On January 21st over 100 people ran into the cold Potomac River as part of CCAN’s 7th Annual Polar Bear Plunge. We braved the ice and snow (about an inch worth) that came down the night before, and leftover light rain, to do the first of these seven plunges with precipitation on the ground.
Urge Obama to end Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining!
Below is an email I received from Matt Wasson from http://www.ilovemountains.org
The pressure on the Obama administration to stop mountaintop removal coal mining is building across the country.
Last week, we asked you to call the White House and tell the administration that it was time to reverse the devastating 2002 Bush Administration “fill rule,” which allows coal companies to dump their toxic mining waste into our nation’s streams.
And next week, on June 23rd, climate scientist Dr. James Hansen will join community members and activists from around the country in Coal River Valley, West Virginia to launch a year of activism to end mountaintop removal coal mining.
Hansen and others will gather at Marsh Fork Elementary — the elementary school that is next to a mountaintop removal mine operated by Massey Energy and just 400 yards downslope from a 2.8 billion gallon coal sludge impoundment that threatens the school.
The activists will then march a short distance to Massey Energy’s office of operations and risk arrest in a line crossing civil disobedience, in order to raise awareness of the devastation that mountaintop removal coal mining is causing to the mountains and communities of Appalachia.
Can you take a moment to stand with them, and help put pressure on the Obama administration to take immediate action to end mountaintop removal coal mining today?
We’re asking every member of iLoveMountains.org to take just three minutes to email the White House to ask President Obama to immediately begin the process of overturning the Bush-era “fill rule,” which allows coal companies to dump their toxic mining waste into our nation’s streams.
Please, click here to email President Obama now.
The Obama administration needs to hear that simply enforcing Bush-era rules and laws is not enough. The administration must overturn the Bush-era rules to begin the process of building a sustainable future for Appalachia.
That’s why the activists gathering at Coal River Valley next week are risking arrest — to send the message that impact on the mountains, communities and waterways of central Appalachia have been ignored for too long.
Please, take a moment to make sure President Obama hears that message:
Email President Obama today.
Thank you for taking action.
Matt Wasson
iLoveMountains.org
PS Contact Annie Sartor (annie@ran.org) at Rainforest Action Network if you are interested in coming to Coal River Mountain on June 23rd.
Mike Tidwell, Lise Van Susteren, Gina Angiola, Wendell Berry, Terry Tempest Williams, Bill McKibben and James Hansen
Great photo from yesterday’s event by Chris Eichler.
"We're doing this for you!"
When I arrived at Spirit of Justice park, at least four inches of snow were on the ground and more was coming down. On the largest day of civil disobedience on climate change in history, an unusual March snowstorm hit the region. Braving the cold, frozen toes and wet snow, thousands of activists still came out to participate in this action. They were joined by the “stars” of climate activism: Bill McKibben, Gus Speth, James Hansen, Wendell Berry, Mike Tidwell and others, and by stars in other realms: Robert Kennedy and Daryl Hannah. Check out pictures and video on the Capitol Climate Action site.
As we marched around the plant, residents in the neighborhood came out to yell cheers of support. Standing in the doorway with her young son, a woman shouted, “Thank you!” Continue reading
VIDEO: MD climate activists suspected/cleared of terrorism
Jim Hansen's letter supporting Wise County protests
James Hansen recently sent this letter out to his email list regarding the Wise County protest:
Obstruction of Justice
“You’re Hannah, right?” Hannah Morgan, a 20-year old from Appalachia, Virginia, was one of 11 protesters in handcuffs early Monday morning September 15 at the construction site for a coal-fired power plant being built in Wise County Virginia by Dominion Power. The handcuffs were applied by the police, but the questioner, it turns out, was from Dominion Power.“Mumble, mumble, mumble”, the discussion between police and the Dominion man were too far away to be heard by the young people. But it almost seemed that the police were working for Dominion. Maybe that’s the way it works in a company town. Or should we say company state? Virginia has got one of the most green-washed coal-blackened governors in the nation (http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/
mailings/20080529_ DearGovernorGreenwash.pdf
).
Continue reading
Coal is what it is–VP candidates and coal
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Barack Obama shone some of his rays of hope on the climate movement. He named “serious” action on global warming as one of the benchmarks for success in his first term. “If I haven’t gotten combat troops out of Iraq, passed universal health care and created a new energy policy that speaks to our dependence on foreign oil and deals seriously with global warming, then we’ve missed the boat.”
In order to deal “seriously” with climate change, we need a moratorium on new coal plants. According to James Hansen, “it’s just silly to build a new one now.” And yet VP hopeful, our own Governor Tim Kaine, aggressively pushed for his and Dominion’s coal plant in Wise County. As Gov. Kaine says on this video, “There are some who say that you can’t build any new coal plants, and I don’t agree with that.”
Join the campaign at www.chesapeakeclimate.org/nocoal
Another VP hopeful, Kathleen Sebelius, has a record on coal that is much more promising than Gov. Kaine’s. She made herself a hero by standing up to a Republican legislature and strong utilities by blocking a coal plant from being built. Even the Republicans have a strong hero in the VP running. Florida Governor Charlie Crist successfully halted the construction of a new coal plant and stated his strong support of renewable energy. “Coal is what it is and I know it’s been an important source of energy in the past. But you know we have solar, we have nuclear, we have wind and other alternative opportunities for energy in the Sunshine State.”
It’s obvious that Kaine supports coal. He wants coal now, and he wants coal in the future. Is this going to meet up with Obama’s stated goal, to seriously address global warming?
Dr. James Hansen: The Paul Revere of Climate Change
The venerable Dr. James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whom Representative Markey referred to in his introduction as “the Paul Revere of the global warming crisis,” had the air of a lion of the climate change movement as he addressed the gathering of congressional aides and the public at his commemorative briefing of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. He wasn’t there to drop any bombs on congress or even convince any global warming deniers, rather he emphasized the sorts of changes that should be made, when we need to make these changes (pretty much right now) and how we might go about accomplishing these changes.
He hit all the big points: cutting CO2 emissions, getting back to 350ppm, raising efficiency standards and moving to a low-loss grid, but many ears perked up in the hearing room when he mentioned that we should take it as a foregone conclusion that all the oil currently accessible would be burned. Wait, what? But we can pass fuel efficiency standards, move to plug-in electric cars powered by a renewable grid. We won’t use Tupperware, I’ll cut down on my use of WD-40. We’re going to burn all the oil?!
Yes. He said that the interests controlling the oil supplies such as the vast state owned operations in Russia, Venezuala and Iran have such a stake in oil that they would never let anything interfere with converting their oil into revenue. End of story.
We should focus instead, he suggested, on making sure that no new coal plans are built in the US (you hear that, Dominion?). This goal is accomplishable and can help curtail the acceleration of CO2 emissions immediately. This comment seemed especially apt considering that the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board votes Wednesday on Dominion Virginia Power’s permit to build a big honkin’ coal-fired power plant in Wise County, VA. The members of the board would be wise to heed Dr. Hansen’s advice. There is no greater authority on climate change in the world. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for his courage.
Ask James Hansen a personal question.
“What we have found is that the target we have all been aiming for is a disaster – a guaranteed disaster,” Hansen recently told the Guardian Newspaper in London.
Hansen will give his first major public address since announcing that governments and climate researchers have grossly underestimated the severity of the effects of carbon dioxide emissions next Tuesday at CCAN’s Super Rally.
Since Hansen is coming to DC to talk to us, I figure we have to get him to answer at least one personal question. I kinda want to know what climate catastrophe keeps him up at night, but I’m a little scared to know what that would be. Ideas? Post your questions for Hansen in the comments
Al Gore, James Hansen, and Civil Disobedience
In a little-noticed op-ed in this past Thursday’s New York Times (“The Big Melt,” with a tip of the hat to Free Democracy for posting it) , Nicholas Kristoff reported on a conversation with Al Gore in which the former Vice-President said: “I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers, and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants.” Continue reading