Spokane Speaks Out Against Coal Exports

Eight hundred people turned out in Spokane on December 4 to the fifth of seven "scoping hearings" across Washington State on the environmental review process for a proposed coal export facility at Cherry Point, 400 railroad miles to the west on the Washington coast.

"Of the 800 people who came to debate the merits of the Gateway Pacific Terminal, I'd estimate at least 700 were opposed," says Crystal Gartner, a Spokane-based organizer for the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign. "A sea of red 'No Coal Exports' t-shirts dominated the hearing venue."

The Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Exports campaign, working as part of the Power Past Coal coalition, has been organizing opposition to the coal export terminal and the vastly increased number of coal trains that would transport coal in open cars from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana to the coast.

Sierra Club organizers Crystal Gartner, Mike Scott, Krista Collard, Marc Heileson, and Cesia Kearns

Over the past year, Sierra Club volunteers and staff in Spokane have gone door-to-door to hundreds of homes, made phone calls to thousands of local residents, and collected over a thousand petition signatures opposing the coal export terminal in advance of the December 4 hearing.

"Spokane is the choke-point for all rail traffic in the Inland Northwest," Gartner says. More than 60 coal trains a day carrying coal in open cars would pass through the city if the coal export terminals now being proposed are built.

The Indianapolis Two Thousand

That's right, the Indy 2,000—as in two thousand petitions the Sierra Club delivered to Indianapolis Power & Light (IPL) on November 28, marking the official launch of the Club's Indianapolis Beyond Coal campaign. The petitions call on the electrical utility to retire its Harding Street coal plant, one of the dirtiest coal-burning power plants in the nation.

[Click on the image above to watch a video about the Harding Street plant.]

Indiana Beyond Coal organizer Megan Anderson, below at center, holding stack of petitions, was among the roughly 50 activists who rallied in downtown Indy and delivered the petitions to IPL headquarters.

"The Harding Street coal plant is less than seven miles from the heart of Indianapolis," Anderson said. "We collected the petition signatures over the past two months. Right now everything is on the line—decisions being made right now will determine our energy future for decades to come."

Photo courtesy of NUVO News

The Harding Street Station, as the plant is officially known, is the largest source of carbon pollution in Indianapolis. The Clean Air Task Force attributes 75 deaths, 120 heart attacks, and 1,300 asthma attacks each year to the plant's toxic emissions.

"While other utilities across the country move toward clean energy solutions like wind power and energy efficiency, IPL wants to charge customers millions of dollars to stay dependent on coal and continue to expose Indianapolis to toxic coal pollution," Anderson, at left, said at the November 28 rally.

"These upgrades will fail to address dangerous carbon pollution and coal ash. Indianapolis has a better vision for a clean energy future that protects both our health and our utility rates."

Anderson spearheaded the petition drive and recruited Sierra Club members and others to be "letter captains." Leading up to the petition delivery, Club volunteers and staff held phone banks, produced fact sheets, did online and social media outreach, and tabled and canvassed with volunteers at events in Indianapolis and other locales around central Indiana to gather petition signatures.

Big Tar Sands Rally in Washington, D.C.

On Sunday, November 18, Sierra Club president Allison Chin joined 350.org founder Bill McKibben and 3,000 other demonstrators in Washington, D.C., for a march on the White House and a rally against tar sands development and the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

The demonstration, organized by 350.org, the Sierra Club, and other public interest groups, followed a 350.org "Do the Math" climate event at Washington's historic Warner Theater.

Marchers carried a 500-foot-long "oil pipeline" and held signs with quotes from President Obama about his commitment to tackling the climate crisis. Among them was his comment on election night: "We want our children to live in an America that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet."

"We're asking the president to reject the Keystone XL pipeline," said Chin, below with McKibben at Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington. "But we're also asking him to embrace a positive, solution-oriented climate legacy. Mr. President, the tar sands are your climate legacy—it's what you do here that history will remember."

Oregon Activists Fired Up to Fight Natural Gas Exports

It's hard to imagine the mouth of the Columbia River, where American explorers Lewis and Clark traversed during the 19th century, being overrun with a huge natural-gas export terminal and massive pipelines, just to stuff the pockets of dirty-energy companies.

But as crazy as that sounds, a proposal to build this terminal and its pipelines is in the works, along with another one in southern Oregon. And if you're at all involved in the movement to stop natural gas companies from exporting their product to lucrative foreign markets, then you have an ally in Ted Gleichman, a Portland resident who is doing everything he can to keep the natural legacy of Oregon and the Columbia River intact.

"The challenge is fighting multi-billion dollar projects that create short-term jobs but at a very high direct environmental cost, in terms of damage to Columbia River estuaries and the damage pipelines at the width of interstate highways will do," Gleichman says.

The proposal along the Columbia is for a $7.1 billion set of projects that would connect natural gas drilling and fracking in Canada and the Rockies to an export terminal near historic Astoria, Oregon, to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Asia -- where the price is five times the price in North America. More than 200 miles of enormous pipelines would run south from the Canadian border through Washington state, tunnel under the Columbia River, and cut through northwestern Oregon to a massive industrial plant -- complete with three 20-story gas-storage tanks -- at the heart of salmon breeding grounds.

Activists at a recent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission hearing.

Gleichman and other Sierra Club activists are helping to lead the charge to stop this export proposal, and another in southern Oregon. They've joined a coalition of other organizations -- Columbia Riverkeeper, Rogue Riverkeeper, Earthjustice, to name a few -- that are wondering what this barrage of natural gas and Big Coal export proposals would mean for the Columbia River and the Oregon forests and coastline.

Huge Turnout in Washington State for Hearing on Coal Export Terminal

On Saturday, October 27, an estimated 2,000 people stood in line for hours in the pouring rain in Bellingham, Washington, to participate in the first of seven public hearings to gather public feedback on the proposed Cherry Point coal export terminal near Bellingham.

"Citizens opposing the terminal overwhelmingly dominated the hearing," says Cesia Kearns, an organizer with the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign. "Only about 30 people spoke in favor of the project, and most of them were Gateway Pacific Terminal staff."

The Sierra Club and its partners in the Power Past Coal coalition have been preparing for over a year for the "scoping hearings," which will define the scope of the environmental impact statement for the Cherry Point terminal. The Club and its allies succeeded in securing multiple scoping hearings throughout Washington State.

"We set out on to make this a state-wide and regional fight, and to take into account all the impacts of the proposal, from mine to rail and port to plant," says Kearns. "We've made the scoping hearings a major priority, focusing especially on the first hearing in Bellingham, which has now set the tone for the other hearings."

The Club has been working for the last year-and-a-half to educate the public in the Pacific Northwest about the risks and folly of transporting more than 100 million tons of coal a year in open train cars from Wyoming and Montana to five proposed coal export terminals on the Washington and Oregon coasts. To date, Seattle, Portland, and numerous other cities and locales in Washington and Oregon have passed resolutions opposing the coal export terminals.

Big Coal Bullying Prompts University to Destroy Artwork

Bullied by coal companies and their allies in the Wyoming legislature, the University of Wyoming earlier this year caved to threats that millions of dollars in funding were in jeopardy if they didn't remove an outdoor art installation on the university campus that Big Coal deemed offensive.

The sculpture, "Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around," was installed on the campus by British artist Chris Drury in July 2011. A spiral of logs made from trees killed by a pine-beetle infestation, the center of the 36-foot-diameter sculpture featured coal-blackened logs surrounded by lumps of coal.

The $45,000 piece was paid for by an anonymous donor and the Wyoming Cultural Trust. Drury, pictured below installing the piece, said the sculpture wasn't intended as a political statement, but he hoped it would prompt viewers to "have a conversation about climate change," which scientists say has exacerbated a pine beetle infestation that has decimated more than 3 million acres of lodgepole pine forest in Wyoming.

But no sooner had the piece been installed than fossil fuel executives and coal-friendly lawmakers began lashing out, implying that the university was treading on thin ice.

"While I would never tinker with the University of Wyoming budget—I'm a great supporter of the university—every now and then you have these opportunities to educate some of the folks at the University of Wyoming about where their paychecks come from," state legislator and Republican majority leader Tom Lubnau told the Casper Star-Tribune.

Martin Loomis, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association, pointed out in the same newspaper that the university "get[s] millions of dollars in royalties from oil, gas, and coal to run the university, and then they put up a monument attacking me and demonizing the industry. I understand academic freedom, and we're very supportive of it, but it's still disappointing."

Initially the university insisted that the sculpture would remain in place for at least two years and perhaps indefinitely as it naturally decayed. But behind the scenes, much stronger language and tactics were being used to cow university officials, as revealed by emails requested by Wyoming Public Radio and obtained by the Star-Tribune.

Floating Beyond Coal in Asheville

On October 14, the Sierra Club teamed up with half-a-dozen allied groups comprising the Asheville Beyond Coal Coalition to create a 34-boat flotilla on Lake Julian in front of the Asheville Plant, a coal-fired generating station in Asheville, North Carolina.

Undeterred by windy, rainy weather, more than a hundred citizens took to the water in kayaks and canoes and deployed three 17-foot-long banners with the Asheville Plant as a backdrop, sending the message, "Let's Move Asheville Beyond Coal."

"This is the largest Beyond Coal flotilla yet," says Sierra Club organizer Kelly Martin, below. The Club has organized similar floating rallies recently in Baltimore, Seattle, and other locales around the country.

Back on dry land, participants took further action by signing petition postcards and drafting a letter-to-the-editor for submission to area newspapers. "The afternoon wrapped up with solar-powered bluegrass music, food, mingling, and fun!" says Martin.

A Clear Energy Choice in Chicago

The choice is clear.

Less than three months after Chicago turned off two coal plants that were harming the health of local communities, voters will have the chance to give a nod to clean energy this November. A referendum on the ballot – if approved – would allow the city to purchase its energy from different sources, such as residents who generate power from clean energy.

"We are trying to enlighten and inform as many people as possible on this, and of course, we only have a few months to do it," 20-year Sierra Club activist Rose Gomez said last month. "Our coalition is made up of nearly 20 different organizations and everyone is reaching out and working with the same effort to get to as many votes as possible."

To help push the referendum past the goal line, Sierra Club activists joined the Chicago Clean Power Coalition in launching Chicago Community Energy Choice, a campaign to mobilize voters and city leaders to make clean energy a top priority. Earlier this month, campaign organizers helped turn out 100 volunteers at City Hall, who delivered 3,000 petition signatures to the desk of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The event featured speakers from Blue Green Alliance, Respiratory Health Association, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, and Solar Service.

"Not only could Chicago see significant cost savings by using its collective bargaining power, but the city could also see a new energy plan crafted with a focus on clean, renewable power," said Christine Nannicelli, a Sierra Club organizer.

Georgia Activists Rally for Offshore Wind Power

Between 300 and 400 Georgia Sierra Club members and supporters came together on Tybee Island, near Savannah, for an end-of-summer rally to support the Production Tax Credit (PTC) and the creation of wind energy jobs in Georgia.

The "Wind Works: for Jobs, for Georgians" rally was co-sponsored by the Sierra Club and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

Volunteers gathered more than 150 petition signatures asking Governor Nathan Deal to encourage the creation of wind-energy jobs in Georgia by joining the Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Consortium. Deal is one of only two Atlantic coast governors not currently working with the Department of Interior's "Smart from the Start" program to kick-start wind energy jobs and development and streamline the permitting process. If the PTC isn't renewed by the end of this year, the U.S. wind industry would take a major hit and 35,000 to 40,000 jobs could be lost.

Wind-energy supporters wrote to the governor, engaged beach-goers with kite flying, helped kids make pinwheels, and talked up offshore wind energy and its job-creating potential in interviews with local newspapers and television stations.

Above, two local residents tell the camera why they support offshore wind. Below, Savannah-based country rockers The Train Wrecks—"the hardest-gigging band in Savannah"—were on hand to lend their musical and moral support to the cause.

Arkansans Speak Up for a Clean-Energy Future

Sierra Club Organizer Lev Guter.

Sierra Club activists, supporters, and friends held several successful town halls to call on Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe to move the state beyond coal and push for a clean-energy economy that will provide good jobs. Town hall attendance surpassed 300 people, ranging from toddlers to college students to seniors.

"This has helped build the momentum to influence the creation of a clean and sustainable energy plan that will later be turned into proposed bills and voted on early next year," said Lev Guter, a Sierra Club Arkansas organizer.