“Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.” Continue reading
Picking up steam – coal fight goes national
The debate over coal has caught on all across the U.S., even reaching into the heartland, and America is beginning to stand up and demand clean energy.
The Des Moines Register’s Perry Beeman lays it out in an informative piece centered on controversies in Iowa, a state that’s also front and center now in the presidential race.
Environmentalists, NASA’s chief climate scientist, industry experts and citizens are lining up to testify about the coal-burning plants, which could affect Iowans’ lungs, power bills, fish-eating habits and ability to find jobs. The debate over whether to build the two Iowa plants is part of a national argument as utilities and a new breed of so-called “merchant generators” have plans for 150 new coal-fired plants. States as different as Kansas, California, Idaho and Florida have blocked new coal-fired plants. Even Texas forced its biggest utility to pare down a proposal for 11 new coal plants to three.
NASA’s chief climate scientist, James Hansen is an Iowa native and graduate of University of Iowa. He is also an outspoken critic of coal, saying “It seems to me that young people, especially, should be doing whatever is necessary to block construction of dirty coal-fired power plants” back in August. He’s provided testimony against the proposed Iowa plants. Continue reading
Scientific Town Hall Meeting – Another Month of Action Success
On Wednesday night, I attended the Town Hall Meeting in Greenbelt (mainly organized by our amazing local chapter!), which featured, among others, atmospheric scientist Chris Barnet, Ph.D, who gave a great talk about the science of global warming. After going through the standard science-speak introduction, he brought up an analogy for global warming pollution that everyone could easily visualize: charcoal briquettes. He challenged the audience to visualize throwing a certain number of briquettes into their backyard (or out their car window while driving on the beltway) for each activity they did, to symbolically demonstrate the amount of pollution their energy use was producing.
Audience members listen to the speakers.
Other speakers included Mayor Davis of Greenbelt, State Senator Paul Pinsky, and Brad Heavner, the Director of Environment Maryland. The evening closed with a panel of scientists joining the speakers to take questions from the audience.
The distinguished panel takes questions.
And as this was one of the month of action events, that means it’s time for an update on how we’re doing on our goals!
| GOALS | Goal | Number to Date |
| Events | 20 | 7 |
| Media Hits | 10 | 2 |
| Postcards | 5,000 | 500 |
Want to help us reach our goals? Get involved in the month of action!
Putting Coal on the Ballot in Virginia
My alarm went off at 6:00 am. The rain was falling outside and I could count on hours of sleep on one hand (and no thumb). The urge to hit snooze was overwhelming, but I had a job to do! It was November 6th, election day, and I had to get COAL on the ballot!
I was one of over a hundred volunteers participating on “Vote No on Coal”, an outreach campaign designed to educate people about the proposed coal-fired power plant Dominion Virginia Power wants to build in Wise County, and why we as citizens need to say NO NEW COAL. This plant will cost $1.6 billion in taxpayer money, emit millions of tons of CO2, and bring further environmental and health hazards to the already impacted communities of SW Virginia.
Our goal was to collect signatures for a “mile-long petition” that Kathy Selvage and other members of Wise-County based Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards will present to Dominion at their annual shareholder meeting.
URGENT ACTION NEEDED TODAY or climate denial site wins web award
The Weblog Awards are going to be issued tomorrow for the best science blog. Currently, a climate denial site called climateaudit.com is winning. To ensure that Climate Audit does not win this award, we need as many people as possible to vote for Bad Astronomy today. To be clear, Bad Astronomy is not a climate blog, but it is running 2nd behind Climate Audit – if we can get a bunch of people to click on Bad Astronomy, we can defeat Climate Audit.
Click away!
Here’s the voting link:
Power Shift '07!
Personally, I was only able to attend Power Shift Friday night – I was working at Step It Up on Saturday and then, well, I needed a day off. But it was incredible to watch all the students arrive from all over the country. The excitement was palpable, and the speakers were great.
Van Jones kissing Bill McKibben on the cheek after they gave two of Saturday’s keynote speeches. Photo courtesy of Liz Veazey.
USCEC coordinator Ted Glick was one of the first speakers. He walked up to the stage and announced that he was on the 60th day of a “Climate Emergency Fast.” I was sitting in the audience and watched everyone around me do a double take, turn to their friends and whisper, “did he just say what I think he said?” and “60 days, is that even possible?”
It is possible, apparently. For the first 27 days, Ted subsisted on water and vitamins (27 days is longer than Mahatma Gandhi ever fasted. Gandhi was generally thin and had very little fat to lose). After 27 days Ted switched over to drinking juices and broths. Ted’s fasting to pressure Congress to pass significant and meaningful global warming legislation. He has been to Capitol Hill to lobby key representatives numerous times and plans to continue the fast until Congress adjourns for the year. Continue reading
2007 Virginia Climate Action Conference
On Saturday, Oct. 27, I was privileged to attend a truly historic event. Activists, politicians, students and citizens from all over the Commonwealth of Virginia converged on Charlottesville to participate in the first-ever Virginia Climate Action Conference. The conference represented the first time in the history of the state that Virginian’s had come together with the sole purpose of fighting disastrous climate change right in their own backyard.
There were lectures and panel discussions on a wide range of topics, from biofuels to state energy policy, from coal mining to engaging the faith community, from wind farms to environmental legislation.
The Green Miles even did some live blogging from the event, which you can see here.
For me, it was a great opportunity to learn about the science and politics of climate change in Virginia, with experts panelists drawn from numerous disciplines. Did you know, for example, that with over 3,000 miles of shoreline (as much as California!) Virginia is one of the states most vulnerable to sea-level rise? Or did you know that Virginia is ranked dead-last in state spending on energy efficiency? Or how about the fact that Virginia’s per capita energy usage is 40% percent higher than California’s? Sobering statistics, especially when you consider the efforts of Dominion Power to build even more coal-fired plants.
Perhaps more importantly, though, the Virginia Climate Action Conference was an opportunity to see the passion that Virginian’s have for the well-being of their state, and to witness the kind of progress that can be made when people get together, form coalitions and fight hard for what is right. Already there is a diverse group of people fighting to protect Virginia’s environment. When we come together on a regional level, just as we did last Saturday, there’s no limit to what we can achieve. Continue reading
Southern California's Climate Refugees
Between 1970 and 2003, the average length of the active wildfire season (from the start of the first reported fire to the day the last reported fire is controlled) increased by 64 percent, or 78 days. Wildfires between 1987 and 2003 burned for an average of 37.1 days before being controlled
Dispatch from a land on fire
The following post was written by my dad, Paul Douglass, who is on vacation in Coronado, a town in Southern California…
The wildfires that sweep through Southern California this week, blackening over 400,000 acres and displacing a half a million residents from their homes, may be cited correctly as evidence of global warming, all right. But the well-organized response to the disaster by local authorities, firefighters, volunteers, and ordinary citizens in San Diego County may signal that people here have crossed a milestone in their thinking about climate change.
San Diegans remember the Cedar Fire that devastated the county only three years ago. San Diegans know that more fire-related disasters are sure to be coming their way living in this arid corner of the country because they know what climate change is likely to mean for them. The increasingly frequent wildfires in recent years seemed to have taught San Diegans to be prepared when the next fires hit.
They were prepared this time. Fortunately for my wife and me, we were staying at a house on the beach in Coronado, a quiet village located on the narrow finger of sand that forms San Diego Harbor, when the fires raged in the hills to the east. Watching the local TV stations’ non-stop coverage of efforts by firefighters and air tankers to stave off the advancing walls of fire burning everything in its path only a few miles away was surreal.
Comparisons of the response to the wildfires with Katrina by the media were inevitable. By all accounts San Diegans did a superlative job of dealing with the thousands of evacuees, saving homes, providing supplies to those in need, even arranging live entertainment for the kids at the county’s central relief station, Qualcom Stadium, home of the San Diego Chargers. Continue reading
Coal Kaput in Kansas – what does this mean for Wise County?
Great news for the climate. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment yesterday became the first government agency in the United States to cite carbon dioxide emissions as the reason for rejecting an air permit for a proposed coal-fired electricity generating plant, saying that the greenhouse gas threatens public health and the environment. Read the Washington Post story here.
Kansas has stepped up to help lead the nation away from the dirty energy technologies and towards smart energy solutions. Virginia should follow Kansas’ lead and do its part to help fight global warming by finding cleaner, better ways to produce energy, a goal that does not include allowing Dominion Virginia Power build their proposed coal-fired power plant in Wise County. As most of you probably know, CCAN is part of a major effort to stop Dominion’s proposed power plant.
Kansas’s Sunflower Electric Power, a rural electrical cooperative, wanted to build the pair of big, 700-megawatt, coal-fired plants in order to supply power to parts of Kansas and fast-growing eastern Colorado. Similarly, Dominion claims they need to build the Wise County power plant to meet the growing demand for electricity in Virginia, especially as the population in Northern Virginia explodes.
One interesting note is that Kansas, like Virginia, is not exactly committed to the idea of conserving energy. In fact Kansas and Virginia are in a three-way tie (along with Wyoming) for last in the nation in spending on demand-side management programs according to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. Those three are the only states that spent absolutely nothing on demand-side conservation.
Despite their lack of interest in energy efficiency and conservation programs in the past, Kansas yesterday reversed course and put climate and health concerns first. Instead of a new coal plant, Kansas has committed to taking a path to a clean energy future.
Dominion has been using the threat of rolling blackouts for a while now. Yet Dominion’s threats are unfounded. Virginia can do better — much better – on energy efficiency and renewable energy, making a new coal plant unnecessary.
CCAN and its coalition members — the Sierra Club, Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, Appalachian Voices, and the Southern Environmental Law Center — are fighting Dominion’s proposed coal plant in the courtroom, at the statehouse, and on the street. The victory in Kansas gives us something to point to to show that wise energy decisions are being made in the U.S. right now!