It’s Getting Hot In Here

UPDATE: The four blockaders and one journalist were arrested at Massey’s headquarters. The protesters are charged with trespass, destruction of property, failure to obey a lawful command, conspiracy and resisting arrest. The journalist is charged by trespass, failure to obey a lawful command, and conspiracy. All Climate Ground Zero protesters abide by a non-violence and no property destruction policy. “All four have pledged to not participate in property destruction — these are likely just trumped up charges,” Charles Suggs of Climate Ground Zero said. All activists are being held on $5,000 bail and the journalist is being held at $3,000 bail. As of 5:00 p.m., one blockade member, Roland Micklem, featured in this video, was being bailed out.

Donations to the legal fund can be made here.

The campaign of non-violent civil disobedience against mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia continues. Today’s action is an inter-generation endeavor with one West Virginian youth locked down beside three movement elders ages 53 to 81. Here is the initial press release from www.climategroundzero.org:

JULIAN, W.Va.—Four concerned citizens are locked arm-to-arm across the road to Massey Energy’s regional headquarters off of Corridor-G in Boone County, W.Va. The four men, ranging in age from 22 to 81 years, are halting all traffic coming into the corporate office in an act of protest against Massey Energy and their use of mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining.

The signs read “Stop MTR,” “Stop Blowing up America,” “Protect God’s Creation,” and “People Over Profit.” The protesters insist that Massey pay damages and  health care costs to people who live within a one-mile radius of Massey MTR sites, that the federal government ban MTR immediately, and that a full investigation is conducted into Massey’s business, labor, and environmental practices.

“I am exercising a spiritual obligation as a steward of Creation. It was not God’s intent that these mountains be destroyed to enhance the wealth of a few individuals,” said Roland Micklem, 81.  “This should not be solely a young person’s campaign. Now that they have provided the example and inspiration, we seniors need to make a statement with our own actions and share the risks that are part of this ongoing effort to stop the obliteration of West Virginia’s mountains.”

Continue reading ‘Blockade at Massey Energy’s West Virginia Headquarters’

Pittsburgh, PA – A Climate Convergence will be held in Pittsburgh to coincide with the International Coal Conference (Sept. 21-23) and G-20 summit (Sept. 24/25.

The 3 Rivers Climate Convergence [3RCC] is a partnership of local groups and individuals, concerned about climate change, environmental justice and true sustainability, collaborating with regional and national groups. Together, they are planning a variety of activities over a one-week period, involving public education and non-violent direct action targeting the International Coal Conference, local coal companies, the banks that finance them, and the G-20, which plays a pivotal role in enabling the industrial activities that negatively impact climate change. The focal point of the Convergence will be a Climate Camp and Sustainability Fair, which the groups are planning to hold at Point State Park.

The goals of 3RCC include:

Amplifying the voices, issues and efforts of local, regional and global communities adversely affected by fossil fuel extraction, along with environmental racism, urban development and climate change.
Connecting the climate crisis to the economic crisis while challenging false corporate-based solutions that perpetuate environmental injustice, such as carbon (cap and trade) markets, clean coal, industrial biofuels, and nuclear power.
Projecting positive alternatives & initiatives to create localized, low-carbon sustainable communities and economies. Continue reading ’3 RIVERS CLIMATE CONVERGENCE TO OPPOSE G20 AND INT’L COAL CONFERENCE’

This is cross-posted from Kelly Blynn, Latin America and Caribbean coordinator at 350.org

We´re excited to pass along the news about some really energized youth from the Caribbean who are planning big things for October 24th and beyond. This past August, 30 Caribbean youth from 13 countries converged in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic for the Caribbean Youth Environment Network (CYEN)´s 4th Youth Exchange.  As a part of the week long Exchange, 350.org worked with CYEN to organize a 3-day long training on climate change advocacy, media, and the UN process.  In addition, the youth there produced the Santo Domingo Caribbean Youth Declaration on Climate Change, which calls for 350ppm – you can download the statement here.  Please watch the video from the training above and read the article (many thanks to Panos Caribbean) below for more information about how Caribbean youth are taking action.  For more info on CYEN, visit their website at www.cyen.org.

Caribbean youth rally for climate change

Continue reading ‘Caribbean Youth Call for 350ppm, Urgent Action in Copenhagen’

Portland General Electric is a friendly company which likes to reassure Oregonians that their local utility is concerned about the planet.  PGE will let you sign up to purchase renewable power, so the money you pay on rates goes to fund clean energy projects.  The company’s homepage highlights how PGE is helping the owners of small, sustainable businesses.  PGE’s been known to purchase advertising space on the sides of Portland’s MAX lightrail system, that read “I heart ice caps” above an image of gently turning wind turbines.  And oh, yeah – PGE also wants to lock the state of Oregon into 30 more years of coal dependence.

PGE owns Oregon’s Boardman Coal Plant – the only coal-burning plant in the state.  Fortunately, this month the company had a chance to show customers that it understood coal is over, and planned to move away from coal dependence as fast as possible.  That’s because PGE was scheduled to release a draft plan of the Integrated Resource Plan that it releases every two years, to explain how it plans to meet its energy needs for the next two decades.  PGE considered many possible scenarios, including options that would have involved phasing out dependence on Boardman.  Unfortunately, PGE decided that the best option for Oregon’s energy future is actually to increase our reliance on Boardman, keep the coal plant open at least until the year 2040, and build two new natural gas plants by 2015.

Oregon has some of the most progressive greenhouse emissions-reduction goals in the nation, and PGE’s plans are clearly at odds with state targets for cutting pollution.  It’s safe to say PGE knew this, and it’s worth speculating whether that had something to do with why the company waited until late on the Friday before Labor Day Weekend to release its report; possibly they hoped this would decrease the odds of the press taking notice.  If so, the strategy didn’t work: a pretty nice story about PGE’s draft plan made front-page headlines in the Oregonian Saturday morning.  Oops.

The truth is, Oregon is perfectly positioned to become the first state in the country to sever its reliance on coal completely.  Shutting down Boardman and replacing it with renewable energy would result in less than a 1/2 percent increase in consumer rates over the next 30 years.  Meanwhile, keeping the plant open will require PGE to spend nearly $600 million of ratepayer money to pay for pollution controls that do nothing to curb carbon dioxide pollution.  Studies show the Northwest can meet 85% of new energy demand over the next twenty years through energy efficiency measures alone.

PGE won’t get away with these coal-tinted shenanigans.  Anti-coal activists in Oregon already have some pretty cool projects in the works that will increase the pressure on PGE over the next several months, and highlight the ability of the Northwest to be a leader in renewable energy.  The public has until October 5th to comment on PGE’s draft plan, and there are lots of opportunities coming up for citizens to let the company know coal is over.  While its disappointing that PGE is trotting out 19th-century “solutions” to Oregon’s energy problems, this month’s draft report is not the final word.

The real lesson we learned this month is where PGE will stand as citizens and governments in the Northwest work to create a clean energy future for our region.  We will make that future a reality, but PGE is going to drag its feet and kick and scream every step of the way. 

At a time of great danger and immense opportunity, PGE has placed itself squarely on the wrong side of history.  And those cute wind turbines on the MAX train just aren’t going to make up for that.

Last fall, after years of meetings and strategizing, Miami University of Ohio was set to become a leader in campus sustainability, and then the economy fell apart. Plans to open a campus Office of Sustainability were scrapped, and a campus-wide hiring freeze was set in place.

Now, Miami is back on track! At a forum this past Thursday, the student body Vice President and others unveiled a bold new plan to offer a $50,000 revolving fund for “cost saving, feasible, environmentally impactful and well-researched” projects. Money saved will then be put back into the pot, increasing the amount available for new projects.

Geography professor and chair of the new sustainability committee David Prytherch said “We really, in a certain sense, are only in the beginning. I think the people who will be at Miami in the next century will face a challenge that the people in the past couldn’t have contemplated.”

The first wave of proposals, open to students, faculty, and staff, are due in November. Whoever writes the winning proposals, this will surely be a landmark program that helps to set the future course of Miami University. Read the full story in the Miami Student.

In the week before Van Jones’ departure from the White House, the White House was ominously silent in its support for Jones.  Additionally, most of the major environmental organizations, who had supported Jones’ work and appointment to the White House seemed uncertain on to how to respond to attacks, so didn’t.  It was only this morning, over a day after Jones resigned that Green For All, the organization he founded and lead just prior to working for the Obama Administration, sent an announcement to their supporters with the news.  Other organizations have been slower to respond.

While I believe this was a strategic mistake on the part of the White House (allowing the right-wing media to smear members of the Administration one-by-one), the Obama Administration should not waste precious time and political capital debunking Glenn Beck’s lies.  Instead, their role in this is to instill confidence in Administration officials’ competence (which they certainly did not do).

As a result, the responsibility to tackle smear campaigns like this rests with the media (to debunk lies), other members of the Democratic Party (to provide support for the Obama Administration) and civic organizations (to articulate the vision of Van’s work).  But there was no coordinated progressive response to dismantling the smear tactics coming from the extreme right and magnified through the media. Given the vast silence on the Left is it any surprise that the attacks worked in turning public opinion against Van Jones?

Continue reading ‘“We blew it.” Let’s not blow it again.’

Cross posted from Praxis Makes Perfect.

For the last couple weeks, Van Jones has been demonized by Fox News in a paranoid racist red-baiting witch hunt to continue to 1) scare white Americans into the idea that “their country is being stolen from them” 2) tie Obama to Left radicalism (since they can’t find it anywhere in his policies, they’ll continue to do the guilt-by-association thing).

The initial response from much of the liberal blogosphere was a defensive attempt to distance Van from actual statements he made (yes, Van actually was part of a socialist organization called STORM, yes he did do radical community organizing), in a way that plays into right wing frames as if having a Left background disqualifies someone for office, rather than allows a breadth of political perspective grounded in values of peace and justice. It’s worth noting that despite the unfortunate and hasty but also benign signing of the 911 petition (the Truther’s are in fact wingnuts), Van never said anything that wasn’t true.

Its been clear in this experience and in the health care backlash that right wing pseudo “populism” has become a renewed, coherent and compelling force in this country – complete with Orwellean Newspeak (‘Van Jones / Obama is a Racist’, ‘Health Care is Death’, ‘Socialism is Fascism’).

A good reality check on how big some of the fights ahead of us are and how important a coordinated and thoughtful Left is. It has interesting implications for those pursuing an ‘inside/outside’ strategy in confirming the long long history in this country of the establishment-left jettisoning anyone they think is too progressive (aka delegitimizing) to be palatable…whereas the Right goes as far right as it wants to.

Have you noticed how people on the Right say all sorts of foul stuff and when they are called on it, they just OWN it and are like WHAT? yeah I said it WHAT! …and then it goes away?

I don’t know what happened inside the White House, but I do naively wish the administration (or Liberal institutions) just had the courage to say yes, this is what we believe and in fact, this is a positive vision that we’re organizing around. But of course they don’t. By this stammering and backpeddaling, it confirms to the American people: yes, you are right to be afraid of these ideas, they are scary. Its a losing strategy that validates all of the crazy paranoia that is skyrocketing across the country right now. It emboldens the extreme Right to go even further (you know, when we run campaigns, and our targets respond, we always say ‘look, its working! lets keep going!’ – this can only have the same effect for Glenn’s followers.)

Progressives of all stripes would do well to fortify themselves with the knowledge that we have BIG BIG fights ahead of us, and the Right will play as dirty and deceptive as possible. They have much larger megaphones, and the luxury of playing into deep seated national mythologies and origin stories of this country.

So lets stand on our principles and own them loudly, and not get squeamish in the face of marginal hate mobs, just because they have a loud voice.

I think David Roberts’ Thoughts on Van Jones’ Resignation piece on Grist offers some useful thoughts that I’ll share here:

Continue reading ‘A few more thoughts on On Van Jones’ Resignation, Glenn Beck, and Right Wing “populism”’

The resignation of Van Jones is about more than Van Jones, more than Glenn Beck.  It is part of a concerted effort to neutralize progressive champions who are trying to fix the problems that are ripping this country apart.

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me. -Martin Neimoeller

McCarthyism is the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence…The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries. -from that communist source, Wikipedia

The resignation of Van Jones last night is the culmination of a deeply disturbing pattern from the last several months. The spokespeople for the right have made it acceptable to spout hate-filled speech and unfounded accusations to the American public.  This must stop. Continue reading ‘Glenn McCarthy Beck is Hurting America’

By now you’ve learned of Van Jones stepping down as an adviser to President Obama.  Across the internet, the print media, and the radio the militant right is reaching out to find quotes and statements from the environmental movements sites that cast doubt on Van’s ability as an adviser to this President.  “Why is this guy in our government anywhere near the President?” came out of Glenn Beck’s mouth, because he was able to pull up a video on YouTube, a video that I published years ago with the best of intentions, and has used it as a tool to put this great man down, to cast doubt on his ability to create Green Jobs and battle poverty.

Lying in bed tonight, I hopped up knowing that I needed to share these thoughts with you.  Something as simple as Van Jones asking for “a new system” of re-usable energy, has been used to put pressure on the Obama administration, to cause even more chaos amidst the battle over health care reform.  Something created by all of you, something published by videographers on this very site just like me, has become a weapon of the militant right and has been used in an assault on a good man that we all respect. Continue reading ‘Weapons of Mass Distraction’

Cross-posted from: here

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20503

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Christine Glunz

September 5, 2009
202-456-3469

Van Jones Resigns as Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on
Environmental Quality

WASHINGTON, DC – Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the
Council on Environmental Quality resigned today. Below is the text of
his resignation letter, sent to Chair Nancy Sutley: Continue reading ‘Van Jones Resigns’