Climate change town hall encourages individual action

Gazette.Net

By Marlena Chertock

About 500 residents, politicians and activists showed support for climate-change policies at an Organizing For Action town hall last week at the Silver Spring Civic Center.

“Cleaner air leads to healthier families,” said Neeta Datt, the county director of OFA.

The nearly four-hour meeting was the first in a month of action for OFA, a nonprofit that supports President Barack Obama’s agenda.

Speakers focused on the president’s plan, but also encouraged action on an individual level.

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Suit objects to loan that helps region's coal exports

The Virginian-Pilot

By Robert McCabe

Environmental groups on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging the U.S. government’s backing of a loan that facilitates the export of some Appalachian coal through the ports of Hampton Roads and Baltimore.

The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco, alleges that the U.S. Export-Import Bank broke federal law by approving a $90 million loan guarantee in support of Latrobe, Pa.-based coal broker Xcoal Energy & Resources LLC without first preparing an “environmental impact statement.”

The taxpayer-backed financing, approved on May 24, 2012, will help leverage $1 billion in coal exports from Appalachia to markets in Japan, South Korea, China and Italy through coal terminals in Hampton Roads and Baltimore, the groups said.

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Lawsuit seeks to stop federal loan guarantee for coal planned for export from Hampton Roads

Daily Press

By Tamara Dietrich

As a registered nurse at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital for more than 20 years, Lorraine Ortega has noticed more and more serious asthma patients who need treatment.

“I was alarmed by the increased number of acute asthmatics in our area, as well as people actually being diagnosed with lung cancer when they’re non-smokers,” Ortega said.

One of those acute asthmatics happens to be Ortega’s daughter, who’s wound up several times in the emergency room. Ortega says she’s also had her own share of “really, really bad lung congestion” and pulmonary issues, even though she, too, is a non-smoker. She didn’t have such problems before moving from Brooklyn to Chesapeake in 1991.

She believes the culprit is coal.

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Environmental groups, critical of coal export loans, file lawsuit

Cumberland Times-News

By Matthew Bieniek

CUMBERLAND — At the same time the coal industry is fighting against what industry leaders say is a war on coal, several environmental groups have filed a lawsuit to fight multimillion dollar loan guarantees to export U.S. coal to foreign nations including Japan, South Korea, China and Italy.

Much of that coal leaves the country through the Port of Baltimore.

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Environmentalists sue Export-Import Bank over loan guarantee to domestic coal broker

The Washington Post

By Max Ehrenfreund

Above the harbor in Baltimore’s industrial Curtis Hill district is a one-acre urban farm. Jason Reed, a community organizer who works there, described the view. “I can look out over the harbor, and you can see the piles and piles of coal,” he said.

That coal is the subject of a lawsuit filed Wednesday by a coalition of environmental groups against the Export-Import Bank of the United States. The groups are challenging the federal agency’s financing of fossil fuel exports from ports in Baltimore and Hampton Roads.

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#Walk4Grandkids Day 8: NO KXL!

From July 19th to July 26th, grandparents, parents and young people, from age 15 to 78, journeyed together on a eight-day trek from Camp David to the White House. After 100 miles of sweat and blisters through this summer’s worst heat wave, the Walk for Our Grandchildren reached DC today. Dozens gathered downtown at the headquarter of ERM to expose corporate influence in the US Department of State’s analsysis of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Tomorrow, we will reach our ultimate goal – the White House, calling upon President Obama to demonstrate substantive leadership on climate by rejecting the KXL.
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Loudoun Rally Promotes Clean Energy

Leesburg Today

By Emily Moschetto

Almost 50 people gathered outside the Loudoun County Government Center Tuesday afternoon to catch the attention of local leaders and to raise awareness about how Loudouners can help combat climate change.

The “Wake Up Loudoun” rally drew members of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and a group of activists from the “Walk for Our Grandchildren” group who are in the midst of a 100-mile walk from Camp David to the White House.

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O'Malley crafts stricter plan to fight climate change

The Baltimore Sun

By Erin Cox and Tim Wheeler

The O’Malley administration’s aggressive new plan to fight climate change calls for Maryland residents to further cut their energy use or face higher monthly utility bills.

The plan, to be released Thursday by Gov. Martin O’Malley, also requires that more of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020.

Maryland’s goals for reducing greenhouse gases are among the most ambitious in the nation. The plan requires stricter measures than previously proposed to meet the requirement set by the General Assembly in 2009 to cut carbon emissions that scientists say drive climate change.

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#Walk4Grandkids Day 4: Voices From the Trail

The following is a Day 4 update by Elisabeth Hoffman, who’s on the trail of the Walk for Our Grandchildren, July 19th-July 27th.
For our children, we would do anything.
From the mundane to the extraordinary, we have done what ever was necessary to protect, clothe, educate, and help them grow.
Parents on the 2013 Walk For Our Grandchildren baby-proofed the house, stayed up all night with sick children, coached, and volunteered in schools. Some gave up lucrative jobs to work from home for their children or to go sledding on snow days. Those memories are now the fuel that moves them onward step by step to Washington, DC.
Bill Ramsey of Asheville, NC instilled a love of nature in his children with summer backpacking and camping trips. But they also participated in protests, including once when his oldest son, then two years old and out of view in a backpack, was inadvertently arrested with him at a farm workers’ strike. “They’ve seen me, day after day, working and acting as if we can create change,” he said. Bill now walks for his grandchildren, age eight and three.
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Camp David to the White House: The first three days of extreme heat and high spirits

I’ve walked thirty miles across Maryland the past three days in the middle of the worst heat wave of the year. The heat index has soared well above 100 each day, causing the corn fields and forests to shimmer in the distance. My feet, meanwhile, are so tender I’ve literally begun applying duct tape to the balls of my feet to ward off blisters.
And I couldn’t be in higher spirits. Why? Because today I get to do it all over again with 60-70 inspiring climate activists from across the country as part of the “2013 Walk for Our Grandchildren.” For eight days, from July 19-27th, we are walking 100 miles from the gates of Camp David — the presidential retreat in western Maryland — all the way to the White House. Our goal: Tell President Obama to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and accelerate solutions to global warming.
Frederick-farmer-shelly-wolfAlready, we’ve walked through the “green tunnels” of the Catoctin Mountains. We’ve marched across soybean farms and into towns with one stoplight. We camped one night on a Civil War battlefield. What keeps us going with bandaged feet and evaporating pounds are the stories we hear along the way. We met farmer Shelly Wolf who says the weather in rural Frederick County Maryland is unrecognizable compared to when she and her husband bought their farm 58 years ago. The snow back then would shut down their country road for a week at a time. Now it barely snows. And today it’s not just the heat waves but the summer humidity! Insufferable, she says. There was nothing like it during her childhood.
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