It started as an email on "The Law of Two Feet."

"The Law of Two Feet" came up in a side discussion tonight (at a very traditional committee-style meeting for climate action). I thought I would share this, as it relates closely to another topic of another side discussion that deserves further (and central) consideration (by this particular group): that topic being Transition Towns. (I started to right this as an email to a few members of the group, then it seems to have turned into a blog post, so... enjoy!)

The Law of Two feet is part of a scalable organizing approach for groups "focused on a specific task". It's called Open Space Technology (OST) as wikipedia defines it,

"The approach is characterized by five basic mechanisms: (1) a broad, open invitation that articulates the purpose of the meeting; (2) participant chairs arranged in a circle; (3) a "bulletin board" of issues and opportunities posted by participants; (4) a "marketplace" with many breakout spaces that participants move freely between, learning and contributing as they "shop" for information and ideas; and (5) a "breathing" or "pulsation" pattern of flow, between plenary and small-group breakout sessions." ...The approach is often defined by its lack of an initial agenda.

The Law of Two Feet promotes the "breathing", "the flow" of the gathering. It is a critical operating instruction, which states:

“If, during the course of the gathering, any person finds themselves in a situation where they are neither learning nor contributing, they must use their feet and go to some more productive place.”

This is an example of an organizing process that can maximize the creative output of a large and diverse group of people, WITHOUT the need for hierarchical power structures and it's related ego-battles. In fact, as this Transition Culture website puts it,

"If you are a control freak, you will hate organizing an Open Space event! It involves a lot of trust that the process will work but at the same time I have never seen or heard of one not working."

I've been part of open space activities, and can personally attest. By simply setting an intentional tone for a gathering with simple rules, one can allow people to express and synthesize their ideas to their greatest potential as a fluid yet cohesive group. That is why this organizing tool is central to Transition Town model. One way I define the Transition Town (or Transition Initiative) model is as an organizing model for community-scale climate action, based in the principles of permaculture, that builds community resilience and decreases dependence on fossil fuels. With this scale of intent, and in the context of our climate emergency, we can see how such efforts to maximize the creative potential of a group (and to abandon dysfunctional interpersonal dynamics) seem most appropriate.

I would strongly suggest to anyone who is concerned with climate change and/or peak oil: look at the Transition Initiative model. They can borrow the book from the library, read the pages and forums online, or start with this 49-page primer. Then all they have to do is find someone else in their community and turn them onto it. Then... they're ready to start.

Transition Initiative, as an organizing model, gets at the root causes of climate change. It addresses the ways in which we relate to each other, to ourselves, and to the planet. It helps us to think about the climate and energy crises in a more holistic context, with sensitivity to the psychological and emotional reality of our situation. And even if a person is not ready to start an Initiative herself, the principles, theories, and tools will surely be useful in the years ahead.

more useful links:
A Brief User's Guide to Open Space Technology, Harrison Owen
http://transitionus.org/ - Transition United States

Day 42 Message to fasters

After the Disaster

"The possibility for a rapid regeneration of human culture is predicated
on a great awakening happening quickly -- before ecological meltdown
leads to systemic breakdown.."

After the Disaster, by Daniel Pinchbeck (read the article here)

This is the kind of thinking that attracts me to the 2012 meme. It's what helps me to keep an optimistic outlook! Much gratitude to Daniel for sharing these words!

we will save this mountain

Last Monday I had the privilege to join a protest to save one mountain from the destructive onslaught of mountaintop removal coal mining. Coal River Mountain is the tallest standing mountain in West Virginia (almost 500 mountains have been destroyed across Appalachia), and its ridges provide some of the most viable locations for wind power generation. But the coal companies began blasting away at the mountain several weeks ago. This single mountain serves as a potent symbol of the greater struggle for energy justice in the coal fields of Appalachia. (more details here and here).




The protest was intense and bordered on surreal. About 500 people (at most, by my estimate) assembled into two pretty even groups in the parking lot of the DEP in Charleston, separated by two temporary fences and a detail of police. There was a strong counter-protest to this anti-mountaintop removal protest, composing largely of miners (in striped uniforms: they likely got the day off to attend). They had nice printed or vinyl signs with words like "Loud and Proud, Miners of WV" and "Environmentalists: Endless Bitching." They certainly were loud; boisterous shouting, insults, cheers ("whose coal?") and especially the massive coal trucks; a dozen or so of which circled the block, tirelessly airing their booming horns, in an attempt to drown out the speakers at our protest.

You can hear the horns in the background of this video.

Judy Bonds began to shout "Honk if you love mountains" every time a truck went by, blaring its horns. The cheers of our crowd would then join with the shouts and jeers of the miners and other counter-protesters, much to their dismay. (photo cred. Scott E., via facebook)

I had the honor of assuming a "Peacekeeper" role for this action. Dozens of angry miners, shouting, blaring horns, blinded by ignorance and hate. This volatile setting provided a trial-by-fire, as it were, for my peacekeeping skills. Our charge, as Peacekeepers, was to diffuse any conflicts between protesters and counter-protesters, to pull our people aside and remind them of our purpose there, and if necessary, to intercept any insults, glares or violent gestures. ("Sure... no problem... just breathe..." I told myself...)

I found it to be an incredible exercise in non-attachment, in mindfulness, in non-violent thought. Not only did I have to keep my own emotions in check, I had to monitor the emotional state of others around me, and to step in when energetic interactions approached violence.

And I realized:
The whole "us vs. them" polarity is becoming obsolete.
We only believe that we are in competition with each other.
But we all need clean air and clean water, a live-able climate.
Mountaintop removal mining is ecological suicide for Appalachia.
And our continued burning of coal is a fatal mistake for the planet.
Coal extraction is poisoning the same families that are fed by it.
They depend on coal to live, yet it kills them slowly.
What a profound microcosm...
Our collective our addiction to fossil fuels!

If we're going to solve this problem, then we need to dismantle false polarities.
In the end, we're all in the same boat! (except the exploitative corporations... we should vote them off the boat...)

Mining coal is currently the only option for so many fathers that need to feed their children. And of course, the coal companies want to keep it that way! So I was so delighted to hear the words shared by Mountainkeeper Larry Gibson, which included an opening line to the effect of: "Before we shut down the coal companies, we have to create jobs for all of these miners back there!"

The coal fields of Appalachia have provided the cheap and abundant fuel source that has propelled our nation's industrial progress and amassed great wealth for Wall Street bankers. But ironically the top coal-producing regions are also the most impoverished in the country. Imagine if the rest of the country were to pay its dues and respect to the coal regions, and help it to develop more sustainable and just economies? Ideas for restorative justice have been proposed by green jobs champion Van Jones; give the older miners an early retirement and retrain younger miners to perform green and sustainable jobs. What if we helped them create an alternative economy to coal? They could then walk away from the jobs that are killing them!

We all need to respect those who've been sacrificed to get us here (wherever we are...) I guess it comes down to "hating the sin, and not the sinner..." or maybe "the game, not the player?" We need to end mountaintop removal. And we need to end exploitation of all kinds. The miners, as much as they have been conditioned to hate environmentalists, are themselves being exploited by coal companies. The only viable answers to this conundrum will be to work together, to realize that we're on the same side (as humans). The only "them" is the disembodied corporate structures, the machine of exploitation (which, by the way, is in its final death throes), and perhaps the few sad and sleep-walking souls who think they're on top.

time to stop tip-toe-ing around the tulips

We can't just substitute one power source for another.
The energy crisis and climate change are only symptoms of a much larger disease.

New PCI Study Concludes No Combination of Alternative Energy Systems Can Replace Fossil Fuels

From the press release:

"An alarming new study jointly released by two prominent California-based environmental/economic think tanks, concludes that unrelenting energy limits, even among alternative energy systems, will make it impossible for the industrial system to continue operating at its present scale, beyond the next few decades. The report finds that the current race by industries and governments to develop new sustainable energy technologies that can replace ecologically harmful and rapidly depleting fossil fuel and nuclear technologies, will not prove sufficient, and that this will require substantial adjustments in many operating assumptions of modern society."

One particularly powerful conclusion from the study includes:

"...It is necessary to prepare societies for dramatic shifts in consumption and lifestyle expectations. It will also be necessary to promote a new ethic of conservation throughout the industrial world. A sharp reversal of today’s globalization of commercial activity—inherently wasteful for its transport energy needs—must be anticipated and facilitated, and government leaders must encourage a rapid evolution toward economies based on localism especially for essential needs such as food and energy. The study remarks that this is not necessarily a negative prospect, as some research shows that, once basic human needs are met, high material consumption levels do not correlate with high quality of life."

Harnessing Coal River Wind in Appalachia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIwO9Z3IlRo&fmt=22

Today, the confluence between mountaintop removal coal mining and climate change is front and center on the streets of Charleston, West Virginia and on stage at the "COP15" United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen.

In Charleston, activists from around the region are gathering in front of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection headquarters to demand an end to blasting at Coal River Mountain -- ground zero in the fight against mountaintop removal coal mining.

And in Copenhagen, Google is unveiling a new layer in Google Earth that dramatically illustrates the choice to be made at Coal River Mountain -- a choice between a clean energy future and the increased threat of climate change.

As Lorelei Scarbro, who lives in Rock Creek, West Virginia, at the foot of Coal River Mountain, says in the video, Coal River Mountain represents a crossroads in our future.

Massey Energy plans to mine more than 6000 acres of mountaintop at Coal River Mountain, which would destroy the opportunity to build a 320 megawatt wind farm on the ridges of Coal River Mountain.

Instead of 320 megawatts of clean energy that would power more than 70,000 homes indefinitely, Massey's plans would release 134 million tons of C02 -- the equivalent of putting 1.5 million more cars on the road for 17 years.

That's what makes Coal River Mountain a "cauldron of Climate Change," in Lorelei's words. That's why Google is showing millions of Google Earth users and the delegates in Copenhagen what's at stake at Coal River Mountain, and why people from around the region are gathering today in Charleston.

Can you stand with the activists in Charleston and the delegates in Copenhagen today by taking two simple actions?

1. Watch the Coal River Mountain Video and forward it to your friends and family. Ask them to join you in stopping mountaintop removal coal mining by signing up at iLoveMountains.org.

2. Email your Senators and tell them to pass the Appalachian Restoration Act. If Congress is serious about addressing climate change, we need this bill to dramatically reduce mountaintop removal coal mining, which is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

Thank you for taking a moment today to help secure a clean energy future for all of us.

Matt Wasson
iLoveMountains.org

it works both ways

A public address delivered to those gathered at the 350 International Day of Action in New Bedford, Massachusetts on October 24th, 2009

picture from 350.org, New Zealand

Last night, on the other side of the planet, a conscious group of individuals gathered in the mountains of New Zealand to greet the first rays of sunlight to hit the earth on this arbitrary calendar day, October 24th, 2009. They gathered with a very specific intent: to be the first ripple in a wave of heightened awareness to spread across the globe on this day.

Today, people 181 countries are coming together for the most widespread day of environmental action in the planet's history. At over 5200 events around the world, people are gathering to call for strong action and bold leadership on the climate crisis.

Thank you for being part of this amazing event!

Science tells us that we must immediately begin to reduce global atmospheric CO2 to below 350 ppm in order "to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted. " Currently, we’re at 390, and climbing by 2 ppm each year. Most of the economically and politically “feasible” action proposals put forth by world governments consider 450 or even 550 ppm to be acceptable.

The last time the Earth was at 450 ppm, the oceans were 75 meters higher. A coastal city, like New Bedford, would be completely under water. Is that acceptable?

Our global greenhouse gas emissions have been on an exponential curve for decades. Science tells us that our yearly emissions must not only decrease, but they must peak by 2014, and then drop rapidly in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.

It is clearly an amazing, and daunting challenge, and there’s no simple answer. The only thing I know for sure, is that we’re all in this together. And that the only way past this global challenge is to come together as a global family.

Because climate change is about more than just carbon in the atmosphere. It is perhaps the most visible and immediately threatening symptom of a much larger disease. And yet this crisis may be exactly what we need to wake up to this fact. Perhaps we’re ready to realize that at the root of all our problems is a defective and fatal world view.

This idea of kill-or-be-killed,
Of competition over cooperation,
Of systematic oppression and exploitation of people and planet,
the mechanistic worldview of Empire is finally being exposed as the short-sighted failure that it is.

Many of us have heard about the maxim represented by Chinese character for Crisis and Opportunity. The climate crisis gives us an incredible opportunity: an opportunity to reweave the very fabric of our culture, to lay the framework for a truly just and sustainable global society, to redefine the way we relate to each other and the planet.

But the opportunity also works both ways.

Those in power want to remain in power, and are using this crisis towards their own advantage,
They are breeding a new form of colonialism, where rights to pollute our common atmosphere are bought and sold. They’ve fabricated a variety of thinly-veiled programs to maintain the status quo:
Carbon capture and sequestration,
agro-fuels,
bogus carbon-offsets and carbon markets,
and of course “clean coal”

But as Einstein put it: “The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”

So quite simply, how can we entrust our very survival as a civilization to the same “free market” forces that brought us to this precipice? (we can’t)

We know that Empire is unsustainable, but they can see nothing beyond their own world view, and seem to be ready to go down with the ship.

But we won’t let them take us with them.

We are here today to demand meaningful action from our so-called “world leaders.” This December in Copenhagen, they must reach an international climate agreement that is Ambitious, fair and binding, that is in line with what Science is telling us, and that prioritizes the interests of people over the interests of the corporations.

But we clearly can’t put all our eggs in this one basket.

We must realize that our future is ultimately in our own hands. And we are writing our future story right now.

In our own communities, we must each cultivate climate solutions which are
decentralized, locally-controlled, bioregionally appropriate and socially just.

We must work to build community resilience, both to mitigate the causes and to adapt to the changing face of our feverish Mother Earth.

And we must work intimately with each other, and within ourselves to heal the initial trauma, the disconnection that brought us here in the first place.

I have an incredible sense of excitement and anticipation for this time which we have entered. We are here for the birthing of new society, the next step in our collective evolution. Don’t get me wrong: things are going to get MUCH worse before they get better. But we are carefully planting many seeds around the world. And like a forest fire, which disturbs the established system of hierarchy and order, our seeds are being activated and given space to grow.

Thank you for being here, for being part of this, and for being ready to brave the coming storm with clarity of purpose, and positive intent.

We’re all on the same boat! - 350 Day of Action in New Bedford

New Bedford, a coastal city with a strong nautical heritage, is home to a growing and creative movement for social equality, green jobs, and environmental justice. On Saturday, hundreds of concerned individuals surrounded a sailboat placed curiously in the middle of an intersection of downtown New Bedford, with a sail that boldly read: “350.org”. The people there were joining thousands of others across the globe as part of the largest environmental action in history. The message: The world is ready for an international climate treaty that is ambitious, fair, and binding, and that follows what science is telling us.

350 may be the most important number in the world. Science tells us that it’s the highest level of atmospheric CO2 that we can maintain if we wish to “maintain a planet like that on which civilization developed.” (We’re currently at 390 and climbing.) I found the sailboat to be an incredibly powerful way to accent the nautical heritage of New Bedford and to highlight its vulnerability to sea level rise. Perhaps most importantly, it symbolizes the importance of community resilience and adaptation in the face of this emerging climate crisis.

When I first heard that Bioneers by the Bay: Connecting for Change was happening the same weekend as the 350 event, I was excited at the possibilities of how these unique and powerful initiatives would combine forces in the city of New Bedford. Bioneers is an inspirational gathering of individuals sharing “visionary and practical solutions for restoring the Earth and its inhabitants.” What a perfect context in which to punctuate the global message of 350.org! We have the solutions to avert climate disaster and sustainable communities. We must simply realize that we’re all in the same boat, and make up our minds to act as one.

Let's do it.

watch and listen from the heart

Drunvalo brings us a message from the Mayan Elders



and this

All-You-Can-Emit Pass from Jet Blue!

Check out the new deal from JetBlue!

Enjoy unlimited polluting and climate destruction with JetBlue’s new All-You-Can-Emit Pass! For just $599* you can pollute with JetBlue anywhere you like, as often as you like, from September 8 to October 8, 2009. Use your All-You-Can-Emit Pass to cause global warming, sink island nations, or to visit your favorite polluted cities or to meet with a climate refugee. You might as well just do it all! With more than 50 cities to pollute in, and for just $599, it’s a deal you can’t pass up.

JetBlue Unlimited Flight Pass Abbreviated terms:

*Offer ends when climate crisis makes the Earth uninhabitable, or earlier, when coastal airports are underwater. Pass includes unlimited stratospheric pollution for one person on JetBlue operated flights between any cities in the JetBlue route network. Pass does not include certain external costs, including without limitation (a) melting the Arctic (b) rising sea levels (c) subsequent damage to coastal cities and climate refugees (d) spread of mosquitos and tropical disease (e) the climate crisis. Other restrictions apply, see 350.org/jetsmog for more complete deals.

Street Farmer

By ELIZABETH ROYTE

Published: July 1, 2009

Will Allen, a farmer of Bunyonesque proportions, ascended a berm of wood chips and brewer’s mash and gently probed it with a pitchfork. “Look at this,” he said, pleased with the treasure he unearthed. A writhing mass of red worms dangled from his tines. He bent over, raked another section with his fingers and palmed a few beauties.

It was one of those April days in Wisconsin when the weather shifts abruptly from hot to cold, and Allen, dressed in a sleeveless hoodie — his daily uniform down to 20 degrees, below which he adds another sweatshirt — was exactly where he wanted to be. Show Allen a pile of soil, fully composted or still slimy with banana peels, and he’s compelled to scoop some into his melon-size hands. “Creating soil from waste is what I enjoy most,” he said. “Anyone can grow food.”

Like others in the so-called good-food movement, Allen, who is 60, asserts that our industrial food system is depleting soil, poisoning water, gobbling fossil fuels and stuffing us with bad calories. Like others, he advocates eating locally grown food. But to Allen, local doesn’t mean a rolling pasture or even a suburban garden: it means 14 greenhouses crammed onto two acres in a working-class neighborhood on Milwaukee’s northwest side, less than half a mile from the city’s largest public-housing project.

Continue Reading…

im back

I need to start blogging again.

I have so many other outlets for web 2.0 connections, but still need somewhere to post thoughts and articles that are critical to my personal process, as well as our collective process

America Honors Leaders

World at gunpoint, or what’s wrong with the simplicity movement. By Derrick Jensen

This essay originally appeared in Orion Magazine Written by Derrick Jensen

A FEW MONTHS AGO at a gathering of activist friends someone asked, “If our world is really looking down the barrel of environmental catastrophe, how do I live my life right now?”

The question stuck with me for a few reasons. The first is that it’s the world, not our world. The notion that the world belongs to us—instead of us belonging to the world—is a good part of the problem.

The second is that this is pretty much the only question that’s asked in mainstream media (and even among some environmentalists) about the state of the world and our response to it. The phrase “green living” brings up 7,250,000 Google hits, or more than Mick Jagger and Keith Richards combined (or, to look at it another way, more than a thousand times more than the crucial environmental philosophers John A. Livingston and Neil Evernden combined). If you click on the websites that come up, you find just what you’d expect, stuff like “The Green Guide: Shop, Save, Conserve,” “Personal Solutions for All of Us,” and “Tissue Paper Guide for Consumers.”

The third and most important reason the question stuck with me is that it’s precisely the wrong question. By looking at how it’s the wrong question, we can start looking for some of the right questions. This is terribly important, because coming up with right answers to wrong questions isn’t particularly helpful.

So, part of the problem is that “looking down the barrel of environmental catastrophe” makes it seem as though environmental catastrophe is the problem. But it’s not. It’s a symptom—an effect, not a cause. Think about global warming and attempts to “solve” or “stop” or “mitigate” it. Global warming (or global climate catastrophe, as some rightly call it), as terrifying as it is, isn’t first and foremost a threat. It’s a consequence. I’m not saying pikas aren’t going extinct, or the ice caps aren’t melting, or weather patterns aren’t changing, but to blame global warming for those disasters is like blaming the lead projectile for the death of someone who got shot. I’m also not saying we shouldn’t work to solve, stop, or mitigate global climate catastrophe; I’m merely saying we’ll have a better chance of succeeding if we recognize it as a predictable (at this point) result of burning oil and gas, of deforestation, of dam construction, of industrial agriculture, and so on. The real threat is all of these.

The same is true of worldwide ecological collapse. Extractive forestry destroys forests. What’s the surprise when extractive forestry causes forest communities—plants and animals and mushrooms and rivers and soil and so on—to collapse? We’ve seen it once or twice before. When you think of Iraq, is the first image that comes to mind cedar forests so thick the sunlight never reaches the ground? That’s how it was prior to the beginnings of this extractive culture; one of the first written myths of this culture is of Gilgamesh deforesting the plains and hillsides of Iraq to build cities. Greece was also heavily forested; Plato complained that deforestation harmed water quality (and I’m sure Athenian water quality boards said the same thing those boards say today: we need to study the question more to make sure there’s really a correlation). It’s magical thinking to believe a culture can effectively deforest and yet expect forest communities to sustain.

It’s the same with rivers. There are 2 million dams just in the United States, with 70,000 dams over six feet tall and 60,000 dams over thirteen feet tall. And we wonder at the collapse of native fish communities? We can repeat this exercise for grasslands, even more hammered by agriculture than forests are by forestry; for oceans, where plastic outweighs phytoplankton ten to one (for forests to be equivalently plasticized, they’d be covered in Styrofoam ninety feet deep); for migratory songbirds, plagued by everything from pesticides to skyscrapers; and so on.

The point is that worldwide ecological collapse is not some external and unpredictable threat—or gun barrel—down which we face. That’s not to say we aren’t staring down the barrel of a gun; it would just be nice if we identified it properly. If we means the salmon, the sturgeon, the Columbia River, the migratory songbirds, the amphibians, then the gun is industrial civilization.

A second part of the problem is that the question presumes we’re facing a future threat—that the gun has yet to go off. But the Dreadful has already begun. Ask passenger pigeons. Ask Eskimo curlews. Ask great auks. Ask traditional indigenous peoples almost anywhere. This is not a potential threat, but rather one that long-since commenced.

The larger problem with the metaphor, and the reason for this new column in Orion, is the question at the end: “how shall I live my life right now?” Let’s take this step by step. We’ve figured out what the gun is: this entire extractive culture that has been deforesting, defishing, dewatering, desoiling, despoiling, destroying since its beginnings. We know this gun has been fired before and has killed many of those we love, from chestnut ermine moths to Carolina parakeets. It’s now aimed (and firing) at even more of those we love, from Siberian tigers to Indian gavials to entire oceans to, in fact, the entire world, which includes you and me. If we make this metaphor real, we might understand why the question—asked more often than almost any other—is so wrong. If someone were rampaging through your home, killing those you love one by one (and, for that matter, en masse), would the question burning a hole in your heart be: how should I live my life right now? I can’t speak for you, but the question I’d be asking is this: how do I disarm or dispatch these psychopaths? How do I stop them using any means necessary?

Finally we get to the point. Those who come after, who inherit whatever’s left of the world once this culture has been stopped—whether through peak oil, economic collapse, ecological collapse, or the efforts of brave women and men fighting in alliance with the natural world—are not going to care how you or I lived our lives. They’re not going to care how hard we tried. They’re not going to care whether we were nice people. They’re not going to care whether we were nonviolent or violent. They’re not going to care whether we grieved the murder of the planet. They’re not going to care whether we were enlightened or not enlightened. They’re not going to care what sorts of excuses we had to not act (e.g., “I’m too stressed to think about it” or “It’s too big and scary” or “I’m too busy” or any of the thousand other excuses we’ve all heard too many times). They’re not going to care how simply we lived. They’re not going to care how pure we were in thought or action. They’re not going to care if we became the change we wished to see.

They’re not going to care whether we voted Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, or not at all. They’re not going to care if we wrote really big books about it. They’re not going to care whether we had “compassion” for the CEOs and politicians running this deathly economy. They’re going to care whether they can breathe the air and drink the water. They’re going to care whether the land is healthy enough to support them.

We can fantasize all we want about some great turning, and if the people (including the nonhuman people) can’t breathe, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but that we stop this culture from killing the planet. It’s embarrassing even to have to say this. The land is the source of everything. If you have no planet, you have no economic system, you have no spirituality, you can’t even ask this question. If you have no planet, nobody can ask questions.

What question would I ask instead? What if, instead of asking “How shall I live my life?” people were to ask the land where they live, the land that supports them, “What can and must I do to become your ally, to help protect you from this culture? What can we do together to stop this culture from killing you?” If you ask that question, and you listen, the land will tell you what it needs. And then the only real question is: are you willing to do it?

Manly P. Hall - Love

Call to Action: Stop Cliffside Power Plant

Dear Friends,

Two weeks ago, thousands took to the streets of Washington D.C. to blockade and shut down the Capitol Power Plant in the largest direct action against the coal sector in U.S. history. On April 20, another peaceful direct action has been called to stop the construction of an 800 mega-watt coal-fired powerplant in NC. People from around North Carolina and the nation will converge at Duke Energy's headquarters in Charlotte, NC to demand an end to dirty coal by putting their bodies on the line in acts of civil disobedience.

We need you to join us. RSVP By Clicking Here Now.

The new 800 MW coal-fired facility that would emit over 6 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. This facility will live at least 50 years, which means 312 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere throughout its life. This is the equivalent of adding one million cars to the road each year! Furthermore, North Carolina and Duke Energy are some of the biggest consumers of mountaintop removal mined coal. Over 500 mountains have been destroyed to feed these dirty plants.

The fight against mountaintop removal and coal-fired powerplants has escalated and it's time for dramatic action.

We need you to join us. RSVP By Clicking Here Now.

WHAT: Take Action to Stop Duke Energy's Dirty Coal Plant
WHERE:Duke Energy Headquarters, Charlotte, NC
WHEN:Monday, April 20
INFO:http://www.stopcliffside.org
RSVP:http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5797/t/5284/questionnaire.jsp?questionnaire_KEY=108

See you there!

Thanks for all you do,
Scott Parkin, Senior Organizer
Rainforest Action Network

We're going mainstream

More media hits than I can keep up with.

Here's two great recent articles on coal activism.

Indypendent, March 20, 2009,Taking on Coal Power: The Movement to Shut Down the Coal Industry is Not Waiting for Congress or Barack Obama

Time, March 10, 2009, Environmentalism, Millennial-Style

hopefully I'll actually have time to write something one of these days...

New video from the Capitol Climate Action

This video couldn't do a better job nailing home the message: substituting one fossil fuel for another is unacceptable. If you haven't heard about the effects of natural gas extraction, it's time to educate yourself, and each other.

http://www.energyjustice.net/naturalgas/

TVA March in March

Cross-posted from the Power Past Coal blog


Posted by Chelsea Ritter-Soronen on March 15th, 2009

On the same day that dozens of Californians marched to demand renewables in their state, students from all across the country joined Appalachians in Tennessee to march on the TVA headquarters. Organizer Chelsea Ritter-Soronen offers her account of the action...

On Saturday March 14, over one hundred activists gathered in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee to protest dirty coal, to speak out against the Harriman ash spill disaster, and to demand renewable energy from the nation's largest purchaser and distributor of coal, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The majority of the crowd was composed of students that had attended the annual Mountain Justice Spring Break the previous week, and the action was a result of their collective planning process throughout camp. Others in the crowd included many Tennesseans, including members of United Mountain Defense, college students, and residents of nearby counties affected by the ash spill. Judging from the diverse crowd, one message prevailed: dirty coal affects everyone, and it is time for TVA to clean up their act with renewable energies!

The weather was certainly not in our favor, as it had been pouring for three days beforehand and was not willing to compromise. However, a little rain was the least of our worries. The rally kicked off with people speaking from the crowd to TVA with big statements through a big megaphone, while bystanders were fliered about the event and media mingled through the masses. We then started our march around the two TVA towers, which occupy an entire city block, and are the most prevailant buildings of the Knoxville skyline. The Knoxville Police Department had the entire perimeter on watch with vehicles and, in some spots, shoulder-to-shoulder police (this was a public event that had been openly advertised, and they were ready for us). Thankfully, the TVA police never made a public appearance; their unusual behavior and recent harassments were unwelcome at our event. Yes, it's true, because the TVA is a government-owned facility, they have their own police division, which seemingly has precedent over the local police, no matter what. It's actually quite terrifying.

Anyways, the march continued with music and chants that could be heard throughout the area. As we turned one corner, a banner was dropped from the top of a parking garage along the parade route that read TVA, Windmills not toxic spills, for which there was more cheering and excitement. As we reconvened at our starting point in front of the TVA entrance steps, 14 individuals stepped up together in front of the police line that separated public property from TVA, and dramatically participated in a “die-in”, to represent all of the land and lives that have been lost to coal, coughing and wheezing as they gracefully collapsed to the wet concrete. Each of these 14 people wore a dust mask to represent that humanity is choking on coal ash, and many depend on these masks and respirators for daily living. With the TVA headquarters there, it is no wonder that Knoxville has the highest asthma rates of any other city in the United States. After everyone had laid down, two activists strategically appeared behind the police line with a large banner that read TVA, Clean it up, don't cover it up, resulting in yet another great image from the day's events!

Police escorted the group lying on the sidewalk away, with the protesting crowd supporting them close behind, and they were ticketed for a mere loitering citation. Apparently, a couple of police officers had relatives with chronic respiratory diseases, and were empathetic to the cause. Again, the message is obvious that coal affects everyone, and not just those who live next to an ash spill or work in the mines. Everyone at the die-in was very cooperative and treated respectfully, and nobody went to jail.

Later that night, we held a candlelight vigil at the TVA entrance as we paid our respects to those harmed by dirty energy. It was very beautiful and motivating, as we recognized that this is indeed a movement, and that together, we have the power and potential to stop the coal-inflicted abuse of land and people. We look forward not only to the remaining days of Power Past Coal, but to every day after!

http://www.tvamarchinmarch.com/

Western Coal: Low in Sulfur, High in Oppression

cross-posted from The Wesleyan Argus

By Jonathon Booth

The first promise I made to myself when I agreed to have an online column in the illustrious Blargus, was that I would write my own articles and not respond to other columnists, no matter how much they angered me. Admittedly, I thought I would have to resist responding to Mytheos, but that was before I read Jonah Blumstein’s latest response article. Aside from referring to my “reflexive liberalism” (I promise you, I am not a liberal), Jonah’s article amazed me in its ability to make absurd assertions and miss the point of my article entirely.

Jonah’s thesis, as much as one was detectable, was that clean coal exists. Blumstein’s clean coal is different from the clean coal that the coal industry talks about. He does not refer to the process that cleans some chemicals out of coal emissions, which also creates toxic coal sludge. Jonah’s clean coal is western coal, which contains less sulfur. He believes that a conspiracy between the United Mine Workers Union and Senator Robert Byrd has forced coal power plants to buy and burn high sulfur coal from Appalachia. Whether or not this conspiracy exists is utterly irrelevant. Low-sulfur coal is not clean, it just has less sulfur. Jonah failed to address the three major points of my column: coal mining is extremely and inherently destructive, any coal burning will release huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and we do not have time to waste waiting for fantasy technologies to fix these two major problems. Jonah’s low-sulfur coal is not lower in mercury or lead and, obviously, is not lower in carbon. Just to make sure no one believes Jonah’s western coal is a sensible alternative, let us explore one of the largest western coal mines in Black Mesa, Arizona.

Since 1968, Peabody Coal has been exploiting Hopi and Navajo land in northern Arizona. The Black Mesa coal mine is one of the largest strip mines in the United States and has been the subject of indigenous anger and resistance since its inception. Due to Peabody’s mining more than 12,000 Navajo have been removed from their land, the largest removal of native people since the 1880s. Additionally, Peabody coal has been responsible for draining more than half of the Navajo Aquifer in the extremely dry region. In an average year of the mine’s operation Peabody was responsible for more than half of the water taken from the aquifer.

Mining at Black Mesa stopped in 2005 because the Mohave Generating Station in Nevada, which bought all of the Black Mesa coal, shut down because it violated the Clean Air Act. The plant emitted 40,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per year from Jonah’s low-sulfur western coal. However, last December the Office of Surface Mining (OSM) allowed Peabody to restart mining, and continue destroying Navajo and Hopi communities until 2026 or the water runs out, whichever comes first. (Side note: The OSM is an absurd bureaucracy that gives out awards for the best strip mine reclamation. Reclamation is a euphemism for planting grass after destroying an ecosystem to mine coal.) All this oppression for Jonah’s low-sulfur coal!

Regardless of its sulfur content, or the fantasies of Jonah Blumstein, coal will never be a clean energy source. Coal mining, like all fossil fuel exploitation, destroys local environments, oppresses local (often indigenous) people, and contributes to climate change. Our fossil-fuel economy is based on the exploitation of land and people from Appalachia, Arizona, Alberta, Ecuador, and many more. Exploiting new sources of coal in the West would simply expand the destruction of Appalachia to the rest of the country. It clearly would do nothing to slow climate change or stop environmental destruction.

The only way to stop the exploitation of these communities and to stop the worse effects of climate change is to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

Emergent Events - Boston

Mountain Justice Spring Break 2009!

9 days of training, service and action
for environmental justice in the coal fields
9 more nails in the coffin of dirty coal!


In less than five weeks, you'll have a chance to get totally plugged into the growing movement to end mountaintop removal and bring justice to the coal fields. Come to Eastern Tennessee, March 7-15 for Mountain Justice Spring Break, where we will share the skills and knowledge needed to fight back against dirty coal. This will be an amazing opportunity to meet and join the good people who make up Mountain Justice, gain grassroots organizing skills, and learn the dirty truth about coal, with your own eyes. Stand up and take action at the site of the TVA coal ash disaster and stand in solidarity with the impacted communities.

You can visit mjsb.org right now and register for what is bound to be a life-changing experience.

Building upon the success of Mountain Justice Spring Break (MJSB) 2008, this year's camp will be full of workshops, speakers, community service, direct action, hiking, music, great food, camp fires, fun times and more. Not only will you leave with a refined understanding of mountaintop removal and the dirty coal cycle, you will learn to organize in solidarity with coal-impacted communities to maintain their land and culture and end our dependence on dirty energy.

(Check out this video/slideshow from MJSB 2008! )

MJSB 2009 is will be held at a beautiful camp (with cabins) near the Cumberland Plateau, allowing us to explore and appreciate the land we are working to protect. The camp is only miles away from the recent TVA ash disaster, the single worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. History. We will have the unique opportunity to meet with and act in solidarity with the local people, who's lives have been turned upside-down by the colossal one billion gallon spill of toxic coal ash. (And TVA Headquarters will only be a few miles away, in Knoxville... )

At spring break, Mountain Justice will also be recruiting volunteers to join the struggles in coal-impacted communities of Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia. Internships for college credit can be set up for a wide range of areas of study. You can come work for Mountain Justice and get college credit for it!

This event is being planned largely by college students and full-time volunteers, so if you're interested in joining in on the final stages, please email Marty to get involved!

If you have break between March 7th and 15th (or even if you don't...), please consider coming to Eastern Tennessee and joining in on the fun and educational experience that will be Mountain Justice Spring Break. We're looking forward to making lots of new friends and pushing the movement that much closer towards critical mass. The time for Mountain Justice is at hand, and you can be part of it!

Please visit mjsb.org for more information, and register by February 18th!

Can't make it to MJSB 2009? Then maybe you can come to DC for the 4th Annual End Mountaintop Removal Week in DC, March 14-18th. Check out this event and many more at powerpastcoal.org

Arch Coal CEO talks up "clean coal" at Harvard lecture: Epic Fail

This rough week for coal continued yesterday, as Rising Tide Boston (RTB) acted in solidarity with those who took a stand at Coal River Mountain, earlier that day. Steve Leer, CEO of Arch Coal, the second largest coal supplier in the U.S., attempted to deliver a public lecture on "clean coal technology" at Harvard University last night. Not only was the crowd less than receptive to the coal baron's sad defense of coal, the final word was delivered by members of RT Boston.

The Arch Coal rep was a guest speaker in a special series of lectures entitled "The Future of Energy." As if its some sort of cosmic joke, the lecture series is funded by none other than Bank of America, the largest financial sponsor of coal extraction, and a predominant investor in Arch Coal. Not surprisingly, the lecture contained very little discourse on the feasibility of carbon capture, and served mainly as a defense for maintaining the status quo of centralized and dirty energy production (including nuclear!!!).

After a hour-long excretion of predictable arguments for keeping us addicted to dirty coal, the evening was ended with an enlightening Q&A session. Every single person in line at the mic made a critical comment as part of their question, the first being delivered by a young woman from the coal-fields of Kentucky, who brought attention to the conveniently overlooked issue of coal extraction in Appalachia.

You could almost see the CEO shrink in his cocoon of avoidance and denial, his voice dropping to near inaudible as he delivered each sidestepping non-answer. After getting nailed one question after another, a member of Rising Tide Boston got to ask the last "question," which ended, "...what gives us the right to gamble the future of civilization on a magic technology that doesn't exist?". Oh snap.


As he tried to control the damage, and fashion some sort of response, two other members of RTB walked to the front of the lecture hall and unfurled a banner which read, "The coal bubble is bursting - Clean Coal is a Dirty Lie," before proclaiming a list of statements on Arch Coal's investments in "every dirty energy practice in the country." (Note that the banner included both the Arch Coal logo, as well as Bank of America's.)

That was the end of the evening's failed attempt at disinformation. Don't quit your day job, Steve. No wait, quit your day job.

The whole debacle served as yet another blow to King Coal, a one-two punch after the morning's inspiring action at Coal River Mountain. And with the capital action and others across the country on the horizon, things are only heating up for Steve and friends. Rising Tide Boston isn't letting up on Bank of America either, and will continue to stick it to them come Valentine's day.



The press release, from the laptop of Rising Tide Boston:

Rising Tide Boston crashes talk by Arch Coal CEO

February 3, 2009

Boston, MA - Seven activists from Rising Tide Boston disrupted a lecture at Harvard University being delivered by Arch Coal CEO Steve Leer, who was speaking on the future of "clean coal" technology. The activists attempted to enlighten the coal baron and the lecture attendees on the true cost of coal extraction.

"Arch coal is participating in the destructive practice of mountaintop removal," says Tyler Kinser, a member of Rising Tide Boston. "How can coal ever be clean when entire communities are being poisoned and displaced by coal extraction?"

"This Harvard lecture series is funded by Bank of America, the single largest financial sponsor of mountaintop removal," said Kinser, "so it's no surprise that Harvard is hosting this lecture of disinformation on coal. We decided to balance out the lies." Bank of America has invested billions of dollars in Arch Coal, according to the website dirtymoney.org.

Read the full press release, here.

Time Magazine celebrates monkewrenching; plugs Capitol Climate Action

cross-posted from It's Getting Hot in Here

Another momentous article in mainstream media! Check out this recent feature in Time Magazine. It’s truly inspiring to perceive this sort of shift in the political climate. To have an article like this, in a publication like Time, without any allusion to the Green Scare or use of the “T” word, says something. The article even gives a nice plug to the upcoming mass civil disobedience in DC on March 2nd.

To Protect Public Land, Eco-Protesters Get Creative

By Bryan Walsh Saturday, Jan. 31, 2009

Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher tainted an auction of oil and gas drilling leases by bidding up parcels of land by hundreds of thousands of dollars without any intention of paying for them.

Courtney Sargent / Deseret News / Rapport

You may have never heard of the Monkey Wrench Gang—unless you read the 1975 novel by maverick writer and nature lover Edward Abbey, who introduced the world to a fictional collection of green misfits waging a guerrilla war against industrialization in the American West. They sabotage bulldozers and construction sites, burn billboards and destroy dams, all to keep their beloved Southwestern desert pristine. Think of it as muscular environmentalism, a world apart from the wonky work on climate change that now defines the mainstream green movement.

Still, the outlaw spirit lives on in the work of contemporary monkeywrenchers like Tim DeChristopher, a 27-year-old college student who singlehandedly disrupted a multi-million-dollar land auction that would have put hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands in southern Utah in the hands of oil and gas companies. But DeChristopher didn’t use sabotage or homemade bombs—just chutzpah.

Read the full article, here

George Monbiot places Shell Oil CEO over a barrel

Guardian columnist George Monbiot sticks it to Jeroen van der Veer, the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell. Watch this hilarious video of the CEO squirming in his seat as Monbiot blows up his spot.

NYT: Collapse of the Clean Coal Myth

Cross-posted from the Climate Progress blog
read the full post here

The NY Times had a strong editorial this week on the painful reality that trumps the industry greenwashing — coal ain’t clean:

A month of negative news for the Tennessee Valley Authority could lead to positive changes in national policy, including federal regulation of toxic coal wastes and new legal constraints on coal-fired power plants. More broadly, the authority’s recent travails may help persuade the public that coal is nowhere near as “clean” as a high-priced industry advertising campaign makes it out to be.

Hear! Hear! (see The day ‘clean coal’ died). The whole piece is worth reading.

Blowing Away King Coal - The Coal River Wind Project

Another great article, this time on the Coal River Wind Project, an effort to install a wind farm on one of the remaining mountains in Coal River Vally, currently threatened by mountaintop removal.

From Salon.com

Also, get an update on the Coal River Wind Project, here.

Blowing away King Coal

Can a scrawny young wind-power activist topple the biggest, dirtiest industry in West Virginia?

By Jeff Biggers

Jan. 29, 2009 | ROCK CREEK, W.V. -- On Jan. 16, as Barack Obama visited a wind turbine factory in Ohio, Rory McIlmoil snaked along a muddy mountain road in West Virginia on a similar mission. He was headed up Coal River Mountain, the last mountain left untouched in a historic range ravaged by strip mining.

On a ridge, the 28-year-old activist brought his four-wheeler to a skid. He couldn't believe what he saw. Bulldozers had begun clearing the site for the first phase of a mountaintop removal operation, a radical strip-mining process that would clear-cut 6,600 acres of hardwood trees, detonate thousands of tons of explosives and topple the mountain range into the valley. A 100-foot swath of forest just below the ridge lay like an open wound.

For McIlmoil, this should have been ground zero in Obama's green recovery plan. Not a future wasteland.

Read the full article here.

Dirty Coal Reaching a Tipping Point?

We may be reaching critical mass, in more regard than one. As explained, in such interesting detail, by Malcolm Gladwell in "The Tipping Point", social epidemics, such as ideas, fashions, or even virus's tend to spread exponentially through a population after reaching a certain point and touching a few key channels. It seems like the message of mountaintop removal, and the True Cost of Coal, is finally reaching that point at which it will soon become a commonly held fact. Let us work to further this progress, and spread this contagion!

Since I first learned about mountaintop removal, I had a gut feeling that "If only more people knew about it, it wouldn't be happening." It seems to be so vile a transgression against the Earth, that we simply can't let it continue once enough of us know it's happening. An idealistic perspective, I know. It will, at the very least, lay the context for seemingly radical action.

Well, the truth is finally making it's way into mainstream consciousness, in increasing frequency.

The recent TVA coal ash disaster, as horrible as it was, has served to punctuate the growing distrust of the pure marketing tactic known as the Clean Coal Lie. Although the toxic spill, 50 times larger than the Exxon Valdez has passed by some major media outlets, it did make several hits. Time magazine did an article on it (Jan 10, 09), titled "Exposing the Myth of Clean Coal Power"

And then today, I learn about a 12-page article entitled "Mining the Mountains" in Smithsonian Magazine, which brings our attention to the plights of a small West Virginia town.

To anyone paying attention to the stream of media and collective popularity of coal and coal issues, it is clear that we are approaching a tipping point. There is reason to be optimistic, for sure, and ample motivation to continue with this work, with a renewed sense of purpose and validation. We are going to change this thing around, each and everyone one of us.

As a side note, the last article will also bring you to this website, where you can see exactly where your energy comes from and what kind of emissions it causes. It also provides resources on cleaner and greener energy usage.