By John W. Roulac in EcoWatch – To the leadership at Greenpeace, Sierra Club, 350.org, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council and all other climate groups: Your organizations have worked very hard, collectively, to reduce world reliance on carbon-centric oil, gas and coal. Thanks to your work to reduce pollution, we certainly have a healthier planet. High praise is in order for the success of your valiant efforts in the face of corrupt vested interests. Yet I, along with many others, must still ask: Will your plan win the race against time to avert climate chaos? Anyone paying close attention can see that, even if the world doubles the rate at which it’s adopting wind, solar, bike lanes, electric cars and conservation, the excess carbon in our atmosphere and seas will still lead to intense climate chaos.
By Ronnie Cummins in Organic Consumers – After decades of self-destructive business-as-usual—empire-building, waging wars for fossil fuels, selling out government to the highest bidder, lacing the environment and the global food supply with GMOs, pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, toxic sweeteners, artery-clogging fats, and synthetic chemicals, attacking the organic and natural health movement, brainwashing the body politic, destroying soils, forests, wetlands, and biodiversity, and discharging greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere and the oceans like there’s no tomorrow—we’ve reached a new low, physically and morally. Distracted by know-nothing media conglomerates and betrayed by cowardly politicians and avaricious corporations, homo sapiens are facing, and unfortunately in many cases still denying, the most serious existential threat in our 200,000 year evolution—catastrophic climate change.
By John Atchenson in Common Dreams – The climate change talks to be held in Paris this December (COP 21 in UN lingo) are all about how much risk to the livability of our planet we’re willing to accept. And the dirty little secret is, we’re accepting a hell of a lot right now, and we’re imposing even more on our children and future generations. 2 degrees C is too high, and COP 21 isn’t on target to meet it in any case: The press accounts are referring to the 2 C limit as the “maximum safe level.” Scientists are more careful, referring to it as a “speed limit” or “guardrail,” and even this phrasing implies a level of protection that the 2C limit simply doesn’t afford. Doubt that? So far, human actions have increased the temperature by .85 degrees C over pre-industrial levels, and look what that’s done.
By Margaret Flowers for Beyond Extreme Energy. Washington, DC – In an open letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), more than eighty health professionals urge the FERC to stop permitting oil and gas infrastructure and to move to clean sustainable sources of energy to protect the health of people and the planet. The construction of oil and gas projects such as unconventional fracking, pipelines, compressor stations and export terminals which pollute with cancer and disease-causing chemicals is akin to an uncontrolled health experiment that is destroying communities and risking lives of residents. These projects also harm the workers who build and maintain them. For the health of all who are involved, health professionals demand that this unethical ‘experiment’ stop.
By Nadia Prupis in Common Dreams – The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Wednesday ruled against India over its national solar energy program in a case brought by the U.S. government, sparking outrage from labor and environmental advocates. As power demands grow in India, the country’s government put forth a plan to create 100,000 megawatts of energy from solar cells and modules, and included incentives to domestic manufacturers to use locally-developed equipment. According to Indian news outlets, the WTO ruled that India had discriminated against American manufacturers by providing such incentives, which violates global trade rules, and struck down those policies—siding with the U.S. government in a case that the Sierra Club said demonstrates the environmentally and economically destructive power of pro-corporate deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
By Juan Cole in The Nation – At the Asia Pacific Resilience Innovation Summit held in Honolulu, Hawaii, this week, Governor David Ige dropped a bombshell. His administration will not use natural gas to replace the state’s petroleum-fueled electricity plants, but will make a full-court press toward 100 percent renewables by 2045. Ige’s decisive and ambitious energy vision is making Hawaii into the world’s most important laboratory for humankind’s fight against climate change. He has, in addition, attracted an unlikely and enthusiastic partner in his embrace of green energy—the US military. Ige said Monday that LNG (liquefied natural gas) will not save the state money over time, given the plummeting prices of renewables. Moreover, “it is a fossil fuel,” i.e., it emits dangerous greenhouse gases. He explained that local jurisdictions in Hawaii are putting up a fight against natural gas, making permitting difficult.
By Lee Fang in The Intercept – Christopher Horner, an attorney who claims that the earth is cooling, is known within the scientific community for hounding climate change researchers with relentless investigations and public ridicule, often deriding scientists as “communists” and frauds. Horner is a regular guest on Fox News and CNN, and has been affiliated with a number of think tanks and legal organizations over the last decade. He has called for investigations of climate scientists affiliated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and NASA, and inundated climate researchers at major universities across the country with records requests that critics say are designed to distract them from their work.
By Emma Howard in The Guardian – Desmond Tutu, Vivienne Westwood, Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky are among a group of high-profile figures who will issue a mass call to action on Thursday ahead of the UN’s crunch climate change conference in Paris in December. They call for mass mobilisation on the scale of the slavery abolition and anti-apartheid movements to trigger “a great historical shift”. Their statement, published in the book Stop Climate Crimes, reads: “We are at a crossroads. We do not want to be compelled to survive in a world that has been made barely liveable for us … slavery and apartheid did not end because states decided to abolish them. Mass mobilisations left political leaders no other choice.” Bill McKibben, founder of environmental movement 350.org, which has launched the project with the anti-globalisation organisation Attac France, described the move as a “good first step” towards Paris.
By Ad Crable in Lancaster Online – Some 33 faculty members from three colleges in Lancaster County have sent a letter to Gov. Tom Wolf and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that stresses the validity of climate change and endorses President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan to cut carbon pollution at coal-fired power plants. The 33 from Franklin & Marshall College, Elizabethtown College and Millersville University also urged the EPA to adopt strong rules to capture methane pollution from oil and gas drilling, which they said was quickly becoming a major driver for climate change. “Without a planet that can sustain us, nothing else matters,” said Sarah Dawson, director of the Wohlsen Center for Sustainable Environment at F&M.
By Filiberto Nolasco Gomez in Elhuateque.com. Washington, DC – Responding to what they believe to be an illegal backroom deal between John Kerry’s State Department and pipeline company Enbridge activist’s have staged at protest at the home of Secretary of State John Kerry. Protesters argue that the pipeline deal would allow the Alberta Clipper tar sands pipeline expansion to proceed without any federal environmental review. Protesters appear to have there arms linked in plastic tubes in order to stage a sit in and risk arrest.
By Lindsay Abrams in Salon – Low-income and communities of color are on the front lines of climate change. They have, for that matter, been disproportionately shouldering the burden of our reliance on dirty energy since the beginning: nearly 40 percent of the people living and breathing in the vicinity of coal-fired power plants are people of color; not unrelatedly, asthma rates for African Americans are 35 percent higher than they are for Caucasians. Fighting climate change, and the energy revolution that doing so requires, is for many such communities a question of environmental justice. It’s also, Rev. Abrose Carroll tells Salon, an incredible opportunity. Carroll is the founder of Green the Church, a movement that’s “tapping into the power and purpose of the black church” as a moral and social leader on climate issues.
By Tish O’Dell in Alternet. Columbus, OH – With the oil and gas industry already reveling in a recent Ohio Supreme Court decision stripping local control on fracking and other extraction activities away from communities, the Secretary of State has now handed the industry another victory, opening the door for fracking infrastructure projects to spread even faster across Ohio. In a decision issued August 13, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted blocked citizens from voting on Home Rule Charter initiatives which include provisions on fracking infrastructure development.
By Lori Chandler in Big Think. Shell has received the final permits to drill off the coast of Alaska,courtesy of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE). Many in the oil industry are timid, citing the many high risks involved from both a business and environmental perspective. One expert even predicts that oil demand is set for a long-term decline. If that’s true, drilling in the Arctic would be an epic miscalculation — and a poor business decision. Former BP executive John Browne has publicly warned Shell of the potentially disastrous consequences of their decision, saying, “I think you’ve got to be careful what you do, and cost includes your long-term reputation.” I
Newsletter Climate Change, Climate Justice, Cornel West, Ferguson, Pipelines, Racism, Solar, TAFTA, TPP, TTIP, Wind By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org
August 22nd, 2015
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance – It has been a busy two weeks since our last newsletter for #BlackLivesMatter, seeking climate justice, fair wages and stopping the TPP. We have been doing weekly newsletters since Occupy, last week we missed our first week as we were at the Localize This Action Camp of the Backbone Campaign. The reality of our times and of our history is that truth needs a messenger. Truths, especially difficult ones to face, do not become known on their own. Telling the hard to face truths is where movements begin; spreading that truth creates a national consensus for change and is the source for mobilizations that force essential transformations.
By Kieran Suckling in The Huffington Post – When many people think of America’s public lands, they think about pristine, wide-open spaces in the West. But lurking beneath them is a massive carbon bomb that we unleash at our own peril. A new report released Wednesday finds that unleased fossil fuels on public lands and offshore areas – publicly owned fossil fuels controlled by federal agencies – hold up to 450 billion tons of greenhouse gases. If we allow that coal, oil and natural gas to be developed, we’ll cripple America’s ability to meet its obligation to cut carbon and avoid the worst effects of the global climate crisis. That’s why it’s never been more clear that President Obama – and whoever comes after him in the White House – needs to pledge to ban new fossil fuel leases on U.S. public lands and offshore coastal areas.
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