Environment

Ken Burns' documentary The Dust Bowl is based on the terrifying dust storms and extended drought in the 1930s in areas centered around Boise City in the Oklahoma Panhandle.
The weather conditions devastated the area, impoverished many people and created an exodus to California. It's a story embedded in our state's psyche.

Two separate incidents involving container ships off the coast of British Columbia have local First Nations questioning the prudence of transporting tar sands crude in the region's hazardous waterways. The incidents, occurring within less than 48 hours of each other, lend new support to those who oppose the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline that would bring over 200 oil-bearing supertankers through the area each year. 

Last week, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) contacted Cargill employees in over 20 countries to alert them to the company’s ties to rainforest destruction and orangutan extinction. The email urged employees to watch a recent eye-opening prime time NBC news story profiling the imminent extinction of orangutans due to unchecked palm oil expansion in Indonesia and Malaysia.

At a well-attended energy forum hosted by Politico on Thursday, I shed some light on the role of coal lobbyist Jeffrey Holmstead in blocking pollution reductions for his coal utility and mining clients after he said we can't "regulate our way to clean energy." Here's the video

Patriot Coal, one of the largest coal companies in America, recently announced its decision to end mountaintop removal mining (MTR) in the Appalachian Mountains. 

Last week, RAN joined sixty environmental and social organizations, including a dozen Indonesian groups, in signing an open letter to banks and other financial institutions across the globe warning them to avoid investments in pulp and paper industry projects associated with deforestation and human right abuses in Indonesia.

Food and Water Watch (FWW) released a report today titled "U.S. Energy Security: Why Fracking for Oil and Natural Gas Is a False Solution.

In his acceptance speech last Tuesday, President Obama stated that: "We want our children to live in an America that isn't burdened by debt, that isn't weakened by inequality, that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet." The President's words will be put to the test very shortly.

This morning, nine activists interrupted business as usual at four Bank of America branches across the city of Charlotte, NC. The activists, most of whom were Charlotte locals, were there to protest the bank’s massive financing of the U.S. coal industry.

Over at Scaling Green, I posted yesterday about a series of new polls by Public Opinion Strategies which find that "despite the millions of dollars opponents poured into attacks on the [clean energy] industry," voters in key swing states - including Virginia - "support clean, secure, and affordable energy."