It\’s Getting Hot In Here

State of the Movement report shows emerging move away from fossil fuels

Posted on behalf of Sam Akiha, Communications and Research Intern at Better Future Project

As a reminder that sustainability is not an annual event, Better Future Project today released The State of the Movement: New England’s Transition Beyond Fossil Fuels, a new report that catalogues sustainability efforts throughout the region. The report details dozens of local projects that are not simply about recycling or solar panels; rather, people investing time and energy to transform their community one garden, one street, or one building at a time.  It demonstrates that the movement beyond fossil fuels is diverse and thriving.

The report is the result of Better Future Project’s Climate Summer program. In the 2011 program, 31 cycling college students toured New England spreading a simple message: New England needs to move beyond fossil fuels. The riders collaborated with local organizations and individuals in the towns they visited. They lent hands to their projects, co-organized events, and connected them to other efforts in the area. These Climate Riders will return to towns throughout New England for the program’s fourth year this June, July, and August.

The State of the Movement focuses on the following categories: sustainable economies, sustainable food systems, waste and materials management, transportation, green spaces, building efficiency, renewable energy, environmental justice, and community resilience. In addition, it includes town profiles that provide information of what specific cities and towns are doing to rely less on fossil fuels.

Better Future Project, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a new, grassroots organization dedicated to moving America and the world beyond energy sources that harm human health, human dignity, and human life. The organization’s first report, Energy Casualties, released in February, explores the public health, security, social justice issues surrounding the fossil fuel industry. With a focus on leadership development, network-building, and engagement platforms, Better Future Project’s main programs include Climate Summer, Ride for the Future, which will launch in New Orleans in May, and 350 Massachusetts.

Reposted from the RAN Understory

On Tax Day, RAN Boston activists joined a national day of action targeting Bank of America over….. well… everything.

Bank of America currently pay no taxes to the government, yet received massive bailouts after they crashed the economy. They are currently the largest forecloser of homes in the U.S. and the largest funder of the coal industry. They’ve laid off tens of thousands of their own employees, while bestowing their execs with lavish bonuses. It has just been recently reported that CEO Brian Moynihan’s salary quadrupled in the past year.

Early in the afternoon, RAN Boston activists showed up to Bank of America’s downtown offices at 100 Federal St. with flyers, signs and chants. They were soon joined by over 30 housing activists with Right To The City and then more with Occupy Boston. Tax Day all over the country focused on Bank of America’s misdeeds against the American public and this combination of housing, climate and economic justice activists.

The Boston campaign to highlight Bank of America’s involvement in the coal industry is just beginning. On May 5^th in Sudbury, MA (neighboring community to many BofA execs) will host “The Real Cost Of Coal” forum featuring speakers from coal impacted communities from Appalachia to the Powder River Basin. Then on May 6^th, another forum will happen in Cambridge, MA. Continue reading ‘Boston Tells Bank Of America: “No Coal”’

Cross-posted from the Coal Export Action

Across the Northwest, people are waking up to the threat of coal export projects in their communities.  Recently, students from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington took action, organizing a march against coal exports a few days before a forum on how coal exports and increased coal train traffic would negatively impact Spokane.

On Sunday, April 15th, Gonzaga students marched from the University campus to a busy street intersection, where their signs reading “Honk for Clean Air” garnered attention from drivers parked at the street intersection.  Says Gonzaga student Adriana Stagnaro, “As we walked we remembered our intentions of supporting the community with an action to raise awareness about issues surrounding coal exports.  We smiled and waved to cars as we made our way into town.”

At the intersection, students talked with passersby waiting at crosswalks, and explained what an increase in coal train traffic would mean for Spokane.  This city sits on at the intersection of two existing rail lines coal trains could use to get from eastern Montana and Wyoming to the West Coast, putting the community at the front lines of the fight against coal exports.  Of course, with every additional coal train to hit the tracks comes an increase in coal dust, diesel emissions, and climate-changing carbon pollution.

A few days after the march, coal-free activists held a forum at Gonzaga University, featuring speakers  Bart Mihailovich of Spokane Riverkeeper, Gonzaga professor Hugh Lefcort, and local farmer Walter Kloefkorn.  According to Stagnaro, the panel “really exposed the complex nature of environmental-human issues surrounding coal exports.”

Like communities throughout the five-state region of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, Spokane residents may have a long road ahead of them when it comes to protecting their public commons from the threat of coal exports.  But this community with a history of leadership on social issues is already getting organized, and students at Gonzaga are setting an example.

No doubt this won’t be the last we hear from Spokane residents.  With communities across the Northwest rallying to stop coal exports, King Coal’s CEOs don’t know what they’re up against!

Dear Diary,

Today I went to Dundas Square, one of the busiest intersections in Toronto to join Rhytms of Resistance-Toronto,“a political samba-inspired band that plays for environmental and social justice.” The band was raising awareness about some of the tar sands pipelines that will threaten forests, waterways, fish habitat, and communities along and near the pipelines. What a way to spend Earth Day, eh?

They were also letting people know how to plug into the resistance against the pipelines! The band’s groupies, who I gladly joined, were letting people know about a rally happening at the Enbridge Annual General Meeting in Toronto on May 9th. I learned about the Yinka Dene Alliance, one of the leading groups of First Nations opposing the Enbridge Northern Gateway oil pipeline, who will be in Toronto on May 8th and 9th to say “No” to the proposed pipeline.

Members of the YDA are traveling from BC to Toronto for the Enbridge AGM and they will be stopping in Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg along the way. Once I am done writing this diary entry, I am going to invite all my friends in those cities. It is Earth Day after all—great excuse to spread the word on how to resist environmentally destructive projects.

I am so glad that so many people are piping up (pun intended) about these pipelines. These pipelines would contaminate water, fish sources, and human health. Communities would be put at risk for the profit of a few greedy oil and gas corporations. Diary, that just isn’t fair!

I mentioned the Northern Gateway Pipeline, which would bring dirty tar sands to the west coast of British Columbia for export; but I still haven’t mentioned the tankers that would come to collect that oil. They would have to travel through ecologically sensitive areas and through waters which are known to be rough because of the high winds and waves. Do we really want to repeat some of the horrible oil spills which have destroyed fishing communities and continue to impact human health and livelihoods? This sounds just too risky!

There is also another pipeline which would bring liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Kitimat as well: the Pacific Trails Pipeline. This LNG would be primarily from shale gas development in northeastern BC. This type of gas development involves injecting water and unidentified chemicals into underground shale rock formations at very high pressures in order to extract natural gas below the surface. This process uses up tons of water, while also contaminating groundwater and local drinking water.

But those aren’t the only pipelines blazing through British Columbia. Kinder Morgan is trying to increase the amount of tar sands crude that would be transported through the Trans Mountain Pipeline, a pipeline which brings tar sands to southwestern BC.  There has been local opposition to the pipeline expansion which would require twinning the pipeline and putting communities at significant risk.

Looking east, there is the Trailbreaker project which would bring tar sands across the Prairies, Great Lakes, Ontario, Quebec, and finally to the coast of Maine, USA. The pipeline has faced growing opposition from communities across the route. And rightfully so. In 2010, an Enbridge pipeline leak put over a million gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River which flows into the Great Lakes. Enbridge may be okay with polluting the largest group of freshwater lakes on the planet, but I won’t sit by and just watch it happen.

And I am not the only one!

This Earth Day, there were over 10 communities that took action specifically against pipelines, tankers, and tar sands expansion. In Montreal, Quebec there was a march so huge that “more than two hours after it began, a large crowd was still waiting to begin at the starting point.” Right on!

Diary, I am so inspired that I am going to explore more ways to take collective action against environmentally destructive operations.

Happy Earth Day, -maryam

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 18, 2012

For more information contact:
Kandi Mossett
Indigenous Environmental Network
Native Energy & Climate Campaign Organizer
701.214.1389
iencampusclimate@igc.org

Front Door Stripped off Mobile Home As Forced Evictions Reach New Low in Bakken Oil Patch

Evictions, Price Gouging, Natural Gas Burn-off, Crumbling Infrastructure, and Death: The energy boom is not progress, it’s waste and extreme violations of human and environmental rights!

New Town, ND – Forced evictions, of local residents from their mobile homes in the New Town area, to provide housing for predominately out-of-state oil workers has reached a new low. On Monday, April 16th, Four Native American residents of the Prairie Winds Mobile Home Park, including a 9-year old child, were forced to leave their home when landlord, Leroy Olsen, removed Heather Youngbird and Crystal Deegan’s front door. Olsen then cut the electricity and turned off the propane to the home, and told them they had to leave their home immediately.

The battle for housing in North Dakota has been an on-going struggle since the onset of the oil boom in the Bakken Shale Oil Formation, which partially lies in northwestern North Dakota.

The housing crisis has been growing exponentially worse, particularly within the million-acre Fort Berthold Indian Reservation; homeland of the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara tribal nations.

Crumbling Infrastructure and Severe Housing Shortages

Tribal members, as a result of this boom, are experiencing some of the most severe consequences from the lack of proper infrastructure to support this intensive extractive industry. Infrastructure is inadequate at all levels in North Dakota- from crumbling roads and the lack of proper sewage facilities in the various man camps that have popped up across the state, to a severe shortage of adequate housing.

Who Is Prospering?

It’s estimated that the state of North Dakota, to date, has collected at least $100 million as a result of the oil boom through revenue generated from Fort Berthold alone, while the majority of Fort Berthold residents haven’t seen a dime. In the meantime, roads are crumbling as semi-trucks take over with no regards for safety. Several deaths have occurred over the past few years as a result of accidents between the semis and local Native American residents; at least 6 of the deaths involved young people under the age of 27 with the youngest being 3 years old.

With the “Boom” Comes Guns and Crime

Crime, drug and death rates have increased all across the state as firearm sales have hit an all time high. Prostitution rings are being formed and rape rates for both men and women are on the rise with police enforcement struggling to keep up and yet North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple has said, “Build America back on the same blueprint that North Dakota has adopted and our country will surely be rewarded with the same great economy our state is enjoying.”

Gas Flaring – Why are they burning it off?

Additionally, within the Bakken shale formation hydraulic fracturing is being used to extract the oil but the

natural gas is being flared off. A New York Times article points out that more than 100 million cubic feet of natural gas is being flared away every single day in North Dakota. That’s enough energy to heat half a million homes for a day. The flared gas also spews at least two million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, as much as 384,000 cars or a medium-size coal fired power plant would emit. Regulations on flaring are woefully inadequate as well in North Dakota and there are no current federal regulations on flaring for oil and gas wells.

Wind Has Taken a Back Seat to Oil

Perhaps the greatest irony is that North Dakota has the greatest wind resource of any of the lower 48 states. According to National Wind, LLC, “With all of its wind power a class 3 or higher, North Dakota could supply 1.2 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of annual electricity, which is 14,000 times the electricity consumption in the state.” Unfortunately, programs for wind power generation and distribution have recently been cut back within the state while the focus is on the extraction of the oil, with almost no regard to the human health impacts and environmental devastation occurring.

Divided Communities

“This oil boom has divided the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara people and pitted them against each other in a negative way,” says tribal member Kandi Mossett. “It’s really hard to see the damaging and negative effects occurring at Fort Berthold and throughout North Dakota as a result of corruption and greed. The reality is that people in positions of power at both the Tribal and State level are lining their own pockets, while the Mandan, Hidatsa & Arikara people suffer and in some cases die as a result of this terrible oil boom. I want people to know the reality we are facing here and to realize that at this rate we are heading toward modern-day genocide of the people, while the BIA and others stand idly by and let it happen.”

The Fight For Prairie Winds – Their Homes & Future

Prairie Winds mobile home residents refuse to stand by while their homes are ripped out from underneath them and held a protest this past Saturday in New Town geared toward Mobile Home Park owner, John Reese. Residents of 45 trailers have until August 31st to move after the mobile home park was sold with plans to develop it to house oil workers. Future Housing LLC bought the property and plans to construct housing for employees of United Prairie Cooperative, formerly Cenex of New Town.

John Reese, the CEO and general manager of United Prairie Cooperative and agent for Future Housing LLC, has said the company is trying to work with the residents. Initially, the eviction deadline was set for May 1, but it’s been postponed until Aug. 31. The residents have not been given any restitution to help with moving expenses, therefore, if they cannot afford to move their homes they are left with limited options and facing homelessness.

“Just because there’s a lot oil around here doesn’t mean we all have money,” said Heather Youngbird of New Town. “We were not even given a formal 30 day eviction notice and now that we have been kicked out of our home we are currently homeless.”

Reese said in an interview last month the housing shortage in the area makes it difficult for him to find employees. Available land to develop housing is also difficult to find, he said. “Right now, anything that’s available that has water and sewer on it is very attractive to anybody that’s trying to continue to grow their business.” On Saturday, Reese said he was aware of the protest but he was out of town planting potatoes. Many of the signs and chants targeted Reese directly. “I’m just fine with taking the rock beating,” Reese said. Indeed John Reese has proved that he’s fine with displacing people because this isn’t the first time he’s done it. In 2010 he displaced people from the Four Corners trailer court behind the old Charbee’s and the second time he displaced people from the old movie theater apartments on main street. Tribal members are still paying back loans they had to take from the tribe to help pay for the moving expenses.
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This post was submitted to It’s Getting Hot in Here by Emma Newman, of the Climate Justice League at University of Oregon.

As coal plants in the United States continue to close, local organizations around the country appear to have struck a blow to the industry. But in reality, as coal consumption decreases in our country, global demand continues to rise. A result of this shift in demand can be found in recent proposals to ship Powder River Basin coal from Montana and Wyoming through several Northwest ports. One of these proposals would bring coal right through the city of Eugene, to the Port of Coos Bay.

Eugene has been given a unique opportunity to combat coal by rallying against this proposal. Not only are coal mining and combustion dirty; its transportation presents significant health hazards as well. The coal passing right through downtown Eugene, slowing traffic for up to eight minutes would be transported in open bed coal trains.

More than 100 tons of coal dust per train will blow off between Montana and Coos Bay. The dust contains heavy metals such as lead and mercury and causes lung diseases, as well as pollution from the diesel that fuels the trains. Regionally, the health impacts of coal follow the transportation and watershed routes.

This is a major issue we face as a community, region, and nation and it represents a textbook environmental justice problem. Environmental justice (EJ) is a social movement that includes mainly people of marginalized communities and focuses on the environment directly around people in society who carry many environmental burdens in their everyday lives, including living and working conditions. EJ strives to bring communities autonomy through their fight for civil and human rights. The coal trains will be passing directly through the Whiteaker neighborhood, a historically working class part of the city.

Emma Newman, a Co-Director of the Cascade Climate Network, went on an environmental justice tour in West Eugene last week and saw the neighborhoods that would be hardest hit. “One neighborhood,” Emma said, “was literally surrounded by a train yard on one side and train tracks on the other. They are already suffering from a toxic plume in their well water and the last thing that they need is coal dust drifting over their park and onto their vegetable gardens.” Continue reading ‘Stop the Coal Trains, Bring Climate Justice to Eugene’

Reposted from the The Understory

It sucks to be Bank of America. And the only thing that sucks worse is it’s behavior towards much of the rest of the world.

BoA is wrecking the planet for profit, wrecking the economy for fat cat executive bonuses, and foreclosing on millions of American Dreams.

It is the biggest funder of coal, from mining to power plants, in the U.S.

BoA may have gotten away with it for years, but now the bank is starting to look like a hitchhiker caught in a Texas hail storm: It can’t run, it can’t hide, and it sure as hell can’t make it stop!

From Occupy Wall Street to irreverent Rolling Stone journalists to pesky environmentalists to homegrown coalitions fighting foreclosures and corporate power, Bank of America is getting it from all angles. Now this massive array of Wall Street occupiers is preparing to fight Bank of America in the streets and suites of Charlotte. This spring, people from all walks of life, representing the diversity of the 99%, are converging on Bank of America’s doorstep to hold the bank accountable and take action.

And we are asking you to join RAN and our allies on May 9 in Charlotte, NC to protest at Bank of America’s annual shareholder meeting. Continue reading ‘Bank Of America Vs. The World: Charlotte, NC On May 9th’

Cross-posted from Solutionaries.net by Kerri Sorrell

Focus often eludes high school students with seven different classes covering seven different subjects and too much homework to jam in their backpacks at the end of the day – but on Thursday, April 5, EcoCentric and Envirocity, environmental clubs at two Iowa City high schools, teamed up with Iowa City Summer of Solutions to concentrate class discussions on one issue: the environment.

The daylong event, Focus the Classroom, encouraged teachers to relate the subjects they teach to current environmental issues. Last summer, Zach Gruenhagen, Bailey McClellan and Noelle Waldschmidt from the Iowa City solutionary team worked to complete a website with sustainability-focused lesson plans for every subject area, to help teachers more easily integrate the environment into their classes. In addition, presentations ran all day from environmental leaders in the Iowa City community, including Tim Dwight – a Iowa City High graduate and former professional football player.

Dwight, a popular speaker at both high schools, co-founded a renewable energy company called Integrated Power Corporation after retiring from the San Diego Chargers. At the Focus the Classroom event, he gave presentations extolling the virtues of solar energy.

“This shift [to renewable energy] that I’m going to talk about is your generational shift, and it’s going to be massive. Producing energy with wind and solar will change the world because those resources are available anywhere, and you’re going to see it,” he told students at West High school.

Read more …

Continue reading ‘Iowa City promotes environmental education in local high schools’

NEW TOWN, N.D. – About 50 people paraded through this northwestern city of 2,000 people Saturday chanting “People over profits” and carrying signs such as “Relocation ended in the ’70s” to protest the eviction of mobile home court residents.

Residents of 45 trailers – many of them the poorest members of the Three Affiliated Tribes – have until Aug. 31 to move after the mobile home park was sold with plans to develop it to house oil workers.

Future Housing LLC bought the property and plans to construct housing for employees of United Prairie Cooperative, formerly Cenex of New Town.

Protestors marched and participated in a vehicle procession through the trailer court, past the offices of United Prairie Cooperative and to the two Cenex stations in New Town.

“We just want to be heard,” said resident Becky Deschamp.

Valerian Three Irons of New Town, who protested in support of the mobile home park residents, said the business should work to find an alternative solution.

Residents worry they’ll be homeless due to a severe housing shortage in the area. Many of the trailers are in such poor condition they can’t be moved.

“These are real people, real families with children,” Three Irons said. “Where are they going to go?”

Many of the protestors called for a boycott of Cenex.

“There has to be a conscience and responsibility to the community by business,” Three Irons said.

Mark Skibsrud, one of the few residents of the mobile home park who is not an enrolled member of the tribe, carried a sign that read “I’m white. I’m not used to getting displaced.”

“Big money should not just be able to buy out the little people and tell us we have to move,” Skibsrud said. “I’m not against progress, but this is more exploitation than anything else.”

John Reese, the CEO and general manager of United Prairie Cooperative and agent for Future Housing LLC, has said the company is trying to work with the residents. Initially, the eviction deadline was set for May 1, but it’s been postponed until Aug. 31.

Reese said in an interview last month the housing shortage in the area makes it difficult for him to find employees. Available land to develop housing is also difficult to find, he said.

“Right now, anything that’s available that has water and sewer on it is very attractive to anybody that’s trying to continue to grow their business,” Reese said.

On Saturday, Reese said he was aware of the protest but he was out of town planting potatoes.

Many of the signs and chants targeted Reese directly.

“I’m just fine with taking the rock beating,” Reese said. “When the housing complex is done, all races will live there.”

Several signs referenced the tribal members who were displaced in the 1950s by the construction of Garrison Dam and the creation of Lake Sakakawea, which put hundreds of homes under water. New Town was founded for the displaced residents and is the largest city on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

Theodora Bird Bear of Mandaree participated in the protest in support of the residents. Bird Bear said while United Prairie Cooperative is playing a role in this situation, the tribe and federal officials also need to protect tribal members from effects of oil development.

“There needs to be planning done,” Bird Bear said.

Wayne Stubstad, who owned the park for 31 years before deciding to retire, has said he first offered to sell it to the tribe but got no response.

Judy Brugh, a tribal councilwoman who helped organize the protest, said Stubstad talked about it with individual members but did not formally bring it to the council.

“It was never brought to the table,” Brugh said.

Tribal leaders have identified land east of New Town for possible development of a new mobile home park, Dennis Fox, CEO for the tribe, has said.

Gov. Jack Dalrymple has said he plans to send a letter to President Obama asking that FEMA trailers now being used by flooded Minot residents be made available to address housing needs on North Dakota reservations. Some of those trailers could be used to help the displaced New Town residents.

Dalrymple is a Forum Communications Co. reporter stationed in the Oil Patch. She can be reached at adalrymple@forumcomm.com or (701) 580-6890.

I’ve been organizing campaigns and non-violent direct actions for a long time. Over ten years now. Most of the time, I hear stories about the screwed up things our government and corporations do and I take it in stride. Every once in a while, something pops and it gets under my skin. A lot.

Case in point.

This week, the Ft. Worth Weekly (Ft. Worth’s alt weekly) posted a follow up story to last month’s Washington Post expose about the FBI investigating Rising Tide North Texas, anti-fracking activists in Denton, TX, my friend and comrade Ben Kessler and his professor at the University of North Texas Adam Briggle.

The reporter, Andrew McLemore, provided more details about the FBI and Dallas Police Dept.’s conversations with Briggle:

“The law enforcement officers asked Briggle about his involvement with the Denton Stakeholder Drilling Advisory Group, a group of residents lobbying the city council to stop issuing permits for gas drilling until potential environmental impacts are studied.

The agent and police officer also asked the professor about Kessler, who took his ethical theory course, and about some of his assigned readings. Oh, and they also asked him about IEDs, improvised explosive devices of the sort used by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“A question like that is so out of left field, it just sort of stuns you,” Briggle said. “It seemed like this was about Ben, not me. …  The Dallas police guy said they just wanted to make sure everyone was ‘playing nice in the sandbox.’ ” Continue reading ‘Playing Nice In The Sandbox?’