But of course Daniel might be lying, right?

I do not know the academic background of American Petroleum Institute’s Marty Durbin, but it’s very possible, given his recent comments, that he didn’t take freshman logic. Or maybe he did and he’s learned to apply his lessons in very clever ways. You be the judge.

My suspicion over Mr. Durbin’s schooling comes from his comments regarding the expansion of the Keystone XL pipeline, which recently began carrying tar sands oil from Alberta to Oklahoma.

In response to regulatory action taken after two recent spills, Mr. Dubin said that the accidents actually prove the pipeline is safe and should be expanded. Comments on the expansion were due to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday.

Said Mr. Dubin in The Hill:

What we’ve seen over the last several weeks here is it’s almost proven that we have an effective regulatory process in place… In some ways it actually supports the approval of the XL pipeline. They were able to detect the problems very quickly and take actions to stop the flow through the pipeline.

Of course if no oil were to spill that would also prove that the pipeline was safe. It’s nice to be able to have it both ways, but it’s not accurate.

Here is what is accurate: If the plan is accepted and the pipeline is expanded, stopping climate chaos will become even more difficult, maybe impossible. Just ask NASA’s James Hansen, who wrote this to his scientific colleagues yesterday:

Easily available reserves of conventional oil and gas are enough to take atmospheric CO2 well above 400 ppm. However, if emissions from coal are phased out over the next few decades and if unconventional fossil fuels are left in the ground, it is conceivable to stabilize climate.

Phase out of emissions from coal is itself an enormous challenge. However, if the tar sands are thrown into the mix it is essentially game over. There is no practical way to capture the CO2 emitted while burning oil, which is used principally in vehicles.

Tar sands oil is the worst type of oil for the climate, producing three times the greenhouse gas emissions of conventionally produced oil because of the energy required to extract and process tar sands oil. No amount of rhetorical trickery will erase that fact. Expansion of the tar sands must be stopped.

It was also something of a kickoff for what would turn out to be a really bad year for dirty energy — a year in which seemingly everything that could go wrong did go wrong, laying bare for all to see the inherent danger and unsustainability of continuing to rely on fossil fuels as sources of energy.

Just fifteen days after the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine on April 5^th, for instance, BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, taking with it the lives of 11 men working on the drilling platform. The wellhead blowout led to a three-month long ordeal in which crude oil gushed uncontrollably into the Gulf, exposing once again the relaxed attitude towards worker and environmental safety held by purveyors of dirty energy.

Now, a year later, we’re facing the specter of nuclear meltdown in Japan, a frightening capstone to what should serve as a year’s-worth of alarming wake up calls.

But these of course were only the highest profile disasters that resulted from our reliance on dirty energy. The Atlantic recently compiled a long list of dirty energy disasters from the past year that should lay to rest once and for all the debate over our society’s energy future.

Here is a brief, by no means comprehensive list of the dirty energy disasters we witnessed last year alone. This draws from The Atlantic’s list some, with additions by me and other RAN staffers.

• April 5, 2010 – An explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia claimed the lives of 29 miners.
• April 20, 2010 – BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded and sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, claiming the lives of 11 workers and leading to an oil spill of over 200 million gallons.
• May 8, 2010 – Two explosions at the Raspadskaya coal mine in Siberia claimed the lives of 91 miners.
• June 17, 2010 – An explosion at a coal mine in Amaga, Colombia claimed the lives of 73 workers.
• July 20, 2010 – China experienced its biggest oil spill ever – some 400,000 gallons – after pipelines exploded in Dalian Province.
• July 26, 2010 – An Enbridge Pipeline burst, spilling 19,500 barrels of oil into the Kalamazoo River — a record for the Midwest. The river remains closed.
• August 10, 2010 – Five people lost their lives and another 50 were injured when a natural gas pipeline owned by PG&E exploded in San Bruno, CA, a suburb of San Francisco.
• October 16, 2010 – At least 20 miners were killed by an explosion in a coal mine in Yuzhou, China.
• November 21, 2010 – Some 87 workers were killed in the year’s worst coal-mining accident in China.
• December 2, 2010 – A Chevron pipeline in Salt Lake City, UT burst, spilling 500 barrels of oil. Chevron actually had not one but TWO oil spills in Salt Lake City in 2010. Not only that, but the company had THREE oil spills in the space of one week in December 2010.
• February 9, 2011 – A natural gas explosion in Mont Belvieu, TX claimed the life of one worker and led to a fire that burned for nearly an entire day.
• February 10, 2011 – A natural gas explosion in Allentown, PA killed five people and destroyed eight homes.
• March 11, 2011 – An earthquake-triggered tsunami hit the coast of Japan, dangerously destabilizing several of the country’s nuclear reactors. To date, workers are still trying to prevent total meltdowns of the reactor cores. But it wasn’t just nuclear energy that posed a problem in the aftermath of the earthquake: A fire at an oil refinery was sparked by the quake and raged for days, some times with 100-foot flames leaping into the air.

It couldn’t be more obvious that now more than ever we need to redouble our efforts to ensure that our children are not held captive to these dirty energy sources of the 19^th century. A bad year for dirty energy is actually really bad news for us all.

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!

Credit: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

Here in San Francisco we just got some holiday cheer: After decades of  battling, the last remaining fossil fuel power plant in our city is going to shut down.

Mayor Gavin Newsom today announced that Potrero Power Plant, operated by GenOn Energy, will close on January 1, and be fully decommissioned by February 28.

The 40-year old natural gas plant is situated in the South East of the city, where neighborhood residents have long suffered from higher rates of pollution-related illnesses, such as asthma and respiratory disease.

So here’s to cleaner air in the new year, and to shutting down many more dirty power plants in 2011!

A coal slurry spill from Murray Energy’s American Century Mine is threatening Belmont County Creek.

This is the fourth coal slurry spill into the creek in recent years – and yet Murray Energy wants to put another impoundment right on the creek.

Murray is the largest privately owned coal company in the US, and the second largest producer of longwall coal.

You can read the full story about the spill here in the Columbus Dispatch.

Crossposted from Daily Kos

In the last two days Chevron has been hit with two developments that will surely produce lasting doubts to the legality and authenticity of Chevron’s actions in what is being called the world’s largest environmental lawsuit. Chevron has been involved in the $27.3 billion for the last 17 years. The breathtaking figure represents the expensive pollution counting for over 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste and 15 million gallons of crude oil left in the Amazon rainforest. Chevron has vehemently denied responsibility, claiming high cancer rates and polluted drinking water is due to “poor sanitation.” However Chevron cannot, and as of yesterday now refuses to, backup any such claim.

Yesterday Chevron was provided with the opportunity to submit to the court its own damages assessment. (Presumably to argue any discrepancies they found in the original damages assessment compiled by the court appointed expert.) Chevron in turn rejected the opportunity. A peculiar move considering Chevron has spent the last two years attacking the submission of independent damages assessment. The original assessment contained over 105 expert reports and more than 64,000 samples, many of which came from Chevron’s own team. This latest maneuver by Chevron has many in the legal and human rights world scratching their heads. However for those close to the lawsuit this latest development is seen as another indicator that Chevron is solely interested delaying the trial rather than letting the courts rule on the extent of their liability.

“We predict that Chevron’s bad faith will be on full display yet again,” said Pablo Fajardo, the lead lawyer for the Amazonian communities. “Chevron complained that it did not have an opportunity to produce its own damages assessment. But when given the opportunity, company lawyers accuse the judge of bias against Chevron and launch attacks on the justice system.” Fajardo said the Amazonian communities would submit their own damages assessment prepared by a team of scientific and medical experts to the court today.”

The new damages report submission, comes a day after another major dilemma for Chevron’s defense in Ecuador. On Wednesday a Federal Judge ordered Diego Borja, a spy video operative and former Chevron employee, to appear for a deposition in San Francisco next week.

The deposition is in regards to Borja’s involvement with Chevron in a potentially illegal entrapment scheme. Borja became a lightning rod of controversy in the lawsuit after partnering with a former drug runner and secretly videotaping themselves having conversations with the judge presiding over the trial. The videotape as been a key piece of evidence for the defendants and human rights activists claiming the Chevron continues to attempt to undermine the rule of law in Ecuador with “dirty tricks”.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Edward Chen says “that Mr. Borja was not an innocent third party who just happened to learn of the alleged bribery scheme but rather was a long-time associate of Chevron whom Chevron would pay for any favorable testimony.”

Chevron has denied any association with Borja, however an investigation uncovered that Chevron had arranged for his relocation from Ecuador to a $6000 a month Northern California townhouse, and is currently providing him legal counsel. Diego Borja’s deposition is scheduled for October 1st, pending any objections from Chevron.

In the days before, the re-branding of Chase went viral. Armed with a thumbmail picture and a few status messages, people all over the internet let their friends and family know the truth about Chase and mountaintop removal.

Through the course of the day, we hit Chase in the following ways:

-RAN and allies Tweeted to over 330,000 people
-RAN and allies touched 180,000 people on Facebook
-had over 30 unique blogs posted, including posts on Huffington Post, Treehugger and Grist
-had 3,000 people “defriend” the Chase Community Giving Facebook fan page
-reports of dozens of people cancelling their Chase credit cards and bank accounts.
-one Appalachian activist started a “Boycott Chase” Facebook group.

This day of action has actually created a surge of activity amongst RAN and our allies as we’re getting lots of calls from activists and RAN members asking what more they can do to tell Chase to stop funding mountaintop removal.

I love it when online asks turn into offline action.

They have financial relationships with the poster child of mountaintop removal, Massey Energy. That means their money is funds sludge impoundments like Brushy Fork which is currently holding 7 billion gallons of coal waste above the Coal River Valley. Their money funds the dragline that 14 of my friends shut down in Twilight last June that scrapes away house size chunks of earth after the mountain has been blasted. Their money funds the security guards and noise machines that harassed and abused 3 tree-sitters last month defending Coal River Mountain with non-violent direct action. Their money funds Don Blankenship’s helicopters, mansion and corrupt junkets to Spain with WV Supreme Court Justices .

Chase has hired PR firms to re-brand themselves on the internet as “charitable” and “benevolent” through their “Chase Community Giving sites and Facebook Fan Pages (even though they disallowed “political” groups from participating in any fundraising). Chase touts themselves as a green environmentally friendly bank. Their greenwashing, social media branding and high powered PR firms can’t hide the truth about what Chase really does. They are complicit in destroying Appalachia’s mountains, poisoning it’s communities with dirty water and ruining it’s economy by creating conditions that lead to the worst poverty in the country.
Today, we’re exposing that truth using tools on the internet that will concentrate tens of thousands of people on Chase brand they’ve spent so much money perfecting.

It’s time we amp up the pressure on Chase and take their money out of the coal industry.

Please join us for a social media day of action. We are using our Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and blogs to hold JP Morgan Chase accountable for financing this despicable practice. Follow this link to take social media action and tell JP Morgan Chase to stop destroying Appalachia’s mountains.

Some ways to take action:

1.Update your facebook status with this message: “Chase is bankrolling the destruction of American mountains for coal. End mountaintop removal and PUT CHASE ON THE RUN. Take action today at DirtyMoney.org.
2. Upload this Chase brand jam image to your Facebook picture (image to the left)”
3. Brand jam Chase’s Facebook page “Chase Community Giving.” (follow this link)
4. .Tweet this message: #Chase is bankrolling the destruction of American mountains. Take action at DirtyMoney.org. #coal #mtr #RAN Please RT.
5. Upload the Chase brand jam image to Flickr (image to the left)
6.Blog the social media day of action

Before dawn this morning, a small team of climate activists rappelled from the US observation deck at Niagara Falls. Dangling hundreds of feet above the ground, they sent a special welcome message to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ahead of his first official visit to the White House to push dirty Tar Sands oil.

Not that he’s feeling so welcome anyway. Obama limited the meeting to just one hour. While some have called it a slap in the face, Aides say Harper will turn the other cheek. “The economy, and the clean-energy dialogue,” one aide told the Globe and Mail, “will dominate the discussions.” Obama needed to dodge controversy over oil imports from Canada’s tar sands in the midst of the Climate Legislation debate. Harper needed a story to go with his photo-op.

During Harper’s first official trip to meet Obama in the U.S., the two leaders are expected to discuss climate change and energy policy ahead of the upcoming G20 Summit. Canada supplies 19% of U.S. oil imports, more than half of which now comes from the tar sands, making the region the largest single source of U.S. oil imports. The expansion of the tar sands will strip mine an area the size of Florida. Complete with skyrocketing rates of cancer (by 400%!) for First Nations communities living downstream, broken treaties, toxic belching lakes so large you can see them from outer space, churning up ancient boreal forest, destroyed air and water quality, the tar sands have been called the most destructive project on Earth.

Tomorrow’s visit to the U.S. by Prime Minister Harper is the latest attempt by Canadian Federal and Provincial officials to lock in subsidies for 22 new and expanded refinery projects and oil pipelines crisscrossing 28 states, which would transport and process the dirty tar sands oil. Many are concerned that Prime Minister Harper wants to protect the tar sands oil industry from climate regulation, even though it is one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.

“Climate change, one of the biggest security threats of our time, is something Canada and the United States face together. Extracting tar sands oil, which sends three times more climate-changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than conventional oil, puts us all at risk,” said Eriel Deranger a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and Rainforest Action Network’s Tar Sands Campaigner in Alberta.

As this oil spills into the U.S., communities living near oil refineries face increased air and water pollution, which contains 11 times more sulfur and nickel and five times more lead than conventional oil.

Opposition to tar sands oil has been rising on both sides of the border. Just last month, four Native American and environmental groups sued Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Deputy Secretary James Steinberg and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over Enbridge Energy’s Alberta Clipper pipeline. If built, the 1,375 mile pipeline would pump 800,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day from Northern Alberta to Midwestern refineries. On the Canadian, Native activists escalated pressure on the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) for their funding of the tar sands a few weeks ago.

Canada has no regulations to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, and the federal government’s climate change plan would allow total pollution from the tar sands to increase almost 70 percent by 2020. Tar sands oil production is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada and was recently cited as one of the most important reasons Canada will miss its Kyoto targets by over 30%.

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) used to be the centerpiece of Harper’s pitch. Global warming pollution from coal and tar sands “can be solved by technology,” declared Obama. Not to be outdone, Harper’s office announced that “A strengthened U.S.-Canada partnership on carbon sequestration will help accelerate private sector investment in commercial scale, near-zero-carbon coal facilities to promote climate and energy security.”

Half a year and billions of wasted tax dollars later, though, CCS is still a pipe dream. FutureGen, North America’s supposed proving ground for the unproven technology, can’t keep private investors to save it’s life. Two of its biggest private backers, Southern Co. and AEP, jumped ship last June. Around the same time, sponsors lowered the goal-post on the project to just 60% less carbon. So much for near-zero-carbon facility. Projects promised in the tar sands are fairing even worse.

No matter. Harper is back, hat in hand, looking for legislative handouts to an industry destined to ruin the climate.

So here’s our welcome to you, Prime Minister Harper. Now, please, go home.

And take your dirty tar sands with you.

During rush-hour commute this morning, two Indigenous Canadian women – RAN’s own Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, and Heather Milton-Lightening – scaled flagpoles in front of the main entrance of Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC’s) headquarters in Toronto, dropping a banner reading “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon.com”. On the streets below, they were joined by dozens of Toronto RAN supporters, spreading the same message to every RBC employee they could talk to: an appeal to Mrs. Janet Nixon, the wife of RBC CEO Gordon Nixon, to lend her strong and influential voice to those fighting to protect Canada’s clean water and respect Indigenous rights by pushing RBC to phase out its investments in Alberta tar sands projects. They handed out flyers, held banners, and even circled the building on bikes with “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon.com” flags.

And at the same time as the banner was being unfurled, RAN supporters and allies began emailing a video to key RBC executives – in which RAN’s Michael Brune appeals to Mrs. Nixon to help RBC regain its environmental leadership by withdrawing its funding for the tar sands. Over 3,000 people sent over 12,000 emails to these top RBC execs. (If you haven’t participated in this online action yet, it’s not too late! Click here to view the video and email it to RBC executives.)

You can also view the video on YouTube (be sure to go to PleaseHelpUsMrsNixon.com and take action when you’re done watching):

The banner was up for about two hours, and a large crowd of people gathered to watch. (I heard a lot of remarks like “hey, that banner says ‘Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon’ like all those posters I’ve seen all over town”.) Several RBC public relations executives also joined us, and expressed their displeasure with what we were doing (“we support the right to public protest, but we are also proud of our environmental record”). In the end, the police let the two valiant climbers go without making any arrests; the climbers were given citations.

This action is also the culmination of a month-long guerrilla advertising campaign by RAN Toronto, who have covered the city with hundreds of posters bearing the message “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon” – leaving people in Toronto wondering what these posters are all about. (But in case Janet Nixon herself was unsure who she was being asked to help, we had a letter from RAN delivered to her home address yesterday.)

While Janet Nixon is the wife of RBC’s CEO, we are appealing her today because she is also a committed environmentalist, and has been instrumental in shaping RBC’s Blue Water Campaign. But while pledging $50 million to help fight water pollution over the next ten years, RBC has served as the ATM for the the dirty tar sands, loaning $2.3 billion to tar sands companies in the last two years alone.

Tar sands oil extraction has been called ‘the most destructive project on Earth,’ and its expansion is devastating the regional environment, contaminating Canada’s precious water supply, endangering wildlife, threatening First Nations’ health and preventing Canada from meeting its climate commitments. Indigenous First Nations communities downstream have experienced polluted water, water reductions in rivers and aquifers, increased cancer, and declines in wildlife population that threaten to destroy their traditional ways of life.

RBC has a critical role to play in investing in Canada’s clean energy future. RBC must require clients to provide evidence of free, prior and informed consent from First Nations on projects affecting their communities, as the first step of a phase-out of financing and advisory services to all tar sands projects which have adverse impacts on the environment. The bank must develop an action plan to reduce ‘financed emissions’ related to all lending activities that impact the climate.

Tar Sands extraction and processing is one of the greatest social and ecological injustices of our time. Unless they’re stopped by grassroots pressure, oil companies will transform a boreal forest the size of Florida into an industrial sacrifice zone – complete with lakes full of toxic waste that are so big that you can see them from outer space.

We know that Mrs. Nixon cares deeply about clean water, and so we’re appealing directly to her to help us push RBC to make a meaningful commitment to clean water, by ending its financing of the tar sands – rather than giving fistfuls of cash to Big Oil’s dirtiest project ever, while donating its spare change to clean water projects.

Mrs. Nixon, will you help us? (And Mr. Nixon: if you want to help us stop the tar sands too, there’s no need to wait for your wife to take the lead.)

Check out the final glorious episode of the 10 day adventure of RAN and Substance educating and mobilizing people to stop the Tar Sands, with rock bands Propagandhi and Strike Anywhere

In this one we talk to bands, Chrissy Swain from Grassy Narrows, RAN activists, and talk about how YOU can get involved with the campaign

Check out episode 7 of the 10 day adventure of RAN and Substance educating and mobilizing people to stop the Tar Sands, with rock bands Propagandhi and Strike Anywhere

Check out episode 6 of the 10 day adventure of RAN and Substance educating and mobilizing people to stop the Tar Sands, with rock bands Propagandhi and Strike Anywhere

Check out episode 4 of the 10 day adventure of RAN and Substance educating and mobilizing people to stop the Tar Sands, with rock bands Propagandhi and Strike Anywhere

This morning, the Cliffside Climate Action brought hundreds to Duke Energy’s headquarters in Charlotte North Carolina to protest the construction of the new Cliffside coal facility.

The latest news is that 44 community members and supporters have been arrested, sending a bold message of urgency around the need to get off coal for the health of our communities and the future of our planet.

The Cliffside Climate Action is the latest in the growing wave of civil disobedience demanding that we get our country off dirty energy and coal power. Duke Energy’s continued pursuit of construction of two coal-fired power plants stands in stark contrast to its rhetoric of environmental care.

Check out all the photos in the Charlotte Observer, the Stop Cliffside Twitter feed, and a piece in the WCNC News.

Since their announcement of the carbon principles – new environmental standards designed to help banks assess the risk associated with investments in coal power, Citi has continued to provide financial assistance to Dominion Resources. Along with Barclays, JP Morgan Chase and Merrill Lynch, Citibank served as joint book-running managers for the sale of $ 1.2 billion of Dominion debt securities in June, 2008.

Dominion currently operates over 30 coal-fired power plants in the US and is proceeding with the construction of a 585 MW coal plant in Wise County, despite widespread opposition amongst Virginians.