It’s Getting Hot In Here

Warning: the Utah Department of Commerce and the state’s major electric utility really don’t want you to know the following information, and they will hijack your computer to keep you from getting it:

The administration of Utah’s former Governor Jon M. Huntsman (now U.S. Ambassador to China) commissioned an independent study to figure out how much, if anything, the state could save by switching to alternative, clean forms of energy.  Utah currently gets almost all of its energy through fossil fuel combustion, 82% of which uses coal.

Report says these things are dirty and expensive; report get's an "F" from state

It appears the current administration (Gary Herbert) and his coal-burning buddies don’t like what the report had to say:

“This [coal-based] resource mix…results in significant emissions of air pollutants and consumes a large share of Utah’s increasingly valuable water resources. The authors estimate that fossil generation in Utah today:

–consumes about 73,800 acre feet, or 24 billion gallons, of fresh water per year; results in 202 premature deaths per year;
–contributes to 154 hospital visits per year for respiratory injuries, and 175 asthma-related emergency room visits each year.

We estimate that the health and water impacts from Utah fossil generation have a monetary value of between $1.7 and $2.0 billion dollars per year (2008$), or between $36 and $43 per megawatt-hour (MWh) of fossil generation in Utah, a value similar to the direct costs of conventional electricity generation.”

Naturally, at this point, I would include a link to the PDF of the report. But I don’t want to do that to you. Get this: if you surf over to the PDF on the state’s website, a giant pop-up window (disavowing the findings) appears, the rest of the screen goes dark, and there is no way to click out of it. I’m no computer genius, so I had to “ctrl-alt-delete” and restart my laptop  just to finish this post. Sheesh. Continue reading ‘Utah commissions independent clean energy report, hides the findings, crashes my computer’

The US Social Forum just wrapped up in Detroit. For 5 days 15,000 people from the labor, environmental, social justice, and  peace movements (among many others) gathered under the banner of “Another World is Possible. Another US is Necessary.” To me one of the most exciting parts of the USSF was the Ecojustice People’s Movement Assembly where representatives from grassroots environmental and climate justice groups came together to find common cause and plant the seeds for an uncompromising, justice based environmental movement in this country. Indigenous peoples, Gulf Coast residents, Appalachians, and inner city residents on the frontlines of the fossil fuel industry’s war on our planet and their allies came together to draft the following statement. To me this is a very exciting step forward in the fight for a clean and just future. And our movement would do well to align itself with the principles it lays out.

Declaration from the US Social Forum’s Ecojustice People’s Movement Assembly

As participants from diverse social movements throughout North America responding to the ecological, economic and social crisis created by corporate-controlled industrial production and exploitation of land, water, soil, air, work and life; we honor the struggles and are inspired by the resiliency of the people of Detroit. Detroit has epitomized the inevitable boom and bust cycles and class, race and gender oppression that Capitalism inflicts on communities; however this city has also come to represent a beacon of hope for communities across the US.

Detroit is a window into the future. Through this window we see an inspiring site of deeply grassroots and living visions of a just and democratic community. Community resistance to corporate polluters in Detroit, including oil refineries, coal power plants and the world’s largest waste incinerator, continue to hold the frontline against the destruction of the planet. Meanwhile resistance to such corporatization strategies such as predatory lending, water privatization, prisons and police brutality are matched with equally powerful models of resilience; such as community gardens, cooperative economics, freedom schools and transformative justice. Detroit can be a model of the Just Transition to sustainable communities that we require; one in which exploitive jobs that cause ecological devastation and compromised health are replaced with meaningful work in our own interests; restoring our labor and our resources to the web of life. Continue reading ‘Declaration from the US Social Forum’s Ecojustice People’s Movement Assembly’

I’m pissed off and ready for a fight.  King Coal drives all over Appalachia’s land and people like Keith Richards on a five day bender in his new roadster, and the EPA gives them the keys to the liquor cabinet.

How long before the compromisers at the EPA and in the Obama administration figure out that there is no kinder gentler version of mountaintop removal coal mining.

Scores are mobilizing for a big rally and action in Washington D.C. on Sept. 27.  People in the coalfields are working everyday to stop this crime.  It’s time to mix it up and stop this madness.  Get involved.

Much-Lauded Strict Mountaintop Mining Guidelines Not So Strict

EPA’s First Decision Under New Mountaintop Mining Guidelines is to Approve Coal Permit; Permit Would Create Three New Valley Fills

SAN FRANCISCO– Just last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave the Army Corps of Engineers a green light for the Pine Creek mine permit, a mountaintop removal (MTR) mining site in Logan County, W.Va. This is the first permit decision the EPA has issued under the new mountaintop mining guidelines, which came out last April and were anticipated to provide tougher oversight of mountaintop removal coal mining.

The new MTR guidelines were understood to provide greater protection for headwater streams by curbing the practice of dumping waste in neighboring valleys to create what is known as valley fills. The Pine Creek permit is the first test of these guidelines, and green lights three new valley fills (each over 40 acres large). It was anticipated that these guidelines, by requiring mining operators to control levels of toxins in nearby streams, would significantly reduce the dumping of mining waste in valleys, which the EPA said was scientifically proven to contaminate drinking water and wreck ecosystems. Continue reading ‘EPA’s New Guidelines Promising Strict Enforcement of Mountaintop Removal…. Not So Strict’

By Teryn Norris & Clifton Yin
Published by The Huffington Post

When President Obama and key Senate leaders meet today to reach a compromise on energy and climate legislation, they should strongly consider increasing federal investment in clean energy technology to at least $15 billion annually. This is a comprehensive third way strategy to improve U.S. energy independence, economic competitiveness, and climate security, and it deserves bipartisan support.

We are a Democrat and Republican. One of us campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008, the other as a delegate for John McCain. One of us worked on energy and climate policy for the progressive Breakthrough Institute, while the other worked on similar issues for the conservative American Enterprise Institute. We disagree on a wide range of issues, and we hold different economic philosophies.

Despite our differences, we are strongly united behind a serious federal agenda for clean energy innovation. Regardless of the future of cap and trade, robust federal investment in clean energy technology can effectively tackle both energy and climate policy reform. In addition to reducing our oil addiction, it can help build new export-oriented and manufacturing-intensive industries, seize global market share, drive down the price of clean energy technologies, and accelerate the transition to a cleaner, low-carbon economy.

Continue reading ‘A Bipartisan Strategy for Energy Leadership’

School may be out, but over at ACE, we are searching for some answers! This summer, we hired a detective to investigate pressing climate questions.

Follow ACE’s Detective Meadows as he answers an urgent climate conundrum: Is the warming that we’re seeing natural or not?!

Stay tuned as Inspector Thorough gets on the trail next week! I

If you have a question for Detective Meadows, email him at: detective.meadows@climateeducation.org — you may just end up in our next video!

[The following is a creative perspective on the recent verdict finding Syncrude guilty in the death of 1,600 ducks that landed in one of their tar sands tailing ponds.]

Sixteen hundred ducks flew over the Canadian sky in the annual migration to their mating grounds, guided by genetic compasses, as they had for millennia.  Instead of cool, dark forest as far as the bird’s eye view could see, smokestacks pumping out heavy black fumes and tangles of pipelines carrying modern day alchemy stretch for miles.  You see, the earthmovers had discovered a way to turn tar into gold.

Where once had grown the one of the richest ecosystems on the planet, now refineries and boom towns and pit mines have taken hold like any other invasive species.  That’s right, the tar sands are the Asian carp of Canada.  And despite our best efforts, they show now signs of going away.  Fifteen years of reckless and drunken expansion have led to the most destructive project on the face of the planet.  And, you know what the word for unrestricted growth is?  Cancer.

But to the ducks winging their way home, they only saw a choice between landing on pit mines and machinery or those large, still lakes that stretch for miles.  Kind of a no-brainer for these birdbrains.  Continue reading ‘Attack of the Sticky Menace’

It has officially been over three months since the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill started in the Gulf of Mexico.  In that time President Barack Obama has appointed an oil spill team, met with BP executives, gone to Louisiana, and addressed the nation.  He’s even appointed an Oil Spill Team to handle the crisis.  Granted, none of this has stopped the flow of oil into the Gulf, but it at least gives the impression that Obama is committed to solving this climate crisis and preventing similar events from happening in the future.  That we have a leader committed to environmental justice and corporate accountability for BP.  How I wish that this were the case.

In his address to the nation President Obama stated that he had frozen all off shore oil drilling permits for at least six months in order for new and better regulations to be created and implemented.  It was music to my ears.  Finally someone was realizing that regulation of business is sometimes necessary to protect both people and the planet.  However, recently it has been revealed that the Obama administration has approved plans by both BP and Shell Oil to drill a total of 11 exploratory wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas above Alaska.  Wait, WHAT?  We’re granting more permits to the very same company that has destroyed peoples lives, work, and ecological treasures in the Gulf?  We’re allowing them to potentially ruin the Alaska wilderness?  Really?  Is our government incapable of understanding that a fossil fuel economy is no longer justifiable?  When will our government finally wake up?  After every ecological treasure in the country is destroyed and everyone is jobless?

Luckily for humanity, communities and activists are working on solutions to protect people and the planet. Continue reading ‘Government Failing, Communities Succeeding’

Over 700 “Hands Across the Sand” events are happening today in all 50 states and around the world to protest oil-drilling and call for clean energy solutions.

At events taking place on beaches, near waterways, and in land-locked towns, participants are joining hands to form symbolic barriers against spilling oil. The events represent the largest-yet outpouring of grassroots activism in response to the disastrous April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig and the subsequent, devastating oil damage in the Gulf of Mexico.

Check out Google News for the hundreds of media hits the events are generating!

The rally also represents a new surge of climate organizing since the oil disaster. More so than ever, Americans are calling for strong action to move our country away from fossil fuels and towards a sustainable future. We’re putting our hands to work, now it’s time for President Obama to pick up his hand, grab a pen, and sign some strong climate and energy legislation!

For the past ten months, I’ve coordinated the Greenpeace Organizing Term, a semester of advanced training & leadership development for the next generation of environmental leaders in Washington, DC.  Here, Tabitha Skervin tells her story from the program so far.  NOTE: I did not tell Tabitha to say that I’m “really cool.”  She came up with that one on her own.

The earth is God’s creation and my home, so I firmly believe we have a responsibility to take care of it and all the life that lives in it.

It is on that ground that applied to do the Greenpeace Organizing Term (GOT) for this summer in Washington, DC. The environment is something I’m passionate about, and I want to know how best to convert that passion into practical action with an impact. I want to have the ability to help lead this movement of young activists into a more sustainable and healthy future. Continue reading ‘Building the Movement, Winning Victories for the Planet’

(Reposted from Treehugger)

Some people do their part fighting climate change at home in front of a computer. Others prefer a bit more sweat, blood, and tears. Well, hopefully just the former: Once again, Brita Climate Ride is throwing a bunch of environmentalists on bikes, this time in California, September 21-25. Those up for the challenge (a maximum of 150 riders) will pedal 320 miles over five days, soaking up spectacular vistas in the Redwood Forest, Wine Country, and more. Then, when you cross the finish line, toast your success with a large frothy beer at the Tour de Fat bike and beer festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

So how much will riders pedal a day? Day 2 is the big one, clocking in at 75 miles. On day 3, riders can choose to go either 71 miles or 100 miles — a shuttle bus is available for the difference. Day 5 is a mere 30 miles.

A pilot for the first ‘sustainable” certified multi-day sporting event, Brita Climate Ride is the largest environmental charity bike ride and “climate conference on wheels” in the U.S., the press release tells us. Participants will include ocean activist Roz Savage, who rowed solo across the Pacific.

Continue reading ‘Climate Awareness Bike Trip Climate Ride Includes Beer and Redwood Forest’