It’s Getting Hot In Here

The permit for the largest mountaintop removal project in West Virginia is almost history.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has propsed a veto of Arch Coal’s Spruce Number 1 strip mine that would have buried more than seven miles of streams and destroy 2,278 acres (about 3.5 square miles) of rich mountains.  This veto still has to go through the official process to get finalized but this is the biggest concrete victory on stopping mountaintop removal in a long time.  We need to celebrate.

We need to celebrate because we’re protecting Appalachia, but we need to be cautiously celebrating. The economy in the coalfields is still heavily dependent on, well, coal.  While it’s true that there are one-sixth of the mining jobs in West Virginia that there were 50 years go, there’s 20,000 now, certain portions of the state are definitely still dependent on coal.

I remember that, in the October 2009 Public Hearing in Charleston on Mountaintop Removal, a pro-Mountaintop Removal speaker from Logan County lamented seeing environmentalists partying next to the mountain they saved while he tried to figure out what’s next for his family now that those paychecks weren’t coming.  That’s the question we should be asking of the Obama Administration as we thank them for their veto.  We should be both asking them what’s next for the coalfields and bringing them solutions.

Bummed out that the fossil fuel empire might be a scoring a big win on offshore drilling?

Wanting to do more to stop King Coal’s destructive reign over Appalachia?

Are you thinking WTF (What the Frack) is going on with hydro-fracking?

Well tomorrow is a big day to get out there and tell the fossil fool’s just what we think about them.  And Fossil Fool’s Day Organizing has been rocking it across North America with over 30 actions planned across Canada, Mexico and the U.S [plus many more internationall.]  It’s less than 24 hours until our merry network of pranksters unleashes joke, actions and hare-brained schemes on the Fossil Fools and their pals.

• If you haven’t registered an action, please do so here- http://bit.ly/9ZSzyy
• If you aren’t letting us know about your action until after the fact, be sure to send a reportback email to fossilfoolsday@risingtidenorthamerica.org
• Watch Fossilfoolsday.org,  @risingtidena on Twitter and on Facebook for the latest updates
• Read 15 Ways to Topple the Fossil Fuel Empire

And remember what the late great anarcho-prankster Abbie Hoffman said: “The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.“

UPDATE:We just found out that some of our mates down in Tasmania set up a road blockade to keep loggers from releasing more carbon into the atmosphere by cutting down old growth forest.  Pics soon. Continue reading ‘Twenty-Twenty-Twenty Four Hours to Go, Fossil Fool’s Day is Almost Here!’

This morning, the Obama administration announced that it would expand offshore drilling. This is a major step backward: a misguided concession to Big Oil that will damage our coastlines, pour more carbon into the atmosphere, keep us addicted to oil, and slow down the creation of clean energy jobs (oh, and yeah, it will lower the price of gasoline … by a few pennies in 2030).

The next few hours are crucial for shaping the public response to this announcement. The administration is already feeling the heat — most news sources are covering criticism from both environmental groups and Republicans — and we need to keep the pressure up. Here’s some quick ways to help out:

Tell President Obama and the Senate that you oppose expanding offshore drilling. The Senate still has to approve the deal and coastal Senators can help block drilling off their shores.

Join the growing 1,000,000 Strong Against Offshore Drilling facebook group. The group is quickly becoming a hub for anti-drilling activity and a good place to stay up to date with new developments.

Follow the debate on Twitter with this list. A list of some of the people tracking the debate.

And, of course, keep checking back to the blog for more updates and commentary on the announcement!

Of all states to be concerned about the effects of climate change, I would think that Florida would be first on the list.  A state with a mean elevation of only 100 feet and subject to regular hits by hurricanes and other storms, Florida stands to lose a significant amount of landmass as sea levels begin to rise and storm surges increase.  Perhaps this is why Senator Bill Nelson received a 100% rating from the League of Conservation Voters in their rating of the 111th session.

Stratton Kirton, a staffer from Senator Bill Nelson’s office, talked to students and faculty from across Florida on March 25th about how Senator Nelson’s support for environmental issues plays into his support for the economic development of Florida – and his sticking points in policy decisions.

Echoing the sentiments of many of the staffers that we have been speaking with during the Let’s Talk series, Kirton said that Senator Nelson will support a climate change bill as long as it is carefully constructed and designed with concern for consumers in mind. This includes what I think needs to be a major shift in framing of the issue.  The focus is always how environmental regulation will harm the economy and a carbon cap-and-trade will negatively affect our competitiveness in the global economy, especially if our trading partners (namely China) fail to enact similar legislation.  The focus needs to shift away from this idea to how legislation will spur the new growth economy.  The Michigan Senators hammered this home when we talked with them back in February and so have the other staffers, but that discussion is not happening in the press or among the common people.  The Senate and environmental groups need to emphasize that climate change is going to present us with a huge challenge – but one that will also provide us with new jobs, make us more secure, and more energy independent.

Continue reading ‘Let’s Talk: Florida’

Posted on behalf of Jasper Conner, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, Mountain Justice and the RReNEW Collective

We have to make it clear: a Green economy that doesn’t work for everybody, doesn’t work at all.

I’ve seen the demand for Green Jobs for a while now. It has spread so widely across the country that political candidates are forced to take a position on our demand. We should celebrate pushing this demand so far, but we also need to evaluate what we’ve won with this demand. (and what it is exactly that we are demanding?)

I organize in SW Virginia with the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards (SAMS), in a coal field community directly impacted by mountaintop removal.  The other day I had a conversation with a strip miner who also runs a cluttered second hand shop in the town of Appalachia. We were able to find a lot of common ground in our conversation: we both don’t like surface mining, and we both would love to see Green jobs in the community. I didn’t need to convince him about more jobs in his community, so much as I needed to show him what we’re actually doing to make it happen.

While in Richmond, Va, our state Capitol, on a lobby trip I spoke with some industry people at length about some different things. I asked them what they thought about a more sustainable and diverse economy in Appalachia, and they were supportive of the idea. They were also very honest with their belief that coal won’t be around much longer. But they also asked an important question, “Where is that Green economy?”

Continue reading ‘Moving Beyond Green Jobs’

LNG Sources, Part 1: Russia’s Sakhalin Island

In the Pacific Northwest, NW Natural Gas claims that the Palomar pipeline and Bradwood Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal will bring “clean” fuel to the United States. But the truth is the real impacts of LNG importation are enormous, and extend far beyond the Pacific Northwest. LNG threatens to harm Oregon’s economy and environment and the impacts of LNG are huge even before the fuel reaches Oregon’s shores. Far from being “clean”, the environmental and social impacts of the full LNG supply chain show LNG is a dirty, costly fuel. This is the first post of a series highlighting the global impacts of LNG, which strongly resemble the global impacts of oil production. Is LNG going to be “the new Foreign Fossil Fuel”?

Take action: Click here to tell NW Natural “Global injustice is not a fair trade for their profit!”

Tell your friends in Oregon what’s up: Click here to make this movement the most effective, share this article with a friend on the West coast.

In January of 2005, representatives of local indigenous groups on Sakhalin Island, Russia, were so outraged by the damage to their community and their fishery caused by pipelines for LNG exports, they blockaded construction sites. Their outrage was directed at the Sakhalin II LNG export project, a potential source of LNG for proposed LNG import terminals in Oregon. Continue reading ‘Is LNG the New Foreign Oil?’

“Its like a kick in the face” says Jonathan Ruiz of Florida International University.  Jonathan campaigned for Obama for fourteen months, and now he’s livid about today’s announcement by the administration to open half the east coast to offshore drilling.

“I was born near Florida’s Emerald Gulf Coast.” says Graham Penniman of University of Central Florida.  “The memories that I have on those beaches brings me so much joy, that every night I fall asleep thinking about the moons reflection across the water. To imagine my beach any other way destroys my heart.”

Image from the NY times

Why are these Florida university students mad?  They are being sold out by the Obama administration in a misguided attempt to curry political favor.  From the NYTimes:

“The proposal — a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations — would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.”

Youth, the millennial generation so inspired by Obama to vote in record numbers, have the most to lose from the expansion of drilling.  Even some coastal governors and senators will be angry about the announcement because of the small amount of oil and huge environmental risks.  If white-haired governors and senators are worried, what about young people who are thinking about protecting this coastline for us and our children, long after the tiny amounts of energy have been extracted?

Continue reading ‘Our Generation Screwed Over by Obama’s Offshore Drilling Plan’

Great article in Mother Jones about Chase’s financing of mountaintop removal.  A must read.

And FYI, if this inspires you and you want to take action against Chase, Fossil Fool’s Day is only two days away.

JPMorgan’s War on Nature

How the Wall Street darling underwrites environmental Armageddon.

By Andy Kroll | Tue Mar. 30, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

Unlike virtually all of its competitors, JPMorgan Chase steeled itself early for the collapse of the subprime market and emerged from the rubble of the global financial meltdown with both its balance sheet and reputation intact. But the storied firm stands alone among its Wall Street rivals in another area, too. JPMorgan backstops one of the most destructive mining practices in the world: mountaintop removal coal mining. And it continues to do so even as other major banks have cut ties to this practice.

“Chase is the single largest remaining player in this game,” says Scott Edwards, advocacy director for the Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental advocacy group comprised of lawyers, scientists, and activists, among others. “They just absolutely refuse to take responsibility for their role in this absolutely devastating industry.”

Mountaintop removal (MTR) mining, focused in Appalachian states like West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, involves deforesting huge swaths of land and blasting the summits off of mountains to expose the black veins of coal underneath. The waste and rubble from the demolition is then dumped into nearby rivers and streams, burying local water sources in toxic byproducts, choking off tributaries that feed into larger rivers, and wiping out plants and wildlife, according to numerous scientific studies. Despite the mining industry’s claims, there are no successful ways to mitigate the effects of MTR, according to Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. The effects on the nearby environment, she says, are long lasting and often irreversible. Continue reading ‘MoJo: JPMorgan Chase’s War on Nature’

Written by Arielle Klagsbrun at Washington University in St. Louis

After months of working on-campus to rename the Consortium for C!#@n Coal Utilization, here at Washington University, we decided to take our concerns to the source: the corporate headquarters of Peabody Energy in downtown St. Louis. Since our flashmob against our administration’s coal-sponsored “America’s Energy Future” Conference, a unanimous Student Union Senate Resolution calling for the renaming of the Consortium and a meeting with the head honchos of the Consortium have not yet yielded our goal – to remove the misleading term “c!#@n coal” from the Consortium’s name – we decided to take our concerns downtown.

This past Friday, March 26, 2010, over fifty Washington University students and St. Louis community members gathered outside of Peabody Energy to protest the company’s business practices. WashU senior Todd Zimmer laid out our demands for the crowd and for Peabody executives. “We want an end to dirty energy,” he said, “we want an end to lies about c!#@n coal, … And we want an end to the relationship between Washington University and Peabody Energy.” Many St. Louis employees emerged from their office buildings to hear our chants of “C!#@n coal, hell no, that’s a lie, it’s got to go,” and “coal, coal, no solution, we are sick of your pollution,”  accompanied by a drum set, full-size banners, and signs held by protesters.

We’ve already been asked several times where that title came from.  Consider us poetic.  Here at the University of Maryland, UMD for Clean Energy is organizing a major event on green development practices next Monday, April 5th.  Check out the background from our website on why we’re organizing.  Below is one of two blog hits we just received thanks to Rachel Hare, one of our members.  There’s also an op-ed I have out in our campus newspaper today about why we need to go all out on greening the East Campus development.  If you have friends in Maryland, let them know about this event!

Since developer Foulger-Pratt pulled out of plans for the University of Maryland’s East Campus Development project last fall, the entire endeavor has been thrown into uncertainty.  The university has reconsidered the project’s design, the timeline, and even toyed with the idea of postponing or abandoning the plan.  But among the growing uncertainty, there is something else: an opportunity.

The East Campus project presents an opportunity for the University of Maryland to become the benchmark for sustainable development in Maryland. Continue reading ‘UMD for Clean Energy: Make East Campus a Beast Campus’