It's Getting Hot In Here

“We should not develop the unconventional fossil fuels. Those fuels – coal and tar sands – are so dirty and have such large regional negative consequences that it only makes sense to leave them in the ground,” says scientist Dr. James Hansen

“I would seriously consider a moratorium on all tailings ponds until impact is understood,” says “Avatar’ Hollywood Director James Cameron

On Tuesday, October 5th, the ERCB Hearing on Total’s proposed Joslyn North Mine project re-adjourned, this time at the Coast Edmonton Hotel East in Sherwood Park near Edmonton.

For one thing the location is largely inaccessible to the public, located in the heart of upgraders and right next door to Total’s office. Also, the Hearings were located in the ‘Empire Room’ of the Coast Hotel, so very befitting to a packed room full of lawyers and suit-and-ties representing the pro-mining cheerleaders of industry and government.

The first day in Sherwood Park began with Karin Buss from Ecojustice opening as legal counsel on behalf of OSEC (Oil Sands Environmental Coalition). Then it was time for OSEC’s presentation, beginning with Simon Dyer and Nathan Lemphers from the Pembina Institute. The third expert witness was famous scientist Dr. James Hansen. Continue reading ‘We Stand in TOTAL rejection of the Joslyn North Mine Proposal’

Warning: the Utah Department of Commerce and the state’s major electric utility really don’t want you to know the following information, and they will hijack your computer to keep you from getting it:

The administration of Utah’s former Governor Jon M. Huntsman (now U.S. Ambassador to China) commissioned an independent study to figure out how much, if anything, the state could save by switching to alternative, clean forms of energy.  Utah currently gets almost all of its energy through fossil fuel combustion, 82% of which uses coal.

Report says these things are dirty and expensive; report get's an "F" from state

It appears the current administration (Gary Herbert) and his coal-burning buddies don’t like what the report had to say:

“This [coal-based] resource mix…results in significant emissions of air pollutants and consumes a large share of Utah’s increasingly valuable water resources. The authors estimate that fossil generation in Utah today:

–consumes about 73,800 acre feet, or 24 billion gallons, of fresh water per year; results in 202 premature deaths per year;
–contributes to 154 hospital visits per year for respiratory injuries, and 175 asthma-related emergency room visits each year.

We estimate that the health and water impacts from Utah fossil generation have a monetary value of between $1.7 and $2.0 billion dollars per year (2008$), or between $36 and $43 per megawatt-hour (MWh) of fossil generation in Utah, a value similar to the direct costs of conventional electricity generation.”

Naturally, at this point, I would include a link to the PDF of the report. But I don’t want to do that to you. Get this: if you surf over to the PDF on the state’s website, a giant pop-up window (disavowing the findings) appears, the rest of the screen goes dark, and there is no way to click out of it. I’m no computer genius, so I had to “ctrl-alt-delete” and restart my laptop  just to finish this post. Sheesh. Continue reading ‘Utah commissions independent clean energy report, hides the findings, crashes my computer’

Cross-posted from blog.wwf.ca

“We also have an opportunity to address a second existential threat to human kind – a threat posed by climate change. The science is sobering. And climate change is happening much, much faster than you may realize,” Ban Ki Moon, United Nations Secretary General said as he began is speech in Ottawa, Canada this morning.

“We must be ready and we must be committed to leave this planet Earth to our succeeding generations to be more hospitable and more environmentally sustainable. That is our political and historical responsibility.

That’s what I’m doing as the Secretary General – I’m going to discuss with Prime Minister Harper, as the leader of the G8, and as a chair of the G20 this year, and as one of the most developed countries in the world, Canada has a special role and special responsibility to play. That is what I want to emphasize here.” Continue reading ‘I want to hug Ban Ki Moon’

(An ode to Minister Beverley Oda on the issue of Official Development Assistance)

The G8 International Development Ministers’ meeting in Halifax, Canada happened this week with little talk of climate change. The issue of climate change is set to be on the G8 agenda, yet no ministers’ meetings to date have raised the issue. This ministerial was the last of a series of meetings leading up to the G8 Summit in Muskoka this June.

Germany’s representative Dirk Niebel, Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, was the first to bring up climate change in a general context, as he noted that Development Ministers had a responsibility to include climate change in their planning and projects.

WWF (World Wildlife Fund) put out a statement with clear criteria expectations: “G8 International Development Ministers play a key role in ensuring climate financing are in fact new and additional to Official Development Assistance, and that they are not just robbing Peter to pay Paul. They should establish clear criteria and standards for ensuring that funds are additional,” said Mark Lutes, Finance Policy Coordinator at WWF International. Continue reading ‘An Ode to Oda on ODA’

Japan Foreign Affairs Press Secretary, Kazuo Kodama tonight re-affirmed Japan’s concerns around climate change. “As we all know, the global community must address the issue of rising sea levels and rising temperatures. In order to address [climate change] there seems to be a consensus today …that we have to transform our society from carbon intensive one to a low carbon society.”

Continue reading ‘Japan Sets Climate Precedent for G8′

Maritime shipping regulations, oil-spill cleanup capabilities and search and rescue capabilities topped the agenda at today’s Arctic Ocean’s Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Chelsea, Canada, held immediately before the opening of the G8 Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Gatineau, Canada.

While these top-line issues make headlines, at the core of all these emerging Arctic issues, is climate change. These meetings were based on the Ilulissat Declaration of 2008, which recognizes – and is largely based on – the quickly changing Arctic due to climate change. Today’s meetings showed us which international players are thinking and acting on issues of climate. Continue reading ‘U.S.A. and Norway Lead on Climate at Arctic Meeting’

Area fire and ambulance crews arrive near the scene in Middletown, Conn., Sunday, Feb. 7, 2010. Multiple people have died in an explosion at a power plant in Connecticut and an unknown number of people are injured. (AP Photo/Richard Messina, Hartford Courant)

This morning, at 11:30 am, Middletown’s Kleen Energy Power Plant suffered a major explosion,  believed to be when a gas line caught fire during testing. Friends who work at the plant said that there were 50 – 100 construction workers, engineers, and plant managers who were inside. As of 12 pm, Middletown firefighters had only found 9 individuals. Since then, five* have been reported dead, with casualties and injuries expected to be many more. Firefighters from around the state came into the plant, with Hartford and Boston’s search-and-rescue teams both coming to Middletown to help clear the wreckage and free workers still stuck inside.

Workers at the plant were working long shifts, trying to finish the plant on a tight schedule. Matthew Lesser, Middletown’s representative to state government, said, “As I understand it, they were testing a gas line when the explosion took place but we’re not sure. Our first priority is making sure that everyone there is safe.” Continue reading ‘CT Gas Power Plant Explosion Reminds Fossil Fuels are Deadly’

As David Aaron Smith, 23, Amber Nitchman, 19, and Eric Blevins, 28 protest mountaintop removal in two oak trees  and one tulip poplar on Coal River Mountain in southern West Virginia, Don Blankenship (CEO of Massey Energy) and Robert Kennedy, Jr. (Founder of Waterkeeper Alliance) debate the same issue farther north in Charleston.

Liveblogging of the debate: (Juliana Williams, Becca Rast & Nora Graubard will be liveblogging.  Juliana from within and Becca Rast & Nora Graubard from Rock Creek, WV)

8:00 – Thanks for tuning in, we welcome dialogue about this debate on the blog – please let us know what your impressions were!!

7:59 –   We are disappointed by lack of reference to Climate Ground Zero “enviros”. Check out further updates on our brave friends in the trees and their struggle with Massey at http://www.climategroundzero.org.  Learn more and show your support! Continue reading ‘LiveBlogging: Youth in Trees, Kennedy on the Ground – Everyone v. Massey”’

I like numbers, and I also like telling people when they’ve done a good job. So, I’m going to continue what should be a monthly series about this blog itself. This is a big community, and we do amazing work, so it makes sense that we’d want to check in on how we do an even better job of sharing those stories with the world. ItsGettingHotInHere.org is a powerful tool to do that.

In these posts, I’ll do a snapshot of how the blog’s doing overall, and then have a few helpful tips, and finish with the top posts of the month, and other regular stats.

Stats: In the month of November (well, almost, I’ll try and update this when its actually over) the blog was viewed 52,000 times.  That puts us up there with our best months, although no stand-out crises or scandals drove an obscene amount of traffic. I expect December to be the biggest month ever, with all the amazing reporting coming out of Copenhagen.

Read on for more stats, and also how to link IGHIH to your Facebook account and how to read this blog by topic (such as how to read all news about Copenhagen!) Continue reading ‘How’s the Blog Doing? (monthly update)’

I like numbers, especially when they give feedback on how we’re doing.  Something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and am now just getting around to, is post a snapshot of stats on the blog for the past 30 days.  First, a little context, and then the top posts and numbers below the fold.

For this round-up I took the top posts that were posted in the past 30 days.  Some posts get more traffic from a high volume of google searches, but those searches don’t tend to focus on the youth climate movement.

In the last 30 days, we’ve had 106 posts from dozens of different authors, covering almost every corner of the globe, and a broad view of all that makes up this movement.  We’ve had 260 comments and there are 325 people registered to post.  We’ve had over 55,000 unique views, and it goes without saying, played a big part in the largest global day of climate action ever.

If you’re interested in learning more, check our technorati rank and read about what all this means at Fired Up Media. And for contributors, please look at the stats in the back-end to see more about where web-traffic comes from.

This post is a bit of an experiment.  IGHIH is a community project with hundreds of contributors, and we’re still learning how to get our voices out there louder than ever.  For thoughts about how to share community news like this easier, discussions about what this all means, and how we can do better, I’ll see you in the comments.

And now for the most viewed posts, most clicked links, etc…

Continue reading ‘How’s the Blog Doing?’