Category Archives: sustainable energy

gulf of mexico clean-up, Gulf restoration, ocean pollution, offshore oil, sustainable energy

Sun Herald: 5-year-old among many groups to weigh in on funding for Gulf Restoration

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http://www.sunherald.com/2013/06/11/4728129/girl-5-among-those-who-get-messages.html

By PAUL HAMPTON – jphampton@sunherald.com

BILOXI — One of the most effective people at Tuesday night’s meeting on the RESTORE Act didn’t have a great speaking voice, a polished presentation or a bunch of political connections.

Annika Smith of Biloxi did have the exuberance of a 5-year-old and one very connected pal — Justin Ehrenwerth, who eight days ago became chairman of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council.

“Before I say anything else, I have to tell you about the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in my eight days and it happened just a few minutes ago,” said Ehrenwerth, the Commerce Department’s representative on the council. “There is a young girl and I don’t know if she’s still here, she may have had to leave Š there she in the back, she’s waving. I hope you can see Annika in the back.”

And just like that, most of the several hundred people Coast Convention Center met Annika, the little girl bouncing up and down and waving wildly.

“I’ve been talking about Annika a long time. She was here when we were here in February and she was handing out these buttons that say
‘Restoring our Ecosystem Restores Our Economy.”

Ehrenwerth said at that meeting he couldn’t wait to get his button, but before he got the chance Annika’s bedtime arrived and she had to leave. But she’d heard the request.
“She wrote me the nicest letter in my favorite color of crayon — thank you for that — and included a few stickers. I’ve been really looking forward to this and hoping you’d be here tonight. So thank you for being here.”

Later she said she was handing out the stickers (“They’re not buttons, they’re stickers”) for a friend, Mark LaSalle, the director of the Pascagoula River Audubon Center in Moss Point. She said after she sent Ehrenwerth his sticker, he sent her a thank-you note.
“That was nice,” she said.

A parade of ideas

Then came a parade of people — someone from just about every activist organization on the Coast, it seemed — to give their thoughts on the council’s draft plan to spend money the government has received and will receive in the wake of the BP oil disaster. There was the Audubon Society, the Coastal Conservation Association, the Steps Coalition, Boat People SOS, Oxfam, the Sierra Club, Gulf Restoration Network, Women of the Storm, Ocean Conservancy, Asian Americans for Change, Nature Conservancy and others.

One theme that emerged was similar to Annika’s stickers — restoration and economic development go hand in hand.

Avery Bates of the Organized Seafood Association of Alabama commended Mississippi for rebuilding the oyster reefs.

“It’s a major, major improvement to the environment, the ecosystem, because of the work that that little oyster does,” he said. “And he’s wonderful eating. And we like to feed the people in Alabama and Mississippi, where many of our people have to come to make a living. We literally have thousands and thousands of people who depend on us for their seafood. And we want to commend you for starting off right by building back not only the ecosystem but also the economy.”

Distrust remains

But another theme was equally evident. There was skepticism, in some cases outright distrust, that the people would ever know how the money was spent or that it would be spent on projects that have nothing to do with restoration.

“The state of Mississippi is going to be completely oriented toward figuring out ways to pour concrete, build buildings and help the contractor buddies who helped get them into office,’ said Steve Shepard, Gulf Coast Group chair of the Sierra Club. “That’s the way the state of Mississippi works.”

Mike Murphy of The Nature Conservancy said one way to help ensure the money was allocated fairly would be to develop a ranking system “that is transparent.”
Many of the Vietnamese were worried they were being left out because the draft plan wasn’t translated and the meeting was being held the day shrimp season started, when many were out on their shrimp boats.

Grace Scire of Boat People SOS said her organization had finished a translation just the night before. She, too, urged the council to send out its meeting notices in more than just English.

About the plan

The plan, which provides a broad outline of the process to apply for RESTORE Act money and describes the process for the approval of each state’s plan to spend BP money, could be finished as early as July, officials at the meeting said. It also sets broad goals for restoration of the Gulf.

The council was established by the act and comprises the governors of the five Gulf states and officials from six federal agencies: Agriculture, Army, Commerce, EPA, Homeland Security and Interior.

The council’s website says it will soon:
– Refine its objectives and criteria for evaluating projects

– Establish advisory committees

– Develop regulations for allocating oil-spill money

– Release a schedule for submitting proposals

– Publish a list of programs and projects that will be funded over the next three years

– Adopt a 10-year funding strategy for money expected to be provided by the companies responsible for the disaster

Special thanks to Richard Charter

clean energy, energy policy, fossil fuels, marine pollution, natural resource management, renewable energy, sustainable energy

Our Power Campaign: Communities Unite Around A ‘Just Transition’ Away from Dirty Energy with Historic Training Camp

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http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2013/06/11-10

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 11, 2013 5:37 PM
CONTACT: Our Power Campaign
Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan
(415) 359-7324
Angela Angel
(510) 759-3177

media@ourpowercampaign.org

Groundbreaking Our Power Campaign Will Create Healthy Future for Communities Impacted by Climate Change

CENTRAL ARIZONA – June 11 – This week, Navajo community members of the Black Mesa Water Coalition will host a skills sharing and strategy camp for communities impacted by coal and other dirty energy. This camp marks the first of many convergences of indigenous peoples, communities of color, and working-class white communities building a powerful movement to take on climate change while fostering a new economy. The groups are uniting in a new national campaign launching this week called the Our Power Campaign: Communities United for a Just Transition.

Through the Our Power Campaign, communities are organizing to transition off of dirty energy to foster clean community power, zero waste, food sovereignty, public transit, housing for all, and restoration of ecosystems and watersheds.

“We can create quality jobs by retooling the infrastructure in our regions,” said Bill Gallegos, Executive Director of Communities for a Better Environment and Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) Steering Committee member. “We need to divest from dirty energy and the ‘greed economy’ and invest in a transition to local living economies and community resilience. This camp is about learning the skills and forging the strategies we need to bring this transition home.”

“We can have power without pollution and energy without injustice,” said Jihan Gearon, Executive Director of Black Mesa Water Coalition and CJA Steering Committee member. “Navajo people and Navajo lands have been moving central Arizona’s water and providing much of central Arizona and Southern California’s energy for 50 years. Renewable energy provides a new way forward to bring economic and health benefits to the Navajo people while cutting greenhouse gas emissions at the source.”

The backdrop for the camp is one of the communities creating a ‘just transition’. Navajo Generating Station, which is run by the Salt River Project and Peabody Coal’s Kayenta Mine, has depleted the Navajo Aquifer, severely impacted the land base, and adversely affected community health. Generating electricity from coal also pumps greenhouse gases into the atmosphere contributing to climate change which the Navajo Nation is already suffering the effects of.

The Black Mesa Water Coalition is proposing Navajo-owned utility scale solar projects and fostering local, sustainable land-based economies. According to their studies, there is enough old mine lands and good sun on the Navajo Nation to generate over 6,000 megawatts of solar power in the years to come. That would be thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars into the regional economy each year, billions of dollars during construction.

At the groundbreaking training camp, communities along coal’s chain of destruction from the Southwest, Appalachia, the Midwest, and beyond will come together to learn from and exchange with the Black Mesa community. Activities include:

June 14- sharing stories of struggles and victories in communities impacted by dirty energy
June 15- workshops on topics such as direct action and land-based resilience
June 16-17- sessions for communities to strategize together to win shifts away from dirty energy towards local living economies

The Our Power Campaign is launching in three communities impacted by dirty energy– Black Mesa, Arizona; Richmond, California; and Detroit Michigan –and will expand to communities across the country over the coming years. With nearly 40 organizations, CJA’s members are rooted in Indigenous, African American, Latino, Asian Pacific Islander, and working-class white communities throughout the United States. Together, they apply the power of deep grassroots organizing, direct action, coalition building, civic engagement, policy advocacy, and a variety of communications tools to win local, regional, statewide, and national shifts.

“This is a historic opportunity to unite working-class communities and communities of color across the nation who bear the brunt of the climate and economic crisis,” said Ife Kilimanjaro, Co-Director of the East Michigan Environmental Action Council in Detroit and CJA Steering Committee member. “Together, we are building a movement that is demonstrating and winning a shift away from dirty energy through investment in the root cause solutions we all need.”
###

The Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) is a collaborative of over 35 community-based and movement support organizations uniting frontline communities to forge a scalable, and socio-economically just transition away from unsustainable energy towards local living economies to address the root causes of climate change.

energy policy, fossil fuels, Keystone XL, marine pollution, national ocean politics, natural resource management, sustainable energy

Mother Jones: Grassroots Greens Challenge Environmental Defense Fund on Fracking

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Grassroots Greens Challenge Environmental Defense Fund on Fracking


→ Climate Change, Corporations, Energy, Environment, Regulatory Affairs

—By Kate Sheppard
| Wed May. 22, 2013 1:49 PM PDT

fracking_6

Michael G McKinne/Shutterstock.com

A coalition of grassroots environmental groups—plus a few professors and celebrities—issued a public message to the Environmental Defense Fund on Wednesday: You don’t speak for us on fracking.

The coalition of 67 groups released an open letter to EDF President Fred Krupp criticizing his organization for signing on as a “strategic partner” in the Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD), a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit that bills itself as an “unprecedented, collaborative effort of environmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, energy companies and other stakeholders committed to safe, environmentally responsible shale resource development.” CSSD’s partners include Chevron, CONSOL Energy, and Shell. The partners have been working together on voluntary industry standards for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a controversial process used to extract natural gas from shale rock.

The groups that signed the letter included national organizations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, as well as regional environmental outfits such as the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and Catskills Citizens for Clean Energy. Actors Mark Ruffalo and Debra Winger also signed the document. They wrote:

The very use of the word sustainable in the name is misleading, because there is nothing sustainable about shale oil or shale gas. These are fossil fuels, and their extraction and consumption will inevitably degrade our environment and contribute to climate change. Hydraulic fracturing, the method used to extract them, will permanently remove huge quantities of water from the hydrological cycle, pollute the air, contaminate drinking water, and release high levels of methane into the atmosphere. It should be eminently clear to everyone that an economy based on fossil fuels is unsustainable.

Gail Pressberg, a senior program director with the Civil Society Institute, criticized EDF for a “willingness to be coopted” by industry in a call with reporters about the letter. “For too long, nationally-oriented groups have tried to call the shots on fracking,” she said. “These local people can and should be allowed to speak for themselves.”

EDF’s Krupp responded with his own letter on Wednesday, defending the group’s participation in CSSD and its record of “fighting for tough regulations and strong enforcement” on natural gas extraction:

Let’s be clear about where EDF stands. It’s not our job to support fracking or to be boosters for industry. That is not what we do. In fact, we regularly clash with industry lobbyists who seek to gut legislation protecting the public, and we have intervened in court on behalf of local communities and their right to exercise traditional zoning powers. We have made it clear that there are places where fracking should never be permitted. But if fracking is going to take place anywhere in the U.S.—and clearly it is—then we need to do everything in our power to protect the people living nearby. That includes improving industry performance in every way possible. In our view, CSSD, a coalition that includes environmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, energy companies and other stakeholders, is one way to do that.

Make no mistake: CSSD is not and never will be a substitute for effective regulation. Stronger state and federal rules, along with strong enforcement, are absolutely necessary. However, voluntary efforts can build momentum toward regulatory frameworks.

I’ve covered the sparring between EDF and grassroots groups over gas before. At the heart of it is that many of the grassroots groups want there to be no fracking, period. EDF’s position is that fracking is “never going to be without impact, never going to be risk free,” as EDF Vice President Eric Pooley described it to me, “but we’re also mindful that it’s happening all over the country.” Voluntary standards, Pooley said, are not the ultimate goal—but they can help reduce impacts in communities that already have drilling, and lay the groundwork for actual regulations. “How could we not, in good consciousness, want to engage if we see an opportunity to reduce impacts in communities?” he said.

For what it’s worth, both enviros and industry folks have berated CSSD for being too accommodating of the other side.

climate change, energy policy, fossil fuels, Keystone XL, natural resource management, sustainable energy, tar sands

San Francisco Chronicle: Keystone pipeline foes set for protests

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I agree that we should all do what we can to express our opposition to this insanity. DV

http://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/Keystone-pipeline-foes-set-for-protests-4536853.phpKeystone protests

Michael Macor, The Chronicle
An El Sobrante man named Rick participates in civil disobedience training Saturday in Richmond.

By Joe Garofoli
May 22, 2013

Climate-change activists aren’t waiting to see what President Obama will decide on the most controversial environmental issue of his tenure – the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would carry petroleum extracted from the Canadian tar sands 1,700 miles across the U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico.

To call attention to the project and what they consider the government’s slow political response to climate change, tens of thousands of activists plan to get arrested in nonviolent civil disobedience across the nation in the coming weeks.

In small groups such as one that gathered in a Richmond storefront office last weekend, they’ve begun training for demonstrations aimed at key players in the Keystone decision.

They will begin at a Facebook shareholders meeting next month in Millbrae. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg started a political action committee that is supporting senators who favor the pipeline.
A larger protest will follow Aug. 3 in Richmond near the Chevron refinery.

“Things are getting worse,” said LaVerne Woodrow, a 51-year-old registered nurse who drove from Arroyo Seco (Monterey County) with her 26-year-old son to participate in the Richmond training Saturday.

Woodrow participated in various social justice marches when she was younger, but she has never been arrested at one before.

“I am a law-abiding citizen. Worst I ever had was a parking ticket,” Woodrow said. “But I live out in the country. I see the damage that’s being done to our environment.”

Promising action

More than 59,000 people have signed an online pledge to express their disgust and engage in what San Francisco-based pledge organizers Credo Action calls “serious, dignified, peaceful civil disobedience that could get you arrested.”

As the State Department analyzes the Keystone project before a final decision, expected this year, activists are corralling their energy into campaigns with names like “Summer Heat,” featuring street demonstrations the last two weeks of July, typically among the hottest days of the year.

Another group of environmental activists is plotting a campaign called “Fearless Summer” to protest various types of natural-resource extraction – from fracking to mountaintop removal to extract minerals.

Supporters of the Keystone pipeline say the project would bring much-needed jobs to the United States, where 11.7 million people are unemployed, according to the Labor Department. But while construction of the pipeline is estimated to create 42,100 temporary jobs, a State Department study projected it would add only 35 permanent jobs, mostly for pipeline inspection and maintenance.

Team in training

The four-hour Richmond tutorial was among the first of more than 1,000 training sessions that eventually will take place nationally, organizers say.

On Saturday, activists gathered in the Richmond storefront amid posters of past direct actions: “Against the Patriot Act,” “Wells Fargo: Reset Mortgages Now!” and “We are the port authority!” – from an Occupy demonstration at the Port of Oakland.

Many of the 15 people who attended the training had participated in civil disobedience before. Uniformly liberal, they needed few primers on climate change or why the pipeline was a bad idea, from their perspective.

“Why are we doing direct action?” instructor David Solnit, a longtime Bay Area activist who has protested internationally, asked the group sitting around a long, rectangular table.

“To piss off the powers that be,” volunteered one.
“To unite power behind us,” said another.

Handy tips

Solnit nodded, with a soft smile. Direct action protest not only “builds our power,” he said, but takes it from the 1 percent – the wealthiest of Americans.

Much of the afternoon was spent discussing and role-playing the mechanics of gumming up the gears of capitalism. Sprinkled throughout were practical tips on how to behave in the heat of nonviolent battle.

Start with the best way to sit together to block a building entrance.
Next to each other in a straight line? Bad idea. Security can pry away the weaker members, instructors said, as they demonstrated on such a chorus line.

Sitting in a circle? Better.

“But my back is kind of hurting sitting like this,” said one circle-sitter.

Handy tip: Sit back-to-back in concentric circles. Not only does it provide back support but it allows the activists to have a 360-degree view of the action. Plus, by putting the weaker members in the inner circle, it protects them from getting pried off.

When it comes to getting arrested, Solnit said, “the key thing to remember is, you always have choices.”

If you don’t want to be arrested, he said, leave when the cops tell you to disperse. “But when would be some times where you would want to be arrested?” he asked.
“To prolong the action,” said one man.

“To make a more dramatic statement,” said another.

Handy tip: Don’t wear contact lenses if you’re planning to get arrested. Pepper spray burns even more. Wear your prescription glasses instead.

Calming down

Much of the afternoon’s conversation involved “de-escalation” – how to bring down the temperature of tense confrontations. There is an art in talking nose-to-nose with the employee of a company you’re blockading. Start with saying, “This is a peaceful protest.”

Handy tip: If they’re yelling at you, match the level of their voice initially, then start talking softer. “And then they’ll start talking softer,” Solnit said.

When the training session ended, Tania Pulido was ready to hit the barricades. The Richmond resident is 23, a soon-to-be-senior at UC Berkeley and a direct-action rookie. Still, she’s a little worried about what might happen if she were to be arrested.

“It’s a risk,” she said. “I’m a student with a lot of loans. You never know what the government could do with those loans if you get arrested.”

Joe Garofoli is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/Keystone-pipeline-foes-set-for-protests-4536853.php#ixzz2U5asuj9T

_________

http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2013/05/22/inside-a-civil-disobedience-training-session-video/

San Francisco Chronicle

Inside a civil disobedience training session (VIDEO)

In today’s Chronicle, we have a story about climate change activists training to engage in civil disobedience over the Keystone XL pipeline. They’re ready to roll on different protest campaigns with innocuous names like “Summer Heat” and “Fearless Summer,” but the message is clear:

Oh, it’s on.

Enviros are frustrated with the lack of political progress on halting climate change, and their anger is focused on the looming Keystone decision. A growing number of people – and not just the professional activist community – want to do something more than contact their member of Congress (who obviously aren’t listening) or post a quick rant on Facebook. That just ain’t enough, many tell me.

So let’s go to the barricades.

Naturally, this being the Bay Area, the trainings are ramping up here first. We checked out a training the other day in Richmond. Lot of role-playing. Lots. Down to some role-playing security officers wielding rolled-up foam “batons.”

Here’s the crew role-playing how they would blockade the entrance to a building. Let’s go to the video, courtesy of SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle’s Shaky Hand Productions:

In the next video is David Solnit – a longtime Bay Area activist who has demonstrated around the world – explaining the do’s and don’t’s of getting arrested.

Here’s a handy tip: Don’t ever touch a police officer, police dog or police horse in any way, instructors warned. One activist at the training hushed the crowd with a story about a fellow protester who pet a police horse during a demonstration. The protester, who was a horse lover, was charged with assaulting an officer.

Again, courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com’s Shaky Hand Productions, is a peek at the training:

Special thanks to Richard Charter.

clean energy, climate change, energy policy, national ocean politics, natural resource management, ocean pollution, sustainable energy

The Lens–Survey: Americans nationwide willing to shell out personally to save our coast

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Survey: Americans nationwide willing to shell out personally to save our coast

By Bob Marshall, Staff writer April 24, 2013 2:00pm

Question: Would enough American households be willing to make a one-time payment in their tax fillings to raise as much as to $201 billion for Louisiana’s coastal restoration effort?

Answer:
A) Yes
B) No
C) You gotta be kiddin’!

The answer, according to a pair of Mississippi State University researchers who conducted a recent survey, is “A.”

Which will probably leave most coastal area residents thinking “C”.

That’s how one of the researchers reacted.

“I was surprised at the high numbers who said they would help, and then how much they would commit personally, ” said Dan Petrolia, an associate professor of agricultural economics at MSU who conducted the survey with colleague Matt Interis – an attempt to judge the financial commitment Americans would make to Louisiana’s coastal crisis.

“I think this shows there is enough awareness out there by enough people. And that’s very encouraging.” – David Muth

A Louisiana native who was raised in Independence, Petrolia said the idea for the survey came to him after seeing a growing number of “America’s Wetland” bumper stickers. They’re circulated by the America’s Wetland Foundation, the Louisiana civic group whose mission is alerting the nation to the state’s grave coastal emergency.

Does the nation embrace Louisiana as its wetland? “I wanted to find out if Americans really felt that way,” Petrolia said. “It seemed like a pretty straightforward thing to find out.”

One of the best ways to answer the question was to ask how much of their own money Americans would pay to help save the nation’s most productive coastal estuary and the storm buffer for a vital economic and cultural infrastructure.

The MSU researchers asked two different types of questions:
They first asked respondents if they would choose to help pay for the coastal effort, or do nothing.
The second question was multiple choice. Respondents could choose to contribute to two different habitat projects affecting wildlife, fisheries or storm protection. Or they could choose to do nothing.
In each case, those choosing to help did so knowing the decision came with a specified charge in their end-of-year tax filings.

The respondents included 3,400 people spread across every state; only 32 were Louisianans.
The results were good news for the coast:
Forty-three percent of those given the help-or-not question choose to help the state. The median amount they agreed to pay was $1,751.

That would translate to $201 billion, if the 43 percent sample held for the roughly 115 million American households counted in the most recent census.

Sixty percent of those given the multiple-choice question chose to help, with the mean contribution from that group coming to $909, the researchers found. If that result held true for the 115 million American households, it would raise $105 billion for the coastal effort.

The state’s current coastal Master Plan carries a price tag of $50 billion. But the planners reason they could do twice as much with twice the funding.

Petrolia stressed that he was not claiming the survey sample would necessarily hold true for all American households.

But since 93 percent of the respondents had never visited or lived in New Orleans, the level of support should be encouraging to Louisiana, the researcher said.

Garret Graves, head of Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, declined to comment on the survey.

David Muth, state director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Coastal Louisiana Campaign, called the results a welcome surprise.

“I think it’s encouraging that Americans are willing to pay anything, frankly,” Muth said. “That’s because when you attach a dollar value to a question like that it sort of puts the (issue) on a whole new plain. I think this shows there is enough awareness out there by enough people. And that’s very encouraging.”

In other findings from the survey:
* Respondents ranked fisheries production as their first concern followed by storm surge protection and wildlife habitat.
* Respondents who had made lifestyle changes for environmental reasons were more likely to support restoration.
* Those who identified themselves as liberal tended to be more supportive than those who identified themselves as conservative.
* Past or present Louisiana residents tended to be more supportive.
The Northern Gulf Institute and the MSU Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station funded the study.

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ABOUT BOB MARSHALL
More from this author
Bob Marshall covers environmental issues for The Lens, with a special focus on coastal restoration and wetlands. While at The Times-Picayune, his work chronicling the people, stories and issues of Louisiana’s wetlands was recognized with two Pulitzer Prizes and other awards. In 2012 Marshall was a member of the inaugural class inducted into the Loyola University School of Communications Den of Distinction. He can be reached at (504) 232-5013.

Special thanks to Richard Charter