Satellite photos recently released by NASA illustrate the real impacts of mountaintop removal (MTR) mining in Appalachia.

They were taken between 1984 and 2009 at the Hobet mine site in Boone County, West Virginia.

You can see through the time lapse the scale of the deforestation that has taken place, followed by the leveling of the mountain tops and filling of the valleys.

This is the same Hobet mine that was recently awarded a permit to expand by the EPA.

We urge EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to examine this practice firsthand, and take a citizen-led flyover of Appalachia before she considers issuing any further MTR mining permits.

I’m heartened to hear that British Columbia has made a firm commitment to protect the headwaters of Glacier National Park by banning mining and drilling in the Flathead River Valley.

http://3.ly/BritshColumbia

“There’s still work to be done here, but I’m not going to lie to you, I’m a pretty happy guy right now,” said Will Hammerquist of the National Parks Conservation Association. “You had a land-use plan in place that put mining above all other values. This announcement signals a shift away from that.“

After more than a year of denial, RBC may be admitting that it has a problem in the tar sands. Tomorrow, we’ve learned that RBC will host a group of more than a dozen international banks for what it calls a “day of learning”. The meeting comes just eight weeks after our letter to 68 banks signed on to the Equator Principles requesting that they forgo financing in the controversial industrial project.

RBC’s invitation-only meeting clearly aims to develop begin developing a coordinated response among banks to the growing controversy over tar sands financing. We got a peek at a draft agenda featuring Deputy Ministers from Alberta’s Environment and Energy Ministries, tar sands developers, selected environmental groups and at least one “First Nation representative”.

While we didn’t get an invitation to the meeting, volunteers are planning to make our presence known by distributing a special message to bankers in attendance.

We don’t know for sure which banks will show, but we’re expecting most of the 26 ranked in our earlier post on international banks backing the tar sands.

We’re happy to see RBC starting an important conversation in the banking industry, but actions speak louder than words. These banks should stop bankrolling dirty oil and shift those funds into clean energy.

Progress or PR? You decide! Tell us what you think in the comments.

Over the past 12 years, RAN has supported through our Protect-an-Acre small grants both Defense and Ecological Conservation of Intag (DECOIN) and Community Defense Council in the Intag region in the western Andes of Ecuador, a cloud forest ecosystem that is a globally significant biological hot spot. For 2 decades now, communities there have successfully led the struggle to halt all mining in the region, keeping out major Japanese and Canadian corporations.

Copper Mesa, until last year, was the owner of a two mining concessions in the Intag. But the company ran into a strong, organized opposition from communities, local government and, eventually even the national government, which eventually stripped Copper Mesa of its concessions in the country.

Now the Toronto Stock Exchange, which had been sued by 3 Intag activists, has delisted Copper Mesa from the exchange.

DECOIN organizer Carlos Zorrilla wrote in an email to Intag community supporters:

“This is a key victory in Intag’s very long and exhausting battle against mining interests. So big in fact, that I still find it difficult to believe. After all, this has been a dream of ours and something we’ve been working on for almost six years.”

Copper Mesa’s shares lost about 60% of their value in the 48 hours after the TSX delisting.

My friend Chuck Nelson is a retired West Virginia underground coal miner. He works hard with Ohio Valley Environment Coalition to protect the beautiful mountains of West Virginia and to end mountaintop removal coal mining.

I was very sad to received this message from him:

“About a month ago, I went to take my Federal black lung test. I finally got my results back, which said that I had black lung, but I was not eligible for benefits, because I was not disabled because of my lungs. I guess one has to be on oxygen, or bed ridden, in order to qualify for benefits.“

Black lung – aka ‘Miner’s asthma’ is a lung disease contracted by breathing coal dust. Dust builds up inside the lungs, gradually reducing the miner’s ability to breathe. Chuck continues:

“I was not surprised to see that Wells Fargo is the ones that represents Massey Energy as a third party legal assistant, assisting Massey. Just another example of how Massey is linked up with these financial institutions. So I made a call to a man named John T. Deneault, who really got upset , when I questioned him about his organization involvement with such a rogue outfit as Massey Energy, trying to beat a miner who has given his life to this industry.”

“He got so mad, that he told me to never call him again.”

Historically, West Virginia’s miners fought hard for their safety against black lung and for compensation after Nov 1968, when 78 miners died in an explosion in Consolidation Coal’s No. 9 mine at Farmington, WV. In February 1969 they went on wildcat strike. By early March, nearly every mine in West Virginia was shut down.

This led the state to pass a new law that, for the first time, strengthened safety rules and created compensation benefits for miners suffering pneumoconiosis from breathing coal dust. The federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act passed at the end of the same year.

It’s a scandal that miner’s who have given their lives to the industry are being denied their rightful compensation.
Chuck has a suggestion for us:

“I think everyone who has the time, could call him and ask just why Wells Fargo are joining forces with Massey Energy, to continue to deprive workers of the things that they deserve, and have given their lives to.”

“If anyone is interested, again his name is John T. Deneault, claims consultant for Wells Fargo. His number is 304-556-1105, and his e-mail is john_deneault@wellsfargois.com

“Ask him why his company is on the side of depriving underground miners the rights that they have so rightfully deserve, and black lung is a horrible death. His office probably isn’t open during the weekends.”

Here in Copenhagen (Day 5, 5:00 PM), delegates from all over the world are not surprised that the U.S. is playing a disappointing role in the climate negotiations, after all the science calls for 40% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2020, and the U.S. climate legislation calls for only 4%. This past summer, RAN opposed the Waxman Markey bill in the House of Representatives for many reasons, the largest being the inclusion of 2 billion tons in carbon offsets. These are 2 billion tons of carbon that U.S. polluters do not have to stop emitting, a gaping loophole in our effort to thwart climate change that keeps us addicted to fossil fuels.

Half of those offsets were to be used for domestic sources from sectors whose emissions are not capped, particularly the agriculture and forest sectors. The other half, 1 billion tons of offsets, are to come from international sources. The two major potential source of carbon offsets internationally would be:

1) The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) or a similar regime of reduced emissions projects from developing countries. The CDM is quite controversial, and exists under the Kyoto Protocol, which the U.S. did not sign onto, so these CDM-like projects would theoretically need to emerge from the new agreement now being negotiated in Copenhagen.

2) And the second source would be carbon credits from international forests. This regime is also being negotiated right now in Copenhagen, and its outcome will influence if not determine the future for forest protection in the coming decade. A strong REDD deal with good safeguards would mean forest protection and the rights of forest dependent people respected. A weak REDD deal without strong safeguards would allow the continued logging of the intact natural rainforests in countries like Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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As negotiations wrapped up in Barcelona at the UN Climate Talks, the opportunity for a robust agreement to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries (REDD) is dangling from a wire. The latest negotiating text, which parties will be working on at the opening of the Copenhagen UNFCCC COP15, contains no provisions to monitor vital safeguards in developing countries which will receive funding to implement REDD, nor language that will ensure the protection of intact natural forests in those countries.

REDD is intended to help developing countries protect their remaining rainforests and reduce the 15-20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation, forest degradation and peatland destruction.
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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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Evidence is mounting about the social and environmental consequences of industrialized biofuels, aka agrofuels. A new paper from RAN concludes that we cannot grow our way out of our oil addiction. Because of agrofuels’ impacts on climate change, direct and indirect land use impacts, fossil fuel inputs, and the investments they may draw away from real solutions, agrofuels will not solve the twin crises of climate change and our dependence on oil.

The report also finds that if we don’t take action to rein in the rapid global expansion of agrofuels we will in fact be making these problems worse. Particularly when expanding in rainforest regions, the carbon debt accumulated by agrofuels will take decades or sometimes centuries to pay back.

RAN’s recommendation: rather than continuing to pursue agrofuels policies and increasing the global market place for agrofuels, we call on decision makers in the corporate and political arenas to prioritize proven, true solutions that halt the expansion of carbon-intensive industries. Policies and investments that support mass transit, bike transit, and plug in vehicles recharged by a green grid are far more efficient and cost effective means to reduce our dependence on oil. Agrofuels are not low carbon, and we can’t afford to lose any more time pursuing false solutions. It’s time for a real transportation revolution.

Read the full report at: http://ran.org/fileadmin/materials/comms/mediacontent/reports/Agrofuels_White_Paper.pdf

With climate talks underway in Bangkok, Indigenous activists reviewing the text and engaged in the talks calling for no market-based REDD deal, Greenpeace activists blockading the tar sands in Alberta, and the EU investigating fraud in carbon trading schemes, today is a big day for the movement for climate justice.

Too bad it’s such a disappointing day for climate in the US. Today Senators Boxer and Kerry released their first draft of the Senate climate bill, a companion to the House ACES bill passed this past June. It calls for the US to reduce emissions by 20% of 2005 levels by 2020. By comparison, island nations and the world’s least developed countries are calling for 45% emissions reduction from 1990 levels by 2020.
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