It\’s Getting Hot In Here

Crossposted from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network blog.

Last night Governor McDonnell addressed a crowd of almost-entirely-not college students at the University of Mary Washington. It wasn’t the students fault for not being there- it was only their second day on campus, so the Governor’s town hall was under the radar. Despite that, there was a group from the Mary Washington environmental club that was excited to ask the Governor about his stance on offshore drilling and wind development.

Here is Abbie Rogers, a Winchester native and sophomore in anthropology and environmental studies, asking Governor McDonnell why he continues to support offshore drilling.

Governor McDonnell spoke at length about his support for offshore drilling- and for offshore wind- but failed to answer Abbie’s concerns. While the Governor is correct that currently Virginia and the US depend on oil and other fossil fuels for our energy use, he did not address Abbie’s questions about why he continues to support offshore drilling. He claims we need domestic offshore oil to avoid relying on ‘unfriendly’ foreign nations, but the Navy and NASA have voiced concerns about drilling off Virginia’s coasts. Beyond that, solving the foreign oil problem with a domestic oil problem is only shifting the problem, not providing a solution. In a followup question to Abbie’s, the Governor was asked about his plan to keep Virginia competitive in offshore wind development. He again spoke favorably about wind, but focused more on his concerns about regulatory burdens, such as permitting timelines, than his plans to bring wind development to Virginia’s coasts. Offshore wind is part of a true solution, one that may time to implement but that other countries- and states- have started and Virginia is being left behind. Below the jump, the transcript of Abbie and Governor McDonnell, since the video quality was poor.

Continue reading ‘VA Youth question Governor McDonnell’s offshore views’

by Scott Adams

“I prefer a more pragmatic definition of green. I think of it as living the life you want, with as much Earth-wise efficiency as your time and budget reasonably allow. Now back to our story.”

Photo taken of MTR site in West Virginia. Vivian Stockman/Southwings

On Tuesday I went to the town of Hazard in Perry County,  Kentucky.

It’s a surreal-looking place, if you get up out of the valley onto any viewpoint the panorama that should be rolling hills stretching into the horizon, is missing something. The hill tops have disappeared.  It’s as if the landscape is a jigsaw puzzle missing some vital pieces.

This is because over 20% of the surface of the entire county has been strip-mined for coal.

My viewpoint is excellent as I am taken up into the sky by SouthWings to get an aerial perspective. In the small plane with me is Stanley Meiburg, Regional Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

After the short flight, Stanley and other EPA staff meet with local community members, who have been brought together by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. They share their experiences of living with the impacts of mountaintop removal (MTR) mining: John shares the scientific results of testing the water from the creek by his home and asks how permits can be issued when the water quality is already degraded, McKinley speaks of his family’s water supply “running black”. Continue reading ‘Bearing witness to mountaintop removal with the EPA’

Big Oil never ceases to amaze me. Just today I was reading about a new round of “citizen rallies” manufactured by Big Oil front groups. I was amused that many of the sponsoring Big Oil front groups were actually front groups of the front group API.

Yet, beyond the web of election season front groups, I’ve been watching the tricks of the trade come front and center for the past 5 months in the Gulf of Mexico, as BP has resorted to the Big Oil playbook (PDF) on oil disasters. BP’s oil disaster play calling has mirrored that of Chevron’s tactics in Ecuador, where they are embroiled in a 17-year $27 billion lawsuit for their pollution in the Amazon. While both companies share the same playbook, as BP puts on a public relations dog and pony show and Chevron attempts to buy off Salt Lake City residents for $300, it’s Chevron that is beginning to turn to some desperate trick plays resembling a last second Hail Mary.

We’ve seen an illustrious chain of embarrassing Chevron snafus. There was the well-documented collusion with a known felon and former employee conspiring to bait an Ecuadorean judge. Then there was the instance in which Chevron did not like the media they were receiving on a national level. Following a scathing 60 Minutes piece exposing Chevron’s double speak and ill-crafted lies, Chevron conjured up the idea to produce their own “news reporting” for their YouTube audience. In this news report Chevron hired a retired CNN reporter to “report” their side of the story and pass it off as “journalism.” An event that nearly had the New York Times at the edge of their seat with laughter.

Continue reading ‘Chevron Now Trying to Buy Journalists. Seems Big Oil is Getting Desperate.’

This election, there’s been a horrifying lack of action on climate change. But the Australian Youth Climate Coalition’s Elephant in the room is keeping climate change alive as an election issue and showing Tony and Julia that young people (and elephants) demand stronger policies to cut carbon pollution. Check out these hilarious videos below (make sure you watch the Sky news one until the end).

You can see more photos, video and news coverage of the Climate Elephant in the room here.

What’s that rumbling I hear?

It’s a movement thundering as they say “Ya Basta!” to climate change and fossil fuel extraction, and “Yes” to climate justice.  Throughout the industrial North in Europe, North America, Australia and Aotearoa, Climate Camps are sprouting up next to their nation’s biggest polluters to take direct action.  No more waiting on Obama, the United Nations, Duke Energy, Environmental Defense or whatever other all powerful entity to charge in and save the day.

Like Neil Young once said “We’re finally on our own.“

Climate Camp UK is setting up their camp next to the Royal Bank of Scotland’s (RBS) HQ outside of Edinburgh, Scotland.  RBS is a major funder of the highly destructive Canadian Tar Sands.  In Montreal, the Camp is focusing on the Enbridge Trailbreaker project this year, a transcontinental pipeline that would bring dirty tar sands bitumen to Montreal and beyond to Maine, eventually ending up on tankers heading to refineries in the Gulf Coast.  In Australia, the camp is taking place at the Bayswater coal fired power station in the Hunter Valley.  Other camps have, or are, happening in Sweden, New Zealand, Ireland and Wales.

In the U.S., there are no climate camps or convergences scheduled this year but much is still going on.  Earth First! has had a revival and camps and rendezvous are happening from Colorado to upstate New York to Maine.  Many of them focusing on corporate polluters.  Much momentum is buiding around oil and gas lease auction monkey-wrencher Tim DeChristopher’s trial in Salt Lake City.  Appalachians are joining activists from all over to country to rise up in Washington D.C. at a mass mobilization called “Appalachia Rising” on Sep 25-27.

Even Billl McKibben is beginning to sound like Peter Finch in Network.

Climate Justice Action, the organizing body around the direct action that took place in Copenhagen last December, is calling for a Global Day of Action for Climate Justice on October 12.

Since last year, we’ve had space open up for a global people’s climate justice movement, mostly due to the inability of the ruling class to begin to resolve climate change. Continue reading ‘Climate Camps Sprouting Up Around the World’

Guest post By Leigh Ewbank. Leigh is a Melbourne native and a 2009 summer fellow at the California-based progressive think tank, the Breakthrough Institute. Leigh consults on framing and messaging and is Director of Online Communications for Beyond Zero Emissions.

Dissatisfied with the policies of both major political parties, the Australian climate movement are attempting to make climate change a key issue in the final days of the 2010 federal election. A coalition of leading progressive and environmental organisations will hold Walk Against Warming demonstrations in the nation’s capital cities at the weekend. ‘By coming together one week before the election,’ says event organiser Victoria McKenzie-McHarg, ‘the community has a real opportunity to put climate change back on the election agenda, and push our leaders to put policies on the table that will actually cut emissions.’

The Australian Youth Climate Coalition is running its own initiatives to get climate change on the agenda. The youth-run organisation will hold the final of three Power Shift conferences this weekend. In an effort to influence the election, each of the conferences were located in areas that ‘represent crucial senate races and marginal seats in the Federal Election,’ according to AYCC spokesperson Lucy Manne. ‘Young people will make up 20 per cent of the voting population this election,’ Manne explains, ‘and the Power Shift conferences will ensure that the issues they care about will be heard.’ Continue reading ‘Australia Campaigners to Make Climate a Key Issue in Last Days of Election’

Before I even start writing, I just want everyone to know that they should SIGN the Oceana petition to “Stop the Drill” as a call to President Obama and Congress to end the drilling of new offshore oil wells.  Oceana wants to get 500,000 signatures so please sign it and then go get 5 or 10 friends to sign it too.  I don’t think I need to recap the horrors of Gulf drilling or the oil spill, but if you need a refresher, check out StopTheDrill.org for more info about the petition, offshore drilling, and the oil spill response. And now, to my own meandering thoughts:

As I look over the pages of It’s Getting Hot In Here from the past few weeks and months, I’m reminded of a few truths:

1) The Senate is a place where legislation goes to die. Or at least, where it goes to hibernate until the four months following an election. We all know it and we’ve all been saying it, but it bears repeating — something in the Capitol is broken and it’s going to take a while to fix it. Here’s one idea:  Grist’s David Roberts on Busting the Filibuster (http://is.gd/egawA)

2) There are still ways to make sweeping changes from the White House without congressional approval. While it’s tough for advocates and activists to target administration officials or federal agencies, the fact remains that we can completely alter our negotiation strategies at COP, change large swaths of agricultural policy, or even END offshore drilling without having to navigate the tricky tricky Senate. Let’s not forget President Obama’s words from years past, “I don’t pretend to have all the answers to the challenges we face, and I look forward to periodic conversations with all of you in the months and years to come. I trust that you will continue to let me and other Democrats know when you believe we are screwing up. And I, in turn, will always try and show you the respect and candor one owes his friends and allies” (http://is.gd/egbTG)

3) People Power can still force our leaders to take action. Whether it’s experienced organizers confronting banks to stop funding MTR or it’s young policy advocates storming The Hill in Washington, we are still making a difference.

Oceana, the world’s leading ocean conservation organization, is hoping to harness some of that people power in a campaign to get 500,000 Americans to demand that President Obama and Congress stop offshore drilling. Partnering with a long list of celebrity spokespeople like January Jones,  Zach Braff, Nicolas Cage, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Harper,  James Cameron, and a gajillion more, Oceana is doing a pretty phenomenal job getting the word out about the moral, environmental and economic imperative that is stopping offshore drilling.

I won’t bore you all with the details of the marine life that is being decimated by the Deepwater Horizon explosion or the thousands of jobs that are put in jeopardy every time there is a spill (and they do happen a lot, there have been 30+ in the US since 2003). You can check out all that information at StopTheDrill.org. I just want to urge all readers of this blog not to get bogged down in the thoughts of what is possible or impossible – my patience has surely been tested this summer and I’ve been teetering on the line between faith in the system and despair. That’s why I’m encouraging you all to sign the Oceana petition. I have faith in their ability to bring about change and their creativity as messengers to help get the job done in Washington. Again, StopTheDrill.org. Thanks!