Todd Zimmer of RAN introduced the panel by noting that the audience included community members from Charlotte as well as student leaders of the campus fossil fuel divestment movement from Western Washington, Brown, Harvard, and Davidson. Todd remarked that although Bank of America has stated its intention to be a leader on climate and clean energy, its track record as the number one funder of the coal industry is in direct conflict with this ambition. The bank’s lending and financing decisions involving the coal industry that are made at the bank’s headquarters in Uptown Charlotte impose immense costs for communities in the U.S. and around the world.

The first guest speaker, Ashish Fernandes of Greenpeace spoke about the dangers of India’s coal industry to rural communities, the environment, and to investors exposed to risky energy infrastructure in the country. Contrary to the myth that a coal boom in India is inevitable due to the country’s energy needs, most new coal plants and mines face huge community opposition across India. In the last three years alone, courts have sent back at least four different power plants to drawing board. India produces 65 percent of its electricity from coal, and produces 90% of its coal from open pit mines, which endanger over a million hectares of forest, and threaten the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities in the country’s coal belt. Fortunately, wind is now cheaper than new coal plants in India and solar will reach grid parity with coal in under four years. However, the enduring influence of India’s coal lobby risks locking the country into coal dependence.

Next, Barbara Gottlieb, the director of health and advocacy for Physicians for Social Responsibility spoke to the global impacts of climate change on health. She began by highlighting that climate change is no longer a theoretical problem: It is happening now, and it is happening to us. Furthermore, she emphasized that climate change is not just an environmental issue. The British medical journal The Lancet called climate change “the health challenge of the 21^st Century.” Barbara noted that climate change is associated with more frequent and more intense storms, extreme heat waves, and drought, all of which pose acute risks to human health. She concluded by stressing that there is a way forward for Bank of America and the financial sector: Shifting their financing to clean, renewable energy.

Next, Bonnie McKinley from Portland, Oregon spoke to her experiences working with Power Past Coal and Rising Tide North America to fight plans to export coal from Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin through ports on the Pacific Northwest. Currently, Arch Coal, Peabody Energy, Kinder Morgan, and other companies have introduced plans to build export infrastructure to ship Powder River Basin coal to be burned in India, China, and elsewhere in Asia. These proposed coal export terminals would bring up to 70 coal trains per day (each up to a mile-and-a-half long) through residential neighborhoods, leaving a trail of heavy metal-laden coal dust and putting communities at risk for derailments. Bonnie concluded on a hopeful note, remarking that a proposed railway for coal exports would never be built because, in the words of activist Vanessa Braided Hair, “Arch Coal understands money. What Arch Coal doesn’t understand is community. They don’t understand history. They don’t understand the Cheyenne people whose ancestors fought and died for the land that they are proposing to destroy. They don’t understand the fierceness with which the people, both Indian and non-Indian, in southeastern Montana love the land.” Bonnie also had a message for her baby boomer peers, urging them to take action to protect their communities and the climate: “Please get out and work for our special planet.”

Finally, Kathy Selvage from Wise County, West Virgina spoke about her decade-long experience fighting the impacts of mountaintop removal mining in her community and throughout Appalachia. She began by calling for the bank to “return to the integrity I knew decades ago” as an employee of a predecessor bank, Wise County National. Kathy spoke of her mother, who “would go outside and read the bible on front porch, then raise eyes to ponder what she had just read. When she raised her eyes, she saw a beautiful mountain across from her.” But after Glen Morgan Properties destroyed the mountain as part of one of their mountaintop removal mines, when her mother raised her eyes, “she saw the devastation of god’s creation.” The devastation wrought by the coal company that destroyed her community inspired Kathy to become active in the fight against mountaintop removal.

Kathy concluded by urging the audience to think about the interconnections between climate change, mountaintop removal, and other environmental issues. Faced with growing evidence of environmental threats hurting our communities and the environment, she reminded us that “we can no longer afford to stand still like we’re not a part of this planet.”

The Church of Stop Shopping returns to New York now, after a week in the Bay Area.  A highlight:  we launched the “Extinction Resurrection” campaign at the front doors and inside the big banks that finance climate disruption. Then, each evening we went indoors to a concert stage–and direct activism spiced up the prayers, songs, and shouts of “Earthalujah!”

In “The Revolt of the Golden Toads” tour, we concentrated our crawling and hopping on JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America–which move billions into coal-fired power plants. We believe that the Golden Toad was forced into extinction 25 years ago by drought conditions in their cloud forest home–destruction that was funded by these banks.

Our impact this week in San Francisco? It is impossible to make Nielsen Ratings from activism. Clearly more and more people know they must now be Earth radicals. Put some URGENCY in the EMERGENCY. Our post-big-daddy-god church, with the wonderful music, tries to activate direct action. In nine Bay Area performance events we had something short of 2000 individuals in our audiences. Our media coverage was good and in our interviews we tried to be guided by the Extinction Resurrection theme, which is surreal and funny–but people get it.  It’s about survival.

We’re not celebrities. Celebrities don’t “Stop Shop.” So we have to land the message manually. During “Toads” we went at it non-stop for 6 days and 6 nights. The upside for the non-celebrity approach is this: it builds communities. (We call people who join our church–the citizens of “Earthalujahville.”  For instance, we were fed, transported, and offered beds by Earthalujahville citizens as we zig-zagged around the Bay.)

Everyone in the Stop Shopping Church experienced Hurricane Sandy–and the super storm created our new songs and put us into the masks of extinct beings. Last November we were left thinking that Earth is destroying consumerism on purpose. Earth is interrupting the sale. Why? Because consumerism keeps us a bunch of little apex predators and that adds up to a horrific Super Devil. Then again, anything that distracts us from this Eco-pocalypse is the Devil and must be cast out.

Extinction Resurrection. The Dark and the Light. Honest assessment of the current environmental movement leaves us feeling dark. But the ecstatic release of a good direct action raises us to the light. Darker and Brighter. Extinction and Resurrection. It’s the up and down and up of Evolution. We felt the darkness when we performed at Oakland City Hall and felt the memory of police violence there during Occupy. But moments later we unloaded some happy toad gospel at the Chase Bank across the street. They closed the bank and locked the doors after our first song. So they had to seal off the hushed high church of the bank. So we sang on the sidewalk and sent happy curses up into the surveillance system. Eventually we’ll be naked animals hopping on Jamie Dimon’s desk. Earthalujah!

We wish to thank RAN for posting these reports. Now the toad hops back to NYC, then over the Atlantic.

To be updated with Rev. Billy and The Church of Stop Shopping tour dates, click here for tour dates.

Photo Credit: Steve Rhodes

As our title indicates, coal has become an extreme investment. Long touted as a cheap and abundant fuel, coal’s environmental and public health costs are becoming increasingly acute: A 2011 Harvard School of Public Health study found that coal mining and combustion in the U.S. imposes between a third to over one half of a trillion dollars in externalized environmental and health costs each year.

Despite mounting evidence of the extreme impacts of the coal industry on the climate and human health, in 2012, US bank financing practices have failed to address the acute risks and impacts of the financing the “worst of the worst” companies in the coal industry. Even as U.S. coal consumption for power generation fell 11 percent in 2012, the top three U.S. financiers of the coal industry (Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase) collectively financed an estimated $9 billion for mountaintop removal mining companies and the most coal-intensive power utilities last year. The report card also finds that the broader banking sector remains deeply exposed to the coal industry, providing $20.8 billion in financing for these companies in 2012.

With few exceptions, bank lending and financing policies for the coal sector for this year’s report card received disappointingly low grades. Although Wells Fargo improved to a “C” for taking steps to improve its mountaintop removal mining lending practices and HSBC North America received a “C-“ for policies covering its lending to coal-fired power, grades for the rest of the U.S. banking sector showed almost no improvement from last year.

The long-term financial outlook for companies involved with coal mining, transportation, and combustion remains highly uncertain. As we note in one of our report’s case studies, Patriot Coal, a coal mining company with major MTR operations filed for bankruptcy last year and agreed to phase out its MTR operations. Of the 12 other MTR companies profiled in the report, only one had an S&P credit rating above ‘junk.’ Last month, investors scrapped a controversial plan to export coal through Coos Bay, Oregon. And on April 16^th, the Texas power company Energy Future Holdings (formerly TXU) announced plans to file for bankruptcy due in part to the deteriorating financial picture for the company’s fleet of coal-fired power plants.

Last year, even with the coal industry’s bankruptcies, risky proposals for coal plant upgrades, and coal export terminals, Wall Street doubled down on its exposure to the industry, despite its incredibly uncertain future. Unfortunately, they’re not just gambling with their own money. Bad investments can be written off, but coal’s impacts on human health and the environment are severe, permanent, and irreversible.

Ben Kessler at the Tar Sands Action last August; via We Are Powershift

I’ve been organizing campaigns and non-violent direct actions for a long time. Over ten years now. Most of the time, I hear stories about the screwed up things our government and corporations do and I take it in stride. Every once in a while, something pops and it gets under my skin. A lot.

Case in point.

This week, the Ft. Worth Weekly (Ft. Worth’s alt weekly) posted a follow up story to last month’s Washington Post expose about the FBI investigating Rising Tide North Texas, anti-fracking activists in Denton, TX, my friend and comrade Ben Kessler and his professor at the University of North Texas Adam Briggle.

The reporter, Andrew McLemore, provided more details about the FBI and Dallas Police Dept.’s conversations with Briggle:

“The law enforcement officers asked Briggle about his involvement with the Denton Stakeholder Drilling Advisory Group, a group of residents lobbying the city council to stop issuing permits for gas drilling until potential environmental impacts are studied.

The agent and police officer also asked the professor about Kessler, who took his ethical theory course, and about some of his assigned readings. Oh, and they also asked him about IEDs, improvised explosive devices of the sort used by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“A question like that is so out of left field, it just sort of stuns you,” Briggle said. “It seemed like this was about Ben, not me. …  The Dallas police guy said they just wanted to make sure everyone was ‘playing nice in the sandbox.’ ”

Briggle said the officers seemed mainly to want him to contact them if he observed the potential for violent behavior by a student or activist. The professor described Kessler as an intelligent leader of nonviolent student protests.

“There’s a concern, not just that I get written off as a nutty ideologue, but that Ben and other protesters are written off as crazy, violent terrorists,” he said.”

Ben is marine veteran. He served in Afghanistan. Our government sends people off to participate in these wars. When they return and see how screwed up the government and corporations have made our country and world and begin to speak out about it, they are investigated as “criminals” and “terrorists.”

Adam Briggle is right. Ben is an intelligent leader of a non-violent group of students and environmentalists fighting for a safer cleaner world. It’s the FBI agent and the Dallas police officer that are conducting this “investigation” that carry guns and work for the people dropping bombs, not Rising Tide North Texas.

Here’s McLemore’s article if you want to read it in full.

Palm oil day laborer in Sumatra, Photo by David Gilbert/RAN

Fortunately the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took into consideration the complexity of the issue in its latest ruling about biofuels derived from palm oil. Late last week, the EPA excluded palm oil biodiesel from the U.S. renewable fuel standard—a small yet significant reprieve for Indonesia’s rainforests, where palm oil plantations are a major cause of rainforest destruction.

The EPA found that biofuels derived from palm oil aren’t a good choice for the climate because, once the carbon footprint of palm oil production is factored in, they can no longer meet the 20% emissions-reduction standard for biofuels.

It’s encouraging that the EPA sees the terrible toll the industrial production of palm oil biodiesel has on the environment. Indonesia is already the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and the U.S. Some 85% of Indonesia’s emissions result from clearing rainforests and draining carbon-rich peatlands, activities driven heavily by the rapid expansion of the palm oil industry.

Widely considered a “clean” agrofuel, palm oil has more environmental implications to consider than just the emissions it produces when burned. According to the Center for International Forestry Research, biodiesel from palm oil grown on peat has a 200 year carbon debt. This means it would take 200 years of production for these palm oil plantations to replace the carbon lost from land conversion. And once you consider the amount of fuel used for palm oil cultivation and transcontinental shipping, palm oil can be one of the worst fuel sources for the climate.

Looking at the harsh and immediate realities of today’s climate science, it’s clear that a 200-year turnaround is 200 years too late. There are already too many demands on Indonesia’s rainforests coming from the palm oil industry.

I think I’ve found a solution, nestled in northern England. The Baywind Energy Co-operative is pioneering an incredibly smart model. Local residents invest money in a locally run renewable energy company, putting money right back into their community while ending their reliance on polluting fossil fuels. Talk about improved quality of life.

Baywind’s wind farm co-operative started in 1996, when they offered shares to community members, with a low minimum stock purchase to make it financially feasible for as many as possible. Using the capital they raised from 1,350 shareholders (approx. 2 million pounds), the Baywind co-op purchased their first three wind turbines. A board of directors, elected by the shareholders, runs the day-to day operations. Hyper-focused on community involvement, Baywind uses only local contractors for site development, maintenance, and support.

Hurray for local green jobs!

As for the investment part, shareholders receive annual dividends amounting to 5-10%. The industry average is 9%. Though co-op members may receive a few less annual dividends, they get clean energy that keeps their air and water free of pollutants while keeping their investment in their community. This sort of ROI goes beyond dollars and cents.

The leadership at Baywind also focuses heavily on education, which they see as absolutely key for progress. They invite local schools and adults alike to visit the wind farm and read their educational materials. Think about how inspiring it is for a young child to see the possibilities of renewable energy right in their backyard!

Through Baywind’s development organization, Energy4All, communities can have assistance with recreating this type of renewable energy co-op in their own parts of the world. Energy4All assists communities in planning, building and maintening a wind farm co-op. Over the past nine years, Energy4All has succeeded in sharing their model with seven different communities throughout England and Scotland.

Let’s hope this renewable energy co-op model spreads far and wide, so that all of us can participate in locally-run, clean, sustainable energy generation that keep jobs, revenue and resources right where they belong.

The coal industry argues that coal technology is already available while renewable energy technology is a pipe-dream that hasn’t yet been developed enough to supply energy en masse. Well, let’s not forget an important point — renewable energy is already being utilized. And not only on a small scale.

Take, for example, the Thisted municipality in Denmark, which uses 100% renewable resources for its electricity demands and 85% renewable energy for heating demands to supply over 46,000 residents. Thisted’s success can largely be attributed to the community’s focus on the local economic benefits of shifts to renewable energy, the constant re-evaluation of its programs to achieve continual improvement, and inclusion of local leadership.

Thisted is situated in Northern Jutland, an ideal location for utilizing windmills because of its strong, constant wind almost year round. Thisted has 226 windmills throughout the municipality that generate 103 GwH hours of energy each year. Thisted is also home to Denmark’s first geothermal facility, which produces another 10% of electricity needs.

Another significant source of Thisted’s electricity is provided by biomass — a combination of landfill incineration (which RAN acknowledges can have detrimental impacts on local communities, see GAIA to learn more) and straw burning plants.

As an example of the constant inclusion of locals and an expanding business plan, the municipality purchases the 8700 tons of straw it burns each year from the farmers, who otherwise would have discarded the straw as waste.

Since Thisted’s switch to lower carbon energy sources, customers have seen their energy bills fall by two-thirds.

Movements such as Thisted’s are being referred to as the “Third Industrial Revolution,” the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Community-led initiatives offer a better environment to live in by leaving nature in tact as much as possible, while always keeping sight of the financial benefits for the local society. The people of Thisted did not wait for large grants, corporations, or subsidies to start their conversion.

Thisted wants to keep the bar of energy achievement high. The municipality has pledged to further reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 3% each year, until 2025. The largest project being considered is a network that will connect district farmers who are producing more than enough energy to run their respective farms, to a municipal grid where the farmers can sell their surplus energy.

Thisted is a reminder that small steps, perseverance, and local commitment can lead to larger, sustainable change. Their commitment to forward thinking and proactive measures are a beautiful example of community action and decision-making.

Image: Goldman Environmental Prize

One mother’s dedication can make a difference.

Ursula Sladek was spurred into action after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. A mother of five small children from Germany’s Black Forest region, Ursula was alarmed by the detected radiation in local produce and even on neighborhood playgrounds. Her concerns for her children’s health and the safety of their daily activities inspired her to seek out alternative sources of energy.

Germany was, and still is, largely dependent on nuclear energy. But, the good news is that the country just last month passed a law which will close all of their nuclear plants down by 2022.

Initially, Ursula focused on behavior-changing practices piloted within her own home, then spread the changes by educating her neighbors throughout the farmlands of Schoenau, a small town in Black Forest, Germany. Ursula recalls seeing her son turn off a light even with his cut finger before he was whisked away to the hospital for stitches after a run in with a kitchen knife. Conserving energy was ingrained into her children’s brains. Eventually, Ursula took her energy independence goals a step further and started installing solar panels on her own home and some others within her community. Ursula worked with her neighbors as a group to urge the local power company, KWR, to increase their renewable energy sources, but KWR wasn’t keen on the proposals and refused to budge.

Image: Goldman Environmental Prize

So the group took matters into their own hands. They formed Schoenau Power Supply (EWS), and vied for the license to operate the power grid when KWR’s license went up for renewal in 1991. KWR requested an inflated price, but Sladek’s group raised the exorbitant purchasing cost and took the license in 1998. They even sued KWR for illegal price fixing, after the fact.

Today, Schoenau Power Supply is collectively owned by 1000 citizens. Schoenau’s energy sources are 100% green, primarily hydropower, but also sourced from solar panels, wind turbines, and co-generation plants. Residents have individual units that power their own homes, but can also sell surplus energy to the grid. In total, EWS provides over 400 million KwH to 100,000+ customers. (For a quick comparison, Pepsi Bottling Group uses 426 million KWh annually)

Ursula Sladek focuses on the big picture as well — she educates her customers on how to conserve energy, build their own solar plants and co-generators, and provides financial support and incentives. EWS is another inspiring example of combining community, business, and green initiative to provide a better future. Sladek’s success is a testament to the fact that huge corporations don’t always have to win, and they certainly aren’t the only answer.

At today’s Citigroup annual shareholder meeting, CEO Vikram Pandit was taken to task by David Daniel along with RAN’s own Brant Olson for his company’s financing of TransCanada Corp and its proposed Keystone XL pipeline. If approved, the 1,980-mile pipeline would carry tar sands oil from northern Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries.

Citigroup is a major financier of TransCanada Corp. RAN’s research shows that the bank has raised more than $5.8 billion for TransCanada and its related companies since 2007. RAN, along with a coalition of landowners, First Nations, and environmentalists, is calling on Citigroup to cut its ties to the tar sands and help shift investment capital into critical clean energy technologies like green grids and electric transportation.

Daniel, who lives outside of Winnsboro, Tex., about 100 miles east of Dallas, is one of the landowners in five heartland states whose property lies in the path of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. He is a former stuntman and the founder of Stop Tarsands Oil Pipelines, which is organizing Texas landowners against the Keystone XL project. If the project is approved, he says he’ll build a platform in one of the century-old elms on his land and stand his ground: “If I am in it, they can’t cut the tree down.”

As Daniel said just before the shareholder meeting today:

As a landowner in the path of Keystone XL, my family, just as so many others, has experienced trespassing, broken agreements, lies pertaining to payment for damages, lies about permitting, eminent domain abuse, and a complete disregard for our personal safety. TransCanada labels our land and therefore our lives as ‘low consequence’ and has denied any type of informative warning label to landowners. I have no reason to trust TransCanada with the lives of my family. Mr. Pandit needs to hear about the human consequences of financing this dangerous project.

The $7 billion pipeline project would double the export of Canadian tar sands to the United States. It would carry tar sands oil across Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas — mostly across private property owned by farmers and ranchers. The route also runs through the Ogallala Aquifer, putting one-third of the groundwater used in American agriculture at risk of contamination from diluted bitumen, a more corrosive product than conventional crude oil.

Little Village Environmental Justice Organization rally to shut down dirty coal power plants in South Chicago

Research shows that carbon offsets aren’t working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stall global warming. That’s why RAN has founded the Climate Action Fund.

In theory, a carbon offset is a reduction in emissions of carbon or greenhouse gases made in order to compensate for or to offset an emission made elsewhere. Rather than reduce its own pollution, for example, a business would pay someone somewhere else in the world to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and then take credit for their contribution.

Sounds good, but does it really work?

A recent report estimates that of the $700 million dollars that are invested in carbon offsets around the world, offset buyers

are often buying vague promises instead of the reductions in greenhouse gases they expect. They are buying into projects that are never completed, or paying for ones that would have been done anyhow, the investigation found. Their purchases are feeding middlemen and promoters seeking profits from green schemes that range from selling protection for existing trees to the promise of planting new ones that never thrive. In some cases, the offsets have consequences that their purchasers never foresaw, such as erecting windmills that force poor people off their farms. Carbon offsets are the environmental equivalent of financial derivatives: complex, unregulated, unchecked and – in many cases – not worth their price.

Stanford University researchers found that up to 2/3 of offsets in international markets are not delivering any additional reduction in emissions compared to business as usual, which means that buyers are getting ripped off and the offsets are doing nothing to slow climate change. The attempt to “buy” our way out of climate change has left us with a corrupt system with little accountability where very little is done to reduce emissions.

At RAN, we began the Climate Action Fund (CAF) to take a fundamentally different approach. Starting with our own organization, we calculate the annual carbon emissions associated with our operations, including travel. We then apply an internal price — effectively a tax — on that carbon. These modest revenues are then invested directly in frontline community groups that are organizing against the extraction and combustion of dirty fossil fuels in the first place.

The Climate Action Fund is also open to individuals and businesses that want to participate in CAF-supported efforts to tackle the root causes of climate change. The CAF contributes 100 percent of donations directly to community organizations that are fighting to protect land and people, as well as to keep millions of tons of CO2 in the ground.

Rainforest Action Network is inspired by the work these frontline community groups are doing and honored to be able to support and promote their amazing work. We hope to be able to get more and more progressive organizations and companies involved with the CAF and learn how to green their business, reduce their carbon footprint and make direct contributions to groups on the frontlines of the battle to end our addiction to dirty fossil fuels and reduce dangerous carbon emissions contributing to climate change.

Get started with Climate Action Fund!

Amidst a horrific week of news about Japan, there was some truly good news yesterday in the fight to keep dirty coal and oil out of our air, water and atmosphere.

Ambre Energy was foiled in its effort to open a coal export terminal on the coast of the Pacific Northwest; TransCanada was delayed in spreading crude tar sands oil to the U.S. via the controversial Keystone XL pipeline; and oil giant Enbridge was dealt a deeply funny hoax by our friends the Yes Men. It is critical to remember, especially during such a dark week, that our movement is making major strides in the effort to build a clean energy future.

Score 1: Ambre Energy Ltd said yesterday that it will surrender a permit to build a coal export terminal in Washington state after enormous opposition from those concerned about environmental and public health impacts. The proposed Longview export terminal would have shipped coal mined in Montana and Wyoming to Asia through the Columbia River in Washington. The cancellation of the Longview coal export terminal is critical in sending the message to the coal industry that we don’t want coal burned here and we don’t want it burned anywhere.

As Ross Macfarlane, Senior Advisor for Climate Solutions put it:

“The profits were headed out of the country, but the health problems and pollution would have been here to stay. This idea of turning Washington into a way station for coal – which will pollute our atmosphere with tons of carbon dioxide and toxics – is a losing idea for our health and our economy.”

Score 2: Approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project, which would pump crude oil from the Alberta tar sands to Texas refineries through a 1660 mile pipeline, has been delayed. Thanks to some serious political pressure from environmentalists in the U.S. and Canada, the Obama administration yesterday ordered additional environmental reviews of the $7 billion pipeline before making a final decision.

As Kate Colarulli, Sierra Club Dirty Fuels Campaign Director, explained:

“We are very pleased that the State Department is taking a closer look at Keystone XL. Now we need to make sure they do a thorough job. If any foreign oil project requires close scrutiny by our government, it’s this one. This project would carry toxic, dangerous tar sands oil right through America’s heartland, putting our drinking water and farming at risk.”

Score 3. Early yesterday, the world learned of oil transport giant Enbridge’s strategy for handling inevitable oil spills along its proposed pipeline through pristine British Columbian wilderness: mop it up with human hair. The fake initiative, dubbed MyHairCares, was promoted in a Video News Release and ran in a number of major news outlets, but was pulled after a denial by Enbridge.

Shannon McPhail, a former Canadian oil worker and Canadian spokesperson for People Enbridge Ruined in Michigan (PERM), the group responsible for MyHairCares (wink wink), said:

“This was a funny way to dramatize the fact that neither Enbridge nor any other oil company can prevent spills, and that they basically have no cleanup plan.”

Just last summer, an Enbridge pipeline spilled more than 800,000 gallons of oil into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. Enbridge’s northern gateway pipeline proposes to ship oil from the Alberta tar sands to an export terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia.

I must admit, it does feel good to score against dirty energy companies sometimes!

Of the hundreds of news reports covering these one-after-another disasters, one Bloomberg article caught my eye with a very interesting question: how will Japan’s nuclear meltdown impact the future of energy?

As the nuclear meltdown in Japan continues, the conversation about the impact this disaster will have on our energy choices is an interesting one. There seem to be two competing answers: expand the use of coal as a clear alternative to nuclear power, or push for clean energy, like wind and solar, that does not explode, spill or meltdown. Which would you choose?

Apparently, two of the biggest coal mining companies in the world, Siberian Coal Energy Co. and OAO Mechel, have responded to Japan’s energy crisis with a plan to increase coal shipments to Japan by 3 million to 4 million metric tons a year. The stock market also seems to point to coal as a good alternative to nuclear, at least at this moment in the news cycle. The Wall Street Journal reported that coal companies including Peabody Energy, Consol Energy, Alpha Natural Resources, Cloud Peak Energy and International Coal Group are trading higher since the nuclear plant explosions.

However, the New York Times is reporting that solar and wind stocks are surging amidst nuclear fears as well. The demand for renewable energy is picking up. With Bloomberg reporting that: “Equipment makers for solar and wind energy climbed as much as 27 percent, rallying for a second day on speculation that clean energy will benefit in the aftermath of Japan’s nuclear-reactor accident.”

It is disgusting to think that any company, dirty energy or clean, would “benefit” from this disaster. However, it is also horrifying to imagine that as a global community we would not heed the warnings that disasters like the BP oil spill and this week’s nuclear meltdown are sounding.

As country’s like Germany and Switzerland suspend plans for nuclear plants and fear over this unstable fuel justifiably surges around the globe, we have two paths for our energy future: to stay the course, pumping our countries full of coal, oil and nuclear energy, or transition to renewable sources of energy like solar and wind.

In my estimation, replacing nuclear energy with energy from burning coal is a foolish path. Coal has a long and shameful history of devastating accidents, including the TVA coal ash spill in December 2008, which dumped 2.6 million cubic yards of fly ash across hundreds of acres just outside Knoxville, Tennessee, and Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine explosion in April of 2010, which killed 29 miners. These are just two recent examples from the United States. It would take a much longer blog post to cite all the recent accidents at coal plants and mines around the world.

The debate around the future of nuclear energy will surely rage for many months. It is critical that those of us who have been watching the disaster in Japan unfold not let pundits, politicians and journalists decide to replace one dangerous power source for another.  Energy shouldn’t cost lives.

We regret to inform you that this bank is being put on Notice. Effective immediately you must begin to cease all financing of coal-fired power-plants and related infrastructure.

The Rainforest Action Network, our supporters and allies, being inhabitants of this planet, do hereby give you notice to cease and desist all coal financing.

Furthermore, you are hereby required to protect public health, economic security and the climate. First and foremost by limiting your exposure to coal financing and, thereby, limiting our exposure to air, water and climate pollution.

Furthermore, you must cease and desist financial relations with the nation’s leading coal companies until they end their addiction to coal, including but not limited to: AES Corporation; Alcoa Inc; Allegheny Energy; ALLETE Inc; Alliant Energy; Ambre Energy; Ameren Corporation; American Electric Power (AEP); Arch Coal; Atlantic Power Corporation; Berkshire Hathaway; Black Hills; Corporation; CMS Energy; Constellation Energy Group; Dominion Resources; DTE Energy Company; Duke Energy Coporation; Dynegy Inc; Edison International; Empire District Electric Co; Entergy Power; Generation Corp; FirstEnergy Generation Corp; Great Plains Energy; MDU Resources Group; MGE Energy; NiSource Inc; NRG Energy Inc; NV Energy; Peabody Energy; PNM Resources; PPL Corporation; Progress Energy; RRI Energy; SCANA Corporation; Southern Company; SSA Marine; TECO Energy; Transalta Corporation; UGI Corporation; Unisource Energy Development Company; Waste Management Inc; Westar Energy Inc; Westmoreland Coal Company; and Xcel Energy Inc.

We hereby demand that you adopt firm policies to include the following criteria:

• No financing for companies pursuing new coal-fired power plants and life-extending retrofits of existing coal-fired power plants.
• No financing, for companies engaged in mountaintop removal coal mining.
• No financing for companies pursuing coal export infrastructure.
• Shift the balance of your energy financing to support power generation that is less threatening to our health and environment.

Consider this your first warning. You are on notice to shift the focus of your energy portfolio to support clean, renewable power generation in the United States.

Rainforest Action Network will be monitoring you. You have three months. After which, we are prepared to apply public pressure to evict your coal portfolio and move clean energy into its place.

You can tell the country’s biggest banks to stop funding dirty coal and start investing in clean energy alternatives!

We’ve watched movies like Split Estate and Gasland, which explain the serious health risks associated with fracking, and we’ve been hearing and reading about thousands of people across the US who are turning out to public meetings and hearings to say “No” to fracking in their community.

Having taken a look at the issue, we developed the following policy position:

Rainforest Action Network believes that corporations should be allowed to extract and process mineral fuels only if they can do so without harming human health or contaminating the air, water, and soil, or failing to maintain ecological integrity,  with an eye on impacts at all levels: local, regional, and global. This means achieving the following goals:

1. No water pollution: Protecting public health, the environment, and the climate from toxic, hazardous, and carcinogenic chemicals used in the extraction of fossil fuel energy resources;

2. Low emissions: Protecting public health, the environment, and the climate from pollutants emitted during the drilling and ongoing production of energy resources;

3. No-go zones: Protecting sacred areas, fragile ecosystems, high conservation and high carbon value areas, neighborhoods, drinking watersheds, and densely populated areas targeted for energy development;

4.  Landowner Consent: Continuing to develop and then implementing laws and policies that make surface and mineral estates co-equal and ensure that landowners have essential rights to negotiate, including the right to say ‘no’ to energy development.

5.  Indigenous Rights: Honoring the unique right of Indigenous Communities to free, prior, informed consent as defined in the United Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Consent should be sought via a process that respects the traditional decision-making structures of the community. The process should be mutually agreed upon and recorded, while also complying with and building upon any applicable laws and regulations.

We would love to hear your feedback on this policy.

This is great news. California’s AB 32 is by far the strongest climate legislation in the country and is clearly succeeding in reducing emissions in the state. In addition, California is leading the way for other regions around the world to enact similar laws that can begin a shift away from high-emissions fossil fuels to cleaner, greener energy sources.

While it is exciting to see California move away from fossil fuel dependency, I wonder what we are moving toward. Who are the companies that are supplying our clean, green energy anyway?

Conveniently, the California Energy Commission’s website hosts a list of “large solar energy projects” that includes the names of the companies that own each project. The companies associated with solar projects  include Beacon Solar, Abengoa Solar, Solar Millennium, Solar Partners, BrightSource Energy, Imperial Valley Solar, Genesis Solar, NextEra ™ Energy Resources, Calico Solar, and Tessera Solar. This is of course only a partial list, and while my short search didn’t turn up a complete list of solar companies providing energy to the state or a similar list of wind or geo-thermal companies, I think that this list can still be informative.

Of this small group of solar companies, it turns out that most are small, less than half are publicly traded, and many are  headquartered outside California. One of the companies on this list, BrightSource Energy, happens to be a subsidiary of NRG Energy. NRG  is well-known to anti-coal activists because the company owns both existing and proposed coal-fired power plants across the country, including a large new plant that has caught the attention of climate activists in Texas. Additionally, NRG is involved in the development of highly controversial carbon capture and sequestration projects and the expansion of nuclear facilities.

My point in highlighting BrightSource Energy’s relationship to NRG is not to fault a fossil fuels company for moving into the renewable energy market. There is money to be made in renewable energy development, and it’s not surprising that both existing and new energy companies are scrambling to fill the growing demand. Rather, I think it is critical that as the renewable energy industry grows in stature and influence, we keep their power over our political systems in check.

The oil, gas and coal industries spend millions of dollars every year on lobbying, advertising and political donations and have played a huge role in slowing legislation and regulations aimed at transitioning our society away from dirty energy. Right now, renewable energy companies don’t have the same stranglehold over our democratic systems that the fossil fuels industries do. Stories of coal companies buying judges to influence court cases don’t yet apply to companies developing wind farms or solar arrays. However, just because a company is “green” doesn’t mean it would not try to obstruct the judicial system, bankroll a misleading ad campaign, or put heavy-handed pressure on elected officials.

The fight over climate policy is an incredibly huge indicator that corporations have far too much power in our society. While shifting to green energy is necessary, it is also necessary to look at corporations as the source of the problem. It is critical that movements to stop climate change also participate in efforts to roll-back corporate influence. The SEIU campaigns to organize workers employed by major industries are one example, organizations working to keep corporate money out of politics are another. Of course, the Rainforest Action Network also tirelessly campaigns on some of the world’s most destructive corporations.

As the fossil fuels industry (hopefully!) fades from power and the renewable energy industry takes its place, we need to work to make sure that we don’t find ourselves at the mercy of a cleaner and greener — but just as severe — corporate lobbying campaign in the future.

Sign the Petition

To the Board and Staff of 1 Sky,

We are grassroots and allied organizations representing racial justice, indigenous rights, economic justice, immigrant rights, youth organizing and environmental justice communities actively engaged in Climate Justice organizing.

Given the very necessary discussion spurred by your recent public letter (August 8, 2010), we wanted to share with you some of the work we have been doing to protect people and planet, as well as our reflections on a forward-thinking movement strategy. Your honest reflections on the political moment in which we find ourselves, alongside the open invitation to join in this discussion, are heartening.

Organizing a Powerful Climate Justice Movement

Like you, we recognize Climate Disruption as a central issue of our time. With the right set of strategies and coordinated efforts we can mobilize diverse communities to powerful action. Our organizing strategy for climate justice is to: 1) Organize in, network with and support communities who have found their frontlines of climate justice; 2) Organize with communities to identify their frontlines of climate justice, and 3) Coalesce these communities towards a common agenda that is manifested from locally defined strategies to state and national policy objectives through to international solidarity agreements.

Community-Led Climate Justice has been Winning

In assessing the broader landscape of climate activism it is critical to recognize that despite the failure of DC policy-led campaigns, there have also been significant successes on the part of grassroots climate justice campaigns across the U.S.

Frontline communities, using grassroots, network-based and actions-led strategies around the country have had considerable success fighting climate-polluting industries in recent years, with far less resources than the large environmental groups in DC. These initiatives have prevented a massive amount of new industrial carbon from coming on board – here are just a few examples:

Stopping King Coal With Community Organizing: The Navajo Nation, led by a Dine’ (Navajo) and Hopi grassroots youth movement, forced the cancellation of a Life of Mine permit on Black Mesa, AZ, for the world’s largest coal company – Peabody Energy. Elsewhere in the U.S. community-based groups in Appalachia galvanized the youth climate movement in their campaigns to stop mountain-top removal (MTR) coal mining, and similar groups in the Powder River Basin have united farmers and ranchers against the expansion of some of the world’s largest coal deposits.

Derailing the Build-out of Coal Power: Nearly two thirds of the 151 new coal power plant proposals from the Bush Energy Plan have been cancelled, abandoned or stalled since 2007 – largely due to community-led opposition. A recent example of this success is the grassroots campaign of Dine’ grassroots and local citizen groups in the Burnham area of eastern Navajo Nation, NM that have prevented the creation of the Desert Rock coal plant, which would have been the third such polluting monolith in this small, rural community. Community-based networks such as the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Energy Justice Network and the Western Mining Action Network No Coal Network have played a major role in supporting these efforts to keep the world’s most climate polluting industry at bay.

Preventing the Proliferation of Incinerators: In the last 12 years, no new waste incinerators (which are more carbon-intensive than coal and one of the leading sources of cancer-causing dioxins) have been built in the US, and hundreds of proposals have been defeated by community organizing. In 2009 alone, members of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives prevented dozens of municipal waste incinerators, toxic waste incinerators, tire incinerators and biomass incinerators from being built, and forced Massachusetts to adopt a moratorium on incineration.

Defeating Big Oil In Our Own Backyards: A community-led coalition in Richmond, CA, has, stopped the permitting of Chevron’s refinery expansion in local courts. This expansion of the largest oil refinery on the west coast is part of a massive oil and gas sector expansion focused on importing heavy, high-carbon intensive crude oil from places like the Canada’s Tar Sands. This victory demonstrates that with limited resources, community-led campaigns can prevail over multi-million dollar PR and lobby campaigns deployed by oil companies like Chevron, when these strategies are rooted in organizing resistance in our own backyards.

REDOIL, (Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands) an Alaska Native grassroots network, has been effective at ensuring the Native community-based voice is in the forefront of protecting the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Together with allies, REDOIL has also prevented Shell from leasing the Alaska outer continental shelf for offshore oil exploration and drilling. Advancing recognition of culture, subsistence and food sovereignty rights of Alaska Natives within a diverse and threatened aquatic ecosystem has been at the heart of their strategy.

Stopping False Solutions like Mega Hydro: Indigenous communities along the Klamath River forced Pacificorp Power company to agree to “Undam the Klamath” by the year 2020, in order to restore the river’s natural ecosystems, salmon runs and traditional land-use capacity. For decades, Indigenous communities have been calling out false solutions – pointing to the fact that energy technologies that compromise traditional land-use, public health and local economies cannot be considered climate solutions.

Building Resilient Communities Through Local Action: In communities all over the US, frontline communities are successfully winning campaigns linking climate justice to basic survival:
• In San Antonio, Texas, the Southwest Workers Union led the fight to divert $20billion dollars from nuclear energy into renewable energy and energy efficiency. In addition, they launched a free weatherization program for low-income families and a community run organic farm.
• In Oakland, California, the Oakland Climate Action Coalition is leading the fight for an aggressive Climate Energy and Action Plan that both addresses climate disruption and local equity issues.

Lessons from the Beltway Strategy

Our analysis of mainstream climate advocacy’s failure to win in the federal arena echoes yours, but differs in key areas. We agree there was insufficient investment in movement building, and a “beltway strategy” was prioritized without clarity on what the bottom lines were. “Anything is better than nothing,” will always lead to nothing, because it is a declaration of our intention to compromise. As a result, a decade of advocacy work, however well intentioned, migrated towards false solutions that hurt communities and compromised on key issues such as carbon markets and giveaways to polluters.

These compromises sold out poor communities in exchange for weak targets and more smokestacks that actually prevent us from getting anywhere close to what the science – and common sense – tells us is required. We encapsulate the lessons learned as follows:

Access was confused for Influence. We do not have influence in DC, regardless of how much face-time we get with legislators, or their staffers. To start from a place of power – you must first figure out where you have power, and build from there. We have power in our communities where we have relationships and can hold politicians and corporations accountable. In DC, corporate power rules because they can concentrate energy, resources and relationships there – in ways we cannot. However, when confronting these same corporations in our tribes, cities, and towns, we reveal that they are not nimble or powerful enough to defeat our communities.

Density was confused for Depth; and Mobilizing for Organizing. Since we are calling for a redoubling of grassroots organizing efforts, we should be clear what we mean. Grassroots Organizing is the process by which people in communities rally around a common cause, acting on their own behalf with allies and networks – often against powerful interests, often building new institutions needed to win a lasting change. The material conditions in communities have to change for the material conditions in DC to change. Anyone looking to support real and effective solutions would do well to look outside the beltway.

Targets were confused for Solutions. We will never win by centering our principal energy on CO2 targets alone. Real Solutions must move past carbon targets, whether it is parts per million or percentages of emissions. Here is why:

1) Targets reinforce the “carbon fundamentalism” frame that hides the root causes of climate change. By not talking about root causes, we miss opportunities to connect climate disruption with failures of economic systems, resource wars and forced migration, for example. Targets also serve to reduce discussion on climate to arenas where corporations have greater access.

2) How we get to the targets is more important than the targets. By staking our claim solely around a target, we leave the political space for false solutions wide open. From technology solutions such ast “clean coal”, “safe nuclear” and “renewable biomass” to market solutions such as offsets – these so-called solutions serve to line the pockets of those who got us into this mess in the first place, without dealing with the root cause. The targets we do articulate along with our solutions should be extremely aggressive and aligned with call from international social movements, such as those coming from the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.

Flipping the Script: Leading with the Grassroots

Given the significant gains we have had with community-led strategies for Climate Justice, and the failure of resource-intensive, beltway policy campaigns, we need to re-prioritize building power from the bottom up. The strategy we emphasize includes::

1) Investing in grassroots action at frontline struggles to win the victories that build our power, improve our communities and stop the corporations causing climate disruption;.
2) Prioritizing local organizing to build the resilient communities, economic alternatives, and political infrastructure that we need to weather the climate crisis; and,.
3) Supporting solidarity with grassroots movements around the world, to link our struggles, and to craft policies and structures we need internationally to support solutions determined locally.

International Solidarity for a Stronger Movement – Beyond Cancún

As grassroots forces, we have been building with social movements from around the world. Our groups were well represented at the World Peoples’ Summit Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia in April 2010. The Peoples’ Summit Conference modeled what a more democratic, transparent policy-making process could look like and resulted in proposals that were formally submitted to the UNFCCC, Conference of Parties 16, in Cancun. These submissions are in the negotiating text, being championed by several southern nations. The demands in these submissions are clear and strong – No Offsets, No (Carbon) Markets, No Commodification of our Atmosphere or of Life.

While “offsets” are often cloaked as opportunities for “clean development”, this claim fails on two counts. First, offsets do not lead to clean development but to greater destruction, displacement and disempowerment. Second, the very premise of offsets is that it is allowable to continue polluting in poor communities and communities of color in the U.S. to justify over-industrialization of communities and their resources elsewhere.

As communities fighting climate pollution in our own backyards, we link our struggles with social movements worldwide to stand against offsets and other false solutions and to build real solutions based in our communities. We call on you to stand with us. If there is anything you can take away from this letter, we reiterate: The equation of power in our movement, just as in our country, must be inverted.

The leadership is not going to come from beltway strategists navigating federal policy, with a grass-tops cultivated to support it. The leadership is coming from the grassroots everyday.

We will win Climate Justice by supporting the hundreds of communities around the country who are targeting the climate polluters in their communities, whether that is an energy source, a toxic industry, a dirty port, a big box chain, a freeway or a developer driving gentrification. Resources should be deployed to win those fights in those communities – for their own sake.

Grassroots Organizing Cools the Planet.
In power,

Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project
Indigenous Environmental Network
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
Southwest Workers Union
Southwest Organizing Project
Black Mesa Water Coalition
Resisting Environmental Destruction On Indigenous Lands
Communities for a Better Environment
Just Transition Alliance
Asian Pacific Environmental Network
Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives
Alaska Community Action on Toxics
Direct Action for Rights and Equality
Little Village Environmental Justice Organization
People Organized to Win Employment Rights
Youth For Justice Save Our Sacred Earth
Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development
Alternatives for Community and Environment
Justice in Nigeria Now
Ironbound Community Corporation
Don’t Waste Massachusetts Coalition
Berthold Environmental Awareness Committee
Grassroots International
Global Justice Ecology Project
smartMeme
Ruckus Society
Rising Tide North America
Energy Justice Network
Stand Up / Save Lives Campaign
Earth Circle Conservation & Recycling
Biofuelwatch
Climate Ground Zero
Coal River Mountain Watch
Rainforest Action Network
Buckeye Forest Council

A few weeks ago, the British government granted Chevron the first deepwater drilling permit it has approved since the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico began back in April.

At virtually the same time — and with little to no fanfare — Chevron finished drilling the first deepwater oil well to be completed in North America since the tragedy in the Gulf started. Some 260 miles northeast of Newfoundland, Chevron’s well is the deepest ever drilled off of Canada’s coasts.

Now we’ve got news that Chevron will spend $7.5 billion on one of the largest deepwater drilling projects in US history. The Houston Chronicle describes it as “a massive floating city about 280 miles southwest of New Orleans.”

Chevron is leading the charge to recklessly exploit the world’s dwindling oil supplies in the post-Gulf oil spill world, but the company prefers to keep that fact quiet. Why? It’s one of those pesky facts that would spoil Chevron’s efforts to recast itself as a responsible, environmentally conscious oil company (despite the obvious fact that “environmentally conscious oil company” is an oxymoron that would require mass-cognitive dissonance to take hold in the public consciousness).

As part of its easy-to-spoof PR efforts, Chevron likes to highlight its projects that don’t actually involve enormous risks to sensitive ecosystems or contribute to global warming. One of those is the Chevron Lucerne Valley Solar Project, which will produce up to 45 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 13,500 – 33,750 homes. There’s definitely a certain poetic justice in Chevron’s dirty oil money being used to help bring more clean, green solar energy into the mix. But don’t go changing your opinion of the company just yet.

Chevron has no intention of changing its core business from dirty fossil fuels to clean renewable energy. That’s just window dressing, meant to mask the supremely dirty business going on inside the shop. In fact, between January 2009 and June 2010, Chevron spent over $28 million on lobbying and PAC contributions to federal candidates in order to protect its oil business, according to the Center for American Progress. The positive benefits of the Chevron Lucerne Valley Solar Project will easily be negated by Chevron continuing its dirty business as usual.

This isn’t the first time Chevron used a solar project as a means of greenwashing its otherwise dirty oil business. We posted about Chevron’s Project Brightfield earlier this year, a solar project the company will use to power its Kern River Heavy Oil Extraction Facility, once again defeating the purpose of green energy by charging full steam ahead with its dirty oil business. See a pattern here?

While all new solar capacity added to the national mix is undoubtedly a good thing, Chevron is plowing millions of dollars into efforts to protect its fossil fuels business, and the company’s own CEO has admitted that he hopes it will take generations to phase fossil fuels out altogether. Meanwhile, the company is aggressively pursuing unprecedented deepwater drilling operations that imperil precious ecosystems and wildlife.

Until Chevron stops working to keep us hooked on the dirty stuff for as long as possible in its blind quest for profits, it cannot credibly claim to be responsible or environmentally conscious. In other words, the company will continue to be ripe for the punking. Download our spoof Chevron ads and get to punking today by putting them up in your town!

This week, as campers emerged from their tent village to lay non-violent siege to RBS facilities throughout Edinburgh, the bank released “new figures” to re-assert its green credentials. Yesterday, an RBS Spokesperson told the Guardian:

“Since January 2006, we have lent more money directly to wind power projects than to any other type of energy project and have been the leading UK financier of this sector over the last 10 years… We are one of the biggest lenders in the UK to renewable projects. Between 2004 and 2008 RBS lent more to renewable power projects than any other commercial bank globally.” [emphasis added]

The bank’s carefully crafted statement is technically accurate but intentionally misleading.  First RBS relies on outdated pre-recession figures. Second, RBS’s new figures isolate “project finance,” a relatively small segment of its overall business.*

A careful look at financial transactions compiled by Bloomberg shows the inconvenient truth that RBS is trying to hide: Since UK taxpayers took over the bank in 2008, the bank’s alternative energy lending has declined by nearly 86% ($640 million since the bailout vs. $4.5 billion in the same period prior). The graph below shows the trend in alternative vs. conventional energy lending (project finance and general lending) underwritten by RBS since 2007.

RBS Energy Lending

Globally, RBS’ rank in terms of lending to alternative energy projects fell from 1^st place in 2004-2008 as cited in yesterday’s “new figures” to 39^th in the period since.

The point here is not to split hairs over language and data points. The point is that RBS needs to walk the talk. The bank says that “Just as society as a whole has to make a transition to renewable energy sources so will banks like RBS,” so let’s either see more of that (our preference) or hear less of it.

*Project Finance refers to a specific type of loan secured by large industrial projects (like wind farms and pipelines). By contrast, general “corporate lending” is essentially a cash transaction secured by a borrower’s assets and generally not tied to a specific project.   Project Finance comprises only a fraction of RBS’ overall lending. General corporate lending is the bank’s bread and butter.

But Downing Street won’t enforce basic environmental standards at RBS so Climate Camp is taking direct action. The camp is calling for RBS to end financing of dirty fossil fuel projects like Canada’s tar sands.

RBS defended itself in the press by touting its backing of alternative energy projects. The bank told the Guardian that “in 2006 the bank was the world’s largest single financier of wind and green energy.” It told the BBC that “In recent years RBS has been one of the most active banks in the world in providing funding for renewable energy projects.”

Those claims are royal BS.

According to financial market data compiled by Bloomberg, RBS ranked third as financier for alternative energy companies in 2006. In the period since the taxpayer bailout, RBS ranks a distant 19th!

This chart illustrates the point. Of the more than $15 billion RBS raised for the energy sector since the bailout, just $83 million went to alternative energy–less than one percent.

There are a few answers to that question…

1 Be Energy Efficient

One answer is that opportunities for energy efficiency in the US are huge. Individual and commercial consumers could reduce the annual amount of energy used in this country by far more than the energy that’s produced in Appalachian coal fields – which is estimated at between 5% and 10% of coal produced annually.

2 Invest in Renewable Energy

Another answer is that rather than continually panicking about where we will find more fossil fuels to feed energy needs, we should start investing seriously in renewable energy alternatives. Ideally, both energy efficiency and development of renewable energy would also create new jobs in the energy sector – which may address another oft-asked question.

3 Stop Exporting Coal

A third answer to this question, and one I find particularly interesting, is that much of the coal mined in the United States isn’t consumed here in the United States. Coal exports are growing and many US coal mining companies, such as perpetual bad guys Massey Energy, see vast profits in exporting coal abroad.

A great example of the coal for export trend is Alpha Natural Resources, a Virginia-based company and the United State’s third-largest coal producer. Alpha just announced “soaring” second quarter earnings, which they attribute largely to growing demand for coal in Asia and Europe. The coal that Alpha is exporting comes from their operations in Wyoming, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

Poisoned drinking water, flattened mountains and devastated communities are a mighty high price to pay for lining Alpha’s pockets in the export market.

The question of how we will keep the lights on here in the United States becomes moot when US coal producers export vast quantities of coal to Asian, European and South American markets. The question becomes, why would we let coal companies pollute US waterways and blow up Appalachian mountains for coal that actually doesn’t keep our lights on, just makes coal company CEO’s richer?