It’s Getting Hot In Here

Hang Ten! Tidal Power (Webisode 207) from Center for Innovative Media on Vimeo.

Are you ready to ride the waves?

Continue reading ‘Hang Ten! Tidal Power’

Americans for Energy Leadership — one of the nation’s foremost energy policy think tanks and advocacy groups led by young people – is seeking applicants for the New Energy Leaders Project, an initiative to empower young thought leaders and help redefine the national energy and economic agenda.

What: Selective program for young leaders to engage in high-level writing, research, and discussion at the intersection of energy, economic, and national security policy.

Why: The previous clean energy and climate agenda has collapsed, and the United States needs a new generation of thought leaders to challenge conventional wisdom and reshape the next agenda.

Who: Graduate students, undergrads, and young professionals

Positions: Policy Fellows, Featured Columnists, and Contributors

When: October 2010 – February 2011

Deadline for applications is October 1st, 2010

See full description below, download as a PDF, or view online here.

Continue reading ‘Calling Young Leaders: Apply for the New Energy Leaders Project’

Great action today in San Francisco.

The Mobilization for Climate Justice West (MCJ-West) turned out 150 people on a Monday afternoon and marched to the SF financial district offices of Chevron, the Environmental Protection Agency and BP calling for Big Oil to stop harming our environment and communities and pay up for the damage they’ve caused.

A coalition of national, regional and local groups, activists with MCJ-West) blockaded the doors of the SF BP offices and the intersection in front of the building.

With a set of demands, MCJ-West organized one of the largest direct actions at BP to date with 15 arrested. Continue reading ‘Blockade at BP San Francisco Offices on 5th anniversary of Katrina; 15 Arrested; 150 March’

“When friends are outlawed, only outlaws will have friends.”
–Mike Roselle

Ummm, yeah. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t watching. We knew it would happen sooner or later. The surveillance state is not only watching social media sites, the social media sites are the surveillance state.

Long time environmental and animal rights activist Rod Coronado is being sent back to prison for four months for “friending” Earth First!, RAN and Ruckus Society co-founder and anti-mountaintop removal organizer Mike Roselle on Facebook and for accessing an unauthorized compter. See Coronado’s lawyer’s statement here.

Coronado known for “Operation Bite Back,” a series of animal liberation actions and arson in the 1990’s for which he served a stint in federal prison, has been an outspoken opponent to cruelty to animals and environmental destruction since the 1980’s. After serving that prison term, he continued to advocate direct action and spoke often on animal rights and environmental issues. In 2003, the federal government targeted him for a mountain lion hunt sabotage and speaking publicly about tactics he used in the 1990’s.

And they went after him HARD. The way that Christian Bale went after Johnny Depp last summer in “Public Enemies.” He served 8 months for the hunt sabotage and struck a bargain after a jury returned deadlocked on the public speaking charges and a mistrial was declared. Part of the plea agreement was a year in prison and federal probation. They’ve gagged him. He’s on monitored computers, he can’t associate with radical environmentalists and he can’t speak out on animal and environmental issues. Continue reading ‘Environmental and Animal Rights Activist Returned to Prison for Facebooking’

This is a guest post from Gabe DeRita, cross-posted from the Sierra Club’s Climate Crossroads blog.

**** UPDATE: 9/3 Gap, Levi- Strauss and Timberland have not specifically committed to eliminating “tar sands oil” from their fuel sources, but each have committed in their own way to reducing the environmental and social impacts of their fuels. Any action to reduce environmental and social impacts of fuel choices must consider the significant impacts of tar sands, and give preference to suppliers who avoid it, but these companies are not specifically targeting tar sands fuel for a boycott. Walgreens, however, has made an explicit move away from tar sands oil, and has directed its suppliers to source non-tar sands fuels. ****

The pen is mightier than the sword, but the purse may sometimes be mightier than the pen. Major US corporations are adding market pressure to the growing wave of opposition against tar sands expansion, giving tar sands producers a fresh reason to consider the consequences of their poor environmental street cred.

Whole Foods Market and Bed Bath and Beyond joined a list of six major Fortune 500 companies, including Gap, Timberland and Levi Strauss, committed to reducing or eliminating tar sands oil from their businesses. Walgreens also recently announced it will avoid purchasing tar sands oil to fuel its distribution network.

Federal Express also voiced concerns over the ‘environmental and social impacts’ of the fuel it sources, and committed to address them. Being the dirtiest fuel on earth, tar sands oil certainly makes the short list for these categories.

Continue reading ‘Fortune 500 Companies Flex Market Muscle, Reject Tar Sands’

Note: this guest post is written by Mika Hernandez, one of the great team of student organizers who made Paint Past Coal a reality in Oregon.

Bright yellow shirts with the words “BEYOND COAL” boldly printed across the fronts dotted the Southwest waterfront in Portland, Oregon on Tuesday, August 17th.  As cars zoomed past and families strolled through Water Front Park, the group in the distinctive tees gathered  for a community event known as “Paint Past Coal.”  The youth climate organizers who put on the event hoped to promote knowledge about the risks connected with operation of Oregon’s Boardman Coal Plant, and the need to close this plant by the year 2015. 

The Boardman Plant is the only coal plant located in Oregon, and the debate over what year it closes has become an issue of interest and concern for people throughout the state.  This is the that issue drew together the youth organizers of  Paint Past Coal.  Rallying for a 2015 closure date for the coal plant, the young people involved hail from colleges and cities across the state.  With the original idea behind the event being “creativity with a cause,” Paint Past Coal took the form of a peaceful artistic protest against Portland General Electric (PGE), a prominent Oregon company and operator of the Boardman Plant.  The event took on added significance in light of PGE’s recent announcement that it will continue pushing to keep the plant open until 2020. Continue reading ‘Guest Column: In Portland, Students and the Community “Paint Past Coal”’

“She said she grew up not far from an injection well, where oil companies disposed of wastewater during an earlier boom. Her father drew water from a spring near there. She has no clear evidence of connections. But her parents both died of cancer, she said. Both sisters had cancer. So did close neighbors.

“Some nights you could go outside and the air was so rotten you couldn’t breathe,” she said. “I’ve always believed these oil wells cause cancer. We breathe the air. We drink the water. We farm the land. Our cattle eat the grass.”

“We need to do a better job of regulation. We don’t have the experience. We need people to guide us because we have to protect our future. We have to look out for our children.”

http://www.runningwithoil.com/?p=444

A Forum Communications special project

TRIBAL SECRETARY WEIGHS NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES

By Chuck Haga – Forum Communications August 18, 2010

FOUR BEARS, N.D. – Judy Brugh strides along a hilltop overlooking Lake Sakakawea as it wends through the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The sharp, homey pungency of sage rises from her footfalls as she puts the lake at her back and steps to the other side, to a late afternoon vista of blue sky, deep grassy ravines and, in the summer haze beyond, a line of sentinel buttes.

This is her prayer place, a high knoll favored with wildflowers, prairie grasses and quiet. It is where she came to pray when she learned she had cancer. And it is where she came to offer thanks when treatment turned the cancer away.

Judy Brugh, tribal secretary for the Three Affiliated Tribes at the Fort Berthold Reservation, stands on a knoll overlooking Lake Sakakawea. Brugh and others find tranquility and solace on the hill, a place for meditation and prayer. Photo by John Steiner, Jamestown Sun

Brugh, 64, tribal secretary for the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, paid for those long months of treatment in Illinois with oil money: a lease and royalties check for $160,000. Her story reflects the broader but unfinished story of oil’s long-term benefits and costs, its opportunities and consequences.

The initial lease payment three years ago allowed her to buy a house and a new car. It didn’t make her Beverly Hillbillies rich, “but it made my husband and me comfortable,” she said. “We were able to pay off some bills and help our children.

“And I had cancer. The money came at such a time of need.” But oil has brought negatives, too, she said. “Are we going to be so congested that we are not able to live a healthy life? Are we going to have any of the serene beauty of the reservation left? Will we pick Juneberries? “Before, by 11 at night it was quiet. You could hear a cricket. Now it’s the sounds of jake brakes and big trucks down-shifting.”

For the children

She also worries about cancer … oil and cancer. Continue reading ‘Tribal Secretary Weighs Negative Consequences’

This morning two anti-MTR activists, associated with Climate Ground Zero, locked down in Charleston at the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection offices.

Activists Block Entrance to DEP Headquarters,
Condemn Failed Enforcement

CHARLESTON, W.V. Protesters associated with Climate Ground Zero blocked the entrance to the headquarters of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) today. Joe Hamsher, 23, and Sarah Seeds, 60, are chained to a concrete-filled metal barrel that is blocking the front door of the DEP office complex in Charleston. The activists painted the following statement on the barrel: Department of Easy Permits: Closed.

The human rights activists staged the sit-in in order to bring attention to what they believe is the DEP’s failure to enforce the Clean Water Act by permitting mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia.

“The DEP is taking part in sins of permission,” said Seeds. “Permitting mountaintop removal is permitting the poisoning of this bioregion.”

The protesters specifically sought to shed light on the DEP’s new permitting guidance for implementing water quality standards in the coalfields, which it announced earlier this month. The new permitting guidance, the protesters said, is meant to circumvent the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) much stricter water quality standards, thus paving the way for continued pollution of West Virginia’s waterways by coal operators. Continue reading ‘Oh Hells Yeah! Anti-MTR Activists Take Action Against Failed Regulatory Agency’

Cross-posted from Grist.

Election season is upon us! This year has been distinguished by the sheer number of crackpots running for office, as well as the number of people with yachts trying to ‘self-finance a campaign’ or ‘purchase’ a political post.

One of the few upsides of races so far has been skepticism of political candidates who were failed CEOs, which has been surprising in the era of golden parachutes and consequence-free decisions by executives. Turns out that if you want to run government like a business, people don’t want government’s value to tank like the stock price of HP, which lost 60% of its value under senatorial candidate Carly Fiorina’s watch.

A major downside has been the rise of the climate skeptics running for the Senate. With Sen. Lisa Murkowski – AK, possibly losing in a primary to a Tea Party Candidate who thinks climate change is caused by sunspots, climate advocates have their work cut out for them. So, what is one of the leading responses by civil society? Voter Registration.

Yes, voter registration is one of the tools of choice that civil society, particularly 501c3 groups, turn to have an impact on the election. The Energy Action Coalition is gearing up for Power Vote again, the Sierra Club is registering voters, Rock the Vote is back with some terrific software to make it easy to register to vote online.

This is great, right? They are getting volunteers and staff out on the street registering people to vote, talking to people about the issues they care about and empowering people to make a difference. It makes sense that environmental advocates would want to register people to vote. Brian Siebel, for the Huffington Post, wrote “Student and Youth Voters Face Higher Hurdles Than Others to Register and Vote in 2010“. Other disenfranchised groups are urban and minority communities and poor rural communities. These groups are the backbone of many environmental fights, whether against mountaintop removal, urban coal plants, or fighting for clean energy on campuses.

However, the fact that civil society is registering people to vote is a legacy of the troubled history of US democracy. Voter registration has been a hard-fought battle in the United States and any expansion of voter registration was fought tooth, nail, and claw by politicians trying to maintain Jim Crow laws in the South.

The fact that a history of racism has led to young and dis-empowered voters to face hurdles at the voting booth should be a spur to modernize our nation’s voting laws, replacing a patchwork of laws that made our elections in 2000 and 2004 the world’s laughingstock with universal voter registration. Universal voter registration would simply move the burden of voter registration from underfunded civil society groups onto government, alongside the other fundamental requirements of citizenship, like selective service. If we have passed a law to make health insurance mandatory, it is staggering that we don’t have universal voter registration.

Making election day a national holiday would also help working class people get to the polls, so that they don’t have to skip work or miss a shift in a recession to vote. Normally, when progressive organizations look for a tool to level the playing field with corporations they look to campaign finance reform.

However, with the Supreme Court equating money with free speech, perhaps it is time to look to the ballot box and let those hard-earned dollars go towards convincing people that perhaps Senate candidates who think global warming is caused by sunspots or ‘natural cycles’ aren’t worth voting for at all.