President's push for energy efficiency

President Obama addressed a group of small business, labor and industry leaders at a Home Depot in Alexandria, Virginia, yesterday morning to highlight the importance of providing consumers with incentives to invest in energy efficiency.

While negotiators craft an international climate deal in Copenhagen and Congress considers jobs legislation, this home retrofit initiative could move quickly to create jobs while addressing the 20% of U.S. global warming pollution that comes from our homes. It seems like an easy - potentially, sexy?- step to address major economic and environmental challenges.

"Here's what’s sexy about it." said President Obama. "Saving money."

In summary: "most of this stuff is going to pay for itself."

It's an opportunity for households to immediately capture the benefits of clean energy investments and to create clean energy jobs for struggling communities.

Five participants joined the President at a roundtable discussion before the President's speech, including 23-year-old DC resident Stephon Burgess. Trained by the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA), Stephon now works full time for Ardently Green, a local home performance contractor focused on making existing homes more energy efficient. WeatherizeDC, a non-profit, has helped raise demand in DC for energy efficiency upgrades despite a lack of incentives for consumers (see Will Byrne's update at Huffington Post).

Investing in energy efficiency is the fastest, easiest, cheapest and safest thing we can do to address global warming pollution and put Americans back to work while saving families money. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act aggressively increased funding for clean energy, with Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants for cities and towns and an expanded Weatherization Assistance Program for low-income households.

The challenge is to demonstrate the immediate benefits of a program like that the President is proposing while securing long-term economic and environmental benefits for our communities.

Sunny Times for Florida Rail

Transportation emits one-third of US global warming pollution and is the fastest growing sector.  The Sierra Club's Green Transportation Campaign aims to reduce transportation emissions with stringent standards for our cars, clean fuels, and supporting transportation choices that will help us reduce how much we drive.  States are moving forward on all fronts, including showing strong support for passenger rail, which can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide convenient transportation choices to more people. 

The following is a post from Dave Cullen of the Sierra Club Florida Chapter highlighting a tremendous victory for passenger rail in Florida. In short, Florida has demonstrated a commitment to making rail an option for residents.  --Ann Mesnikoff

Passenger Rail Passes!
by Dave Cullen

A special session of the Florida State Legislature ended Dec. 8th with the passage of HB 1B, a bill supported by Sierra Club Florida, approving the $432 million purchase of 61.5 miles of railroad track from freight operator CSX. The purchased rail will serve passengers on Sun Rail in Central Florida. The bill also shored up funding for Tri Rail which serves the Miami to Palm Beach corridor. 

HB 1B is Florida's down payment on a vision for passenger rail in the state that will link bullet trains from Tampa to Miami and connect local rail systems around the state.  

Seasonal Greetings: Lumps of Coal for Blackstone and JPMorgan Chase CEOs

From Bruce Nilles, director of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign. This post was co-written by Tim Wagner of Resource Media

Nearly a year after the Bush administration left office, we’re still dealing with one of their fossil fuel legacies: an attempt to burden our economy and our climate with over 150 new dirty coal-fired power plants.

But of those 150 new plants proposed in Bush’s early years, we’ve seen over 100 of them cancelled or shelved indefinitely for a variety of reasons, including increased public opposition to dirty coal and the economic reality of trying to construct an unnecessary multi-billion dollar (yes, I said ‘billion’) power plant that will emit millions of tons of potentially-costly greenhouse gases every single year for a decades-long lifetime.

In other words, new coal plants in the 21st century make no sense. And yet apparently some giant Wall Street equity firms haven’t quite figured that out – including JPMorgan Chase and the Blackstone Group. Both corporations are funding the construction of new coal-fired power plants across the U.S.  Let’s focus on Blackstone, the firm with the most proposed plants.

As the majority owner and financier behind Sithe Global Power Company, LLC, a private energy developer with a heavy fossil fuels portfolio, Blackstone is willing to drop billions of investors’ dollars into three large and dirty coal plants: the 300-megawatt River Hill waste coal burner in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania; the 750-megawatt Toquop coal burner located just outside the beautiful deserts of Mesquite, Nevada; and the giant 1500-megawatt Desert Rock coal burner on the Navajo Reservation in northwestern New Mexico.

The largest of these dinosaurs, the Desert Rock plant in New Mexico, has had its air permit completely remanded by the Environmental Protection Agency itself after it was issued by the agency in the waning days of the Bush administration. The reason? A completely inadequate environmental analysis as required by the Clean Air Act.

In addition, the 470-mile Navajo Transmission Project needed to transmit Desert Rock’s power to Las Vegas and other markets has also seen its required environmental study and permit remanded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs due to similar analysis inadequacies.

And just last week, the Department of Energy (DOE) denied a $450 million grant request from Sithe Global to make one of Desert Rock’s generating units into a proposed carbon capture and storage pilot project.  The Desert Rock plant simply did not meet the criteria as required by DOE.

What does all this mean for the proposed $4+ billion Desert Rock coal plant, the Blackstone Group and its other coal plants? In today’s economy, where credit has been severely pinched and we have a citizenry that is crying out for more clean renewable energy to help thwart off the worst of climate change and to stimulate our economy, Desert Rock and other new coal plants are a foolish bet.

And while Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman is making these foolish bets, his neighbor down the street Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is financing destructive mountaintop removal coal mining and other risky new coal plants like Desert Rock. 

So to get into the spirit of the season, tomorrow, Santa and the Sierra Club need your help to deliver our holiday greetings, complete with stockings full of coal, to Mr. Schwarzman and Mr. Dimon at their companies’ respective headquarters in New York City.  It’s clear they both deserve coal in their stockings. 

We’ll be in front of the Blackstone Group headquarters in the morning to ask Mr. Schwarzman to get off our naughty list by ending plans for Blackstone’s three proposed coal plants.

After the Blackstone Group meeting we’ll convene at noon in front of JPMorgan Chase headquarters to encourage Mr. Dimon to stop supporting dangerous mountaintop removal coal mining and risky new coal plants.
 
If you can’t attend our rally in New York on December 15th you can visit our websites to take action.  Let’s tell these CEOs that our communities don’t want coal for the holidays, and neither should they.

You can also follow along with the day’s events on the @BlackstoneCoal Twitter account or the #nocoal hashtag.

The Importance of Copenhagen and EPA’s Endangerment Finding

You’ve probably already been bombarded with news about the climate talks in Copenhagen this week and next. The hustle of the news cycle should not diminish the gathering’s importance, though.

This international meeting is an opportunity to take great international strides against global warming. Indeed, we have our own team of people in Copenhagen to support that cause, with our more specific goals being:

• Ensuring that developed countries, including the US., increase their commitments for greenhouse gas reductions, and that developing countries put concrete, meaningful actions on the table. This includes, where possible, stronger commitments to reduce CO2 emissions, but also new initiatives to deal with non-CO2 greenhouse pollutants, including methane and black carbon.

• Making significant progress toward a final deal on international climate financing that will include substantial commitments from developed countries, and immediately agree to a “prompt start” package for emissions reduction and adaptation to climate impacts in developing countries.

• Ensuring that there is real transparency and verification for all developed country commitments and developing country actions.

And adding a great push to our efforts in Copenhagen is the announcement from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) earlier this week: that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases constitute a danger to public health and welfare and are subject to common sense regulation under the Clean Air Act.

This is a historic and significant announcement that will bring much needed regulation to the major carbon-intensive industries such as coal.

This endangerment decision, ordered by the Supreme Court in April 2007 and based upon years of scientific research and analysis, will speed the shift toward the clean energy economy.

And do not listen to the naysayers of the Clean Air Act, claiming that this ruling means small businesses, churches, schools and hospitals are subject to regulation from the proposed Big Polluters rule now. EPA has addressed that already – only those who emit more than 25,000 tons of carbon annually are subject to that proposed rule.

My focus is on the huge coal industry in the U.S., they need to clean up their dated power plants and stop blocking progress. And in looking at Copenhagen, the need to move beyond coal stretches well beyond our borders. Numerous countries rely on coal power and we must all take steps away from this dirty energy source if we are to be serious about fighting global warming.

The Time for Coal Ash Regulation is Now

This is the weekly post from Bruce Nilles, director of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign.

How many people have to be sickened or killed before we get strong coal ash regulations in the U.S.? I ask this during a week very full of news on coal ash – the by-product of burning coal for power.

Our latest and biggest news is our notice today putting New Mexico’s San Juan Coal Company on notice for failing to properly dispose of millions of tons of toxic coal ash and scrubber sludge each year.

“For years the San Juan Coal Company and others have dumped toxic waste into this mine without regard to what it was doing to those living downstream,” said R.G. “Squeek” Hunt, a sheep farmer near the mine in Farmington, N.M. Mr. Hunt’s water has been polluted by the dumping, causing illnesses in his family and killing hundreds of his sheep.

The San Juan Coal Company has dumped more than 40 million tons of coal combustion waste containing pollutants like arsenic, lead and mercury into massive unlined pits at the San Juan Mine, about 10 miles west of Farmington. As a result of the lack of safety precautions, toxins from the coal ash have leaked into nearby waterways and wells, endangering local residents, livestock, and wildlife – like the Hunt family has had to cope with.

We know that coal ash is becoming increasingly toxic, with harmful levels of arsenic, selenium and other pollutants; we know that those living near coal ash sites face an increased risk of cancer, damage the nervous and reproductive systems, and other serious illnesses.

At the San Juan site, testing has shown that the levels of arsenic, lead, selenium, uranium and many other toxins exceed safe levels in ground and surface water near the coal ash dump site.

And this isn’t the first time for San Juan - previous unsafe dumping of coal combustion waste near the San Juan coal plant caused significant damage, forcing the owners of the plant to pay over a million dollars in damages for livestock killed and families made sick by drinking contaminated water.

Over the past years coal companies have been increasingly dumping burned coal waste in open coal mines, like the San Juan mine, as a way to avoid the costs of landfill disposal, liners, covers and monitoring to make sure toxins don’t leak out. As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency has found that water supplies in 24 states have been contaminated from coal combustion waste that was disposed of without proper safeguards.This is why coal ash must be classified and regulated as hazardous waste.

But in case you needed another reason – we’re just about to the one year anniversary of the devastating coal ash spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority Kingston plant. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee even held a hearing on it yesterday, as the cleanup continues but the news media has mostly moved on.

And today the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on coal combustion waste disposal and its relation to drinking water and public health.

Need more reasons for action? Important information, like inspection results and violation records, were withheld by many coal companies when EPA recently collected data. The Club and others have demanded that information be made public.

Also, the Mirant coal plant, just outside of DC, was put on notice for contamination at their Brandywine coal ash landfill (The landfill contains seven million cubic yards of coal combustion waste in multiple, unlined disposal cells – and it’s leaking into a nearby wildlife sanctuary stream). Even Pennsylvania is in the midst of revising its own coal ash rules.

Yet the coal industry continues fighting for special treatment to keep them from cleaning up their dirty business. Coal use from cradle to the grave is dirty, dangerous, and damaging, and yet the coal industry is spending millions on lobbying to retain and create more loopholes for themselves.

We’re grateful for some movement on the issue – such as today’s House committee hearing, but we need strong, federal standards on coal ash. Coal ash should be classified as hazardous waste.

Keeping Up With Copenhagen

Just in case you hadn't heard yet, the Sierra Club will have a huge crowd of folks over in Copenhagen for next week's international climate talks. Top Sierra Club officials attending the talks and available for media interviews include:

-Carl Pope, Sierra Club Executive Director
-Allison Chin, Sierra Club President
-Robin Mann, Sierra Club Vice President for Conservation
-Dave Hamilton, Director, Global Warming & Energy Team
-John Coequyt, international domestic policy expert, Global Warming & Energy Team
-Margrete Strand, Director, Sierra Club's Labor, Workers' Rights & Trade Program
-Other Sierra Club and Sierra Student Coalition activists

Many of our folks will be blogging and keeping us (and you!) posted on how things are going on our Copenhagen page: www.SierraClub.org/Copenhagen

That page is part of our Climate Crossroads community, which you should join for many reasons, not just because of our excellent upcoming Copenhagen coverage. The Copenhagen talks last from Dec. 7 - 18, so stay tuned!

White House Forum on Clean Energy

Later today at the White House is a Clean Energy Forum, several of our own Sierra Student Coalition (SSC) folks will be there as part of the Energy Action Coalition. From our SSCers' blog post over on Climate Crossroads:

On Wednesday, December 2, four members of President Obama’s Cabinet will host a Clean Energy Economy Forum with youth leaders from around the country at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.  Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar , Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, and other Administration officials will reiterate the need for a comprehensive energy plan that puts America back in control of its energy future.

So tune in at 4pm ET to watch it on the web.

Your Clean Energy Story!

The Thanksgiving holiday is a great time to share stories.  My favorite radio program, National Public Radio’s Story Corps Project, is hosting a National Day of Listening this Friday, November 27th.  They are encouraging people to sit down, interview family members, and record their responses.  The Sierra Club is also providing a way for you to collect stories – American Clean Energy Stories! 

There are a number of ways to get involved.  You can share your own clean energy story, or collect stories from your community.   

Want to see examples of other people's stories?  Check out these videos on YouTube.  See if you can find mine!

Another great Turkey Day tool is Sierra Club's Holiday Survival Guide.  This guide has advice on how to talk to your family members about the environment.  You will find ready responses to predictable dinner-table arguments.  This year you may even win some!   

The Green Gap: American Ingenuity is not an Illusion

By: Julian Carmona, Intern for the Global Warming and Energy Team

American ingenuity is not an illusion. We built four of the seven Industrial Wonders of the World (Hoover Dam, Panama Canal, Transcontinental Railroad and Brooklyn Bridge). All of these great engineering feats were devised, planned, built and financed by American businesses with American minds.    

What does this all have to do with clean energy technology and global warming? Some detractors of a clean energy bill have made the point that the United States is in a zero-sum game with China. Republicans, like Sen. Bennett (R-UT), have complained that there is no use in attempting to cut greenhouse gases if China does not agree to do the same. He perceives their super-accelerated domestic development as a move away from cutting emissions. This, in his mind, will make them more competitive, and make the US less competitive. In other words, we will not succeed in cutting emissions and will be back to “zero.” 

Assumptions about complacency over cutting emissions have been coupled with assertions that China is producing clean energy technology purely for profit. This is based on the fact that some of our wind turbines and solar photo-voltaic cells are being manufactured in China. This means that China will continue to reap the benefits of US debt, while building more coal plants, instead of wind farms and solar panels for domestic use.

Global Warming: The Science is Clear

The controversy has been boiling since Friday, when it was revealed that hackers breached the email servers for the esteemed Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

The huge amount of emails stolen have since been scoured and cherry-picked by climate deniers to use as so-called "proof" that these scientists were hiding or altering data that could show that global warming is not caused by humans.

The university folks have already responded (seen in the Real Climate blog post linked here and above), and are standing by their emails - the comments section on that blog post is being monitored by the scientists and they are answering questions. In fact, despite climate deniers almost fainting as the sight of these emails between climate scientists, most are coming to the defense of these climate scientists.

Hundreds Speak Out In Support of EPA Global Warming Rule

This is a guest post by Greg Haegele, deputy executive director of the Sierra Club, who has a regular weekly column on Treehugger.com.


Sierra Club's Mary Anne Hitt, Carl Pope and Lyndsay Moseley (R to L) stake out the front row of the Arlington EPA hearing.

This week we saw some amazing public action as part of the two Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hearings on its proposed tailoring rule, which we call the "Big Polluters" rule.

Right now only a handful of pollution sources, including coal-fired power plants, are responsible for more than half of all of the global warming pollution in the United States. Cleaning these up is a large step towards stopping global warming, so EPA is proposing a new rule to start cleaning up these Big Polluters under the Clean Air Act. By targeting the worst offenders, the Big Polluters rule is an important step that will cut global warming pollution while still helping our economy grow.

EPA held a public hearing on this Big Polluters rule in Arlington, Virginia, on Wednesday, and then another in Chicago, Illinois, on Thursday. The Sierra Club got the word out, and that resulted in great crowds at each hearing who testified in support of this rule that marks one of EPA’s most important commitments yet to moving us toward a clean energy economy and away from dirty power sources like coal.

Home Energy Efficiency: Cash for Caulkers

 This post was written by Jeff Speir, apprentice for the Sierra Club Clean Energy Solutions Campaign.

Following in the wake of the consumer, economic, and environmental success of the "Cash for Clunkers" program this summer, the Obama administration is considering using stimulus cash to fund another ambitious, rewarding "Cash for" project. This time? Caulkers.

Though conveniently coined with a consistent catchphrase, the program would involve much more than just caulking. The program would provide funding for homeowners to contract energy auditors and construction workers to assess areas for energy efficiency improvement in their homes. These points of air infiltration and "exfiltration," such as leaky doors, windows, and ducts, dramatically increase the amount of heated or cooled air that is necessary to make a home livable. After the assessment, construction workers would conduct an energy efficiency upgrade of the home by installing insulation, replacing inefficient windows, and sealing leaky breaches of the home's overall envelope (like the door-frame sealing in the photo above, or the insulating of hot water pipes in the photo below).

 As a result, less energy would be needed to make a home comfortable, thereby reducing energy consumption and cutting energy bills. The program would also create good jobs with skills that are transferable to a wide variety of applications in the green economic recovery. In addition to helping consumers and creating jobs, the program would also help the environment.

Studies estimate that improving the energy efficiency of a home can reduce energy consumption by 28%, energy that comes largely from polluting coal-fired power plants. As the New York Times reports, this kind of reduction of energy usage is equivalent in magnitude to the carbon emissions from half of the vehicles in the country on the road today.

Want to learn more about what you can do to increase the energy efficiency of your home? Check out the Sierra Club Cool Cities Checklist of Home Energy Solutions.

Brief Update from Today's EPA Big Polluters Rule Hearing

That's a photo of Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope (left) testifying at today's Environmental Protection Agency public hearing on the Big Polluters rule. We'll have more of a wrap-up blog post tomorrow, once the Chicago hearing is complete (today's hearing was in Arlington, Virginia), but I thought I'd give a very brief recap on how today's went.

Carl testified second and was excellent - especially after listening to the nay-saying negativity of Howard Feldman of the American Petroleum Institute (on the right in the above photo). You see, EPA brought up two speakers at at time. Carl and Howard started the hearing off well as far as seeing very different sides of the argument.

We also had quite a few great volunteers there to testify in support of this EPA rule. The testimony I saw was overwhelmingly in favor of the EPA rule, with only a couple of polluting industry-folks there to whine and complain and use words like "absurd," "flawed," and "unnecessary." 

Sierra Club volunteer Bob Pearson (green blazer) testifies in favor of the Big Polluters rule.

Our volunteers and other fantastic regular ol' members of the public used words like "necessary," "stop global warming," and "this rule is common sense." They also frequently pointed out that unlike the industry folks, no one paid them to be there - they came because they see how important this rule is in the fight to stop global warming and clean up the biggest polluters in the US.

More to come tomorrow! And don't forget, if you aren't able to attend these hearings in person, you can send in your comments online.

 

Carl Pope talks to reporters at the hearing.

LiveBlog: Big Polluters Hearing - Virginia

Our folks are on the ground Tweeting from the EPA's first of two hearing on their proposed "Big Polluters" rule that would regulate pollution from large polluters. You can contribute to the discussion through Twitter using the hashtag #bigpolluters

Time to Speak Out Against the Biggest Polluters

This is the weekly post from Bruce Nilles, director of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign.

Wednesday and Thursday of this week are big days if you live in Arlington, Virginia, or Chicago, Illinois. Those are the two days of public hearings on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “Big Polluters” rule. But of course, this whole issue is huge whether you live in Virginia, Illinois, or anywhere else in the U.S. – it affects everyone.

Right now only a handful of pollution sources, including coal-fired power plants, are responsible for more than half of all of the global warming pollution in the United States. Cleaning these up is a large step towards stopping global warming, so EPA is proposing a new rule to start cleaning up these Big Polluters under the Clean Air Act. By targeting the worst offenders, the Big Polluters rule is an important step that will cut global warming pollution while still helping our economy grow.

That’s why we’ve helped organize crowds of folks to turn out to the Wednesday and Thursday hearings: These mega-polluters should be held responsible for their share. (You can also check in on the hearings by following the #bigpolluters hashtag on twitter. We’ll have lots of folks tweeting from inside the hearing rooms)

This rule will bring the most bang for the buck—resulting in real pollution reductions and helping spur growth and development of clean energy technologies.

And forget the nay-sayers spreading false information about the government trying to regulate churches, hospitals, schools and Dunkin Donuts (why do they always bring up Dunkin Donuts?): The rule would only apply to offenders emitting at least 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases each year, exempting small businesses, churches and apartment buildings, while addressing the bulk of the nation’s global warming pollution.

Under the Big Polluters rule, big new facilities that would create large amounts of global warming pollution—like new coal plants—would have to install technology to clean up their carbon emissions. These safeguards would also be required for large existing facilities when they are expanded or modified.

Again, this proposed EPA rule uses the time-tested Clean Air Act, which has already succeeded at cleaning up other sorts of pollution all over the country, to help control global warming pollution. 

To provide a little more detail about EPA’s proposal: The Clean Air Act requires all new ‘major emitting facilities’ – big sources – to use the ‘best available control technology’ to limit their emissions.  Existing polluters that make big physical changes to their plants and increase their emissions in the process have to update their controls to meet this standard, too. 

This best available control technology requirement has been used for decades to reduce many other types of air pollution. EPA must consider the “energy, environmental, and economic impacts” before deciding on the right controls for any particular plant.  There are a number of simple, proven methods for controlling global warming pollution, including using energy more efficiently, replacing old equipment, or burning cleaner fuels.

The sources that EPA will focus on under this rule already have decades of experience with this process.  Having used best available control technology to reduce many other types of pollution, they have the engineering expertise to work with EPA and community groups to select appropriate, cost-effective controls.

Global warming pollution controls will also reduce emissions of other pollutants, including those that cause smog, heart attacks, and lung disease. 

By focusing on these big sources, EPA is spending its resources wisely.  Although global warming pollution comes from many places, EPA can cut down on the lion’s share by taking on the largest sources first. 

The Big Polluters Rule marks one of EPA’s most important commitments yet to moving us towards a clean energy economy and away from dirty power sources like coal.

If you can’t make it in person to the hearings Wednesday and Thursday, you can still send in your comments to EPA on this important rule – simply use our Big Polluters website:

And don’t forget to follow along with the #bigpolluters hashtag on Twitter for tweets from inside the hearing.

For a recap of how these hearings went, be sure to check in on my colleague Greg Haegele’s column later this week for photos and a wrap-up.

Energy & Global Warming News Round-Up

Time again for a round-up of energy and global warming news from the past few days.

First up, this weekend we heard the news that for the upcoming major international climate talks in Copenhagen slated for December, there will be no legally-binding treaty created. Rather, the countries will create a politically-binding agreement that sets out a timeline for a legally-binding agreement. This is not bad news - check out this Climate Progress blog post from Joe Romm about how this agreement bodes very well for an international climate treaty.

Second, according to a new a report from three universities, "...U.S. renewable energy policies could create as many as 1.9 million new jobs around the country. In addition, the study shows that those policies would account for an increase in annual household income of more than $1,000 and that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could increase $111 billion by 2020."

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a new web tool today that will help consumers make their homes cleaner and greener - which will lower energy bills and help the environment. Check out EPA's Green Homes site to learn more.

And look at the good work coalitions can do - last week the Sierra Club Cool Cities program and the U.S. Green Building Council announced a new partnership called "Green Buildings for Cool Cities." The purpose of the partnership is to bring together local Cool Cities activists with local USGBC members to advocate together on bringing practical and cost-effective green building administrative policies to Cool Communities across the country.

If you want to help out with this new partnership, you can take part in a conference call this week for activists wanting to start a green building movement in their communities. Learn more about the call here.

Finally, Forbes launched a new online map this week that show's the world's 200 dirtiest power plants.

Climate Change, Politics and a Treaty in Copenhagen

By:Julian Carmona, Intern for the Global Warming and Energy Team

The time to act on climate change is running out. The time to act on climate change is running out (yes, I wrote it twice). While the Senate is navigating itself through the intricacies of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, the international community is negotiating the nuanced details of a possible agreement in Copenhagen. The United States must demonstrate leadership in the Copenhagen talks, though whether or not it will have something to show in December when the talks begin is very unclear. While the negotiations happen, the world continues to warm and feel the affects of climate change.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) released their 2009 World Energy Outlook report this Tuesday (11/10). The conclusion of the 28-nation organization was that governments needed to act immediately to stem the affects of global warming or face costs of $500 billion per year going forward. The report reiterated that the main drivers of global warming are the burning of fossil fuels and the increased demand for those fuels in order to meet higher energy consumption. The report also mentioned that if we continue on our current path, we would see an increase on our dependence on fossil fuels, higher greenhouse emissions, and a decrease in availability of technology for the developing world and a decline in global security. The report recommended that we can keep global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius by focusing on renewable energy technology (wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, etc.) and energy efficiency. Most importantly, the report stressed the importance of reaching an agreement in Copenhagen.

Green Building = Jobs

A report out this week from the U.S. Green Building Council says that "(d)espite a challenging economic outlook, green building will support 7.9 million U.S. jobs and pump $554 billion into the American economy – including $396 billion in wages – over the next four years (2009-2013)..."

Phew! The report has many good stats in it besides that.

The economic impact of the total green construction market:
• Contribution to the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP)
    o 2000-2008: $173 billion
    o 2009-2013 forecast: $554 billion
• Jobs created or saved (includes direct, indirect and induced jobs)
    o 2000-2008: 2.4 million
    o 2009-2013 forecast: 7.9 million
• Wages
    o 2000-2008: $123 billion
    o 2009-2013 forecast: $396 billion
• Energy savings
    o 2000-2008: $1.3 billion saved
    o 2009-2013 forecast: $6 billion saved

The economic impact of LEED-specific spending (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design):
• Contribution to the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP)
    o 2000-2008: $830 million
    o 2009-2013 forecast: $12.5 billion
• Jobs created or saved (includes direct, indirect and induced jobs)
    o 2000-2008: 15,000
    o 2009-2013 forecast: 230,000
• Wages
    o 2000-2008: $703 million
    o 2009-2013 forecast: $10.7 billion
• Energy savings
    o 2000-2008: $281 million saved
    o 2009-2013 forecast: $4.8 billion saved

Read more in the press release (PDF) and download the full report here.

Rally at Penn State: Students Taking Lead on Clean Energy

This post was co-written by Kim Teplitzky, field coordinator for the Sierra Student Coalition

Today at Penn State University, dozens of students, faculty, and community members rallied in front of university’s coal plant, calling on the university to move beyond coal to clean energy solutions.

“Young people have been at the forefront of the greatest social movements in history, including the fledgling environmental movement that brought us Earth Day and put out flaming rivers,” said Penn State junior Chris Billman, who spoke at the event.  “We’re working to continue that legacy of creating a better future and the most important thing we can address right now is our dependence on coal. We can’t have a clean energy future without moving beyond coal.”

Many find it strange that the Nittany Lions still rely on coal despite the university’s other strides toward clean energy. “The biggest surprise to people is how much we rely on coal,” said sophomore Rose Monahan, a leader with Penn State Beyond Coal. “They know we use it, but they didn’t know that we get 80% of our energy from coal-fired power plants.”

And yet Penn State has made some progress. For example, Penn State is a member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Sustainability Partnership Program, which has the school committed to reducing its global warming pollution 17% by 2012.

University clean energy student groups have praised the administration for its commitment to sustainability and for initiatives the school has already undertaken to reduce carbon emissions.  According to the College Sustainability Report Card, Penn State purchases 20% of its power from renewable sources.

Students and faculty are now calling on the school to commit to developing a plan and timeline for phasing out the school’s 80-year-old on-campus coal plant. 

Thankfully, there is some progress on that end at Penn State. University President Graham Spanier has agreed to meet student leaders this semester to discuss the topic. 

“This is an enormous opportunity for Penn State,” said Monahan.  “We’re looking forward to working with President Spanier, the rest of the administration, faculty, and students to expand Penn State’s reputation for leadership and excellence to the clean energy movement.”

Penn State Geography Professor Brent Yarnal, who has spearheaded regional and national greenhouse gas inventories and climate change impact assessments, also spoke at today’s rally and praised the students for understanding the urgency of climate change and for wanting their school to lead the movement.

We agree: With some of the world’s leading climate scientists on faculty and a history of student activism, Penn State should be a leader for Pennsylvania and all the large, public university systems in the nation.

Monahan echoed that sentiment.

“People are finally really start to talk about (clean energy),” said Monahan. “They realize how big an issue it’s going to be. Penn State is worried about carbon emissions, but we could definitely go bigger.

“If there’s any school that can step up to address the enormous challenges associated with coal reliance, it’s Penn State.  As President Spanier says, Penn State thinks big.  Coal is too dirty for our school—we’re better than that.”

Learn more about how coal is Too Dirty For College

One Small Step...For Global Warming

This post was written by Jesse Prentice-Dunn of the Sierra Club Green Transportation Campaign.

We've talked about needing an effort on the scale of the Apollo Project to launch a clean energy revolution. To follow that comparison, yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took one small step for bureaucracy, but a giant leap towards solving global warming. The EPA sent its finalized decision that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare to the White House for review and approval. This decision will put into law what has become quite clear – climate change is real, the threat is serious, and the time to act is now.

This ruling, when finalized, will recognize that emissions spewing from the tailpipes of new motor vehicles are contributing to global warming (they account for 20% of our country's global warming emissions) and lay the groundwork for new greenhouse gas standards for motor vehicles. These standards will reduce our dependence on oil, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and save consumers money at the pump. The decision will also allow the EPA to reduce emissions from other major sources of global warming pollution.

This may seem like old news – EPA has already proposed historic new vehicle standards and received coverage when it announced this endangerment finding – but there's more to it. The White House now has 90 days to review EPA's endangerment finding. It's now official, before the United Nations meet in Copenhagen to work towards a global solution to climate change, President Obama can finalize EPA's decision and show the rest of the world that the US recognizes the danger of global warming and is acting to stop it.

One other thing: When EPA announced that it had sent the endangerment finding to the White House, it mentioned that the agency received more than 300,000 comments from the public regarding the decision. This shows me that the public is engaged, people want global warming solutions, and the administration is listening.

Over the next few months, there will be plenty of opportunities to make your voice heard and, as EPA notes, make a difference. Right now you can send EPA and the Department of Transportation a message to make our vehicles as clean and efficient as possible, or stay involved through the Sierra Club's Big Picture Campaign to learn the latest on what actions the administration is taking to reduce global warming pollution. As the United Nations prepares to meet in Copenhagen, show Washington and the World that you want to move to a clean energy economy. It will make a difference.

Senate Hearing Wrap-Up: Halloween is Over

This post is by Justin Guay, apprentice for the Sierra Club Global Warming and Energy Team

Halloween is over, but someone forgot to tell the obstructionist Republican party that. Their tired litany of scaremongering tactics employed continued in today's Senate Finance hearing covering climate change legislation and future jobs. Not surprisingly, Republican senators didn’t see many jobs. In fact, surprise, surprise, they only saw scary China stealing our jobs if we decide to act. Oh and energy prices will skyrocket and we will all be sent straight to the poor house. Oh and then the President will pull the plug on Grandma. Oh wait, wrong issue to obstruct…

So if climate legislation is so scary, what is their alternative? Well, they would prefer it if you didn't ask, because it consists of quite a bit of looking backwards to technologies of the past while other nations continue to outpace us in the new clean energy economy. You can see how this position is very difficult to sell – apparently it's just not sexy.

Their official "we are frightened by the future" motto has become so ridiculous that it visibly frustrated even Senate veteran John Kerry (D-CA) who thankfully came to the hearing’s rescue. He pushed back on all the endless supply of scare tactics, questioning the assumptions of faulty economic analyses and calling them "out of whack." The most glaring of these faults being the absence of costs associated with inaction. Abraham Breehey of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers strongly backed Kerry on this point, going on to say that climate action is vital to securing America's economic future and that American jobs were worth protecting.

Senator Kerry and Senator Stabenow (D-MI) then teamed up to show that inaction is so costly that it is simply not an option. Senator Kerry set Kenneth Green from the American Enterprise Institute straight by demonstrating that China is indeed acting and that they are moving faster and more boldly than we are. Stabenow followed up by pointing out that we are in a clean energy race with China. She pointed out that we can not afford to repeat the errors of the computer age when American ingenuity drove technology development only to see it manufactured overseas.

As U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern often repeats in his testimony, our real problem with competitiveness is not whether we can get the Chinese to act, but whether we will be chasing them in five years when we ourselves have failed to do so. Towards the end of the hearing John Kerry put his mark on the hearing by saying that the costs of inaction will come back to haunt us. Considering the severe economic hardship we are currently facing, that is the truly scary thought.

Tweeting from Today's Climate Hearing

Well, we'll only be tweeting from one Senate hearing on climate legislation today, since the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee postponed theirs. So follow @SierraClubLive and the hashtags #cejapa and #sfc on Twitter for updates from today's Senate Finance Committee hearing on "Climate Change Legislation: Considerations for Future Jobs."

Tweeting from Tuesday's Senate Climate Hearings

Tomorrow (Tuesday, Nov. 10th) we'll have two of our folks tweeting from the two very important Senate hearings. Justin Guay, the apprentice for our global warming and energy team, will be twittering with the @SierraClubLive from the Senate Finance Committee hearing on climate legislation and jobs. You can also follow those tweets with the #cejapa and #sfc hashtags.

And then Julian Carmona, our global warming and energy team intern, will be twittering using his own account from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on global warming policy. Follow along @JulianCarm or using the #cejapa and #enr hashtags.

Both hearings begin at 10am ET.

Another Coal Plant Bites the Dust

This week’s post was co-written by Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign

We’re celebrating great news out of Minnesota and South Dakota this week:

“After almost five years of planning and permitting efforts, the participating utilities in the proposed Big Stone II Project announced…Monday that they will end their quest to build the project’s large coal-fired power plant and associated transmission facilities.”

We echo our own Cesia Kearns, a Sierra Club staffer from Minnesota, in what the halting of Big Stone II means for the region.

“The failure of this enormous proposed coal plant expansion unravels the myth that the Midwest is starving for more electricity, and that coal is the only way to adequately meet that perceived need,” Kearns said.  “This victory demonstrates that even when we may lose the battles - consistent pressure, engaged citizens, and strong partnerships can win the war.  It's a strong example of how even though the regulators may be on the side of a developer, the public is not.”

We salute our tough band of local residents in South Dakota and Minnesota (the plant was proposed for northeastern South Dakota, near the border with Minnesota), who spent the last five years fighting this dirty coal plant. The Sierra Club also partnered with grassroots, state, and regional organizations during this long and difficult campaign. They knew how bad the air pollution and global warming contributions this plant would spew forth would be, they wanted clean energy for their region, and even when the going got tough, they never gave up.

 

Stopping the Big Stone II project prevented about 4.7 million tons of CO2, or the equivalent of the pollution from roughly 670,000 cars (substantially more than all the cars in South Dakota) from entering the atmosphere every year.

 

The residents so entrenched in this fight against Big Stone II helped lead a long fight against the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission for its issuance of an air pollution permit for the plant and, equally importantly, an enforcement action targeting the existing coal-fired unit at the Big Stone facility for past violations of the Clean Air Act.  We also challenged the state of South Dakota's Clean Air Act plan for failure to comply with federal law.

 

Kearns added that one noteworthy example of the grassroots push for clean energy was the mention of Sierra Club's "footprint petition" in the Administrative Law Judge's written recommendation to the MN Public Utilities Commission to deny the certificate of need for Big Stone II’s transmission lines.

 

“The footprint petition was a long swath of fabric with the signatures and outlines of the footprints of over 2,000 Minnesotans who wanted to see global warming solutions in Minnesota,” explained Kearns. “It was presented to the Administrative Law Judge during a public hearing in Ortonville, Minnesota - the town closest to the location of the proposed plant.”

 

This plant’s demise is also a sign of impending climate legislation. Otter Tail Power had pulled out of this plant back in September, citing, among other reasons, “a high level of uncertainty associated with proposed federal climate legislation and existing federal environmental regulation.”

 

No other utilities stepped in to take over the Big Stone II expansion themselves – because the companies all know that this legislation is coming.

 

Coal power is not the future of U.S. energy. The public is speaking up for more clean energy. And from coast to coast, that voice is getting louder every day.

Recent Coal News - Dirty & Dangerous As Ever

There's been a lot of news out about various aspects of the coal industry lately, so I wanted to share the links to get it out there. These are in no particular order, but all are interesting.

First up, last Friday the newspaper Business Lexington in Kentucky published side-by-side editorials on mountaintop removal coal mining, one from our Sierra Club folks there and one from a coal industry rep.

Also last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) notified officials in West Virginia and Ohio about the integrity of coal ash storage site (impoundment) at an AEP facility in West Virginia. EPA officials say the impoundment is suffering from issues similar to those that caused the coal ash dam failure in Tennessee last December:

As part of that effort, EPA contractors identified factors at the AEP Philip Sporn facility that are similar to the Kingston facility – specifically, both facilities piled coal ash and bottom ash around the impoundment to raise the impoundment’s walls.

In similar news, residents in Trimble, Ohio, are worried about a planned coal ash impoundment expansion near the Ohio River.

More in coal ash news, did you see EPA's coal ash report? The agency released it last week, and we've taken a look at it:

The report shows that coal power plants are discharging huge amounts of toxic pollution including arsenic, mercury, and selenium into rivers, streams, and groundwater across the country, contaminating wells, killing wildlife, and risking lives.  EPA’s report concludes that an “increasing amount of evidence indicates that the characteristics of coal combustion wastewater have the potential to impact human health and the environment.”  The report documents decades of damage, ranging from a single spill which wiped out 200,000 fish to reports of well water laced with selenium, which can cause infertility.

The Tennessean had a good article on the report and what it means.

In "that shouldn't be funny but it is" news, the Faces of Coal folks tweeted a disturbing note recently: "Coal helped us get a healthcare industry, which we did not have" In response, a friend of ours quipped, "Yeah, helped us get a healthcare industry by creating a market for it with ailments like black lung." To that we'd add the thousands of health and respiratory issues caused by pollution from burning coal.

Moving on to other coal environmental health issues, the Sierra Club has worked on coal dust issues before, and we're at it again - this time in Alaska. Our Alaska chapter teamed up with the Alaska Center for the Environment and Alaska Community Action on Toxics:

Local conservation groups put Alaska Railroad Corporation and Aurora Energy Services on notice that the companies need to control the coal at the Seward coal loading facility. A lack of adequate pollution controls at the facility has resulted in ongoing dumping of coal debris into Resurrection Bay and uncontrolled blowing coal dust, damaging water quality in the Bay and threatening the tourism industry it supports.

You can read the full press release here (PDF).

And finally, as if that wasn't enough news about the risks of using coal, here's another link to back that up. Pediatrician Dr. Keith Sebert wrote an editorial in Georgia's Bryan County News about mercury in waterways being a risk to children. Where does the mercury come from? You guessed it: Coal-fired power plants.

Powerful Campus Action Against Coal

Saw this video today over on the "It's Getting Hot in Here" blog and had to share. Students at Washington University in St. Louis got tired of seeing the influence coal execs were having on their campus and decided to hold a flash mob protest at an energy summit on campus.

What an inspiration, and what a bold action. Read the whole blog post to learn more.

Threats to Kyoto Protocol Endanger Copenhagen & Our Climate

By Justin Guay, apprentice for the Sierra Club Global Warming and Energy Team

Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) committee hearings held on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act last week have built upon the Kerry/Graham op-ed in the New York Times to provide renewed momentum on domestic legislation - even if the party of no continues to childishly obstruct the process by boycotting committee mark up. Unfortunately, movement in the Senate is being overshadowed by a deterioration of negotiations at the global level stemming from concerted attacks by a handful of countries seeking to kill the Kyoto Protocol and replace it with a “pledge and review” system.

Pledge and review in its most general form repeals any notion of a legally binding deal, allowing countries to instead pledge the level of ambition they deem fit – rather than that determined by climate science. As if this “race to the bottom” in terms of emissions targets were not enough of a threat, it also breaches the Bali “firewall” – the differentiation between industrialized and developing countries that exempts the developing world from binding emissions reductions targets. Differentiation was agreed to under the Bali Action Plan - the outline for the Copenhagen negotiations – under the tenet of common but differentiated responsibility and is central to the international negotiations.

Republicans Boycotting Clean Energy Jobs Bill

It's sad, but it's also not a surprise: Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee are boycotting the mark-up of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. We released our thoughts on what we think the Republicans are doing instead of taking part in the push to bring a clean energy future to the U.S.:

The Sierra Club is distressed that these Senators are unwilling to sit down and work on this important plan for less pollution, more jobs and greater security.

The Sierra Club openly wondered what these Senators might be doing that is more important than finishing work on this historic bill and so suggested these Top Ten Possible Excuses for not showing up for work on the Clean Energy Jobs bill:

10. They are hiding in the attic with balloon boy.
9. They are allergic to wind.
8. They had to prep for a conference denying climate science.
7. They got lost hiking the Appalachian Trail.
6. They were swimming, Scrooge McDuck-style, through swimming pools filled with Big Oil and Coal money.
5. They had choir practice for the Chorus of No’s.
4. Rush told them not to go.
3. They had to hold up some more judicial nominees.
2. They actually oppose a Clean Energy Jobs bill that would put America back in charge of its economic and energy future.
1. They had a pre-existing condition.

We even created a place where you can list their possible excuses as well - let us know what you think the Republicans are doing!

And if you want to do more work than the Republicans are doing, you can watch the mark-up in the committee via CSPAN online.

Shame on You! Fraudulent Letters Hearing

By: Julian Carmona, Intern for the Global Warming and Energy Team

Yesterday the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming (EIGW) held their (previously postponed) hearing on fraudulent letters sent to Congressmen by supposed “grassroots” organizations opposing the Waxman-Markey House climate bill (H.R.2454 American Clean Energy and Security Act). The fraudulent letters were supposedly from grassroots organizations representing the elderly, veterans and ethnic minorities, some of which included the NAACP and the American Association of University Women (AAUW). The letters were exposed as fraudulent by the Charlottesville Daily Progress out of Charlottesville, VA. The source of the letters was Bonner and Associates, a grassroots firm that was hired by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE).

The hearing was called by Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), who is the chair of the House committee. The original hearing was scheduled for October 15th, but ranking member Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) asked for postponement in order to review the witnesses’ testimonies, as they had not submitted them in time.

The hearing on Thursday included a recounting of the events leading up the discovery of the fraudulent letters, and a verbal excoriation by Markey and Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) of witnesses from Bonner and ACCCE. The witnesses on the panel included Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA), Jack Bonner of Bonner and Associates, Steve Miller of ACCCE, Lisa Maatz of AAUW and Hillary Shelton of the NAACP. While Rep. Sensenbrenner and Rep. Candice Miller (R-MI) spoke during introductions, the panel was dominated by Markey and Inslee, who were the only representatives present when it came down to questioning the witnesses.

The True Impact of Coal Mining

This is the weekly post from Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign.

We learned with sadness this week that blasting has begun on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, site of a long battle between Massey Energy and local residents who want the mountain to be a site for 200 wind turbines instead of mountaintop removal coal mining.

Massey has ignored these pleas, despite research showing that a wind farm would bring more jobs and economic stability to the area – and certainly less environmental destruction.

And while we frequently talk about the impact of mountaintop removal coal mining, a Sierra Club Beyond Coal activity from our northwest region last week brings to the forefront the reality of coal mining in the western U.S. as well. The northwest “Dirty Little Secret” regional tour showed residents in Washington and Oregon the tour’s namesake: that the region is hooked on coal power, and its use and mining devastate many communities.

Part of the tour included speeches from Wyoming rancher LJ Turner and Northern Cheyenne Tribe members Otto and Barbara Braided Hair from southeast Montana. All three have seen the impacts of coal mining in the Powder River Basin up close, and they shared their experiences with the crowds along the tour's stops.

Wrap-Up - Senate Clean Energy Jobs Hearings, Day 3

This post is from Justin Guay, Apprentice with the Sierra Club's Global Warming and Energy Team

The Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) committee wrapped up its three days of hearings on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act today with one last full day of testimony from multiple panels. Despite genuine pleas for bi-partisanship throughout the past few days, a number of senators have demonstrated that their only interest is obstruction. Senator Alexander refuses to discuss the issues at hand, taking any chance he can to push his fanatically pro-nuclear policies. Sadly, he is really a side show to the scare mongering on job losses and consumer costs led by Senator Voinovich and backed up by Senators Inhofe, Barrasso, and Bond.

Miss the hearings? You can read our archived liveblog here.

Luckily, Senator Boxer stood firm throughout the three days of hearings, genuinely listening to opposition concerns and pledging to work together in a spirit of bi-partisanship. She had strong support from Senators Whitehouse, Tom Udall, Merkley, Klobuchar, Gillibrand, Sanders, Cardin, and Lautenberg, who are clearly committed to the issue of climate leadership (any of these your Senators? You can send them a thank you below!). The message coming from these climate heroes was clear: Our children will ask us where were we when the world was burning.

From John Kerry’s impassioned 26 minute speech, to Vice Admiral Mcginn’s convincing testimony concerning the need for American leadership, the EPW hearings demonstrated that legislative action on climate is needed and the time to act is now.

Let your Senator know that you were watching, and thank them for supporting a clean energy future:

Sen. Specter (D-PA):

Sen. Gillibrand (D-NY)

Sen. Sanders (D-VT) 

Sen. Klobuchar (D-MN)

Sen. Kerry (D-MA)

Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI)

From Ohio?  Tell Senator Voinovich not to stand in the way of progress

Day 3 of the Senate EPW Hearings on Clean Energy Jobs Bill

Day 3 of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee hearings on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. Witness list here. Away we go! (Today is also the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming hearing investigating the forged letters from coal lobbying firm Bonner & Associates, who were hired by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. Follow @NoNewCoal and #nocoal for tweets from that hearing!)

Broken Record: Senate EPW Climate Hearings Day 2

Did you see the whoppers yesterday? Click here for a recap - and follow along below for today's liveblog - a lot of witnesses on the books today, so it should be good.

Where Were We When the World Was Burning?

We had a few folks in today's Senate Environment and Public Works hearing on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. Our own Justin Guay and Julian Carmona were some of the ones responsible for that great "live-tweeting" you saw keeping you up to date on just who was saying what.

Justin and Julian sent me their thoughts on today's hearing and I wanted to share them with you:

Today the clean energy revolution took a significant step forward with the debate of the chairman's mark of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act in the Environment and Public Works Committee. We are working hard to strengthen and protect the bill during this process to ensure that it cleans up dirty sources of pollution and provides clean energy jobs.

• Senator Baucus only spoke for about three minutes, but he said he did not like the target or Clean Air Act authority though he made a point to say that "we must pass common sense legislation, the key word being pass."

• Senator Voinovich began to attack retaining Clean Air Act authority as creating "uncertainty" for business if the bill were to pass because the Environmental Protection Agency could come back and make further changes to the regulatory environment. Senator Voinovich also attacked the bill's targets, saying we couldn't technically achieve them.

• Senator Specter then followed up on the Clean Air Act authority attack and challenged that the Clean Air Act authority was something that may needed to be compromised. Boxer replied to Specter afterwards telling him that she would "work with him on his concerns".

• At the end of the hearing Senator Whitehouse stood up for Clean Air Act authority, saying he firmly believed in it along with many of his colleagues.

• Senator Klobuchar made clear her strong support of a renewable electricity standard and investment in renewable energy.

• Senators Kerry, Sanders, Lautenberg and Cardin all delivered "thundering" speeches to the effect that our children will ask what we were doing when the world was burning.

• We really liked Senator Cardin's line that our kids will ask us where we were when the world was burning. A number of senators gave "thundering speeches." Kerry especially. It was honestly really good especially for a hearing - very positive. Overall, the Democrats laid the smack down on the tired excuses of the past.

Stay tuned - we'll be tweeting and live-blogging again from tomorrow's hearing!

Broken Record: Senate EPW Climate Hearings #1

The hearings have started - you can participate yourself with the hashtags #brokenrecord #cejapa Or comment below!

Live-Blogging Tomorrow's Senate Clean Energy Hearing

Get ready for some fun this week. Starting tomorrow are the hearings on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Tomorrow's hearing features secretaries Ken Salazar, Ray LaHood and Steven Chu, of the interior, transportation, and energy departments, respectively, as well as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff.

We will be live-blogging and tweeting from tomorrow's hearing, starting at 9:30am ET. So, tune in right here to the Compass blog, follow our www.Twitter.com/SierraClubLive account, or follow the #CEJAPA hashtag on Twitter.

And we will also be live-blogging from the Wednesday and Thursday hearings in the Senate EPW committee, so stay tuned all week!

Cap and Trade Economics: Thoughts and Quotes from the ENR Hearing

By: Julian Carmona, intern for the Sierra Club Global Warming & Energy team

On Wednesday (10/21/09) I attended the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee (ENR) hearing on the economics of the Cap and Trade system in the Waxman-Markey House Energy bill. The witnesses were picked from a mix of non-profits (Resources for the Future, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) and academia (MIT, Tufts), and were highly praised by both Republicans and Democrats on the Committee. After making her introductory remarks about consumers bearing the brunt of energy costs, Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) allowed for the witnesses to begin their testimony.

There was a major theme that pervaded all the witnesses’ testimonies: a cap and trade system would disproportionately affect low income communities, and the cost would vary by region (they disagreed on how varying that cost would be). All witnesses agreed that there must be an explicit determination on how money could be returned to the consumer and how transitional assistance should be provided for low income families. Dr Karen Palmer from Resources for the Future stated that price distribution would be complicated because some state energy utilities are regulated and some are not. Dr. Palmer, along with Dr. Gilbert Metcalf, a professor of economics at Tufts University, agreed that a “Cap and Dividend” system might be effective in returning money directly to the consumer in the form of stimulus-like checks. Dr. Chad Stone, Chief Economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, suggested that a system akin to state assistance measures (food stamps, etc) that is embedded in the House bill could help low income families. Lastly, Dr. Danny Ellerman, former economist at MIT, declared that any allowances from permits given to corporations would flow to their shareholders and employees before going to consumers not with the company.

Then, the questioning started. This part was both informative and fun. Chairman Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) began by asking how consumers would receive money or rebates. This theme was a sticking point for senators Robert Bennett (R-UT), Jim Bunning (R-KY) and John Barrasso (R-WY) when they questioned the witnesses. But, ranking member Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) preceded them, and quickly switched the topic to regional differences. She started out by making a jab at the coastal states by citing an EPA report that put most of the tradable permits with the coastal regions and left the Midwest to fight for the rest. She went on to say that Alaska’s energy bills could be 22 times that of any New Yorker’s energy bill, which put her state at a disadvantage. Dr. Stone answered Murkowski’s concern by pointing out that once all impacts are combined, the general effect of cap and trade will be modest and vary slightly from region to region. He reassured that those who pay the most for energy will most likely see the least effects.

The Must-See New Film “Coal Country”

This week’s post was co-written by Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign

"My hope is this superb documentary will shock Americans and create a surge of
urgency that stops the atrocity of mountaintop removal coal mining immediately."
- actress Ashley Judd

That’s the trailer for the powerful new documentary “Coal Country.” If you haven’t heard about this film yet, you need to take a look at the website and learn more about the devastating effects of mountaintop removal coal mining.

Executive producer Mari-Lynn Evans and Writer/producer/director Phylis Geller do an incredible job of portraying the controversy between the coal industry and local residents in many Appalachian towns.

We want to spread the word about “Coal Country” because people must know about this destructive practice and get involved to stop it: So we’re giving you the opportunity to see the film before the general public does.

The movie premieres on the Planet Green network on November 14th at 8pm ET, but you can receive a free 45-minute sneak preview DVD of the film by signing up to host a house party the week of Nov. 10 – 14 with the Sierra Club.

The reviews of this great film are already in - On Tuesday night at Town Hall in New York City, legendary Appalachian musicians shared the stage with activists and celebrities for the New York premiere of this film. It was a tremendous hit with the 1,000+ people in attendance in New York, who were also treated to performances by musicians including Kathy Mattea and Jean Ritchie, artists that donated their time and talents to help advance the cause of ending mountaintop removal.

Geller and Evans bring us the unforgettable and spellbinding story of the troubled, divisive legacy of coal in Appalachia, and they connect the dots to the problems coal causes nationwide, including global warming. The film looks at the reality of mountaintop removal coal mining, where companies blow off the tops of mountains to reach the coal beneath.

Some of the people you meet in the film are concerned about jobs and the economy, and they believe they're acting responsibly in bringing power to the nation's residents. The movie also features remarkable people whose families have lived in the region for generations, have loved and tended the land, and have mined the coal, and whose lives are now being torn apart, driven from their homes by pollution and blasting.

Sign up to be a host and you’ll also get the opportunity to receive a special message on the night of your house party from actress Ashley Judd, who has worked with the Sierra Club and other organizations to end mountaintop removal coal mining.

We’ll send you the sneak preview DVD so you and your house party guests can witness the amazing stories of coalfield residents like Judy Bonds, whose life has been threatened numerous times due to her activism, and Chuck Nelson, who worked for decades as an underground miner before becoming a powerful voice for ending mountaintop removal. You and your guests can discuss the film, take action, and call in to hear a message from celebrity guests, Sierra Club leaders, and Appalachian community members featured in the film.

This film continues to become more important as we learn more about the realities of coal power. This week we saw the release of a National Research Council report on the external costs of energy – focusing on “monetizing the damage of major air pollutants -- sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ozone, and particulate matter – on human health, grain crops and timber yields, buildings, and recreation.” They tallied up damages of an estimated $120 billion in the U.S. in 2005, and the biggest contributor to that cost was coal, coming in with $62 billion of the tab. One wonders how much higher that number would be if it included the realities of mountaintop removal coal mining.

More than 500 mountains have been leveled by this coal-mining practice, and more are under threat right now. Many of you reading this post are benefiting from the power generated by the coal mined using this practice -- but have no idea what's going on or the effect it is having on the Appalachian people, and in one of the world's most diverse ecosystems.

Won’t you take one evening to get together with friends and check out the sneak preview so that we can educate more people and finally put and end to the devastation of our mountain heritage?

P.S. Remember our Coal is Too Dirty for College campaign? The second and third ads are out – watch them here:

Clean Cars and that Motown Sound

This post is from Jesse Prentice-Dunn, with the Sierra Club's Green Transportation Program

Yesterday I testified at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) public hearing on proposed standards  that will make our cars and trucks average 34.1 mpg and 250 grams CO2/mile by 2016. The hearing was in Detroit, but Motown might be more accurate. A wide range of seemingly conflicting interests were there to testify; however, everyone was singing harmonies out of the same songbook. The tune – new standards that make our cars and trucks cleaner and more efficient will curb global warming, save consumers money, and help Detroit automakers once again become leaders in a clean energy economy.

One after another, disparate groups praised the administration for accelerating fuel economy standards and creating new greenhouse gas standards for vehicles. If you want a quick recap, check out my live tweets  from the hearing.

Mud Wrestling > Coal

What's dirtier than Mud Wrestling at a college party? Well, see the video below to find out (hint: it's black, dirty, and has been poisoning water and our environment since the industrial revolution).

Last month, Sierra Club and Sierra Student Coalition launched the Campuses Beyond Coal campaign. The aim of the campaign is simple - kick coal off campuses. It's one of the sad truths on Colleges across America - that even as communities all across America are moving beyond coal, Colleges aren't. But students - many of whom were shocked to find out that their schools were still using ancient technology to power when cheap, affordable clean alternatives exist.

Check the video out - and forward it to your friends.

Live from the Vehicle Fuel Economy & Emissions Public Hearing

This morning our own Jesse Prentice-Dunn of the Sierra Club Green Transportation team is in Detroit, where the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation are holding the first of three public hearings on strong new vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards.

The Department of Transportation proposed accelerating fuel economy standards to 34.1 mpg by 2016 and the Environmental Protection Agency proposed setting a standard of 250 grams of CO2 equivalent per mile by 2016.

Jesse is tweeting from the hearing, so follow @SierraClubLive or the #fueleconomy hashtag on Twitter. The hearing began at 9am ET.

Tuesday News Round-Up

It's a busy week in the energy world. Let's start with the biggest news first:  Yesterday the National Research Council released a Congressionally-ordered report entitled “Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use."

The report gives a great look at what you don't even know you're paying for when you turn on the lights or fill up your gas tank. "The damages the committee was able to quantify were an estimated $120 billion in the U.S. in 2005," and the biggest contributor to that cost was coal, coming in with $62 billion of the tab.

From the news release:

The committee that wrote the report focused on monetizing the damage of major air pollutants -- sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ozone, and particulate matter – on human health, grain crops and timber yields, buildings, and recreation.  When possible, it estimated both what the damages were in 2005 (the latest year for which data were available) and what they are likely to be in 2030, assuming current policies continue and new policies already slated for implementation are put in place. 

And the coal industry certainly found a fun way to spin it with this quote from a Bloomberg news article:

“The report completely ignores the ‘hidden’ benefits of coal-based generation,” Carol Raulston, spokeswoman for the National Mining Association in Washington, said in an e-mailed statement. “Numerous studies have shown the health benefits of electricity in providing air conditioning, heating and refrigeration.”

In other bad energy news, Shell just won federal approval to drill for oil in the fragile Beaufort Sea near Alaska.

To finish up with some good news, though, yesterday two of our staffers were at the White House to see the unveiling of the "Recovery Through Retrofit" report. The report "builds on the foundation laid in the Recovery Act to expand green job opportunities and boost energy savings by making homes more energy efficient." Some of the report's recommendations included:

• Provide American Homeowners with Straightforward and Reliable Home Energy Retrofit Information.
• Reduce High Upfront Costs, Making Energy Retrofits More Accessible.
• Establish National Workforce Certifications and Training Standards.

Read the rest in the White House new release.

And stay tuned to the blog tomorrow, our own Jesse Prentice-Dunn will be sending us updates from the first of three hearings on the government's new vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions hearings. Tomorrow's hearing is in Detroit.

Climate Change: A National Security Threat

By: Julian Carmona, intern for the Sierra Club Global Warming & Energy team

On September 14th, 2001, President George W. Bush stood on the ruins of the World Trade Center vowing to hunt down those who perpetrated the worst attack on United States soil since Pearl Harbor. President Bush presided over one of the largest expansions of domestic security measures, meant to prevent further terrorist attacks. Many will remember Bush’s presidency as one defined by a debate over how far the government could go to protect national security.

The release of an EPA report, written during the Bush administration, shows that he might have ignored a looming threat to national security: Climate Change. The report was an “endangerment finding,” published in 2007, but not released to the public. Amongst recommendations that gave government more authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded that global warming posed a serious threat to the country. It spoke of countries that were already feeling the affects of global warming, and the destabilizing affect that climate change might have. It also resembled the exact same conclusions that the Obama administration listed on their endangerment report, released in April of this year.

In 2007, the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA) presented a report that connected global instability, terrorism, warfare and national security with global climate change and energy dependence. The report was written by their Military Advisors Board, which included 11 former top officials from the Marines, Air Force and Navy. More importantly, the report concluded:

Projected climate change poses a serious threat to America’s National Security...drought, sea level rise, retreating glaciers, habitat shifts and increased spread of life-threatening diseases...have a potential to disrupt our way of life and to force changes in the way we keep ourselves safe and secure

They recommended that the consequences of climate change be integrated into policymaking in regards to national security and defense, global security and the creation of international partnerships.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Climate Change: The Road Not Taken

By: Julian Carmona, intern for the Sierra Club Global Warming & Energy team

This weekend an Op-Ed was published in the NY Times that stressed the need for “give-and-take” bipartisanship on a bill to help mitigate global warming and achieve energy independence. The authors put emphasis on reductions in emissions using market-based systems to allow polluters to transition into compliance with new emission regulations without harming the economy. They wrote about renewable energy, breaking a dependence on foreign oil, maintaining international competitiveness, protecting business and ensuring national security.

This would seem like your average call-to-action from a group who is sick of partisanship. And, to a certain extent, it is. The authors of this Op-Ed, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) represent the first evidence of bipartisan support for the passage of a Senate clean energy jobs bill.

The exception in this unusual partnership would be Senator Graham. Most of his colleagues on the other side of the aisle from Kerry adamantly disagree with any clean energy legislation, especially one that carries cap-and-trade. Graham’s perceived “defection” from the norm was even compared to Senator Arlen Specter’s (D-PA) party change. All of this amounts to strong pressure to conform along party lines.

Watch the Forged Letters Scandal Live Online

***UPDATE - 9:54am: Well nevermind. Rep. Markey just postponed the hearing because the witnesses did not get their testimony to the committee in time. New date for the hearing TBA. ***

If you're interested in watching today's Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming hearing on those forged letters to members of Congress about this summer's American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), you can do so by clicking here.

We'll be watching closely as well and providing some updates.

For now, check out this articles with many more details on how deep this scandal goes!

Forged Letters Went Unreported Until After ACES Vote

New Twist in Astroturf Coal Campaign

Forged Congressional Letters Scandal Gets its Hearing

As someone more hip (or nerdy) than me might say, "It is so on." Why? Because tomorrow the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, chaired by Rep. Edward Markey, is holding a hearing on those forged letters to members of Congress about this summer's American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES).

You remember that scandal - Bonner and Associates, a lobbying firm hired by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) to lobby against ACES, sent forged letters opposing ACES from the local chapters of the NAACP, Hispanic groups, senior citizen groups and more, to several members of the House of Representatives. ACCCE denied that it asked Bonner to do that, and Bonner blamed it all on a temp.

The subsequent investigation by Rep. Markey's select committee turned up a few more letters, too. Oh, the intrigue! It's pretty bad when you have to forge your opposition letters - how desperate and illegal can you get?

Now we get to hear more testimony about it all - starting tomorrow at 9:30am on Capitol Hill. The witness list is promising:

• Mr. Jack Bonner, Bonner & Associates
• Mr. Steve Miller, President and CEO, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity
• Ms. Lisa M. Maatz, Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, American Association of University Women
• Mr. Hilary O. Shelton, Director and Senior Vice President for Advocacy and Policy, NAACP Washington Bureau

We get to hear from Mr. Bonner and Mr. ACCCE themselves. This will be interesting, to say the least! Stay tuned, we'll blog on this more tomorrow once we hear what everyone has to say at the hearing.

Another Energy Film You Should See

This past spring I got to see a lengthy trailer for the new documentary Split Estate. I also got to chat with the filmmakers about it. From the film's synopsis:

Imagine discovering that you don't own the mineral rights under your land, and that an energy company plans to drill for natural gas two hundred feet from your front door. Imagine another shocking truth: you have little or no recourse to protect your home or land from such development. Split Estate maps a tragedy in the making, as citizens in the path of a new drilling boom in the Rocky Mountain West struggle against the erosion of their civil liberties, their communities and their health.

The trailer was very powerful, and I know it'll be an excellent film. And now everyone has several chances to see it, because it's being show on Discovery's "Planet Green" channel several times this month: Saturday, October 17th, at 8pm ET; Sunday, October 18th, at 12pm ET; Thursday, October 22nd, at 11pm ET; and Friday, October 23rd, at 3pm ET.

Get a Sneak Peek at Coal Country

Cross-posted from our Climate Crossroads blog...

Coal Country is a documentary that takes an eye-opening look inside the lives of Appalachian residents threatened by Big Coal's destructive practice of mountaintop removal. The movie will be getting a jump-start with house parties the week of Nov. 10, which will have sneak-peek DVDs. To get involved in a house party, click here. If you want to learn more, visit and join the Move Beyond Coal group here on Climate Crossroads.

You can also watch the trailer for the documentary right here.

The Economic Benefits of Ending Mountaintop Removal

The Sierra Club today released a groundbreaking new report that reaffirms the economic benefits of ending mountaintop removal coal mining and transitioning to clean energy sources in Appalachia.

The report shows that America can have affordable electricity without mountaintop removal because many factors contribute to the cost of electricity, with coal prices playing just one small part.

According to the report:

• Ending mountaintop removal would have a negligible effect on electricity prices in the eastern United States, where mountaintop removal coal is currently burned.

• We have an abundance of cost-effective alternatives to mountaintop removal coal.

• Other types of mining in Appalachia employ more workers.

• Mountaintop removal coal mining costs state budgets more than it generates.

• Mountaintop removal destroys clean energy sources.

The report comes as the Army Corps of Engineers holds public hearings across Appalachia this week where hundreds of residents are calling for an end to a "one-size-fits-all" nationwide permit that has been used for years to allow this destructive type of coal mining. At the hearings, the coal industry will likely argue that radical strip mining benefits Appalachia's economy, but this new report reaffirms the value of clean energy.

Ken Ward from the Charleston Gazette already wrote up an excellent blog post on the report, so check that out.

To read the full report, its executive summary, or a white paper on other recent mountaintop removal coal mining studies, head over to our factsheet page.

Coal Too Dirty for All Schools, Even College

By: Sarah Lerner, Media Assistant

As the Sierra Club has noted, coal pollution has a direct link to asthma diagnoses and other health problems. So, it's no wonder that veteran West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd (D) criticized Massey Energy for not stepping up to pay for a new site for Marsh Fork Elementary school. Massey's coal energy plant is a mere 300-feet away from the school and Byrd asserts that it is up to the company, not the public, to help relocate the children away from the dangers of coal-pollution exposure. So far, Massey is pushing back and not offering to help finance the move.  

This story certainly points to a larger issue with the relationship between the coal industry and education: the dominant role it plays in the energy schools use, especially at institutions of higher learning. Enter the Sierra Club and its launching of "Campuses Beyond Coal" campaign-a concerted, nation-wide effort to help 600 college campuses end their reliance on coal-powered energy and transition to clean-energy solutions.

Just this week, the Sierra Club kicked off its "2 Dirty 4 College" advertising effort of the "Campuses Beyond Coal" platform. These three, short videos poke fun at "dirty" college behavior and make the point that even coal is too dirty for university students. The first one has just been released and it shows what a college student would be willing to consume over coal. Targeted in 11 coal-friendly states, the ad campaign will continue until the end of October, with each subsequent video pushing the envelope even further than the previous one.

Green LA: UCLA Sustainability

By: Julian Carmona, Energy Intern

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has been a leader in sustainable living. Efforts by administrators, students and environmentalists have helped form their success in sustainability. In April 2006, UCLA adopted a Sustainability Charter, stating that a committee will "create a culture of sustainability, in which the entire community is aware of, engaged in and committed to advancing sustainability through education, research, operations and community partnerships."

Here is a sample of some of the sustainability efforts that have been going on in Westwood:

• Sustainable Dining Halls – Trayless dining, food grown and produced on campus, and the planting of an herb garden are all elements of sustainable eating being practiced or suggested at UCLA. 
• UCLA Event Sustainability Volunteer Program – A program where students, staff and faculty are able to assist and educate guests at campus events about proper disposal of waste and recyclables. The work of this “Green Team” has led campus events to become more sustainable and offered an outlet for the creation of more sustainable programs. One such idea has been to provide compostable serving utensils at campus events.

Is Coal Slurry Contaminating Wells in WV?

That's the question WCHS-TV in Charleston, West Virginia, is publicizing in a three-part series this week. More than 250 residents in the Boone County community of Prenter Hollow say they are getting sick because of their well water - and that the well water is being contaminated by coal slurry (the remnants of what's been washed off of coal) is being injected into nearby coal mines. Those families are now suing Massey Energy and eight other coal companies responsible for the mines.

So WCHS-TV did a three-part series on the issue, and it's both heart-breaking and maddening. Take a look.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

You may recognize one resident's name in the WCHS-TV series: Jennifer Hall-Massey and her family's health woes were also featured in this NY Times article on clean water violations.

Businesses Leading on Global Warming Action

There's been a great trend recently - businesses breaking away from climate deniers and climate action obstructionists to show how much they want legislation that creates clean energy jobs and fights global warming.

We've seen the growing list of companies leaving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but now there's a coalition specifically asking for climate legislation - We Can Lead - and they're getting some great press.

Many of these companies' executives were in Washington this week to tell Congress to act on climate change:

The business executives from more than 30 states argued that climate legislation and a shift of energy priorities away from fossil fuels could lead to a new industrial revolution and create 1.7 million jobs related to clean energy technologies - from developing new batteries to building windmills and the next generation of solar panels....

The executives said they wanted to bring a message to senators: that the successes of their companies shows the viability of the clean energy development and that limits on greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, will lead to the creation of new companies and industries.

But, they argued, without action in Congress, these same technologies will be produced elsewhere, likely in China.

These advocacy days for the We Can Lead coalition also got news hits in Reuters, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the NY Times.

We're also not the only ones to have noticed this trend in the business world - this San Francisco Chronicle article discusses the split and includes a great quote from our own Dave Hamilton:

"You've got people who want to make money from the change, and they're sick and tired of people who don't want action calling the tune," said David Hamilton, director of the global warming and energy program for the Sierra Club.

And while many businesses want strong action on global warming, others may try to find some loopholes to get out of changing their own business policies. An article in today's LA Times discusses one aspect that could be abused - international deforestation offsets.

Global Warming Reports Show Economic Benefits of Action

Tuesday saw the release of two new influential reports on global warming. First, the United Nation's Foundation the Center for American Progress unveiled an analysis of what's needed to fight global warming. From the release:

Achievable gains in energy efficiency, renewable energy, forest conservation, and sustainable land use worldwide could achieve up to 75 percent of needed global emissions reductions in 2020 at a net savings of $14 billion....(Also):

• Increasing the rate of global energy efficiency improvement to 2.0 percent by 2015 (from current rate of 1.25 percent) would reduce emissions by 12 percent below business as usual in 2020, or 5.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, and would yield a net savings in 2020 of $98 billion.

• Deriving 20 percent of the world’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020 would reduce emissions in 2020 by 10 percent below business as usual at a net cost in 2020 of $34 billion.

• Reducing the annual rate of tropical deforestation 50 percent by 2020 and increasing the amount of land under sustainable management though habitat restoration and sustainable forestry, agriculture, and livestock practices would reduce emissions in 2020 by over 50 percent from business as usual at a net cost in 2020 of $51 billion.

The other global warming and economic report came from the E3 Network (Economics for Equity and the Environment). The report

"argues that a worldwide effort to lower atmospheric carbon concentrations to 350 parts per million is affordable; it can create more new jobs, spur more innovation and protect businesses, governments and households from the damages caused by the rapid heating of the earth. Today, global carbon concentrations in the atmosphere are near 400 parts per million - and rising. The report concludes that the estimated cost of reaching a target of 350 parts per million is roughly equivalent to one to three percent of world gross domestic product."

You can read more about the report in this Washington Post article as well.

Coal is Too Dirty Even for College

That’s the first ad of our new campaign targeting the world of higher education: Coal is too dirty – even for college.

Did you know that many of our country’s colleges and universities – places that are supposed to be a source of higher-education and leadership – get their electricity by burning coal? And sometimes those coal-fired power plants are even on the campuses?

I think many of us look back in disbelief at some of the things we did in college. We’re seeing that same sense of disbelief from current college students when they learn that their campuses are still powered by coal.

This ad launches a campaign that will use print and online advertising (two more video ads to come) to highlight that some things are just too dirty, even for college.

The ads play off stereotypically “dirty” college behavior, becoming progressively more “dirty” throughout the series. Though college life allows for leniency in the socially acceptable, coal still crosses the line. 

The ad campaign targets schools in 11 states which currently rely on coal power.

• Indiana University-Bloomington
• Indiana University of Pennsylvania
• Lewis and Clark
• Ohio University
• Penn State University
• SUNY-Binghamton
• University of Colorado - Boulder
• University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
• University of Georgia
• University of Iowa
• University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• University of Missouri-Columbia
• University of North Dakota
• University of Southern California
• University of Washington
• Virginia Tech
• Washington University-St. Louis

If you attend one of these schools, you can sign a petition asking your university president to kick coal off your campus – the list and the petition are on this website: http://www.2dirty4college.com/ 

The Campuses Beyond Coal Campaign is working nationwide to wean all campuses off of coal-generated electricity and replace it with clean energy options. With organizers on the ground in several of the more than 60 campuses with on-site coal plants the Campaign is working to help universities achieve the zero carbon emissions targets set forth in the Presidents Climate Commitment.

We released a report last month to support the campaign: “Breaking Coal’s Grip on Our Future: Moving Campuses Beyond Coal.” It highlights many of the problems facing coal dependent schools and the solutions available.

We know students want a cleaner, healthier future, and so they're organizing on campuses coast-to-coast to make that vision a reality.

The ad campaign will run through the end of October, with the remaining two videos to be released in the next few weeks. It’s time to kick coal off campus!

Tuesday News Round-Up

Much has happened in the past 24 hours - lots of good news stories that deserve a read.

First up, yesterday President Obama signed an executive order that "challenges agencies to lead by example in energy and environmental performance and gives them 90 days to set a 2020 greenhouse reduction goal. It also sets targets for efficient, sustainable buildings, petroleum use reduction in fleets, water efficiency, waste reduction, purchasing green technologies and product, and supporting sustainable communities."

Clearly Obama wants the government to lead by example, as these two articles from the Associated Press and the Washington Post describe.

Also yesterday, another domino fell for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Now it's Apple joining the ranks of those businesses that have left the Chamber due to its obstructionism when it comes to global warming legislation.

There's good news out again from the government today, this time about your winter heating bills: "This winter's heating bill should be about $105 less than last winter, the government said Tuesday. Households using fuel oil, electric heat or propane also will save money."

Finally, Grist's Dave Roberts had a great post up yesterday about the costs of climate change legislation. From the post:

Another key thing to keep in mind is that when faced with a decision, the choice is not between acting, which imposes some cost, and doing nothing, which doesn’t. Time can’t be frozen. The costs of charting a new course are often more striking or salient to us, but every choice, even maintaining the status quo, carries its own costs. Take, for instance, the electrical grid. It’s easy to scare people by saying that creating a smart grid in the U.S. would cost a trillion dollars. A trillion! Eek! But if grid experts are right, simply maintaining and building out an old-fashioned grid would also cost about a trillion dollars. And doing nothing, allowing the grid to decay, would end up costing even more than that.

Preach it, Dave!

The Environmental Justice of Mountaintop Removal

Today a coalition of Appalachian residents and community organizations submitted a petition to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) citing the need for the agency to address the environmental justice tragedy of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia.

Unfamiliar with mountaintop removal coal mining? Read up about this devastating practice on our coal website.

The petition urges EPA to incorporate environmental justice considerations into its review of pending applications for mountaintop removal coal mining permits, among other actions. The petition outlines how EPA has the responsibility under Executive Order 12898 to address the environmental justice impacts of mountaintop removal mining, and has the authority under the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and other laws, to do so.

Read more about the petition in the news release. And check out the petition on our environmental justice page.

Senate Energy Bill Introduced

By: Sarah Lerner, Media Assistant

The big climate news this week - Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer announced on Wednesday Senate legislation on climate change that will become the Senate's version of the landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act that passed the House floor 217-213 in June.  Ardent global warming activists as well as key Democratic senators and retired Navy Vice Admiral, Lee F. Gunn, were at the Capitol to show their support for the “Clean Energy Jobs and Power Act.” Signs read, “Clean, American Power” and “2 Million Clean Energy Jobs Now.”

Kerry and Boxer said they were aiming to cultivate bipartisan support for the bill. However, there are talks that the Senate bill would strengthen emission reduction targets from 17% by 2020 to 20% by 2020. This piece in the House bill was heavily argued, with environmentally-minded members wanting the target to be at least 20% and critics, like the Agriculture committee, calling foul.

The House ended up decreasing the targets to 17% in order to win over key moderates, but with a 60-vote Democratic majority, the Senate can afford to be bolder and demand stronger pollution regulation. There are numerous other provisions – from giveaways to coal and big oil – that also need to be fixed if we are to move forward to a clean energy economy.

With the UN Climate Change Conference coming up in early December in Copenhagen, the U.S. is on a tight deadline to take action and send the world a strong message. If Congress can do this, U.S. representatives will come to Copenhagen with legitimacy and be seen as leading voices in the global warming solution. Now is the time for the Senate to take action so that America can lead again.

The Tribal Southwest Shift to Clean Energy

The tribal peoples of the American southwest know all too well the horrors of environmental degradation. Often with little say in the manner, they've suffered through decades of poisoned groundwater, air pollution, and sacred land destruction caused by coal mines and power plants.

Now, things are finally changing. Sierra Club has partnered with Southwest tribes and environmental groups have for years to promote clean energy, health and water issues. Recently, the Navajo Nation’s passed a  unanimous green jobs resolution. 

There are solar power projects in the Hopi village of Hotevilla, all strong signs that clean energy solutions are gaining momentum.

"Global warming is a threat on and off Navajo and Hopi lands," said Hertha Woody, a member of the Navajo Nation and a Sierra Club volunteer leader in Flagstaff. "There is great potential for solar and wind projects to help reduce the emissions that contribute to global warming, and we are proud to continue to support a transition from coal to clean energy that will create a more sustainable economy."

For more on the latest development in the Southwest, check our press room.

Rally for the New Kerry-Boxer Bill

Today was a big rally at the Capitol Building for the release of the brand new "Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act" bill from Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer.

Lots of folks turned out, including plenty of veterans and clean energy activists - not to mention Senators Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Frank Lautenberg, Mark Udall, Ben Cardin, Tom Udall, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jeanne Shaheen, and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Also speaking on the topic of how global warming is a huge national security threat were Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn of the U.S. Navy (Retired) and Afghanistan U.S. Army Veteran Aaron Bailey. Both spoke of how our dependence on foreign oil makes us vulnerable, as well as how global warming causing resource-scarcity will be a security threat to many nations.

All the speakers received huge cheers and applause when talking about the importance of switching the US to a clean energy economy - about how it will boost our economy, create millions of jobs, secure our energy independence and make us more secure overall.

I took quite a few photos, so to see the rest, check out our Flickr set. And get involved now!

A National Day of Action Against Coal

This post was co-written by Kathleen Ridihalgh, Senior Representative for the Sierra Club’s Northwest Region

The first three days of this week are seeing a slew of activities taking on coal. We have events in 25 states to counter the coal industry and cheer on clean energy investments. It’s all part of our National Day of Action, and there are events happening across the nation, including rallies, public hearings, coal deliveries to polluters, press conferences, brown bag lunches, coal tours, and town hall meetings. Our Campuses Beyond Coal campaign is holding photo petition events on a dozen campuses nationwide, calling on campus administrators to shut down old, dirty coal plants polluting those universities and the neighboring towns.

These events are all sending one message from coast to coast – coal is dirty business, and we need clean energy. You should check the website to learn more about these creative events and see if there are any taking place near you.

As we watch activists in these states work together for clean energy, we want to highlight a few states taking steps in the right direction that we hope other states will emulate. The Governors of Washington (Chris Gregoire), Oregon (Ted Kulongoski) and Montana (Brian Schweitzer) have all committed their states to meeting climate goals and investing in a clean energy future.

Coal’s Ash is On the Line

This post was co-written by Lyndsay Moseley, Washington Representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign.

For those who remember the tragic TVA coal ash spill of December 2008 and wonder if such a disaster could happen in your town, there have been lots of important recent developments. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has started inspecting hazardous coal ash impoundments around the U.S., rating them based on how likely are they to fail and cause massive disasters like the spill at TVA’s Kingston, TN, plant last December.

In keeping with President Obama’s goal of promoting transparency, EPA has also begun posting their findings online  – more than 43 inspections at 22 facilities have already been posted.  And how many of those 43 impoundments ranked “satisfactory”?  Just over half of them – the rest were rated “fair” or “poor”, which means they have some work to do. This is scary news, considering that these dams are holding back billions of gallons of toxic waste left over from burning coal to generate electricity.

As EPA continues to inspect more coal ash impoundments, we are anxiously awaiting EPA’s draft rules, which have been in the works for over a decade and – amazingly enough – would be the first federal regulations ever put in place to ensure utilities are disposing of this hazardous waste safely. We expect that EPA will not only address the safety of the dams, but also how to treat the highly toxic waste material that is held back behind the dams. Coal ash contains arsenic, selenium, lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, boron, thallium, and aluminum – toxic heavy metals that have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and neurological disorders, and which clearly threaten nearby communities and ecosystems. 

Pittsburgh's Clean Energy Rally

We'd been telling you about the big clean energy rally last night in Pittsburgh, and some news stories are now in. The rally was a big success, with thousands gathering to hear some great speakers and bands - and all happening right before today's opening of the G-20 summit. This story includes a great slide show of photos from the rally.

Check out some excerpts from the speeches in this news release from Repower America, including a speech from our own Carl Pope.

As for more photos, there are some good photo sets on Flickr of the rally. Here's one, here are some more, and we'll add more as we get them. If you have any photos or notes to share on the rally, please do so in the comments! 

(All rally photos in this blog post are courtesy of jaojao1's Flickr photostream. The first photo is Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope. Second photo is the Pittsburgh Gospel Choir. Third photo is Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO and member of the Blue-Green Allliance.)

Global Warming News of the Day

Today the Senate debates amendments that could strip Environmental Protection Agency authority to regulate global warming pollution from power plants and that could "defund" the White House Council on Environmental Quality head Carol Browner. Phew - it's an all out assault on protecting the environment, that's for sure.

And that's not the only global warming news hanging around. Did you see President Obama's remarks to the United Nations this morning? Here's an excerpt:

As we head towards Copenhagen, there should be no illusions that the hardest part of our journey is in front of us. We seek sweeping but necessary change in the midst of a global recession, where every nation's most immediate priority is reviving their economy and putting their people back to work. And so all of us will face doubts and difficulties in our own capitals as we try to reach a lasting solution to the climate challenge.

But difficulty is no excuse for complacency. Unease is no excuse for inaction. And we must not allow the perfect to become the enemy of progress. Each of us must do what we can when we can to grow our economies without endangering our planet - and we must all do it together. We must seize the opportunity to make Copenhagen a significant step forward in the global fight against climate change.

You can read the rest here.

And then the NY Times has two interesting articles. One is on the UN meeting about climate change, and another is on an experimental carbon capture and sequestration project at a coal-fired power plant in West Virginia. The WV article contains this doozy of a quote:

“I really believe, in my heart of hearts, that coal is going to be burned around the world for years to come,” said Michael Morris, chairman and president of American Electric Power, which owns the plant here.

It's sad when someone is so passionate about such a dirty and harmful source of energy.

Next up on the global warming story front, the EPA announced today that starting on January 1, 2010, it "will, for the first time, require large emitters of heat-trapping emissions to begin collecting greenhouse gas (GHG) data under a new reporting system." Read more in the EPA press release.

And finally, we've got a ton of clean energy activists out in Pittsburgh this week taking on the International Coal Conference and the G-20 (check out our rally!). Yesterday the Sierra Student Coalition and the PA Alliance for a Coal Free Generation took on the coal conference with a fun demonstration.

Clean Energy Activities in Pennsylvania

Next week the hub-bub begins with the big G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh. Many groups are planning rallies and/or protests, including our own huge clean energy rally and concert on Sept. 23rd (learn more here).

But I wanted to take a moment to highlight a new campaign launching next week, the Pennsylvania Alliance for a Coal-Free Generation. This campaign starts off aimed at those attending the International Pittsburgh Coal Conference from Sept. 20-23, and includes various events telling the truth about coal - including a screening of the new film "Coal Country" and a tour of a longwall mine.

Learn more: http://www.coalfreegeneration.com

Shining beacons of energy in New York and New Jersey

Advocates for economic growth through clean energy - including environmentalists, innovative small businesses and labor unions - were eager to greet a report released by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) last Wednesday. The report called for improvements to the legislation under consideration by the Senate and highlighted the promise of efficiency as an important energy - and job - source.

New Jersey plans to use federal stimulus dollars approved earlier this year to train and employ several hundred workers who can address energy leakage in low-income homes and keep energy bills under control this winter. That creates jobs and saves consumers money. Consumers and workers would be glad to see this work continue - ACEEE projects a potential 19,400 jobs in New Jersey over the next ten years if Congress passes a strong clean energy bill.

While the Laborers Local 55 and the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club stood shoulder to shoulder to greet the news in New Jersey, a robust coalition of interests, including state and local representatives of these two groups, achieved a significant legislative victory in New York State.

According to ACEEE, New York stands to gain 48,100 jobs if federal legislation passes with strong energy efficiency incentives - and potential household savings are estimated at $244/year in 2020. But New York isn't waiting to capture these jobs and savings: Last week, the state Senate passed an ambitious plan to drive energy efficiency upgrades in one million of its homes and businesses. The Green Jobs/Green NY Act, sponsored by Senator Darrel J. Aubertine, passed with strong bipartisan support last week - 52-8 - after rancorous debate.

Like New Jersey's plan, there have been robust efforts to provide comprehensive job training and to define career pipelines for individuals from underserved communities and for the chronically unemployed.

The program created by the bill will use seed money collected from the auction of carbon emission credits through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to set up a loan fund for home retrofits. If the homeowner sells their house, the payment plan and the extra savings are passed on to the new owner.

Dan Cantor of the Working Families Party explains at Huffington Post:

"Here's how it would work: State certified contractors would perform free or low-cost energy audits for homeowners, looking for repairs and upgrades (like air sealing, insulation, new boilers) that can pay for themselves through the energy savings they create. The work would be paid for by the fund - homeowners pay it back out of a portion of their energy savings (they pocket the rest, in addition to getting their homes repaired)."

David Sasson gets into more detail on the national implications of state action on the Solve Climate blog. Billy Parish echoes his thoughts at It's Getting Hot in Here. And the New York Times offers its two cents: A Cheap Fix for Climate: Retrofitting.

The ACEEE report, and plans underway in New York and New Jersey, shine a bright light on our energy future.

Senate Global Warming Hearing Gets Tense

by Justin Guay Global Warming and Energy Apprentice

The opponents of climate change legislation in the Senate smell blood and are now circling their victim – clean energy legislation. The bait – Yesterday’s Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee hearing “to explore potential costs and price volatility in the energy sector as a result of a greenhouse gas trading program.”

The hearing began with each panelist weighing the pro’s and con’s of potential cost containment mechanisms including price floors, price collars and offsets. Before long the panelists were struggling to keep the hearing focused on cost containment as the sharks on the committee attacked “cap and trade” as a system, leaving the panelists with the unenviable task of defending the legislation with little help from any members on the committee except perhaps Senator Shaheen (D-NH).

First came Senator Murkowski (R-AK) who quickly turned from cost containment to the potential for market manipulation which she was confident was imminent. To which panelist Dr. Joseph Mason, a professor at Louisiana State University, provided ample ammunition by saying that a bailout for the carbon market similar to what recently occurred for Wall Street was indeed “imminent.”

Then came Senator Corker’s (R-TN) southern “charm” who called cap and trade a “Rube Goldberg” that could only work “in Wonderland”. This must be the same wonderland where Corker, a staunch Republican, would support a “simple” carbon tax. This was quickly followed by the gem from Senator Barrasso (R-WY), “Cap and trade is a recipe for green collar crime.” Senator Barrasso your profound understanding of international crime rings is astounding!

The dirty blows also came from Democrats like Senator Cantwell (D-WA) who claimed that the apprehension about cap and trade systems was “music to my ears”. And then there was Senator Stabenow D-MI) who seemed to not care about anything other than he r love of offsets and USDA authority.

Of course this committee’s three ring circus would be hysterical if it weren’t for the serious threat it poses to strong clean energy and climate legislation. While the clowns attempt to distract, the sharks continue to aim for our jugular. We are facing a climate crisis of epic proportions and our efforts to tackle it are under constant attack.

Cleaner Cars On the Way

This is a guest post from Jesse Prentice-Dunn of the Sierra Club Green Transportation Program

Today at the White House, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson and Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Ray LaHood took the first step towards making President Obama’s vision for cleaner, more efficient cars a reality, releasing proposed regulations that fill in the details of how we will meet the President’s goal of a fleet that averages 35.5 mpg and  250 grams of global warming pollution per mile.

The rules proposed today are a historic first step on the path to highly efficient vehicles. They are the single biggest step we can take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, preventing 950 million metric tons of CO2 from being pumped into the atmosphere. Not only will new standards reduce our oil consumption, they’ll save consumers an average of $3,000 at the pump over the life of the vehicle.

Secretary LaHood and Administrator Jackson laid out a National Program, combining existing DOT fuel economy standards with first time EPA greenhouse gas standards, all reaching the goals that California’s Pavley standards would have achieved. Although California has agreed not to implement its Pavley standards (bowing to the national standard), it retains the authority to set more stringent standards, driving emissions reductions and efficiency in the future. This National Program will not only significantly reduce emissions and oil consumption, it will give automakers the certainty and direction they need to invest in new technologies and create more efficient cars and trucks.

The new standards will help automakers put technologies already on the shelf onto new vehicles. Conventional technologies such as turbocharged engines, lightweight materials, continuously variable transmissions and reduced rolling resistance tires are available today to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase fuel economy. New standards will also help drive innovation and advanced technology vehicles, such as the soon to be released plug-in electric Nissan Leaf and the plug-in hybrid electric Chevrolet Volt.

The high-level announcement today is great, but the devil is always in the details. Over the next two months, we’ll be looking over the hundreds of pages of proposed rules to make sure that excessive credits and overly generous flexibility measures don’t undercut the program.

The Obama Administration should be applauded for creating a program that is a win for the environment, automakers, and consumer’s wallets. Find out more about the new standards and use our handy new online tool to send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper!

Tweeting from Today's Senate Hearing on Global Warming

Our own Sierra Club Global Warming and Energy Team Apprentice Justin Guay will be twittering from today's Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee hearing "to explore potential costs and price volatility in the energy sector as a result of a greenhouse gas trading program." That's the title!

The hearing has a good list of speakers and Justin is there to follow along when it starts at 2:30pm ET today. To keep up with Justin's tweets from the hearing room, follow along at www.twitter.com/SierraClubLive

You can also follow the #aces hashtag.

Why are we paying attention to a hearing with such a long and dry title? It's important to find out who's saying what on the costs of global warming action and inaction. Are they talking about the great economic benefits that come with investing in clean energy and fighting global warming - or are lies being spread? 

Justin will also return on Thursday to twittering from another Senate ENR committee hearing, that one is "to receive on energy and related economic effects of global climate change legislation."

Monday News Round-Up

Let's start today's news round-up with the most shocking story - the NY Times has put together an excellent piece on Clean Water Act violations across the country, using a narrative from one West Virginia community whose water has been poisoned by nearby coal mining.

The whole story is very telling, very sad, and a powerful reason to become an activist calling for clean water and regulations on polluting industries (especially coal).

Speaking of coal, there's a study out showing that clean energy can create more jobs than the coal industry.

And more on dirty energy sources - this week Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is visiting President Obama to talk about Canada's tar sands. The U.S. recently approved a tar sands oil pipeline from Canada into the US. Learn more on our coalition website: www.dirtytarsands.org

It's a dirty energy world out there, folks! We can do better.

EPA: Pending Mountaintop Removal Permits Would Violate Clean Water Act

This post co-written by Mary Anne Hitt, Deputy Director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign

Very big news out of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this morning – the agency has determined that all 79 mountaintop removal mining permits submitted to them for review by the Army Corps of Engineers would violate the Clean Water Act. After eight long years of rubber-stamp permits being issued during the Bush Administration, this is one of the most dramatic and encouraging actions yet by the Obama Administration, and marks a welcome return of the rule of law to the coalfields of Appalachia.

Mountaintop removal – a devastating form of coal mining that involves blowing up mountains and dumping the former mountaintops into neighboring valleys, burying streams – is governed by a patchwork of laws and federal agencies. Permits to bury streams with mining waste are initially issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, but EPA has ultimate oversight and may veto Corps-issued permits if they fail to comply with the Clean Water Act. 

Another Forged Letter Found in ACCCE Scandal

Investigators have found yet another forged letter from lobbying firm Bonner & Associates (hired by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity) to Congressman Tom Perriello (D-VA). This time the faked letter speaking out against the American Clean Energy and Security Act was "sent" from a veterans group.

The details are all here in this article from the Washington Post. This is the 14th letter found since the scandal surfaced last month.

Dominoes Keep Falling for Clean Coal Coalition

Only a week after the nation's third largest utility, Duke Energy announced it was terminating its membership in the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), citing disagreement over clean energy legislation, another company has followed suit.

Alstom Power is joining Duke for similar reasons. From the NY Times/Greenwire article:

Alstom Power, a French company that makes parts for power plants and is working on carbon sequestration, said it is leaving ACCCE immediately. "We have resigned from ACCCE because of questions that have been raised about ACCCE's support for climate legislation," said Tim Brown, an Alstom spokesman. The French company, which is partnering with U.S. utilities on power-plant projects, said that it wants to "remove any doubt about our full support" for a climate bill.

Check out what Duke Energy said last week:

As the debate evolved, it became clear that there were some influential members who would never support climate legislation no matter what," Duke Spokesman Tom Williams told the press.

Duke has also withdrawn its membership in the National Association of Manufacturers for similar reasons; the NAM is currently running a misleading ad campaign against clean energy legislation.

Duke Energy and Alstom Power washing their hands of the coal lobby is welcome news.  ACCCE is trying to preserve the status quo for dirty coal, and they will do whatever it takes to keep things that way.

ACCCE doesn’t want any climate legislation and has actively been fighting the legislation using any means necessary. ACCCE contracted with Bonner & Associates - the lobbying firm that forged letters against ACES and otherwise tried to subvert the democratic process. Then ACES hired “Astroturf” firm like Lincoln Strategies.

The defections of Duke Energy and Alstom Power are a clear sign that this front group has gone too far--even for energy companies like Duke that are heavily invested in coal and have more coal plants under construction than any other utility. 

The big question now is why is General Electric staying in the coalition? Why is General Electric continuing to sully its name by associating with a coal front group that is under investigation by Congress for corrupting our democracy?  When will they realize that the coalition is trying to kill markets for clean energy, the very markets that GE allegedly cares about? 

New Coalition Forms for Clean Energy and Climate

Yesterday came the announcement of a great new coalition called "Clean Energy Works." It's comprised of more than 60 groups spanning environmental, union, veteran and religious organizations - and the coalition is aimed at passing strong clean energy legislation.

You can follow along with Clean Energy Works via its Twitter page, and read more about it in this Politico article, this Washington Post article, this Business Week article, this Denver Daily News article, and this Washington Independent article.

Meanwhile, some great research came out from NYU Law School's Institute for Policy Integrity today:

A non-partisan new analysis of the Waxman-Markey clean energy and climate bill finds that it will have economic benefits that will be worth at least twice as much, if not more, than what it will cost.

Read more in the Wall Street Journal article, which includes a link to the full report.

Good Green Jobs: Weatherization Event

While there is considerable concern about the speed of our green economic recovery (it just can't happen soon enough), public expectations for green job creation are high.

Key players are stepping up to help expand clean energy industries and maximize the benefits of federal recovery dollars: private businesses, non-profits, youth employment programs, community groups and labor unions. The $green$ from the federal government may provide a big boost, but the challenge is to jumpstart growing industries and secure long-term economic and environmental benefits.

Wednesday, down the street from the Sierra Club office in Washington, DC, a labor union turned up to help one couple address their steep energy bills and stay warm this winter. The Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) announced that its job training programs, training expertise and infrastructure would be directed toward upgrading, or "weatherizing," energy-inefficient homes.

A crew of newly trained workers tested their skills by sealing leaks and insulating walls in the 100-year old home owned by Amy Vruno and Chuck Roberts in the Trinidad neighborhood north of Capitol Hill.

I met Brian Salmon, 19, of southwest DC, at work on the house. A graduate of the DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services and Earth Conservation Corps, Salmon was excited to find work with the union weatherizing homes.

"To me, it's another step up," said Salmon. "People are spending a lot of money on gas and energy bills. We seal up the cracks."

Dawne George, 28, showed me the repair work her team was doing in the upstairs rooms of the old house. "I like to work with my hands and work with the community. I hope we can get more people to help us with the work."

With all the hands at work on this home, there was enough energy on this block to power a small wind turbine.

Sierra Club President Carl Pope was on site to welcome the announcement of LIUNA's weatherization training program, emphasizing the need to greatly expand building energy efficiency work and recognizing the union for its leadership in rebuilding America for the 21st century.

Copenhagen: It’s all about the money

 By Justin Guay

Wu-Tang unwittingly summed up one of the central problems preventing international action on climate change with their hit song: Cash Rules Everything Around Me (CREAM). The rap giants whose famous financial advice was to “diversify your bonds son!” is well heeded when it comes to the international politics of climate change. Financing is central to any deal that may come out of Copenhagen and not surprisingly developed countries like the United States have very different views on the issue compared to their counterparts in the developing world. These views hinge on two fundamental issues: who controls the money, and how much of it there is. In short, it’s all about CREAM.

For their part, developing countries are demanding that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) controls the flow of finance committed to a potential international deal in Copenhagen. They want and need this to happen, because without UNFCCC control they have no input into the crucial decisions on how the money is spent.

Their concerns reflect the decades of western-centric development aid that has been focused through a few high-powered channels-think the World Bank and the IMF-that have in many cases enriched western countries and contractors, while leaving developing countries worse off than they were prior-think Confessions of an Economic Hit man, large scale dams and the displacement of indigenous populations. Developing country negotiators are not fools; they understand how the West’s aid financing works and they are looking to circumvent the damaging ways of the past by increasing their control over future financial flows through the UNFCCC.

On top of concerns over how the money is spent, the actual dollar amount of financing needed for both mitigation and adaptation to climate change weighs heavily over the international negotiations. Estimates vary widely, however the commonly accepted numbers for mitigation and adaptation together range from $150-300 billion annually starting in 2020. That is until a host of recent reports challenged those numbers, including a new UN report  that finds that developing nations need a “$600 billion Marshall Plan to tackle climate change with support from rich nations on a scale not seen outside wartime recovery.”

The report is a global wake up call that we have been drastically underestimating the scale of financing needed to avert climate crisis. The UN report states that failure to finance low carbon development in countries like China and India, "runs the real danger of locking in dirtier investments for several more decades"-think the future of our planet, and existence as a species. Financing on this level is also not unprecedented-have we already forgotten the Wall Street bailout?

The hope of many in the international community is that a declaration at the G-20 in Pittsburgh later this month would address this crucial issue by pledging specific amounts to an international “green fund” to be included in a Copenhagen deal. Sadly, the likelihood of such a declaration is looking grimmer by the day. Developed countries like the United States are incredibly reluctant to commit to specific dollar amounts for a host of reasons including the recent financial crisis and stimulus package, as well as mounting domestic concerns about sending money and resources overseas during a recession.

Ultimately, financing is a question of priorities, not political realities. Our skewed priorities have created a rapidly evolving crisis and it is time that the public stands up and demands our politicians act, or pushes them out of the way. Of course that means following the money, because as Wu-tang knows, it’s all about CREAM y’all.

Duke Energy Leaves ACCCE

Here I was about to type up a post on the interesting energy news of the day, and then this big news came down. Duke Energy is leaving the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). This news was tacked on as an update in that article:

Duke Energy left the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy on Tuesday over differences with "influential member companies who will not support passing climate change legislation in 2009 or 2010," the company said.

I imagine we'll hear more soon about this, but we wanted to get that news up right away. There's not even anything up on on the Duke Energy website yet about this.

But seriously - how bad is ACCCE trying to spin the climate and energy bill debate when its own member groups are now leaving?

Anyway, in other energy news today, the oil industry is whining about not getting enough government money. Yes, you read that correctly. From that NY Times article:

“When is the last time the government gave a grant to the American Petroleum Institute to go out and tout the virtues of fossil fuel?” (said Daniel Kish, a spokesman for the Institute for Energy Research, a conservative group fighting the proposed emissions caps). “Last time I checked, the National Mining Association hasn’t gotten anything to educate people about the wonders of coal.”

Ah folks, you can't make this up.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Dept of Energy is awarding grants to renewable energy projects - they just handed out $503 million:

The 12 winning projects would be able to produce 840 megawatts of electricity, representing a 3 percent increase in total U.S. renewable electricity generation capacity, the Energy Department said. One megawatt powers about 800 homes.

Next up, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is now backtracking on its claims that doesn't believe the science behind global warming. If you'll remember, last week a Chamber official called for a huge public hearing on the science of global warming, saying it'd be the next Scopes monkey trial. Now he's taking that back and saying they actually do believe in global warming and want action on it. Mm hmm.

And finally, an article in the NY Times discusses venture capital for green energy projects. It's an interesting take on funding projects of which a majority are expected to fail.

"Collateral" Damage - Boulder Rolls into Kentucky Home

We already know that streams don't matter to the coal industry. Clean Water? Overrated. Mountains and natural beauty are similarly torn apart, removed, for the sake of black gold, the desecrated landscape someone else's problem. Most often, it's the locals who pay the price, folks who usually have little say in the coal industries decisions.

With this lack of concern for the well-being of others, this photo shouldn't surprise any of us.

From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

State mining officials have fined a blasting contractor $10,000 for an explosion last week that sent a large boulder tumbling downhill and into a Floyd County home. 

...

A boulder measuring about 4 feet wide, 9 feet high and 6 feet deep rolled downhill after a blast Friday afternoon and crashed into a home knocking it off the foundation and damaging its rear. No one was home at the time and no injuries were reported.

Can you blame them? Dumping waste into streambed and valleys is fine. What's a little rock that hits a home that, thankfully, was empty at the time.

$10,000 is barely two coal-train cars of coal.

Sign our petition and let's end Mountaintop Removal Mining.

More photos below the fold, courtesy Lauren McGrath.

Big Oil's "Voices for Energy"

From Natalie Gaber, Sierra Club Media Intern

I don’t know about you, but I really hate being lied to. It bothers me almost as much as when I see someone put a plastic bottle in the garbage can when there is a recycling bin literally 2 feet away. So, needless to say, Big Oil’s latest campaign to take down federal climate legislation, which has more factual holes in it than Swiss cheese, really irked me.

Valero’s “Voices for Energy” campaign webpage, patriotically themed and adorned with snazzy images of the American flag and Uncle Sam, wastes no time in getting to the lies. The first paragraph ends with the statement, “If this type of climate legislation becomes law, it will have enormous negative impact on the economy, the consumer and the refining industry.”

Specifically, Valero claims that, “The hidden tax on commodities imposed by this legislation will lead to a significant increase in the price of gasoline and other energy sources, and more than a million job losses in our already crippled economy - with no measurable improvement on global climate change.” They then go on to assert that, “If Congress passes cap & trade legislation, YOU WILL PAY THE PRICE. ‘Cap and trade’ will cost you 77 cents or more a gallon.” Conspicuously absent from this bold declaration, however, is a source for this information.

Where to begin with poking holes in these arguments?

Persistence Stops A Train - and Global Warming Slowed

This is the weekly post from Bruce Nilles, director of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign.

A massive new rail line planned to move millions of tons of low-grade coal from northeastern Wyoming to the Midwest has been stopped. For more than 9 years Sierra Club and our allies have been battling plans by Dakota Minnesota& Eastern Railroad Corp. (DM&E) to build this new coal line and late yesterday DM&E announced the project is “on hold.”

 
The $6 billion rail line would have carried 100 million tons of coal annually, enough to power about 50 coal plants.  If burned, the coal shipped by this rail line alone would have emitted approximately 200 million tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of adding about 40 million cars to our highways.  By stopping this coal line we are ever closer to averting runaway global warming and jumpstarting a clean energy revolution.
 
Let’s put those numbers in perspective. Stopping this one rail line may be one of the biggest steps we have ever taken to slow global warming. For the U.S. to do its part to stop global warming, we have to reduce our carbon run-rate by upwards of 200 million tons each year.  This one victory has thus bought us a full year's worth of progress – not that we should stop here, of course.  
 
This decision is also further evidence that coal is on its way out. The risk of financing coal ventures, future carbon regulations, the Obama Administration closing the loopholes coal enjoys in mining, burning and ash disposal, and competition from affordable and reliable clean energy options clearly spells trouble for coal.

The Sierra Club beat back this project in 2002 when we and our allies persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit that the Bush Administration had failed to consider the global warming impacts of this new train line. This decision stands as one of the first global warming cases in our nation.  After the Bush Administration agreed this project might have some impact on global warming, the legal challenges continued.

Throughout the years of legal wrangling we worked with a broad coalition of landowners and public health advocates - including the Mayo Clinic in Rochester - that did not want coal trains running through its back yard.  

Stopping this ill-conceived coal line continues a welcome and recent trend. In just the past few weeks we've seen decisions not only to abandon plans for new coal plants, but also existing coal plants being retired and replaced with cleaner alternatives.
 
Last week Ohio Edison Co. announced it would slash coal burning at its R.E. Burger coal plant in Shadyside, Ohio, and replace the coal with biomass due to a pollutant-lowering agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
 
This past Monday, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) entered the twentieth century when it announced that it will study whether it should close the John Sevier coal plant in Rogersville, Tenn., and six units of its Widows Creek Fossil Plant in Stevenson, Alabama.
 
Just one day later, Progress Energy made public plans to close three coal plants in North Carolina. The coal plants would be replaced with a clean-burning natural gas power plant.  Progress Energy cited "changing emission targets and the likelihood of legislation to reduce carbon emissions" as a reason for the switch.
 
This week we also celebrated the 101st proposed coal plant being defeated.  For more than a year we, along with our allies, have been battling Santee Cooper’s planned Pee Dee coal plant in South Carolina. Apparently someone at Santee Cooper finally updated the cost of coal and realized that global warming regulation was imminent.  
 
All that, and we can see why the Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced recently that coal use in the United States has plummeted in the past year. Whereas coal provided more than 55 percent of our electricity in May 1985 in May of this year it only provided 42.5% of U.S. electricity. It’s a welcome downward trend for coal, and we will be doing everything we can to replace the remaining dirty coal with clean energy even faster in the future.

Everyone Else is Doing It...

In today's news there are some good examples of people taking energy and global warming issues into their own hands. First, in Los Angeles, residents have taken enough measures to reduce energy usage by the amount it would take to power 53,000 homes. That decreased power usage also equates to more than 178,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases not being pumped into our atmosphere. You can read more stats on these savings in the press release. Nice job, Los Angelinos!

Meanwhile, green building continues to expand as people see the benefits for their wallets and the planet. The Green Building Certification Institute just reported that its new credentialing program is extremely popular. From the news release:

More than 1600 green building professionals have already signed up to participate in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Credentialing Maintenance Program since it was launched just three weeks ago, according to The Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI). The maintenance program, which supports the LEED AP and LEED Green Associate credentials, ensures that LEED professionals in the field are up to date with the most relevant and useful information by requiring a commitment to ongoing participation in green building project, learning and service activities.

Not bad at all!

And finally, as we sit here in the U.S. and twiddle our thumbs over passing final clean energy and climate legislation, China's lawmakers are calling for emissions reductions legislation of their own. So much for that argument of China not taking action on their own. Yes, we hope this isn't lip service, but you have to start somewhere.

Tuesday News Round-Up

Here is some energy news making the rounds today. First up, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is getting a little ridiculous on its crusade against clean energy and climate legislation. They're now asking the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a large public trial about the science of global warming. From the LA Times article:

Chamber officials say it would be "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" -- complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect.

"It would be evolution versus creationism," said William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs. "It would be the science of climate change on trial."

Wow.

After picking my jaw up off the floor, I then found the New York Times OpEd by energy "consultant" Michael Lynch entitled "'Peak Oil' is a Waste of Energy." Lynch takes the two-page OpEd to discuss what he sees as errors in the arguments of those who think our days of using oil are rapidly approaching their end due to peak oil. The folks in the comments section of the piece do an excellent job of debunking his debunking attempt, so be sure to check that out as well.

So while we fight for action against a U.S. Chamber of Commerce that still wants to debate global warming science and an energy "consultant" who thinks we're just fine using as much oil as we can possibly get our hands on - we then have articles like this one from USA Today: "Report: Future U.S. Heat Waves Will Be Worse." That report comes on the heels of last week's from the National Climactic Data Center, which stated that the world's ocean temperatures are the warmest ever recorded.

Look, folks, global warming is happening, and its effects are only going to get worse if we sit around twiddling our thumbs and trying to defend our current energy-guzzling and over-consumption lifestyles. Changes need to be made at all levels.

In other interesting news notes, be sure to read this NY Times article on China becoming a leader in solar panel production, and this Economist article on just how much carbon all our computing emits.

USGA: Mercury in Fish Endemic

By Natalie Gaber, Sierra Club Media Intern

It is common knowledge that the toxic substances spewed from coal power plants lead to respiratory problems for those who inhale them, but did you know that coal plants are also responsible for the dangerous levels of mercury in the fish we eat?

A seven-year study by the U.S. Geological Survey released last week —the most comprehensive study of its kind-- revealed that the nation’s streams are filled with mercury-contaminated fish. Every single fish in the 291 streams tested contained mercury, and about 25% of the fish were found to have mercury levels in excess of what the EPA considers to be safe for human consumption.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “Oh, that’s not so bad. How much harm can a little mercury do?”, then please allow me to share with you some frightening facts about mercury and its effect on humans:

• Every year, one in six women of childbearing age in the United States has mercury levels in her blood high enough to put her baby at risk of developmental harm, including brain damage and mental retardation. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, nationwide as many as 630,000 infants are born every year with unsafe mercury levels.

• High mercury levels in men can lead to increased risk of heart disease.

So how exactly did this happen? Where did all this mercury come from? The answer, unsurprisingly, can be traced back to our favorite villain: the coal industry. Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of toxic mercury pollution in the U.S, emitting 42% of the country’s industrial mercury pollution.

Mercury’s journey from coal plants to your bloodstream goes like this: Coal-fired power plants release mercury into our air. The mercury rains down into our lakes, rivers and streams. Fish ingest the mercury. You ingest the fish, thus filling your body with toxic mercury. Yum.

The Clock has Started Ticking on Mountaintop Removal Mining Permits

This blog post co-written by Bruce Nilles and Mary Anne Hitt, Director and Deputy Director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign.

We’ve just learned that the clock has started ticking on more than 80 new mountaintop removal coal mining permits in Appalachia. We are told that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may start approving these permits within the next month – or even sooner. All this is according to a timeline set in an agreement between EPA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Department of Interior.

According to that agreement, once the Army Corps has handed over all pertinent information about the permits, EPA will have 60 days to decide which permits concern the agency, and all the rest will be allowed to go forward. That 60-day countdown has now begun.

If you’ll remember, early in the Obama Administration, EPA announced it would be reviewing all mountaintop removal mining permits before approving any – a sign of what we thought was perhaps the beginning of the end for the destructive practice that levels mountain peaks, poisons drinking water and destroys communities.

Dirty Energy Behind the Clean Energy Protests

Today's NY Times has an excellent article about the oil companies behind all the protests to the clean energy and climate legislation in Congress. The article discusses the industry front group Energy Citizens and its campaign to undermine any legislation that would restrict its emissions.

If you're interested in the list of which organizations sponsor Energy Citizens, check out this long list of names from Media Matters. Highlights include the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Farm Bureau, the National Association of Manufacturers, and a whole bunch of state coal associations.

But, back to this NY Times article:

For its part, the oil industry plans to raise the pressure in coming weeks through its public rallies so that it can negotiate more favorable terms in the Senate than it got in the House. The strategy was outlined by the American Petroleum Institute in a memorandum sent to its members, which include Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips. The memorandum, not meant for the public, was obtained by the environmental group Greenpeace last week.

“It’s a clear political hit campaign,” said Kert Davies, the research director at Greenpeace.

In the memorandum, the president and chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, Jack N. Gerard, said that the aim of the rallies was to send a “loud message” to the Senate. He said the rallies should focus on higher energy costs and jobs. “It’s important that our views be heard,” Mr. Gerard wrote.

Want to read that memo? Talking Points has it on their website.

This is just another example of the dirty energy industry "astroturf" campaign trying to undermine real grassroots work by Americans.

New Green Building Report Released

As we approach the 4th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, the Sierra Club today released a new report analyzing the green rebuilding efforts under way in New Orleans. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina has provided the city of New Orleans with a unique opportunity to develop a national model for rebuilding green.

This "New Orleans Green Building Assessment" (PDF) report examines the current and former green building efforts in New Orleans, noting partnerships and potential strategies for improvement throughout.

"This assessment documents and merges the disparate green building efforts into one central location and successfully fulfilled its stated goals," said environmental justice organizer Darryl Malek-Wiley at a press conference held today in New Orleans to release the report.

"Moving forward, this document provides a foundation for the city to develop a 'best practices' model for rebuilding green, focusing on the city’s existing and emerging partnerships."

The report's five goals are to

• profile key agencies;
• catalog current and former green building projects;
• evaluate the capacity and needs of each business and organization;
• assess the current green building situation;
• and develop a directory of local green building service providers.

I took a gander at the 53-page report, and it's fantastic. Really expansive, in-depth and helpful for anyone looking into that important part of rebuilding New Orleans.

The Netroots Nation Experience

As many of you know (if you were following my livetweeting) this past week I was one of Sierra Club's representatives at Netroots Nation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Netroots Nation brings together the best and brightest in the Progressive world of issue politics, social media, online organizing and good old fashioned activism.

With a group this wide and diverse, it's no surprise that there was such a wide range of panels and activities. The environmental movement was strongly represented, with panels such as "Building the Blue-Green Movement Online," "Climate and Security," "Copenhagen and the Web," and many more.

Sierra Club also played a large role at Netroots. The highlight was a longwall mining tour organized by Sierra Club Environmental Justice Organizer Bill Price and our friends at the SW Pennsylvania based Center for Coalfield Justice. Participants, who visited a former recreational lake that had to be drained due to Longwall Mining making the nearby damn unsafe, and met with residents who've had their homes and livelihoods devastated by the coal companies, called the tour eye-opening, and left with an even greater understand of how dirty the coal business really is.

Immediately afterwards, in the third showcase, Netroots Nations patrons got a sneak preview of Coal Country. Evening drinks were provided by Greenpeace, who called on all of us to come together to ensure that we don't lose this opportunity to bring the environmental agenda to the forefront.

With a new President, even amidst the economic recession, there was a sense that we need to come together to get our goals accomplished. And that together, we can accomplish what we've only dreamed about for so many years. But that success is not guaranteed.

Were you at Netroots? What did you think? Comment below and let us know.

Monday Morning News Round-Up

Good morning, folks. Here are some good news stories to get your brain working.

First up, an interesting NY Times story out of Utah, where a Native American tribe is investing in biofuels made from algae: "A New Test for Business and Biofuel." From the story:

The Southern Utes, one of the nation’s wealthiest American Indian communities thanks to its energy and real-estate investments, is a major investor in the professor’s company. It hopes to gain a toehold in what tribal leaders believe could be the next billion-dollar energy boom.

But from the tribe’s perspective, the business model here is about more than business. “It’s a marriage of an older way of thinking into a modern time,” said the tribe’s chairman, Matthew J. Box, referring to the interplay of environmental consciousness and investment opportunity around algae.

While we don't work with that specific tribe, the Sierra Club Environmental Justice and Community Partnerships program works closely with tribal groups on clean energy projects in Arizona and New Mexico. You may have even read recently how the Navajo Nation voted for clean energy.

Next up is another NY Times story, this one done with ClimateWire. In "Clean Technology May Trump Tough Emissions Control, Jount U.S.-China Study Says," a report out from the Center for Clean Air Policy says "...hard emissions caps, or even caps on emissions per unit of gross domestic product, are difficult to actualize in developing countries because often, data simply do not exist or are not good enough."

And then, related to the current climate legislation debate, a Washington Post story shows that the climate bill needs certain language to make sure old coal-fired power plants aren't allowed to keep up with their dirty ways. Our own Carl Pope discussed this problem of grandfathering coal-fired power plants as it related to the Clean Air Act - check out his Grist column, saying that we can't make the same mistake.

And did you see the latest report from the Energy Information Administration? Net U.S. electrical generation from renewable sources (biomass, geothermal, solar, hydro, and wind) reached an all-time high in May of 2009, comprising 13% of the total electrical generation for the month. And coal hit an all-time low - now generating only 42.5% of U.S. electricity.

Finally, a conservation group is seeking federal stimulus money to replant millions of trees on land destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia. From the story:

The goal is to put back trees on hundreds of thousands of acres where they once stood, but which coal companies reclaimed as grassland after surface mining over the last three decades. The plan could boost the economy in one of the nation's most chronically poor areas, ultimately providing an estimated 2,000 jobs for forestry technicians, tree-planters, bulldozer operators and others, backers estimate.

So, how 'bout you - seen any news worth sharing today?

Netroots Nation LiveBlog

Netroots Nation Liveblogging

Hey Everyone - Sierra Club has a huge presence at this year's Netroots Nation conference. With folks on two panels, screening our brand new Coal Country film, to our tour of regional longwall coal mining sites (an especially devastating practice). It's the greenest Netroots Nation ever, so it's natural that Sierra Club its natural that Sierra Club is playing such a big role.

What is Netroots Nation? It's the largest gathering of online activists, social media progressives, and other interested in using new media and technology in pushing progressive causes such as Health Care, Union rights, and, of course, Climate and Energy policy.

Check back here at Compass and Climate Crossroad throughout the next four days for live updates on what's happening here at Netroots. The latest big news - Bill Clinton is coming!

VICTORY: Dynegy Out of the New Coal Business

This is the weekly post from Bruce Nilles, director of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign.

Three years ago Dynegy launched plans to partner with LS Power and become the largest new developer of coal-fired power plants.  Yesterday Dynegy officially terminated those plans, including selling its shares in a coal-fired power plant currently under construction

Coal is again proving to be a bad investment.  Dynegy announced yesterday that the company is essentially going to lose $100 million as it sells its portion of the Texas Sandy Creek coal plant back to LS Power.  But they decided a $100 million loss was better than continuing to be involved in the expensive and risky project.

Dynegy is still trying to sell their stake in the Arkansas Plum Point coal plant, also under construction. There have been no takers so far, which most likely means more losses to come.

Dynegy and LS Power’s joint venture, launched in the fall of 2006, was supposed to build at least seven new coal plants.  But in February 2008, Sierra Club responded with what would become our most successful national grassroots and corporate accountability campaign to date. We focused on the six states where Dynegy proposed their coal plants—AR, IA, GA, MI, NV and TX. 

The campaign included a national letter-writing and email campaign to their CEO; and a website specifically targeting Dynegy. We coordinated our efforts with several partner organizations. In addition to thousands of letters, emails, and phone calls, we organized numerous local protests in the states, including a major rally with a broad coalition outside of Dynegy’s annual shareholder meeting in Houston. We also met with Dynegy’s CEO twice—once in their Washington, D.C. lawyers’ offices and once in Sierra Club’s Chicago office.

Although two of the plants had already started construction, Dynegy’s CEO soon admitted that new coal plants were uneconomic.  And in January 2009 Dynegy announced that they were pulling out of the joint venture, a move which was finally closed yesterday.  Dynegy is now out of building new coal plants, and LS Power can’t find anybody to purchase power from their last proposed coal plant in Georgia.  

We know that the once-unabashed coal booster Dynegy is now out of the dirty new coal business – and the financial struggles show how bad a choice coal is. Let’s hope companies still supporting coal see the light from this (We’re looking at you, Blackstone Group).

More Dirty Politics

Ugh, after a week of exposed dirty tactics (ACCCE's forged letters), Media Matters is pulling back the veil on some more low-down work.

This time it's the oil and gas industry funding disruptive turnout to various town halls organized by members of Congress. Read more in the Media Matters post "Oil and Gas Industries Fuel Unruly Town Hall Meetings."

It's sad, but no big surprise. Of course those receiving millions from these industries will do all they can to stop clean energy legislation. The oil, gas and coal industries want to continue with their handouts and loopholes and will do all they can to protect the status quo. Read the Media Matters post and learn the reality!

ACCCE’s Fraudulent Phone Calls

By Natalie Gaber, Sierra Club Media Intern

If you thought this whole forged-letter from the coal industry scandal couldn’t get any more, well, scandalous, then get a load of this. It turns out that fraud and deception are nothing new for ACCCE, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which is the coal lobby group behind the forged letters sent to three Congressmen urging them to vote against the House climate bill.

As it turns out, ACCCE has been up to no good since at least May of last year, when the Institute for Southern Studies reported that the lobby group was placing phone calls urging people to oppose the Lieberman-Warner bill on climate change (S. 2191). The bill, which would have created a federal cap-and-trade system, was under consideration in the Senate at the time. These calls wouldn’t be such a big deal, except for the fact that ACCCE was having a bit of trouble keeping its story straight on the calls.

One recipient of ACCCE’s calls was Pete MacDowell, who was working with the North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, an organization opposed to coal. From Southern Studies:

“They wanted to add my name to a fax to Senators Lieberman and Warner asking them leave it up to the states to decide how to respond to climate change rather than drive up our utility rates. When I asked who ABEC was, I was told that they were individuals concerned about utility rates. When I asked if they were an environmental group, the answer was "yes." When I asked whether they were related to the utilities, the answer was "No." When I asked to find out more about them I was directed to their website. When I told the lady that they were the coal lobby, they said that they did believe in "clean coal."

The caller’s claim that ABEC was independent of the utilities was a flat out lie, because ABEC, and later ACCCE, were and still are funded by the coal industry. Is it any surprise, then, that the organization behind these calls and the deceptive “Clean Coal” advertising blitz, is also connected to the recent forged letters scandal and attempt to deceive members of Congress? It’s unclear whether Bonner and Associates, the firm hired by ACCCE to send the faked letters was also the mastermind behind the calls, but judging from the firm’s sullied history, I wouldn’t put it past them.

JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon: Time to Walk the Talk on Coal

This post is co-written by Mark Kresowik, Corporate Responsibility Representative for the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon professes profound concern for our future.  He has made numerous statements about how his company supports strong action on global warming. He waxes eloquently about how JP Morgan Chase is committed to investments in clean energy and he wants policy makers to provide leadership on curbing emissions of global warming.   

But Sierra Club’s diligent researchers have pulled back the curtain and uncovered that his rhetoric doesn’t match his company’s action.  JPMorgan Chase is pouring billions of dollars into dirty coal plant projects - projects that would dramatically increase global warming pollution and ensure runaway global warming.

At the same time, JPMorgan Chase is the big money financing the most egregious mining companies engaging in the most egregious mining practices. Specifically, JPMorgan Chase is financing Massey Energy and three of the four largest mountaintop removal coal mining companies in America.  Mountaintop removal coal mining involves blowing up the country’s oldest mountain range in Appalachia, leaving a desolate and polluted landscape.  More than 500 mountains have already been leveled and more than 2,000 miles of streams buried.

With such promises about global warming and being a good energy steward – why is JPMorgan Chase financing massive new dirty coal plants in Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina and South Dakota?

To help expose the disconnect between Jamie Dimon’s words and actions, we are launching a public education campaign to ask him to walk the talk.  We are delighted to be joined in this effort with our partners at Rainforest Action Network, the Waterkeeper Alliance, and the New York Public Interest Research Group. 

If you are outraged that one of America’s leading banks is betting on dirty coal, please take a minute to watch this short video our ever creative team put together.  It grabs clips of Mr. Dimon’s statements on clean energy and contrasts that with the dirty coal companies they are financing. 

Then please take a minute to click on this link and send an email to CEO Jamie Dimon urging him to kick the dirty coal habit. 

Conversation with Nancy Sutley of White House CEQ

Sierra Club columnist Javier Sierra recently had the opportunity to sit down for a conversation with Nancy Sutley, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. He wrote a column on this discussion, which you can read on his Sierra Club page. But we also wanted to provide the complete transcript right here for you to read and enjoy. Thanks for sharing, Javier!

QUESTIONS FOR NANCY SUTLEY
HEAD OF WHITE HOUSE COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
July 31, 2009

Q: There is a theme that resonates throughout the Obama administration’s environmental agencies: environmentalism has to do not only with protecting nature but also with protecting communities and their health. Can you please elaborate on this?

A: I think that this is very true. I always thought that people care about the environment that they experience… and they’re concerned about the environment they experience. So for people who are Latinos or anything else […] what's going on around [them] and are now confronting the climate change that puts us all at risk. It's important to remember that the environment affects us all; whether it's confronting pollution in our cities, or harm to our watersheds. It affects our water supply, for people or for agriculture, things like that, there's a way that the environment affects us all every day. And another thing, I think that the President believes and the administration believes that the environment and the economy and our energy future are all tied together. Our prosperity in the 21st Century is linked to our ability to move to a cleaner energy economy, and that’s good for an economic future and good for the planet.

Q: Latinos are disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation. According to a Sierra Club national survey, 66 percent of us live dangerously close to a toxic site. What initiatives is your office putting in place to address this terrible problem?

A: Across the administration and the President as well have the strong initiative that our environmental policies must be based on science and the law. Not on who it may [effect more]. We should base it on science and the law. For Latinos, that means a focus of having regulators and enforcers back on the job, I think [Environmental Protection Agency's] Lisa Jackson said that on many occasions. That EPA is back [is] very good news for Latinos and other people who live in areas in which they face significant environmental and public health risks. So for example, in the recovery act, we put money for the Superfund program to accelerate the clean up of Superfund sites. This has been a long-standing issue: toxic sites not being cleaned up. We are reinvigorating EPA’s brownfields program, which also provides for economic development in areas where an industry has picked up and moved and left behind a mess and there’s no opportunity to bring the economic development back. There’s a lot going on at the EPA and the government which really does focus on this. The science and law are going to guide us, really going to guide us to a place where we’re doing a better job of protecting people’s health.

Vote With Your Dollars

Guest post by Shannon Goggin, Global Warming and Energy Team

There has been a great deal of buzz around Washington and the rest of the United States this summer as historic climate legislation has been working its way through the House and the Senate. Turning such legislation into law will be an incredibly important step on our way to a new clean energy economy and fighting climate change on a large scale.

This type of legislation, however, is not the only tool we have at our disposal. There are over 300 million people in the United States, and nearly 7 billion in the world. While the actions of an individual may appear to have little impact on the environment, the actions of millions have a great one. As we continue to fight for comprehensive climate legislation, we should remember that there is a second way to vote: with our dollars.

Climate Counts is an organization launched by Stonyfield Farm CEO Gary Hirschberg. Each year, Climate Counts publishes the Climate Counts Scorecard, which ranks companies on a scale from 0-100 based on criteria of whether they have measured their carbon footprint, set targets to reduce their impact, supported progressive climate legislation, and publicly disclosed their climate actions. The Climate Counts Scorecard gives consumers information about the companies they buy from, and lets them vote with their dollars.

Climate Counts has reported that 84% of the companies scored improved from 2007 to 2008, and many of them attributed part of it to hearing directly from consumers who were not happy with their Climate Counts score. Your voice, and your dollars, can make a huge difference. Go out and spend your money- on something that won’t end up costing even more later.

Big Savings From Energy Efficiency Investment

Research organization McKinsey & Company released a report last week detailing the massive savings the U.S. could receive if it invested heavily in energy efficiency. From the report:

The research shows that the U.S. economy has the potential to reduce annual non-transportation energy consumption by roughly 23 percent by 2020, eliminating more than $1.2 trillion in waste – well beyond the $520 billion upfront investment (not including program costs) that would be required. The reduction in energy use would also result in the abatement of 1.1 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions annually – the equivalent of taking the entire U.S. fleet of passenger vehicles and light trucks off the roads.

Wow - that's a lot of savings in money and global warming pollution. The power of efficiency! The EPA and U.S. Green Building Council (PDF) have already commented on the report, too.

Forging Letters to Beat Clean Energy?

UPDATE: Big surprise, coal is linked to this. We have copies of these forged letters and they say "Virginia gets 56% of its energy from coal."

More to come!

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Oh for shame, lobbyists. An investigation has found that a lobbying firm forged letters from the NAACP and a Hispanic community organization in Charlottesville, Virginia, saying that the organizations opposed the American Clean Energy and Security Act. The forged letters went to Congressman Tom Perriello (D-VA 5th) and as expected, the community groups are incensed (as are the rest of us).

Neither of the groups oppose the bill.

The guilty lobbying firm is Bonner & Associates, who is calling it a "mistake." Um, yeah. To say the least. We're all waiting to find out who paid the firm to do this.

If it's getting to the point where our opposition is forging letters opposing clean energy - what's next?

Michigan to Granholm: We Want Clean Energy

This is the weekly post from Bruce Nilles, director of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign.

Yesterday, under a beautiful summer day in Lansing, Michigan, more than 500 activists from all corners of the state lent their voices to a call for a massive investment in clean energy and moving the state beyond coal.

Clean Energy Now, a coalition made up of over 40 environmentalist groups including Sierra Club, organized this Rally for Clean Energy Jobs to support Michigan’s clean energy future – and as a grassroots response to the proposal of new coal plants in Michigan.

The rally speakers and activists in particular took aim at plans in Michigan to build at least six more massive coal plants.

These plants would eliminate any market for clean energy and derail Governor Jennifer Granholm's bold vision to put Michiganders to works producing a clean energy manufacturing boom, not only to meet the state's energy needs as the state retires its old fleet of coal plants, but also to export around the world to help other states and other countries do their part to cut pollution, including dangerous emissions of carbon dioxide.

At the rally, citizens spoke out for a clean energy economy in Michigan, which will create jobs and bring money into the state, rather than the construction of new coal plants, which will continue to weaken our economy.

Michigan residents want Gov. Granholm to get that message loud and clear: No more coal – We want clean energy!

We also had a lot of fun – as people listened to great musicians, browsed informational tables from various clean energy industries, used our communications tent to send in comments and letters to Governor Granholm, signed our clean energy petition, and even threw a few baseballs at dunk tank where we had folks dressed up as various dirty energy villains.

But clearly the fight for clean energy won’t be over any time soon. For now, all eyes are on Michigan. Can it harness its legions of highly skilled workers and legendary manufacturing base into a clean energy power house, or will it go the route of 19th-century coal technology and export its dollars to line the coal barons' pockets in Appalachia?

Governor Granholm can help make this happen by choosing clean energy now instead of coal.

Reaching Across the Aisle, Getting Kicked in the Back

Guest post by Shannon Goggin, Global Warming and Energy Intern

As we know all too well, the polarization between the Republican and Democratic parties ranges from predictable to counterproductive. As the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) worked its way through the House of Representatives, it was clear that winning any Republican votes would be difficult, if not impossible. When the bill finally passed with a tight margin of  219-212, just 8 Republicans had voted “aye.” 

That was an extremely bold vote. These 8 Congressmen and women are especially brave given the overwhelmingly negative messaging coming from Republican opponents of this bill. Calling it a tax bill, opponents uniformly dismissed its significant investment in America’s clean energy future. That investment will help get us off of foreign oil and develop a growing sector of the American economy which will provide us with sustainable jobs that cannot be shipped overseas. 

For their willingness to stand up for what is right, these Republicans have been assaulted and slandered by their own party, called traitors and given an arbitrary deadline by which to reverse their votes. They stuck to their guns, however, and now they could use a kind word. 

Here they are:

• Mary Bono Mack

• Mike Castle

• Mark Kirk

• John McHugh

• Frank LoBiondo

• Leonard Lance

• Dave Reichert

• Chris Smith

Especially if you live in their district, show them that they need not fear voting for a clean energy future. Thank them for their vote! Write to them now.