It’s Getting Hot In Here

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This post was written by Ananda Lee Tan, organizer at GAIA, Rising Tide North America and Energy Action Coalition board member.

Between the pollution trading markets and increasing public handouts for bad corporate behavior, U.S. energy corporations have been laughing all the way to the bank.

Hence it comes as no surprise that some of the most polluting and risky power companies have banded together, once again, to lobby DC for more subsidies and incentives to help finance their plans for more dirty power plants.

This time they have crafted a shrewd and conniving scheme to:

1. Seek cover under the aegis of Renewable Energy such as wind and solar.
2. Get large logging firms and waste industries to rally behind the concept of burning biomass.

A new report released yesterday by the Biomass Accountability Project exposes the billions of taxpayer dollars being handed out for biomass electricity projects. The report highlights the range of subsidies being sought as well as the huge public health and climate impacts that result from burning biomass.

Contrary to the biomass industry’s claims of “carbon neutrality”, biomass burners actually produce more climate pollution per unit of electricity than coal power. Even the US EPA was forced to retract public statements supporting such misleading claims, after strong criticism from scientists about false carbon accounting and legal challenges targeting the integrity of biogenic carbon data on EPA web pages.

Continue reading ‘Big Polluters Lining up at Renewable Energy Trough’

Today, a group of eleven leading activists and environmentalists released a letter calling for people to join them in Washington DC this August to take part in civil disobedience to help stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Want to join in? You can sign up to take part here.

Dear Friends, 

This will be a slightly longer letter than common for the internet age—it’s serious stuff.

The short version is we want you to consider doing something hard: coming to Washington in the hottest and stickiest weeks of the summer and engaging in civil disobedience that will likely get you arrested.

The full version goes like this:

As you know, the planet is steadily warming: 2010 was the warmest year on record, and we’ve seen the resulting chaos in almost every corner of the earth.

And as you also know, our democracy is increasingly controlled by special interests interested only in their short-term profit.

These two trends collide this summer in Washington, where the State Department and the White House have to decide whether to grant a  certificate of ‘national interest’ to some of the biggest fossil fuel players on earth. These corporations want to build the so-called ‘Keystone XL Pipeline’ from Canada’s tar sands to Texas refineries.
Continue reading ‘Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, Wendell Berry Call for Civil Disobedience on Tar Sands’

Rather than blame undocumented immigrants for the fires ravaging his home state, Sen. John McCain should be educating the public about something he used to profess to know something about: the climate crisis.

At a press conference last Saturday, McCain said, “There is substantial evidence that some of these fires have been caused by people who have crossed our border illegally.”

This isn’t the first time McCain has talked about seeing the “substantial evidence.” In a 2008 speech at a wind turbine facility in Portland, McCain said of climate change, “No longer do we need to rely on guesswork and computer modeling, because satellite images reveal a dramatic disappearance of glaciers, Antarctic ice shelves and polar ice sheets. And I’ve seen some of this evidence up close.”

John McCain’s transformation from climate Dr. Jeckyll to anti-immigrant Mr. Hyde is a challenge for climate and a immigrant rights activists to find common ground.

Climate scientists have studied not only how increased global warming exacerbates fires across the western United States, but also how the drought caused by climate disruption drives more and more people in Mexico and across Central America to leave their parched homes and risk their lives to find work in el norte. A 2010 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that climate change’s impacts on crop yields may force as many as seven million Mexicans to emigrate to the U.S. over the next 70 years.

Now, the very immigrants that were driven from their homes by the climate crisis are being blamed for its impacts.

Continue reading ‘McCain should blame climate change, not immigrants, for Arizona wildfires’

If so-called world “leaders” won’t lead on climate change, global citizens will.  If governments in the world’s most powerful countries insist on stoking global warming by approving massive new fossil fuel projects, then it’s up to groups of concerned people to hold polluters accountable ourselves.  In the last few months I’ve been encouraged to watch as more and more climate activists have begun using creative direct action to sidestep the government delay tactics that have stalled progress on climate issues for so long, and started peacefully confronting corporate polluters directly.

That’s what happened this past weekend, as activists across the world participated in the second International Day of Action Against the Tar Sands.  As you may know, the Canadian Tar Sands in Alberta are the world’s most destructive industrial project, and one of the fastest-growing sources of carbon emissions on the planet.  While the Canadian government’s oil fever has unleashed tar sands extraction, the US is by far the biggest consumer of tar sands oil, and European banks have pitched in to fund tar sands activity.  Further development of the tar sands will threaten the world’s ability to bring climate change under control – and since governments aren’t acting to stop it, citizens and consumers are stepping in.

On Saturday people in twenty US cities took action to expose the companies driving demand for the tar sands – including fruit producers Dole and Chiquita, which use tar sands oil to fuel their huge trucking fleets.  From New York to Los Angeles and from Seattle to Boston, activists unfurled banners outside of supermarkets and staged creative actions by banana produce stalls calling attention to Dole and Chiquita’s involvement in the tar sands.  This comes after months of work by groups like Forest Ethics that have been trying to get the companies to engage in talks about their tar sands-soiled produce.  Dole and Chiquita haven’t responded, prompting activists to take public pressure to the next level.

In my home state of Oregon, a group of volunteer activists walked into a Safeway in Portland, unfurled a banner by a kiosk full of Chiquita bananas, and acted out a short skit alerting store customers to the problems with the tar sands.  While a store security guard shouted angrily and threatened to call the police, a spokesperson for the group politely explained they were only there to make a point about Chiquita and Safeway’s corporate irresponsibility, and would soon be leaving.  No confrontation with police ended up taking place, and Safeway shoppers looked on with interest as the group filed out of the store.

While US activists were pressuring the companies using oil from the tar sands, organizers in Canada, Europe, and elsewhere took action against governments, banks, and other institutions that are pushing the tar sands forward.  What’s notable about these actions is that while the issue at hand is deadly serious, photos compiled by event organizers show activists who are smiling, cheerful, and ready to remain nonviolent in thought and attitude as well as in action.  The same holds true for many other creative direct actions happening with increased frequency across the US and around the world.

More people than ever before seem ready to use the power of nonviolence to directly confront the institutions standing in the way of sustainability, democracy, and a livable future.  I hope Chiquita, Dole, and other corporate players behind the tar sands are paying attention.

This post was co-written with Michael Davidson.

Just in case our 5 years of swarming state capitals decked out in green hard hats, running campaigns calling for more jobs in clean energy, and vowing to only vote for candidates who support renewable energy companies hasn’t made it clear — youth really want more green jobs.

While young people have been some of the biggest advocates for green jobs, no one has really tried to answer the question of whether green jobs will be youth jobs? Will more green jobs mean more jobs for youth, or will young people miss out on the very green jobs we’ve worked so hard to create?

So far, the answer has been “we don’t know.” That’s because, despite all of the green jobs studies that have been done, none of them has really looked at the different kinds of people who actually get green jobs (one exception is for income and education level). This is especially true across different races, ethnicities, genders, and, yeah, ages. So, we set out to change that, writing the first study we know of to look at youth access to green jobs, and also the first written by youth. Continue reading ‘Will Green Jobs Be YOUTH Jobs?’

Last October 5, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu stood up before a conference of renewable energy advocates in Washington, DC and made an announcement. “As we move toward a clean energy economy, the White House will lead by example,” said Sec. Chu. “I’m pleased to announce that, by the end of this spring, there will be solar panels and a solar hot water heater on the roof of the White House.”

Tomorrow, June 21st, is the final day of spring and despite over 125,000 signatures on a letter asking President Obama to meet his deadline, it looks like the Administration will #fail to get solar on the roof in time. I’ve been on and off the phone with the Department of Energy, the agency in charge of the installation, and the best answer I can get is that the installation is a “federal procurement project” that the spokesman isn’t authorized to comment on.

Ok, I understand, home improvements can be easy to procrastinate on, but look at all the Administration has achieved on climate and energy since last October. Betsy Kolbert outlined some of the most notable accomplishments in her recent New Yorker piece:

Since the midterm elections, Obama has barely mentioned climate change, and just about every decision that his Administration has made on energy and the environment has been wrong. In March, the Administration announced that it would be opening up new public lands in Wyoming for coal mining. In April, the White House delayed plans to impose stricter controls on the mining technique known as mountaintop removal. In May, the Administration put on hold rules aimed at cutting pollution from power plants at places like paper mills and refineries. Also in May, the President announced plans to increase domestic oil production by speeding up permits to drill off the coast of Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico. “Is Obama’s call for more drilling bad messaging masquerading as cynical policy—or vice versa?” the liberal blog Climate Progress asked.

When it comes to handouts for big polluters, President Obama seems to have felt “the fierce urgency of now,” but when it comes to climate, the best advocates can get is a “deliberative process.”

I’ve been trying to think about some of the reasons for this solar #fail.

Continue reading ‘Will Obama #Fail to Meet His White House Solar Panel Deadline?’

This guest post comes from Jay Mallin, who made the following video while marching on Blair Mountain and interviewing a variety of officials about Blair Mountain’s unique history.

Last Saturday I sat for awhile on a roadside guard rail with a young coal miner in Blair, West Virginia. We watched a rally of people who’d come deep into coal country to try to save Blair Mountain. The miner had wandered over with some neighbors who staged a small counter-protest; they’d left, but he stayed on to catch some of the rally.

“I can see it both ways,” he said once his neighbors had gone. On one hand he understood the value of a job in the coal industry. When he’d switched from being an X-ray tech in a local hospital to a roof-bolter – one of the most dangerous mining jobs – in a nearby underground mine, his salary had doubled, from $45,000 to $90,000. And cousins who’d moved away to find work in other states returned to the area when new coal jobs became available.

At the same time, he admitted, “I don’t really want to see it torn down,” and he gestured up at Blair Mountain, above us to our left. More than one person has called it “the most important site in America that you’ve never heard of,” the place where perhaps 10,000 union coal miners came under machine-gun fire and even aerial bombardment in 1921 as they fought against a mercenery army hired to preserve a feudal system run by coal companies. The miner pointed to the ridgeline above us to our right. Beyond that line of trees, he said, “there’s nothing there,” just a rocky waste left by mountaintop removal.

Just as the miner struggled with that balance, the rally in front of us had its own uneasy tensions. I’d originally been attracted to filming the event because Blair Mountain brought together labor, environmentalists, and historic preservationists. But their alliance was sometimes a tenuous one. Some environmentalists boycotted the event because it focused too much on saving one mountain. Some unions didn’t want to be associated with the march because it could be seen as anti-coal – and coal is jobs, irreplaceable jobs in that part of Appalachia. And the historic preservationists would admit they don’t like any kind of surface mining, but they know from experience they have to work intelligently with property owners if they want to get anything done.

Despite those conflicts, hundreds of people marched over five days, and more than a thousand took a hot, steep hike up the mountain at the end of the rally, in a plea to save Blair Mountain, a piece of American history and Appalachian beauty that no one really wanted to see destroyed.

“Power never takes a back step-only in the face of more power” -Malcolm X

July 8-9-10th: Yellowknife NWT Facebook
July 15-16-17: Camp Meywasin, Wabamun AB (near Edmonton) Facebook 
July 22-23-24: Camp Byng Sunshine Coast, BC (just outside of Vancouver) Facebook

August 12-13-14: Camp Beaverbrook, Halifax NS

August 18-20-21: Unicamp, Oustide of Toronto, ON

*Camps start Friday morning and run until Sunday afternoon (subject to change), and the camp locations are open as of Thursday afternoon.

via the Oregonian

Coal companies are bound and determined to get that dirty black rock out of the Powder River Basin and send it over to Asian markets to line their pockets.

While the EPA is pressing for stricter regulations on coal plants and the anti-coal movement stops new coal fired power plants from being built and existing coal plants from having their lives extended, coal companies like Arch Coal, Ambre Energy and Peabody Energy are looking at Japan, China and India for new markets. These companies have already begun to seek permitting in the Washington ports of Bellingham and Longview and are facing stiff opposition.

In the southern part of the state along the Columbia River at the port of Longview, public pressure caused Millennium Bulk Logistics (a combination of Ambre Energy and Arch Coal) to blink and withdraw their permitting. While Ambre has stated they will re-submit once an environmental impact study is complete, the opposition to the port in Longview has become quite loud and effective at fighting the coal port initiative.

North of Seattle in Bellingham, WA, port logistical company SSA Marine and Peabody Energy have faced their own opposition. In the past few months, people in Bellingham have organized a number of large events around the coal export terminal at Cherry Point, a thousand person rally which featured climate activist Bill McKibben and caused the mayor of Bellingham Dan Pike to publicly oppose the terminal (the most notable politician to speak out against coal exports thus far.)

Now the coal companies are looking to mitigate the effective campaign work of the Longview and Bellingham communities, along with their national, regional and local allies, by spreading the ports south of Washington into Oregon.

Ambre has announced a lease at the port of Morrow (near Boardman, OR) along the Columbia River. Their goal at the Port of Morrow is to minimize the criticism they are getting from the increased rail traffic opening up coal terminals will bring. Their plan is to rail coal from the Powder River Basin to the Port of Morrow, put it on river barges and float the coal down river to coal terminals for export to Asia.

The other Oregon port being talked about is the port of St. Helens. Also along the Columbia this port is almost directly across the river from Longview.  Columbia River Keeper, which has been a leader in fighting coal exports, has been pursuing more information on the Port of St. Helen’s. Oregon’s Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber, elected with strong support of the environmental community, has stated that the coal exports in Oregon won’t move forward without a vigorous public debate. Continue reading ‘Coal Export Madness Spreading to Oregon’

Cross-posted from Peaceful Uprising

By issuing another last-minute delay, Judge Dee Benson has made it clear that he is desperate to avoid public accountability for the persecution of peaceful climate justice activist  Tim DeChristopher.

The new date is July 26th at 3pm. However, nationwide solidarity actions will proceed on June 23th.