This compelling four-minute video produced by our Portland allies highlights plans to export dirty U.S. coal to Asia. Local voices from Longview, Bellingham, Hood River, and Portland share how coal trains and terminals could harm their communities. Footage captures the filth of coal and the spirit of people who know we can do better.
There is a question from a gentleman in the fourth row.
He introduces himself as Richard Rothschild. He tells the crowd that he ran for county commissioner in Maryland’s Carroll County because he had come to the conclusion that policies to combat global warming were actually “an attack on middle-class American capitalism.” His question for the panelists, gathered in a Washington, DC, Marriott Hotel in late June, is this: “To what extent is this entire movement simply a green Trojan horse, whose belly is full with red Marxist socioeconomic doctrine?”
Here at the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, the premier gathering for those dedicated to denying the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet, this qualifies as a rhetorical question. Like asking a meeting of German central bankers if Greeks are untrustworthy. Still, the panelists aren’t going to pass up an opportunity to tell the questioner just how right he is.
Read more: Capitalism vs. the Climate
(By Naomi Klein, The Nation)
(Link provided by Rob Briggs)
1) “Across a range of clean energy projects, including renewable energy, transportation, and energy efficiency, for every million dollars spent, 16.7 green jobs are created. That is over three times the 5.3 jobs per million dollars that are created from the same spending on fossil-fuel industries.”
Searching for Green Jobs for the Coalfields
2) “Despite generating $546 billion in profits between 2005 and 2010, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP together reduced their U.S. workforce by 11,200 employees during that time.”
Big Oil Companies Make Huge Profits with Taxpayer Support but Cut Jobs Anyway
3) Researchers at Cornell University put a lot of time and energy into examining the subject of jobs and the Keystone XL pipeline. Share their findings by downloading a free pdf document from this page:
Cornell University Economists Debunk Keystone XL Economic Claims
(Information compiled by Sharon Cousins.)
1) We have so much oil that the USA is exporting oil. If we need more, we can export less.
U.S. Awash in Oil and Lies, Report Charges
For more in-depth information, click on “new report” to download a detailed pdf document.
2) We may not need dirty oil from the ground at all pretty soon. We can pull excess carbon dioxide out of thin air and recycle it into carbon neutral fuel.
Enzyme Holds the Key to Renewable Hydrocarbons
3) We can also have ethanol without starving Africa or triggering frenzied corn speculation. Many plants that can grow on land not suitable for major food crops can be used to make ethanol. Agave is just one of them.
Mexico & Agaves: Moving from Tequila to Ethanol
4) Hemp offers many possibilities for cleaner and sustainable fuels.
(Information compiled by Sharon Cousins.)
Filmed at TEDxVictoria on November 19, 2011, photographer Garth Lenz shares shocking pictures of the environmental devastation of Alberta tar sands mining projects and the beautiful and vital ecosystems they jeopardize. For almost twenty years, Garth’s photography of threatened wilderness regions, ecological destruction, and impacts on indigenous peoples has appeared in the world’s leading publications. His recent images from the boreal region of Canada have helped lead to significant victories and large new protected areas in the Northwest Territories, Quebec, and Ontario. Garth’s major touring exhibit about the tar sands premiered in Los Angeles in 2011 and recently appeared in New York. Garth is a fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers.
An October 2011 survey revealed that MOST Americans favor federal subsidies, construction loans, and investments in wind/solar/efficient energy (but not for fossil fuel/nuclear energy), dislike disproportionate corporate influence on national energy policy and a federally passive approach to energy markets, support phasing-out coal-fired power plants, are concerned about water shortages and pollution and how natural gas fracking affects water quality, connect recent extreme weather-related disasters to climate change, understand the environmental and human health costs of energy sources, and want the U.S. to be a global leader in clean energy technology.
The Sierra Club brings its anti-coal campaign to Spokane on Thursday, urging local residents to oppose terminals at Washington seaports that would ship coal to Asia.
Coal producers are seeking permits to build terminals near Bellingham and Longview to ship up to 130 million tons of coal mined in Montana’s and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to China, India, Korea, and Japan.
The coal would reach Washington’s coast by rail. Communities along the route, including Spokane, could see dozens more trains loaded with coal rolling through their towns if the terminals are built, said Robin Everett, part of the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign.
Read more: Group Urging Spokane Opposition to Coal Ports
(By Betsy Kramer, The Spokesman-Review)
On Wednesday, a dozen regional anti-megaload activists attended and provided oral testimony at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers public hearing about the Port of Lewiston expansion application. Please lend an ear to the Thursday, October 20, KRFP Evening Report between 11:03 and 9:16 for a brief summary of the arguments presented by opponents and proponents of the Port’s proposal to gravel a storage yard, move a mooring dolphin, and extend the dock into the Clearwater River, explicitly to accommodate larger shipments. Because most of the public comments voiced at the Lewiston hearing supported Port expansion, your comments are crucial to requesting a full environmental impact statement, accompanying public involvement, and ultimate denial of this expensive and short-sighted project. Please peruse the previous WIRT Port of Lewiston Permit Application Comments for writing prompts. The Corps has received 140 written comments to date: let’s double that number with your expansion-denouncing input by Saturday, October 29, at midnight.
(From WIRT Newsletter)
The Walla Walla District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will conduct a public hearing on October 19, 2011, to solicit addition information concerning the Port of Lewiston NWW-2010-00213 application to expand its existing facilities. The proposed port actions could accommodate megaload shipments and require the Corps’ verification and authorization for work in federal waters, lands, and flood control structures (Lewiston levees). Registration to comment and an informational open house hosted by Corps representatives begin at 6 pm, before the 7 pm hearing at Sacajawea Junior High School, 3610 Twelfth Street in Lewiston.
The Corps will record the hearing and report verbatim all written and oral comments at the meeting, for inclusion in the official public record. Besides speaking out on Wednesday against this unnecessary development venture, please send your remarks to the Corps by the end of the extended public comment period on October 29, 2011. For further information about public hearing procedures, comment submission addresses, and the port expansion project, see the Corps’ News Release and its Notice of Public Hearing. Call Friends of the Clearwater at 208-882-9755 to carpool from downtown Moscow at 5:30 pm.
(From WIRT Newsletter)
Reports of burning tap water and contaminated aquifers have followed the natural gas industry to the Pacific Northwest, where some drilling could involve the controversial practice of “hydraulic fracturing.”
For millions of years, vast deposits of natural gas have been trapped beneath much of the continental United States. Only in the past decade have energy companies possessed an extraction technique that allows them to free a good deal of the previously untapped reserves. This gas rush has sent federal, state and local lawmakers scrambling to reassess their drilling regulations.
Access the entire story with a map, photos, and audio/video files: Natural Gas Drillers Eye the Northwest
(By Bonnie Stewart and Aaron Kunz, Oregon Public Broadcasting EarthFix)
Wild Idaho Rising Tide 