Climate change is intensifying and scientists say we must move toward clean energy solutions now to avoid the worst impacts. In Maryland, the biggest single source of global warming pollution is the burning of dirty fossil fuels for electricity. We’re calling on the Maryland General Assembly to act by requiring that 40% of Maryland’s electricity come from clean sources like wind and solar by 2025.
Climate change town hall encourages individual action
By Marlena Chertock
About 500 residents, politicians and activists showed support for climate-change policies at an Organizing For Action town hall last week at the Silver Spring Civic Center.
“Cleaner air leads to healthier families,” said Neeta Datt, the county director of OFA.
The nearly four-hour meeting was the first in a month of action for OFA, a nonprofit that supports President Barack Obama’s agenda.
Speakers focused on the president’s plan, but also encouraged action on an individual level.
Environmental groups, critical of coal export loans, file lawsuit
By Matthew Bieniek
CUMBERLAND — At the same time the coal industry is fighting against what industry leaders say is a war on coal, several environmental groups have filed a lawsuit to fight multimillion dollar loan guarantees to export U.S. coal to foreign nations including Japan, South Korea, China and Italy.
Much of that coal leaves the country through the Port of Baltimore.
Environmentalists sue Export-Import Bank over loan guarantee to domestic coal broker
By Max Ehrenfreund
Above the harbor in Baltimore’s industrial Curtis Hill district is a one-acre urban farm. Jason Reed, a community organizer who works there, described the view. “I can look out over the harbor, and you can see the piles and piles of coal,” he said.
That coal is the subject of a lawsuit filed Wednesday by a coalition of environmental groups against the Export-Import Bank of the United States. The groups are challenging the federal agency’s financing of fossil fuel exports from ports in Baltimore and Hampton Roads.
Lawsuit Challenges Federal Financing of Coal Exports from East Coast Ports
Environmental groups today filed the first-ever lawsuit challenging the federal government’s financing for the export of Appalachian coal from the United States. The U.S. government approved this financial support for coal exports without considering the increased toxic air and water pollution that could affect communities near the mines and ports, and along the railways that connect them.
The groups filing the lawsuit charge that the U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank) violated federal law by providing a $90 million loan guarantee to Xcoal Energy & Resources without reviewing the environmental impacts as required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). According to Ex-Im Bank, the taxpayer-backed financing, approved on May 24, 2012, will help leverage a billion dollars in exports of coal mined in Appalachia. The coal will be shipped from ports in Baltimore, Maryland and Norfolk, Virginia to markets in Japan, South Korea, China and Italy.
“Ex-Im Bank turned a blind eye to the toxic coal dust, heavy train traffic and disruptive noise that our members living near ports and railways experience on a daily basis,” said Diana Dascalu-Joffe, senior general counsel at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “People on the front lines of the U.S. coal export boom deserve to know the risks and to have a say over whether their tax dollars finance it.”
#Walk4Grandkids Day 8: NO KXL!
From July 19th to July 26th, grandparents, parents and young people, from age 15 to 78, journeyed together on a eight-day trek from Camp David to the White House. After 100 miles of sweat and blisters through this summer’s worst heat wave, the Walk for Our Grandchildren reached DC today. Dozens gathered downtown at the headquarter of ERM to expose corporate influence in the US Department of State’s analsysis of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Tomorrow, we will reach our ultimate goal – the White House, calling upon President Obama to demonstrate substantive leadership on climate by rejecting the KXL.
Continue reading
Governor O’Malley Unveils One of Nation’s Strongest Global Warming Plans
CCAN applauds plan as critical example of climate leadership as our planet passes the carbon pollution danger zone of 400 parts per million
BALTIMORE—Governor Martin O’Malley released today a far-reaching plan to reduce economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions in Maryland by 25 percent by 2020. The plan will create an estimated $1.6 billion in economic benefits and create over 37,000 jobs. The plan surpasses California and all states except Massachusetts in its goals, while incorporating carbon reduction and clean energy policies that experts believe are credible and achievable. Today’s release positions Maryland as a national leader in facing the climate change crisis head-on.
“A problem of this magnitude requires tough choices and bold leadership,” said Maryland Senator Paul Pinsky (D-Prince George’s County), sponsor of the 2009 landmark Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act. “Not only is it dangerous and foolhardy to ignore this looming threat, but acting now to mitigate the future damage from climate change can also enrich our state in numerous ways. Today’s plan offers the right mix of policy solutions that will both reduce the dangerous greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming while offering the maximum economic benefits for Maryland.”
“In the face of virtually unrecognizable weather and rapidly rising seas, Governor O’Malley is stepping up to lead,” said Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “The Governor’s plan is an example that other states should follow, given the intensifying impacts of climate change and the unacceptably slow response on Capitol Hill.”
O'Malley crafts stricter plan to fight climate change
By Erin Cox and Tim Wheeler
The O’Malley administration’s aggressive new plan to fight climate change calls for Maryland residents to further cut their energy use or face higher monthly utility bills.
The plan, to be released Thursday by Gov. Martin O’Malley, also requires that more of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020.
Maryland’s goals for reducing greenhouse gases are among the most ambitious in the nation. The plan requires stricter measures than previously proposed to meet the requirement set by the General Assembly in 2009 to cut carbon emissions that scientists say drive climate change.
#Walk4Grandkids Day 4: Voices From the Trail
The following is a Day 4 update by Elisabeth Hoffman, who’s on the trail of the Walk for Our Grandchildren, July 19th-July 27th.
For our children, we would do anything.
From the mundane to the extraordinary, we have done what ever was necessary to protect, clothe, educate, and help them grow.
Parents on the 2013 Walk For Our Grandchildren baby-proofed the house, stayed up all night with sick children, coached, and volunteered in schools. Some gave up lucrative jobs to work from home for their children or to go sledding on snow days. Those memories are now the fuel that moves them onward step by step to Washington, DC.
Bill Ramsey of Asheville, NC instilled a love of nature in his children with summer backpacking and camping trips. But they also participated in protests, including once when his oldest son, then two years old and out of view in a backpack, was inadvertently arrested with him at a farm workers’ strike. “They’ve seen me, day after day, working and acting as if we can create change,” he said. Bill now walks for his grandchildren, age eight and three.
Continue reading
Camp David to the White House: The first three days of extreme heat and high spirits
I’ve walked thirty miles across Maryland the past three days in the middle of the worst heat wave of the year. The heat index has soared well above 100 each day, causing the corn fields and forests to shimmer in the distance. My feet, meanwhile, are so tender I’ve literally begun applying duct tape to the balls of my feet to ward off blisters.
And I couldn’t be in higher spirits. Why? Because today I get to do it all over again with 60-70 inspiring climate activists from across the country as part of the “2013 Walk for Our Grandchildren.” For eight days, from July 19-27th, we are walking 100 miles from the gates of Camp David — the presidential retreat in western Maryland — all the way to the White House. Our goal: Tell President Obama to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and accelerate solutions to global warming.
Already, we’ve walked through the “green tunnels” of the Catoctin Mountains. We’ve marched across soybean farms and into towns with one stoplight. We camped one night on a Civil War battlefield. What keeps us going with bandaged feet and evaporating pounds are the stories we hear along the way. We met farmer Shelly Wolf who says the weather in rural Frederick County Maryland is unrecognizable compared to when she and her husband bought their farm 58 years ago. The snow back then would shut down their country road for a week at a time. Now it barely snows. And today it’s not just the heat waves but the summer humidity! Insufferable, she says. There was nothing like it during her childhood.
Continue reading