It’s Getting Hot In Here

This morning Rainforest Action Network activists dropped half a ton of coal rubble from Appalachia on the front lawn of the EPA.  This is part of the effort to compel the agency to veto the 2,278-acre Spruce mountaintop mine project in Blair, W.Va., which is the largest mountaintop mine project ever proposed.

The activists were detained and ironically issued citations for “Failure to obey order to remove dangerous condition.”  Of course, the coal industry never gets citations like that after blasting the tops off of mountains in Appalachia.

Activists Stage Creative Demonstration at EPA Headquarters: Call for Agency to Veto Controversial Spruce Mine Permit

EPA Decision May Predict Future of Mountaintop Mining

Follow @dirtyenergy for live twitter updates of today’s event

WASHINGTON— Today, activists with the Rainforest Action Network staged a creative demonstration at the EPA headquarters to compel the agency to veto the 2,278-acre Spruce mountaintop mine project in Blair, W.Va. In an effort to demonstrate the impact of the Spruce mine—the largest mountaintop mine project ever proposed—activists dumped 1,000 pounds of earth and rubble brought from Appalachia on to the EPA’s lawn. The message: “EPA: don’t let King Coal dump on Appalachia.” Continue reading ‘Activists Dump Half a Ton of Coal Rubble on Lisa Jackson’s Front Lawn’

Photo: Timothy Jay

By Shani Tager, Robert Price and Daniel Sharp

The banner read, ‘don’t undermine our farms’ as an unlikely scene unfolded in Australia at Queensland’s State Parliament on August 4 with ten kids on pedal tractors, two people hanging a banner off the roof of parliament house, a platypus staring down the police, “the frackman”, ten members of parliament, a federal senator and a senate candidate, an American gas activist, author and filmmaker and a large crowd that included a few busloads of farmers who made the three to four hour trip into the city.

Farmers and environmentalists, concerned citizens and rural landholders, children and grandparents rallied together at Queensland parliament house to demand protection of farmland from coal and gas mining.  The groups; Six Degrees, Friends of the Earth , Save our Darling Downs, Community Climate Network Queensland, Friends of Felton, the Basin Sustainability Alliance, Western Downs Alliance, Wandoan Clean Foods Alliance, the Kingaroy Concerned Citizens Group and the Queensland Conservation Council are all concerned about the threats posed to valuable cropping land, rural communities, the Great Artesian Basin and our climate. Together they brought three simple demands to the Queensland parliament –

1. Ban coal and coal seam gas mining on good quality agricultural land
2. Institute a moratorium on coal seam gas until the environmental and social     impacts are assessed.
3. Support renewable energy and sustainable agriculture.

The Frackman. Photos: Western Downs Alliance

In light of the plan to put about 40,000 gas wells across the fertile Darling Downs, one of Australia’s most agriculturally productive areas, American filmmaker and author Tara Meixsell warned the crowd that America’s recent unhappy experience with gas mining could be Queensland’s near future.

The expansion of Queensland’s coal and gas mining industries is rampant. The Queensland government is committed to doubling our coal exports. Open cut coal mines, underground coal gasification, and coal seam gas projects are being planned and developed at a frightening pace and it seems nothing is sacred. The Great Artesian Basin, an enormous underground aquifer which supports agriculture, communities and ecosystems across vast swathes of the Australian continent is under threat of contamination.

Continue reading ‘Don’t Undermine our Farms: Coal and Gas Protest in Queensland, Australia’

So enough is enough.

Our friends, comrades, loved ones and heroes from the UK to Bolivia to Nigeria to Australia to Canada are fighting against the fossil fuel empire in bold creative ways every day.  Appalachian activists have taken a stand against King Coal, but now we need ideas and action from the rest of U.S. climate movement

We’ve been built and trained the climate movement for years.  But it’s time to be as creative as our friends that camped out on the Royal Bank of Scotland’s front lawn last month and as courageous as the women shutting down oil operations in the Niger Delta.

It’s time we stepped into the fray.

Next week, I’m headed off to the Ruckus Advanced Action Boot Camp for Eco-Justice in the Twin Cities and then Appalachia Rising in Washington D.C. from there.  Out of these events, I hope to see a dozen U.S. based climate camps (ending with actions), ongoing direct action campaigns and mass actions in the next year.  We can’t continue to meet and train and send emails, we need to take action and organize action campaigns.

Check out this thought piece and call for action from McKibben, Radford and Tarbotton.

Cross posted from Grist.

We Need Your Ideas: A Call for Direct Action in the Climate Movement
We’re going to have to build a movement much bigger than anything we’ve built before. That movement is our only real hope, and we need your help to plot its future.

Dear Friends,

God, what a summer. Federal scientists have concluded that we’ve just come through the warmest six months, the warmest year, and the warmest decade in human history. Nineteen nations have set new all-time temperature records; the mercury in Pakistan reached 129 degrees, the hottest temperature ever seen in Asia. And there’s nothing abstract about those numbers, not with Moscow choking on smoke from its epic heat wave and fires, not with Pakistan half washed away from its unprecedented flooding. Continue reading ‘We Need Your Ideas: A Call for Direct Action in the Climate Movement’

For the last three days, I’ve been sitting at my kitchen table in California cranking out press releases, calling reporters, and generally playing “pit crew” for Bill and our Put Solar On It road trip. It’s been a great ride: tens of thousands of people have shown their support for putting solar back on the White House, the crew had great stops in Boston, New York, and D.C., and we managed to secure a meeting with the Administration to discuss putting solar back on the roof.

As we expected (but secretly hoped wouldn’t be the case), the White House didn’t commit to … well, anything. We tossed them a big, fat soft ball to hit out of the park and they just watched it float on by.

That’s too bad. But it’s also a great reminder of who the real leaders are. As Joe put it, if the President can’t climb up on the roof and hammer in some solar panels, clearly we need to push him up.

Continue reading ‘White House won’t put solar on it … but we will’

… And they strike back at us anywhere and everywhere.

A gas explosion in a San Francisco Suburb last night destroyed an entire city block, killing at least 6 people and destroying over 50 homes.  The San Bruno disaster started at 6pm when a fireball erupted from a ruptured gas line, shooting flames 1000 feet into the air.

Today it looks like a war zone – the aftermath of an epic battle raged between firefighters and the dangerous chemicals we keep so tantalizingly close. Burned out cars, homes reduced to rubble, a 15′ crater in the ground – we suffered a deadly attack – by who?

“If it is ultimately determined that we were responsible for the cause of the incident, we will take accountability,” Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said in an e-mailed statement Thursday evening. But later Thursday the company’s president, Christopher Johns, said he didn’t know what sparked the explosion.

Haven’t we learned that it hardly matters what company is in charge?  Isn’t it time to levy strict punishments on the industry that keeps us fixed, and on politicians that refuse to provide alternatives?

Continue reading ‘Losing the War With Fossil Fuels’

We all agree – it’s gonna take a mass movement to avert climate catastrophe. But what kind of movement?  After the Senate climate debacle, it’s clear that we need to step up our game, broaden our analysis, and bring in new allies if we’re to have any chance at winning climate justice.

The following is one attempt to expand our movement by aligning with front line groups battling the economic root causes of global warming. And what way to build the movement would be more fun than biking to COP16 in Cancún?! Dig it:

Crossposted from Climate Reality Tour:

This October, we’re embarking on a two-month bicycle documentary trip to the United Nations climate negotiations taking place in Cancún, Mexico from November 29th to December 10th of this year.

That’s right. We’ll cross deserts and climb mountains, biking roughly 2,500 miles as awareness-raising documentary project about the economic root causes of global warming. We’ll post video and written content from the tour as we meet with local front line organizations that are fighting climate changing corporate interests and promoting sustainable alternatives. But we need your help to make it a reality.

It’s called the Climate Reality Tour – because the U.S. needs a reality check, not just about global warming, but about the economic model that creates it, one that we’ve helped export over the whole world. We believe that to solve the climate crisis we must undo the root causes of global warming – namely our unfair global economy that pits working people against one another, and against our shared environment. Continue reading ‘Cancún or Bust – by Bike! Announcing the Climate Reality Tour’

There may be a solution the large amounts of contaminated soil present on the earth’s surface. WI Environmental has created XR-88, which ” treats and turns heavy metals and poisons inert, making them harmless to the
environment for safe, easy disposal.”

The company, based out of Whidbey Island in Washington State (the same place that has tidal turbines in the works), focuses on everything from contaminated mine water to air quality and stormwater runoff. XR-88 is applied to a contaminated site, which then breaks down the harmful chemicals into a safe, sludge-like substance.

The company focuses mainly on sites in the pacific northwest, including the 3,800 abandoned mine sites, the 12 million tons of coal from Washington’s lone coal plant, and 14 million pounds of pollutants dumped in the Puget Sound annually.

The Puget Sound (Wikimedia Commons)

WI Environmental is expanding, though. According to a recent article in the Seattle Times, the company has just “signed a multi-million-dollar deal to license his environmental technology to begin cleaning up China’s heavily contaminated rivers and
soil.”

Continue reading ‘Environmental Remediation’

By Teryn Norris & Daniel Goldfarb
Cross-posted from LeadEnergy.org

China is rising to dominate the clean energy industry primarily due to direct government subsidies, according to a new investigative report by the New York Times. The rise of China’s “green mercantilism” marks a new stage in the global clean energy race and raises critical questions for U.S. competitiveness policy.  According to the report:

The booming Chinese clean energy sector, now more than a million jobs strong, is quickly coming to dominate the production of technologies essential to slowing global warming… much of China’s clean energy success lies in aggressive government policies that help this crucial export industry in ways most other governments do not… “Who wins this clean energy race,” Mr. Zhao of Sunzone said, “really depends on how much support the government gives.”

China’s clean energy industrial policy is unique in its scale and type, and some of its practices may violate World Trade Organization rules and could spark trade conflict between the United States and China:

These measures risk breaking international rules to which China and almost all other nations subscribe, according to some trade experts… Other countries also try to help their clean energy industries, too, but not to the extent that China does — and not, so far at least, to the point of potentially running afoul of W.T.O. rules.

Continue reading ‘The Rise of China’s Green Mercantilism’

Posted on behalf of  Caroline Wooten, student leader with Students for a Just and Stable Future.

Massachusetts wants solar panels on the White House and a clean energy future. This was the message sent by the more than 200 individuals who crowded into Boston’s historic Old South Church on Tuesday night to show their support for 350.org’s Solar Road Trip.

The back story: In 1979, Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. In 1986, Ronald Regan removed them. Years later, the White House panels were rescued from a government warehouse and installed on the roof of the dining hall at Unity College in Maine.  Now, 350.org founder Bill McKibben, a group of students from Unity College, and one of President Carter’s panels are traveling in a biodiesel van from Unity, Maine to Washington D.C, where the group will pressure President Barak Obama to reinstall solar panels on the White House. For the past few months, 350.org has been circulating an online petition asking political leaders from around the world to install solar panels on their homes as part of the organization’s Global Work Party on 10/10/10. The petition to the politicians states, “Install solar panels on your roof, and then enact legislation to make it possible for everyone in your country to join you in the clean energy future. We need you to act symbolically—and then we need you to act for real.”

During the Road Trip’s stay in Boston, the reality of the growing climate movement was palpable.  The event at the Old South Church was high in energy. Before the event, attendees enjoyed live music played by the environmentally themed rock band Meolodeego, and joined together to sing “Three Five Oh” with the Rev. Fred Small. Later, they cheered on speakers from local, national, and international organizations, including Interfaith Power and Light, the JP Green House, Students for a Just and Stable Future, Second Nature, Unity College, and 350.org. Attendees signed their names and wrote messages to the president on the sheet of plastic protecting the solar panel. The evening ended with the American premier of the film A Road Not Taken, which documents the strange tale of Carter’s solar panels. Continue reading ‘Boston Joins Call to Put Solar On It’

Published by National Journal at the Energy & Environment Expert Blog

By Teryn Norris

When future scholars document the history of global warming, one of the watershed years will almost surely be 2010. For over a decade, the primary goal of U.S. climate policy advocates has been to establish a strong carbon pollution cap and a binding global emissions treaty. Armed with large war chests and major electoral victories, climate advocates had one of the best opportunities to achieve these goals.

This agenda has collapsed. In the aftermath of the Copenhagen climate negotiations and recent developments in the Senate, it is clear that carbon caps in the U.S. and globally will not happen for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the IEA projects global CO2 emissions will skyrocket 40% above 2007 levels by 2030, and the EIA predicts China’s emissions will more than double over the next 25 years – which would make its emissions greater than the rest of the world combined.

What happens next? The upcoming lame-duck session in Congress could be one of the last opportunities for national reform before 2013. There are a number of incremental proposals worth pushing, from the American Clean Energy Leadership Act, to Senator Alexander and Senator Dorgan’s Electric Vehicle Deployment Act, to Senator Kerry’s latest Clean Energy Technology Leadership Act. Some still hope for a Hail Mary lame-duck pass on cap and trade, but when asked whether it could be revived, Senator Reid recently said, “It doesn’t appear so at this stage. It doesn’t have the traction that a lot of us wish it had.”

Continue reading ‘Climate Movement at the Crossroads’