From Bank of America’s website:

“Bank of America is particularly concerned about surface mining conducted through mountain top removal in locations such as central Appalachia. We therefore will phase out financing of companies whose predominant method of extracting coal is through mountain top removal. While we acknowledge that surface mining is economically efficient and creates jobs, it can be conducted in a way that minimizes environmental impacts in certain geographies.”

We are thrilled that just two and a half weeks after RAN’s day of action against coal and coal finance, Bank of America has made a public commitment to stop financing the devastating practice of mountaintop removal mining. This has been a major demand of the banks for the Global Finance campaign and we applaud Bank of America as it takes a step in the right direction – a step away from coal. Congratulations to everyone who has helped to pressure Bank of America to end it’s financing of coal and mountaintop removal – this is a truly incredible grassroots victory!

We will have more information about Bank of America’s announcement soon, as we work with our team and our allies to respond. For now, let’s celebrate!

-Annie

First the Good News

News just came in yesterday that Duke Energy Corporation’s controversial Cliffside power plant will have to undergo a full environmental assessment of its coal-fired generator that is currently under construction in North Carolina. A federal judge ruled that Duke was in violation of the Clean Air Act for failing to adequately regulate toxic air pollution from the plant – and now has 60 days to complete a Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) analysis to determine how to control mercury and other hazardous air pollutant emissions to the maximum extent possible. This is great news to the many activists who have been struggling to stop construction of this new coal fired power plant, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Southern Environmental Law Center, Environmental Defense Fund, National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

This decision effectively closes a loophole that had allowed other plants to ignore pollution requirements, and we at RAN are optimistic that this ruling will help put an end to coal-power companies trampling environmental laws that exist to protect all of us – and hopefully be yet another nail in dirty coal’s coffin.

Now the Bad News

George Bush’s legacy is in the news a lot lately, and unfortunately the news got bad for those of us trying to stop mountain top removal coal mining. In one of his last acts before leaving office, Bush’s white house approved changes to the Stream Buffer Zone rule that will make it easier for coal companies to dump rock and dirt from mountaintop removal mining operations into nearby streams and valleys. This change undermines the Clean Water Act and will weaken environmental standards for mountain top removal mining operations. Appalachian activists have been working to stop mountaintop removal mining because of its total destruction of mountains, valleys and streams, which impact both air and water quality for nearby residents.

RAN is working with our Appalachian allies to respond to this decision and we are motivated now more than ever to stop mountain top removal coal mining!

-Annie

POZNAN, Poland, December 1, 2008 (ENS) - The U.S. climate delegation’s “sidestepping and recalcitrance” in a news conference on the opening morning of the United Nations annual climate conference in Poznan was denounced by the international climate campaign 350.org and young people from the United States who are attending the meetings.

Lead U.S. negotiator, Ambassador Harlan Watson, representing the outgoing administration of President George W. Bush, dodged reporters’ questions about whether or not the United States would commit to emissions targets or funding for developing countries to address global warming.

U.S. Ambassador Harlan Watson (Photo courtesy ENB)

“It’s an embarrassment,” said Jamie Henn, 350.org co-founder and a U.S. youth delegate. “With the election of Barack Obama we showed the world we were ready to commit to real action on climate change. All this lame-duck delegation is offering is more of the same.”

Henn asked delegates from other countries to ignore the current U.S. delegation and focus on the next administration’s commitments.

“Thanks in large part to the work of young people across the United States, President-elect Obama has committed the U.S. to 80 percent cuts in carbon by 2050,” Henn said. “That’s the type of serious action scientists are saying is necessary to stabilize atmospheric C02 at the safe upper limit of 350 parts per million.”

The figure 350 in the organization’s name is the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere in parts per million. Led by author Bill McKibben and a staff of young organizers from around the world, 350.org partners with more than 100 organizations to push for a strong international climate treaty that meets the 350 ppm target.

Twenty young people from the United States are attending the Poland climate meetings, representing every region of the country and youth organizations like the Energy Action Coalition and SustainUS.

“As youth representatives of the United States, we’re working with other young people from around the world here in Poland,” said Jeremy Osborn, a 24 year old from Connecticut. “It’s time for our government to do the same. If we can all get along and work together, so can they.”

Read the rest here: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2008/2008-12-01-01.asp

Have you seen the great series in the Minneapolis Star Tribune this week? One of our favorite reporters, Matt McKinney, is writing a whole week of expose on the effects of agribusiness - particularly Minnesota-based Cargill - on ordinary folks both in the US and abroad, such as Lynette Hambuga:

Sitting in the shadows of her home, which rests between a mountain and a coastline teeming with brilliant coral reefs, the graying grandmother says she fears global pressure to grow more oil palm for food and fuel will destroy the land for Cargill’s benefit. “They’re our resources. Not theirs.”

Cargill’s not stopping though - BNet yesterday reported that the agribusiness giant is seeking to expand its presence in Indonesia and Malaysia. Not good news, for Indonesia’s people or its forests.

About 90 minutes from the site of COP14, a Greenpeace climb team ascended to the top of a smokestack in Konin, Poland.

Operating out of the Climate Rescue Station, 14 climbers have camped out at the top of a massive coal plants smokestacks and are demanding that world leaders “Quit Coal” and get serious about climate change.

Here’s an email from the climb team-

“I’ve stepped away from the UN climate talks and joined up with our climb team here in Poland to get a first-hand view of the biggest driver of climate change - coal. 14 of us climbed a smoke stack this morning at a massive coal power station 1.5 hours from Poznan, near the climate rescue station.

The sheer scale of the place is huge - trains bring coal in from the huge open mine next to the rescue station, and two of the five smoke stacks including the one we are on are burning it, belching a toxic stew of gases including the one posing the greatest threat to the planet - carbon dioxide.

The scale of this place mirrors the sheer scale of tackling climate change, especially in a place like Poland where more than 90% of electricity comes from coal. But if anyone doubts that solutions to climate change are possible, then the 17knot gusts of wind that are gently swaying the platform I am perched on should be enough evidence as to the power of wind. If only Poland would harness it.

At his opening speech at the UNFCCC negotiations yesterday Polish prime minister Donald Tusk played lip service to climate change, and recently committed some financial help for renewable energy. But this is far too little, and not the energy revolution we need to see. And meanwhile Mr. Tusk’s government continues to undermine EU efforts to put a strong package of climate measures in place. If he succeeds, then Europe will fail, UN climate talks in Poznan could falter, and catastrophic climate change will loom closer. We will stay up here for the next days until we get some clarity that Poland and the world is serious about climate change.

Regards,
Gavin & the Greenpeace climb team

Washington, DC - As the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change opened today in Poznan, Poland, grassroots climate activists took over the Washington DC office of Environmental Defense. The activists stated that they had targeted ED, one of the largest environmental organizations in the world, because of the organization’s key role in promoting the discredited approach of carbon trading as a solution to climate change.

Dr. Rachel Smolker of Global Justice Ecology Project read a statement, which said in part, “My father was one of the founders of this organization, which sadly I am now ashamed of. The Kyoto Protocol, the European Emissions Trading Scheme and virtually every other initiative for reducing emissions have adopted their market approaches. So far they have utterly failed, serving only to provide huge profits to the world’s most polluting industries. Instead of protecting the environment, ED now seems primarily concerned with protecting corporate bottom lines. I can
hear my father rolling over in his grave.”

The activists rearranged furniture in the office, illustrating how marketing carbon is “like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” Others held signs reading “Keep the cap, ditch the trade” and “Carbon trading is an environmental offense.”

Leo Cerda, an Indigenous activist with Rising Tide Ecuador said, “ED wants to turn the atmosphere and forests into private property, and then give it away to the most polluting industries in the form of pollution allowances that can be bought and sold. Not only is this an ineffective way to control emissions, it is also a disaster for the poor and Indigenous peoples who are not party to these markets and are most impacted by climate change.”

ED has been key in establishing the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a business consortium advocating for a cap and trade system with extremely weak emissions reductions. US CAP allows polluters like Duke Energy, Shell, BP, DuPont, and Dow Chemical to claim they are green while continuing with business as usual. In recognition, activists awarded ED the “Corporate Greenwash Award,” a three foot tall green paintbrush. “We think this award is appropriate since Environmental Defense spends more time painting polluters green than actually defending the environment,” said Matt Wallace of Rising Tide North America.

Opposition to carbon trading is growing as it becomes apparent that market based schemes do little to fight climate change while helping corporations rake in profits. Earlier this year, over 50 groups came together in the US to denounce carbon trading in a Declaration Against the Use of Carbon Trading Schemes to Address Climate Change. Globally, hundreds of environmental, social justice, and Indigenous groups have come together to oppose such market based initiatives as inherently unsustainable and ineffective in creating a just transition away from fossil fuels.

Abigail Singer

On the same day that COP14 (the Conference of Parties, or the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) began in Poznan Poland, Danish climate activist group, KlimaX, dropped banners off the top of the Bella Centret in Copenhagen in anticipation of COP15 (scheduled for Copenhagen 2009) The banners read “Time is Running Out, Take Action Now!” and “Social Change, Not Climate Change“.

Climate activists are converging on Poznan calling for more urgency in the climate negotiations and more participation by communities in the Global South and traditionally marginalized communities in the Global North. Groups across Europe and from around the world are mobilizing towards COP15 in Copenhagen next year for negotiations around a new climate treaty as the Kyoto Protocol ends.

KlimaX promised more actions in the building up to COP15. “We need a humane solution to the climate crisis.” Says Sini Østergaard from KlimaX “We cannot stand by and watch while the rich countries buy CO2 quotas from the poor countries. We have take action now.”

“The clock is ticking and time has run out. It is now we have to face the consequences of our over-consumption in the west.” says Thor from KlimaX.

Nice article about our friends at Rising Tide. It’s a rapidly growing global movement.

Climate Crisis Energizes Radical Environmentalists
November 26, 2008
By DINA CAPPIELLO, Associated Press Writer

LOUISA, Va. (AP) — Under arrest, Paxus Calta raised two fingers from his shackled hand to flash a peace sign. Fellow environmental activists cheered as police escorted him to the van that would take him to jail.

He had intended to get arrested, as he had before in 12 countries on three continents.

For two hours, Calta and 19 other protesters associated with the grassroots group Rising Tide North America had occupied the visitor’s center at Dominion’s North Anna Nuclear Power Station.

While radical groups and their tactics are by no means new, climate change is a new cause for them.

Rising Tide isn’t protesting the causes of global warming as much as the solutions. It is against clean coal, nuclear power and capping carbon pollution while letting polluters buy and sell rights to pollute under the cap — the very fixes under discussion in Washington. It disdains the compromise and collaboration between the Big 10 environmental groups and elite corporations, as well as the view that technology can save the environment.

The protest at Dominion — which is seeking to build a new reactor — was the latest stunt organized by Rising Tide.

”There are lots of different ways that you can approach the problem of climate change. What the direct action movement believes is that the market-based solutions that have been used in the past are inappropriate,” Calta said in an interview after he was charged with trespassing, and released from jail at 2 a.m. on $1,000 bail.

”The alternative is that we let corporations and governments do what they have always done, and the world is going to die,” he said.

Rising Tide originated in the Netherlands in 2000. It came to the U.S. in 2006. That’s when a group of activists involved in Earth First!, one of the earliest groups to use in-your-face tactics such as tree sitting and blocking roads with human chains, decided that more attention needed to be paid to global warming.

”There was a huge need for a climate-focused group that wasn’t going to compromise … not do what is conducive to business, but what we actually need for ecosystems on this planet to survive,” said Abigail Singer, who was in those early discussions and is one of roughly 20 people who lead Rising Tide nationally. Small cells have spread across the country in Asheville, N.C., Boston, Portland, Ore., and more recently Houston and Baltimore.

The group’s annual climate camps draw hundreds of activists, anarchists and organizers each year. The participants — many in their early 20s — camp out for the week, share group meals and learn skills such as tree climbing that can help during a demonstration.

Calta is one of the veterans. A tall and lanky figure with stringy shoulder-length hair, he has been protesting nuclear energy for 20 years in the U.S. and abroad. The Dominion plant is likely the closest he has gotten to home — he lives in a nearby commune.

Rising Tide’s first protest took place in July 2006 at a coal plant in Carbo, Va., where two activists chained themselves to a coal truck and another suspended himself from a bridge. One of their demands: a nationwide movement away from fossil fuels.

Earlier this year former Vice President Al Gore made the same call: The nation should wean itself off carbon-based fuels in 10 years. Then, in September, he urged young people to protest all new coal plants that don’t have technology to capture greenhouse gases.

Rising Tide’s targets include other environmentalists.

The group issued a fake press release and Web site under the name of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an association of businesses and large environmental groups that support action on global warming. The phony media blitz claimed the groups’ members, which include Alcoa Inc., BP PLC, Dow Chemical Co. and General Electric Co., had agreed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 90 percent. More than one major news organization bit on the hoax.

”Radicals don’t think they are going to get solutions from the very social sectors that are driving the problem,” said Bron Taylor, who teaches and writes about environmentalism at the University of Florida.

Mainstream environmental groups, such as Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense, think it is ”absolutely essential to turn the corporate sectors into responsible environmental citizens,” Taylor said.

Rising Tide took one protest to the North Carolina home of Duke Energy Corp.’s chief executive, Jim Rogers. They placed Post-It notes on his windows criticizing construction of a new coal-fired power plants that Duke is building while he preaches curbing greenhouse gases.

In Madison, Wis., Rising Tide activists deflated car tires to prevent people from driving.

The targeted companies and groups are often not amused.

Eric Hendrixson, the director of safety and licensing at Dominion’s North Anna Power Station, looked on as the protesters sat on the floor, passed around trail mix and chanted slogans such as ”Climate Revolution, Not False Solutions” and ”No Nukes, No Coal, No Kidding.” Meanwhile, police gathered outside.

”If there was a perfect solution, it would have arrived,” Hendrixson said, shaking his head, and at one point calling the protesters rude. ”What I don’t respect are individuals who voice their opinion out of ignorance.”

Others, like Duke Energy, call them completely ineffective.

”I’m not sure where they get their dozen protesters frankly,” said Tom Williams, a Duke spokesman.

Williams said the real way to be part of the debate is to participate in the permitting process.

But those who have played by the rules and failed say groups like Rising Tide can help.

Elisa Young says that her family’s 144-acre farm in rural Ohio is surrounded by coal-fired power plants, and there are proposals for more of them. She attended one of Rising Tide’s climate action camps this summer.

”I am not a trained activist. I don’t even consider myself an environmentalist,” said Young. But these groups ”have a vested interest in the future of this planet. They are the most motivated and least compromised of the activists out there.”

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has approved Massey Energy’s revision of one of the mountaintop removal coal mining permits for Coal River Mountain.

That means Massey may begin blasting at any time.

Read about it here on Grist.

West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin can still stop Massey Energy from ruining Coal River Mountain’s wind energy potential.

Please make a call today to protect Coal River Mountain’s wind energy potential.

Call Governor Manchin today at 1-888-438-2731.

After you’ve made your call, you can also send him an email here.

Please tell him that Coal River Mountain can make wind energy - forever! The wind power project would generate clean electricity, quality jobs, and major tax revenue. Mountaintop removal at Coal River Mountain would destroy all of the wonderful potential of the wind project. Ask the Governor to put a halt to mountaintop removal at Coal River Mountain - today!

Wind is the better economic option for Coal River Mountain, but that depends on the mountain being left intact. Extensive research has shown that Coal River Mountain has enough wind potential to provide electricity for between 100,000 and 150,000 homes, forever, while creating approximately 50 well-paying, permanent jobs in an area long dependent upon sparse, temporary coal mining jobs. The wind farm would also generate over ten times more county revenue than the mountaintop removal operation would.

Find out more from Coal River Wind.

Here’s a list of media hits this has generated:

Manchin and Coal River Wind
in the Charleston Gazette
on DailyKos
on CNN Money
on Forbes.com
on NRDC blog
on ItsGettingHotInHere:
on AppVoices Front Porch Blog
on WV Blue

Jeff Biggers
in Grist
on the Progressive Dems of America website
on Huffington Post
on Common Dreams

This is too much. Don Blankenship and Massey Energy are the poster children for mountaintop removal. They not only wreck the planet by selling the coal they mine to be burned, but wreck Appalachian communities and landscape in extracting it. It’s a pretty horrible process and this guy labels us as the crazy ones?

My favorite line in this article is “The greeniacs are taking over the world.”

Coal CEO calls environmentalists crazy

Published:
Saturday, November 22, 2008 10:12 AM EST
JULIA ROBERTS GOAD
Staff Writer

Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, the fourth largest coal company in the country, blasted politics and the press, comparing Charleston Gazette Editor James. A. Haught to Osama Bin Laden Thursday evening when he addressed the Tug Valley Mining Institute in Williamson.

“It is as great a pleasure for me to be criticized by the communists and the atheists of the Charleston Gazette as to be applauded by my best friends,” he said. “Because I know they are wrong. People are cowering away from being criticized by people that are our enemies. Would we be upset if Osama Bin Laden was critical of us?” he asked.

“Totally wrong. Nonsense. Absolutely crazy.”

Those are the words Blankenship used to describe Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as well as environmental groups. He said he felt simple terms were the only ones the country could understand, that more sophisticated language was over the head of the general public.

“When we talk about it in more articulate ways, the American public doesn’t get it,” he said.

Blankenship told the crowd, which overflowed the room, spilling over to fill the Brass Tree Restaurant, that coal is getting a lot of undeserved bad press. The coal business, he said, needs to start standing up for itself in the face of the negative image being portrayed by politicians, special interests and the press.

Blankenship said the business community should put their business interests first, not environmental interests.

“They can say what they want about climate change,” he said. “But the only thing melting in this country that matters is our financial system and our economy.”

“The business community doesn’t want to lose any skin,” he said, referring to the skinned knees he sustained playing football as a boy. “Being scratched up is not so bad, but the political elite are so comfortable that they think their mission in life now is to save the world.”

Many people would give support to groups who work to disprove global warming if it was not so politically incorrect, Blankenship said.

“How many times have the people in this room heard, at the US Chamber of Commerce or at the National Mining Association, ‘I don’t believe in climate change, but I’m afraid to say that because it is a political reality.’ The greeniacs are taking over the world.”

Blankenship said politicians misrepresent facts when it comes to the environment. “Politicians occasionally trip over the truth,” he said, “but they get up and go on as if nothing happened.” He said the amount of pollution produced by American coal is negligible compared to the environmental damage done by other countries.

“Its nonsensical, its idiotic. And yet, we call it two different sides, partisan, Democrat or Republican,” he said. “If Pelosi thinks that decreasing CO2 in this country is going to save the polar bears, she’s crazy. If CO2 emissions are going to kill the polar bears, it’s going to happen. What we do here [in the US] is not going to it.”

Blankenship said he realizes the environment is a concern, but that it is only part of the picture.

“I talk a lot about the total environment,” he said. “Yes, we need to breathe clean air and have fresh water in the streams. We need to have trees and all that, but we need to be able to send out children to school. That’s a total environment.

“Most people wouldn’t believe that coal is the most important thing to the environment.”

But coal produces electricity, he argued, and that improves the quality of life. “Anywhere you go, low cost electricity, the creation of energy, of jobs, of an economy, ultimately leads to an improvement in the environment. There is no place in the world that has a good environment where people live on two dollars a day with no electricity,” he said. “If you are really believe that the world is going to overheat from the use of carbon, then whatever you do in the United States to reduce carbon emissions is wrong, because all that it will do is increase CO2 emissions in China. All the things the environmentalists told us were important, sulfur and particulates, everything they have talked about and badgered this industry about are still being polluted throughout most of the world without any controls.”

Blankenship said the industry needs to be as outspoken as those who oppose the use of carbon fuels.

“Its not only important for the greeniacs and environmentalists to change their views, but there is also a real need for business people to change their views. We have to challenge everything, and we need to get more bold. When business people act like politicians instead of expressing what the truth is, we will have people making decisions on what they call political reality.”

Blankenship said energy policies put forth by the government have not worked in the past, and they are not the answer to today’s energy crisis. He shared a video clip of then President Jimmy Carter encouraging measures such as conserving heating fuel, carpooling, using public transportation and avoiding unnecessary car trips.

“Jimmy Carter understood that there was a risk if we increased our dependence on foreign oil,” Blankenship said. “But did it not sound similar to Obama? Turn down your thermostats? Buy a smaller car? Conserve? I have spent quite a bit of time in Russia and China, and that’s the first stage. You go from having your own car to carpooling to riding the bus to mass transit. You eventually get to where you’re walking. You go from your own apartment and bathroom to sharing kitchens with four families. That’s what socialism and the elimination of capitalism and free enterprise is all about.”

“Massey is working hard to come up with soundbites or what sort of messages might resonant publicly. Unless we get people to think positively about coal, we are in trouble not only as an industry, but also as a country.”

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, if you have that much energy in the ground, you shouldn’t have thousands of troops in Iraq, spending $10 billion a month, you shouldn’t by trying to patrol the world. Let the world fight over the oil. Liquify the coal.”

“Coal has to be important,” Blankenship said. “We have to stand up for coal and for energy independence. Sooner or later, we are going to have to start saying something, because if we don’t, the other side is going to start taking over.”