It’s Getting Hot In Here

Students from Linfield College turn out for a clean energy future

When more or less a hundred people turn out on a weekday evening for a public hearing by a relatively obscure energy planning commission, to speak up for a future free of coal power, you know something serious is brewing.

Last night in Portland, Oregon, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council held a final hearing on its 6th Northwest Power Plan – a document that will help determine the future of energy policy in the Northwest United States for the next 20 years.  Since the first public hearing on September 9th of this year, the Sierra Club and others have rallied hundreds of people of all ages and backgrounds to turn out for hearings from Seattle to Eugene and speak up for a clean energy future for our region.  This future is attainable for the Northwest, and the NWPCC has a key role to play in getting us there.

While the current draft of the 6th Power Plan makes some very encouraging steps forward – for instance, the current plan recommends meeting most of future new energy demand through energy efficiency and says that we won’t need any new coal plants in the region – it can and must go much farther.  The single most effective step the NWPCC can take to rejuvenate the Northwest’s economy and protect us from catastrophic global warming is to lay out a plan to phase the Northwest completely off coal dependence.

The NWPCC’s own analysis has shown that the transition away from coal is possible, and last night dozens of concerned citizens gave testimony in support of adopting a coal-free future as the recommended scenario in the final 6th Power Plan.  Though the public hearings on the Plan are now over, the push to take the Northwest “beyond coal” once and for all is just beginning (check out this extremely cool event coming up in less than a week!) Continue reading ‘The Future Within Our Grasp’

It’s just a short 9 days until the International Day of Climate Action on October 24th, where hundreds of thousands people will raise the issue of climate  change urgency to a new level.

Here at Project Survival Media, we wanted to mark the event visually.  So we created a video, featuring Jon Warnow, 350.org’s Internet Director and Organizer of Pacific & Polar regions, to get a better sense of how this wonky policy target of 350 parts per million  relates to the survival of people.

I mean thousands of people aren’t heading to the streets because they’re all secretly wonky scientists.  It’s about what 350 represents to people all over the world in a time of crisis.  It’s stability, safety, and above all 350 means survival.

The footage we pieced together was from youtube — a few different sources that were urging people/journalists to spread the word about these crazy environmental disasters.

Please leave comments to let us know what you think

This post is part of Blog Action Day, 9,993 blogs and counting, all writing about climate change on the same day and together calling the US to take serious action on climate. Sign their petition here.

In 1986, the Swedish rock band Europe penned a song that would go down as one of the greatest in karaoke history, “The Final Countdown.” In truth, “The Final Countdown” has inspired thousands – nay, millions – to become amateur hair-metal superstars, belting out that most famous of lyrics, “It’s the final countdown/Duh nuh nuuuuuh nuh/ duh nuh nuh nuh nuh/ duh nuh nuuuuuh nuh/ duh nuh nuh nuh nuh.” It has become a timeless anthem that brings basketball crowds to their feet and brings back memories of hairspray and frayed leather vests to many a former groupie.

To me, however, “The Final Countdown” has a more serious connotation. It represents a soundtrack to the next two or three months, as world leaders, climate advocates, and global citizens prepare for a “final countdown” of their own. Clean energy legislation is moving through the US Senate, with more details emerging daily. The international climate negotiations are steadily plodding forward in anticipation of what some have called “the most important negotiations in the history of the world.” For me, the rest of 2009 is a final countdown of a different sort, dare I say, a “Climate Countdown”? And how does any good countdown start? Well, at “10″ of course!

10 weeks until Copenhagen high level meetings. That’s right – only ten weeks remain before the world’s most powerful men and women gather in the Danish capital to structure a binding global treaty aimed at solving climate change. That means, ten weeks to tell your senator that you want to see strong domestic climate legislation that will enable American negotiators to craft a real deal in Copenhagen. That means, ten weeks to tell President Obama to get in the game and ramp up the pressure on Senators to push for the emissions reductions that science is calling for and the financing that a global treaty needs to succeed. Ten weeks.

9 Regional PowerShifts. That means there are nine opportunities left for you to bond with youth climate leaders in your region and hold your Senators accountable as they take up clean energy legislation. From Michigan to Virginia, North Carolina to Oregon, these are nine conferences to reinforce a central tenet of the youth climate movement: “There is only one thing that can cut through the influence of these special interests and politics as usual; YOUNG PEOPLE LIKE US!!!” Continue reading ‘It’s the Climate Countdown, duh nuh nuh nuh…’

This is a guest-post from Jeff Mann at Consequence09.org.  This post is one of thousands of Blog Action Day ’09 posts written today by bloggers around the world.

Consequence is the largest coalition of youth organizations ever assembled to call for congressional action on clean energy jobs and global warming. This is OUR fight. Youth have the most to lose from the impending climate catastrophe, and the most to gain from a new clean energy economy. In 2008, our decisive effort on the Obama campaign proved our political might. In 2009, our collective voice can be the deciding factor in the battle for strong clean energy reform. Standing together we cannot — and will not — be ignored.

Consequence Campaign partners are already running bold grassroots campaigns in every state in the country. In the collection of posts today, you will hear from several of these partners in their own words about why they are involved in this effort and how you can take part.

It’s our time to lead. Together we will create our clean energy future.

Back in the 1980’s and 1990’s forest wars of the Northwest, the false dichotomy that emerged out of that conflict was “jobs vs. the environment.” Loggers, mislead by industry, contended that they couldn’t make a living if environmentalists and government regulators restricted their ability to log old growth forest.

This of course was not true and many alternative sustainable logging practices existed, as well as other ways of making a living. The conflict became extremely fierce and thousands were arrested doing civil disobedience trying to protect the forests in northern California, Oregon, Idaho, Washington and other places, while violence erupted between loggers and enviros in these places as well (the most known example being in 1990’s Redwood Summer when a bomb was planted in Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney’s car.)

Now the meme of “jobs vs. the environment” has shifted from the Pacific Northwest to Appalachia. In the past couple of years, we’ve seen environmentally minded community members, environmentalists, miners and their families come into direct conflict over the issue of mountaintop removal. Industry has worked to frame the mountaintop removal issue around “jobs versus the environment.” They cast opponents of mountaintop removal as “out-of-towners” who are threatening their desperately needed jobs. They dismissed local concerns about the practice as coming from “unreasonable environmentalists” who were more concerned about trees than jobs.

The tensions are boiling over as public opinion nationally (and in West Virginia) is shifting to greater opposition to mountaintop removal. Continue reading ‘Jobs vs. The Environment in Appalachia’

This post is part of Blog Action Day, 9080 blogs and counting, all writing about climate change on the same day.

In the first student lobby meeting I ever organized with a US Senator’s office, one of the girls who was coming along asked me whether the lobby meeting really mattered or made a difference. I knew her from my running club, so I tried to tie my answer into something we both could relate to and understand. Continue reading ‘Fight for Every Inch’

This post is part of Blog Action Day, 8414 blogs and counting, all writing about climate change on the same day and together calling the US to take serious action on climate. Sign their petition here. This is cross-posted from indiaclimatesolutions.com

Here in India, we started on the Road to 350 a long time ago. It’s been one year since I quit my job and decided to drive across India in solar powered and electric cars with 350 literally written all over them (that’s our Revalution to the right!), to show the world that there is a Road to 350, a path paved with solutions that is beautiful, powerful, and inspiring. We worked to demonstrate that there is no silver bullet, there is no single solution — that there are 350 and counting! The Road to 350 drives straight through October 24, straight through COP15, and straight onto the future that we are creating every day we wake up and commit to being the change. As it gets closer to October 24, I’m more and more inspired by those actions planned that are showing what the Road to 350 looks like – what our world of solutions will be!

One of my all time favorite 350 actions is the image taken in Granada, Spain, where Rene turned solar cookers into a gleaming visual representation of 350 as part of his Sahara project bringing solar ovens to the region of North Africa. It reminded me of the incredible solar cookers all across India that we saw, and of course of the day that Anna cooked Maggi noodles on the roof of Manzil; our time in Vasant Kunj solar festival when women cooked pakora for all of us; or eating solar cooked food at Deepak Gadhia’s tribal girls school in Gujarat. We saw so many solutions that I hope these organizations will highlight similarly on October 24. It doesn’t have to be a 350 made of solar cookers, but a 350 made of pakoras cooked by the sun!! I am grateful to Rene for showing just how many people will benefit from these incredible machines, saving our forests and our air!

Tantoh Nforbah and his community group, Save Your Future Association, in northwestern Cameroon planted flowers with the message “CO2 350 PPM” to promote carbon reductions, community development and sustainable agriculture in the region, while 350 Dominicana gathered to help with a local reforestation project and take a 350 action photo. All around the world, and all across Delhi, people are planning to plant or distribute 350 trees in their neighborhoods, their schools, or their cities.

In the City of Mandurah in Western Australia, they will be celebrating October 24th through a ’350 Bulb Swap’ – where they will be swapping 350 incandescent bulbs for energy efficient CFL bulbs. The event will be held at the Sustainable Mandurah Home, a modern hands-on display home where, after they have swapped their bulbs, visitors can learn how to make their home more cost effective (through energy efficiency measures) and environmentally sensitive.

There are so many more! There’s some more of my favorites after the break, and tons more at 350.org

Continue reading ‘The Road to 350 is Paved With Solutions’

This post is part of Blog Action Day, 7141 blogs and counting, all writing about climate change on the same day. This is cross-posted from Avaaz.org

For more Blog Action, visit blogactionday.org

Right now Copenhagen is the most important city in the world. In just 2 short months, the city might witness the formation of a global climate treaty. You’ve heard of the Kyoto protocol – the climate treaty that the US helped draft 12 years ago? The one that pretty much every other country has signed on to?

Well, the US, with 1/4 of global greenhouse emissions, has more excuses than a student with a late term-paper about why it hasn’t done its part to help solve climate change. The people of the world aren’t impressed.

Two years ago in Bali after a dramatic plea from Papua New Guinea in the final hours, the US and other leaders agreed to make a global treaty in Copenhagen in 2009. According to the Bali agreement, the plan needs to have four key elements to bring all nations together (here’s the homework assignment). It needs to set mitigation targets for every country (reducing carbon emissions). It needs to protect forests from destruction (which cause 20% of global emissions). It needs to help poor countries develop more responsibly than we did by providing clean technology because the world can’t afford to repeat the dirty energy economies of the 20th century. And it needs to help poor countries deal with the present and increasing effects of the climate crisis.

Continue reading ‘From Here to a Global Climate Treaty’

Stop Everything
Rebecca McNeil

I spent the past year trying to follow the antics of the big players on Parliament Hill, and this weekend threw another wrench in the drama that is becoming Canadian politics. Over the past year we have watched the Liberals change leaders from a boy scout to an assertive “foreigner”, the NDP go from the biggest denouncers of Harper to backing them in a confidence motion, and watched Harper move the Conservatives slowly but surely from far right to right of centre – not a small step in the world of Conservative Party politics.

In an October 1st editorial Globe and Mail writer Michael Bliss announced that “In a historic shift, the Tories have seized the centre and are set to become the natural governing party.” I assume if you have time to read this blog you’ve likely already scoured the daily papers so this won’t require a full explanation, but it is becoming increasingly evident that Harper will be our leader through the rest of this year. This means he’s our guy for the international climate change decisions this year, and we are going to have to find a way to make sure that strong climate change policies and action makes it onto his agenda.

The good news is that with a government turning increasingly to the centre, they are backing a lot of issues on would not have normally have been supportive. Take Employment Insurance. Harper has taken an uncharacteristic stance to secure his Party’s position as leader of this country, and the NDP in turn propped up his government as a big ol’ thank you. Call it opportunistic, but it gives me some comfort to think that in the midst of achieving his own priorities our Prime Minister is able to adopt policies that will actually end up supporting Canadians.

Continue reading ‘Back at ya, Harper’

Last week, a trio of West Virginia’s top politicians blasted Massey Energy’s arrogance and blatant disregard for human life after the company stubbornly refused to assist the Raleigh County School District move the school located next to a toxic coal prep plant, toxic waste pond and MTR site.Now Massey is openly discussing moving the school.

For years, grandfather Ed Wiley campaigned to get the school moved, now after much public education, direct action and grassroots organizing the school may be getting moved. Continue reading ‘Coal Company Massey Energy Now Discussing Moving Marsh Fork Elementary’