President-elect Obama, by calling to Repower America, is removing (almost) all my fears of American's energy future.
I say "almost" because he (and Gore) have never specifically said "no more coal"! That's why Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben are calling for a demonstration in March to call attention to coal-fired power plants.
Maybe there soon will be
Dear Friends,
There are moments in a nation's and a planet's history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push for its correction. We think such a time has arrived, and we are writing to say that we hope some of you will join us in Washington D.C. on Monday March 2 in order to take part in a civil act of civil disobedience outside a coal-fired power plant near Capitol Hill.
We will be there to make several points:
- Coal-fired power is driving climate change. Our foremost climatologist, NASA's James Hansen, has demonstrated that our only hope of getting our atmosphere back to a safe level˜below 350 parts per million co2 lies in stopping the use of coal to generate electricity.
- Even if climate change were not the urgent crisis that it is, we would still be burning our fossil fuels too fast, wasting too much energy and releasing too much poison into the air and water. We would still need to slow down, and to restore thrift to its old place as an economic virtue.
- Coal is filthy at its source. Much of the coal used in this country comes from West Virginia and Kentucky, where companies engage in "mountaintop removal" to get at the stuff; they leave behind a leveled wasteland, and impoverished human communities. No technology better exemplifies the out-of-control relationship between humans and the rest of creation.
- Coal smoke makes children sick. Asthma rates in urban areas near coal-fired power plants are high. Air pollution from burning coal is harmful to the health of grown-ups too, and to the health of everything that breathes, including forests.
The industry claim that there is something called "clean coal" is, put simply, a lie. But it's a lie told with tens of millions of dollars, which we do not have. We have our bodies, and we are willing to use them to make our point. We don't come to such a step lightly. We have written and testified and organized politically to make this point for many years, and while in recent months there has been real progress against new coal-fired power plants, the daily business of providing half our electricity from coal continues unabated.
It's time to make clear that we can't safely run this planet on coal at all. So we feel the time has come to do more--we hear President Barack Obama's call for a movement for change that continues past election day, and we hear Nobel Laureate Al Gore's call for creative non-violence outside coal plants.
As part of the international negotiations now underway on global warming, our nation will be asking China, India, and others to limit their use of coal in the future to help save the planet's atmosphere. This is a hard thing to ask, because it's their cheapest fuel. Part of our witness in March will be to say that we're willing to make some sacrifices ourselves, even if it's only a trip to the jail.
With any luck, this will be the largest such protest yet, large enough that it may provide a real spark. If you want to participate with us, you need to go through a short course of non-violence training. This will be, to the extent it depends on us, an entirely peaceful demonstration, carried out in a spirit of hope and not rancor. We will be there in our dress clothes, and ask the same of you. There will be young people, people from faith communities, people from the coal fields of Appalachia, and from the neighborhoods in Washington that get to breathe the smoke from the plant.
We will cross the legal boundary of the power plant, and we expect to be arrested. After that we have no certainty what will happen, but lawyers and such will be on hand. Our goal is not to shut the plant down for the day: it is but one of many, and anyway its operation for a day is not the point. The worldwide daily reliance on coal is the danger; this is one small step to raise awareness of that ruinous habit and hence help to break it.
Needless to say, we're not handling the logistics of this day. All the credit goes to a variety of groups, especially EnergyAction (which is bringing thousands of young people to Washington that weekend), Greenpeace, the Ruckus Society, and the Rainforest Action Network. A website at that latter organization is serving as a temporary organizing hub: http://ran.org/get_involved/powershift_and_mass_civil_disobedience_updates/
If you go there, you will find a place to leave your name so that we'll know you want to join us.Thank you,
Wendell Berry, Bill McKibben
Think globally, act locally!is lost in the struggle to save our planet. But if in the meantime we ruin the planet we are trying to save, poisoned its inhabitants with toxic chemicals, and destroyed homelands and habitats, we will have nothing left to save.
I just don’t like it when the argument gets stuck here. Sequestering the carbon still does not make coal clean....unfortunately the focus is just on what comes out of the stacks as long as they keep this debate going the true cost of coal does not get to surface like the destruction of the oldest mountains on earth, the desert and the upper mid west farmland. and the destruction of fresh water resources.That is what I am trying to do here on my blog, as well as is in comments I leave on other blogs.
Please go to the [NPR] site and blog about it or write about. Someone tell Al Gore to look at the entire death march of coal....
The quoted message below was written before I hear about President-Elect Obama's choice for Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who, according to the Reuters article Obama starts filling energy and environmental team " was an early advocate for finding scientific solutions to climate change and had guided the laboratory on a new mission to become the world leader in alternative and renewable energy research, particularly the development of carbon-neutral sources of energy." I found a PowerPoint presentation by Chu on Alternative Energy Sources from 2005. I am very hopeful now that we will be able to go forward to become a leader in working with Climate Change. 
Furthermore, he has selected Nancy Sutley, Deputy Mayor for Energy and Environment of Los Angeles, to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Former Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner will take on a new position coordinating White House policy on energy, climate and environmental issues. I have been receiving a continuous flow of emails from environmental organizations with their recommendations to President-Elect Obama for our future energy sources, and for the environment. These include such admirable concepts as "cap & trade," using the Big 3 Buyout (from the Sierra Club) to get them to build more environmentally friendly vehicles, supporting solar, wind and geothermal in a big way as part of the economic incentives package.
But even before the new government works on cap & trade and other energy issues, Obama has to select an Energy Secretary. This person must believe whole-heartedly in this kind of change. He must not just be green-washing a life of dirty coal, destruction of homelands and habitats, as the coal industry and the power companies that use coal currently are doing. He must not be professing that "clean-coal" is just around the corner (because it's not!) or believe that our real low CO2 future lies with nuclear.
We have to do everything we can to make sure Mr. Obama picks the right person. So far he is not on the right track. Unfortunately, according to Al Kamen in the Washington Post, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers is on his short list, Next on Obama's Dance Card, Mother Nature. Kamen says that a decision could be announced this week, so we have to be fast.
According to an email I received this week from a Teri Blanton, who lives in Kentucky, but has managed to escape her Harlan County childhood home (who told me she "shuddered" when she read this):
Rogers would not be "change we can believe in". As head of one of the largest U.S. power companies, Rogers' idea of change is finding creative ways to "green-wash" while building coal and nuclear plants and limiting energy efficiency and renewables. Environmental and consumer groups in states where Duke operates have been challenging Rogers' actions, which grossly contradict his PR-crafted image as a visionary concerned about climate change.Please contact all the environmental organizations you can think of, asking them to work together to create a short-list of visionary and acceptable people for this job. The new Secretary must not have any connections to the currect power, nuclear, oil or coal industries! We've been there, done that, and it's been a catastrophe!Here are some more links about Rogers:
- Duke Energy CEO: Coal not going away CNET April 13, 2008
- A Green Coal Baron? fromt he NYT June 22, 2008
- Rogers and Me, An interview with Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, by Amanda Griscom Little on Grist 04 Apr 2007
- Duke Energy CEO Rogers Calls For "Paradigm Shift" to Realize Full Potential of Energy Efficiency Edison Electric Institute February 12, 2007
The email I received recommended emailing comments through the Obama website: http://change.gov/page/content/contact/ which I have already done. Please do so as well!
The Bush administration is doing its darnedest to make a final impression on this country, and since it's so bad already, he's decided to go whole hog to go down in history as the For example, I just received this news from the Sierra Club:
Breaking News: Mining through Streams, Permission Granted
The U.S. EPA signed off today on the Bush administration’s last minute repeal of the stream buffer zone rule, which prohibits mining within 100 feet of streams. The repeal clears the way for an increase in devastating mountaintop removal mining, where coal companies blast the tops off mountains to reach thin seams of coal below and then simply dump the waste into nearby valleys and streams. Today's decision will finalize the repeal, despite the objections of EPA scientists, top decision makers in Kentucky and Tennessee, and 2 out of 3 American people. (italics mine.)
Here is another article about this: Can it really get worse? Yes. from a blog called Stop Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining. I have also written several entries here on Mountaintop Removal and so-called "Clean Coal".
An article recently in the New York Times: Bush Aides Rush to Enact a Rule Obama Opposes tells how
The Labor Department is racing to complete a new rule, strenuously opposed by President-elect Barack Obama, that would make it much harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job.
It also mentions a few more issues they're working on:
Another, issued last week by the Health and Human Services Department, gives states sweeping authority to charge higher co-payments for doctor’s visits, hospital care and prescription drugs provided to low-income people under Medicaid.
The department is working on another rule to protect health care workers who refuse to perform abortions or other procedures on religious or moral grounds. (Apparently they've already gotten this one through as well.)
According to the article, they are making these changes to rules in a way that will require Congressional permission to change them back, taking valuable time from other very important issues. Hopefully Obama's staff is already working with Congressional leaders to prepare the legislation needed to repeal these cases of sabotage by the Bush Administration. I assume that grassroots organizations will be preparing law suits and lobbying to save the country from these attrocities, all of which takes time and money away from pressing needs.
My husband has a little tool on his desktop telling how many days are left of this devastating administration. Today they have still have
Let us hope that the spirit of the season will remind our "Christian" President of what he seems to have forgotten, that this is a time for "Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All!"49 more days to wreak havoc.
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