"What do we want? Clean Energy! When do we want it? Now!"

This is a guest post from University of Mary Washington student and UMW Ecology Club activist, Tori Wong.

Green hardhats, American flags, congressional petitions and an endless supply of energetic optimism filled the lawn of Hurkamp park in downtown Fredericksburg Thursday night as University of Mary Washington students and community organizers joined together to show support for clean energy and to take action to make it happen.

The event, which featured speakers from the Spotsylvania County government, local clean energy businesses, the Rapahanock branch of the Sierra Club, and the UMW Ecology Club, was one of six “Clean Energy, Bright Future” rallies planned in Virginia for the evening of September 17th. The goal of the rallies was to create public support and demand for a national climate policy as Congress considers legislation to cap global warming pollution and invest in education for a clean-energy economy. The Fredericksburg rally was coordinated in part by the Sierra Club and the University of Mary Washington’s student-run environmental group, the Ecology Club.

At the rally, UMW students set up “action tables” where they encouraged all attendees to fill out postcards to Virginia Senators Warner and Webb. These postcards will be sent by the thousands to the senators’ offices to show Virginia’s, and especially Virginia college student’s support for strong clean-energy legislation. They were also writing letters to the editors of all local newspapers, showing their enthusiasm for taking action towards clean energy.

University of Mary Washington senior, Nate Delano opened the rally with the well-known Mark Twain quote, “There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist,” and was followed by Doris Whitfield, Chair of the Rappahannock Group of the Sierra Club, Bob Bennett, Founder of Energy and Environment, Inc. an international renewable energy company based in Spotsylvania County and Henry “Hap” Connors, Chancellor Supervisor for the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors. All speakers emphasized the importance of action and optimism, and applauded the wonderful turnout especially of young people and college students.

Gotta love those judges…

gavel Yesterday, the 2nd circuit court of appeals in New York overturned a lower court decision brought by 8 states against 5 of the largest electricity providers in the country. The court said that greenhouse gases, like traditional air pollutants, can be considered under common law as a “nuisance”. The decision provides yet another “feather” in the proverbial legal “cap” of progressive states and environmental advocates to address CO2 emissions from the biggest climate change offenders via the courts. Way to go 2nd circuit! Continue reading

Pittsburgh to Host G-20 and G-20 Protests

Today, September 22nd, is the first day of the United Nations opening session in New York City where heads of state from all over the world are speaking publicly about the climate crisis and, in some cases, what their country is doing and intends to do about it.

Two days from now, some of these same heads of state will travel west to Pittsburgh, Pa. for a summit meeting of the G-20. Part of the G-20 agenda is the climate crisis; specifically, how on-going negotiations can be advanced so that at the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in December, a new and stronger climate treaty than the Kyoto Protocol can emerge.

Climate activists and other activists will be taking part in a variety of actions outside the G-20 meeting in the streets and elsewhere. There will be a number of climate-related activities. The major one is taking place on Wednesday evening when the Alliance for Climate Protection’s Repower America campaign, the United Steelworkers and the Blue Green Alliance will conclude their Clean Energy Jobs Tour with a rally beginning at 7 pm. The Jobs Tour, a month-long campaign with more than 50 events in 22 states, highlighted how a transition to a clean energy economy will create jobs while reducing harmful carbon pollution and our dependence on foreign oil.

The Wednesday evening event will feature musical entertainment, including Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, the Pittsburgh Gospel Choir and Grammy-award winning artist Kathy Mattea. Scheduled speakers include Pa. Governor Ed Rendell, Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, Rich Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO and Rev. Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus.

The event will take place in Point State Park. Click here for more information.

Other climate-related events include a Wednesday afternoon forum on “Challenging the G20’s Agenda of Corporate Globalization, a Thursday morning breakfast with Larry Schweiger, President/CEO of the National Wildlife Federation and a Thursday afternoon Jobs and Climate Solutions Press Conference featuring youth leaders from the United States and India.
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Copenhagen: Turning Point or More of the Same Old Same Old?

This coming week, in New York City and Pittsburgh, there will be important United Nations and G20 meetings that could advance the process of coming up with a new international treaty to address the climate crisis. This coming week will also see the opening salvo of “civil society” groups in the streets taking action to press their demands for not just any treaty but one that is strong and fair, one that reflects the deepening of the crisis.

From December 7-18, in Copenhagen, Denmark, 190 or so nations will come together in for the annual U.N. Climate Conference, but this one is particularly important. One reason is that it will be the first one in eight years where the U.S. delegation will be led by people who believe that climate change is real, serious and that action is needed to address it. But much more significant is that this is the U.N. conference that was planned, two years ago at a UN climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, as the place and the time that the world had to come up with a much stronger international climate treaty than the Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol became operative on February 16, 2005, and as of sometime in 2012 it will no longer be in effect. The countries which signed it and agreed to reduce their emissions by an average of 5% below 1990 levels have until then to do so. At that point, if there is no international treaty that has been negotiated, ratified by enough countries and gone into effect, there will be nothing that replaces the expired Kyoto treaty.

Since it is expected that it will take at least two years for enough countries to ratify a treaty, the Copenhagen conference has been seen as critical so that there’s no gap in between Kyoto and a new treaty. However, as we’re less than three months out from Copenhagen, with 15 actual negotiating days between now and the end of Copenhagen (including five days in Barcelona, Spain Nov. 2-6), and with a significant number of major issues unresolved and points of conflict, especially between the countries of the Global South (developing countries) and the Global North (developed), it is not looking hopeful for any kind of treaty, much less a good one, to be adopted and signed at Copenhagen. Continue reading

Can We Make It?

Future Hope column, August 29, 2009

More than once over the last several years I have talked with people who understand the deep hole humankind has dug for itself because of our reliance on fossil fuels and the dominant system’s environmentally destructive model of “development.” They have difficulty seeing a way that we will ever get out of this hole. Intuitively, they see little hope that we can avoid climate catastrophe. They ask me why I’m doing what I’m doing given that likelihood.

What I say to them is, OK, let’s assume the worst. Let’s accept that it is unlikely that we will be able to overcome in enough time the power of the fossil fuel interests and those allied with them and enact a clean energy revolution in enough time. Let’s accept that throughout this century billions of people will die and the world’s population is reduced to several hundred million people, the prediction of James Lovelock. What then? What does that mean for those of us alive today who want to do the right thing with our lives? Continue reading

How to Get a Strong Senate Climate Bill, Part 5: Fight teabaggers, astroturfers and town-hall mobs

If you’re reading this post, and you’re not a right wing-nut blogger looking for something to froth at the mouth about, chances are you’re a progressive activist type who takes the democratic process seriously enough to stay informed on the issues and occasionally respectfully push and prod your elected officials on them. If that’s the case, odds are you’re also pretty appalled, disgusted, and downright frustrated with the hysterical, anti-democratic mobs and their corporate ringleaders who have attempted to hijack the debate over health care over the last few weeks.

If you’re reading this post, it’s also a big no brainer that you’re here to read about climate policy not the health care debate. Maybe you revile the tea-bagger maniacs that are turning town halls into town hells but as a climate activist you’re not going to get too worried or worked out about them until they start coming for climate policy as well. Well if that’s the case then my advice to you would be to start getting worried and start taking action.

Emboldened by the well-publicized scenes of ignorant, disruptive fury that have stifled rational dialogue over real policy at town halls over the past few weeks, opponents of federal climate change action including the American Petroleum Institute and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity have already initiated campaigns to employ the same types of anti-democratic tactics to derail Congressional efforts to pass a climate bill this fall. Last week, API launched its’ “Energy Citizens” initiative Continue reading

Don't Let the Polluters Get Away With This!

A recent Zogby International poll reported that 67% of likely voters “believe Congress is either doing the right amount (22%) or should be doing more (45%) to address global warming. Just 28% believe that Congress is doing too much.”

That helps to explain why the American Petroleum Institute (API), along with groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Conservative Union and Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks are holding “Energy Citizen” rallies all over the country starting today in Houston, Texas. Their purpose? To “call on the Senate to oppose unsound energy policy and ‘get it right.'”

In other words, maintain our addiction to and dependence on polluting and dangerous fossil fuels.

It is critical that supporters of energy reform show up to these API-organized rallies and the ongoing town hall meetings Congress members are holding across the nation. We need to speak the truth about the necessity of strong federal legislation to address the climate crisis and jumpstart a clean energy economy!

Who will be at these rallies? A lot of them will be employees of API member groups. In a memo written by API President and CEO Jack Gerard obtained and released by Greenpeace a few days ago, Gerard urges member groups to provide “strong support for employee participation in the rallies.”

Talk about an Astroturf group!

These rallies are coming as health insurance companies, “clean coal” proponents and right-wing groups are mobilizing to try to intimidate elected officials at town hall meetings in support of their conservative agenda.
We don’t know where all the town meetings over the next few weeks are being held, but we do know where the API rallies are being held (more here):

8/18, Houston, Texas, Verizon Wireless Center, 11:30 am
8/20, Roswell, NM, Eastern New Mexico Fairgrounds, Arts and Crafts Building, 11:30 am
8/20, Greensboro, NC, Greensboro Coliseum, 5:30 pm
8/21, Lima, Oh, Veterans’ Memorial and Civic Center, 11:30 am
8/21, Farmington, NM, Convention Center at McGee Park, 11:30 am
8/22, Atlanta, Ga., Marriott Century Center, 11:30 am
8/25, Elkhart, In., RV Hall of Fame, 11:00 am
8/25, Greeley, Co., Island Grove Regional Park, TBD
8/25, Nashville, Tn., Wild Horse Saloon, 11:30 am
8/27, Bismarck, ND, National Center of Energy Excellence at Bismarck State College, TBD
8/27, Tampa, Fl., Tampa Convention Center, 5 pm
8/27, St. Louis, Mo., Hilton at the Ballpark, 11:30 am
8/31, Greenville, SC, Carolina First Center, 5 pm
8/31, Minneapolis/St. Paul, South St. Paul Hotel and Convention Center, PM TBD
8/31, Anchorage, Ak., Anchorage Convention Center, TBD
9/1, Springfield, Il., TBD
9/3, Detroit, Mi., Burton Manor Banquet and Conference Center, TBD
9/3, Richmond, Va., TBD
9/3, Philadelphia, Pa., TBD, 4:30 pm
9/5, Lincoln, Nb., Embassy Suites Lincoln, 2:30 pm
9/7, Huron, SD, Freedom Stage, South Dakota State Fair, 1:15 pm

If you live in or are close to one of these locations and would like contact information for the primary local organizer, write to me at ted@chesapeakeclimate.org. I can also suggest some creative possibilities for what you could do.

If you go to one of these rallies, leave a comment here letting us know what you are able to pull together.

Let’s stand up for clean energy and strong action on the climate crisis now!
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