Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline!

You may have noticed a lot of activity today about the Keystone XL Pipeline, which is intended to bring extremely dirty oil from Canadian Tar Sands to US refineries. 
There's been a lot of talk about how it will bring lots of jobs while it's being created.
But more important there is alarm that

• Keystone XL will cross through America’s agricultural heartland, the Missouri and Niobrara Rivers, the Ogallala aquifer, sage grouse habitat, walleye fisheries and more.
• There will be a great risk of environmental damage when there are breaks and spills (which will happen.)
• The oil it will bring is dirty and heavy. It is oil that would never have been used before for that reason. It is only now when oil costs more that oil companies are interested in it, but it will cause environmental damage during the refining and under transport.
• The Canadian tar sands are ruining Canadian forests and rivers, home to the Athanascan First Peoples. I have written earlier about these areas on this blog: tarsands

American Wind and American Jobs: Setting the Record Straight

The oil and gas companies are up in arms because they know they will end up loosing to renewables. There has been a lot of progress on cutting back on mountaintop removal, so they are putting their energy into combating the future - as well as the jobs that the coal industry is losing. I heard one of the Tea Party candidates claim that most of the government money that goes to renewables flies out the door to China. But exactly the opposite is true. There are many renewable jobs just waiting for financing, and many companies have already provided green jobs. This video from the American wind Energy Association (AWEA) tells the story right:
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Daisy Girl Ad - Stop Mountaintop Removal!

Victory for Cape Wind!

Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar announced this morning that the Cape Wind project between Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard! There has been incredible opposition to this project from everyone from Ted Kennedy (god rest his soul) and more recently native American tribes, who someone convinced to complain that their ancestors sacred sites would be disturbed. Funny that they didn't complain until Cape Wind seemed sure of getting approved! You can read about the early difficulties of the project in this excellent book by a local journalist.
This will be the first of many off-shore wind projects (see this map from the New York Times today.

Coal Ash Contaminates Lives in New Mexico and Tennessee

Earth Justice has interviewed members of families whose livelihoods and health have been drastically affected by coal ash, far away from the mines.

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If you'd like to read more about the effects of coal, try these books:

Clean Energy for a Strong USA

Green jobs are replacing dirty jobs with the same skills. Great movie!

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) sponsors the Olympics - and Tar Sands

I got this message today. Please take action.

Are you tired of corporations trying to greenwash their environmental blunders? So are we. This week, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) gets the greenwash-of-the-week award for spending $105 million (USD) to become a lead sponsor of the 2010 Winter Olympics, while simultaneously bankrolling billions of dollars in investments in the dirtiest oil project on Earth - the Alberta tar sands. RBC's efforts to advertise themselves as Canada's most caring corporate citizen through their Olympic sponsorship is incompatible with financing Canada's most polluting industry.

The tar sands oil extraction project is systematically turning vast stretches of the breathtaking Canadian boreal forest into a wasteland the size of Florida, eradicating wildlife habitat and jeopardizing the health of First Nations communities across Alberta. Let's do something about it.