What do you get when you put over 200 CCAN supporters out in the rain in downtown Richmond on a Saturday? A drenched but fired-up community ready to stand up to Dominion’s Dirty Power!

If you’re on CCAN’s Virginia list, then you surely heard about last Saturday’s event – the March to End Dominion’s Power Madness.  After 5 weeks of spreading the word, managing logistics large and small and reaching out to the media, we were ready. So, when we saw the forecast and woke up to drenching rain last Saturday morning, we were a little worried. But, we knew it would take more than a downpour to keep CCAN activists from standing up to the commonwealth’s biggest climate change contributor.  We were right!

People came out in droves to Kanawha Plaza, across the street from Dominion’s Richmond offices, with energy and enthusiasm I’ve rarely seen.

Hello Polar Bear Plungers!

We're very excited about how things are looking for this Saturday's 7th annual Polar Bear Plunge at National Harbor on the Potomac River. Thanks for all you're doing to solicit sponsors of your plunge and for participating in this important action!

This blog post is filled with IMPORTANT logistical information, so please read the whole thing:

Volunteering: We are a little short of volunteers to help make the event run smoothly. If you and/or someone coming to support you can get there by 10 am to do this, please contact Ted Glick at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 240-396-2155.

Arrival time: You should plan to arrive at 10:30 am so you can park, get registered and be able to listen to our short program  beginning at 11am, featuring Mike Tidwell, James Hansen, Congresswoman Donna Edwards, and a few other special guests – we promise to keep it brief! We'll move over to the changing tents by 11:30.

 

Waiver forms: Please print out the waiver forms, sign them and bring them with you on Saturday, even if you checked off the box about this when you signed up at the website. We need you to personally sign these two forms. It will help a lot to expedite the registration process and move things along if you’ve done so in advance. You will receive these via email tonight (Tuesday) or tomorrow, but you can also email Ted and ask for them if you missed that - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . 

Chances are, if you're reading this, you were also on the Mall on Saturday, or maybe watching it on TV. Having organized rallies in DC, I was blown away by the turnout. With all the climate-denying happening these days, it was inspiring to see so many people travel from all over the country in the name of sanity. It felt good to be among fellow sane people.

If you organize around political issues long enough, it's easy to get cynical. I fight that urge all the time. Rallies and protests are practically a monthly occurrence and it's often hard to see how they move the ball forward. But, we justify the hard work it takes to organize those kinds of events because they also serve other purposes. Good rallies can inspire people, indirectly leading to future action. And, having a drumbeat of rallies and protests on any one issue might finally get through to our lawmakers and/or the media.

I left the Stewart/Colbert rallies trying to make those same justifications, but have come up short. Did you leave inspired? I left lukewarm, at best. Did you get a sense of what's next? I didn't.

Ok, here's a shocking statement (insert sarcastic tone):

As reported by The Hill on September 14^th: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Petroleum Institute, National Mining Association and National Association of Manufacturers want to block the EPA from regulating pollution that causes climate change!



Is that news to you? Of course the country's biggest polluters want to stop action that would curb pollution

This coming week, in New York City and Pittsburgh, there will be important United Nations and G20 meetings that could advance the process of coming up with a new international treaty to address the climate crisis. This coming week will also see the opening salvo of "civil society" groups in the streets taking action to press their demands for not just any treaty but one that is strong and fair, one that reflects the deepening of the crisis.

From December 7-18, in Copenhagen, Denmark, 190 or so nations will come together in for the annual U.N. Climate Conference, but this one is particularly important. One reason is that it will be the first one in eight years where the U.S. delegation will be led by people who believe that climate change is real, serious and that action is needed to address it. But much more significant is that this is the U.N. conference that was planned, two years ago at a UN climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, as the place and the time that the world had to come up with a much stronger international climate treaty than the Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol became operative on February 16, 2005, and as of sometime in 2012 it will no longer be in effect. The countries which signed it and agreed to reduce their emissions by an average of 5% below 1990 levels have until then to do so. At that point, if there is no international treaty that has been negotiated, ratified by enough countries and gone into effect, there will be nothing that replaces the expired Kyoto treaty.

Since it is expected that it will take at least two years for enough countries to ratify a treaty, the Copenhagen conference has been seen as critical so that there's no gap in between Kyoto and a new treaty. However, as we're less than three months out from Copenhagen, with 15 actual negotiating days between now and the end of Copenhagen (including five days in Barcelona, Spain Nov. 2-6), and with a significant number of major issues unresolved and points of conflict, especially between the countries of the Global South (developing countries) and the Global North (developed), it is not looking hopeful for any kind of treaty, much less a good one, to be adopted and signed at Copenhagen.