Environmental activists from six states -Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, Texas, Iowa, and Illinois - converged today to urge the Houston-based Dynegy corporation to halt construction on its six proposed coal plants.

Outside the meeting 100 activists rallied to speak truth to Dynegy’s power.

40 activists from Georgia, Texas and Alabama staged a “die-in” inside the Westin where the meeting was being held. They held space until police and security got them out of the building.

Video here
More pix here

From their press release:

“Coal is a ticking time bomb for investors and the climate. From the destruction of Appalachian mountaintops to the millions of tons of carbon dioxide, mercury and other toxic pollutants emitted from power plants, coal plants are the country’s top source of global warming and mercury pollution. Yet Houston-based Dynegy plans to build six new coal-fired plants—more than any other company in the country.”

How often do you get to witness a band of activists deploy a direct action and successfully pressure the CEO of a corporation into agreeing to their demands - before the police even arrive on the scene?

On Friday afternoon, student activists with Ohio Student Environmental Coalition and members of Mountain Justice occupied the lobby of American Municipal Power and forced an impromptu meeting with CEO Mark Gerken – who was not a happy camper.

AMP is planning to build a 1000 MW pulverized coal power plant in Meigs County, Ohio – one of the most impoverished counties in the state, with some of the highest lung cancer and premature death rates due industrial pollution in the country. There are already 4 coal power plants within 10 miles of Meigs and the coal barons of the Midwest are planning on building five more – the largest and dirtiest being the AMP project.

Determined to put an end to this economic and social injustice, concerned Meigs residents have been working with student and youth activists to organize and empower communities to break out of the socio-economic slavery of king coal. Mountain Justice Spring Break - an event where many students, rather than spending their holidays in Florida or Cancun, have opted instead for more meaningful pursuits in building solidarity, developing consensus, discovering affinity and exploring nonviolent direct action - showcased this collaboration over this last week.

Today marked a watershed moment in the movement against King Coal in Ohio. The activists’ demands were simple: cancel plans to build the coal plant, fund renewable energy, and schedule a meeting between the AMP Board of Trustees, local students, and frontline community activists to discuss how AMP can best chart a course towards these goals.

So, this morning, about fifty student and youth activists – most of whom had never participated in a direct action – marched to AMP headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, at which point a group of four negotiators entered the building and demanded a meeting with Gerken. Even when confronted by irate AMP employees, the youth negotiators kept their cool and stuck to their demands. They not only managed to meet with Gerken, but also got him to commit to a meeting between students, Meigs County activists and the AMP Board – and to agree that AMP wouldn’t begin construction on the plant until after this meeting has taken place.

This action was part of an ongoing campaign by activists – including residents of frontline communities, and student activists from groups like Mountain Justice, Ohio Student Environmental Coalition, Earth First, and Student Environmental Action Coalition – against AMP’s plans to bring further destruction to Southern Ohio. On a Sunday morning in early March, a group of concerned citizens visited the home of CEO Marc Gerken, and demanded that AMP reconsider its plans to move forward with the plant. (At that point, Gerken brushed off their requests for a meeting.) Earlier this week – as part of the Listening Project – several students visited the homes of Meigs County residents, listened to their concerns about the AMP project, and empowered them to take action and join the campaign against the coal plant.

Today’s action was the biggest step to date in this campaign, and has laid the groundwork for even bigger victories against King Coal in Ohio. Stay tuned for updates on what this collaboration will do next!

Adrian & Ananda in Columbus

Over the weekend, 70+ students from 9 colleges and universities in Ohio gathered in Columbus at Ohio State University to develop a network of student activists, coordinate cross-campus campaign activities and participate in an action to stop development of new coal-fired power plants in Ohio. It was incredibly inspiring to watch these students come together over 3 jam-packed days, and their plans to make Ohio a more socially and environmentally responsible state will surely have huge impacts. Here’s a description that the students wrote describing the conference:

- Annie

Ohio students ask leaders to stop coal plants and need your help!

This Feb. 8-10, over 70 students from the Ohio Student Environmental Coalition gathered in Columbus to set campaigns and form structure for the brand new state network –the Ohio Student Environmental Coalition–and to tell officials that we will not stand for new coal fired power plants in Ohio!

We decided to take our concerns to the top, and have a chat with two people key in deciding on American Municipal Power’s proposed coal power plant in Meigs County, Ohio. More than 50 students dropped by to visit and deliver letters to Director of the Ohio EPA Chris Korleski, and the President and CEO of AMP-Ohio Marc Gerkin on Sunday to let them know that we think that proposed coal power plants are one of the greatest threats facing Ohio today, and that the hearing process on proposed power plants is unjust and disempowering to Ohio citizens.

Ohio DEP director Chris Korleski cordially met us on the lawn in the freezing February weather, carrying his small dog and talked to us for a while, and although he was not sure on all the details of the power plant proposal and permitting process, he promised to “talk to his guys” and learn more. Spokespeople explained about how global warming threatens all of our future and the groundwater toxins, coal waste disposal and air pollution from coal fired power plants is already causing unprecedented rates of cancer in Meigs County, Ohio. Furthermore, rate payers would bear the burden of this expensive, outdated and dirty technology, and counties across Ohio are already thinking (or have) about backing out of contracts for the power plant. While he tried to make us feel really young, we know that meeting with 50 students on a Sunday afternoon made him think and he’ll definitely be talking to “his guys.”

Gerken of AMP-Ohio, a group pushing the power plant forward, was less excited to see 50 students from across Ohio on his sidewalk with letters and wanting to talk to him about global warming and the dangers of dirty coal proliferation. However, he listened to the spokespeople, became somewhat agitated for a few minutes but ended things on a cordial note. It was empowering to take our concerns directly to the top decision makers and have them to listen to us all the way through.

We would like as many people as possible to follow up our visits with as many calls, letters and emails as possible! We want to let them know that we’re serious about stopping coal fired power plants and building a clean just energy future.

Think about setting up a table in a public space on your campus and writing letters, making calls, and/or taking a few minutes during a club meeting to send messages and write letters to Mr. Korleski and Mr. Gerken. Please, leap into action by February 29th! The site permit meeting for this AMPGS plant is in Columbus, OH on Monday, March 3rd, so have your letters in and think about coming down!

Please write AMP-Ohio President Marc Gerken at AMP-Ohio, 2600 Airport Drive,
Columbus, OH 43219 or call 614-337-6222 or contact him by e-mail at mgerken@amp-ohio.org.

Please write Ohio EPA Director at PO Box 1049, Columbus, OH 43216-1049, or call 614-644-2782, or contact him by e-mail at chris.korleski@epa.state.oh.us.

Tell them to just say no to the AMP coal power plant and all coal power plants around Meigs County, Ohio. Tell them that coal causes global warming and releases deadly toxins during the extraction, processing, burning and waste disposal stages and we need to phase our state and our country off of coal — not risk millions of rate payers dollars in out-dated, dirty coal.

So, big news on Wall Street today regarding coal and our climate. Three of the largest investment banks (Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan Chase) announced the formation of the “Carbon Principles” - a set of guidelines the banks will follow when lending money to carbon-intensive projects, such as coal-fired power plants.

While the banks don’t go so far as to say they WON’T finance coal-fired power plants - if I were the CEO of a utility or coal company - I’d be worried. Here’s my analysis of these principles:

WHAT’S GOOD:

• Banks are REALLY keen on not having any accountability for their investments -legally, or for their brand image. They want to pretend an economy is only numbers and to be accountable only for the math and profits - not for the real-world, on-the-ground impacts their participation in the economy has. Banks are happy to address the carbon footprint of their internal operations (pushing papers around is relatively benign, atmospherically-speaking) - but if their footprint includes their “financed emissions” - they start to look bad. REALLY bad. The fact that banks are even talking about the impacts of their investments, and that they have a responsibility they have towards socially and ecologically responsible lending practices is a good first step. Banks weren’t even really talking about coal or their financed emissions a year ago.
• The banks pledge “Enhanced Diligence” in evaluating the carbon risks of coal-fired power plants, which includes the potential liability for future carbon regulation, requirements for carbon storage and sequestration, and to prioritize zero/low carbon projects. Again - the banks aren’t saying straight-up they won’t fund coal - but they at least appear to putting up a few hurdles for carbon-intensive projects to gain financing. I can’t see how they would be able to fund a coal-fired power plant if they are actually honestly abiding by these principles.
• Utility companies were rumored to have involved in drafting these principles initially - but in the end they were not signatories to the principles, they are merely listed as being “consulted”. Did they get coal cold feet in the process of drafting this document? Does this mean that the utilities see serious intent from the banks’ to put a damper on coal? That remains to be seen - but it’s a good sign.

WHAT’S LACKING:

• These principles don’t have any sort of binding commitments to reduce their financed emissions. While guidelines are nice - there simply needs to be a complete moratorium on coal-fired power plants and other carbon-intensive industries. This is the crucial step for our climate - and banks should have an outright moratorium on financing new coal development - not merely guidelines.
• These principles only partially address the problems of coal - they still ignore incredibly destructive extraction methods such as mountaintop removal mining.
• Environmental Defense and NRDC are not listed as signatories either - does this mean even they see this document as not being substantive enough to fully endorse? That too, remains to be seen.
• Bank of America is noticeably absent from the principles. As a leading financier to some of the dirtiest coal developments in the country - where are they in this process?
• Despite big past commitments to “green banking” - Wall Street still pours money to King Coal hand over fist. Banks need to be much more transparent about where their investments are going - all the major Wall Street banks finance hundreds of times more money to dirty energy than to clean energy. I hope the tides are changing - but so far they haven’t walked their own talk.

You can see the banks’ press release here, and Rainforest Action Network’s official response here.

For the past year, a huge coalition of groups has been campaigning on Wall Street Banks’ to end their financing of the dirty coal industry. Groups such Rainforest Action Network, Energy Action Coalition, Rising Tide North America, Coal River Mountain Watch, and many more have been leading the campaign - holding hundreds of public demonstrations, filing shareholder resolutions, and taken non-violent direct action to demand that banks stop banking on the destruction of our climate.

Our strategy of campaigning against the financing of coal is two-fold. First - we are demanding that banks (where many of us hold our checking accounts, credit cards, mortgages, or student loans) should not be profiting from, nor accelerating the destruction of our climate, environment, and communities. We are taking the money out from under carbon-intensive industries like coal and tar sands - rather than fighting one destructive project at a time.

But just as importantly - we are demanding a future where our economy is in sync with our ecology - where investments are made in clean energy, sustainable development, and justice for our communities. As we are seeing now with a looming recession, the credit crisis, and mortgage meltdowns across the country - our current economy is destroying the social and ecological fabrics of our society. People are demanding a new world - based on clean energy, ecological principles, social justice, and an economy that works for people, not profit.

-Matt

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.