It’s Getting Hot In Here

The following is a recent dispatch from the Climate Reality Tour, a movement-building cycling tour from the coalfields of West Virginia to the UN Climate Talks in Cancún.

10/28/10

We’re staying in the spare trailer of a climate denier. No, not John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods. A far less prominent climate denier. Her name is Lynn. She invited us onto her porch, fed Jamie a beer, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. So here we are.

Clearly, it’s been a fascinating day.

We woke up and were underway by mid-morning. After about 15 miles we arrived at French Camp, MS – an idyllic little town with two churches and no stoplight, but with great little café where the local gentry seemed to congregate. We thought it was a summer language camp. Whoops.

Turns out that was founded by a French trader who married a Chickasaw princess and whose son became the last chief of the Chickasaw – before the tribe “moved” as the historical markers on the Trace disingenuously state. There’s a little museum and gift shop, and the Café had amazing broccoli salad in this thick sweet onion-pecan dressing. A-mazing! Continue reading ‘Southern Hospitality – Climate Reality Tour’

“If you’ve got a blacklist, I want to be on it.”  –Billy Bragg

Have you heard the latest?  The Pennsylvania Dept of Homeland Security and their mercenary Israeli security firm are comparing Rainforest Action Network and the Ruckus Society to Al-Qaeda.

Give me a friggin’ break. When was the last time Osama Bin Laden gave a non-violence training? Or Khalid Sheikh Muhammad dressed up like an orangutan at a Cargill shareholder’s meeting?

For a few months stories have been coming out that the PA. Dept. of Homeland Security hired a Mossad and IDF linked Israeli security firm called the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR) to monitor “terrorist” (read “activist”) activities in Pennsylvania.  This crackerjack investigation has included security operatives monitoring screenings of the film “Gasland” as a possible source of “direct action” and tracking the anti-fracking and anti-mountaintop removal movements.  Their investigation also watched animal rights, gay rights, immigration, anti-immigration, peace and civil rights organizations.

Interestingly enough, in the 138 bulletins that ITRR put out, the group with the most mentions is Rainforest Action Network (158 mentions).  That’s right, an organization built on the principles of Martin Luther King and Gandhi, dedicated to saving the rain forests, fighting for human rights and ending climate change is the top of the Dept. of Homeland Security’s watch list.

Furthermore, they have a multi-page bio of our new executive director, Rebecca Tarbotton, and speculation that our outgoing executive director, Michael Brune, will be bringing direct action to his new organization, the Sierra Club. Continue reading ‘“Shades of Al-Qaeda!”’

**UPDATE: The Board of Regents approved the proposal to install 3 wind turbines at the new UNT stadium.  The turbines are expected to be up this spring and will help power the stadium and Eagle Point campus!**

The University of North Texas, like most of our nation’s universities, relies heavily on coal-generated power for its electricity. It’s not one of the 60+ schools with their own campus coal plants, but still get nearly half of its electricity from a Texas coal plant.  That’s bad news for our climate and the health of communities in this state that already has dangerously high levels of air pollution from power plants.

So, like students on more than 50 campuses they’ve teamed up with the Campuses Beyond Coal campaign to do something about it and push the university to switch to 100% clean energy, starting now. Today, as their Board of Regents meets and deliberates on a proposal to install three wind turbines at the site of their new LEED Gold stadium, the Sierra Student Coalition group has set up more than 1,500 handmade paper pinwheels to represent the clean, safe and prosperous energy future they envision.

Over the next couple weeks students at more than 50 campuses are doing the same as part of the Sierra Student Coalition’s National Action for a Clean Energy Future. After their campus events students are shipping their pinwheels to Washington, D.C. where a group of local youth will be setting up demonstrations around the city.  The demos will represent the voices of young people from Oregon to Illinois to Georgia who all want to see their campuses and our nation move to clean energy solutions. You still have time to join the action and plan an event for November 18th at your school to draw attention to your community’s coal dependence and potential to switch to clean, innovative and safe energy solutions. Sign-up to join this visionary, bright action for our future!

The rules of the game have just changed. Less than ten days ago, the Republican Party rode a massive wave into Washington. For the next two years, gone are the days of heart-wrenching testimony from young citizens impacted by climate change and gone are the days of AutoTuned lawmakers discussing the economic benefits brought about by clean energy legislation. We’re operating under new circumstances.

Going forward into the 112^th Congress, the smart money is on inaction, delay, and discord. The punditocracy and inside-the-Beltway flacks are bracing themselves for government shutdowns, a fight over health care repeal, and investigations into the Obama Administration. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this movement, it’s that committed youth clean energy and climate activists don’t give up easily, and I can’t imagine us starting to quit any time soon. Since the rules and expectations have changed, it’s time for us to change too.

Congressional Republicans have already started claiming that the American people have given them a widespread mandate to cut government spending, reduce the deficit, and jumpstart the American economy. In general, these are folks who have an abysmal record on climate and can’t wait to twiddle their thumbs while the world burns. But, since they’re now in charge of “the people’s branch,” youth climate advocates would do well to listen to what our opposition is asking for and see if we can find some common ground.

As the New York Times reports, “Reducing red ink — the $1.3 trillion deficit — will be a major test of Congress’ split-party makeup following elections that partly focused on runaway government spending.” Sounds like it might be time for some unsexy messaging – let’s talk about the deficit, baby. The National Debt was on tip of everyone’s tongues this election season – from Rand Paul to President Obama, American politicians seem to be seeking a way to cut our mounting deficit.  One unexpected way to do this? Put a price on carbon. Continue reading ‘Cut the Carbon, Cut the Deficit: Where Do Climate Advocates Go in the 112th Congress?’

The news that residents in Eastern Oregon are trying to halt production of a new wind farm because of health concerns over noise, lights, stress reminds me of similar, community-related issues occurring around the country related to wind energy

This potential stoppage is not the first of its kind. Recently, a different proposed wind farm in Oregon was put on hold after the discovery of an eagle’s nest in the area.

The wind farm in Eastern Oregon, residents say, will be loud, obstructive eye-sores. Residents also fear that the wind farm will be harmful to their health, cause property values to decrease, and endanger wildlife. One teacher feared the harmful effects of the farm’s proximity to a local school.

Continue reading ‘The Wind Farm Wars’

Some great news.   You’ve heard lots about the “youth climate movement,” but how about a little love for our elders fighting to better their communities and end climate change fueling mountaintop removal.

My friend and close ally, Bo Webb of the Coal River Valley, has won the prestigious Purpose Prize for his efforts in ending mountaintop removal.

I’ve worked with Bo on a number of projects from the Wise Up Dominion action to a march and civil disobedience at Marsh Fork Elementary to Appalachia Rising.  I spent a day in jail with him in Charlotte, NC after the Cliffside Climate Action (where over half of those arrested were over 50, BTW) where he  shared to our fellow inmates the story of King Coal’s assault on his home.  I always feel like he has my back in the work that we do together.

Bo is featured in the new documentary, On Coal River, about the impacts of mountaintop removal in mountain communities in the Coal River Valley.  Check it out if you haven’t already. Continue reading ‘Appalachian Activist Fights Mountaintop Removal with a Purpose’

Art has always played a key role in social change. I remember singing “This Little Light of Mine” before I knew anything about the Civil Rights Movement. I still feel a tightening in my stomach every time I see “Guernica” and can’t avoid feeling a bit more hopeful when I see Shepard Fairey’s iconic Obama.

This November, 350.org is hosting the first planetary scale art show to try and get a new perspective on one of our first truly planetary challenges: global warming. Check out the new website here:

http://earth.350.org

I’ve pasted a piece by Bill McKibben that introduces the project below, but I’m curious to hear from all of you. What role does art play in social change? What good “climate art” do you see out there? What’s the best chant or song you’ve heard, the best poster you’ve ever seen, the short film that got you moving?

The Globe as a Canvas
by Bill McKibben

The idea behind EARTH is simple—we wanted to remind everyone that we are dealing with the first truly global problem we’ve ever faced. What better way than to use that globe as a canvas, for the first truly planet-scale piece of art?

Continue reading ’350 EARTH: Art and Climate Change?’

I first met Jared Duval in the summer of 2003 on a bus with 100 students from every state in the country who had received the Morris K. Udall Scholarship for college sophomores and juniors committed to the environment and native public health issues. I laughed when he told me he was working for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign — then an unknown Governor from Vermont few thought had a chance at winning the primary. But over the course of the ride, Jared’s well-reasoned confidence began to win me over. And by the end of the Udall gathering, we had recruited most of the scholars into an organization a core group of us invented on the spot: Students for an Environmentally Responsible President. SERP wasn’t long for this world, Jared got busy again at school, and we lost touch.

I had already dropped out of college by then to pursue student organizing full-time, and soon co-founded and began coordinating the Energy Action Coalition. Two years after we had first met, Jared was elected National Director of the Sierra Student Coalition, the student arm of the Sierra Club and one of the biggest partner organizations of Energy Action. We spent two years working together to build the Campus Climate Challenge, and organize the first national student climate summit, Power Shift, in 2007. When Jared’s two terms with the SSC were over, he told me he wanted to write a book. Doubtful again, I wished him the best of luck.

So when I got a copy of his book, Next Generation Democracy, in the mail just a week ago, I was chagrined again as I found myself tearing through it in just a few sittings. The book details how a range of new, web-enabled tools, combined with a newly global, progressive and tech-savvy generation is poised to change the world. He tells the stories behind well-known open-source projects like Linux and Wikipedia, but also unearths some of the most cutting edge approaches like the Deliberatorium, Legislation 2.0, 21st Century Town Meetings and other efforts that hold real promise for fixing our Democracy at a time when such hope can be hard to come by.

A couple of years into the Obama presidency, we are now confronted with the stark realization that truly transformational progress will not be made on any major social challenge until the underlying dysfunction of a ‘pay to play, keep people at bay” system in Congress is addressed…

Where might we look for progress instead? I believe that to get at the root blockages of transformational progress, we must address the disenfranchisement of the American and global public from the decision-making institutions of our society. As author Don Tapscott has written, ‘real change seems glacial…What the current system lacks are mechanisms enabling government to benefit on an ongoing basis from the wisdom and insight that a nation can collectively offer.’

Indeed, while the defining ideological debate of the previous generation concerned the proper size of government, for the Millennial generation the pressing question should be the nature — open versus closed, collaborative versus zero sum — of our very process of government.

Democracy is an ancient idea, and our Democracy here in America is the oldest continuous government in the world. When you consider the incredible gridlock and corruption in our current system against the massive problems on both the domestic and global level it is required to deal with, it’s hard not to feel like we need a tune-up. Jared’s book is as good a primer on these issues as I’ve read, and a good fun read as well.

I was presenting on a panel about resistance to strip mining in Appalachia at the 2010 Baltimore Radical Book Fair, and we’d made it to the question-and-answer session. Hands in the audience bolted up to ask about community-outsider activist relations, Obama’s policies on mountaintop removal and the efficacy of civil resistance in ending this destructive form of coal mining. Each question posed its own challenge, but none were particularly unexpected. That is, until one of the presenters called on an unassuming woman in the front row.

“I regularly read the comments section on the Beckley Register-Herald site,” she told us, “From these comments, I’ve learned that these people, they like what they’re doing, they like blowing up mountains.”

I first speculated that she was towing the coal industry line, suggesting that strip-mining brings jobs to coal-producing areas and is universally welcome in those regions. If someone received all their news about mining from the rabidly pro-coal Beckley, West Virginia Register-Herald, it’s reasonable that they’d come away with those sentiments.*

“They [Appalachians living in coal-extraction areas] hate us, they hate Obama, they hate people from Baltimore, they hate black people, they hate Muslims,” she continued, troubling my earlier assumption. Her mouth was literally twisting in anger as she spoke, “You say there are people [in Appalachia] who care about what’s happening but I see no evidence of that. Why are you there helping them? We should just say fuck ‘em, they want what’s happening to them.”

My first reaction was an overwhelming desire to scream. Staring out in to the mostly receptive audience, I decided against that course of action, took a couple breaths and leaned towards the microphone.

“I think that the Beckley Register-Herald comments, which are trolled by pro-mining extremists, are a very poor place to learn about mountaintop removal’s effects on Appalachia. I know many Appalachians who are fighting for their air and water, and strip miners who view their jobs as necessary evils at best,” I replied, the words flying out furiously, “I know people who are dying of cancer and gall bladder disease from poisoned water. If you think that Appalachians deserve what’s coming to them based on comments on an Internet site, you need to revaluate where you are getting your information.”

This woman came off as an extremist, but I worry deeply about the popularity of her sentiments.

Continue reading ‘No, I Don’t Find Your Hillbilly Jokes Funny: Cultural Stereotyping & the Destruction of Appalachia’

“Scrotum, Vagina, Electric Car, and other naughty words” is one of the most-read itsgettinghotinhere posts of all time, probably because it was–and is–honest and on point and yes, provocative, though in the service of an important message (and presumably also because it turns up in Google searches by people who are more than a little surprised and intrigued to see “electric car” and “itsgettinghotinhere” in their results list amidst the other, arguably naughtier, words they were searching for in the first place…).  In that 2007 post, Josh asked: “So what are our naughty words in the climate movement? Electric car? Conservation? Kyoto? Sacrifice?” Fast forward almost four years: Solutions buzzwords are everywhere. Green jobs! Clean energy!  But these terms get so much play in part because we often use them in place of two other words we really want to talk about, but are afraid to say: climate change.  And the US climate movement is losing ground because of it.

Continue reading ‘Two Naughty Words’