It’s Getting Hot In Here

By: Adaeze Umolu
For More images of Powershift UK

It is the fourth day of the UK Powershift 2009 conference. A group of young people with luggage and carrier bags shuffle with the rest of the crowd headed from the London eye towards the direction of the British parliament. Cheering the green peace activists who are on the roof of the parliament, they cross into parliament square, the one with the huge Nelson Mandela statue and the music begins……

Stop, Rewind: This story begins at the Jubilee Gardens beside the famous London Eye. A young lady, one of the UKYCC coordinators, has announced to the group that what they are about to embark on a fun but serious mission. She told the Powershift group that there was no insurance or permission, that by venturing onto Parliament Square, they might be arrested and could be charged under the terrorist act. However, not one person backed down from what is for many their first act of civil disobedience.

Continue reading ‘Youths in the UK dance in front of the British Parliament’

It’s that time of year again: the College Sustainability Report Card 2010 has launched. Released on the brand spankin’ new GreenReportCard.org website by the Sustainable Endowments Institute, the annual publication provides school profiles and grades along with exclusive insights about sustainability in higher education.  What grade is your school taking home to the folks?

The report reveals that despite budget-breaking investment losses and widely fluctuating energy costs, many schools became greener during the last year, earning higher grades on the College Sustainability Report Card 2010. The average overall grade was still a “C+”, but 53 percent of schools earned an overall grade of “B-”, compared to only 38 percent in last year’s Report Card.

Now in its fourth year, the College Sustainability Report Card covers the colleges and universities with the 300 largest endowments in the United States and Canada, as well as 32 additional schools that applied for inclusion.  The profiled schools have combined holdings representing more than $325 billion in endowment assets, or more than 95 percent of all university endowments.

Features on the website include:

• Compare Report Card of rival schools
• Overall College Sustainability Leaders
• Access to over 1,100 surveys responses
• Interactive map
• Endowment Sustainability Leaders

Continue reading ‘The Grades Are In! Green Report Card 2010′

Contact: Andrew Munn or Dea Goblirsch 304-513-4710
Email: news@climategroundzero.org

For updates, follow www.climategroundzero.org and Coalisfilthy on twitter

CEDAR GROVE, W.Va.- The Senior Citizens March to End Mountaintop Removal will culminate in a protest and press conference at Massey subsidiary Mammoth Coal Company on US-60, east of Cedar Grove, at 4:00 p.m. on Monday. Mammtoth Coal Company is 25 miles from the march’s starting point at the state capitol in Charleston. At least 28 seniors between the ages of 50 and 88 will have put their feet to the pavement during the 25 mile walk.

City of Belle police arrested two young people for a solidarity banner drop off of the Walker CAT building in Belle, W.Va. on Saturday. The banner read “Yes, Coal Is Killing West Virginia Communities.” The two arrestees, Gabe Schwartzman, 19, and David German, 18, were released on the same day for $100 personal recognizance.

Several of the participants, including Herk McGraw, 75, and Sue Rosenberg, 62, are relatives of young people who have been arrested for acts of non-violent civil disobedience in the Climate Ground Zero campaign against MTR. Two of march co-organizer Roland Micklem’s daughters are among the senior citizens.

Marchers received training in non-violence and conflict deescalation in preparation for potential confrontation at Monday’s protest.

And for your viewing pleasure, a video summary of Senior March Day 4 from Mobile Broadcast News:

Cross-posted from theClimateers.org

by Louise Yeung

Last month at the UN Climate Summit in New York, President of China Hu Jintao announced a promise to reduce the rate of carbon intensity, marking the first time that China has directly addressed carbon emissions policy. Keep in mind that this still means total CO2 will continue to increase, but still, a bigger commitment than we’ve seen from China so far.

There’s always a lot of debate about how much China (and other developing countries) should be putting into carbon mitigation efforts. The traditional arguments, briefly:

• Developed countries have contributed to the majority of cumulative CO2 in the atmosphere from decades of industrialization. China is still developing, can’t afford to take a hardline stance on climate change, and deserves the chance to raise the standard of living so that its people can enjoy the same quality of life as we do in North America and Europe. Plus, as the Central Party likes to emphasize, China’s per capita emissions are significantly lower than America’s.

• As of 2006, China surpassed the U.S. in total yearly CO2 emissions, and now stands as the number one emitter of CO2. Climate change requires global cooperation and China has a responsibility to be a part of those efforts. Without China’s participation, the rest of the world will probably not be able to stabilize the concentration of CO2 at a safe level (which is now generally agreed to be 350 ppm; see James Hansen.)

Both of those are valid points, but I am always hesitant to take too much of a comparative attitude when it comes to climate policy. That often leads to finger-pointing and inaction until someone else does something, which is the kind of atmosphere we have right now. I think it’s more important – and productive – to look at what each country can do given its own set of parameters.

So let’s just look at China for a second:

It’s in China’s best interest to act on climate change now. Continue reading ‘China’s Climate Future’

‘Nough said:

(but if you want more, check out Greenpeace UK)

Cross posted from www.climategroundzero.org, by Dea G.

Herk McGraw drove from the outskirts of Charleston, West Virginia to participate in this week’s Senior Citizens March to End Mountaintop Removal. Sue Rosenberg made the trek from Saugerties, New York. They were not solely motivated by the call for elders to join the struggle against environmental devastation in Appalachia; McGraw and Rosenberg are joining the 25 mile march from the State Capitol to the gates of Mammoth Coal Company in part because of young people in their lives. McGraw’s granddaughter, Zoe Beavers, and Rosenberg’s son, Mathew Louis-Rosenberg, are both active in Climate Ground Zero, a civil disobedience campaign based in the coalfields of southern West Virginia.

“I’m opposed to mountaintop removal, of course,” said McGraw, a Methodist minister and coal miner’s son, “But particularly after they arrested Zoe [in August's tree sit at Pettry Bottom, W.Va.], that gave me a little more enthusiasm about coming out and supporting her.” Beavers, 28, served as ground support for the two tree sitters. She was arrested twice over the course of the five day protest; once two days after returning as a liason for the sitters at the request of state police.

Beavers enlisted in the U.S. Army after her high school graduation in 2000 and did not move back to her home state until May of 2009. She credits her return to West Virginia, where she lives with family in St. Albans, to the burgeoning movement for environmental justice in the coalfields.

“My whole life I was taught that nothing can change in West Virginia, we shouldn’t fight for it because it’s a lost cause,” the Iraq War veteran, who now works with the Student Environmental Action Coalition out of Charleston, said, “We are not powerless.”

Her grandfather’s main concern with mountaintop removal mining is the industry’s dishonesty.

“What they’re talking about mountaintop removal and what actually happens with mountaintop removal are two different things,” he said, “They say that they are putting it back like it was . . . but what’s been done with it mostly is the golf course and the prison.”

—

Mat Louis-Rosenberg grew up in the Catskill Mountains of New York State. Born in to a family with deep activist roots, his first memory is of participating in a march in his hometown at three years of age. Louis-Rosenberg was raised with a strong appreciation for United States radical history- he learned about West Virginia through family friends’ stories of the labor movement. Continue reading ‘Senior’s March Brings Families Together to Fight Mountaintop Removal’

A surprising turn of events in West Virginia politics this week.

Sen. Robert Byrd, Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Rep. Nick Rahall all publicly criticized Massey Energy after the company refused to fund the relocation of Marsh Fork Elementary.  Marsh Fork is currently sitting next to the Goals Coal processing facility and right down the hollow from a huge coal slurry impoundment (which holds billions of gallons of toxic coal sludge.)

Previously,upon suggestion from local school officials about contributing, Massey Energy spokesman Jeff Gillenwater had said “Massey pays millions of dollars in taxes each year that are available for projects such as this. In fact, just the mines in the Marsh Fork area pay nearly $5 million per month in severance, property and other state taxes.“

Kind of made them look like co(a)ld hearted bastards to refuse to support a bunch of school kids in such dire need (at Massey’s hands, no less). Continue reading ‘West Virginia Politicians Bite the Hand that Feeds Them’

It’s not every day that the major environmental group fighting to close down a coal-fired power plant gets an escorted tour of the power plant owner’s energy operations.  Yet that’s just what happened this past Thursday, when representatives from the Oregon Sierra Club and our allies in the fight against the Boardman Coal Plant joined Portland General Electric (PGE) officials for a guided tour of the PGE-operated Boardman Plant, as well the company’s Coyote Springs Natural Gas Plant, and Biglow Wind Farm. 

The drive out to Boardman, home of Oregon’s only coal plant, was a long one.  The group of us Sierra Club-ers in our van followed a PGE plug-in electric Prius down a highway that led through the heart of the Columbia River Gorge – one of the most beautiful areas in the state.  The lush greenery and towering conifers of western Oregon gave way to the starker beauty of central/eastern Oregon as we crossed the Cascade Mountain Range, and headed into one of the most sparsely populated areas of the state.  Watching the rear end of PGE’s Prius driving down the road in front of us, the words “Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle” plastered to the back, I had to wonder if PGE was hoping to diffuse the ardor of our fact-finding mission by showing us their environmentally friendly car. 

All during the trip, PGE staff were friendly and welcoming to our group; yet I find it hard to believe anyone involved ever forgot our very real conflicting interests.  PGE was clearly hoping to impress us with their green credentials, and convince us that the company isn’t a bunch of evil-doers.  We fact-finders, on the other hand, were there to observe firsthand some of the effects of Oregon’s single largest source of greenhouse emissions: the PGE-operated Boardman plant.  I watched the natural beauty of the Columbia Gorge slide by through the window, spotting red-tailed hawks sitting on tree branches and black-billed magpies perched in roadside brush.  And I was reminded that Boardman is not only responsible for releasing 5 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year – it’s also a major source of smog and acid rain in the Gorge, and a direct health threat to wildlife and people alike.

 We turned off the main highway and headed down the side road leading to the Boardman Plant.  After passing through security, we parked outside the building, Boardman’s towering smokestack looming far above us.  In famously green Oregon, few ordinary people realize how much of the energy they use each day comes from giant smokestacks like this, continually belching a haze of smog, mercury, and carbon dioxide into the air.  This coal plant is located in the sparsely-populated eastern half of the state, out of sight of any major urban area, for a reason.  It is the job of us activists to remind the green-minded consumers of the state’s urban centers that this is where their electricity comes from.

Continue reading ‘Visiting PGE’s Boardman Coal Plant’

By: Adaeze Umolu

Young men and women at the reception and registration desk are in high spirits as UK Powershift 09 has brought hundreds together to tackle our climate future here in London. Irrespective of physical, cultural or social differences, the determination of these young men and woman begs one to wonder if United Kingdom or world leaders can ignore such a movement.

Continue reading ‘Powershift UK! YOUTH and passion’

Nearly 100 youth from over 10 Asian countries joined the 350.org Asian Youth Climate Workshop last weekend to learn about the climate crisis, the UNFCCC, and prepare to create a breakthrough moment on the Road to Copenhagen: a massive day of action on October 24 with thousands of events at iconic places around the world. The workshop was also supported by Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace Solar Generation, TckTckTck, and the People’s Action on Climate Change. Check out this awesome video!

“This is the first time youth in Asia have come together to really focus on building  a movement to push for a strong international climate treaty,” said Abe Woo, 350.org Southeast Asian Field Organizer. “We’ll not only be sending a wake-up call to world leaders on 24 October, we’ll be launching a lasting movement for change.”

Take action on October 24 . . . and read more about the workshop and Bangkok.

Continue reading ‘Video: Asian Youth Take Action in Bangkok!’