More and more people are demanding that JPMorgan Chase stop financing the coal industry and the destruction of Appalachia through mountaintop removal coal mining. Earlier this month, Bill McKibben sent a letter to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and this week, Gloria Reuben, actress, singer and social activist, sent her letter – posted below. Ms. Reuben also posted a heartfelt call to end mountaintop removal mining on her personal website, as well as Huffington Post. Thanks Gloria!

-Annie

Dear Mr. Dimon:

I am writing to you about an urgent issue – to respectfully request you end JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s support of the coal industry. This industry is destroying our nation’s oldest and most diverse mountains, causing catastrophic erosion and flooding, devastating ecosystems, poisoning drinking water, and obliterating historic communities. By investing in the coal industry, JPMorgan Chase & Co. is complicit in this wholesale destruction.
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New Yorkers and those nearby!

Join us this Thursday, October 29th to tell JP Morgan Chase to stop funding mountaintop removal coal mining! JP Morgan Chase is the biggest financier of the devastating practice of MTR – and even funds Massey Energy, the company that has started blasting Coal River Mountain in West Virgina this week.

This Thursday’s Carnival of Destruction will highlight “The Most Shocking Show on Earth” – JP Morgan Chase’s investments in coal and MTR. Hosted by Waterkeeper Alliance, Rainforest Action Network, New York Action Network, Sierra Club, and Friends of the Earth this will be an event not to be missed.

Here’s the details:
When: Thursday, October 29, 2009, from 8:00am – 11:30am
Location: JP Morgan Chase Headquarters, 270 Park Ave. (between 47th and 48th St.)

Join the ringmaster, marching band and costumed supporters.

See you on October 29!

-Annie

Last night, RAN’s Sam Corbin attended the premiere of The Yes Men’s new movie, “Yes Men Fix the World”. After the movie was over, she directed the riled-up crowd to a near-by Chase branch so that movie goers could vent their frustration with corporate greed at a corporation that is financing mountaintop removal coal mining. Check out The Yes Men’s blog about the event and the protest – the pictures are amazing!

-Annie

The largest industry trade group in the world is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a coalition of some 3 million leading corporations. This behemoth includes some of the most environmentally awful players like Peabody Coal, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Massey Energy, along with a number of companies working to lighten their climate footprint like FedEx, General Electric and Johnson & Johnson.

Recently divisions have cropped up in the U.S. Chamber. Three prominent utilities dumped the chamber in the last month, publicly slamming the Chamber’s position on climate change. Nike just left its position on the board of directors. Brad Figel, Nike’s director of government relations, told Greenwire that “We just weren’t clear in how decisions on climate and energy were being made.” And yesterday, computer giant Apple announced it was leaving the Chamber over climate policy.

What gives? What could the trade group be doing that has so offended its major members?
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I recently went on a trip with two awesome people from Rainforest Action Network, Branden Barber and Debra Erenberg, to visit Appalachia country in West Virginia.  The purpose of the trip was to see first hand what’s happening with mountaintop removal (MTR) due to the affects of coal strip mining.  Its one thing to read about and see pictures of MTR, but it’s absolutely another thing to actually see it and to hear the stories from the people who live there.  What I saw and learned left me feeling sad, angry, overwhelmed and deeply affected.

We had the great fortune of meeting with four equally impressive people in the area.  Each works with a different non-profit group that is fighting to stop this insane large scale devastation.  Mike Roselle from Climate Ground Zero talked about the campaigns of non-violent civil disobedience work that this new and emerging organization is doing where local and non-local volunteers are putting themselves at great risk for trying to stop MTR.  Mike is great.  He is truly a leader in the national and international environmental movement.  I know I want him on my side to stand up for a worthy cause.  It’s tough work, but thanks to Mike and the people at Climate Ground Zero, they’re bringing national attention to this horrid practice of MTR. More »

Hey everyone- Kate here, your resident Washington DC Coal campaigner dedicated to taking some of the wonk of our DC Beltway politics and get under the skin of decision makers until they realize just how serious we are about the issue of Mountaintop Removal.

Today the EPA made another important step forward in protecting the communities of Appalachia from the disastrous impacts of mountaintop removal mining. Under a process called “Enhanced Coordination Procedures” the EPA has put a temporary hold on 79 permits, which will now undergo further review before their fate is determined.

So did the EPA stop any MTR permits today? No, and Ken Ward gives a good explanation on his blog:

“But as the EPA statement said, EPA officials have determined that all 79 of these permits as they are currently proposed would not comply with the Clean Water Act. EPA is not denying the permits (though under some circumstances, EPA has the authority to override Corps of Engineers decisions to issue permits). Instead, EPA is saying that all 79 of these permits need to be more closely reviewed and perhaps changed so that they would comply with the law.”

You can read more about the Obama administration’s “enhanced coordination procedures” for reviewing these permits on EPA’s Web site here.  The list of 79 permits is here.

So what now you ask? Well we watch with extreme scrutiny during the next 2 months as the permits go under review. Last week during the finalization of this list I went out with other RAN activists and flyered the EPA office in DC during employees lunch break. We spoke with hundreds of employees, many of whom commented that they work on this issue. Its important that they know we are watching.

I’ll keep you updated and if you are ever in the DC area come down to the East Building of the EPA Headquarters at the corner of 12th and Constitution. You’ll likely find me there, with a tireless team of activists until mountaintop removal is ended once and for all.

I first met Maria Gunnoe a couple of years ago when we had the great fortune to honor her at REVEL with a World Rainforest Award for her courageous and critical work in West Virginia’s Appalachian mountains. I was impressed by her courage and her spirit – and just how engaging and approachable she is.

And just last year I saw her accept a Goldman Environmental Prize for her efforts as an organizer working to save the mountains and the communities she’s from and committed to. As a result of efforts and this attention Maria is gaining some notoriety, and with it there are pros and cons. On the one hand the issue is certainly gaining awareness which is critical if we are going to then raise the consciousness that will lead to an end to this terrible, destructive assault – on the other, those that support Coal (or more likely, the few that benefit the most from it) see Maria as more of a strident agitator than ever.

She’s an 8^th generation “mountain holler girl” who lives where her forebears made their home. She’s encircled by mountains – or their remains – and is just at the back of the town of Bobwhite, West Virginia. She has a teenage son and daughter, and a bunch of baby kittens, and two dogs – one her pet, the other for security. More »

Recently, I interviewed leading climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen, for Earth Island Journal on why he hates coal, what he thinks of the President, the current climate bill and global climate negotiations, as well as his take on Ghandian Civil Resistance.

As we enter climate week, with President Obama poised to give his first big speech on climate change, and just before climate negotiations in Bangkok, i thought it might be a good idea to see what the ‘father of global warming’ thinks about our Administration and all things climate.

Below is an excerpt of the interview, for the full thing  click here!

Kate Davison/Greenpeace

You’ve had more experience than anybody in trying to translate the connection between science and policy. How do you feel President Obama is doing on the climate?

Well, I am disappointed that he has not become a little more involved. He seems to be letting the politics just play out, and perhaps planning to be a judge in the compromises. But it’s a case where we clearly need leadership. And he is still our best hope in achieving that.

What is clear is that we have to phase out the coal, and the place you would start is to say we are going to have a moratorium on any new coal-fired power plants. Because when you look at the science, what we’ve shown is that if you phase out coal emissions within 20 years, then you can keep the peak CO₂ at something between 400 and 425 ppm. But that is critically dependent on phasing out the coal emissions on that sort of timescale. If you’re going to do that, you would not build any new coal-fired power plants.

But to put a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, Obama would have to contend with the coal state senators and the coal lobby.

Yeah, it’s a nontrivial task. But he could do it, and he is the only one who could do it. Without that, it is just going to be this horse-trading that we’ve seen. And you just keep adding more and more bad things to the bill.

But anyway, you should have a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. That is very clear. And mountaintop removal [coal mining], which I understand is only about seven percent of our coal, obviously should be the place you start. I had hoped that the new administration would recognize this and would ban this practice. But again, they seem to be in a position of compromising, of making it a little more difficult but allowing the practice to continue. If [Obama] decided to exert leadership on this, he could. He is articulate enough to explain that to the American public. But so far he is not doing that.

Finding your way to Climate Ground Zero is easy if you know where you’re going.  Well, even then I’ve learned that Google will lead me astray from time to time. But in terms of what CGZ is, well, I thought I knew.

I didn’t have a clue.

Well, maybe that’s unfair.

I knew what was going on in the mountains of Appalachia, I knew that people were fighting a powerful company that is extracting coal and destroying mountains and communities, and I knew that Climate Ground Zero refers to where the main battle for our global climate is going on – here in the heart of Coal Country, in the US where we produce the lion’s share, per capita, of the world’s greenhouse gases and half of that comes from coal. I knew that this battle is seriously heating up. But I didn’t know how serious.

Of course it’s serious that a company is mining coal with machines bigger than office buildings and tremendous amounts of explosives, carried daily in tankers that rip along these narrow two lane highways.

And of course it’s serious when people’s families are endangered, their homes destroyed by floods caused by the mining, and the mountains that sustain so much life, so much diversity, are being wiped out for corporate profit. In this area that is stunningly beautiful, terrible things are indeed happening.

Since 1991 Massey Energy has led the pack in the race to take all the coal available from the once-hallowed mountains of Appalachia. They have systematically led the charge and taken the lion’s share of profit in the most efficient form of coal mining available, Mountaintop Removal.

The EPA continues to grant the permits that allow this company to employ far fewer workers than ever before in the history of coal mining. An underground mine used to employ as many as 500 workers. Now these operations can employ as few as 19. More »

After a long and bumpy ride, we arrived at Larry Gibson’s property. Larry hosts an annual 4th of July party, and this year Massey workers showed up drunk and threatening violence. Larry knew they were coming, and knew they had started drinking at 9 a.m. to build up the nerve to finally show up around 7 pm. The only reason there wasn’t violence was because there were several people with video cameras filming them. After the incident, Larry made repeated calls to the State and Federal government, and many calls to local law enforcement, West Virginia’s State Troopers. The FBI finally showed up 5 weeks after the event took place. They told him that no federal laws were broken, despite video footage of a man threatening to kill and woman and her two kids. According to the FBI, they “have the right to express themselves.”

Larry was preparing for a big Labor Day party, and he was fairly certain there would be violence. He had hung a “Coal keeps West Virginia poor” sign on the patio, right next to his “Friends of the Mountains” sign, and when we arrived he noticed it had been torn down. He was clearly shaken because he hadn’t noticed that anyone had entered his property. While we were there, he put in calls to try to arrange security for the upcoming event, but he didn’t sound hopeful that the police would be of any help. In fact, he has had no call backs for his request for state law enforcement support. Since the incident on the 4th the State Troopers came once to see what the fuss was about, didn’t take a statement and did not give Larry their names when he asked.

Because of his activism, Larry has experienced 136 acts of violence. His property and neighbors’ property has been shot up (we saw bullet holes), and his dog was hung on his porch and almost killed.

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