Marylanders tell General Assembly to “Get to Work” on fracking protections

For Immediate Release
March 13, 2013

Contact:
Kelly Trout, 717-439-0346, kelly@chesapeakeclimate.org
Mike Tidwell, 240-460-5838, mtidwell@chesapeakeclimate.org

Energized by close Senate committee vote on fracking moratorium bill, more than 100 concerned citizens attend morning rally at the State House in Annapolis, vow to continue the fight

ANNAPOLIS—Concerned Marylanders from across the state converged at the State House in Annapolis on Wednesday and vowed to continue their fight for legislative action to address the risks of fracking. Activists said they have more determination than ever after falling just one vote short of passing a bill to place a statutory moratorium on the controversial drilling practice in a Senate committee last week.

Wearing bright red t-shirts and resounding chants across Lawyer’s Mall, around 150 activists—Western Maryland residents on the front lines of drilling, nurses, students, teachers and grandparents—rallied with one message for their legislators: “Get to work now protecting our communities and climate from the harms of fracking.”

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Landmark offshore wind power bill passes final hurdle in Maryland

For Immediate Release
March 8, 2013

Contact:
Mike Tidwell, 240-460-5838, mtidwell@chesapeakeclimate.org
Tom Carlson, 651-587-0730, tom@chesapeakeclimate.org

CCAN applauds historic Senate vote; bill is now destined for Governor O’Malley’s desk

ANNAPOLIS—The Maryland Senate today passed the Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2013 (HB 226) by a vote of 30 to 15, pushing this landmark clean energy law over its final major hurdle, and ensuring it will reach Governor O’Malley’s desk.

The bill will incentivize development of more than 200 megawatts of wind power ten miles off the coast of Ocean City, Maryland. Advocates say this is just the first step toward a goal of over 1,000 megawatts of ocean-based wind development in coastal Maryland. Regionally, the legislation is another concrete step toward a major new and clean power source for the East Coast. Construction of the Cape Wind offshore project in Massachusetts will begin later this year while New Jersey, like Maryland, is moving forward with incentive policies.

In Maryland, today’s Senate passage of the offshore wind bill follows House passage two weeks ago. The bill is the culmination of a broad, unprecedented grassroots campaign. Over the past two and a half years, hundreds of environmental, health, labor, business, faith and student groups, and thousands of ordinary Marylander voters, joined together to push lawmakers in Annapolis to take this step forward and make offshore wind power a reality in Maryland.

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Fracking moratorium comes one vote shy of passing in MD Senate committee

For Immediate Release
March 7, 2013

Contact:
Mike Tidwell, 240-460-5838, mtidwell@chesapeakeclimate.org
Kelly Trout, 240-396-2022, kelly@chesapeakeclimate.org

Advocates say near-miss on victory will only deepen movement to protect state residents from impacts of high-risk drilling

ANNAPOLIS—State legislation to place a statutory moratorium on the controversial gas drilling practice known as fracking came within one vote of passing yesterday in the Education, Health and Environmental Affairs committee of the Maryland Senate. The oil and gas industry had lobbied heavily against the bill (SB 601) in the face of widespread grassroots support and polling data showing Maryland voters overwhelmingly support legislative action on the issue of fracking.

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Mill’s stance on ‘black liquor’ irks lawmakers

The Washington Post

By Steven Mufson

A month ago, the manager of Luke paper mill in western Maryland pledged in writing to remain neutral on a bill in the state legislature that would curtail renewable energy payments to mills burning a residue called “black liquor.”

This week, he changed his mind.

The flip-flop irked key Maryland lawmakers, but the Luke mill manager was just one of a parade of people from the American Forest and Paper Association, the United Steelworkers and Dominion Resources who opposed the bill in hearings in Annapolis on Tuesday and Thursday.

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Victory: MD votes for offshore wind!

On September 23, 2010 at St. Paul’s by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Ocean City, Maryland, CCAN and other advocates held our first town hall in the campaign to bring offshore wind power to the state.

Over two and a half years later, on March 8th, 2013, the Maryland Senate joined the House of Delegates in passing the Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2013 (HB 226), creating a process to support the development of Maryland’s first offshore wind farm.

Marylanders for offshore wind power: what follows is your story – a chronological timeline of key events in the campaign that brought us to today. It was all of your phone calls, your 10,000 petitions, hundreds of hand-written letters, letters-to-the-editor, and trips to Annapolis to rally together and to lobby your legislators that have made this happen. Maryland will be a leader in offshore wind because of you.

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Md., D.C. utilities pay paper mills burning ‘black liquor’ for alternative fuel credits

The Washington Post

By Steven Mufson

When Maryland and the District set floors requiring electric utilities to use increasing amounts of renewable energy, environmentalists cheered the prospect of money going to new solar and wind projects.

But today, several years after the legislation went into effect, it has had an unexpected outcome.

Thanks to a wrinkle in the definition of renewable, the lion’s share of the money used to meet those standards is flowing to paper companies that burn “black liquor,” a byproduct of the wood-pulping process. Paper mills have been using black liquor to generate most of their power needs since the 1930s.

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Fracking Poll: Broad and growing majority of MD voters support pause for studies

For Immediate Release
February 25, 2013

Contact:
Kelly Trout, 240-396-2022, kelly@chesapeakeclimate.org
Mike Tidwell, 240-460-5838, mtidwell@chesapeakeclimate.org

Polling shows seventy-eight percent of Marylanders support approach of moratorium bill; voters want General Assembly to join Governor’s agencies in deciding fate of fracking in the state

ANNAPOLIS—Poll results released today, on the eve of a key Senate hearing on the issue of fracking, show that an overwhelming and growing majority of Maryland voters want legislators to require thorough study of the risks of fracking before any drilling is permitted in the state. Advocates and policymakers pointed to the polling as strong evidence that the fracking moratorium bill (SB 601) before the General Assembly is a common-sense approach that reflects the will of state voters.

More than three-fourths of registered voters surveyed, or 78 percent, want the General Assembly to require environmental and safety studies for fracking, a jump in support of seven points from similar polling conducted last spring. Support for mandating studies aligns across party, regional and racial lines — including 76 percent of Western Marylanders, 55 percent of Republicans and a very strong 95 percent of African Americans. The support is also notably intense. Fifty-eight percent of respondents felt strongly that health and safety studies must come before fracking. Three times as many respondents would vote for a legislator who supports studies as would vote against that legislator.

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Ken Cuccinelli Gets a Science Lesson

If VA Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli was featured on the TV show, Are you smarter than a 5th grader, he would have been out before the first commercial.

In his new book, “The Last Line of Defense,” Cuccinelli has a chapter called “Weird Science” dedicated to his qualms with climate science and his use of taxpayer dollars for lawsuits to fight it. As highlighted in Beth’s blog post last week, among other things, the chapter quips that perhaps 97% of the world’s climate scientists are confusing the ‘supposedly dangerous’ greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, with the deadly household gas, carbon monoxide.

Feel free to check out the book yourself for a play by play of his losing lawsuit against the EPA, but for now, it’ll suffice to say that on a basic level, our Attorney General doesn’t understand why carbon dioxide is so dangerous–after all, it’s in our soda!

So what did I do about it? Last Friday during his book signing in Fredericksburg, I gave our Attorney General a 2nd grade science lesson to catch him up with the majority of elementary school students who understand the Carbon Cycle.

And thanks to stretchy yoga pants and my cell phone, I was able to catch the action on film.

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Charlottesville climate activists tell Sec. Kerry: No KXL!

Virginia climate activists aren’t letting up on Keystone XL after Sunday’s hugely successful climate rally in DC. John Kerry came to the University of Virginia today to deliver his first official speech as the Secretary of State, and UVA students with CCAN and Central Virginia 350 turned out to urge him to oppose the dirty oil pipeline.

Armed with a huge banner and chanting “No tar sands pipeline!” the group drew attention from passersby and Secretary Kerry himself, who walked by with a wave to acknowledge our message. During his speech, Kerry came out swinging on climate change. He made the economic case for climate action, tying rising seas and higher temperatures to greater costs from extreme weather and other climate impacts. 

Secretary Kerry is right – we need to see climate action and we need to see it now. He and President Obama have a great opportunity, a great responsibility, to match their words with action.

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A Voice for Climate, 40,000 Strong

The American Prospect

By Jaime Fuller

Allison Chin, president of the Sierra Club, knows now is the moment to think big on climate. It’s been a year of “records”: A record number of droughts have hit towns across the country, record temperatures slowly roast the planet, and storms have left record amounts of snow and rain in their wake. Finally, too, a record number of people have conceded that we’re changing the environment for the worse. “Mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, businessmen, people of the faith—it’s not just environmentalists that are affected by this,” Chin says. She knows that environmentalists need to be practical—they need concrete demands that all people left adrift by a changing climate can endorse. But facing such long odds and high stakes, how can they be anything but ardent about the environment?

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