Remember that time, last fall, when we found out that the police were spying on Mike Tidwell and other CCAN staffers? Well, it has now come to my attention that Governor O’Malley is being obstructionist about passing a law that protects against future violations of First Amendment rights. Take action now! 
The time is now to urge Governor O
Great photo from yesterday’s event by Chris Eichler.
When I arrived at Spirit of Justice park, at least four inches of snow were on the ground and more was coming down. On the largest day of civil disobedience on climate change in history, an unusual March snowstorm hit the region. Braving the cold, frozen toes and wet snow, thousands of activists still came out to participate in this action. They were joined by the “stars” of climate activism: Bill McKibben, Gus Speth, James Hansen, Wendell Berry, Mike Tidwell and others, and by stars in other realms: Robert Kennedy and Daryl Hannah. Check out pictures and video on the Capitol Climate Action site.
As we marched around the plant, residents in the neighborhood came out to yell cheers of support. Standing in the doorway with her young son, a woman shouted, “Thank you!” Continue reading
UPDATE: Andrew Revkin weighs in: “Climate Campaigners Were on Terrorist List“
Pictures from the rally posted here>>
Letter from Mike:
Since 2001, I have devoted my life entirely to the peaceful promotion of windmills and solar panels to solve global warming. Apparently not everyone liked my work, however. Believe it or not, the Maryland State Police – your state police – put my name in their criminal intelligence database as a “suspected terrorist” as part of their larger program of collecting information about political activists in 2005-2006. I was on this outrageous “watch” list apparently because of a single act of peaceful civil disobedience I participated in outside a coal-fired power plant in 2004. CCAN’s former deputy director Josh Tulkin was also put in the database as was another former CCAN staffer who has chosen to remain anonymous. Neither of these people has ever been arrested for anything in their entire lives. (See background below) Continue reading
As the clamor grows on the Right to “Drill Baby Drill”, clean energy wind farms are spreading across the land, and at sea. A major project, involving 78 windmills, is being built off the Delaware coast, near the Maryland border, by Bluewater Wind. The wind farm will provide electricity to 130,000 homes and, says Bluewater’s Jim Lanard, a second wind farm is under consideration for off-shore Maryland. Watch this edition of Mike Tidwell’s TV show, 21st Century Life.
On September 27th, people all across the nation held nearly 700 events calling for Green Jobs NOW! Mike Tidwell spoke at the green jobs event in Anacostia, DC and called for the United States to tap into “Energy from Heaven:
I’ve never heard energy talked about in those terms before. What do you think?
Has anyone noticed that our local weather in the D.C. region has turned truly screwy? We go from one bizarre weather condition to the next with almost no pause in between for “normal” conditions. It’s too wet, too dry, too cold, too warm, too windy – nearly all the time. Hmmm? And scientists and average people all over the world, from Japan to Argentina, report similar strangeness. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times recently wrote from Kenya that the Serengeti’s April rains, so critical to that famous ecosystem, haven’t shown up this spring. And they didn’t come last year. There’s just no normal weather anymore. Anywhere.
In the D.C. region nothing illustrates this better than the annual Martin Luther King parade. Last year, tired of the cold and grayness of January, the organizers decided to move the annual parade to early April. The result? This year on January 16th (the official King holiday) it was 70 degrees in D.C. Remember all that freakish winter warmth? Outdoor barbeques broke out all over the city on backyard decks still festooned with Christmas decorations. And on Saturday, April 7th, the date of the “warmer” and more hospitable MLK parade? There was actually snow on the ground. The parade majorettes and tuba players woke up to 34 degrees and a blanket of snow on the ground, the most April snow in DC since 1924.
And yes, I know: There’s always been weird weather that occasionally defies the seasonal norms, sometimes dramatically. It’s part of the natural unpredictability of weather. And if you listen to the dismissive climate rants of the Rush Limbaugh crowd, you’ll yield to that inner voice that wants to reassuringly say: Don’t worry. It’s all normal. Everything’s okay. Continue reading
Enough with the bloody lightbulbs already!
By Mike Tidwell
Published in Grist, www.grist.org
04 Sep 2007
Strange but true: Energy-efficient light bulbs and hybrid cars are hurting our nation’s budding efforts to fight global warming.
More precisely, every time an activist or politician hectors the public to voluntarily reach for a new bulb or spend extra on a Prius, ExxonMobil heaves a big sigh of relief.
Scientists now scream the news about global warming: it’s already here and could soon, very soon, bring tremendous chaos and pain to our world. The networks and newspapers have begun running urgent stories almost daily: The Greenland ice sheet is vanishing! Sea levels are rising! Wildfires are out of control! Hurricanes are getting bigger!
But what’s the solution? Most media sidebars and web links quickly send us to that peppy and bright list we all know so well, one vaguely reminiscent of Better Homes and Gardens: “10 Things You Can Do to Save the Planet.” Standard steps include: change three light bulbs. Consider a hybrid car for your next purchase. Tell the kids to turn out the lights. Even during the recent Al Gore-inspired Live Earth concerts, the phrase “planetary emergency” was followed by “wear more clothes indoors in winter” and “download your music at home to save on the shipping fuel for CDs.”
Nice little gestures all, but are you kidding me? Does anyone think this is the answer? Continue reading
On August 17th, Mike Tidwell appeared on PBS’s Bill Moyers Journal to revisit the Hurricane Katrina disaster and discuss how global warming is turning every coastal city into the next New Orleans. Here’s an excerpt of the interview:
What gives me optimism in the face of this overwhelming challenge, and, you know, Katrina really is a curtain-raiser. If you want to know what Miami’s going to look like 100 years from now, go to New Orleans today. Below sea level, behind levees, battered by huge storms– if we don’t stop global warming. This climate crisis is here now. The Great Lakes are dropping in water levels. Texas has got too much rain. The Carolinas too little. Hurricanes are getting more intense– it’s here now. It’s not a maybe, kinda sorta, maybe thing in the future that computer modeling says is coming. It’s already deeply here. So, the fact that it’s here, that this giant climate system with all the momentum built in it toward warming, it’s already unpacking its bags. What could possibly give us the optimism and hope that we can now respond at this late stage, strongly and fiercely enough to hold it in check? And the thing that I come back to is, when we decide to change, we tend to change explosively. You know, Look at the great changes in World War II and all these things that have happened in the 20th Century. I believe that this issue of climate change and sustainable– sustainability, which also implies questions of human rights, and fairness. When this light bulb finally goes on, and it’s going on.
You know, I think Katrina opened the door, Al Gore walked through it. And the zeitgeist changed a lot more. But once we finally really get serious, we’re going to change really fast.
Click here to watch it yourself or watch it below: