Crossposted from Climate Progress.
If you want to know just how determined activists are to stop the proposed tar sands oil pipeline from Canada to Texas, listen to this:
Last Saturday morning, August 20th, more than 50 activists were arrested in front of the White House. They were handcuffed, stuffed into blistering-hot paddy wagons, and informed that they would spend two nights in a crowded, harsh DC jail. The U.S. Park Police Continue reading
This week, five CCAN staffers, including myself, were arrested in front of the White House in an effort to compel President Obama to deny a permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
President Obama will decide later this year on TransCanada’s permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which will send 900,000 barrels a day of the world’s dirtiest oil to US refineries, allowing further development of the Alberta tar sands. Mining oil from tar sands creates three times more carbon emissions than conventional oil extraction and our top climate scientist, NASA’s Dr. James Hansen, has said that the development of the tar sands would be “essentially game over” for the climate.
The Baltimore Sun
By Mike Tidwell and Dr. Cindy Parker
As you read this, two starkly different visions of Maryland’s energy future are clashing on a sidewalk outside the White House.
The push for the Keystone XL pipeline puzzles me. Society is foolishly increasing its dependence on oil by investing more and more in this diminishing dirty resource. Meanwhile, many of the clean and renewable alternatives that our future requires already exist and continue to improve in both efficiency and cost.
The fact of the matter is that we must begin to reorient our entire energy system away from fossil fuels. To that end, there is very exciting news about five new advances coming out of MIT that look to utilize solar energy just about everywhere. In other news there was a great breakthrough in transportation; for the first time a German engineered electric vehicle traveled 1000 miles on a single charge!
While there may be some doubt about current energy conversion rates with solar energy, wind is quite the proven technology for replacing fossil fuels in a very big way. For example, Denmark currently gets about 20% of its total electrical need from wind alone, generating jobs and reducing green house gas emissions all along the way. In the bigger picture, Europe is producing 5.5% of its electricity from wind as of 2010, but has plans for massive investment. According to the European Wind Energy Association, strong EU regulatory framework is guiding 194 billion Euros of investment with the goal of tripling wind energy production to over 15% by 2020.
And here we sit investing in expanding an oil pipeline that already exists. To put it in a wider perspective, the general estimate for the Keystone XL pipeline rings in at around 7 billion. Instead, we should invest that money installing clean, renewable sources of power right near major coastal populations where it is needed most. Or, we can continue to delay the inevitable and invest in a dwindling dirty fuel while ignoring its litany of
At last Saturday’s Rappahannock Electric Cooperative Annual Meeting, more than a dozen REC members turned out to show the most visible presence against a coal plant at any electric cooperative annual meeting in Virginia
This post was written by Caroline Selle who will be a senior at St Mary’s College of Maryland. It was originally posted on wearepowershift.org
In between bites of pizza and homemade peach and blackberry pie, the members of the Maryland Student Climate Coalition (MSCC) spent the bulk of last Saturday planning our campaign for offshore wind. Clean, job-creating, renewable energy like offshore wind is exactly the kind of resource we want to use to power our homes and our schools.
As a resource, offshore wind is kind of incredible. The wind blows relatively constantly off the coast, including at times of peak power usage. Once the infrastructure is in place, it’s almost completely free to generate wind power. Best of all, wind power is clean and renewable. It reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2 and will help public health by creating cleaner air and cleaner water.
Unfortunately, last year the Maryland General Assembly failed to pass a bill that obligated major Maryland utilities to purchase offshore wind power for the next twenty years. The bill would have helped Maryland reach it’s 20% by 2022 Renewable Portfolio Standard and given wind developers the incentive to build offshore wind projects that create thousands of manufacturing, operation, and maintenance jobs during their lifespan.
This fall, the MSCC is running a campaign to make sure that offshore wind is a part of Maryland’s future. We will petition our school and community leaders to support offshore wind, because it is a way to create jobs, harness clean and safe energy, and reach our renewable electricity goals.
Past MSCC campaigns changed the way Maryland leaders looked at youth. Once again, we are going to use our combined energy, skills, and resources to change the state’s landscape and bring offshore wind to our homes.
Yes, there are those who still curiously regard fossil fuels as the only realistic energy sources for our world. It is a dead-end if there ever was one; an idea largely propagated by the fossil fuel biz and their political front men and women. Thankfully, for those who understand the inescapable necessity of renewable clean energy, the options just keep growing.
Meet the solar tower, a solar-based energy source that is an intriguing mix of solar and wind energy. A company named “Enviromission” has its sights on Arizona to build this massive tower. It’s essentially an enormous greenhouse that traps air heated by the sun’s rays. Hot air naturally rises, and as the air does so it is funneled through a central point (the tower), the base of which sports an array of fans that are turned by the current just like a windmill.
A detailed description of the tower can be found here including its numerous advantages. For starters, it is low maintenance, continues to work at night, has zero GHG emissions, makes use of essentially useless desert, and the list still goes on. This earlier, smaller version in Spain recently achieved the huge milestone of generating twenty-four hours of uninterrupted supply, proving solar energy can provide power well into the night!
This is just one of many options that are currently available and make the reality of renewable energy all the more imminent. Add some wind energy, solar thermal and solar PV, some geothermal for good measure, and we’re well on our way to a cleaner, sustainable future.
“Between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer lies what I call the Tropic of Chaos, a belt of economically and politically battered post-colonial states girding the planet’s mid-latitudes. In this band, around the tropics, climate change is beginning to hit hard. The societies in this belt are heavily dependent on agriculture and fishing, thus very vulnerable to shifts in weather patterns. . . In this belt we find clustered most of the failed and semi-failed states of the developing world.” p. 9
Christian Parenti has written a book about climate change, “Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence,” from the perspective, by and large, of the least of these, of the world’s poor. And it is a very sobering picture.
He has also grounded his analysis in history and economics, placing the climate impacts that are being felt in the countries he visited and reports on within a broader context. In so doing, his book will help readers appreciate that the deadly and destructive impacts of climate change, caused mainly by the world’s burning of fossil fuels, are in many respects a continuation of colonial and neo-colonial policies in effect worldwide for centuries.
As Parenti says, “The current and impending dislocations of climate change intersect with the already-existing crises of poverty and violence. . . the catastrophic convergence.” Continue reading
Last week I took my first trip out to Western Maryland with our fabulous fellow Emily Saari. The drive was long but really beautiful- and much more relaxing than driving around the city.
We arrived to quite the welcoming party- a group of really incredible women working to protect their homes and communities from dangerous fracking practices. Over lunch we discussed the latest in fracking news and all the issues it creates. It is overwhelming to keep track of everything: drinking water contamination, traffic on small roads, land value decreasing, harm to wildlife, methane leaks Continue reading