When it comes to fighting climate change, people power is our greatest weapon. This is the message I took with me from CCAN’s screening of the documentary Chasing Ice in Richmond. Last Thursday night at the Camel, I was able to see what comes of weeks of planning, stress, and seemingly endless phone calls and emails. The result was a room full of people who were motivated and ready to take action against climate change.
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By Marlena Chertock
About 500 residents, politicians and activists showed support for climate-change policies at an Organizing For Action town hall last week at the Silver Spring Civic Center.
“Cleaner air leads to healthier families,” said Neeta Datt, the county director of OFA.
The nearly four-hour meeting was the first in a month of action for OFA, a nonprofit that supports President Barack Obama’s agenda.
Speakers focused on the president’s plan, but also encouraged action on an individual level.
By Robert McCabe
Environmental groups on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging the U.S. government’s backing of a loan that facilitates the export of some Appalachian coal through the ports of Hampton Roads and Baltimore.
The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco, alleges that the U.S. Export-Import Bank broke federal law by approving a $90 million loan guarantee in support of Latrobe, Pa.-based coal broker Xcoal Energy & Resources LLC without first preparing an “environmental impact statement.”
The taxpayer-backed financing, approved on May 24, 2012, will help leverage $1 billion in coal exports from Appalachia to markets in Japan, South Korea, China and Italy through coal terminals in Hampton Roads and Baltimore, the groups said.
By Tamara Dietrich
As a registered nurse at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital for more than 20 years, Lorraine Ortega has noticed more and more serious asthma patients who need treatment.
“I was alarmed by the increased number of acute asthmatics in our area, as well as people actually being diagnosed with lung cancer when they’re non-smokers,” Ortega said.
One of those acute asthmatics happens to be Ortega’s daughter, who’s wound up several times in the emergency room. Ortega says she’s also had her own share of “really, really bad lung congestion” and pulmonary issues, even though she, too, is a non-smoker. She didn’t have such problems before moving from Brooklyn to Chesapeake in 1991.
She believes the culprit is coal.
By Matthew Bieniek
CUMBERLAND — At the same time the coal industry is fighting against what industry leaders say is a war on coal, several environmental groups have filed a lawsuit to fight multimillion dollar loan guarantees to export U.S. coal to foreign nations including Japan, South Korea, China and Italy.
Much of that coal leaves the country through the Port of Baltimore.
By Max Ehrenfreund
Above the harbor in Baltimore’s industrial Curtis Hill district is a one-acre urban farm. Jason Reed, a community organizer who works there, described the view. “I can look out over the harbor, and you can see the piles and piles of coal,” he said.
That coal is the subject of a lawsuit filed Wednesday by a coalition of environmental groups against the Export-Import Bank of the United States. The groups are challenging the federal agency’s financing of fossil fuel exports from ports in Baltimore and Hampton Roads.
From July 19th to July 26th, grandparents, parents and young people, from age 15 to 78, journeyed together on a eight-day trek from Camp David to the White House. After 100 miles of sweat and blisters through this summer’s worst heat wave, the Walk for Our Grandchildren reached DC today. Dozens gathered downtown at the headquarter of ERM to expose corporate influence in the US Department of State’s analsysis of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Tomorrow, we will reach our ultimate goal – the White House, calling upon President Obama to demonstrate substantive leadership on climate by rejecting the KXL.
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By Emily Moschetto
Almost 50 people gathered outside the Loudoun County Government Center Tuesday afternoon to catch the attention of local leaders and to raise awareness about how Loudouners can help combat climate change.
The “Wake Up Loudoun” rally drew members of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and a group of activists from the “Walk for Our Grandchildren” group who are in the midst of a 100-mile walk from Camp David to the White House.
By Erin Cox and Tim Wheeler
The O’Malley administration’s aggressive new plan to fight climate change calls for Maryland residents to further cut their energy use or face higher monthly utility bills.
The plan, to be released Thursday by Gov. Martin O’Malley, also requires that more of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020.
Maryland’s goals for reducing greenhouse gases are among the most ambitious in the nation. The plan requires stricter measures than previously proposed to meet the requirement set by the General Assembly in 2009 to cut carbon emissions that scientists say drive climate change.
The following is a Day 4 update by Elisabeth Hoffman, who’s on the trail of the Walk for Our Grandchildren, July 19th-July 27th.
For our children, we would do anything.
From the mundane to the extraordinary, we have done what ever was necessary to protect, clothe, educate, and help them grow.
Parents on the 2013 Walk For Our Grandchildren baby-proofed the house, stayed up all night with sick children, coached, and volunteered in schools. Some gave up lucrative jobs to work from home for their children or to go sledding on snow days. Those memories are now the fuel that moves them onward step by step to Washington, DC.
Bill Ramsey of Asheville, NC instilled a love of nature in his children with summer backpacking and camping trips. But they also participated in protests, including once when his oldest son, then two years old and out of view in a backpack, was inadvertently arrested with him at a farm workers’ strike. “They’ve seen me, day after day, working and acting as if we can create change,” he said. Bill now walks for his grandchildren, age eight and three.
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