A little laugh for your Wednesday afternoon

As 60,000 barrels of oil or more spilled into the Gulf of Mexico a day, the U.S. Senate voted to preserve subsidies to the oil industry. As the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency announced the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest year, and the warmest April, May, and June on record, the Senate utterly failed to pass any energy, climate change, or even oil spill response legislation. As devastating floods sweep Pakistan and Russia wakes up to deep yellow skies, uncontrollable wildfires, and a chocking heat wave, the U.S. Senators continue to bury their heads in the sand and ignore the problem: we are addicted to fossil fuels and its killing us AND the earth.

Needless to say, all of us in the climate movement are a bit exasperated right now. I think we need a good laugh, especially if it comes at the expense of the group at the root of many of our current woes.

Enter Oil Change International’s newest campaign website: CleanUpTheSenate.com. Continue reading

Mad As Hell and Doing Something About It

Last week, a couple of days after Harry Reid announced that there would be no floor debate and no vote until at least September on ANY legislation having to do with the BP blowout disaster, energy policy or climate change, I was part of a group of people that went up to Capitol Hill and presented “oily hands awards” to staff people for Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. This action was initiated and organized by the 1Sky coalition.

Unexpectedly, our group of 10 people got into a polite but pointed and direct back-and-forth with one of Lisa Murkowski’s top aides, Chuck Cleeschulte, before we gave him a big foam hand covered in brown paint, the “oily hand.”
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Anti-Corporate Activism is Climate Activism

Fossil fuel money is irreparably corrupting our politics, and to win on climate change, climate activists have to start caring as much about the pollution of our political system, as they care about the pollution of our skies. That’s why I spoke in Baltimore this past week at a MoveOn rally for Continue reading

Blue Virginia: Offshore Oil Drilling Poses "unacceptable risk to naval forces in Hampton Roads"

This is a cross post from Blue Virginia.

I just got off a conference call on the dangers of offshore oil drilling in Virginia and lessons learned from the Gulf of Mexico disaster. Speakers included Chesapeake Climate Action Network Executive Director Mike Tidwell, Virginia Sierra Club Assistant Director J.R. Tolbert, and retired Navy captain/former Delegate Joe Bouchard. I’ll get to Tolbert’s and Tidwell’s comments in a minute, but first I want to highlight what Joe Bouchard had to say, because it was very strong.

First, according to Bouchard, there’s a long record of offshore oil and gas activities interfering with Defense Department training ranges. The industry likes to claim that they have a “great working relationship with the military,” but “you can’t believe that for a minute.” In fact, Bouchard says, “interference with training ranges is well documented,” and claims to the contrary by the oil industry are “disingenuous if not outright untrue.” Continue reading

CCAN Youth and Power Vote Stand with Little Village

Last night I arrived home from an action-packed training for Power Vote 2010. Over 100 students and young people joined with the coalition and partner staff of the Energy Action Coalition and our trainers from Wellstone Action.

On Thursday we joined the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization in their protest of the Crawfod Coal Plant. The Crawford plant is one of the oldest and dirtiest in operation,
causing 41 premature deaths per year. At the rally, speakers spoke against the dangers their community faces daily- several nearby coal plants, other manufacturing centers- as they lit candles in remembrance of those whose lives are cut short by pollution. They also connected the devastation in their neighborhood back to recent mine collapse in West Virginia, to communities threatened by mountaintop removal, and to the entire dirty death-cycle of coal. It was a powerful moment that connected each of us there, young people from across the country with the residents of Little Village. In closing, we were reminded that an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere. And right now there are far too many coal plants and mines in our backyards.

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"Don't Let Up, Fight Harder"

Judy Bonds may not be physically present when thousands of people take action September 27th in Washington, D.C. to demand an end to mountaintop removal and strip mining, and that would be a real shame. If there is one person who has done more in their life to shake up the coal barons and, in her words, “put them on the ropes,” it’s Judy Bonds, co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch.

Judy may not be there because she learned last month that she has stage three cancer. Treatment will take at least three months.

There’s no question, however, that Judy will be there in spirit, and that her spirit is guiding the growing Appalachia Rising coalition (http://www.appalachiarising.org). This coalition is organizing a two-day “Voices of the Mountains” conference the weekend of September 25-26 followed by a mass demonstration on Monday the 27th.
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An open letter to all people and organizations working to combat global warming

Crosspost from Grist.org

This letter is from members of the 1Sky board of directors: Jessica Bailey, K.C. Golden, Bracken Hendricks, Bill McKibben, Billy Parish, Vicky Rateau, Gus Speth, and Betsy Taylor.

As we find ourselves surrounded by the tatters of the climate debate in the U.S. Congress, it seems fitting to take a moment to step back and ponder where we go from here. While the blogosphere is buzzing with assignments of blame for the failure of the Senate to act, we are much more concerned about how we move forward with urgency and clarity of purpose. Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury to pack our bags and go home as the Senate did only moments ago. We just staggered through the hottest six months in recorded history worldwide. People everywhere are being impacted by the damage we have done through decades of carbon loading, and it is clear that our ailing planet will not sit idly by as our political leaders have done. Continue reading

EPA to regulate Coal's Dirty Little Secret

EPA officially opened their comment period on the federal regulation of coal ash under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). The basic question posed by EPA during this comment period is whether toxic coal ash should be regulated as a hazardous waste under Subtitle C of RCRA or as a solid waste under Subtitle D. Really? Do we need a debate about this??? The very nature of coal ash is HAZARDOUS. Coal ash is riddled with heavy metals that are toxic to humans and the environment. For more information on the nature of coal ash and its impacts on the environment click here.

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We're Hot as Hell and We're Not Going to Take It Any More

Three Steps to Establish a Politics of Global Warming
By Bill McKibben (Cross Posted from TomDispatch.com)

Try to fit these facts together:

* According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record.
* A “staggering” new study from Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, by 40% since 1950.
* Nine nations have so far set their all-time temperature records in 2010, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the new all-time Asia record in May: a hair under 130 degrees. I can turn my oven to 130 degrees.
* And then, in late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn’t do less than they could have — they did nothing, preserving a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action. Senate majority leader Harry Reid decided not even to schedule a vote on legislation that would have capped carbon emissions.

I wrote the first book for a general audience on global warming back in 1989, and I’ve spent the subsequent 21 years working on the issue. I’m a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Not quick to anger. So what I want to say is: this is fucked up. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy.

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