If you had the chance to talk to Big Oil directly to its big oily face, what would you want to say?

I recently had such a chance at a commercial shoot run by the American Petroleum Institute, the major lobbying and public relations front for the oil industry (ie ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, TransCanada and just about every major oil company). Here’s what I had to say:

Through recorded audio, we got to expose API’s upcoming “Vote4Energy” campaign, which debuts January first on CNN during major political programs. Audio recordings from inside the Vote4Energy commercial shoot can be found on the Greenpeace website, and on Yahoo News. More can also be found at the Checks and Balances Project, where Deputy Director and youth climate leader Gabe Elsner has more recordings from inside the shoot.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) is building off of its “Energy Citizens” astroturf campaign, exposed in 2009 in a leaked memo from CEO Jack Gerard to the heads of major oil companies, and launching the Vote4Energy campaign to try and claim that Americans support the oil industry’s agenda. You know, the poor, poor industry that gets billions in taxpayers dollars each year even though its the most profitable industry on Earth, and has to bus oil employees to its own staged rallies.

API is currently spending millions of its $200 million annual budget to push dirty energy projects onto the American people, particularly tar sands through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, fracking for ‘natural’ gas, and offshore drilling in the Arctic, to name a few. Anyone familiar with TransCanada’s reputation for pipeline leaks, the safety concerns and lack of oversight for gas fracking in the lower 48 states, and the implications of a BP-style offshore oil blowout in the frigid Arctic ocean recognizes the danger of the oil industry’s agenda.

Big Oil’s Christmas list does not fit with the desires of most Americans, no matter how hard they work to craft campaigns claiming otherwise. Sometimes, it is up to us to call them out face to face, and tell that story to others so they can recognize how dirty the petroleum industry really is. Tim DeChristopher is the shining example of that confrontational spirit, currently serving a two-year sentence for saving tens of thousands of acres of Utah land from oil and gas drilling by disrupting a Bush Administration auction that later proved to be illegal.

Climate change is only getting worse, and Big Oil, King Coal and other dirty interests are pulling out all the stops to squeeze every last dollar out of this planet while they still can. Their efforts are overwhelmingly funded, and often coordinated. Their business as usual has horrible implications for intensifying global warming and human rights abuses, so the idea that people like us want to spend 2012 voting in their interest is not only ridiculous, but dangerous.

Vote4Energy? More like Vote4BigOil. Don’t buy the lie, pay close attention, and vote for the future you really deserve.

Connor Gibson does research for Greenpeace. Here he is at the Tar Sands Protest back in August 2011.

Toward Ecological and Social Revolution

This is a reconstruction from notes of a keynote address delivered to the Power Shift West Conference, Eugene, Oregon, November 5, 2011.

All of us here today, along with countless others around the world, are currently engaged in the collective struggle to save the planet as a place of habitation for humanity and innumerable other species.  The environmental movement has grown leaps and bounds in the last fifty years.  But we need to recognize that despite our increasing numbers we are losing the battle, if not the war, for the future of the earth.  Our worst enemy is denialism: not just the outright denial of climate-change skeptics, but also the far more dangerous denial — often found amongst environmentalists themselves — of capitalism’s role in the accumulation of ecological catastrophe.¹

Recently, climate scientists, writing in leading scientific journals, have developed a way of addressing the extreme nature of the climate crisis, focusing on irreversible change and the trillionth ton of carbon.  Central to the scientific consensus on climate change today is the finding that a rise in global temperature by 2° C (3.6° F), associated with an atmospheric carbon concentration of 450 parts per million (ppm), represents a critical tipping point, irreversible in anything like human-time frames.  Climate models show that if we were to reach that point feedback mechanisms would likely set in, and society would no longer be able to prevent the climate catastrophe from developing further out of our control.  Even if we were completely to cease burning fossil fuels when global average temperature had risen by 2° C, climate change and its catastrophic effects would still be present in the year 3000.  In other words, avoiding an increase in global average temperatures of 2° C, 450 ppm is crucial because it constitutes a point of no return.  Once we get to that point, we will no longer be able to return, even in a millennium, to the Holocene conditions under which human civilization developed over the last 12,000 years.  Many of you are aware that long-term stabilization of the climate requires that we target 350 ppm, not 450 ppm.  But 450 ppm remains significant, since it represents the planetary equivalent of cutting down the last palm tree on Easter Island.².

It is here that the trillionth ton enters in.  In the last couple of years, climate studies have determined that once we emit the trillionth metric ton of carbon — counting all the carbon put into the atmosphere since 1750 — we will have exhausted our cumulative carbon budget.  This means that if we burn no more than the trillion ton of carbon we will still have a reasonable chance (though this may not in fact be much more than 50-50) of not exceeding the 2° C, 450 ppm boundary.  The trillionth ton of carbon is thus viewed as an absolute cutoff.  Growing scientific evidence, however, suggests that it is essential to remain below the 2° C, 450 ppm level.  Consequently, some prominent climate scientists, such as Myles Allen at the University of Oxford, have stipulated that we need to target 750 billion tons of carbon as the limit, which will give us a 75 percent chance of staying below a 2° C increase in global average temperature.

How far are we from emitting the 750 billion — or even the trillionth — ton?  Since 1750, we have emitted 550 billion tons of carbon and the rate is accelerating.  If present emission trends continue, we will reach the 750 billionth ton of carbon in 2028, that is, in sixteen years.  In order to avoid emitting the 750 billionth ton by 2050 we will need to reduce our global carbon dioxide emissions by 5 percent annually.  In order not to emit the trillionth ton of carbon by 2050, carbon dioxide emissions would have to drop by 2.4 percent per year.  This is much greater than the 1.5 percent drop in global carbon dioxide emissions, resulting from the Great Recession in 2008-2009.  The longer we wait to make the reductions the steeper the decline required.

Another way of putting this is that if we burn even half of today’s proven, economically accessible reserves of oil, natural gas, and coal, we will almost certainly reach/exceed the irreversible 2° C, 450 ppm, boundary.  If we want a 75 percent chance of staying below a 2° C increase, we have to lock up all but a quarter of today’s proven economically accessible fossil-fuel resources.³

If all of this were not enough, climate change is only one of the rifts in planetary boundaries that scientists are now pointing to: the others include ocean acidification, ozone depletion, species extinction, disruption of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, land cover loss, freshwater shortages, (less certainly at present) aerosol loading, and chemical proliferation.  Each of these has the potential of disrupting the global environmental order on catastrophic levels, and the trends for each (with the possible exception of ozone depletion) are presently a source of concern.  Already we have crossed three planetary boundaries: climate change, disruption of the nitrogen cycle, and species extinction.⁴

Faced with such enormous environmental problems and the need for massive, urgent changes in society, our worst enemy, as I have indicated, is denialism.  Here it is useful to look at what I call the “three stages of denial” with respect to the global environmental crisis.⁵  The first stage of denial is straightforward.  It is the denial associated with Exxon-Mobil and climate skeptics — who say either that there is no such thing as climate change or that it is not caused by human actions.  Sometimes they contradict themselves and argue both at once.  This of course is the inevitable response of capital, which is invariably concerned, first and foremost, with protecting its bottom line — even at the expense of the earth itself.

The second stage of denial — often advanced by self-designated environmentalists themselves — is to admit that there is a problem, and even to factor in the proximate causes.  Most of you are no doubt familiar with the environmental impact or IPAT formula.  Environmental Impact = Population X Affluence X Technology.  This is a mere truism, where the drivers of environmental impacts are concerned.  It frequently leads to the notion that the solution is a simple matter of promoting sustainable population, sustainable consumption, and sustainable technology.  Nevertheless, this conception doesn’t actually take us very far, since we then need to explain what drives population, consumption, and technology themselves.  In fact, such multiple-factor analysis is all too often used as a way of denying the underlying background condition: the capitalist treadmill of production.⁶

The third stage of denial has the look and feel of greater realism, but actually constitutes a more desperate and dangerous response.  It admits that capitalism is the problem, but also contends that capitalism is the solution.  This general approach emphasizes what is variously referred to as “sustainable capitalism,” “natural capitalism,” “climate capitalism,” “green capitalism,” etc.⁷  In this view we can continue down the same road of capital accumulation, mounting profits, and exponential economic growth — while at the same time miraculously reducing our burdens on the planetary environment.  It is business as usual, but with greater efficiency and greater accounting of environmental costs.  No fundamental changes in social or property relations — in the structure of production and consumption — are required.  This is the magical world view advanced by such diverse figures as Al Gore, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, Paul Hawken, and Jonathon Porritt — if not Thomas Friedman, Newt Gingrich, and the Breakthrough Institute, as well.

From a policy perspective, this normally divides into two streams, one state-centered and the other market-centered.  Green Keynesians like to think that we can ameliorate our environmental problems (and our economic problems too) by having the state promote economic growth through the creation of green jobs.  Green Schumpeterians, like Friedman, Gingrich, and the Breakthrough Institute, offer as a solution green technological innovations, supposedly a natural outgrowth of the market — but usually seen as requiring additional subsidies to corporations to harness its full strength.  Here too the promise is one of heightened economic growth on greener terms, equated simply with greater energy efficiency.

The main problem, which all of this denies, is the nature and logic of capitalism itself.  Capitalism, as its name suggests, is quite simply, thesystem of capital.  Its sole purpose is the accumulation of capital through the exploitation of human labor.  It is a grow-or-die system dominated by the 1% (the capitalist class) and giant corporations.  It is prone to periodic economic crises, and constant — and today deepening — unemployment.  Capital accumulation and economic expansion occur by means of gross inequality and monopolistic competition, generating a war of all against all and a world of waste.  The wider public/social/natural sphere is an object of theft — a realm in which to dump “externalities” or impose unpaid social costs, which then fall on nature and humanity in general.

Endless capitalism requires unlimited economic growth.  Economists generally consider a 3 percent average rate of economic growth over the long run as absolutely essential for the stability of the capitalist system.  Yet, if we were to have a continual 3 percent rate of economic growth, world output would expand exponentially by around sixteen times in a century, 250 times in two centuries, and 4000 times in three centuries.  Already we are overshooting planetary limits — consuming resources as if we had multiple planets at our disposal, undermining the very basis of our existence.⁸

What then is the alternative?  The answer is a cultural-power shift — opening up the world to the creative efforts of hundreds of millions, even billions of people, and unleashing a process of sustainable human development.  Today the world Occupy movement is showing the way.  It is time, as Noam Chomsky contends, not simply to Occupy Wall Street but to go on to “Occupy the Future.”⁹  As the 99%, we need to take direct action with respect to the environment: locking up the three-quarters of the proven, economically available oil, natural gas, and coal (remembering always that the poorest countries have to be allowed to develop while the richer countries need disproportionately to pay the cost); blocking the Canadian-U.S. tar sands pipeline; and imposing a carbon fee at the point of production (i.e. at the oil well, mine shaft, and point of entry) — the funds from which would be returned immediately to the population on a per capita basis, so that those with the largest carbon footprints, predominantly the corporate rich, would be the ones that paid.  (This is the proposal of U.S. climatologist James Hansen.)¹⁰  In the end we will need to go on and culturally Occupy the system itself through a long-term ecological and social revolution, opening the way to democratic planning at all levels of society from the local community on up.¹¹

Under twenty-first century capitalism the world is being buried in commodity waste.  We are compelled, simply in order to live and breathe in this society, to engage in useless and alienated labor directed at satisfying artificial wants through the production of mere “stuff,” the bulk of which ends up being disposed of soon after it is purchased.  This all takes places simply so that the whole process can start up again, more commodities can be generated, and more profits can be made by the 1%.  As radical economist Juliet Schor says, we have lost any sense of “true wealth.”¹²  In the United States today we spend about $1 trillion on the military spending each year, far more than all the rest of the world put together.¹³  U.S. corporations and businesses today spend more than $1 trillion on marketing annually, simply in order to persuade people to buy things that they don’t want or need.¹⁴  Our very cultural apparatus is shaped so as to conform to the imperative of marketing — not democratic communication.  If we are to save the earth, this gargantuan waste and destruction which dominates our lives needs to be brought to an end, so that we can focus on the real issues: making sure that everyone in every part of the world has enough of life’s basic needs; building community; promoting substantive equality; and creating the basis for sustainable human development.  Some have called this a socialism for the twenty-first century.

In a 1962 speech to the National Maritime Union, Martin Luther King declared: “We are presiding over a dying order, one which has long deserved to die,” and he ended his speech with the words of the great American socialist Eugene Debs: “I can see the dawn of a better humanity.  The people are awakening.  In due course of time they will come into their own.”¹⁵  Now is the time of which Debs and King spoke, the time in which to create a new society where human beings no longer deny, but affirm, their connections to each other and to the earth.

Notes

1  On ecological denialism as a complex social construct see Kari Norgaard, Living With Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life(Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2011).

2  Susan Solomon, et. al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 6 (February 10, 2009): 1704-1709; Heidi Cullen, The Weather of the Future(New York: Harpers, 2010), 264-71.

3  Myles Allen, et. al., “The Exit Strategy,” Nature Reports Climate Change, April 30, 2009, and “Warming Caused by Cumulative Carbon Emissions Towards the Trillionth Tonne,” Nature 458 (April 20, 2009): 1163-66; Malte Meinshausen, et. al., “Greenhouse-Gas Emission Targets for Limiting Global Warming to 2° C,” Nature 458 (April 30, 2009): 1158-62; TrillionthTonne.org; Catherine Brahic, “Humanity’s Carbon Budget Set at One Trillion Tons,” New Scientist, April 29, 2009; Cullen, The Weather of the Future, 264-71; International Economic Agency, CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion (Paris: IEA, 2011), 7.

4  Johan Rockström, et. al., “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,”Nature 461 (September 24, 2009): 472-75.

5  See John Bellamy Foster, “Capitalism and the Accumulation of Catastrophe,” forthcoming Monthly Review63, no. 7 (December 2011): 1-17, where the three stages of denial are put in the context of an overall accumulation of catastrophe under capitalism.

6  Allan Schnaiberg introduced the treadmill of production critique in his book The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity(New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), based on earlier Marxian conceptions.

7  See Al Gore, Our Choice (New York: Rodale, 2009), 346; Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism(Boston: Little Brown, 1999); L. Hunter Lovins and Boyd Cohen, Climate Capitalism(New York: Hill and Wang, 2011); Jonathon Porritt, Capitalism: As If the World Mattered(London: Earthscan, 2007); Thomas Friedman,Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008); New Gingrich, A Contract With the Earth(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, Break Through(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007).

8  Charles Morse, “Environment, Economics and Socialism,” Monthly Review 30, no. 11 (April 1979): 15.

9  Noam Chomsky, “Occupy the Future,” November 2, 2011,NationOfChange.org.

10  James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren(New York: Bloomsbury, 2009),211-20.

11  For a more developed argument on short-term, radical ecological changes and long-term revolutionary ecological change see Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011), 123-44.

12  Juliet Schor, True Wealth(London: Penguin, 2010).

13 For the data on military spending see John Bellamy Foster, Hannah Holleman, and Robert W. McChesney, “The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending,” Monthly Review 60, no. 5 (October 2008): 9-13.

14 ”U.S. Marketing Spending Exceeded $1 Trillion in 2005,” Metrics Business and Market Intelligence, June 26, 2006, http://metrics2.com; Michael Dawson, The Consumer Trap (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 1.

15 Martin Luther King, Jr., “All Labor Has Dignity” (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011), 71.

This article was originally published on  MRzine.

Credit: Michael Drazdzinski

Solar panels adorning the tops of Harvard buildings. A bright, towering wind turbine on the St. Olaf campus. Libraries and dormitories chock full of blue recycling options and even composting bins inside the dining halls, at the University of Washington.

Campus sustainability has come into its own over the last decade, with renewable energy, tray-less dining, and sustainability director jobs popping up at campuses across the country. While many colleges and universities can implement some or all of these programs to reduce their carbon footprint, many projects are done piecemeal, without a regular source of funding or the institutional support to make it the first step in a larger commitment.

Being a sustainable campus can be so much more than just a green garden or showcase project. Sustainability projects can often reduce the overall operating costs for the campus, saving energy and money, keeping tuition low. But high upfront costs can be a barrier to administrators experiencing steep budget cuts and rising energy costs.

One way for any college or university to achieve these results is through a sustainability financing mechanism called the Green Revolving Fund.

On the main stage at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s national conference in Pittsburgh, PA, the Billion Dollar Green Challenge will be launched in front of the largest gathering, to date, on sustainability in higher education. The Challenge is inviting colleges to establish green revolving funds to invest in significant energy efficiency upgrades on campus.

At the time of the launch, 32 institutions have joined the Challenge’s Founding Circle. Founding Circle participants range in size from large institutions such as Arizona State, Harvard and Stanford, to small and innovative institutions such as Northland College, Green Mountain College and Unity College.

Green revolving fund projects are diverse and versatile, and can be easily adapted to a school’s priorities. Have an active student body? Consider operating a student-driven fund, like at Oberlin College’s EDGE Fund, where students work with faculty and staff to initiative sustainability projects. Want to retrofit your campus buildings? Take a page from the University of Pennsylvania’s Energy Reduction Fund, which reduces energy through building upgrades.

Existing green revolving funds prove that sustainability efforts can be profitable and even fund larger and more ambitious projects, as they have an average return on investment of 32 percent annually.

Clearly, the benefits of joining the Challenge and operating a green revolving fund are numerous. They are a bright spot in a rocky economy, helping to create green jobs in campus communities while substantially reducing operating costs. The Challenge is a broad network of like-minded institutions focused on improving campus sustainability throughout their operations.

For participating institutions, it will be a best practice forum for what kinds of projects have proven successful, what programs have had difficulties, and what programs you should consider on your own campus, based on real-life examples.

As energy prices rise and concerns about resource scarcity increase, it is a risky venture to not invest in environmental initiatives on campus. By joining the Billion Dollar Green Challenge, institutions can both save energy and grow money.

Tim DeChristopher understands why he’s going to jail. As he told Rolling Stone in a recent interview, “What I did was a threat to the status quo, so I understand why those in power want to put me away.”

Tim represents a new breed of disruptive, bold climate activists who are putting their lives on the line to bring about the transformational change we need. And he considers Solar Mosaic part of that transformation. Asked what it would take to fundamentally transform our energy system, he pointed to Solar Mosaic as proof that we’re on our way. For the folks at Solar Mosaic, this is both a huge compliment and a great expectation to fulfill.

A quick recap on Tim: One the eve of Obama’s inauguration, a 27-year old economics student from Utah entered an auction set up for oil and gas companies, became the top bidder, and won the lease rights. He had no intention of paying for the land; he was acting to protect public land from destructive extraction. Despite the fact that the leasing plan was flawed and has since been revoked, Tim faces up to ten years in prison for his actions. His sentencing was recently rescheduled for the tenth time and is slated for late July. To read Tim’s full story, click here.

I take a lot of inspiration from Tim, for his personal resolve and his commitment to confronting the inadequacies of the grey economy and spurring on a new energy transformation. I’m also inspired to witness this new paradigm taking hold in concrete ways around the country. Indeed, Solar Mosaic – which aims to democratize clean energy in Oakland, California and around the country – represents a radical departure from traditional top-down fossil fuel systems.

DeChristopher speaks of a future that promotes local power, justice and prosperity for all, and an economy based on human goodness. Solar Mosaic embodies these tenants, putting the energy in the hands of people, creating jobs and helping community institutions save money, and building an economy that reflects the values we strive to live by.

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.

Building on Kyle’s earlier research on green jobs demographics, we looked at the industries where the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (which finally has the resources to take green jobs seriously) says the most green jobs companies are, and compared that to data on the industries most young people work in. You can see the full results in our paper, but they’re not great:

Basically, industries with the most green jobs, like construction (doing energy efficient building retrofits, for example), don’t employ young people who have jobs (here BLS defines youth as ages 18-24). And the industries that do employ a lot of young people, like retail (and every young person’s favorite job, food service!), have some of the lowest rates of green jobs companies, less than a percent of all green jobs firms. Considering that youth unemployment is even higher than average unemployment, that’s pretty crappy news for all those youth looking to make a difference through a steady job.

To be fair, the data we have only tells us how many green jobs companies there are, not how many actual jobs there are (BLS is surveying total numbers of jobs now, hoping to finish by 2012), and the numbers probably look a little better for youth aged 25-29.

Does that mean more green jobs won’t create jobs for youth? No.

For one thing, tons of studies suggest that investments and policies that support renewable energy, energy efficiency, and solutions to climate change create more jobs overall, compared to equivalent support for fossil fuels and fossil fuel jobs. Just having more jobs total should mean at least some extra jobs for youth, even if most of those green jobs go to older workers. Youth are also not heavily employed in fossil fuel and mining sectors, meaning we will be less hurt by these shifts in investments.

For another, just having more older workers with green jobs (when they used to be unemployed) will create some jobs for youth. That’s because people who are getting paid, when they used to be out of work, also start spending money when they couldn’t before. And they spend that money at places like clothing stores and restaurants — places that employ a lot of young people — and those places start hiring more workers as their business picks up (these are called either indirect or induced jobs). These might not be green jobs directly, and they may not pay the kinds of wages youth need to prosper, but they’re at least an improvement over no job.

But lastly, and most importantly, pushing for green jobs today will mean more green jobs tomorrow. Even if our generation isn’t claiming the majority of green jobs today, you can bet we will soon, as we become the biggest generation in the workforce, becomes innovators helping to solve our energy and climate crises, and move into the age range with the most green employment.

Even putting aside other benefits, like fighting climate change and helping other people find decent work, that’s reason enough for youth to fight for more green jobs.

Michael Davidson was a SustainUS youth delegate to the Cancun climate negotiations in December 2010. He is the China Climate Fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, DC, where he examines the dynamic U.S.-China energy and environment relationship and supports NRDC’s Earth Summit 2012 campaign. Previously, he was a Fulbright Fellow in Beijing and holds degrees in Physics and Japanese Studies from Case Western Reserve University.

The study — “Green Jobs for Youth: A Preliminary Analysis of Youth in the Green Economy” — is our own work and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or endorsements of the places we work for.

Right now a Guinness World Record attempt is underway, and you too can make your mark on history.  For the next 24 hours, Greenpeace’s ‘Unfriend Coal’ Campaign is taking aim at the record for most Facebook comments within a 24-hour period.

Comment and share, that’s all you need to do.  But collectively we need to do it 50,000 times to set the record within this timeframe: http://bit.ly/f9YMAR.

Hit up www.facebook.com/unfriendcoal to leave a comment now!  Then ask your friends to help set the record as well.

Greenpeace is also delivering your messages directly to Facebook staff all day on a scrolling screen outside their office, so post your comment now and be seen.  The 50 best commenters will win a t-shirt from the ‘Unfriend Coal’ Campaign.

Tips to help us set the record:
- You have to ‘like’ www.facebook.com/unfriendcoal to comment
- Comment multiple times – it still counts!
- “@nametag” ten friends in the comment so they can join in the record too.
- Share the link on your profile
- Stay on topic – Facebook and renewable energy.  Send your message to Facebook staff.  Ask questions.  Give opinions.  Spark debate.  Tell your story!

Why is Greenpeace doing this?  Because it would be awesome to hold a World Record.  And because the Earth Day deadline that we gave Facebook to announce a plan to go coal-free is fast-approaching.  As of yet, there has been no indication that the company plans to replace dirty coal and nuclear with clean, renewable energy.

Just two of Facebook’s data centers use the same amount of electricity as over 65,000 average American homes.  We are asking Facebook to power those data centers – and all future ones – with renewable energy, and to ‘unfriend’ dirty coal and dangerous nuclear.  We’re pretty sure that 50,000 comments on their website will get Facebook’s attention.

Today we are showing Facebook staff the huge global support that exists for a coal-free Facebook.

Go speak your mind.  Be part of a Guinness World Record attempt for the greatest number of comments on a Facebook post within 24 hours!

http://www.facebook.com/unfriendcoal

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.

This argument can be called another example of what has become known as NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard. NIMBY, though, is an inherently harmful idea. If everyone says “not in my back yard”, then in this case, the wind farm, which will likely be beneficial, never gets constructed.

Perhaps residents in Eastern Oregon should take into account the positive impact a wind farm can have at the community level. I am sure the residents of Roscoe, Texas are quite satisfied with the wind energy they produce:

Roping the Wind (Webisode 122)

So what do you think? Is a wind farm worth the frustration to a few local residents? Can wind farms really be harmful to one’s health? What about the widespread benefits?

Maybe the residents have a point with a wind farm of this scale, do you agree? Share your thoughts below…

See this post and more like it at Planet Forward

I wish to share news of an exciting development unfolding in the Appalachian mountains of western North Carolina. The Appalachian Institute for Renewable Energy (AIRE) is preparing to launch a cooperative business venture for community-owned renewable energy. We’ve been working for the past 18 months to develop and tweak a model of collaborative financing that makes purchasing PV solar considerably cost effective; with a potentially significant return on investment within 5 or 6 years. Currently we are organizing demonstration projects here in western North Carolina, while drafting our strategic and business plans for expansion.

We are a nonprofit organization. However, we are pioneering a “hybrid” development model, in which we seek to establish a network of community-owned Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) comprised of small businesses, congregations of faith, individual homeowners and other community constituencies; to pool their finances and invest in renewable energy. These locally owned LLCs will take advantage of state and federal tax incentives, which are generally written to benefit wealthy investors and large corporations. By forging these innovative partnerships we seek to build the capacity of communities to generate their own electricity using clean, renewable resources … while creating sustainable economic opportunities for local interests, and reducing dependence on the monopolized power grid.

AIRE was recently awarded funding from a progressive private foundation to write an in-depth business plan, upon the completion of which we will potentially be given a “transformational grant” … which would enable us to launch our vision for community-owned renewable energy far and wide. One step in the process of finalizing our business plan involves gathering public interest data on community-owned renewable energy and other related issues. Please, consider taking our quick survey … it will be of great assistance in our efforts to restructure the modern energy economy to be more clean, sustainable, and democratic!

<<< http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/aire-nc >>>

Some friends and I were concerned about Chevron’s attempts to evade both the law and the company’s moral responsibility to clean up the 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste it deliberately dumped in the Amazon, killing 1,400 people and poisoning thousands of others. So we paid him a visit.

Chevron CEO John Watson flees up a staircase (Watson is on the top left) while we hold banners.

Dressed business casual, we came in early and each took seats in different parts of the room. We listened to John Watson distance Chevron from the BP oil disaster. He reassured us all that Chevron is a thoughtful oil company. He went on to say that, above all other objectives, “No goal is more important than operating in a safe and responsible manner.”

On that note, Debra Michaud, a University of Chicago alumna, jumped up to express her dismay that a fellow graduate would be involved in poisoning the communities of 30,000 people. She asked Watson to speak to Chevron’s toxic legacy in Ecuador.

Watson was quick to evade the question, claiming that the damage was not Chevron’s responsibility. He seemed relieved at the end, as if he was thinking, “Phew, glad that’s over.” But it wasn’t.

A couple minutes later I took the mic and pointed out the irony in Watson’s allegations of “deception and conspiracy” on the part of the Indigenous plaintiffs in the court case, as his comments themselves were the real deception. After pointing out his false claims of remediation, he asked that we all just wait and “see how it all plays out.” After waiting through 17 years of Chevron’s delay-deceive-and-distort tactics, I kept pushing and went on to challenge his arguments.

The students in the room were engaged. Our respectful tone and figures presented from scientific case studies played well with the Business School crowd. One person near me glanced to the podium and murmured to her neighbor, “Why isn’t he answering the question?” Watson’s eyes darted around nervously as he realized that his presentation was being hijacked.

Watson’s entourage from the Business school looked panicked. The moderator escorted me off the microphone. A few minutes later, Abigail Singer went up to the mic to speak, and the alarmed moderator declared the Q&A over, after seeing Abigail’s paper, fearing she too would ask about Ecuador. She was escorted to her seat, and the event was declared over.

It was clear that the one thing people would remember from the event was the controversy about Chevron’s role in poisoning Ecuadorean Amazon communities.

We went up to shake Watson’s hand, and were immediately blocked by security guards who ushered him away. We persistently followed him out, holding up a banner reading “Energy shouldn’t cost lives” all the way out of the building. Two people from the crowd cheered us on, saying “Way to stand up!” and “Keep going!” We did, until the moderator, furious, saw to it that we were escorted from the building.

John Watson needs to know that this issue won’t simply go away. It is going to stay in his face until he addresses it head on — even on his home turf and alma mater.

Video forthcoming!

by Scott Adams

“I prefer a more pragmatic definition of green. I think of it as living the life you want, with as much Earth-wise efficiency as your time and budget reasonably allow. Now back to our story.”