RAN board member Randy Hayes and actress Darryl Hannah at the White House protesting Keystone XL as part of the Tar Sands Action.

President Obama has just rejected the Keystone XL pipeline!

This puts a halt to current plans for a massive 1700-mile pipeline that would have allowed some of the world’s dirtiest oil to travel from Canada’s tar sands through America’s heartland — jeopardizing our water, our air and our climate.

Six months ago the pipeline project was considered a foregone conclusion. Today — against all odds — the project has been rejected. That is a heroic political shift, which is the result of massive grassroots opposition that spanned from First Nations in Alberta to farmers in Nebraska.

By sending letters, making calls, protesting in front of the White House and standing up at “Obama for America” offices, the movement against the Keystone XL pipeline has demonstrated what grassroots activism is all about — and what it really takes to make change in this country.

When organizing started against the Keystone pipeline there were two main goals: stop the pipeline, and reignite the climate movement, which had been deflated by disappointments from Copenhagen to Congress. I would say that in just a few months we are well on our way to achieving both goals.

As Bill McKibben, one of the lead visionaries behind the tar sands protests, said in November, when the pipeline was first delayed:

It’s important to understand how unlikely this victory is… A done deal has come spectacularly undone… The American people spoke loudly about climate change and the president responded. There have been few even partial victories about global warming in recent years so that makes this an important day.

McKibben’s words are truer today than they were in November. We have seen little from the administration on climate and energy that we can be enthusiastic about, and this is definitely something to be unanimously proud of.

It has been incredible to watch the movement against the Keystone pipeline come to life. In September, 1,253 people were arrested in a peaceful sit-in at the White House expressing resounding opposition to the pipeline project in one of the largest acts of civil disobedience the environmental movement has ever seen. Since then, droves of protesters, including high-end campaign donors, have confronted President Obama at one public speaking event after another. In November, the opposition grew when more than 12,000 people joined in peaceful protest back in DC, linking hands in several concentric circles around the White House.

At RAN, we believe that when corporations respond to our demands, it’s a best practice to thank them. The same is true here. Against loud and dubious threats from Big Oil, President Obama has stepped up to represent us and our future. Please take the time today to thank President Obama for rejecting the disastrous Keystone XL pipeline.

Many are wondering what the political realities are to the pipeline rejection. The State Department is allowing Transcanada, the company behind the pipeline, to pitch an alternative route for the pipeline through Nebraska. This re-application process would likely put the project back to the drawing board.

As Frances Beinecke, Executive Director of NRDC, put it in an email blast this afternoon:

[B]ecause Big Oil lost, this is not the end of the fight. This is the beginning of the real battle for America’s energy future…That battle will be fought in Congress, where Representatives who’ve collected $12 million from the oil & gas industry over the past two years are sure to try to raise Keystone from the dead . . . it will be fought in British Columbia, where the oil giants want to ram a tar sands pipeline and supertanker traffic through the heart of the Spirit Bear’s coastal rainforest home . . . it will be fought in the Polar Bear Seas, where the Interior Department has given tentative approval for Shell to begin drilling this summer…

If the last few months have shown us anything, it’s that we’ve stopped the project once and we’ll stop it again. Yes, we will need to continue to ensure that President Obama feels the full weight of our opposition and keeps the Keystone XL pipeline off the map forever. But make no mistake, today is a day to come together to celebrate in the exact same way we came together to fight Keystone over the past couple of months, because celebrating our success is a critical part of fueling our work. That should neither minimize nor obscure the reality that if we want a clean energy future, which stops extreme energy projects like the Keystone XL, we’re going to have to keep fighting together for the long haul.

What an incredible sign for the start of this New Year. Let’s make sure that this success begets even more success in our work to protect forests, their inhabitants and our climate.

At least, it was until a grassroots movement—driven by strong action—threw a major monkey wrench into the process. This afternoon the cards collapsed for TransCanada, the corporate giant behind the proposed 1700-mile tar sands pipeline. It looks like we stopped the Keystone XL.

Today, the U.S. State Department announced that the proposed route for the pipeline is getting scrapped. Citing the outcry from every sector of society, President Obama confirmed that he is sending the project back to the drawing board for further review. This process will continue at least through 2013.

Why does a “delay” deserve so much excitement? Pipeline supporters hoped the permit for the pipeline would be approved within the next month, but this new review will last at least into 2013. Manyy analysts and even the developer of the pipeline has stated that a change in the route will kill the project. And with the past reviews being full of rampant corruption, a new honest review will reflect that the pipeline should not be built, ever.

Communities and organizations like RAN have been opposing the development of Tar Sands for decades. In the past four months, a grassroots, actions-based strategy called Tar Sands Action emerged to challenge the Keystone XL pipeline, and inspired the kind of energy that the environmental movement hasn’t seen in decades.

Bringing together groups like RAN, 350.org, Indigenous Environmental Network, and many others — Tar Sands Action showed that grassroots organizing and people-powered action can win campaigns AND build a movement.

In late August, 1,253 people were arrested in a peaceful sit-in at the White House — one of the largest acts of civil disobedience the environmental movement has ever seen. Droves of protestors have confronted President Obama on the pipeline at one public speaking event after another for months. And this past Sunday, over 12,000 people rallied in DC to link hands in several concentric circles around the White House.

Nov 5 Tar Sands Action: Photo by Shadia Fayne Wood

Days after this historic rally, we see that when people act, change is made. We have put out the fuse to this very large carbon bomb… for now. And we will remain diligent in our efforts to ensure that the Keystone XL will never be part of our energy future.

While there is still much more to accomplish, there is much to celebrate today. Thanks to all who spread the word, took strong action, and donated to this campaign. We did it together.

Nov 6 Tar Sands Action: Photo by Christine Irvine

"Pipeline" by DC 51 Art Collective: Photo by Christine Irvine

But more than that, they were protesting what the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline has come to represent: the expansion of fossil fuels infrastructure in this country at the behest of fossil fuels industries who have used the inordinate influence they have over our political leaders to shape public policy for their own benefit. As RAN’s executive director, Becky Tarbotton, wrote last week: “With these protests, the Keystone XL pipeline has become the current symbol, the line-in-the-sand for the climate movement.”

The Tar Sands Action was just phase one, though. If the Obama Administration approves Keystone XL, or continues to green-light the expansion of fossil fuels infrastructure in general — and last Friday’s stealth attack on EPA regulations does not bode well — we will be back at the White House again in the near future, you can count on that. So check out this video and get inspired for phase two:

The message outside the White House these past two weeks was loud and clear: We don’t want dirty fossil fuels any more. We’re ready and willing to make the clean energy revolution happen, and we want our federal government to do its part. Help spread this video far and wide if you agree.

I had hoped for better than this. The ozone standard is one of approximately 15 rules due to be finalized between now and 2012 that, in combination, could force the retirement of almost half of the aging U.S. coal power fleet.

This abandonment means we won’t see a new Ozone Standard until 2013 at the earliest (when it should have been this summer), a date that just happens to be after the next election.

What does this mean for our prospects of retiring the nation’s filthiest power plants? That remains to be seen. We did get some good news earlier this summer on the Transport Rule. I’ve played “wait and see” with this administration before and would not be surprised if we end up getting a rotation of good news-bad news, as we saw with the EPA’s mountaintop removal mining permit announcements last year.

Meanwhile, this sly act of “burying” bad news on a day when it won’t be noticed is not just sneaky, it’s downright insulting. It’s insulting to the people living in neighborhoods close to coal plants who are adversely exposed to respiratory illnesses. The EPA had estimated that their new rule would save 12,000 lives each year. A transition to cleaner, less polluting power sources cannot come quickly enough for these communities.

It’s insulting to the EPA, which, under the leadership of Lisa Jackson, has been working to enforce the Clean Air Act to its original intent based on scientific findings. Ms Jackson has persisted with her mandate, despite repeated attack from the Republicans. Why on earth would the President side with polluting industries against one of his most loyal Administrators?

It’s insulting to the 1,200+ environmental activists who spent the week outside the White House getting arrested in protest of the administration’s plans to approve the hugely polluting Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport half a million barrels a day of carbon-intensive crude from oil-sands developments in western Canada. Those arrested included landowners, scientists, celebrities and people who had worked on Obama’s election campaign. Does the President actually think that industry dollars will get him re-elected without the presence of hard-working activists to do the door-to-door footwork?

This blog was orginally posted on the Daily Kos on August 19th as part of the Stop Tar Sands Blogathon.

On Sunday, Aug 28th, the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C. will open. The dedication — now long overdue — will serve as a reminder of Dr. King’s enduring legacy of justice, love, compassion — and activism.

The dedication falls right in the middle of a two-week period when, in the spirit of King, over 2,000 activists will meet at the White House to voice their opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The 1,700-mile oil pipeline, if built, would carry tar sands oil from my home country of Canada down along the spine of the U.S. all the way to the Gulf Coast.

It’s an ambitious proposal to build an immensely long pipeline, and if President Obama approves the Keystone XL, the distance between his rhetoric and reality will grow proportionally. Upon his election, the president told us that this was the moment “when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” But full exploitation of the tar sands would put the climate at extreme risk, which is why scientists such as Michael Mann and James Hansen oppose the pipeline.

The arguments for the pipeline have included energy independence, pipeline safety, and cheaper fuel prices. One by one each has been knocked down as people come to grips with the reality that increasing oil supply is no way to deal with oil addiction or climate change — our twin challenges when it comes to our energy choices. Consider these facts:

• According to government body in charge of pipeline safety, between 2000 and 2009, pipeline accidents were responsible for 2,794 significant incidents and 161 fatalities in the United States.

• According to NRDC projections, scaling up our use of renewables and increasing our energy efficiency can go a long way to offsetting the use of tar sands oil, if not meet them completely.

• The physics that control our climate are not waiting around for politicians to parse through the arguments for the Keystone XL and figure out how to message yet another step in the wrong direction. We are experiencing climate change now, and no amount of wishing it away or political posturing is going to change that reality.

Of course, the company behind the pipeline, TransCanada, and its other supporters have done everything they can to manipulate the process (including creating fake Twitter personas). It hired Secretary of State Clinton’s former deputy campaign director as their chief lobbyist, and recently released Wikileaks documents show U.S. envoys working with Canadian energy bosses to insure “favorable media coverage.”

We can’t have business as usual anymore. This is the message that the sit-in will send loud and clear to TransCanada and the president, a former community organizer himself who has a bust of King in the Oval Office. The president knows what a people powered movement can accomplish.

King challenged the conscience of the nation, and he was shot down in Memphis as he was putting together the Poor People’s Campaign, a new effort to tackle economic justice and housing for the poor in the U.S. Today’s climate activists are channeling King’s courage by taking their message straight to the doorstep of the president. The eyes of the world are watching.

Cartoon by Kevin Kallaugher.

President Obama just signed the debt deal into law. Just in time too — there were about 10 hours to spare before the midnight deadline, after which our government would most likely go into default.

As bad as default would have been, the deal doesn’t appear to be a whole lot better.

As Andy Kroll explains over at Mother Jones:

The Obama-GOP plan cuts about $917 billion in government spending over the next decade. Nearly $570 billion of that would come from what’s called “nondefense discretionary spending.” That’s budget-speak for the pile of money the government invests in the nation’s safety and future—education and job training, air traffic control, health research, border security, physical infrastructure, environmental and consumer protection, child care, nutrition, law enforcement, and more.

Our country’s environmental laws and the agencies tasked with enforcing them have certainly taken a huge hit, which is especially troubling because the record-breaking heatwave we’re currently witnessing is only the latest projected impact of our warming climate to become all-too-real. We need strong climate policies and a clean energy revolution right now in order to avert runaway climate change. Instead, this deal jeopardizes even the most basic environmental protections, like the right to clean water and air.

The full implication of the Obama-GOP debt deal won’t be clear for some time, as the cuts it calls for are just the first round. The deal also mandates the creation of a 12-member “SuperCongress” committee that will determine where to make cuts totaling another $1.5 trillion. But given how things stand right now, environmental protections in this country have taken a severe blow.

• Guts Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act enforcement

The nearly $1 trillion in immediate cuts means a lot less money going to fund the important work done by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy and Interior departments, and other domestic agencies. If the SuperCongress fails to pass a bill making the required $1.5 trillion in further cuts by this December, that would automatically trigger another $1.2 trillion in cuts from various sectors, including energy and environmental programs.

What that means, essentially, is that the EPA and the Interior Dept. will have less money to enforce existing environmental and climate regulations. “There just won’t physically be the funds available to protect drinking water and to ensure there’s clean air to breathe,” says the Sierra Club’s Melinda Pierce (subscription required).

• Less money for states to enforce environmental laws, too

Slashing the EPA budget will have a drastic ripple effect, as the agency also provides funds for states to enforce their own environmental protections. Whether or not it will still be able to do that is very much in doubt.

• Lets Big Oil keep taxpayer-funded handouts
  

Glaringly absent from the deal is an end to the billions in taxpayer handouts Congress continues to give to Big Oil. Americans overwhelmingly support ending these subsidies, and it’s not like the oil companies need them: the top five Big Oil companies just announced obscene profits of $35.1 billion for the second quarter of 2011. Ending these taxpayer-funded subsidies would not raise gas prices, as Big Oil and its apologists in Congress like to claim, but it would save us somewhere between $30 and 40 billion over the next decade.

This deal literally lets the oil and gas industries keep their taxpayer-funded welfare money while forcing Americans to accept diminished protections for public health, clean air and clean water. So much for shared sacrifice.

• Dries up investments in renewable energy

Ben Schreiber, a tax analyst with Friends of the Earth, says the deal could also “drive a stake through the heart of investments in wind, solar, and other clean-energy technologies,” according to Mother Jones. “The clean-energy revolution becomes a casualty of these cuts,” Schreiber told MoJo.

• Further diminishes chance of establishing a carbon tax

As lopsided as the cuts may seem, both Democrats and Republicans made some token concessions in the deal. Republicans gave up on their insistence that there be a second vote to raise the debt ceiling again next winter, no doubt a cudgel they were hoping to wield closer to the 2012 presidential election. Democrats, meanwhile, completely caved on tax increases, or “revenue” in budget-speak. That sends a clear signal that imposing a tax on carbon emissions will be harder than ever to pass, no matter how much it could contribute to paying down our nation’s debt.

According to the findings of a debt commission led by former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Alice Rivlin, a Democrat who was the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, a carbon tax could raise about $1.1 trillion by 2025 while cutting carbon dioxide emissions 10 percent below 2005 levels.

But perhaps worst of all: The deal emboldens and strengthens the dirty energy apologists and climate deniers of the radical right who have been gunning for environmental protections all along. And, as Robert Reich wrote, “[T]he largest threat to our democracy is the emergence of a radical right capable of getting most of the ransom it demands.”

But I don’t want to end on such a sour note. All is not lost. The Hill reports that Democrats are planning to revive the fight over subsidies for Big Oil in the SuperCongress committee. And the Center for American Progress points out that this second round of cuts “presents progressives with an opportunity to channel their anger over the first round into relentless action to push for the kind of progressive second round of deficit reduction that America wants — and needs.”

Onward, environmental soldiers.

Cherri walking down the road to Washington D.C. Click image to donate to help her get there.

After pleading for transparency and accountability from the Obama Administration in the aftermath of BP’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and getting virtually nowhere, Gulf Coast resident Cherri Foytlin decided it was time to hit the streets. Specifically, the 1,200 miles of streets between New Orleans and Washington, DC.

Foytlin is on The Road to Washington, a month-long walk from New Orleans to Washington DC meant to highlight “the ongoing need for environmental remediation and economic support in the wake to the BP oil Disaster of April 2010.”

“This is a pilgrimage of love for the people of the Gulf,” Foytlin says on The Road To Washington’s Facebook page. “I am taking their concerns about health, the economy, the environment and the claims process to the President of the United States.” Read her open letter to the American people about what is motivating her walk to our nation’s capitol.

Our friend and ally Maria Ramos is walking the walk with Foytlin, and sent this update via email:

I am on this amazing journey to bring more attention to the oil spill in the Gulf. We’re one year out and it’s an utter mess. There are still tar balls on the sand, dead sea life washing up ashore, the claims process is a total shamble, and people are getting really sick.

I’m supporting Cherri Foytlin in this walk — she’s a mom of six turned activist who is literally walking from Louisiana to DC, about 30 miles a day, talking to people, groups, and press along the route.

She, along with other amazing Gulf residents/activists are on a panel at Powershift, and while in DC will be meeting with Lisa Jackson, Congressional Members, and hopefully with Obama.

They’re doing this all basically out of pocket and any bit of funds that come in are extremely helpful.

You can make a donation to support Foytlin on The Road to Washington’s donate page.

Far too many communities have suffered at the hands of Big Oil. We organized a meetup last year between the Ecuadoreans impacted by Chevron’s oil pollution in the Amazon and Gulf Coast residents as the latter prepared themselves for the impacts of BP’s oil spill. You can check out some of the lessons the Ecuadoreans shared with the folks from the Gulf Coast in the report, “The Lasting Stain of Oil.”

If you’re in the Bay Area, you can hit the streets with the Change Chevron team to keep the pressure on by talking with Chevron CEO John Watson’s neighbors in Lafayette, CA about Chevron’s toxic legacy in Ecuador.

With Tim’s trial happening at the same time as the democratic uprising that is spreading across North Africa and the Middle East and the labor rights protests that are spreading across the Midwest U.S., we thought it would be a good time to ask three of the U.S. environmental movement’s savviest activists what they make of all of this. Specifically, we wondered what lessons we can draw from the peaceful uprisings happening around the world and how we can apply those lessons to the climate movement. In response, RAN’s own Rebecca Tarbotton, 350.org’s Bill McKibben and Phil Radford of Greenpeace USA had this to offer:

Dear friends,

Last week, a jury in Utah found Tim DeChristopher guilty for standing up to the oil and gas companies in an effort to protect our health and our climate.

Just in case the federal government thinks that it’s intimidating people into silence with this kind of prosecution, think again. In fact, this is precisely the sort of event that reminds us just why we need creative, nonviolent protests and mass mobilizations.

Over the last six months we’ve witnessed big changes in the world that affect our need for creative, nonviolent protest. They include:

• The wild and extreme weather that marked the end of the warmest year on record, with flooding in almost every corner of the planet;
• The complete collapse of efforts on Capitol Hill to do anything about climate change;
• The passing of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which grants corporations unfettered influence over our elections.

We’ve also seen a historic outpouring of people power to combat these environmental crises, reclaim our democracy and disrupt corporate influence. From the exhilarating outbreak of the freedom movement across North Africa and the Mideast to the amazing stand for democracy and worker’s rights in Wisconsin, we are seeing the strength and effectiveness that average people can have when we stand together.

There have been a growing number of inspiring examples of civil disobedience across the United States to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink and the climate that we depend on. On February 17, Greenpeace activists scaled a coal plant in Bridgeport, CT as part of an escalating campaign against the dirtiest coal plants across the country. Just five days before, one of our great environmental sages, Wendell Berry, joined a sit-in at the Kentucky governor’s office to protest mountaintop removal coal mining.

Taken together, all of this confirms our belief that we need to continue to escalate the struggle for climate action.

It is not one event but a wave of actions that trigger social change. Paul Revere was not the only rider to warn of the British advance, and many people refused to move to the back of the bus before Rosa Parks. It is actions like Tim’s that can create ripples that expand exponentially.

In a recent interview, Tim issued a challenge to all of us to seize the power we already have to make a difference:

We think we have no power when in fact we have more than enough power. Right now, we have a big enough movement to win this battle; we just need to start acting like it. That’s the message that the climate movement really needs to internalize. On an individual level, it means making the commitment that we’re going to be powerful and effective agents of change; on the movement level, it’s about making the decision that we’re really going to win this battle.

We worry sometimes that we may have waited too long to get this battle going in earnest; the science is dark, and the politics are tough. But we know, from watching our inspiring colleagues around the world who are facing great dangers head on, that the best time to act is now. Over the coming weeks, each of our organizations, working together and individually, will be pursuing a variety of strategies to try and spark more mass, direct action.

Tim DeChristopher took a brave and lonely stand; it’s time to make sure that in the future bravery comes in bigger quantities.

Cofán community member Donald investigates one of the many unlined, open-air oil waste pits Chevron left in his rainforest home in Ecuador.

In what has become something of a pattern, the Obama administration recently took a bold new step to protect our planet at the same time that it was taking a giant step backwards.

Hot on the heels of the announcement about the EPA’s plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from oil refineries and fossil-fueled power plants, we get word that the administration is allowing 13 oil companies to resume offshore drilling operations without any further environmental review.

Speaking of patterns: Remember how Chevron recently had three oil spills in the space of one week? Well, several members just walked out of the community advisory committee set up to deal with the fallout from one of those spills, the one that occurred in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. One of the community members who resigned from the committee says that the decision to walk out was prompted by Chevron’s deliberate attempts to hide the extent of the ongoing spill. “What [Chevron] told us and what are in the pictures are two different things. I totally lost my trust,” she says.

Let’s see, Chevron polluting a community, pretending to work to remediate the pollution and impacts on the local community but actually trying to downplay the extent of the problem and having no real desire to clean anything up because that might adversely impact the company’s bottom line… Where have we seen that before?

Oh right! That’s pretty much the same story as down in Ecuador. It almost seems like everywhere Chevron goes, there is pollution caused by its operations that the company refuses to take responsibility for. Just ask the people of Salt Lake City, UT or Richmond, CA or Pascagoula, MS.

It bears mentioning, therefore, that Chevron is among the 13 oil companies that have just been given the green light to resume drilling without performing a thorough assessment of the environmental impacts of a spill — even though the Obama administration vowed that it would not allow drilling to resume until it was guaranteed to be safer and less likely to catastrophically pollute our planet, and Obama’s own National Commission just released a report finding that without fundamentally reworking the regulatory framework, a catastrophe like the BP oil spill could happen again.

Putting aside the obvious fact that the oil business can never guarantee it won’t poison our planet because the oil business is just inherently dirty through and through, it seems like the least the administration could have done would have been to demand a thorough environmental review before the likes of Chevron gets the green light to resume its reckless operations. It’s not a matter of if there’s another oil spill, but when — and why shouldn’t we expect the responsible party to have a legitimate plan in place for dealing with the next spill?

But hey, it’s another pattern: American politicians caving to powerful corporate interests who put profits over the planet.

Sounds like a pretty important news story, right?

The Canadians obviously think so. When RAN hung a banner outside Royal Bank of Canada’s headquarters six weeks ago – only one of countless protests against the tar sands that have taken place in Canada in recent years – the protest was covered by Bloomberg, the National Post, the Toronto Sun, the Calgary Herald, and the Vancouver Sun. Search for “oil sands” on the Toronto Globe and Mail‘s website, and you’ll find over 4,000 articles.

The British also think so. In London recently, five Indigenous Canadian activists joined the UK Climate Camp, to protest British corporations’ involvement in the Alberta tar sands. The protests that these activists organized against British companies that fund the tar sands made news across the country, with reports by the Guardian, the BBC, the Daily Telegraph, and the Times. But this was by no means the first time the tar sands were reported on in the UK: the Guardian did a detailed investigative report on the tar sands over a year ago.

And even… the Norwegians think so. In Norway, the tar sands have become a prime election issue: the opposition Liberal Party is attacking the government for allowing the state-owned oil company, Statoil, to invest in Canada’s tar sands. All you Norwegian-speaking readers out there can check out an editorial by Aftenposten, Norway’s biggest newspaper, denouncing Statoil’s investments in Canadian “oljesandprosjekter” (that’s “oil sands projects”). Skandaløs!

But in the U.S. corporate media? Radio silence.

This is especially ridiculous, given that U.S. corporations are far more involved in the tar sands than their British (or Norwegian) counterparts. Chevron and ExxonMobil have invested a total of over $10 billion in Alberta tar sands projects – Chevron is the majority owner of the 85,000-acre Ells River tar sands project, while Exxon’s subsidiary, Imperial Oil, owns 465,000 acres of “quality oil sands leases.” Citigroup is the biggest tar sands investor outside Canada, with $5.9 billion invested in Canadian tar sands companies since 2007 alone. And oil companies across the U.S. are building pipelines and retooling refineries to be able to process oil from Canada’s tar sands: a new pipeline from Alberta to Wisconsin, capable of pumping 450,000 barrels per day of Canadian tar sands oil to refineries in the Midwest, was recently approved by the Obama administration. And Chevron has been fighting against community activists for years to be able to “upgrade” its refinery in Richmond, California, so that it can process tar sands oil.

The Canadian tar sands aren’t a Canadian problem. They’re a massive project in which U.S. corporations are intimately involved, and hugely implicated.

And yet – with a few notable exceptions, like a recent article in the New York Times – the U.S. news media has ignored the issue. And thus, most Americans know nothing about the fact that the world’s dirtiest oil is being put into their gas tanks.

Next week, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is visiting Washington to meet with President Obama. Harper is as conservative as they come – a lot of Canadians call him “Bush Light” – and is a strong supporter of the tar sands. One of his biggest priorities in coming to the U.S. is to ensure that new climate legislation being written in Washington doesn’t prevent the tar sands oil from continuing to flow to his southern neighbor.

And the Obama administration has signalled that it’s willing to play ball: in June, Energy Secretary Steven Chu stated at the Reuters Global Energy Summit that he believes that the “environmental issues” facing the tar sands would be overcome through technological advancements, stating that “I’m a big believer in technology.”

As Harper tries next week to sneak the world’s dirtiest oil into the U.S., will the U.S. news media report on it? Or will they look the other way, like they have until now?

Why would I fly across the country on my own dime knowing I would most likely end up in jail in one of the poorest parts of America?

Well, have you ever heard of MTR?

Don’t feel bad, my friends are intelligent well-read and informed people, but most of them had never heard of MTR (Mountain Top Removal) either.

So, I went to Coal River to help bring much needed attention to this hidden, criminal (but somehow legal) form of mining. I was honored to be joining an inspiringly brave group of concerned Americans, which included – NASA climate scientist James Hansen who was among the first to sound the alarm on the climate crisis. The sharp, charismatic, 94 year old, former West Virginia U.S. Representative and Secretary of State Ken Hechler, who was the first congressman to introduce a Federal bill to abolish strip mining in 1971. (If passed the bill could have prevented this mess we find ourselves in). And Michael Brune, executive director of Rainforests Action Network who is committed to ending to this terrible, destructive practice. I was deeply moved to be arrested with those affected by MTR in Kentucky, and the many local residents fighting for their very lives, including a half dozen senior citizens, canes, walkers and all.

Me with Dr. James Hansen at Marsh Fork Elementary School

Mountain Top Removal is a devastatingly destructive form of mining and has already destroyed 2,000,000 acres in the Appalachian Mountains.

Coal companies have literally blown up over 500 mountain tops to access the coal seams and then dumped the refuse into the valleys below, killing over 3000 miles of HEADWATER streams. The EPA just gave the go ahead for an additional 42 mountaintops to be blown off with another 6 permits pending.

Mountain Top Removal leaves behind a virtual hideous moonscape of devastated earth, billions of gallons of poisonous toxic sludge, and boarded up towns with dramatically high rates of cancer.

Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for, and am deeply indebted to the miners working in coalmines and on MTR projects who risk their lives daily to bring power to our country. I understand they feel threatened by anything that might take away their jobs. And, I don’t want to see them lose more jobs, as 75% of mining jobs have already been lost to the machines and explosives of MTR.

While it takes fewer miners to remove coal with Mountain Top Removal there are just as many dangers, accidents and fatalities! It is a cheaper way for the companies to mine and that’s why it’s becoming so pervasive.

Yesterday, I received this email from a woman in Virginia -

Dear Daryl,
Thank you so much for coming to West Virginia and trying to save our mountains from Mountain top removal. I am a 9th generation Appalachian and it pains us to see what is happening. If it was not for the Internet I wouldn’t have known about your efforts. Massey has quite a bit of influence of the local media in the coalfields. I am sorry you were arrested but I thank you for standing up for what is right.  We need to work on sustainable communities here in the mountains so that coal miners will have opportunities for jobs not so dangerous. My brother works, when he can’t find anything else, at the mines driving the large dump trucks that haul the coal out of the pits. It’s dangerous work even if you are not underground. You just wouldn’t believe the equipment they give them to work with. This one site he was in this massive huge dump truck that the floorboard was rusted out with open holes. Rocks would fly back into the cab from the tires. And when it rains, it’s a mudslide. One of his co -workers was killed when the dump truck went over an embankment last year. Reporting gets you fired. And yet these workers will defend the job because there is nothing else. So thank you for standing up with us. We do appreciate it.

Then there’s the sickness…

According to WVU’s institute for health policy research, coal county residents are more likely to suffer from chronic heart, lung and kidney diseases, cancers and generally suffer from excess numbers of premature death. There’s a high cancer risk for up to 1 out of every 50 Americans living near the more than 100 billion gallons of toxic sludge in the clay-lined and unlined  (the majority unlined) coal ash landfills and slurry ponds, such as the TVA Kingston ash sludge landfill that collapsed into the Emory River in December.

Tennessee Valley Authority officials consistently have said the ash spilled in December from the utility’s Kingston Fossil Plant wet landfill in Harriman, Tenn., and in January from its Widows Creek pond in Stevenson, Ala., is non-hazardous…  but after the spill, regulatory and independent testing have found high levels of toxicity in the spilled waste and raw water where the two spills occurred. 31 of the landfills and slurry ponds in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama are on or near major waterways!

The slurry pond above the Marsh fork elementary school where we held our protest holds 2.8 billion gallons (it’s one of the smallest ponds – one nearby in brushing fork holds 9 billion gallons) of sludge in unlined pits containing arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury.

Marsh Fork Elementary School site and toxic holding pond

Tragically but predictably in coal river valley, the children are often sick with headaches and asthma and of the 200 students and teachers at Marsh fork elementary school cancer rates are higher than average.

Three teachers have died from cancer and one is struggling with disease now.

In 2005 one student died from ovarian cancer at age seventeen and another was still battling ovarian cancer.

Today I received this from a man in Raleigh County, West Virginia –

West Virginia. It is hell.
Every morning a 6 am my cat starts coughing. My eyes burn, my nose burns (sometimes bleeds), I get ill, and my health continues to fall apart. I got two forms of cancer, I can’t drink the water.. and we are 15 miles from Marsha Fork where they are making (was supposed to be shut down) a cyanide based pesticide that in an accident killed 1800 people in India. My kid is lead poisoned, my wife is- and in a mile radius 10 people have had heart attacks or died from whatever is here. The dust is full of arsenic and the Massey power plants create a blue haze which is really sulfuric acid. EPA won’t come near this place. It is owned by the coal industry. Thousands, who live here and are dying from 100 miles of rivers under coal sludge, Do the earth a favor and check on this and if you feel like improving our life send us a ticket out of here. I am sending you a picture of my son. He is being poisoned here. It breaks my heart. We cannot even get workman’s comp and have huge families. We are the poor of southern West Virginia..

State regulators are telling the people that it’s an “improvement” to flatten a forested mountain, seed it with grass and hope that some shrubs will grow – and then allow hunters who have signed “the appropriate waivers of liability, indemnifications and assumptions of risks” to hunt whatever animals might choose to inhabit such barren fields.

As humorist Dave Barry says, we’re not making this up, although we wish we were.

Let me make one thing clear…  there is no such thing as clean coal!!!

I wish President Obama would stop using the term and take CEQ chief Nancy Sutley and EPA head Lisa Jackson to visit these unfortunate mining sites under their jurisdiction.

When we flip the switch to turn our lights on, most of us have no idea where that power comes from. According to the U.S. dept. of energy, more than 50% of our electricity comes from coal.

Coal emits much more carbon (CO2) per unit of energy than oil and natural gas. From the acid drainage of mines polluting rivers and streams, to the release of mercury and other toxins when its burned into the atmosphere, the fine particulates that wreak havoc on human health, and the colossal waste, coal pollutes every step of the way.

“Clean coal” is the industry’s attempt to “clean up” its dirty image – the industry’s green wash buzzword. It is not a new type of coal. “Clean coal” methods only move pollutants from one waste stream to another.  Coal is a dirty business!

The good news is we have a solution! A study of the long-term benefits of INFINITE Wind Power versus FINITE coal MTR in Coal River Mountain, West Virginia already exists. They show “excellent potential” for efficiency, productivity and economic benefit. Though it doesn’t have short-term financial returns, wind promises to provide clean, inexpensive energy and offer scores of safe jobs for the long term. Just check out the staggering figures from a report released by the American Wind Energy Association “wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year”. Renewable energy will continue to grow exponentially where as mining jobs have decreased or remained relatively stagnant at “81,000 workers” for the over 20 years, according to the 2007 U.S. dept of energy report.

I can understand why those who live in coal towns are frustrated, because while we have this technology available to us NOW – it is still just “a promise” in these regions.

Being led away by the police

It’s imperative we let our president, our elected public servants and entrepreneurs know that this is where we want our investment to be directed.

Hopefully some wise, forward thinking heroes will step up the plate, build the wind farm and take this incredible win, win, wind, opportunity to bury the dirty dinosaur of Mountain Top Removal forever.

Daryl Hannah
http://www.crmw.net/
http://www.appvoices.org/
http://ilovemountains.org/
http://www.ram.org/obamamtr

You can follow Daryl on Twitter: http://twitter.com/dhlovelife

Van Jones. What an amazing human being he is. One of the most passionate, articulate speakers I’ve ever had the pleasure to see and to meet. Not only does he have an impressive array of accomplishments to his name (Yale Law grad, co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, founder and executive director of Green for All) but he’s a truly remarkable man. A notoriously loving father of two, he grew up in Oakland and has risen above so much to become a truly inspired, and remarkably inspiring leader. And, he was on the RAN board of directors before he chose to narrow his focus – a focus that has led him to serve in this most hopeful of administrations in Washington. We now truly have a friend in the White House. Read on below to catch this New York Times story on his being chosen for this new and vital role, and check him out towards the end of this short RAN video.

Van – we’re all behind you.

——

Author-activist tapped as White House ‘green’ jobs adviser

Author and activist Van Jones will serve as a special White House adviser for “green” jobs, enterprise and innovation.

Jones, 40, will work within the Council on Environmental Quality, which coordinates President Obama’s climate, energy and other environmental policy initiatives with federal agencies.

“Van Jones has been a strong voice for green jobs, and we look forward to having him work with departments and agencies to advance the president’s agenda of creating 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize renewable resources,” CEQ Chairwoman Nancy Sutley said in a written statement last night.

Jones, a Yale Law School graduate and veteran human rights and environmental activist, participated last month in the first meeting of the White House Task Force on Middle-Class Working Families. The panel, convened by Vice President Joe Biden, focused on how the public sector can create “green-collar” jobs such as installing solar panels and retrofitting inefficient buildings (E&ENews PM, Feb. 27).

Jones urged Biden and other administration officials who participated in the Philadelphia panel to use the $787 billion economic stimulus to provide training for such jobs, which cannot be outsourced. Economically depressed areas should be a priority, he underscored.

“Let’s green the ghetto first,” Jones said to applause.

Jones will now help shape the administration’s energy and climate initiatives, with special emphasis on improvements and economic opportunities in vulnerable communities, CEQ officials said.

Jones, who could not be reached for comment, is the author of the 2008 book “The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems” and the co-founder of the Oakland, Calif.-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Most recently, he served as a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress, an influential think tank in Washington, D.C.

Joe Romm, a current Center for American Progress senior fellow and former assistant energy secretary during the Clinton administration, called Jones a “tireless” advocate for green-collar jobs in inner cities.

“He pushed this issue when no one was interested in it,” Romm added.

Jones’ candor and talent for firing up audiences will help in his new job, Romm posited.

“A big part of these bully pulpit jobs is selling ideas inside and outside of the administration,” he said. “Selling is one of his strong suits.”

Jones, who does not need Senate confirmation, will start his new job March 16, a CEQ spokeswoman said.

Copyright 2009 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

For more news on energy and the environment, visit www.greenwire.com.

“In an interview Sunday on “This Week” on ABC, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, alluded to internal debate when she was asked whether nationalization, or partial nationalization, of the largest banks was a good idea. “Well, whatever you want to call it,” said Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California. “If we are strengthening them, then the American people should get some of the upside of that strengthening. Some people call that nationalization.”

Yes, some people do. Namely, most of the other people in the world when faced with the government owning the majority share in a company. What does this mean for the banks? Citi and Bank of America lead the pack as poster children for the declining financial sector. Ken Lewis has some serious egg on his face as the train-wreck that is Merrill Lynch pulls up to the station, and Citi is hiving itself off into smaller and smaller chunks to keep it’s head above water. Both are desperately in need of more government intervention to avoid collapse. Whatever we call it, let’s spend some serious time thinking about what kind of conditions should be placed on any public money for the private banks.

I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that's green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f***ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.

No kidding.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is proposing to strike a joint climate-change pact with president-elect Barack Obama, an initiative that would seek to protect Alberta’s oil sands projects from potentially tough new U.S. climate-change rules by offering a secure North American energy supply.

This will be *the* tell-tale on Obama’s ability to push new energy solutions past the considerable influence of the oil majors. Cheap oil is out. What’s left is much more energy intensive to produce. Industry distracts policymakers with the promise of Carbon Capture and Storage.  But even if CCS comes to pass (not bloody likely, but let’s say they make it in 2-3 decades from now, best case) and even if its implementation brings the carbon intensity of heavy crudes into line with conventional stuff, we’re only back to square one on the real problem–breaking free of a fossil-fueled economy. In fact, we’re two steps back because we’ve stranded our investments in an energy infrastructure that won’t outlast global warming.

One early sign of  how Obama will respond will be his selection for the top spot on Climate in the new Administration.  No doubt Canada’s oil lobby are rooting against reports that Mary Nichols is on the short list.  As head honcho at the California Air Resources Board, she’s overseen development of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Recently released drafts seek to reduce the carbon footprint of California’s transportation sector by imposing penalties on refineries that choose to process dirty crudes like those from Canada’s tar sands.  It’s a bold move, and target #1 for Canada’s oil lobby in the US.

Last night’s decisive victory by Barack Obama proved that a message of hope can change the world. It showed us that yes, we can end the cultural divisions that paralyse progress, and that by uniting in a common cause, we can all be agents of change.

In the words of the president-elect, now is our time.

As we embark on a new path of possibility, we must also start a dialogue about how, together, we will move forward. Today, I invite you to join that conversation.

Since the Reagan administration, RAN has served as the mosquito in the tent of corporate America, drawing attention to our planet’s most critical environmental and social issues. We have been and will remain catalysts of change, and we welcome a president who believes that with hard work and a shared vision, we can transform the world for the better.

We have an opportunity to bring about real change in the world’s mightiest corporations. But with opportunity comes responsibility, and now is the time for all of us to work together to protect our planet.

Are you ready to take this historic, grassroots movement to the next level? The question we all have to ask ourselves is how, as individuals, we can work collectively to ensure and shape the change promised by an Obama presidency.

So please, let us know what you think. Use this forum to share your excitement, and lend your voice to this important–and inspiring–discussion.

Moving forward together,

Michael Brune
Executive Director
Rainforest Action Network

Clean coal has been getting a lot of attention lately. Both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama consider it to be an important piece in their energy plans. Even the recent $900 billion bailout package included $1.5 billion for clean coal. Because coal is so plentiful and relatively cheap in the US, the notion of clean coal is particularly appealing. Unfortunately, clean coal is a myth. Here’s why clean coal is so dirty:

1. Clean Coal Requires More Coal

30% more energy is required to pump carbon underground for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). The captured carbon dioxide has to be compressed to 100 times the atmospheric pressure, transferred to an underground storage reservoir and then pumped in the ground. All of this requires large amounts of energy, thus the coal plant must burn an additional 30% more coal to generate the same amount of usable electricity.

2. High Expenses Make It Unfeasible

$5.2 billion in taxpayer money has been spent to foster this technology in the US, yet the results are dismal. A recent government report found that of the 13 projects examined, eight had extended delays or financial problems, six were years behind schedule, and two had gone bankrupt.

3. Commercial Carbon Capture Unlikely by 2020

A study from Australian energy consultancy ACIL Talisman states that CCS will not be available in the short-term to generate electricity with low carbon emissions and that technology breakthroughs are still needed to make this technology feasible. The study does however find that concentrated solar, geothermal, and wind energy already are or will be in commercial use by 2020.

4. Unproven Technology

No commercial scale examples exist. The FutureGen plant in Illinois was to be the showcase for clean coal technology. A total of $50 million was spent, $40 million of which was federal funded. The price tag for the $1.8 billion plant had nearly doubled. The government pulled support for the project due to concern that costs would continue to climb.

5. Coal Mining is Very Harmful

The US averages 30 coal mining deaths annually, while China averages a staggering 8,000. Mountaintop removal mining, a method that is common in Appalachia, destroys ecosystems and has permanently buried over 1,200 miles of streams. Coal mining causes water pollution and lowers the quality of drinking water in neighboring communities. Unfortunately, clean coal technology does not address the many negative impacts of coal mining and could even require large amounts of coal to be mined because of the additional energy needed to sequester carbon emissions.