It’s Getting Hot In Here

Written by Will Fischer, a Climate Action St. Louis organizer

Washington, D.C.: When asked this week about climate change legislation, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill responded, “I think it’s still a work in progress. You know, it took 50 years on health care.

St. Louis, MO: At 12:15 yesterday, July 20th, concerned citizens from across Missouri gathered at Senator Claire McCaskill’s office to mark the three-month anniversary of the BP oil disaster and to remind Senator McCaskill that we cannot afford to wait 50 years to transition to a clean energy future. Speaking directly to her, Will Fischer of Climate Action St. Louis demanded that she, “in the wake of continued inaction, cross the line and stand with PEOPLE, not polluters. To move towards a clean energy future, we demand that you reject campaign contributions from dirty energy corporations, work to switch federal subsidies from polluting fossil fuels to renewable technologies, and support an end to offshore drilling.”

Activists dressed as oil and coal executives presented a large check signed by BP, Peabody, and other dirty energy companies to highlight the influence of dirty energy money in politics. In recognition of the ongoing devastation in the gulf, demonstrators performed an oil “spill-in,” blocking traffic for 10 minutes, and then asked the Senator to choose a side.

Continue reading ‘People or Polluters: Senator McCaskill, Whose Side Are You On?’

Yesterday, July 20th, on the three-month anniversary of the oil disaster in the Gulf, two Carolinians hung banners at the Daughters of Confederacy building in Charleston’s old city to express concern over Senator Lindsey Graham’s continued support of offshore drilling for South Carolina. “Drilling off the coast of South Carolina directly threatens the low country lifestyle central to South Carolina heritage and culture. A single oil spill could destroy our precious coastal environments, not to mention the shrimping, fishing, tourism and real estate industries,” said Todd Zimmer, one of the demonstrators.

Tourism is South Carolina’s biggest industry, bringing in $18.4 billion last year;  should a spill occur like those in the Gulf, in Alaska or in China, this industry would  certainly take a major hit. Meanwhile, Senator Graham has taken over $50,000 from dirty energy corporations in the past year alone. The two asked Senator Graham to stand with people not polluters by giving back his dirty energy campaign contributions and supporting a shift in fossil fuel handouts to clean energy investments.

In 2005, Senator Graham recognized the dangers of offshore drilling. He said that he agreed “offshore drilling would be a detriment to our economy along the coast” and that offshore drilling was “the easy way out” and did not address “the fundamental problem with fossil fuels.” But in 2008, Senator Graham flipflopped to support offshore drilling, describing the South Carolina coast as a “cash cow.”

The two Carolinians, affiliated with Rising Tide North America and the Energy Action Coalition, handed out fliers and urged citizens and tourists to call Senator Graham’s office. Many did so on the spot, telling the office “we liked the Senator better when he protected our state’s low country by opposing offshore drilling.”

Yesterday the EPA publicly released its courageous, strongly worded comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.  The comments rated the draft “inadequate” and requested that a revised Draft EIS with substantial new information be circulated for full public review. Cynthia Giles, Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, detailed more than 30 different pieces of additional information necessary to “fully inform decision makers and the public,” about the environmental impact of the pipeline. These additional pieces of information included calculations of greenhouse gas emissions from increased tar sands extraction and studies of the public health and environmental justice impacts of increased tar sands refining in the US.

Map of the proposed route of Keystone XL

The Keystone XL pipeline, if approved, would transport toxic, high carbon tar sands oil from strip mines in the Canadian province of Alberta to refineries in Houston and Port Arthur, Texas. Community groups, impacted landowners, and environmental organizations from all points along the proposed route have forcefully voiced opposition to increased US reliance on a fuel that is incredibly toxic and carbon intensive at every stage of its life cycle.

The EPA today joins this growing chorus of concerned voices, and with this request for more information, has temporarily stopped the clock on any final decision about the pipeline. If the State Department complies with the EPA’s request, a revised Draft EIS would be open to another period of agency and public comment, and could even be elevated to the Council on Environmental Quality in the White House.For the full comments (seriously, read them, they’re fantastic!) go here. Here are some of the highlights of information requested by the EPA:

Continue reading ‘EPA Issues Bold “Game Changer” in Tar Sands Pipeline Battle’

Community members gather in Friendship Park, Pittsburgh PA on Monday, July 19

The Pittsburgh Student Environmental Collation (PSEC) hosted a rally to demand a moratorium on natural gas extraction in Pennsylvania until a full study on its environmental impact can be conducted. The evening of Monday, July 19 witnessed five local speakers, 60 attendees, one terrific rainstorm, and a sense of urgency moving forward to three hearings regarding hydraulic fracturing and its effects on drinking water.

The rally included a representative for Pennsylvania state Senator Jim Ferlo, Green Party candidate Mel Packer, representatives from Penn Environment and the Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP), and University of Pittsburgh student Seth Bush. Community members wrote letters to state level representatives and senators voicing concerns; and calendars of upcoming hearings and info sessions were passed out along with general info about the fracking process. Continue reading ‘Pittsburgh Youth Say “Quit Fracking Around”’

Cross-posted from www.solutionaries.net courtesy of Summer of Solutions Twin Cities participant Martha Pskowski.

“…it is impossible for most of the world to feed itself a diverse and healthy diet through exclusively local food production — food will always have to travel; asking people to move to more fertile regions is sensible but alienating and unrealistic; consumers living in developed nations will, for better or worse, always demand choices beyond what the season has to offer…”

James E. McWilliams “Food that Travels Well” The New York Times August 6, 2007

Say what? I thought better of you, NYT. While McWilliams does raise some valid points, this mentality falls short in two major ways. His assumptions mirror outlooks about sustainability I have often encountered which also apply to clothing, building practices, transportation and more. Good thing there are Solutionaries on the case.

One projection of peak oil from energyinsights.net

1) This view doesn’t look far enough back. Transportation of food over long distances is a relatively recent phenomenon in the grand scheme of things. There was a time when everyone ate food that was more or less local. Then refrigerated transportation happened, and the industrial revolution and agri-business squeezing out small farmers and before you know it, local is a novelty. This all happened in the course of a century or two. Is inertia so strong we can’t get back to this way of living? Judging from past moments in history, such as WWII when many Americans started Victory gardens, I beg to differ.

2) It doesn’t look far enough ahead. Oil is what fuels our transportation system and alternatives like corn ethanol aren’t looking so hot. Oil is running out, and fast. Since 1968, the world has been using more oil than it has discovered. Just this month after a cabinet meeting, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah answered a Zawya Dow Jones Newswires reporter’s question: “I told them [the cabinet] that I have ordered a halt to all oil explorations so part of this wealth is left for our sons and successors, God willing.”[1]

McWilliams doesn’t think about all the subsidies that have made oranges and coffee beans in New York City cheaper than swiss chard from a Hudson Valley farmer. The subsidies and the artificially suppressed cost of gas for transportation all create a false sense of economy in far-flung production. When the U.S. starts paying an arm and a leg for the last dregs of oil fields, local won’t look so much like a “choice”.

Continue reading ‘Reclaiming prosperity’

This past weekend a group of concerned mothers from the Seattle area took their message to the top of the most glaciated mountain in the lower 48 states – Mount Rainier.

Calling themselves Climb Against Coal - these self-proclaimed Mountain Momma’s summited the 14,411 feet of the mountain in support of the Coal Free Washington campaign.

Their goal was to raise awareness about the need to end our reliance on coal, and specifically to call for the closure of Washington State’s only remaining coal-fired power plant in Centralia, operated by Transalta. This power plant is the single largest source of global warming pollution in the state, and a major cause of respiratory diseases and premature deaths.

As the summit team was coming back down the mountain,  a support team laid out a nearly 75,000 square foot “No Coal” banner on the Inner Glacier – which is believed to be the largest banner in the history of the movement! The banner was viewable from nearby peaks nearly a mile away from the Glacier.  The nearly 2-acre banner took 15 volunteers all morning to layout, using several thousand feet of landscaping fabric.  Continue reading ‘Climb Against Coal takes the message to new heights!’

By Michael LaFemina, Alliance for Climate Education’s dude with the DOTs. Crossposted from the ACE blog.

Between Ethan and me, we’d slept around 20 hours in 4 days to prepare for our bus tour in California… not enough by a long shot, but the adrenaline was pumping because we were about to launch the Connect the DOTs Biobus Tour! That’s right, we’re hitting the road on a 3-week guilt-free road trip on a former school bus converted to run on recycled veggie oil to inspire people to choose their DOT – that’s their Do One Thing to cool the climate.

For those of you who may remember, Ethan Burke – our Bluebird Captain – is no stranger to the veggie-oil-powered adventures. He’s a co-founder of Biotour, a big inspiration to what we’re doing on the Connect the DOTs tour.

Our first event went down this weekend and supported two local organizations in Venice, California. It was a beautiful way to kick off the tour. After a full 1 and a half hour “sleep,” we headed to Venice Beach to support Heal the Bay‘s beach clean up.

While we were getting our hands dirty, a camera crew from NBC Los Angeles filmed us and did a spotlight on the bus in action. Continue reading ‘ACE biobus tour: solar-powered concerts + more!’

On Friday, two oil pipelines exploded while an oil tanker was unloading outside Dalian City, China. The spill covers an area of appr0ximately 71 miles, and low end estimates of the amount of oil spilled are around 1,500 to 1,650 tons of crude oil (or about 11,000-12,500 barrels).  The explosions last for about 15 hours and created flames about 30 meters high (video here).  No people were hurt and the leaks have been stopped, but now the clean up begins.

So in the past couple of months, we have seen the worst oil spill in American history in the Gulf, and oil spill in Salt Lake City, Utah that spilled 785 barrels into streams, parks and backyards, and now this explosion in China.  This is not to mention all the oil spills across the world that escape media attention because they are poorly monitored, like the five decades of oil spills in Nigeria.  Oh, and don’t forget the 27,000 abandoned and unmonitored oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

These are not isolated incidents.  They are symptoms of an energy system that is inherently unsafe and unstable.  Disasters like these will continue to to occur, unless we actually start to get off oil.

Oregon has the opportunity to lead the United States toward a coal-free future and lay groundwork for averting the worst consequences of global warming.  Alternatively, state agencies and commissions can bow to industry pressure and set a different kind of precedent, one of prolonging the life of a dirty coal plant for close to a decade or longer, in the process making it very difficult to achieve the reductions in greenhouse emissions which the best climate science mandates.  Oregon’s choice has become starkly clear in recent weeks, as the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has laid out three options for the future of the Portland General Electric (PGE) Boardman Coal Plant. 

One option for the Boardman Coal Plant would commit Oregon to ten more years of burning coal, while PGE invested huge amounts of ratepayer money into prolonging the plant’s life.  A second option would see the coal plant only slightly sooner, while still forcing ratepayers to pay for expensive upgrades.  Only one option would require Boardman closing on a timescale consistent with Oregon’s greenhouse emissions reduction goals.  That third option lights the one clear path toward Oregon’s clean energy future. 

As I’ve written previously, students and youth activists in Oregon have been organizing for months to close the Boardman Coal Plant by the year 2014 – a date selected because it would allow PGE to avoid installing millions of dollars’ worth of pollution control upgrades required on the plant after that time.  Most notably, student governments at ten educational institutions in Oregon passed resolutions supporting the 2014 date, which collectively represent over 107,000 Oregon students.

At the same time however, PGE was pushing the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to let most new pollution controls slide and allow Boardman to burn coal until 2020.  Fortunately the DEQ rejected PGE’s initial request for pollution waivers.  Instead, the agency has proposed a tentative list of three possible routes to Boardman’s closure: PGE can keep Boardman open until 2020 and install $320 million in new pollution controls; the company can run Boardman through 2018 and fork up $100 million worth of controls; or PGE can install only $35 million of essential pollution controls, and close the coal plant somewhere in late 2015 or early 2016. Continue reading ‘Oregon Offered a Chance at a Coal Free Future’

Delaware is a state I do not know much about. From elementary school and a road trip I remember that its capital is Dover and that Delawareans prize themselves on tasty seafood. My knowledge of Delaware extends beyond that, but I don’t claim to be any sort of expert.

But on Wednesday, I was impressed by “The First State” (Delaware). That is because on Wednesday, at a hearing on a proposed natural gas development in Wayne County, Pennsylvania, the Commissioner from Delaware was the lone member of the interstate Commission – the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) – who voted against the Stone Energy water withdrawal permit.

Continue reading ‘DRBC Approves Gas Permit in Philadelphia Watershed’