The Virginian-Pilot
By Beth Kemler
I have friends who are survivalists. They have three months’ worth of food, water and ammo stowed in their basements. I used to think they were a little nuts. I joked that they were ready for the zombie apocalypse. After a year of completely unprecedented weather fueled by climate change, I’m starting to think they’re a little smart.
Superstorm Sandy was just the latest disaster that gained ammunition from climate change.
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WANTED: Icy-Cool gift donations for this year's Polar Plunge!
Less than a week into my new job as CCAN’s Virginia Campus Organizer, I heard some pretty crazy rumors going around–something about jumping into freezing cold water in the middle of January?? Well, it turned out the rumors were true, and come January, me, my climate-loving co-workers, and our amazing (and brave) climate activists will be taking a dip into the icy Potomac to ‘Keep Winter Cold.’ 
Over 1,700 VA students take the PowerVote pledge for clean energy
Yesterday, over 500 students across Virginia pledged to be a Climate Voter before they hit the polls to cast their ballots. Wow! I could feel the electoral energy as I stood outside with Virginia Commonwealth University students eager to get last minute pledges for clean energy.
Election Day’s big success adds to the past two weeks on the ground across VA where students have come together in a push to get over 1,700 students pledging to vote for a clean energy future. 
After Hurricane Sandy, can we finally talk about climate change?
The Baltimore Sun
By James McGarry
The candidates won’t discuss a warming planet, but Hurricane Sandy filled in the silence
Every four years, presidential candidates tell the American people that this election is a turning point for the country. This year they might actually be right. To be sure, there are always differences between candidates. On a range of issues, from health care to tax reform, voters face a real choice about two different approaches to governing.
But the most profound turning point in this election may be the fact that the neither candidate is talking about one of the most critical issues of our time. I refer to the silence around climate change.
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Sandy Reminds Us to Harness Winds and Mitigate Their Wrath
Maryland was just hit by Hurricane Sandy, the largest storm ever recorded to hit the East Coast, but not as hard as states like New Jersey and New York:
“We all dodged a bullet on this one,” Anne Arundel County Fire Battalion Chief Steve Thompson said Tuesday from the county’s emergency operations center. “If that storm would have wiggled a little bit south, with those winds, it would have been a doozie.”
Yet, 300,000 people from Virginia to Baltimore remained without power Tuesday evening and many areas of the state experienced extensive flooding. The fishing pier on Ocean City’s iconic boardwalk is now half-gone. Sadly there were also a couple storm related deaths in Maryland as well as a number of injuries.
As we begin to rebuild, the first thing we must do is make sure everyone is safe and has what they need to survive in our state and across the country. Please donate if you can to the American Red Cross as they most certainly will need more robust funding in the coming years and decades.
Once we get back on our feet, with the metro running in DC and the subways back on track in New York City, we must immediately focus on what we can do to lessen the wrath of ever-worsening storms like Sandy. Perhaps Stephen Lacey and Joe Romm put it best when describing the link between human-caused climate change and these new super-storms:
Superstorm Sandy
Much of New Jersey, New York City and elsewhere definitely got hit very hard by Superstorm Hurricane Sandy yesterday: several feet of sand covering roads close to the ocean in Point Pleasant and probably elsewhere—50 or so homes burned down in Queens—extensive flooding of the lower Manhattan NYC subways—7 million or more customers without power—blizzard conditions in the Appalachians—and much more, without question.
I live in NJ, about 12 miles west of Manhattan. We didn’t get much rain but we did get very high winds, probably 80 mph or so, and as my wife and I huddled together on the couch last night, we held our breath more than once as the strong winds howled outside. Was a tree or a huge branch going to be uprooted or broken off onto our house or the electrical wires?
VA climate action at sprint-to-the-finish Obama rally
After watching three presidential debates in which climate change was mentioned a grand total of zero times, Richmond area CCANers struck with our well-known banner at today’s big swing-state candidate appearance in sunny Byrd Park!
Maryland Senators unveil support for a state fracking moratorium as groups take EPA action
For Immediate Release
October 24, 2012
Contact:
Kelly Trout, 240-396-2022, kelly@chesapeakeclimate.org
Diana Dascalu-Joffe, 240-396-1984, diana@chesapeakeclimate.org
Maryland Senators unveil support for a state fracking moratorium as groups take legal action to close EPA loophole
Legislators say no drilling should happen in Maryland until communities know the risks
Two noted Maryland Senators announced their support for a state statutory moratorium on fracking today, just minutes after 17 groups nationwide filed a groundbreaking legal petition demanding that the EPA, for the first time, require reporting of toxic chemicals used in the controversial gas drilling process.
Virginia Students Pledge to for a Clean Energy Future
Just days after the second Presidential debate, Barack Obama returned to Virginia today to rally his supporters in the last few weeks before the big day. While thousands of students, community members, and families lined the streets of George Mason University to show their support for the President, I was pleasantly surprised to find that one thing was on a lot of people’s minds: climate change. And they weren’t happy about it.
Dominion CEO Thomas Farrell challenged to publicly debate controversial $76 million energy bonus
For Immediate Release
October 18, 2012
Contact:
Kelly Trout, 240-396-2022, kelly@chesapeakeclimate.org
Mike Tidwell, 240-460-5838, mtidwell@chesapeakeclimate.org
Dominion CEO Thomas Farrell challenged to publicly debate controversial $76 million energy bonus
Activists bring giant ostrich and bucket of sand to illustrate problem outside company doors in Richmond
RICHMOND — Clean energy advocates today presented Dominion Virginia Power CEO Thomas Farrell a fresh challenge over the controversial $76 million bonus his company is receiving under the state’s renewable energy law: debate us publicly at the day, time and rules of your choosing. (Read the letter.)