Blair has become a powerful symbol in the fight against mountaintop removal coal mining. Last summer, hundreds of people marched to Blair Mountain to commemorate the generations of coal miners who fought for their rights and join hands with a new generation of miners, young people, environmentalists, and every-day people to fight for our collective future. The march was an inspiration for our entire movement and was one of many sparks that helped ignite the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline.

Now, Blair Mountain may be under a real and immediate threat of destruction. This afternoon, I talked with Mari-Lynn Evans, a West Virginia activist and filmmaker who directed “Coal Country.” Mari reported that Arch Coal has blocked off all the entrances to Blair Mountain and it looks like they’re making plans to start blasting on the mountain as soon as in the next couple days.

“Apparently they’ve put roads where they shouldn’t put roads,” said Mari. “They’ve set up target practice and are firing rifles behind those fences, just in case you didn’t get the message. People are reporting that there are so many machines it’s like ants crawling over that mountain.” 

If Arch Coal is making a move on Blair Mountain, it’s going to take all of us — in West Virginia and around the country — to make sure that we put up a fight. The two people that can intervene on behalf of the mountain and the communities there are West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomlin and Senator Joe Manchin. In this case, the Governor could move faster than Senator Manchin, so he’s the most likely target. Keep your eyes out for opportunities over the next few days to call in to the Governors office and show him that Blair Mountain is a national treasure that we’re all dedicated to protect.

According to folks on the ground in West Virginia, Arch Coal isn’t going after Blair Mountain’s coal because it’s the only way they can make a profit, there’s plenty of other coal out there. They’re going after it because they know that Blair has become a symbol of the movement against mountaintop removal.

“They’re saying to us, ‘We’ll blow up your past. We’ll blow up the one mountain that everyone in West Virginia cares for,’” said Mari. “Blair Mountain ties unions into this, it ties civil rights leaders into this, it ties everyone in to this fight.”

That includes all of us too. Let’s keep an eye on what’s happening at Blair Mountain and be ready to dive in when we’re needed.

Never has there been a more dire time for defense of the planet. Increase your abilities to defend the Earth through learning the skills of climbing. We will offer a variety of trainings for forest defense and urban actions suitable for all skill levels from beginner to advanced.

Workshops include: Basic Climbing and Anchoring, Traverses, Tree to Tree Transfers, Basic Structure Rigging and Haul Systems, Tripods, Bipods, and Monopods, Advanced Structure Rigging, Large Scale Banner Hanging, and Basic Rescue and Training Set Ups.

To attend the camp contact:

efclimbers@gmail.com

www.efclimbers.net

About the climbers guild

The Earth First! Climbers Guild exists to enable direct action climbing and rigging trainers to communicate with each other to be able to set up training events and continue to produce guides on climbing and rigging as well as standardize the training process to create a safer and more effective environment in EF! direct action situations.

To become a Guild trainer you must be intimately familiar with all aspects of safety and rope work that are presented in the guild guides. Furthermore, to train others under the name of the Earth First! Climbers Guild, the steps as outlined in the guides must be followed. This is to insure a standardization of safe climbing practices.

The Guild will work to maintain a diverse membership and will implement codes of conduct at all events. Guild events will be geared toward the empowerment of all individuals who have a desire to learn.

Guild members will make a commitment to never be under the influence of any drug while training, teaching, or engaging in any climbing activities that are a part of an action or larger campaign. As trainers and skilled climbers, guild members have a responsibility to set the best possible example for those individuals learning from us. It is never acceptable to use any substance that could potentially impair judgment while climbing.

After a year of fighting for coal export terminals proposals in Washington, coal companies are moving south into Oregon.  Last week, it was announced that port officials at the Port of St. Helen’s, OR approved proposals to allow coal export terminals on the Oregon coast.

King Coal’s plan is take the coal being mined from leases in Wyoming and Montana, being opened up by the Obama’s Administration’s energy plan, transport it by rail to ports in the Pacific Northwest and ship it overseas to Asian markets for big profits. There are already active efforts in the Washington port towns of Longview and Bellingham.

The Port of St. Helen’s agreements with Houston-based port logistics company Kinder Morgan and Australia-based coal company Ambre Energy would ship up to 38 million tons a year and is the first proposal to be approved in Oregon.  It’s also reported that the ports in Coos Bay, OR are also in talks with unnamed coal companies about coal export terminal development.

Earlier in the year, Oregon’s Gov. John Kitzhaber had stated no coal would be exported through the state without a “open vigorous public debate.” It’s pretty clear that King Coal and the Oregon political establishment don’t want that at all.

For environmental and climate activists in the Pacific Northwest, I’ll remind them of the words of the late Judy Bonds—“Fight Harder”

via movieposter.com

In the 1974 classic Roman Polanski neo-noir film Chinatown, private detective Jake Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson) discovers one of LA’s dirty secrets.

He finds that wealthy developers are legally stealing precious water from poor struggling farmers in California’s central valley to hydrate the wealthy homes of Beverly Hills and a rapidly growing Los Angeles.  It’s a sorted tale of corrupt local politics, exploited natural resources, an earlier version of the 1% vs. the 99% and seemingly the “future” of the city.

In a similar vein, despite growing green consciousness in southern California, the city of Los Angeles has another dirty secret and it is called coal. Furthermore, the electricity that the residents of L.A. are using everyday from coal is being burned at the expense of struggling Native communities in the American Southwest.

Despite a resolution passed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the L.A. City Council to get L.A. off of coal, the Los Angeles Water and Power Department (LAWPD) still purchases almost half of its power from coal plants in Arizona and Utah.  The resolution has led to two coal plants being shut down, but the LAPWD is still heavily invested in utility companies like Southern California Edison.

And while California itself has very few coal plants and no coal mines, it keeps its homes air conditioned and lights on through plants hundreds of miles away spewing pollution into the airways and waterways of the Southwest. This addiction has a particularly harsh impact on communities in the Four Corners area of New Mexico and Arizona as the Navajo Generating Station is located on Navajo land.  Furthermore, companies like St. Louis based Peabody continue to mine coal reserves on the same land.

Stellar reporting by Altnet’s Josh Frank has highlighted this story and the struggle of Indigenous groups fighting to be heard on the impact of coal plants and mining on native land.

 ”My community is heavily impacted by Salt River Project’s coal and water extraction activities. SRP has extensive ties to Peabody Energy’s massive mining operations and the Navajo Generating Station,” says Louise Benally of nearby Black Mesa. “Coal mining has destroyed thousands of archeological sites and our only water source has been seriously compromised. Their operations are causing widespread respiratory problems, lung diseases, and other health impacts on humans, the environment, and all living things.” 

Last month, protests erupted in Arizona around the Navajo Generating Station. 16 activists were arrested at the offices of corporate climate marauder and managing partner of the Navajo plant, the Salt River Project (SRP). SRB is also a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and sits on its board. ALEC is most known for aggressive legislative campaigns to undermine labor standards, climate science and civil liberties, as well as a driving force behind the racist Arizona law SB1070.

At the end of Chinatown, the wealthy developers won, covered up scandals both political and personal and Gittes was told “Forget about it Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

But the fight over LA’s future with dirty coal is far from complete, and we won’t be forgetting about the struggles of people most impacted by it for quite some time.

This is a reminder that people power works. Direct Action works. Social movements work. Grassroots organizing works. Lets take some time today to celebrate another huge victory.

Every time we win, it builds our resolve for the next fight. We know the fossil fuel industry owns Congress, and so far the Keystone XL campaign has been like playing Whack-A-Mole, or kinda like going to battle with a zombie who just won’t die. There may yet be another stage of the fight, and there will definitely be other theaters of engagement heating up in the Tar Sands fights, like the Enbridge Northern Gateway. I’m confident we’ll be ready to take em on. Moments like this help us remember our power, and that its worth all the headaches and stress of movement building. So lets keep winning.

If you’re in DC, help build the momentum by joining 500 referees blowing the whistle on congress being soaked in big oil Jan 24th. Or this friday, you can join the J20 (January 20) #occupy actions all around the world mobilizing to take on dirty corporate interests. Here in the Bay Area we will be shutting down the SF financial district with nonviolent direct action (check out the hot Lady Gaga outreach flashmob video here).

Here’s a quick sampling of the breaking coverage of the Keystone XL victory from Bill McKibben, and on Globe and Mail, Washington Post, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, ThinkProgress, Grist, Daily Kos, and Politico.

Congratulations, climate movement. What a great way to kick off the new year, eh?

– UPDATE — since this post we’ve gotten media coverage from the New York Times to CNN, but my favorite headline of all of them is from Gawker: So Long, You Filthy Canadian Tar Pipeline!

Join us in Washington, DC at 12pm on Tuesday, January 24 to Blow the Whistle on Congress!

And here’s Boehner’s original video:

via understory.ran.org

Originally posted on the RAN Understory

by Mike G.

RAN activists took to the streets of San Francisco last night and turned every Bank of America ATM in the city into an Automated Truth Machine.

The activists used special non-adhesive stickers designed to look exactly like BoA’s ATM interface. But instead of checking and savings accounts, these new menus offered a list of everything BoA customers’ money is being used for, including investment in coal-fired power plants, foreclosure on Americans’ homes, bankrolling of climate change, and paying for fat executive bonuses.

Here’s a full map showing all 85 ATMs we made a little more truthful last night.

The stickers also encourage BoA customers to “Stop doing business with Bank of America until they start behaving responsibly” and have the URL to our new blog, which we’ve just launched along with The New Bottom Line:

BankruptingAmerica.tumblr.com.

We’re using that blog to track all the ways BoA is bankrupting America, hence the name. We’ve received so many submissions it’s clear to us that this website was badly needed. There are lots of grievances to be aired with regard to how Bank of America is conducting its business these days, as it turns out. (Not that that’s terribly surprising.)

Check it out, and feel free to submit if you’re so inclined.

In his speech this morning, Donahue said:

“There is no legitimate reason, none at all, to subject it to further delay,” Donohue said in his annual address on the state of business and the economy. “Real leaders understand that Americans can have big differences in philosophy but still find common ground. They wouldn’t tell us that solutions have to wait until after the election.”

No, Tom, real leaders stand up to Big Oil and protect the American people from scams like Keystone XL, a fuse to the “largest carbon bomb in North America,” the Canadian tar sands. But it’s no surprise, I guess, that the US Chamber of Commerce isn’t concerned about the climate or the interests of everyday Americans. As Bill McKibben wrote this morning,

“The US Chamber of Commerce, two years ago, filed a legal brief arguing that if the planet warmed humans could alter their physiology’ to cope with the heat. So I guess there’s no reason for them to worry about the climate impacts of opening up the second-biggest pool of carbon on the planet. For those of us who plan to keep our current anatomy, however, their assault on basic environmental review is one more sign they’re nothing but a front for the fossil fuel lobby.”

It’s no real surprise that the Chamber of Commerce is pushing Keystone XL, but it does help clarify what we’ve been saying all along: this pipeline is a scam and the only reason politicians are pushing it is because they’re on the payroll of Big Oil and front groups like the US Chamber.

Mass mobilization works.  And in 2012, it’s time to apply this lesson to what may be the biggest carbon bomb of them all: a proposal to export US coal from the Powder River Basin to the international market.

If you’re not familiar with coal export proposals, you can get the miserable truth about the issue here.  For now, suffice to say large-scale coal export projects seem to be an even bigger threat to the climate than the Keystone XL pipeline.  In states like Montana, both Republicans and Democrats in statewide office seem bent on blowing up this carbon bomb, and have ignored the protests of environmental groups.

Lobbying, petitioning, and talking about “green jobs” have all failed to stop mine-for-export proposals moving forward (though all these tactics have helped build the movement we’ll need to win).  I believe the only thing that can keep Montana and Wyoming coal in the ground is a mobilization that includes large-scale direct action.  It’s time to do here what Occupy Wall Street did in Zuccotti Park, and what the Tar Sands Action did on President Obama’s doorstep.  We must reclaim power over our communities, and chart the course ourselves to a cleaner, more just future.

This isn’t going to be easy.  There are no really large urban areas in the northern Intermountain West, making mass mobilizations difficult to organize.  However, there is a growing movement within these states to protect our communities from the coal industry.  We know we have the support of activists in the not-so-far-off Pacific Northwest proper, who are organizing to stop proposed coal terminals on the West Coast.  And with a livable planet hanging in the balance, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

In 2012, we can channel the power of mass mobilization into the places where it will be most effective, throwing off the stranglehold of fossil fuel industries over our communities while opening up space for clean energy and green jobs.  With direct action sweeping the country, and ever more people in the West waking up to the impacts of coal export proposals, there couldn’t be a better moment.

I know I’m excited.

In a news analysis published today, the New York Times concludes that while the tax bill provision on Keystone XL will likely kill the project, the victory will do little to stop future pipelines, stall tar sands development, or slow down global warming. After all, the world needs energy, the tar sands have it, and therefore, they’re going to be developed, atmosphere be damned.

It’s a compelling argument that’s been made over and over again during the fight against Keystone XL. Here’s why it’s wrong.

Time and again, public opposition has stopped things that made “economic” sense. That’s every mile of the Colorado isn’t dammed, why we haven’t cut down every last inch of Brazilian rainforest, or, to pull from another time period, why the British Empire finally abolished the slave trade even though it was great economics. As it turns out, there are other forces in the world than supply and demand. Just because morality is hard to quantify, doesn’t mean it can’t change history now and then.

As political opposition to the tar sands grows, it’s going to be nearly impossible for oil companies to build the pipelines they need to get tar sands oil out of landlocked Alberta. You thought the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline was contentious? Just check out the struggle over the Enbridge Northern Gateway, a pipeline that was slated to be built from the tar sands out to the coast of British Columbia. Thanks to the opposition from indigenous communities along the entire pipeline route and people up and down the coast, the Canadian government has been forced to stall the project for yet another year of environmental review. The delay, along with the news on Keystone, has fired up the anti-tar sands movement even more. When Goliath teeters, David puts another stone in the sling-shot.

The pipeline victories also create the momentum necessary to push for the larger, structural changes that can really shut down the tar sands, like ending fossil fuel subsidies, rolling out a clean energy economy, and putting a price on carbon. In the United States, the fight against Keystone XL made tar sands a (dirty) household name for the first time. Over 500,000 people signed petitions against the pipeline, tens of thousands of people to part in demonstrations, and over 1,000 people were arrested over the course of the campaign. At places like 350.org, we’re busy brainstorming with supporters across the country about how to quickly get into these larger fights.

The New York Times is right: if it was let up to economics, tar sands development (and the planetary destruction that comes with it) would be inevitable. Good thing we’re not leaving it up to economics.