Below is a blog written by Jenna Garland of the Southern Energy Network. I, like her, had conflicting thoughts after seeing Avatar (as well as a queasy stomach from the intense 3D action). I wonder if people realize that this destruction and greed is happening in our world today. Too bad Avatar didn’t win, I wonder what the director would have said about the film’s message. Joe Letteri, the Visual Effects Supervisor for Avatar, said in his acceptance speech: “To everyone watching, thank you for the great appreciation you’ve shown for our film. And just remember the world we live in is just as amazing as the one we created for you. Thank you. ” Our world is amazing. Do people realize it is just as threatened as the world Avatar created?

While visiting my parents recently, my mother treated me to a 3-D showing of Avatar at a theater close to where I grew up. I went in with a fair amount of trepidation. I’ve been following the media coverage of the film, as well as conversations between friends and colleagues who had seen it in the weeks follow its premiere. I was feeling very nervous about the racial dynamics of the film, and though I’d heard many people describe the film as very pro-environment, I wondered how pro-environment a blockbuster movie could be; how much can its themes and messages really challenge the status quo of our fossil fuel-powered society?

After two and a half hours of pure visual spectacle, I left feeling a mix of emotions and with a ton of thoughts running through my mind. I felt angry. I felt very angry.

I felt angry that the Na’vi people needed an American to save them. I felt angry that the Na’vi people needed an American to save them from Americans! I felt angry for the truth at the heart of the action: the single-minded focus on profits over people and the environment, and the price indigenous people have paid for centuries.

The single most impactful moment for me was when the Head of Security, Colonel Quaritch, said ‘We’re going to blow a hole in their racial memory so deep they will never forget it.’ (I’m paraphrasing slightly.) Frankly, I was amazed that this line made it through the cutting room floor and in to the highest grossing film of all time. I can’t think of a similar line like it, and the reason it stands out to me is that I’ve never heard an acknowledgment from a figure like Colonel Quaritch that events like destroying sacred sites, environmental degradation, and violence do have a long-term impact. The consequences of such violence stay around for generations, and sometimes become deeply ingrained in a culture. Continue Reading »

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This is cross-posted from huffington post.

While the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is charged with protecting “the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the products we consume have a direct impact on the health of our families,” some of its staffers apparently feel it should also serve as a front for the devastating pollution of Big Coal.

As hundreds of citizens from ravaged coalfield areas in Appalachia and around the nation fill the corridors of Congress this week, calling on the House and Senate to pass the Clean Water Protection Act/Appalachian Restoration Act to stop the illegal dumping of toxic coal waste into our American waterways, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and his staff on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee are reportedly providing free window space for Big Coal ads in our taxpayer financed federal buildings.

Check out this photo of the Senate minority leader’s office window at the E/PW Committee, sent by concerned coalfield residents from West Virginia, who have repeatedly asked the staffers to take down the offensive T-shirt on government property:

While Sen. James Inhofe’s comments on climate change are legendary, his prairie land and plains state support for flattening Appalachia through devastating mountaintop removal mining is dangerously uniformed. Last spring, Inhofe sent a letter to EPA chief Lisa Jackson, charging her agency for delay in issuing Clean Water Act permits. Inhofe erroneously claimed:

“As you know, mountaintop mining is a vitally important economic activity. It provides a significant portion of the coal that contributes nearly 50 percent of the nation’s electricity. It also provides well-paying jobs and revenues for some of the neediest regions.”

Significant portion of coal?

Setting aside the reality that mountaintop removal’s irreversible destruction has eliminated over 500 mountains and nearly 1.2 million acres of hardwood forests in the carbon sink of America, led to the largest forced removal of American citizens since the 19th century, and jammed an estimated 2,000 miles of headwater streams and waterways with toxic coal waste, Inhofe’s distortion of the true cost of coal and his window dressing for Big Coal overlooks four main points:

1) As everyone else on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee does know–or should know– mountaintop removal mining provides less than 8 percent of all national coal production.

2) Mountaintop removal has bled the Appalachian economy and job market. As the recent study, “The Decline of Central Appalachian Coal and the Need for Economic Diversification,” makes clear:

Despite these economic benefits, coal-producing counties in Central Appalachia continue to have some of the highest poverty and unemployment rates in the region, and due to the dependence on coal for economic development, any changes in coal production will have significant impacts on local economies.

Specifically, a study last year by West Virginia University reseachers found:

The coal industry generates a little more than $8 billion a year in economic benefits for the Appalachian region. But, they put the value of premature deaths attributable to the mining industry across the Appalachian coalfields at — by a most conservative estimate — $42 billion.

And check out West Virginia blogger Clem Guttata’s analysis of the economics of mountaintop removal on the heels of Inhofe’s misinformed comments.

3) Even the most pro-coal legislators in Appalachia and on Capitol Hill recognize that Appalachian coalfields and across the country are facing a clock of peak coal, and need to shift toward a just transition for clean energy jobs and economic development.

4) Sorry Sen. Inhofe: Coal-fired plants provided only 45% of our electricity last year, and it’s declining.

You can let Sen. Inhofe and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, as well as all members of Congress, know what you think about public financing for Big Coal and misinformation here.

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As this Grist article recently stated  “Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE,  has taken off like wildfire since the concept was first introduced in Berkeley, Calif. in October ‘07. PACE allows private property owners to pay for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects through an addition to their property tax bill, overcoming the high upfront costs that prevent most property owners from investing in such retrofits.”

Numerous states around the country have adopted legislative changes that allow municipalities within them to set up these kind of clean energy loan programs that give out loans to residents and businesses, and collect the repayments over a considerable period of time through their property taxes.  My student group UMD for Clean Energy at the University of Maryland made this kind of a loan fund for energy efficiency a major election issue last fall in our local College Park city council elections.  With enthusiasm from the city council to establish such a program, we faced a setback when the state of Maryland did not adequately permit municipalities to do this.  Our focus turned to advocating for legislation in this Maryland legislative session that would allow us to create our own clean energy revolution in College Park.  An added positive is it would clear the way for other municipalities all around the state to do PACE as well. Continue Reading »

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Here’s a question: If you’re a legislator and you voted to strengthen a particular piece of legislation, and that piece of legislation later came under threat, wouldn’t you make an effort to protect it? The answer seems logical enough, but then again, as we all know, everyday logic doesn’t always apply to the world of politics.

How else would you explain Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski’s failure stand up to protect the Clean Air Act from the attacks that it’s recently come under from the likes of Lisa “Dirty Air” Murkowski? After all, as the Senate’s Legislation and Records site shows, Senator Mikulski voted for the 1990 amendments that strengthened the original 1970 Clean Air Act, ensuring that it had the teeth it needed to really bite into problems like acid rain. But now when opponents of climate action are trying to knock those same teeth out, Mikulski is standing on the sidelines. Continue Reading »

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Thanks to the constant updates via my Twitter feed, this week I discovered NASA’s Earth Observatory website. This website shows satellite images of the Earth — many tragic (arctic sea ice), some providing glimpses of hope (burn recovery in Yellowstone) and some simply bizarre (the growth of Dubai.) Perusing the images and attempting to interpret the changes from image to image was intriguing until the time lapse of mountaintop removal stopped me completely. I no longer marveled at the ability to capture such images, I was sickened at what we are doing to our mountains in Appalachia. I’ve seen mountaintop removal sites in person, but these images clearly show the scale and the permanence of the destruction.

According to the website:
“Below the densely forested slopes of southern West Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains is a layer cake of thin coal seams. To uncover this coal profitably, mining companies engineer large—sometimes very large—surface mines. This time-series of images of a surface mine in Boone County, West Virginia, illustrates why this controversial mining method is also called “mountaintop removal.”

I wanted to share some of the images, though watching the time lapse video on the website is even more compelling.

1984

1988

1995

1998

2004

2009

As you can see, despite claims that the mountains are reclaimed, the scars that mountain top removal leaves on landscape is visible decades later. The first of those mines are older than I am. My whole life the mountains have tried to recover. We cannot let this practice continue. This year, the Virginia General Assembly took the first important step to ending this destructive practice with Senator Ticer’s introduction of the Stream Saver Bill. Congress is considering similar legislation, as is the General Assembly in Kentucky.

Next week I’ll be at Week in Washington, an annual lobby week calling for the end of mountaintop removal. The following week I’ll join hundreds of youth from across Virginia and the nation in Wise County, Virginia for Mountain Justice Spring Break. These mountains have been trying to recover my whole life. It’s time I spend some of my time to help them.

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We had a great workshop in Richmond on Saturday! JR Tolbert with Environment VA kicked off the event with an update on federal climate legislation.

Next up, activists from the region learned how to lobby a legislator with our environmental hero, Senator McEachin, accompanied by lobby expert, Matt Zogby with the Virginia League of Conservation Voters.

Followed by an interactive workshop with yours truly where everyone signed postcards, made calls to Senator Webb’s office and wrote handwritten letters urging him to vote in support of clean energy legislation and against the Dirty Air Act.

After that, the attendees learned the step-by-step process to writing a letter to their editor with Sierra Club staffer, Antigone Ambrose.

Each activist walked away from the workshop learning ways to get involved and taking lots of action. It was a fun workshop to be a part of!

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This past Saturday, over 75 climate change activists in Northern Virginia came together for the Northern Virginia Climate Action Network’s Tools for Change III: Energy Efficiency, Bringing the Message Home and Skills Training. Attendees came from across NoVa, from Loudoun to Bristow, with the common goal of learning more and getting involved in the fight for federal climate change legislation.

Speakers presented on a range of topics focused on some of the federal legislation in the Senate right now, as well as more local successes and projects in the works. Elenor Hodges, Executive Director of Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment, talked about the Green Living Challenge.  Though the program is in Arlington, the model of challenging neighborhoods to be greener than the others is already spreading to additional locations, and attendees got to learn how to motivate their own communities with some good-natured competition. The Virginia Sustainable Building Network and INOVA Health Systems also presented on how businesses can be more efficient and practical results from those that have taken the initiative to utilize better technologies.

But what good is the knowledge and the passion if you can’t communicate it to others? Karen Akerlof kicked off the messaging panel explaining the Six Americas: the categories that the public can be put into based on their beliefs and concern about climate change and how motivated they are to take action. Not surprisingly, everyone in the room would probably fit in with the “Alarmed America”, making it more valuable to learn to educate and mobilize others.

In addition to the others, well-known media staff presented on what they look for in a story, a Letter to the Editor, or an event to go to. Dave Fahrenthold, the Washington Post environment reporter for the DC-metro region, described his job and how he decides the topics and events to cover. Highlights include not to call a reporter before10am, and if at first you don’t succeed, keep e-mailing him to get an event on his radar.

We rounded out the day by putting all that new knowledge to use, practicing making talking points for different audiences. The diverse views of the climate changemovement showed when people prioritized messaging about health, jobs and the economy, children and the future, and water quality – and that was just in the one group of which I was part!

The momentum doesn’t stop there; NoVa CAN will build on the knowledge and skills with follow-up lobby meetings with Senators Webb and Warner’s offices on March 12^th. E-mail me at KeithT@chesapeakeclimate.org for more info.

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The jury presented its verdict on climate change a long time ago. The science says our climate is changing and the results for Virginia and the planet will be catastrophic. The Supreme Court, the EPA, Virginia’s own Commission on Climate Change and even former President George Bush recognized the consequences of climate change.

Yet, amidst typos and lawsuits, today’s press conference a the state capitol in Richmond was a breath of fresh air. It is refreshing to see 19 members of General Assembly standing up for their constituents and allowing the science to speak for itself. The Science that tells us that Virginia is vulnerable to sea level rise, that the Hampton Roads area is ranked #2 in terms of vulnerability. Number one is New Orleans. These threats are real and Virginia is ready to address them head on.

I applaud Senators McEachin and Northam as well as Delegate McLellan for initiating today’s press conference and the other 16 state legislators that joined them to show their support for the science. Addressing climate change and diversifying our economy here in the Commonwealth is no easy task. It’s going to take forward thinking and leadership from Richmond to embrace our potential. It’s also going to take reasonable investments.

The big thing highlighted in today’s conference is the pure fiscal irresponsibility of our Attorney General’s lawsuit. He wants to slap tax payers with $250,000-$500,000 bill to pursue a frivolous lawsuit against the Federal Government, it’s lawyers and its environmental agency on an issue already decided by the Supreme Court. Given the state of Virginia’s economy this is just not acceptable and I am proud that so many legislators had the courage to stand up for their constituents health, the climate and the well-being of the Commonwealth.