Maryland Students Celebrate Going Green

This blog post was written by Emily Saari, a Maryland Intern in the Takoma Park office this summer!

Last Friday, thousands of K-12 students, teachers, parents, and administrators got together on a gorgeous, breezy day for the 2011 Maryland Green Schools Youth Summit at Sandy Point State Park. This annual event of the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education commemorates the achievements of the schools that are meeting MAEOE standards for incorporating environmental issues into their curriculums, partnering with green community organizations on local initiatives, and implementing policies to reduce their building’s environmental impact. Mike Tidwell gave the keynote address at the conclusion of the Summit.

Two student volunteers and I represented CCAN at one of the many booths at the Summit working to increase students’ environmental awareness across the broad spectrum of issues. We talked to kids and their mentors about supporting our campaign for offshore wind in the next year. It was fantastic to see such enthusiasm for clean energy initiatives, and I was so impressed with amount of support we got over the course of the afternoon. When speaking about the installation of offshore wind turbines, I heard teachers and parents say to me again and again, “I don’t know why we haven’t done this yet!” Even the elementary school kids were brimming with knowledge about fossil fuels, renewable energy, and restoration of damaged ecological systems like riparian buffers! It’s amazing how easily young kids can grasp this critical information, especially when the facts can be distilled down and taught to them without the complications and blurriness of politics. To them, it just makes sense. We should all take a cue from these inspired green students and remember that at the end of the day, clean energy just makes sense.

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

The House Appropriations Committee approved an additional $1 billion in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to ensure that the agency has the resources necessary to aid those whose homes and livelihoods were devastated by the recent tornadoes in Joplin, MO. Continue reading

In Chicago, coal is the real crime

This is a cross-post from Greenpeace Executive Director Phil Radford.

A sad fact of living in an American city like Chicago is that every time we open a newspaper or switch on the local news, we hear of some senseless, tragic crime that has claimed an innocent life.

We become outraged, and we demand justice for those who have lost their children, their parents, their siblings or spouses.

In 1982, Chicago acted to stem the tide of gun-related violence when confronted with a disturbing rise in homicides.

In fact, between 1980 and 2006, some 32,300 American died every year due to handgun violence, which is second only to car crashes in deaths by injury.

Ever since I got my start as an advocate for a healthy environment on Chicago’s Continue reading

Richmond CCANers recruit for Energize Va!

Changing over to new energy sources like offshore wind requires trying some new tactics! In Richmond this week, CCANers got together at a local ale house, but it wasn’t just your usual happy hour.

Richmond Climate Happy Hour met this week and used a new strategy to spread the word about Richmond’s upcoming offshore wind conference Energize Virginia. On a spacious outdoor patio, the team took advantage of the modern cell phone age to conduct a “Lightning Phonebank”. The group whipped out their cell phones and called dozens of local supporters and friends, and invited them to the first-ever grassroots conference on offshore wind in the commonwealth. The atmosphere was fun and relaxed, but with a purpose: to get folks to come out and get down to business to bring an offshore wind farm to Virginia.

Here’s the next step in our recruitment experiment, and it depends on you! Register now online to attend Energize Virginia in Richmond on Saturday, June 4th

Maryland Judge Gives Mixed Ruling in Coal Plant Suit Brought by CCAN and EIP

Washington County Circuit Court Judge Sets Good Precedent Concerning Citizens’ Right to Appeal but Drops the Ball on Pollution Permit for R. Paul Smith Power Plant

On April 21st, 2011, Judge W Kennedy Boone, a lower state court judge in Washington County, Maryland, rendered his decision in a case brought by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) and the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). The case focused on Allegheny Energy’s water pollution permit related to the R. Paul Smith power plant in Williamsport, MD. Continue reading

McDonnell's got wrong answers

The Richmond Times-Dispatch

In the face of high gas prices, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell is right to say the commonwealth needs new offshore energy to power its ever-thirsty cars (May 5 Op/Ed, “America’s energy insecurity”). The only problem is McDonnell is talking about the wrong kind of energy for the wrong kind of cars. Pushing for dangerous offshore drilling just a few miles from Virginia Beach in 2011 is the technological equivalent of building canals during the early days of railroad. Or investing in manual typewriters in, say, 1985.

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Permit Meetings: Wonky but Important

I’ve been on the road the past few weeks in some beautiful parts of Maryland! GenOn, the corporate owners of the Morgantown (in Newburg, MD) and Dickerson (in Dickerson, MD) coal plants, has applied for modifications of their existing water permits, and I attended the first of the public informational meetings.

The meetings are a bit intimidating at first, I kept flashing back to chemistry classes in high school. There are a lot of numbers and discussion of point sources and data collection. But the point of these hearings isn’t to understand every detail.

At the end of the day these plants are in the backyards of communities, so it is important for citizens to have a say in the process and know what Gen On is applying to do to the nearby waterways. If there weren’t public hearings like these, permits would get approved with no one asking critical questions and without community members being able to hold Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) and GenOn accountable.

I was so impressed with the questions local citizens asked in the room, and the commitment they had by showing up to these meetings on weeknights. More folks need to be involved in these issues and MDE should make it easier for them. The meetings should be advertised widely to all the local groups, list servs, and neighborhoods and the meeting space and time should be as convenient as possible for that community.

Until then I’ll be doing my best to make sure folks know about upcoming hearings. I’ll be there as well, my lack of chemistry understanding be damned, because I care about making these permits as strong as possible for the health of Maryland’s communities and environment.

Huge environmental presence at Dominion's annual shareholder meeting

This morning, I was one of about a dozen environmental advocates to attend Dominion Resources Inc.’s annual shareholder meeting in Charlottesville, VA, while about 30 others rallied outside. Between shareholder proposals, comments and questions by shareholders and their proxies and the company’s own presentations, reducing the company’s impact on the environment was discussed at least as much as its financial performance. And the meeting left me hopeful that environmental advocates can work with Dominion to increase its investment in renewables, especially offshore wind power.

Just this Tuesday, we publicly launched our joint campaign with the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter, Green Jobs Alliance and Virginia Interfaith Power & Light asking Dominion to work with us to invest in offshore wind power. So today I spoke at the shareholder meeting in support of a proposal for the company to set and pursue a goal of 20% renewable energy generation by 2024. Specifically, I spoke about the fact that while offshore wind power does require a greater investment up front, it carries fewer long-term financial risks than investing in fossil fuel power plants. The risks of building new fossil fuel generation include:

    –volatile prices for coal and natural gas that are set by an increasingly global market
    –the potential need for pollution control upgrades in order to comply with future environmental laws
    –and the risk of accidental releases, like the catastrophic spill of coal-ash that Tennessee Valley Authority had in 2008, which could cost millions in clean up expenses, not to mention the public relations fall-out.

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