It’s Getting Hot In Here

Reason #1534 to Support a Strong Climate Bill that Moves Us Away From Coal ASAP:

(Thanks to www.ohvec.org)
It’s springtime in Appalachia, and that means gardens, flowers and more flowers, wild edibles like ramps and molly moochers, old-timers sitting on their front porch with kids running around the yard and, sadly, catastrophic flash flooding made worse by mountaintop removal.

Late Friday night and early Saturday morning, heavy rains hit southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Many could use help with clean-up of their homes and yards. Communities report flooding debris with mud, stumps and rocks coming off the mountaintop removal site above their homes.

News reports says at least 300 buildings in Mingo County alone were destroyed in the flooding. The National Guard has been called in and the Red Cross is on the scene.

Continue reading ‘Flooding in the Appalachian Coalfields’

Are you over the corporate compromised climate politics of the DC Beltway?  Want to find more empowering ways to build power, stop climate change and take action? Now’s your chance!  The Mobilization for Climate Justice has put out it’s call to action.  Join a group of organizations and activists dedicated to building a North American climate justice movement that emphasizes direct action and public education to mobilize for just and effective solutions to climate change.

A Call to Action: THE MOBILIZATION FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE

www.ACTFORCLIMATEJUSTICE.org

read and pass on the Mobilization’s Open Letter to the Grassroots

WE STAND AT A CROSSROADS

Confront Copenhagen at Home

The facts are clear. Global climate change, caused by human activities, is happening, threatening the lives and livelihoods of billions of people and the existence of millions of species. Social movements, environmental groups, and scientists from all over the world are calling for urgent and radical action on climate change.

On the 6 December, 2009 the governments of the world will come to Copenhagen for the fifteenth UN Climate Conference (COP-15). This will be the biggest summit on climate change ever to have taken place. Yet, previous meetings have produced nothing more than business as usual.

There are alternatives to the current course that is emphasizing false solutions such as market-based approaches and agrofuels. If we put humanity before profit and solidarity above competition we can live amazing lives without destroying our planet. Continue reading ‘Act Now for Climate Justice’

If you’re like me you’ve probably been doing a lot muttering as you read the paper and shouting as you watch cable news clips. The politicians and polluting corporations that want to weaken and defeat bold climate legislation are waging a major public opinion/relations war. They are lying. They are spreading misinformation. And they playing up the fear factor big time- “the light switch tax” etc.

Unfortunately they really are dominating the airwaves and local papers with their opinions and we need to raise our voices with truth and the clear vision we have for a better, cleaner, more prosperous future.

Thus, I am happy to announce the launch of the prestigious, fabulous Truth Squad!

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cnZtY0t6dnJNek11SHM1MTRZZ2xpLWc6MA..

We need YOU to join the Truth Squad and encourage other people- especially news geeks and people who like to write to help us get some TRUTH into this debate, locally and nationally.

Energy Action’s Truth Squad will claim a stake in the national debate by:

• Keeping up on local and national clean energy, green jobs, and climate issues. Easy. Most of you do this already, now you’ll be doing it with a mission.
• Writing at least 2 local and 1 national Letters to the Editors (LTE) over the summer. Again EASY. It takes about 15 minutes to write and email an LTE. No longer will you be silently joyous or outraged. You will be making your crucial voice heard in one of the most widely read pages of the paper. We will provide LTE ideas and opportunities, samples, and will help edit if needed.
• Write 1 Op Ed. Medium Easy. These take a little longer to write but have no fear. You have a unique and important perspective on this debate and your voice needs to be heard. Right now the op ed pages where political discourse still largely prevails is being dominated by polluters and liars. Local papers are desperate for local, young writers. We will help you draft, edit, and place your op ed. For real. Make your grandma proud.
• Write 3-4 blog posts. These can be adaptations of your LTEs or OpEds or original content. We will help find good, influential blogs for you to post on. All we need is the content.

It really is that simple. Winning a better, cleaner future is about winning hearts and minds and telling a winning story. We are particularly positioned to do this well and powerfully. It’s time to make some noise!

Join Energy Action’s Truth Squad BY Friday, May 15, 2009 http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cnZtY0t6dnJNek11SHM1MTRZZ2xpLWc6MA..

In case anyone thought coal wasn’t hip, fun, or down with the kids, I thought you would enjoy these hilarious coal “ringtones” you can download for your “cellular telephone.”  Next time your phone rings on the bus, in the grocery store, or while you’re coming up with the light for America…(AMERICA!) everyone will know you love coal and/or just terrible music. (true story side note, my cat cried when I played the New Orleans re-mix)

Co-authored by Mollie Ruskin and Mark Kimbrell

On Tuesday morning Markese Bryant woke up in his Atlanta apartment, quieted his nerves, and attempted to go about his day as if it were any normal school day.  But this was no ordinary day for Markese.  Today, Markese would become a leader in the climate movement.  Today, Markese would help Atlanta realize the dream of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by shedding the injustices of the carbon economy, and embracing the opportunities of clean energy and green jobs.  This was Focus the Nation 2009.

There are many ways to tell the story of the Focus the Nation Town Hall campaign.  There are the little snippets the media picked out, the experiences of the politicians and panelists who attended the events, and even the war stories of the organizers on the ground.  But no one saw the whole picture quite like the national organizers who worked behind the scenes to put it all together.  These are their stories, their favorite moments; providing not only inspiration but powerful lessons for the future direction of our movement.

Continue reading ‘April: The Turning Point in the Climate Movement’

Chances are, if you are a constituent of Rep. Doyle, Rep. Matheson, Rep. Green, Rep. or Rep. Boucher, you did. Countless young people from districts represented by congressmen who sit on the House Energy and Commerce Committee participated in a national call-in day for a strong climate bill.

Blue-Dog Democrats, lead by Rep. Rick Boucher (D, VA-9), have taken steps in the past week to weaken the emissions targets in the American Clean Energy and Security Act , to give handouts to polluters, and to weaken the Renewable Portfolio Standard in the bill. Continue reading ‘Did you call your congressman today?’

We are not joining the throng of cable news reporters more concerned with the 2010 election than with fixing the country in the meantime. But we did score big with two interviews that could help shape the midterm US Senate race here in Texas.

The US Senate race in Texas has a slightly funny story. Longtime US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is expected to step down and throw her hat in the ring to become the next Texas Governor. The spot she may vacate (but has not yet vacated) is already being contested by a number of potential candidates, the most notable being John Sharp and Bill White on the Democratic side, and Michael Williams and Florence Shapiro on the Republican side.

ReEnergize Texas has conducted interviews with both Democratic Mayor of Houston Bill White and Republican Chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission Michael Williams. See them here:

Continue reading ‘Making Climate an Issue in 2010′

While it’s a sad fact that corporate and industry interests regularly write the basis for much of our Federal legislation, there has been some impressive political maneuvering from the coal and utility industry around the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security (ACESA) Act. In many ways, the ACESA bill reads like a wish list for the coal industry – from multi-billion dollar handouts to the coal industry for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), to allowing enough offsets to allow business-as-usual for coal for decades!

Today, a story in the Washington Times (admittedly, not the most objective paper) ran which called out an exemption in the bill for Duke Energy and other utilities that have coal power plants already permitted or under construction. While ACES has some regulation around new coal plants (requiring retrofits by 2015 with an unproven CCS technology that doesn’t exist yet) – these exemptions would effectively grandfather in two Duke Energy plants currently proposed  – Cliffside in North Carolina and Edwardsport in Indiana.  Not coincidentally, Duke Energy has had a strong role in shaping the ACESA bill, from helping draft the US-CAP blueprint that provided the basis for ACESA, to having CEO Jim Rogers testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearings on the bill.

While many people saw ACESA as a good first step but needing improvements – the bill seems to be getting worse and worse, rather than better.  When the loudest voice from the “environmental community” is from the Duke/industry-led US-CAP – it’s time our movement rolls up its sleeves and starts pushing back to ensure meaningful legislation that will stop the climate crisis, and build a just economy based on clean energy. Right now we are being outplayed by industry – and it’s nothing less than our future at stake.

Continue reading ‘Waxman-Markey climate bill a wish list for Duke Energy?’

As a coal finance campaigner, I often see scumbag behaviour from King Coal and the banks that love them on a regular basis.  But then I forget that we have the mother of all monster industries, Big Oil, to deal with as well.

While nothing should be done to minimize the horror of mountaintop removal and new coal fired power plants, Chevron is the 3rd largest corporation on the planet and responsible for a lot of reprehensible behavior in Iraq, the Philippines, Canada, Nigerial and right here in the San Francisco bay area.   They are also in the homestretch of legal proceedings in Ecuador over a $27 billion lawsuit brought against them by indigenous people of the Amazon.  Chevron is responsible for 18 billion gallons of toxic oil sludge left throughout an area spanning hundreds of miles of rainforest.

Last night, 60 Minutes reamed Chevron.  Like really reamed them. And Chevron didn’t even mount that good a defense.  In it, Chevron’s PR hack compared her mascara to communities living with Chevron’s toxic legacy.

See the Video Here Continue reading ‘Chevron Gets Reamed on 60 Minutes over It’s Toxic Legacy in Ecuador’

James Hansen came out today saying today that he hopes Waxman-Markey fails and that the U.S. government abandons cap and trade.

Very bold.

POLICY: Hansen hopes lawmakers’ cap-and-trade approach to climate will fail

(05/04/2009)

Nathanial Gronewold, E&E reporter

NEW YORK –NASA’s leading climate scientist says he hopes that climate legislation proposed by Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman (Calif.) and Edward Markey (Mass.) to introduce carbon emissions trading to the United States fails. He says lawmakers should abandon cap-and-trade initiatives altogether and implement a simple carbon tax instead.

James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a vocal advocate for action on global warming, told an audience at a conference hosted by Columbia University climate policy students that cap and trade is a scheme devised by Wall Street that will do nothing to alleviate the global warming problem. Continue reading ‘Hansen hopes lawmakers’ cap-and-trade approach to climate will fail’