“Wake up, losers!” two miners yelled from their pickup truck, gunning the engine. “Wake up! Time to get a job! Better yet, time to get the f*** out of town!”

Ah, yes. Mornings in the coal fields of West Virginia. For wake-up calls, I generally prefer morning crickets, birds chirping, perhaps the smell of coffee – I’ll even take a few kicks to the ribs in bed from my little ones. Oddly enough, however, I must say I find taunts from belligerent coal miners to be highly motivational.

I’ve been in West Virginia the past few days to help bring an end to mountaintop removal. We’ve made it a top priority at Rainforest Action Network. Last week, 14 citizens were arrested in a high-altitude protest against leading mountaintop removal mining company Massey Energy. On Saturday, the New York Times stepped in with an editorial, “More than Stopgaps for Appalachia,” saying that recent steps from the Obama Administration, while a sign of progress, don’t solve the problem, because

“…it leaves in place the destructive Bush rules that essentially legalized the practice of dumping harmful waste in valleys and streams. The Obama administration has pledged to restore the old buffer zone restriction. But it has said nothing at all about redefining mining waste as an illegal pollutant, which it was before the Bush people came along. A bill before the House would do exactly that. The administration should do it first.”

Yesterday, a reported 800 people – including a hundred or so coal miners gathered in opposition – rallied at Marsh Fork Elementary School in West Virginia’s Coal River Valley. Following the rally, I joined Dr. James Hansen, Goldman Prize winner Judy Bonds, Daryl Hannah, local organizer Bo Webb and more than two dozen other residents in a peaceful civil disobedience at the Massey coal processing facility adjacent to the school.

There’s been high tension leading to yesterday’s demonstration. Last Friday, upon learning that Dr. Hansen would be joining the protest this week, Massey CEO Don Blankenship challenged the NASA scientist to a debate on climate change. Goading Dr. Hansen and others, Blankenship stated in a press release,

“While I don’t recall anyone inviting out-of-state environmental protesters from San Francisco and a Hollywood actress to Massey’s property on June 23, I’m more than willing to invite Dr. Hansen to have a factual discussion about coal mining in West Virginia…”

Blankenship upped the ante at yesterday’s event, giving time off to some of his loudest and most bellicose workers to come intimidate their neighbors. During the rally, miners tirelessly taunted each speaker, even shouting down local Reverend Jim Lewis while he gave a short prayer.

I can’t remember a more charged atmosphere. The majority of people surrounded one-half of the stage, supporting each speaker calling for an end to mountain blasting.
Separated by police, the remainder crowded around the rest of the stage, wearing Massey t-shirts and shouting their disapproval.

I spoke shortly after Ken Hechler, the 94-year-old former Congressional Representative who has decried the effects of mountaintop removal in his region for more than three decades. “I want to thank Don Blankenship for inviting me to this rally,” I began, to a mixture of catcalls and applause. I told the crowd that mountaintop removal isn’t just a local issue, it’s an American problem – brought to us by Massey Energy and other coal companies.

When utility companies wanted to dam the Grand Canyon, people across the country, not just in Arizona, rallied to protect an American treasure. And when loggers were liquidating ancient redwoods in California’s Headwaters Forest, Americans from every state exercised their right to preserve part of our natural legacy. Whether it was to end segregation or to honor women’s right to vote, Americans have always exercised their voice. And the tragedy of destroying mountains and burying streams for relatively small amounts of coal can’t be ignored by people in any state.

Then I turned to the miners. “I understand why you’re here,” I said. “I have two young children myself, and know the pressures of needing to feed your family.” Personally, I think its criminal the way workers in West Virginia are being treated by coal companies and government officials. Mountaintop removal is an abomination, and all bluster aside, it can’t feel good to be blowing up your own backyard.

Let’s be clear: this is a test of the Obama Administration’s resolve to stimulate a clean energy economy. High wind speeds throughout much of central Appalachia present an excellent opportunity for investments in clean and renewable wind power. The Coal River Valley, slated to be blasted by Massey Energy, could support a 328-megawatt wind farm. It’s one of the few places in the country where both the cause of climate change and its solution can be found in the exact same location. Will we make a deep commitment to clean energy and green jobs in the U.S.? Or will Big Coal continue to intimidate Americans from the coal fields to the Beltway?

It’s time to end mountaintop removal. We need your help. Check out this short video by James Hansen, and please get involved.
forward

On most days, we’re like any other card-carrying, food-conscious environmentalists. My wife and I shop at our local natural grocery store, dutifully selecting locally grown, organic produce. We planted fruit trees a few years ago, our summer vegetable garden is thriving, and we generally do what we can to make Michael Pollan proud.

But every now and then, late at night, we get a little wild. Often to the accompaniment of John Stewart, we’ll pull the blinds down, tip-toe past our sleeping daughter, reach into the darkest recesses of our cabinets, and pull out something sinful. My personal weakness is for cookies and chocolates. My wife is more the pretzels and chips type.

That was before we learned that palm oil – a common ingredient in many of our favorite munchies, not to mention soaps, cosmetics and biofuel – is one of the biggest causes of rainforest destruction and a prime accelerator of climate change.

Throughout Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and now South America as well, millions of acres of tropical rainforests are slashed and burned every year to make way for massive palm oil plantations. Gone are some of the most biologically diverse, carbon-absorbing ecosystems on the planet, which are home to orangutans, tigers, Sumatran rhinos and other endangered species – all replaced by endless rows of palm trees. The draining of peatlands and rampant deforestation has catapulted Indonesia to its status as the world’s third-highest greenhouse gas emitter, trailing only China and the United States. It’s a humanitarian nightmare as well: more than five million indigenous people in Indonesia alone are expected to be evicted from their lands by 2010 to make way for palm plantations.

Much of this palm oil makes its way to the United States, where the palm oil trade is driven by the “ABC’s of rainforest destruction,” giant agribusiness companies Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge and Cargill.

Through late spring and early summer, my organization, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), mobilized hundreds of volunteers to research where palm oil could be found on the shelves of American grocery stores. The news was mixed.

The bad news is that palm oil is nearly everywhere. Palm is used to produce everything from Cheez-Its, Oreos and Mrs. Fields cookies to Pop Tarts, Cool Whip and Ivory Soap. We found palm oil in surprising places, such as Whole Foods-branded products and Newman’s O’s. It’s in Twinkies, Twizzlers, Milky Way bars, even Girl Scout cookies.

The good news is that there are alternatives. As Glenn Hurowitz opined in the Los Angeles Times:

The great tragedy of all this palm oil use (about 30 million tons globally every year) is that it’s so easily replaced by healthier vegetable oils, like canola, that come from significantly less ecologically sensitive areas. Indeed, every single product I examined had either a variant or a competitor that didn’t contain palm oil — with no discernible effect on price or quality. Sitting next to those Whole Foods-brand water crackers were Haute Cuisine water crackers made with canola oil. Down the aisle from palm oil-laden Ivory soap was palm-oil-free Lever 2000.

Can we have our cake and our forests too? One step to take is to simply not buy from the companies that came up on RAN’s research list. That’s a decent start, but if consumers act collectively, we can challenge some of America’s most well-known food companies to make much deeper change.

Last week, RAN issued letters to more than 300 different companies, asking them to join us to protect rainforests and fight climate change by finding sustainable alternatives to the palm oil in their products. At the same time, more than 2,000 citizens across the country went to their local grocery stores to plaster stickers reading “Warning: Product May Contain Rainforest Destruction” on any products that contained palm oil. Online, we generated more than 1.3 million emails to those same companies, sent by people who, like many of us, probably enjoy the occasional late night snack, but aren’t wild about the accompanying rainforest destruction. Here’s what Fortune magazine had to say about it.

In 2008, we shouldn’t have to explain to Cargill, Keebler, or any other company that it’s not right to displace indigenous communities and chop down rainforests, but we must. To understand the pervasiveness of this problem, and to educate and pressure the companies that are putting palm oil on our shelves, stop by TheProblemWithPalmOil.org, take action, and let us know what you think.

The good folks at Appalachian Voices and Oil Change International have put together a great tool to show the ties between Congress and Big Coal. Want to know how much your legislator receives from the coal industry? Or the top overall recipients of coal cash in the House or Senate? How about which utilities or coal mining companies contribute the most to our elected officials? Click here to find out.

You’ll find that each of the top five (and nine of the top 10) recipients of coal industry money in the Senate voted against the solar bill. In the House, one proposed bill (H.R. 2169) would effectively end most mountaintop removal coal mining by prohibiting the dumping of mining waste into streams. Mountaintop removal mining has leveled nearly 500 mountains throughout Appalachia, burying more than 1,200 miles of streams and destroying hundreds of square miles of pristine Appalachian terrain in the process. Not surprisingly, only five of the 30 top recipients of coal money in the U.S. House have signed on as sponsors of this important bill.

Let’s face facts: to get clean energy, we need a clean government. As I wrote in my new book, Coming Clean:

“It’s time to get dirty-energy money out of politics, and to end corporate welfare to the richest industries in history. Politicians need to show some backbone to help our country create a clean-energy future. Elected officials can step up and disavow campaign contributions, travel junkets, or other financial perks from the coal and oil industries. It’s really quite simple: if we want our government to be independent of the fossil-fuel industry, then politicians have to prove they can’t be bought. And if we want to move decisively to safe and sustainable forms of energy, then we should stop using taxpayer dollars to subsidize some of the oldest and dirtiest forms of energy.

“Imagine what we could do with the fossil-fuel industry’s $49 billion in annual subsidies. We could provide Head Start schooling for all eligible children in the United States (about $2 billion), and medical care for uninsured U.S. kids ($6 billion). Rather than dole out taxpayer dollars to Exxon and other oil companies, we could subsidize the rapid development of plug-in hybrid vehicles or residential and industrial-scale solar arrays. We can declare independence from oil and coal, and clean up government in the process.”

It’s time to start holding politicians accountable to the rhetorical standards they so eagerly set for themselves. Next time you see a political ad touting wind power and the coming energy revolution, see for yourself whether the politician who “approved that message” is full of noble intentions, or just full of hot air.

On July 14th, the Ontario government agreed to prohibit development on at least half of the remaining wilderness areas in the region’s northern boreal forest – protecting about 56 million acres.

To put this in perspective, 56 million acres is about half the size of California, or 80 times the size of Yosemite National Park. It’s about equal to nearly all of the remaining roadless areas in the entire United States. If the government keeps its promise, we’ll have protected the largest untouched forest in Canada and the 3rd largest wetland in the world.

Not too bad, eh?

As much as this is encouraging news for critters and the climate (northern boreal ecosystems store about 97 billion tons of CO2), it’s also an important milestone for human rights in Canada, and maybe even the future of environmentalism. Here’s why. In addition to committing to protect important wilderness areas, the Ontario government also acknowledged its responsibility to seek the consent of its indigenous people, stating: “because any decision on development has the greatest affect on communities, local planning will only be done in agreement with First Nations.”

That might seem like a simple statement, but it has huge ramifications. As we learned in grade school, the last several centuries of human history is filled with ugly, tragic stories of Indigenous people being decimated or forced off their land by settlers and, more recently, industrial development. From the Amazon to Alberta, Indigenous communities continue to be threatened by oil, logging, mining, and other industries. But if the Ontario Government keeps its word, the 36 First Nations communities living in this region would have the right to refuse destructive projects on their territory.

That’s a huge victory, and it was won by a unique coalition that realized that environmental and human rights are one and the same. Indigenous communities such as Grassy Narrows, KI, Ardoch, Six Nations and others have been on the front lines of battles to assert their sovereign rights. In coordination with an international alliance of environmental, labor, and immigrant rights organizations, students, faith-based communities, and human rights groups, they’ve blockaded logging roads, lobbied the provincial government, and have created the political space for change. “It is critical that any development of natural resources in the Far North must respect Aboriginal and treaty rights while supporting an environmentally sustainable economic future for our people,” said Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Grand Chief Stan Beardy.

What’s next? First, we need to follow through to make sure this victory is fully realized. Visit here for the latest update. Meanwhile, a similar coalition of diverse interests can encourage other provinces in Canada to follow Ontario’s lead. On the heels of the boreal victory, last week the Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations filed a suit against the Alberta and federal government, asking the court to rule invalid the government authorization for thousands of oil projects on the band’s core territory.

It is clear that we are witnessing a transformation of the values and voices that determine resource extraction in Canada. The boreal is “unspoiled and undisturbed,” Ontario Premier McGuinty says. “And if there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s not going to stay that way forever unless we do something…It’s our responsibility as global citizens to get this right and to act now.”
Amen! Care to join us to make sure he keeps his word?

Late last week, John McCain supported Al Gore’s call for a nationwide commitment to a ten-year clean energy revolution by declaring, “If the vice president says it’s doable, I believe it’s doable.” In the hopes for a grand, bipartisan climate and energy deal in Congress, one might thought this was a breakthrough.

Don’t be fooled. By Monday, McCain launched a new attack ad that makes it perfectly clear the presumptive Republican nominee has something entirely different in mind.

The new 30-second spot, airing on national cable and in 11 battleground states, argues that the real reason gas prices are rising is because, “some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America, no to independence from foreign oil.”

But don’t fret – John McCain will rescue us! “One man knows we must now drill more in America and rescue our family budgets,” the announcer intones. “Don’t hope for more energy, vote for it.”

Can we please get real here? Oil companies aren’t interested in lowering gas prices. That’s why they’ve spent more of their profits buying back stock or giving cash to shareholders than they have exploring for more oil, according to Rice University.

And even the Bush Administration’s own U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) admits that expanded drilling won’t affect the current crisis. As Climate Progress’ Joe Romm first pointed out, an EIA analysis says “that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.”

Our choice here is to either repeat the same mistakes that got us into this mess in the first place, or to invest now in a clean energy future. Rather than scour the world for oil that is increasingly expensive and difficult to get, we can jumpstart automakers to build a fleet of plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles that get in excess of 100 mpg.

Think this is unrealistic? Check out CNN’s profile of electric car visionary Marc Geller, who shows how electric vehicles are ready for prime time today.

Kicking our oil habit can be fun. In my new book, Coming Clean: Breaking our Addiction to Oil and Coal, I describe the experience of riding in the new Tesla Roadster.

…the Tesla Roadster is an electric vehicle that can travel about 220 miles on a single charge. It beats the Lamborghini Murcielago and is quicker than any Porsche currently in production, traveling from zero to sixty in under four seconds–without a drop of gas. The price is a cool $92,000, yet the company’s first edition of one hundred Roadsters sold out in weeks.

I went for a test ride at the company’s headquarters in San Carlos one bright February morning. As we cruised through the hills above Silicon Valley, the company’s strategy became perfectly clear: Tesla wanted to help “retool” the auto industry by getting people excited about cars again. Because this car was fast. I felt like a pilot on Battlestar Galactica as the car accelerated, pushing me back in my seat. Tesla employees have a favorite trick to pull on passengers taking their first rides: he or she is asked to turn on the radio–and simultaneously the driver hits the accelerator. The passenger can’t sit forward enough to reach the dials.

Tesla plans to hit the family car market in 2010 or 2011. “We’ve always envisioned the company to be more than a high-end niche sports-car manufacturer,” says Straubel. “It’s a great way to change the worlds perceptions of EVs and to show what electric cars can do, but we want to make affordable vehicles in much greater quantities.” Adds Musk, Tesla’s chairman, “climate change is the biggest challenge that mankind has ever faced. If we can’t change such a simple thing as the cars we drive, were going to be in trouble.”

Gore describes the challenge of our oil addiction like this, “we’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that’s got to change.”

Every bit of it CAN change. We already have the technological solutions we need to solve our addiction to fossil fuels. Just as we don’t need to blow up mountains for more coal, we also don’t need to plunder our most fragile ecosystems for the last drops of oil we can find. Rather than dump our resources into the fossil fuel economy of last century, let’s invest in the clean energy economy of today.

All too often, our corporate meetings feel like cage wrestling, in that the executives on the other side of the table are trying to escape, trying to do whatever they can to avoid responsibility. They’ll spend as much time as they can get away with elaborating on their deep environmental commitments; they’ll go off on tangents and long stories; they’ll speak in the most vague and ambiguous terms, ask dozens of seemingly pointless questions, etc. etc.

It’s the same here in Japan. It seems as though the language of corporate delay and obfuscation is a universal one. We’ve had a couple meetings so far, and they’re actually going pretty well, but it’s been a workout, a chess match, to keep these meetings focused and to hold each company accountable. We’re meeting with 6-7 corporations while we’re here, pushing them to make statements supporting forest protection in Tasmania, and to cut any business ties to the evil-doers at Gunns.

This is our first trip to Japan since launching our office in Tokyo late last year. While we’re here we’re also meeting with reps from other NGOs like Greenpeace, JATAN (Japan Tropical Forest Action Network) artists, and other allies.  We met with a few journalists as well yesterday, one a freelancer, and another from the Kyodo News Agency, which is like a Japanese version of the AP. Both interviews went quite well, and we should see articles in the coming weeks and months.

More details to come when we get back, but I thought it might be interesting to hear what we’re doing all the way over here.

Sayonara,
Mike

When I was growing up, I used to ask my grandparents that question all the time. All four of my grandparents were young children when World War I started; they were young parents at the beginning of World War II. As a child, I just couldn’t imagine how people could live during those times. I couldn’t picture what life must have been like. Were they allowed to laugh or smile, when there was so much destruction and suffering? Did they go to parties? Did everyone talk about the war, all the time? How did they live?

Of course, we all know now what it’s like to live during a long war in the 21st century. It can be so difficult to open your heart to the suffering in the world today, and so easy to settle in to the routine of our day-to-day existence. Each day we wake up, rush to work, get together with friends, get caught in traffic, get caught in office politics, get caught in emails… and each day so many time zones away, another family is terrorized at gunpoint, another young soldier is killed, a home is destroyed, a child is killed while her sister is raped. And if you live in America, it’s being done in your name.

Nearly a dozen of us at Rainforest Action Network are joining Code Pink and thousands of others around the world who are fasting to end the war in Iraq and to bring our troops home now. We believe deeply in nonviolence, and have the highest respect for Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and others who used the weapon of love to make the world a better place.

For what purpose have we been ruining the lives of so many American and Iraqi families? It’s time to bring the troops home. Fast.

Michael Brune
Executive Director
Rainforest Action Network

These stories are excellent, but what does it all mean? Mark Twain famously said, “Everyone is talking about the weather, but nobody is doing anything about it.” It’s important to raise awareness about global warming, but it is imperative for our corporate and political leaders to take action. How many severe storms must we endure before the President shows leadership on climate? How many communities threatened or species extinguished before Ford Motor Company, Chevron, and the rest of corporate America takes responsibility?

Let’s hope that we don’t get simply more hot air. Indeed, flipping through the pages of the current Time, one will find ads from British Petroleum, Ford, General Motors – companies that are rarely accused of being climate heroes. We need to make sure that these companies aren’t allowed to actually market themselves and profit through the perception that they are leaders on climate, but without really doing much. As RAN campaigner Bill Barclay said yesterday, paraphrasing JFK, “Ask not what the climate crisis can do for you, but what you can do for the climate crisis.”