It’s Getting Hot In Here

While climate activists across the US struggle to close down fossil fuel projects and hold elected officials accountable, it’s important to remember that many people in our movement are working equally hard to transform their own campuses and communities into models of sustainability.  One of the best examples I can think of where young people have come together to reclaim our power from large corporations and take back the commons is the nation-wide movement to abolish bottled water and end privatization of this precious resource. 

This week in the Northwest the Cascade Climate Network formally called for an end to bottled water in our communities, underscoring the importance of Take Back the Tap and Ban the Bottle campaigns already underway at many of our schools.  Read the press release below:

Cascade Climate Network supports bottle-free communities

Eugene, OR- The Cascade Climate Network (CCN), an organization of Northwest campuses and communities collaborating to address climate change, formally took a stand to promote tap water over bottled water on January 4, 2011. The CCN will help campuses and communities with their efforts to discontinue the sale, purchase and distribution of bottled water.

Zachary Stark-MacMillan, co-facilitator of the CCN, says, “The support of the CCN will help spread this campaign to new communities and help campuses share the resources they need to run effective campaigns and have a larger impact.” Many national nonprofits are also working to promote tap water, such as Food and Water Watch and Corporate Accountability.

Bottled water has become a nation-wide issue and many cities and universities are taking steps to minimize their bottled water usage. San Francisco and other cities and counties such as Multnomah County do not spend any public funds on bottled water. Seattle University, University of Portland, Belmont University, Washington University, Brown University and other universities have already discontinued the use of all bottled water on campus.

“Bottled water awareness is increasing every day and many people are making the simple habit change to start using reusable containers to drink tap water, which is actually much healthier for us and the planet” says Terra Smith, previous Take Back the Tap Coordinator at the University of Oregon. Continue reading ‘Northwest Youth Call for Bottle-Free Communities’

“The corporations don’t have to lobby the government anymore. They are the government.”
-Jim Hightower

I can’t say enough that my home state of Texas is becoming the next battlefield in the country’s dirty energy wars.

In a follow up to my “Deep in the Heart of Dirty Energy and False Solutions” blog posted last month, Texas has filed a lawsuit to defy the EPA’s new carbon rules. And now a Federal Appeals Court has sided with Texas and dirty industry!

Do we need more affirmation that Corporate America rules our government and our legal system?

Those oily Texas politicians that pimp for dirty energy’s corporate machine are challenging the EPA’s authority to enforce permits on factories and electricity-generating plants that emit a lot of greenhouse gases. Texas is the only state nationwide that has avoided the Obama Administration’s start up of greenhouse gas regulating this week. The legal fight is just beginning and the EPA expects to be in court in the coming weeks with a response.

Industry backed Republicans took over the both houses in the Texas state legislature with large majorities in November.  Rick Perry is the longest serving governor in state history, is a darling of the right wing Tea Party movement and is in the pocket of Big Oil and Coal. The Texas Tea Party is large and fanatical in Texas. Big Oil, Big Coal, Natural Gas and lots of false solutions companies are running amok.

Big Oil and Big Coal own our political system. The politicians have appointed right wing judges to affirm corporate power. So this begs a bigger question, who is going to stand up to them? It’s time to challenge corporate power in Texas, the courts, the legislatures and the streets.

Lucy Parsons, Jim Hightower, Molly Ivins and many more have all been outspoken rabble-rousers from Texas. San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Dallas-Ft. Worth all have built progressive, radical and clean energy consciousness. Growing population demographics will be shifting the political spectrum which is why the GOP and their corporate benefactors are fighting so hard to maintain the status quo. Continue reading ‘Texas Fights to Stay a Dirty Energy State’

Photo by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth

2010 ended in a great success story for some in central Kentucky—the Smith I plant has been canceled! Members of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC), the Kentucky Environmental Foundation (KEF), the Cumberland Chapter of the Sierra Club, and East Kentucky Co-op costumers have been working for the past four years to prevent the construction of a new coal-burning power plant in Clark County, in central Kentucky, and their work has ultimately paid off, as the East Kentucky Power Cooperative has canceled its plans for this new polluter. Even better news is that they have entered into collaborative effort with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and others to research and implement new energy efficiency programs and renewable energy production.

The decision to cancel the plans for Smith 1 follows a mandate from the Kentucky Public Service Commission that the cooperative reevaluate alternatives to building a new coal plant. While environmental groups and regulatory agencies have been increasing the pressure on EKPC, the co-op’s spokesperson said that the decision was ultimately made to save money for the co-op and its customers—energy demand has actually dipped in recent years at the same time as the Smith plant’s projected cost went up several hundreds of millions of dollars.

The more economically and environmentally conservative route that EKPC is now taking involves collaborating with members of KFTC, KEF, and Sierra. EKPC has already committed $125,000 to this collaboration, which it will chair, with a representative from one of the three groups acting as vice chair. Other participants in the collaborative will include the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General, the distribution co-ops which comprise EKPC, and other stakeholders. Continue reading ‘Another coal plant CANCELED, East Kentucky Power enters into clean energy collaboration with environmental groups’

“Fight Harder“
-Judy Bonds

We’re mourning the passing of our friend Julia “Judy” Bonds. She was a mother, a grandmother, a coal miners daughter a national leader in the mountaintop removal abolition movement, a director of Coal River Mountain Watch and a community organizer.

She’d been diagnosed with a very serious case of cancer back in the early summer.

Yesterday, on January 3rd 2011,  she passed away.

I remember the first time I really spent time with Judy. RAN organized an action at Powershift 2007 with her. At the action, 300 youth and coalfield residents shut down a Washington D.C. Citibank branch (major funder of coal and mountaintop removal at the time.) Continue reading ‘Judy Bonds, Presente’

If you’re like me and are already:

• tired of reading articles like this about what’s going to be hot in 2011 (here’s hoping “the planet” doesn’t make the list)
• busy breaking those New Year’s resolutions you made

I hope we can all resolve (and actually do it) to make one thing hot in 2011 – calling that icky stuff pouring out of our economy “pollution” instead of “emissions”.

Like “greenhouse gas pollution” instead of “greenhouse gas emissions”, “carbon pollution” instead of “carbon emissions”, etc.

Without making this a big post about messaging and why it matters, I think it’s pretty easy to get that “emissions” sounds neutral or at worst just a little bad, like politely talking about someone’s fart, and “pollution”, well, tells it like it is.

Unfortunately, as the charts below show (make them yourself at Google Fight. Other variations, such as “GHG pollution”, look similarly lopsided.), most people haven’t gotten the message. IGHIH isn’t even doing as well as it could (see for yourself).

Climate terms that use "emissions" are way more common than terms using "pollution", and that's a problem for communicating how serious climate change is. Images courtesy googlefight.com

Continue reading ’2011 Resolution – Call It “Pollution”’

By Tim DeChristopher, cross-posted from Peaceful Uprising

This post came from an email conversation with Post Carbon Institute‘s Strategist-Extraordinaire Tod Brilliant, who argued that we should recruit farmers and grandmothers since college-age protesters would get written off as “spoiled elites.” Tod has a totally reasonable view and might be right. In fact, it’s a very similar warning that Martin Luther King, Jr. gave to the Freedom Riders. They ignored his advice and went anyway, demonstrating that there is something strangely powerful about watching another person put themself in harms way.

I think college kids who protest and get a citation will definitely not get sympathy. Those who spend a night in jail probably won’t get much either. Those who get released from a night in jail to go straight back and repeat their action might start arousing some curiosity. Those who defy a judge’s strong warning that returning a third time will guarantee a year in prison will begin to actually move people. When college kids become former college kids who have been kicked out because of their activism, we’ll start making some progress. The “uppity brats” critique only sticks if anyone who wields it has ever sacrificed as much as the college kid is currently doing. I think where the direct action wing of the current movement has fallen short is that they have substituted perceived risk for actual risk, and it is not the same thing.

More than age, income, profession, or anything else, the one thing that matters about who we put out front is stubbornness.  I’ll trade all the strategy in the world for stubbornness…

Continue reading ‘Seeking thick-headed activists…’