I woke up this morning to the sight of a coal train rumbling below my window and the image of a shiny new ‘clean coal’ billboard fresh in my mind. I’m here in Pittsburgh for the 7th Annual Carbon Capture and Sequestration conference to present RAN’s perspective on CCS - which, for those anyone with any remaining doubt, is that CCS is too expensive, dangerous, experimental and energy intensive to be a real solution to the climate crisis and that we have better options. My panel was moderated by NRDC’s David Hawkins who set the tone by summarizing Greenpeace’s fantastic report on CCS: False Hope (released today) - David’s message to the industry reps and academics crowding the room was that although he doesn’t agree with most of the report conclusions himself - they had better damn well get to know the environmental arguments because they’re going to have to deal with us whether they like it or not. Faint praise indeed, but to his credit I was set up nicely for my own presentation.

You see, the striking thing about this conference is how the proponents of CCS are, how can I say this delicately, their own worse enemies. More or less every presenter has agreed that the technology is expensive, that there are tremendous uncertainties, that liability is an issue, leakage is likely and safety is a concern. So my talk was nothing new until the part where I said that my team and I wake up every morning thinking about how to shut down all the remaining coal plants on the books. Because here’s the thing: CCS proponents look at the long list of problems with the technology and see it all being overcome by massive taxpayer subsidies to cover R&D, liability and increased electricity rates. We look at the long list of problems, and we add the oft overlooked fact that (surprise!) the coal itself has to come from somewhere and we see: a dead end.

In conjunction with the international release of a report by Greenpeace today – that identifies the ridiculous risk, uncertainty and cost associated with industry-driven plans for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS),

Public interest groups (from across the country) sent the following letter to Congress, demanding that taxpayer subsidies be disallowed CCS, and that safe, affordable and market-ready energy technologies such as wind and solar be funded instead.

Dear Members of Congress

On behalf of our members and supporters we are writing to express our opposition to any policies that promote or provide taxpayer subsidies for carbon capture and storage (CCS), the practice of trapping carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion and storing it below the sea or beneath the surface of the earth.

As you know, global warming is one of the greatest challenges facing the planet today. To avoid the worst impacts of global warming scientists have warned that we need to reduce global warming pollution by at least 80 percent by 2050. Climate stabilization, national security and economic prosperity depend on substantially reducing our use of fossil fuels. That means no new investments in major infrastructure that increases fossil fuel dependence. Every dollar invested in CCS is a dollar unavailable for investment in renewable energy, efficient vehicles and energy efficiency.

CCS raises a number of serious financial, environmental and safety concerns:

· CCS cannot deliver in time. The best-case scenario is that the technology would be ready by 2030. Every decision made about new power plants today influences the energy mix for the next 30-40 years. We need to make the smartest choices to address the global warming crisis and invest in proven solutions as soon as possible.

· CCS is cost intensive. It increases the cost of power generation by 40 to 80 percent compared with conventional coal plants. Current research shows electricity generated from coal equipped with CCS will be more expensive than other less polluting sources, such as, wind power.

· CCS technology reduces the efficiency of power plants. Up to 30 percent more fossil fuel must be burned when CCS is used to achieve the same power output.

· CCS poses a risk of carbon dioxide leakage. Continuous leakage, even at very low rates, could undermine the climate benefit of CCS and large releases of carbon can also pose significant risk to human health.

As evidenced by mountain-top removal and dangerous emissions, CCS cannot make coal clean. Renewable energy sources are already available without the negative environmental impacts that are associated with fossil fuel exploitation, transport and processing. It is renewable energy together with energy efficiency and energy conservation that has to increase so that the primary cause of climate change – the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas – is stopped.

We strongly urge you to oppose any policies that provide mandates or taxpayer funded incentives for CCS. We should instead fund clean, renewable, domestic sources of energy, energy efficiency and conservation. Congress must prevent the construction of new coal-fired power plants that are inconsistent with an energy future that is good for the economy, the environment, national security, and safe for communities.

Sincerely,

ActionPA • Alliance for Appalachia • Appalachian Voices • Black Mesa Water Coalition • California Communities Against Toxics • Canary Coalition • Cape & Islands Self-Reliance Corporation • Center for Coalfield Justice • Co-op America • Chesapeake Climate Action Network • Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana • Clean Power Now • Coal River Mountain Watch • Cook Inletkeeper • Energy Justice Network • Environmental Alliance of North Florida • Environmental Research Foundation • Friends of the Earth • Global Exchange • The Grand Canyon Trust • Green Delaware • Greenpeace • Heartwood • Help Our Polluted Environment • Indigenous Environmental Network • Jefferson Action Group • Kentuckians for the Commonwealth • Meigs Citizen Action Now • Mountain Watershed Association • North Carolina Waste Awareness & Reduction Network • Nuclear Information and Resource Service • Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition • Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition • Protect Biodiversity in Public Forests • Rainforest Action Network • Residents Against the Power Plant • Rising Tide North America • Save It Now, Glades! • Save Our Cumberland Mountains • Southern Energy Network • Valley Watch

This weekend the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) governors and directors are in Miami for their annual meeting. And where there is unaccountable and unsustainable finance, there is also a broad alliance of representatives from Indigenous groups, human rights, environmental, and developmental organizations from across Latin America, the US and Europe out protesting the bank’s policies and practices.

The IDB’s lending procedures exacerbate poverty, displace communities and destroy pristine environment throughout Latin America. Subsidies for mega-projects such as hydroelectric dams, roads, pipelines, mining, and other resource extraction and dirty energy infrastructure are helping multinational corporations carve up important ecosystems, such as the Amazon, as well as make it impossible for people to continue to depend on their land. In addition, these projects and the deforestation required to develop them contribute gravely to climate change.

Check out IDB Watch, a civil society publication of analyses of the Bank’s policies.

RAN organized a rally outside Saturday’s bank meeting to call attention to these issues and demand that the bank be more accountable to the people it purports to serve, as well as to highlight one of its recent unveilings: investment in agrofuels.

The bank recently approved a total of $45 million in loans and technical cooperation funds to agrofuel projects and is now considering another $3 billion in private sector loan projects. Easily the largest investments are supporting export-oriented infrastructure and ethanol facilities, which provide relatively few jobs and do little to support development that reach those who need it most, while the expanding industrial scale mono-cropping threatens ecosystems and biodiversity.

Meanwhile, the IDB’s Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Initiative (SECCI) fund, which originally had $20 million to invest in assistance for renewable energy, energy efficiency, adaptation to climate change and development of carbon markets, has been used mainly to promote the expansion of ethanol production for export. Increasingly, studies are questioning the contribution of agrofuels to abating carbon emissions, given that crop-based agrofuels often increase emissions significantly as a result of deforestation and the destruction of other natural ecosystems that act as carbon sinks.

RAN and allies were in front of the Miami Beach Convention Center Saturday with a balloon banner that drew attention to the bank’s investments in agrofuels. Individuals from the varied Latin American civil society groups and U.S.-based NGOs spoke at the rally, accompanied by a guitarist and his repertoire of Latin American protest songs.

As one of the largest sources of funding for Latin American development, the IDB has a responsibility to invest consciously, sustainably and with transparency. It’s hard to say if the bank internalized our message yesterday, but we did reach somebody…the guy who leased us a sound system for the rally handed me a donation to give to RAN!

“We All Live at Climate Ground Zero”

It is time for American citizens to take leadership & direct action and make our politicians accountable to us. To this end we announce a Citizens Direct Action Training Camp in June 2008 in Montana to oppose and confront the massive fossil fuel development of the Rocky Mountain Corridor from Fort MacMurry, Alberta all the way to New Mexico. We oppose:

• Alberta Tar Sands and Coal Development
• Development of Coal in Montana and Wyoming feeding America’s electricity appetite
• Montana Governor Schweitzer’s plan to import Alberta dirty fossils into the USA through transmission lines from coal plants in Alberta, and 7 proposed Tar Sand refineries in Montana
• Proposed massive oil shale developments in Utah and Colorado
• Transmission lines off of coal fired power plants proposed all over US
• Mountain Top Removal coal mining

The Action Training will be five day training and include skills needed to do effective Direct Action Campaigning against dirty fossil projects and for a clean energy future. Sessions will include History and Practice Non Violent Direct Action, Campaign Strategy, Direct Actions Skills, Media Skills, Community Organizing

Where: Montana - site to be announced
When: June 1st – June 6th 2008

This camp sponsored by ClimateGroundZero.org and GlobalWarmingSolution.org and is being hosted and organized by:

Mike Roselle- Founder - Earth First!, RAN, and The Ruckus Society
JR Roof - Former Director of Greenpeace International Ships and Direct Action Division, Co-founder The Ruckus Society, ClimateGroundZero.org

For further information or to apply to attend - contact: JR Roof at jr@globalwarmingsolution.org

More »

Last week I told you that RAN supporters shut down interactive features on General Motor’s new greenwashing website, gmnext.com.

We posted pictures of student activists at the Detroit auto show protesting automakers on the site and thousands of RAN supporters flooded GM with comments supporting the students and asking the giant automaker to take real steps, not just greenwashing PR, on climate and green jobs.

Within a matter of hours GM shut down comments on the site.

Then, Christopher Barger, Director of Global Communications Technology for GM, came to our blog and wrote that they turned of the interactive features because “‘dialogue’ does not mean ‘open to demagogues.’” One of his employees–who it seems didn’t realize that her IP address identified her as part of the GM PR machine–going by the name “betty” also commented on our blog and started a lively conversation.

I know, hilarious.

Anyhow, Mr Barger also promised that they “are planning to have an open forum — possibly even a series of them – in the coming weeks where we will address green jobs, the quest for 100 mpg cars and other pressing environmental issues.”

Well, to give him credit, GM has announced the first of those forums.

Mr. Barger left a note on our blog and everyone who left a comment on the site got an email today announcing that:

“GM executive Brent Dewar will be on hand to answer your questions about GM’s environmental policies and initiatives. The chat will take place Wednesday, February 6 from noon to 1 p.m. EST. To access the chat, go to http://www.gmnext.com/LiveChat.aspx and register with your e-mail address. On the day of the chat, click the “Enter Chat” button and join the conversation.”

Great! Let’s ask some questions! I’ll be in the chat and I hope to see lots of RAN supporters there asking GM why they are doing so little about global warming, green jobs and social justice.

Don’t expect a lot of candor or honesty, we are, afterall, dealing with the PR apparatus of one of the biggest corporations in the world. Instead, I expect more of the same–greenwashing slogans and little real action.

I’m in Honolulu this week, joining local organizers and activists outside the Major Economies Meeting (MEM) at the East-West Center on UH-Manoa’s campus. The 16 biggest carbon-emitting nations are here at President Bush’s request to discuss “Energy Security and Climate Change,” but the meetings are closed to the public, and hopes are not high that anything substantial will come out of these talks. As a matter of fact, this Major Economies Meeting is seen by many as the Bush administration’s diversion from any substantive agreements going forward in Bali last month.

Yesterday we were out in force in the pouring rain in front of the governor’s mansion in Honolulu, where she was holding a reception for the delegates of the MEM. The local message is that we need serious commitments to secure our climate, and no more false solutions like importing palm oil from South East Asia to fuel Hawaii’s electrical generation, which is exactly what the Hawaiian Electric Company here is proposing. They want to build two of the world’s largest biodiesel refineries on O’ahu and Maui sourcing palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia - generously supplied by our Rainforest Agribusiness Campaign’s corporate target, Cargill, and they are calling this a green energy solution. What they don’t know is that the public is savvy to the devastating impacts of palm oil on the climate and the world’s people. Read the Hawaii Palm Oil Release .

The words “People over Profit – No Palm Oil” were ringing in the delegates ears last night as they tried to sip their mai tais at the governor’s mansion. We met the delegates and the international press again this morning outside of their meeting at the East-West Center to make sure they know the whole world is watching.

This afternoon we’ll be drawing a blue chalk line in the streets of Manoa to demonstrate where the one meter rise in sea level would wipe out entire sections of Honolulu, including all of Waikiki. For people living on the front lines of climate crisis, there’s no time for useless talks with no real action.

According to a new Naomi Klein piece in the Nation, the “smart” money these days is on guns, not green. Private security companies, weapons makers, and disaster-response contractors can expect brisk business in the fast-arriving era of climate chaos.

Anyone tired of lousy news from the markets should talk to Douglas Lloyd, director of Venture Business Research, a company that tracks trends in venture capitalism. “I expect investment activity in this sector to remain buoyant,” he said recently. His bouncy mood was inspired by the money gushing into private security and defense companies. He added, “I also see this as a more attractive sector, as many do, than clean energy.”

Got that? If you are looking for a sure bet in a new growth market, sell solar, buy surveillance; forget wind, buy weapons.

According to Klein, the private war economy ramped up after September 11 is being re-geared to help the wealthy defend themselves from the angry, unwashed masses during the coming crisis. As she points out, it’s a much more reliable way of making money than actually trying to avert disaster in the first place:

Of course, there is still money to be made from going green; but there is much more green–at least in the short term–to be made from selling escape and protection. As Lloyd explains, “The failure rate of security businesses is much lower than clean-tech ones and, as important, the capital investment required to build a successful security business is also much lower.” In other words, solving real problems is hard, but turning a profit from those problems is easy.

In a way, the current administration’s refusal to engage with international efforts to curb global warming could be seen as yet another sweetheart deal for groups like Halliburton and Blackwater–they’re the ones who will benefit from destabilization resulting from climate change. There’s no shortage of perverse incentives, especially while governments allow polluters to externalize the true cost of their activity.

All this goes to show that we should be skeptical of claims that the markets, left to their own devices, will lift us out of this crisis. For many, it might be more profitable not to.

And they’re coming. We’ve been telling Citi and Bank of America that their financing of coal fired power plants and mountaintop removal was going to get them some unwanted attention from lots of very concerned people. Today thousands have taken to the streets in fifty cities around the country to tell the banks that financing the dirtiest form of energy, financing climate change and financing the destruction of Appalachian mountains and communities is not going to be taken lying down. Read the press release!

Stay tuned as we keep you posted as actions unfurl across the nation – check out this first hit from Santa Barbara.

And in case anyone thought that the surging no coal movement wasn’t making a difference…check out this latest plant closure in Orlando! And a so-called ‘clean coal plant’ at that. This plant was canceled AFTER they had broken ground, which is significant. I think most of us assume (logically) that once ground has broken on construction, it’s fairly unlikely the plant will be stopped. While we don’t have the “inside scoop” on what broke the camel’s back on this plant, the fact that they switched gears after several months of construction makes the decision a very big deal.

UPDATE: A photo and a story from St. Pete:
Bank of America Protest in St. Pete

Three activists from two local environmental groups — Earth First! and Rising Tide — unleashed a balloon-propelled banner earlier today attacking the bank for funding new coal plants and investing in mining companies that use environmentally destructive practices to extract coal.

UPDATE: ATM shutdowns in San Francisco: San Francisco, CA : Across downtown San Francisco, nearly every Bank of America and Citi ATM was shut down this morning as swarms of activists covered over 70 ATM’s with “Global Warming Crime Scene” tape and “closed” signs denouncing investments in coal that are killing our climate. Many customers enthusiastically took flyers, shocked to learn that their banks are using their money to invest in environmental destruction.

Citi is sponsoring How the Grinch Stole Christmas on Broadway so we thought it only fitting that the Grinch and all the Whos from Whoville pay them a visit.

UPDATE: San Francisco die-in at Citi HQ

A couple of weeks ago the Sierra Club reported that the No Coal movement has collectively stopped or held up 60 coal-fired power plants due to environmental concerns.  Today there are reports of  yet another grassroots victory! Voters in Wiscasset, Maine, on November 6, 2007 defeated a ballot initiative that would have allowed a 700 MW IGCC plant (Twin River Energy Center, proposed by Greenwich, Connecticut base National RE/sources) to move forward. The vote was 868-707. Complete story here.

You may know that Al Gore is reported to be considering RAN’s offer to participate in civil disobedience to stop the construction of coal-fired power plants, stop mountain top removal mining, and help prevent climate destruction. Just last week, in Rolling Stone, he again talked about civil disobedience in connection with coal, the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gases:

Look at Texas, where TXU wanted to build eleven new coal plants. Mayors all across that state, Republican and Democratic alike, were spurred by their grassroots supporters to rise up and say, “No, you don’t. We will not allow you to build all of these dirty coal plants here.” The entire deal collapsed, until it was reworked by an environment-minded group that said, “Wait a minute, let’s rejigger this whole thing and apply green standards.” All across the world, you’re seeing developments like that. You’re also going to see people practicing civil disobedience, lying in front of the bulldozers and the dump trucks to physically prevent the building of any new coal-fired plants.

We were on the front lines of the TXU fight, and just yesterday, RAN (along with Coal River Mountain Watch, SEAC and others) organized a die-in targeting Citi, the world’s biggest funder of coal. By targeting banks, we can cut off the flow of financing to coal projects at its source. Activists lay in front of a bank rather than a bulldozer, but the principle is the same: we can no longer afford to tolerate coal, or the banks that fund it. We’re still hoping that Al will join us on our November 16-17 national day of action against coal finance (you can still sign our friendly petition asking him to come participate in civil disobedience). And even if you have yet to win a Nobel prize, we need your support, too.