Archive for August, 2009

by ADAM D. SACKS

In the 20 years since we climate activists began our work in earnest, the state of the climate has become dramatically worse, and the change is accelerating—this despite all of our best efforts.  Clearly something is deeply wrong with this picture.  What is it that we do not yet know?  What do we have to think and do differently to arrive at urgently different outcomes?^[1]

The answers lie not with science, but with culture.

Climate activists are obsessed with greenhouse-gas emissions and concentrations.  Since global climate disruption is an effect of greenhouse gases, and a disastrous one, this is understandable.  But it is also a mistake.

Such is the fallacy of climate activism^[2]: We insist that global warming is merely a consequence of greenhouse-gas emissions. Since it is not, we fail to tell the truth to the public.

I think that there are two serious errors in our perspectives on greenhouse gases:

Global Warming as Symptom

The first error is our failure to understand that greenhouse gases are not a cause but a symptom, and addressing the symptom will do little but leave us with a devil’s sack full of many other symptoms, possibly somewhat less rapidly lethal but lethal nonetheless.

The root cause, the source of the symptoms, is 300 years of our relentlessly exploitative, extractive, and exponentially growing technoculture, against the background of ten millennia of hierarchical and colonial civilizations.^[3] This should be no news flash, but the seductive promise of endless growth has grasped all of us civilized folk by the collective throat, led us to expand our population in numbers beyond all reason and to commit genocide of indigenous cultures and destruction of other life on Earth.

To be sure, global climate disruption is the No. 1 symptom.  But if planetary warming were to vanish tomorrow, we would still be left with ample catastrophic potential to extinguish many life forms in fairly short order: deforestation; desertification; poisoning of soil, water, air; habitat destruction; overfishing and general decimation of oceans; nuclear waste, depleted uranium, and nuclear weaponry—to name just a few.  (While these symptoms exist independently, many are intensified by global warming.)

We will not change course by addressing each of these as separate issues; we have to address root cultural cause. Read the rest of this entry »

Rising Tide North America has released a U.S. version of the “Deal or No Deal” newspaper – a witty and incisive primer about the UN climate process that emerged from the UK Climate camps.  It includes information on the COP meetings, and some insights and suggestions about how we can relate to the December COP15 meetings happening in Copenhagen.

RTNA will be distributing these papers across North America and at upcoming mobilizations.  For more information, visit

DOWNLOAD “Deal or No Deal” COP15 Primer – (US Version)

This radio interview debate between Dan Lashoff from NRDC and Cecil Corbin Marks is interesting. Cecil provides some interesting comments on the (dis)function of market approaches.

Download this audio file

Obama’s landmark federal climate bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), passed the House at the end of June. As the bill has progressed, the debate among environmentalists over whether or not to support the bill has deepened, with the bill’s market-based “cap and trade” mechanism at the heart of the controvesy. Those in favor say the bill contains far more good than bad and is a major step in the right direction, while those opposed say the bill is little more than a bait and switch scheme that risks great harm in the face of an urgent climate crisis. We bring back Cecil Corbin-Mark from Harlem environmental justice organization WE-ACT to discuss the issue with Dan Lashof from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

CLIMATE SOS

TELL YOUR SENATORS A CLIMATE BILL THAT IS “WORSE THAN NOTHING” IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

This past June, the House passed the American Clean Energy & Security Act (ACESA). Soon, this bill will be voted on by the Senate. If passed, this climate bill would:

a. Prevent the U.S. from making anything remotely close to its fair share of greenhouse gas emissions reductions – necessary for averting catastrophic consequences and forging an effective global strategy on climate stabilization.

b. Lock us into an extremely complex cap-and-trade scheme that benefits fossil fuel, utilities, the Wall Street, and big agribusinesses, prone to Enron style market manipulations, while doing nothing to save the climate.

c. Use public money to subsidize the most polluting industries like coal and nuclear, drawing much needed financing away from real climate solutions like renewable energy production;

d. Add more toxic and climate polluting smokestacks, especially in backyards of the poor, people of color, and indigenous communities across the U.S., by grandfathering dirty old coal plants, permitting numerous new ones, and subsidizing incinerators as a form of renewable energy.

In the words of leading climate scientist James Hansen:

[ACESA would] “do more harm to the environment than doing nothing at all.”

Please contact your Senators and let them know that as a person deeply concerned about climate change, you want to see climate legislation passed, but ONLY IF IT IS REAL AND EFFECTIVE legislation, not like ACESA.

Click to join ClimateSOS

Read the rest of this entry »

by Jeff Biggers – 8/25/09

In a stunning blow to mountaintop removalblasting operations in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia this morning, two fearless protesters scaled massive trees and unfurled banners from their 80-foot-high platforms. Within 300 feet of the Massey Energy’s Edwight mountaintop removal blasting site, above Pettry Bottom and Peachtree in Raleigh County, West Virginia, the protesters called on federal agencies to crack down on the scandal-ridden West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WV DEP) and stop the unsafe and reckless blasting in the area.

Dear friends,

Have you heard enough about climate change? Do you agree that its time for
action?

Are you ready to join thousands of others in risking arrest to protect
people and ecosystems around the globe from the catastrophic impacts of
climate chaos?
Read the rest of this entry »

Burning Forests for Electricity

By MICHAEL DONNELLY

“All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent.”

—David Brower

Like one might expect from a Dr. Seuss character, the Once-ler of old has morphed into the Renew-ler in these “Sustainable” times. The modern day Thneed is electrical power. His allies are a mix of industrialists, politicians and co-opted “greens.” The end result: a forest vacuumed of all life; remains the same.

Coming Soon to a Forest Near You

On a daily basis of late, plans are unveiled for new biomass “renewable energy” electricity plants nationwide, complete with State and Federal “Renewable Energy Tax Credits.” Over 100 are already up and running or approved and under construction. Another 200 are in the approval process. Ten in Michigan; six in Arkansas; three in Massachusetts; two in Georgia; three in Maine; three in Florida; …even one in swanky Vail, Colorado. If a state has trees, it has a burner(s) on the drawing board. Of all the proposals working their way through state governments, only those in Oregon have been (so far) thwarted. There, Governor Ted Kulongoski has vetoed legislation giving the renewable tax credit designation to existing Timber Industry wood-to-electricity and existing garbage burner electricity plants that sailed through Oregon’s Democrat-dominated Legislature with GOP support. On the other hand, Kulongoski and Oregon have given their renewable energy tax imprimatur to giant wind farms. For some 3550 megawatts of peak production, Oregon is handing these private wind power producers a projected $144 million in tax subsidies this biennium alone. But, that’s a different part of the story.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Mark Engler

This guest essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. Research assistance was provided by Sean Nortz. 

In the early morning of October 8, 2007, a small group of British Greenpeace activists slipped inside a hulking smokestack that towers more than 600 feet above a coal-fired power plant in Kent, England. While other activists cut electricity on the plant’s grounds, they prepared to climb the interior of the structure to its top, rappel down its outside, and paint in block letters a demand that Prime Minister Gordon Brown put an end to plants like the Kingsnorth facility, which releases nearly 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each day.

Read the rest of this entry »

Why we protest Chevron – Anti-War groups join the climate change movement

On August 15th activists and community members from around the Bay Area
will be joining Richmond, California residents to protest the Chevron
corporation’s devastating environmental and human rights record around the
world. They’ll be working with a coalition of dozens of social justice
and environmental organizations, called the Mobilization for Climate
Justice, to highlight and stop Chevron’s legacy of criminality. From
faulty environmental impact reports for a dirty crude expansion and
ongoing pollution in Richmond, to using the Nigerian military to murder
environmental activists in the Niger Delta, to toxic waste sites and
subsequent harm to human health (that dwarfs the Exxon-Valdez spill) in
the Ecuadorian Amazon, Chevron is responsible for a substantial roster of
injured people and denuded environments around the world. Not the least
of which are the lands and people of Iraq; which is why it’s important for
anti-war activists to work with environmental and labor groups to oppose
Chevron this August. Read the rest of this entry »

U.S. biofuel makers want CO2 credits in climate bill

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Makers of biofuels and plastics and chemicals made from crops want U.S. senators to change the climate bill to give them free pollution permits that would be needed to emit greenhouse gases under the legislation.

Companies that make the alternative motor fuel ethanol and plastics from renewable biomass, rather than fossil fuels, have visited Senate offices to urge that 1 percent to 5 percent of the emissions permits in a cap and trade program outlined in the bill be given to the businesses from 2012 to 2050.

Such credits were not included for those industries in the House of Representatives version of the bill passed in June. Democratic leaders hope the full Senate will vote on the legislation in October.

The biofuels industry, most of which has the capability to also make bio-plastics and chemicals similar to petroleum-based chemicals, is far smaller than the oil refining industry, which would get 2 percent of the permits to pollute under the bill.

But Brent Erickson, an executive vice president at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, said makers of biofuels and plastics made from plants should get a share of the permits because their products are renewable.

“No offense to refiners, but they’re taking carbon that’s been buried in the ground for millions of years and releasing it into the atmosphere,” he said. “And we’re taking carbon that’s in the atmosphere and recycling it through plants, and it ought to be treated differently.”

A study in Yale University’s Journal of Industrial Ecology published this year found that ethanol made from corn had lifecycle carbon dioxide emissions about 50 percent lower than gasoline. Ethanol producers say cellulosic ethanol, a second generation fuel made from non-food crops that’s not available yet in commercial amounts, is even cleaner.

Erickson said such incentives in the climate bill could benefit companies such as Archer Daniels Midland Co, DuPont Co, Dow Chemical Co and Metabolix Inc.

BIO also hopes companies that are looking to make fuels and products from algae will get incentives under the climate bill. No company makes commercial amounts of fuel from algae yet, but interest in the industry has grown over the last two or three years.

Exxon Mobil Corp, for instance, said last month it will invest $600 million over the next five to six years on trying to develop biofuel from algae.

The bill passed by the House would give about 85 percent of the credits away in the first years of a cap and trade program on greenhouse gas emissions and auction about 15 percent of them.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Christian Wiessner)

© Thomson Reuters 2009.

by Jeff Biggers

This might be a first in the country: The failed West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection is emerging as such an embarrassingly pro-coal anti-mountain public relations nightmare for Gov. Joe Manchin that even retired coal miners have taken to the streets against the state’s environmental regulators, calling on the federal EPA and Office of Surface Mining to take over the key duties of the dysfunctional state agency.

The uprising in the Appalachian coalfields against failed state government action on mining policy is growing–today, coalfield residents took their protests directly to ground zero of the state’s regulatory failure.

Following 12 previous protests and civil disobedience actions in the Appalachian coalfields this spring and summer, a contingent of four protesters locked themselves to the WV DEP doorsin Charleston, WV in a nonviolent sit-in. Four protesters were reportedly arrested.

While the WVA Department of Environmental Protection carried out the “Blaster’s Exam” today, as part of its unfettered support for mountaintop removal mining and the daily detonation of 3.5 million pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives in historic mountain communities, scores of fed up coal miners and coalfield residents also rallied at the agency’s office this morning. The protesters presented an embarrassingly long list of the agency’s failure to hold up its mandate to protect and restore the environment, ensure water quality, and enforce strip mining, and demanded the resignation of WV DEP Secretary Randy Huffman. Read the rest of this entry »

Nominations Wanted for Worst Climate Lobby Award

Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) is seeking nominations for “The Worst Climate Lobby Award” – a new award which will be presented to the corporation or industry grouping with the worst track record in lobbying to prevent effective action to tackle climate change.
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Wish you weren’t here: The devastating effects of the new colonialists

Up for grabs: Countries with large populations such as China, South Korea and even India are acquiring swathes of African farmland to produce food for export

A new breed of colonialism is rampaging across the world, with rich nations buying up the natural resources of developing countries that can ill afford to sell. Some staggering deals have already been done, says Paul Vallely, but angry locals are now trying to stop the landgrabs

Read the rest of this entry »