It’s Getting Hot In Here

By now, it’s no secret in the environmental community that there was an unprecedented scientific report on mountaintop removal released a few days ago which found the obvious

“Mining permits are being issued despite the preponderance of scientific evidence that impacts are pervasive and irreversible and that mitigation cannot compensate for losses. Considering environmental impacts of MTM/VF, in combination with evidence that the health of people living in surface-mining regions of the central Appalachians may be compromised by mining activities, we conclude that MTM/VF permits should not be granted unless new methods can be subjected to rigorous peer-review and shown to remedy these problems.”

The report came on the heels of a new permit issued by the EPA for the blasting of the Hobet 45 mine. As the Charleston Gazette reported Continue reading ‘Congress makes the deals, the EPA Should follow the Science’

x-posted from Solutionaries

Over the past ten days, 19 youth activists involved in the Summer of Solutions converged in chilly St. Paul, MN to build a strategy for reshaping our economy from the ground up. We learned how to run an effective summer program dedicated to finding tangible, local solutions to the problems of climate change, the economic downturn, and environmental injustice.

The program began in the summer of 2008 with one program of 20 participants, and over the course of last year grew into 9 programs across the United States. Collectively, there were 150 youth activists involved around the nation.

That was this last summer. Now, we’re looking forward to next summer and the growth it has in store for us.

I have had the amazing experience of working with folks from around the nation over the past 10 days at the Grand Aspirations Winter Leadership Gathering. Grand Aspirations is the organization that facilitates Summer of Solutions programs around the nation. The purpose of the gathering was to bring local Summer of Solutions program planners together to strategize at the national level on how to make our programs effective, how to connect with the communities we live in and train participants.

Participants in Grand Aspirations’ Summer of Solutions program have created businesses around cooperative energy, held community forums called “barn raisings” to raise awareness about energy issues, and have enhanced the power of their own organizations, such as the Northwest Institute for Community Energy. Last summer also saw a huge growth in community gardening and local food projects, listening projects to bring communities together around development issues, and general education and awareness raising.

Continue reading ‘Reflections on the Summer of Solutions National Leadership Gathering’

When I was a younger man than I am today, I had a vision of the Great Plains transformed: buffalo roaming across great tracts of tallgrass prairie studded with wind farms that powered the whole Midwest. Tribal communities, farmers and ranchers and young people all working together to develop an economy that could sustain the people and restore the land. Maybe even a little folk school, something like the Highlander Center in east Tennessee, to bring everyone together to sing and dance and strategize together.

As I’ve learned, usually the hard way, big visions only become reality through perseverance, hard work and often a bit of luck or good timing. I only lasted six months in Grand Forks, North Dakota, all of which were somehow during the winter, but one of the things I remember best was that any of the plans we devised had to contend with the 800 pound gorilla in the state. Basin Electric, a rural electric cooperative with 2.8 million members across Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming was the populist face of big dirty coal. Headquartered in Bismarck, ND, they seemed to run state politics and they weren’t interested in wind.

So when I saw the headline “Rural Electric Cooperative Completes $240 Million Wind Farm in 4 Months” I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. This 115.5 MW project will be the largest wind project entirely owned by a consumer cooperative, AND IT WAS COMPLETED IN JUST 4 MONTHS!! Basin, which got 94% of its power from coal in 2005 (and only 1% from wind) now has a goal to reach 20% wind by the end of the year.

As we work towards a rapid and massive ramp-up of clean energy across the country, we should look to consumer cooperatives and municipally-owned utilities, both of which are non-profit, community-controlled structures with jobs and revenues that stay in the communities they serve. In 2008, rural cooperatives expanded wind energy capacity 65% compared to just 25% nationally, and municipal utilities, like in Long Island and Austin, are implementing some of the most innovative and aggressive renewable energy and energy efficiency programs in the country. Check out the American Public Power Association, which represents over 2,000 community-owned utilities, for more information.

My friend Laura recently wrote, “It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.”

Raise your hand if you agree. Fair enough — you’re being realistic. But if we were in a large room full of common people representing the population of the world, every hand would be raised. Which means two things:

1. Somehow common culture has developed a stereotype that only the dishonest are voteable.
2. Common culture prefers candidates with common sense, common honesty and common decency.

The question is, when the common people turn out to vote in the next election, will there be any sensible candidates to vote for?

Continue reading ‘Who else will we vote for?’

You heard it here first. A Department of Interior Administrative Law Judge withdrew Peabody Coal Company’s Life of Mine permit for operations on Black Mesa, AZ, handing a major victory to tribal and environmental organizations who appealed the permit decision in January. The permit had been granted on December 22nd 2008 by the Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM) in one of several fossil-fuel friendly 11th hour decisions by the Bush Administration.

According Judge Robert G. Holt, “OSM violated NEPA [National Environmental Protection Act] by not preparing a supplemental draft EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] when Peabody changed the proposed action. As a result, the Final EIS did not consider a reasonable range of alternatives to the new proposed action, described the wrong environmental baseline, and did not achieve the informed decision-making and meaningful public comment required by NEPA.  Because of the defective Final EIS, OSM’s decision to issue a revised permit to Peabody must be vacated and remanded to OSM for further action.”

As a community member of Black Mesa I am grateful for Judge Holt’s decision. For 40 years our sacred homelands and people have borne the brunt of coal mining impacts, from relocation to depletion of our only drinking water source. This ruling is an important step towards restorative justice for Indigenous communities who have suffered at the hands of multinational companies like Peabody Energy. This decision is also precedent-setting for all other communities who struggle with the complexities of NEPA laws and OSM procedures in regards to environmental protection. However, we also cannot ignore the irreversible damage of coal mining industries continues on the land, water, air, people and all living things.

Hello intrepid readers and writers of ItsGettingHotInHere.org. The blog is 5 years old, started during the Montreal COP11 conference, and in that time we have all contributed to making this a huge communal resource.  Can you help us grow more by doing the site a 5 minute favor?

Our movement benefits from the breadth and quality of stories and opinions shared here. Activists in Oregon can benefit from action ideas from Australia. On-the-ground activists fighting coal in West Virginia engage in discussion with San Francisco think tanks.  Climate activists share stories from around the world. We help the movement grow by broadcasting amazing victories, like the Green Job/Green New York Act and stopping a 1000 MW coal plant in Meigs Co Ohio.

In 5 years, these efforts created a blog that has huge authority on the web, and is read by everyone from journalists to activists to policy makers.  As we upgrade to a new decade, we’re upgrading the this site based on your feedback.

The IGHIH editors have put together a survey to collect input from readers, writers and partner organizations so we can better serve you and the climate movement. Thank you so much for your feedback!

Take the 5 min Survey

 Just a few years ago – say 2006 or 2007 – the Northwest climate movement in the United States was composed of a dedicated but relatively small group of folks working to inject the energy of the youth voice into the climate debate.  Those early years saw the solidification of the Cascade Climate Network, increased student involvement in passing state and local climate legislation, and the launching of several region-wide initiatives that continue to influence policy decisions in the Northwest today. 

As we enter 2010, I believe the Northwest youth climate movement is becoming stronger than ever before.  We’ve expanded onto new campuses, helped pass a slew of climate laws in both Washington and Oregon, and are becoming increasingly involved in the national and international climate dialogue.  So how did the Northwest get to this point?  Below, in today’s Climate Generation post, I’ve tried to highlight some of the major successes and achievements of youth climate activists in the Northwest, and to take a look at where some of the current major initiatives may be going.  This list is by no means comprehensive – and due to the nature of my own current work in the movement, it’s biased toward projects that focus on confronting the fossil fuel industries directly.  Yet I hope it gives a rough idea of the trajectory of this movement so far, and provides a glimpse of where we might be headed next. Continue reading ‘Climate Generation: The Fight for a Fossil-Free Northwest’

Or should I say, the obviously abhorrent…

The incredibly destructive coal mining practice known as “mountaintop removal” causes “pervasive and irreversible” damage to human health and the environment, according to an authoritative scientific study released today.

The comprehensive and far-reaching scientific review, entitled “Mountaintop Mining Consequences“, was conducted by members of the National Academy of Sciences and is being published in the prestigious journal Science.

The study summarized dozens of pre-existing scientific papers analyzing the impacts of mountaintop removal mining, a type of surface coal mining that uses huge amounts of explosives to blast away the tops of mountains to expose coal seams. The resulting debris (aka the former mountain) are typically disposed of through a practice known as “valley fills,” where tons of mining debris are dumped into neighboring valleys, burying miles of headwater streams and valley ecosystems.

According to a press release on the study:

…the authors outline severe environmental degradation taking place at mining sites and downstream. The practice destroys extensive tracts of deciduous forests and buries small streams that play essential roles in the overall health of entire watersheds. Waterborne contaminants enter streams that remain below valley fills and can be transported great distances into larger bodies of water.

Mountaintop removal mining has already buried more than 800 miles of Appalachian streams and destroyed hundreds of square miles of woodlands in one of America’s biodiversity hotspots, all while both the U.S. EPA and state environmental agencies have allowed the destructive practice to continue. That’s left it to activists to slow these projects down and prevent their irreversible damages.

The new scientific study condemned federal and state regulation of mountaintop removal mining operations, concluding that “Current attempts to regulate [mountaintop mining and associated valley fill] practices are inadequate,” and that “Regulators should no longer ignore rigorous science.”
Continue reading ‘Science Confirms the Abhorrently Obvious: Blowing Up Mountains Damages Environment, Human Health’

Wednesday, January 6

Nothing says “Happy new year” like kilotons of TNT blasting down your horizon and burying your streams, and a deposit of millions of cubic yards of hazardous waste into already devastated valleys. That’s Pres. Obama and the EPA’s new years greeting card to the folks in Lincoln, West Virginia.

Nothing says “you betrayed us” like a rowdy gang of anti-mountaintop removal activists at EPA HQ in DC during the morning rush, holding giant red letters spelling out “SHAME” and chanting down the EPA staff’s resolve to keep appeasing the coal barons. (Actually, there are much better ways to say it, but we had a night to plan and the underfunded, volunteer-driven anti-MTR movement does what we can with what we’ve got.)

The bad news didn’t reach most of us at DC Rising Tide (DCRT) until last night’s meeting. On Tuesday, Patriot Coal got the EPA go-ahead to start blasting through 3 miles of mountain streams in Lincoln, WV. The Hobet 45 mine, named for the Patriot subsidiary in charge, is the first major Appalachian MTR coal mining permit to be loosed from the 79 suspended for EPA review last year. DCRT wasn’t about to let it go unnoticed.

Continue reading ‘EPA’s New MTR Permit, New Year’s Shame’

Cross-posted from Americans for Energy Leadership

The Cleantech Group just released a ranking of the top 10 clean-tech universities in the United States for 2010, with MIT, Berkeley, UT Austin, Stanford, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor occupying the top five slots.

Universities and colleges have a critical role to play in accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy and reclaiming U.S. competitiveness in the global clean-tech race. Universities perform 54 percent of the nation’s basic research, a fundamental building block of the technological innovation we need to spark the clean energy revolution. Universities and colleges are the training ground for the next generation of scientists, engineers, teachers, and leaders in government and industry. And universities are the launching ground for numerous entrepreneurial ventures to bring those innovations to the marketplace. Indeed, it’s common knowledge that universities like Stanford played a defining role in the information technology revolution, birthing companies like Google, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems.

However, as President Obama reminded us in a speech today at the White House, “despite the importance of education in these subjects, we have to admit we are right now being outpaced by our competitors… To continue to cede our leadership in education is to cede our position in the world.” As we found in our recent report, “Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant,” Asian nations like China, South Korea, and Japan are launching massive government investment projects to dominate the clean-tech sector, which promises to be one of the largest new growth sectors of the next few decades.

(More below the fold…)

Continue reading ‘Top 10 U.S. Universities for Cleantech: How Does Your School Rank?’