It’s Getting Hot In Here

Photo by Tyler March

I’ve spent the past week in Salt Lake City, UT – supporting the local group Peaceful Uprising, and my friend Tim DeChristopher. For those that aren’t familiar with Tim – he gained notoriety in 2008 when he went to a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) auction of oil and gas leases, and he raised his Bidder #70 paddle to win 22,000 acres, at a cost of $1.8 million dollars. Not surprisingly, he didn’t have $1.8 million dollars. What he did have was the courage and conviction to take creative direct action to prevent this land from being sold off for the short-term profit of oil companies who care nothing about the justice, ecology, or a livable future.

This afternoon, Tim goes to trial for disrupting the auction. Despite the fact that the BLM auction was later invalidated under the Obama administration (the BLM violated its own rules and rushed the auction through at the behest of the oil industry), Tim is still facing up to 10 years in jail, and a $750,000 fine.

Continue reading ‘United States vs. Tim DeChristopher’

Crossposted from Environmental Defense Fund Blog

In Delhi, it’s easy to lose hope in the fight for environmental protection and climate mitigation – a thousand new cars every day; thousands of tons of garbage that make their way to the landfills coming from millions of homes, industries, and street sides; constant new construction of flyovers and widening of roads; and the sensation that it is too big for any individual, even any well-intentioned local politician to make a difference.

An overnight train ride away from Delhi, though, there exists another world. One that is full of enormous challenges in a rapidly changing climate, but also one full of Himalayan hope. The Environmental Defense Fund, in partnership with the Hunger Project and local NGOs in Uttarakhand, are giving female political and community leaders the tools they need to be able to engage in the development decisions happening every day.

One cold but warming day in mid-January, I had the honor to join Richie Ahuja to visit a leadership program, bringing together more than 100 of these female leaders from throughout the Kumaon district. Some of these women (and three generations of their family members) travelled by bus for more than 2 hours to reach this workshop, through winding mountain passes from their villages. Many of these women were Sarpanches (elected heads of villages) or members of their panchayat (an elected board of community representatives), while others were community leaders of other kinds, working with Self-Help Groups in their village. Continue reading ‘Himalayan Hope: Sustainable Development in India’

Written by Claire Christensen, leader with Washington University’s Green Action

Toss a handful of college students and a few community members into a National Coal Council Coal Policy Committee gathering and what do you get? A canceled meeting and an early lunch.

The National Coal Council would be reviewing a final draft of a study on deployment of carbon capture and storage technologies and would present their findings to the Secretary of the Department of Energy Steven Chu.

So what’s so bad about carbon capture and storage technologies? In itself, absolutely nothing. In fact, I strongly encourage it. However, when it’s used as an excuse for America to CONTINUE using coal it is simply unacceptable. The label “Clean Coal” is false advertising and purposefully misleading.

According to a study by Dr. Paul Epstein, Director of Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment called, “Full Cost Accounting for the Life Cycle of Coal,” published in 2011 in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,

Each stage in the life cycle of coal-extraction, transport, processing, and combustion-generates a waste stream and carries multiple hazards for health and the environment. These costs are external to the coal industry and thus are often considered as “externalities.” We estimate that the life cycle effects of coal and the waste stream generated are costing the U.S. public a third to over one-half of a trillion dollars annually.

Industries need to stop funding false solutions and tackle the real problem: the use of a dirty, inefficient resource that harms the climate through emissions, our country through its extraction, and our people through its presence. As conscious citizens, we have to draw attention to the use of coal propaganda and its detrimental affects to our country and our future.

On Tuesday at about 11:10 a.m., only ten minutes into the Coal Policy Committee’s meeting, students from Washington University’s Green Action group and activists from Climate Action St. Louis unfurled a banner declaring “Coal is Never Clean” and sang “Clean coal is a dirty lie.” As a member of Green Action, I took pictures to document the members of the St. Louis community standing up for what they believe in.

The National Coal Council meeting stalled as the police escorted us out of the building. The committee then canceled their meeting early, had lunch, and disbanded. Continue reading ‘Students and Community Shut Down National Coal Council Meeting in St. Louis’

This week the elected student government at the largest university campus in the Pacific Northwest endorsed the vision of a coal-free Washington.  On Tuesday the Associated Students of University of Washington (ASUW) passed a resolution that calls for replacing the TransAlta Coal Plant with clean energy by the year 2015 or sooner.  UW joins four other Washington colleges and universities where student governments have passed similar resolutions so far. 

This legislative session Washington lawmakers are confronting the challenge of phasing out coal dependence and eliminating the serious public health threat that is the TransAlta Coal Plant.  Right now a bill is moving through the state senate that would set a 2020 deadline for ending coal combustion at TransAlta; yet student groups know we can move beyond coal sooner than that.  The evidence is in the number of student governments – basically the elected voices of student interests on college campuses – that have called for a transition to clean energy by 2015.  ASUW alone represents over 40,000 students at the UW Seattle campus.

The UW Beyond Coal resolution was spearheaded by the College Greens, a group of undergraduate and graduate students who introduced the legislation to the student senate.  While working to pass the resolution, students from UW took time off their busy class schedules to visit the state capitol in Olympia as part of an environmental lobby day attended by over five hundred concerned citizens from across the state.  Students are sending their message loud and clear: the young voters of Washington are ready to move beyond dirty coal power.

Legislation to transition off the TransAlta Plant by 2020 recently cleared the Senate Ways and Means committee, and is gradually making its way toward law.  Legislators should take this opportunity to not only continue working to pass this bill, but to strengthen it and require an end to coal use by 2015.  Lawmakers who do so will have the support of five student governments and counting – including ASUW, which represents a larger body of university students than any similar entity in the Pacific Northwest United States.

This is an incredibly inspiring story of 10,000 Thai citizens protesting a coal plant in their region yesterday. This blog has lost some of its global content recently, so I thought it good to be reminded that the struggle for clean energy solutions and a global draw-down of green house gasses reaches across the planet. Incredible to see so many people come out for this. Here in my home country of the US we get excited when 3,000 people converge to protest dirty energy, we really do need to continue to aim high.

Here are some highlights from Greenpeace and various news outlets:

“On Thursday, 10,000 residents of Tha Sala District in Nakhon Si Thammarat Province formed a “human chain” as a symbol of their determination to protect their district from the coal-fueled power plant slated to be built by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT),” according to a press release by the protest organizer, Greenpeace Southeast Asia….

Continue reading ’10,000 Thai Citizens Take Action for Clean Energy’

So Big Coal never seems to get the message.

When we say “Coal is Over” we really mean it. That means no mountaintop removal coal mining, no coal plants and no coal exports.

Today, RAN joined in Salt Lake City with our friends in Peaceful Uprising, Utah Moms for Clean Air and the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers for a 60 person rally calling on soon to be notorious coal exporter Ambre Energy to stop their development of coal export facilities in Longview, WA.

Jim Cooksey, a representative of the union, had this to say about the protest in Salt Lake City today:

“We are concerned about the exporting of coal to overseas markets in that there are no environmental standards once the coal leaves our borders. The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers understands the issue of climate change and is looking to secure alliances with other labor and environmental organizations to find solutions that protect workers and the environment.“

This comes on top of a 50 person rally of directly impacted community members held yesterday in Longview, WA calling on the local government to act in the best interests of the community, not out of state coal corporations. They want to permits revoked, as does a growing coalition of environmental and community groups up and down the Pacific Northwest coast. Continue reading ‘Drawing the Line on Western Coal Exports’

Today, we have an op-ed published in the Presidents’ Day edition of The Plain Dealer, the largest newspaper in Ohio. The op-ed, “Winning Ohio’s energy future,” arrives one day before President Obama visits Cleveland to promote the administration’s “winning the future” agenda and host a business forum on entrepreneurship and innovation.

Co-authored with the CEO of the Cleveland Foundation, one of the country’s largest community foundations, we discuss how greater federal investment in clean energy technology innovation — on the scale of $15 billion annually for R&D — can unleash economic growth in the Midwest and across America, help recapture our global clean-tech leadership, and drive down the price of low-carbon energy.

Winning Ohio’s energy future
The Plain Dealer – Cleveland, OH
Monday, February 21, 2011

By Ronald B. Richard and Teryn Norris

When President Barack Obama visits Cleveland on Tuesday to talk about entrepreneurship and innovation, he will find a city and state where those forces are driving a revolution in clean, green energy – and where a greater federal commitment to energy innovation can secure our national competitiveness.

Continue reading ‘Presidents Day: Winning Our Energy Future’

It has been a busy couple of weeks in the fight to quit coal. One of the least reported and yet most compelling new set of facts illustrating how irresponsible it is to burn coal for electricity is a new study soon to be published by Dr. Paul Epstein at Harvard University. Here is an excerpt from a blog by Kert Davies over at Greenpeace:

“The paper details all the factors that are not quantifiable like lost work time when a mother has to take her child with to the doctor for an asthma attack or the cost to a family for the lost of a loved one or wage earner.

“The monetizable impacts found are damages due to climate change; public health damages from NOx, SO2, PM2.5, and mercury emissions; fatalities of members of the public due to rail accidents during coal transport; the public health burden in Appalachia associated with coal mining; government subsidies; and lost value of abandoned mine lands.”

The abstract of the of paper tells the whole story:

Each stage in the life cycle of coal—extraction, transport, processing, and combustion—generates a waste stream and carries multiple hazards for health and the environment. These costs are external to the coal industry and thus are often considered as “externalities.” We estimate that the life cycle effects of coal and the waste stream generated are costing the U.S. public a third to over one-half of a trillion dollars annually. Many of these so-called externalities are, moreover, cumulative. Accounting for the damages conservatively doubles to triples the price of electricity from coal per kWh generated, making wind, solar, and other forms of non fossil fuel power generation, along with investments in efficiency and electricity conservation methods, economically competitive. We focus on Appalachia, though coal is mined in other regions of the United States and is burned throughout the world.

Continue reading ‘$500 Billion True Cost of Coal: New Harvard Study’

Chevron is guilty of dumping a massive amount of oil pollution in the Ecuadorean Amazon and a judge has ordered the company to pay $8 billion to clean it up.

Chevron has vowed to appeal the decision, however, clearly intending to pull an Exxon Valdez and stall indefinitely, hoping never to pay its due.

So the Change Chevron team got together with our friends and allies at Amazon Watch, Greenpeace, Global Exchange, and Communities for a Better Environment, headed down to Chevron’s HQ in San Ramon, CA, and delivered a message to the company: Chevron was found guilty because Chevron is guilty. Time to accept responsibility and clean up your oily mess in Ecuador!

Check out pics from the event below. If you want to send your own message to Chevron, go to ChevronIsGuilty.org.

Continue reading ‘Chevron Was Found Guilty Because Chevron Is Guilty’

Clemson marks the 12th campus to make such an announcement since the Sierra Student Coalition launched our Campuses Beyond Coal campaign.  Here’s more info cross-posted from the Sierra Student Coalition blog.

After a year-long effort by students Clemson President Jim Barker announced the university will be investing in several university upgrades including ending the use of coal on campus!  The campaign, spearheaded by Students for Environmental Action at Clemson, has been working with the administration to stop burning dangerous coal in the campus steam plant situated near the aptly named “Death Valley” – the university’s football field.  Ending their use of coal is just phase I of several planned utility upgrades over the next five years and a significant step towards meeting the university’s commitment to reduce their overall carbon emissions to zero by 2030.

Students are excited and looking forward to another address by the President planned for next week at their “Solutions for the Next Decade” teach-in where they hope to hear more details for the transition.

“Clemson is making strides in becoming more aware of sustainability and taking concrete steps to reduce its carbon emissions.  No where is this more evident than in President Barkers’ announcement to begin Phase 1 of taking the campus coal plant offline.  This will catapult Clemson toward our goal of becoming a carbon neutral campus by the year 2030 and we are very excited to hear yesterday’s announcement,” said Graduate student and SEA leader Holly Garrett.

“This decision to move our university beyond coal shows that the university is really listening to the concerns of students and faculty who want a cleaner, healthier campus and demonstrates our dedication to environmental, economic and social leadership.  I’m very proud to go a university that is committing to building a clean energy future,” said CU Beyond Coal leader Rose Kinane.

“Now, we hope to see the university to continue invest in solutions like efficiency for our buildings and renewable energy projects that will make our school a 100% clean energy institution.”