. economy that do not fall under the pollution cap, such as forestry and agriculture. If a suitable supply of domestic emissions offsets are unavailable, the limit on the use of international offsets may be raised to 1.5 billion tons annually at the discretion of the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The extensive use of these international and domestic offsets would effectively allow U.S. firms in capped sectors to continue emitting global warming pollution at levels well above the reductions supposedly driven by the emissions cap. New analysis from the Breakthrough Institute reveals that if fully utilized, the offset provisions in the ACES bill would allow continued business as usual growth in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions until 2030.
Continue reading ‘Climate Bill’s “Cap” on Emissions May Let U.S. Emissions Rise for Next Twenty Years’

Rep. Boucher’s Handouts to Coal Lobby Hurt Working Families

Nearly 20 people arrested for protesting Virginia Congressman Boucher’s efforts to block strong climate legislation

This article is also posted on the Chesapeake Climate Action Network’s Blog.

WASHINGTON, May 21, 2009—Nearly 20 concerned citizens were arrested today for peacefully blocking the entrance to Virginia Congressman Boucher’s office protesting his efforts to gut strong climate legislation at the expense of American families. Congressman Boucher has driven efforts in Congress to give away billions of dollars worth of free permits directly to coal, oil and other dirty fossil fuel companies under a cap and trade bill.

Continue reading ’15 Arrested in Protest Against Boucher’s Polluter Handouts’

Cross-posted from TheReefTank.com

The world pressures of over-fishing and pollution are already a major threat to sea life. Throw climate change into the mix and we’re reading into a whole deeper story.

With oceans covering the majority of our planet, you’d think there would be more attention garnered towards the deep blue mass of beauty that always lies just beyond.

It’s comforting, in a way, to know that we understand so very little about what thrives beneath the ocean’s surface. Science has taken us very far, but the ocean remains a world much larger than our own, that reaches places to which our imaginations can’t yet fathom.

And yet, the impact of us living on this planet is unintentionally having an incredibly significant impact on ocean life. There are three major climate change shifts that the World Conservation Monitoring Centre points to when it comes to ocean life, as explained in the book Global Warming for Dummies:

Continue reading Water World: Sinking Faster Than We Can Swim? on TheReefTank