Tag Archives: washington

‘Never give up’: Greta Thunberg takes climate strike to the White House

This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

WASHINGTON — Greta Thunberg, the famous 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist who kicked off a global movement of students leaving school to demand action on the climate crisis, joined other youth activists at a rally outside the White House on Friday.

A few hundred people, mostly teenagers and young children, gathered on the Ellipse south of the White House carrying signs that read “I want you to panic!” and “Why are we studying for a future we won’t have?” They chanted, “This is a crisis, act like it!” and “No more coal, no more oil, keep that carbon in the soil.” When someone mentioned President Donald Trump, the crowd booed and yelled “Shame!”

After marching a short distance toward the White House, numerous protesters lay down on the ground for an 11-minute “die-in” ― what one speaker called a “mass extinction.” The protest represented the 11 years that scientists say world governments have to rein in greenhouse gas emissions to stave off potentially cataclysmic climate change.

“We are striking today to save tomorrow!” Nadia Nazar, the 17-year-old co-founder of the Zero Hour movement.

Trump has a long history of denying the threat of climate change, often arguing that spells of cold weather somehow disprove the long-term warming trend. His administration has taken an ax to a slew of environmental regulations meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions — all part of its so-called “energy dominance” agenda. Thunberg told CBS in an interview last month that she wouldn’t “waste time” talking to Trump if given the opportunity.

Thunberg spent most of the rally surrounded by peers and a throng of reporters wielding cameras. She quietly joined a series of chants, and when finally given a chance to speak, simply expressed her gratitude for such a large turnout.

“This is very overwhelming,” she said. “Never give up. We will continue.”

Jeff Hunt, a 28-year-old resident of Washington, D.C., was among those participating in Friday’s rally. He carried a sign that read, “When I grow up I want to be Greta Thunberg,” and told HuffPost that like Thunberg, he thinks Trump is a lost cause.

Instead, Hunt hopes the event helps sends a message to the rest of the country and world that we are nearing a dangerous tipping point and it is time to make radical, economy-wide changes that will protect future generations.

“I have high hopes that the generation beneath me will be much more plugged in,” he said. “I feel like my generation has kind of dropped the ball, if you look at our voting habits and our dedication to actually change our lifestyle.”

Thunberg rose to fame last year when she went on strike from school following Sweden’s hottest summer on record. For weeks, she sat outside her country’s Parliament, holding a “School strike for climate” sign and demanding that local politicians enact policies in line with the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate action.

School strikes quickly popped up in other countries. And in March, an estimated 1.4 million young people in more than 100 countries mobilized for a global strike, part of what has come to be known as the Fridays for Future movement. Tuesday’s gathering outside the White House comes ahead of a weeklong global strike slated for the week of September 20.

Thunberg traveled to the United States by sailboat to reduce her carbon footprint. While in the United States, she’s expected to testify before Congress, speak outside the U.S. Supreme Court alongside youth suing the government over climate change, and attend the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York.

Excerpt from – 

‘Never give up’: Greta Thunberg takes climate strike to the White House

Posted in Accent, alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on ‘Never give up’: Greta Thunberg takes climate strike to the White House

U.S. won’t take climate refugees displaced by Hurricane Dorian

President Trump’s ongoing war on migrants and refugees has extended to the Bahamas, where some residents say they’ve received little to no help from their own government after Hurricane Dorian absolutely devastated the area less than two weeks ago. The storm, which hit the islands as a Category 5 hurricane, killed at least 50 people (though that number is expected to rise, as more than 1,000 people are still missing).

While the United States has granted temporary protected status, or TPS, to natural disaster victims in the past, the Trump administration has decided not to extend the designation to Bahamas residents who were displaced by the monster storm. That means Bahamians can still travel to the U.S. temporarily if they have a travel visa, but they will not be granted work permits.

TPS is a form of humanitarian relief intended for people from designated countries where war, famine, natural disaster, or other crises make it difficult for people to return home safely. People with TPS can generally stay in the U.S. for a period ranging from six and 18 months, but the Department of Homeland Security can extend this time if conditions in their home country remain unstable. Those protected under TPS are granted work permits, allowing them to support themselves while living in the U.S. Created by the Immigration Act of 1990, TPS has protected immigrants from 22 countries at various times.

“Generally, under circumstances like this really catastrophic hurricane … TPS would be granted,” the Migration Policy Institute’s Doris Meissner told the Washington Post. The U.S. has over the years offered TPS to residents of Haiti and Nepal after earthquakes devastated those countries in 2010 and 2015 respectively, as well as in South Sudan and Venezuela following armed conflicts in those countries. In the late 1990s, Honduras and Nicaragua were designated for TPS after Hurricane Mitch killed more than 11,000 people in Central America.

One of the Trump administration’s main immigration goals has been to overhaul how the U.S. grants legal immigration status. It envisions a “merit-based” immigration system in which individual immigrants are selected based on their education level, relevant professional skills, and financial self-sufficiency. But critics say the administration is setting the bar so high that many Americans couldn’t pass it.

Trump’s goal of limiting legal immigration has run afoul of many longstanding U.S. immigration policies, but TPS might be the biggest affront to his vision of merit-based entry. Not only does the program extend legal protections to people who want to enter the U.S. based entirely on what’s happening in their home countries, but it also applies to people, whether they are tourists or undocumented immigrants, who are already in the U.S. when TPS is granted. As such, it came as no surprise to some humanitarian workers in Washington that this administration would not be continuing the tradition of offering a temporary home to Bahamians fleeing the storm.

The impacts of Trump’s new TPS approach will likely extend far beyond the hurricane season. As climate change continues to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, it’s likely that ever-larger numbers of environmental refugees will be forced to leave their homes behind in search of safety. According to a new report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, for example, 7 million people worldwide were displaced by natural disasters in the first six months of 2019 — “the highest mid-year figure ever reported for displacements associated with disasters.” But with the White House closing off avenues for migrants hoping for respite in the U.S., those climate refugees will see their options shrink just as they need help the most.

Visit site:  

U.S. won’t take climate refugees displaced by Hurricane Dorian

Posted in Accent, alo, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on U.S. won’t take climate refugees displaced by Hurricane Dorian

Trump’s Hurricane Dorian map looks doctored with a Sharpie. We might know why.

The forecast maps that the National Hurricane Center produces can be confusing. What they attempt to show is a range of possible paths a storm’s center could take over the next few days. Presented without that context, it’s no surprise some people think the maps show hurricanes growing larger over time, or that they show all the areas that could conceivably be under threat. (In fact, people living outside the “cone of uncertainty” are still at risk.) Visual journalist Alberto Cairo recently explained what the cone means in a fascinating interactive for the New York Times that’s very much worth your time.

Donald Trump, surprisingly, seems to understand exactly what the cone of uncertainty means. He just doesn’t agree with the meteorologists whose job it is to know whatever is humanly possible to know about hurricanes.

If you were online Labor Day weekend, you may have seen Trump tweet about Hurricane Dorian, which had recently ravaged the Bahamas and was heading toward the East Coast. “In addition to Florida – South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated,” he wrote in a now-deleted tweet. There was only one problem: Dorian was not, in fact, forecast to hit Alabama. To clear up any confusion, the National Weather Service office in Birmingham tweeted a fact-check:

But on Wednesday Trump had the last word, as Trump is wont to do. In a video update on Hurricane Dorian filmed in the Oval Office, Trump presented a probability map for Dorian that, lo and behold, showed the hurricane potentially moving toward Alabama. What accounted for this unexpected change of forecast? Well, Trump, or someone on his staff, had amended the map’s cone of uncertainty in what appeared to be Sharpie.

“It was going toward the Gulf, that was what was originally projected,” Trump explained with a straight face as he gestured toward the altered map, “and it took a right turn.” Ah yes, the massive hurricane took a sharp right turn! That’s a much more plausible scenario than a scientifically illiterate president making a mistake in a hastily composed tweet.

According to the Washington Post, Trump repeatedly said “I don’t know” when asked if the map had been doctored. Credit where credit is due — a man who’s not afraid to admit it when he doesn’t know something is a man worthy of our admiration.

This article is from – 

Trump’s Hurricane Dorian map looks doctored with a Sharpie. We might know why.

Posted in Accent, alo, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Sprout, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump’s Hurricane Dorian map looks doctored with a Sharpie. We might know why.

The Trump administration tried to bury a climate study on … rice?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is supposed to use the “latest available science” to help the nation’s farmers avoid risk, according to its own mission. So it was more than a little surprising when, last year, the agency decided not to promote an alarming study (that two of its employees had contributed to) that showed climate change could lessen the nutritional value of rice — a crop the agency says the U.S. is a “major exporter” of.

Here’s the gist of the research: Rice may not be super flavorful by itself, but for millions of people, particularly in Southeast Asia, it’s an important source of both protein and calories. Rice also contains a suite of B vitamins, iron, and zinc. But those nutrients appear to decrease if rice is grown in high ambient concentrations of CO2 — the kind that climate models are predicting for the end of the century. Scientists say that could exacerbate the incidence of illnesses like malaria and diarrheal disease in places that rely on the staple crop.

At first, the Agricultural Research Service, the USDA’s in-house research arm, seemed open to promoting the study. When Jeff Hodson, the director of communications at the University of Washington’s school of public health (from where two of the paper’s contributors hailed), reached out to the ARS about coordinating efforts to get the word out to journalists about the research, he was told the department had begun drafting a press release. But a week later he was notified the USDA had killed its promotional efforts around the study.

In an email explaining the decision to Hodson, a USDA spokesperson wrote, “The narrative really isn’t supported by the data in the paper.” She added: “Please let me know how you will proceed with your own press release.”

Questions about the muffling of the rice research were also circling within the USDA. Lewis Ziska, a 25-year veteran of the department who worked on the study told Grist the decision to keep the paper quiet was a departure from protocol. The highly unusual manner in which the ARS abruptly canceled the press release and the excuse the agency gave for doing so, he said, “indicated that it wasn’t a question of the science anymore, it was a question of the ideology.” He began to wonder if the study was being buried due, at least in part, to the Trump administration’s apparent indifference toward climate change.

“This is the first time that we’ve been told that the data don’t support the findings for any climate paper; that’s never happened before,” Ziska said.

But despite the USDA’s non-promotion, the paper did not quietly fade into academic obscurity. After checking with the interim head of the School of Public Health — who said in an email that the research seemed “straightforward” — Hodson decided to press on with promoting the paper. The university issued a press release that included a quote from Ziska, and they helped connect reporters with him as well as the school’s own scientists. The research garnered coverage in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Seattle Times, among other outlets.

Ziska and his team’s findings that protein, iron, and zinc levels decreased in rice grown in higher carbon dioxide concentrations verified the work of Samuel Myers, a research scientist at Harvard’s Center for the Environment who works closely on the human health impacts of climate change. To Myers, who examined this incident against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s war on climate science, it seemed to be part of a pattern.

“The USDA is part of a federal administration that can only be described in legal terms as ‘exhibiting depraved indifference to climate change,’” he said. Suppressing a study that highlighted the negative effects of global warming on a major food staple is, Myers added, “completely consistent with the way the federal administration has been acting for the past two and a half years.”

The Trump administration’s combative position on all things climate and environment has had a significant and lasting impact on multiple federal agencies. Earlier this month, Ziska decided to abandon his tenure at the USDA after securing a job at Columbia University. At the Environmental Protection Agency, employees say morale has plummeted as the agency continues to roll back key environmental and health regulations. Mentions of climate change have disappeared from government websites.

Rather than try to increase retention rates, some critics say these agencies are happy to lose some of their more seasoned officials. The Bureau of Land Management is planning to move its headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Colorado, in what at least one representative and multiple environment groups have called a scheme to shake its tenured policy officials. And in July, the USDA gave its D.C.-based employees a week to decide whether they would relocate to the department’s new headquarters in Kansas City. Administration officials said the move was aimed at cutting costs; critics said it was yet another attempt to bleed tenured talent.

In a statement to Grist, a USDA spokesperson pushed back on the idea that the agency is suppressing climate change research. “No one attempted to block the paper – it is freely available in the science literature,” the spokesperson wrote, adding that higher-ups at the agency disagreed with the paper’s conclusion that rising levels of CO2 would put 600 million people at risk of vitamin deficiency. “Issuing an ARS press release would have erroneously signified that ARS concurs with the nutrition-related claims,” the spokesperson noted.

“The notion that this is not of public health significance is just ridiculous,” said Harvard’s Myers, in response to the ARS’s position on the research. The controversial study just focused on rice, he added, but “every other food crop across the board is losing nutrients in response to CO2.”

A spokesperson for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science Advances, the journal where the rice article appeared, stood behind the research, saying that the study went through “rigorous peer review” before it was published.

For Ziska, the incident constituted an abdication of one of ARS’s responsibilities, which is working to solve climate change-related issues that farmers face. “It’s surreal to me,” he said.

Visit site: 

The Trump administration tried to bury a climate study on … rice?

Posted in Accent, alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Trump administration tried to bury a climate study on … rice?

The climate change ‘tipping point’ has already arrived for these 70 U.S. counties

For years now now, we’ve been hearing warnings about 2 degrees Celsius of warming — the global average cautioned against as part of the 2015 Paris accord. But according to a Washington Post interactive published on Tuesday, that so-called “tipping point” has already arrived in many towns across the country.

The earth is warming at an uneven rate. The Post looked at 100+ years of data from over 3,000 U.S counties and found that over 70 have already exceeded 2 degrees C of warming above pre-industrial levels. That translates to 34 million people (roughly 1 in 10 Americans) living in regions that are heating especially rapidly.

So where are the U.S. hot spots? The counties that have already reached 2 degrees C or warming are spread throughout the U.S., but there are some regional trends. The fastest-warming state in the country is Alaska, which may come as no surprise given its recent spate of heat waves and wildfires. In the Lower 48, Rhode Island’s average temperature increase is the first to pass 2 degrees Celsius, with other parts of the Northeast, including New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts, not far behind.

While the east coast has been sizzling this summer, the Post found that most regional increases were driven by warming winter temperatures, not summer heat waves. That’s means lakes can’t freeze (causing algae blooms, in some cases) and pests don’t die as per usual in certain historically cold regions. Less snow and ice also means those regions are less able to reflect solar radiation during winter, further feeding into the warming cycle.

The freezing point “is the most critical threshold among all temperatures,” David A. Robinson, New Jersey state climatologist and professor at Rutgers University’s department of geography, told the Post.

Scientists aren’t yet sure why the Northeast is warming so quickly. But experts say these 2-degree C hotspots are like little pieces of the future here in the present, showing us what’s coming.

Of course, climate catastrophes aren’t just about higher average regional temperatures. Cold, heat, flood, drought, and sea-level rise all pose significant risks to U.S. communities, according to a newly released analysis by the group Clever Real Estate. And bad news: The report found that many of the cities most at risk to the impacts of climate change are also the least prepared for it.

Clever Real Estate

There’s some concerning crossover between the Post’s list of rapidly warming counties and the areas identified by Clever Real Estate’s analysis (which was compiled by Eylul Tekin, a Ph.D. candidate at Washington University in St. Louis’ Memory Lab). Four of the top five cities with the “lowest degree of readiness” are located in Southern California (Anaheim, San Bernardino, Santa Ana, and Riverside). The counties in question have reached between 1.8 degrees C and 2.1 degrees C of warming compared to pre-industrial levels.

Parts of New Jersey also didn’t fare well on either list. Essex County has already hit the 2 degrees C warming mark, and Newark snagged the fifth spot on the list of places with the “largest difference between risk and readiness scores.”

So in short, there’s already a lot to sweat in many parts of the U.S. (which is even more reason to take climate action now). To get a better sense of the way your specific area is being affected, check out the two studies we mentioned here and here.

Originally posted here:  

The climate change ‘tipping point’ has already arrived for these 70 U.S. counties

Posted in Accent, alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The climate change ‘tipping point’ has already arrived for these 70 U.S. counties

Comet – Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Comet

Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: February 25, 1997

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


What are these graceful visitors to our skies? We now know that they bring both life and death and teach us about our origins. Comet begins with a breathtaking journey through space astride a comet. Pulitzer Prize-winning astronomer Carl Sagan, author of Cosmos and Contact , and writer Ann Druyan explore the origin, nature, and future of comets, and the exotic myths and portents attached to them. The authors show how comets have spurred some of the great discoveries in the history of science and raise intriguing questions about these brilliant visitors from the interstellar dark. Were the fates of the dinosaurs and the origins of humans tied to the wanderings of a comet? Are comets the building blocks from which worlds are formed? Lavishly illustrated with photographs and specially commissioned full-color paintings, Comet is an enthralling adventure, indispensable for anyone who has ever gazed up at the heavens and wondered why. Praise for Comet "Simply the best." — The Times of London "Fascinating, evocative, inspiring." — The Washington Post " Comet humanizes science. A beautiful, interesting book." —United Press International "Masterful . . . science, poetry, and imagination." —The Atlanta Journal & Constitution

Read the article – 

Comet – Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, oven, Poetry, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Comet – Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan

Packing for Mars – Mary Roach

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Packing for Mars

The Curious Science of Life in the Void

Mary Roach

Genre: Physics

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: April 4, 2011

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


“America’s funniest science writer” (Washington Post) returns to explore the irresistibly strange universe of life without gravity in this New York Times bestseller. Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can’t walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions, space agencies set up all manner of quizzical and startlingly bizarre space simulations. As Mary Roach discovers, it’s possible to preview space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA’s new space capsule (cadaver filling in for astronaut), Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth.

View original: 

Packing for Mars – Mary Roach

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, oven, PUR, Uncategorized, W. W. Norton & Company | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Packing for Mars – Mary Roach

The Arctic Council brought up climate change, and the U.S. couldn’t handle the heat

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to sign the consensus-dependent agreement regulating the Arctic. The hiccup, according to sources? Climate change. So this year, for the first time since its founding in 1996, there was no joint declaration at the Meeting of the Arctic Council.

With record-breaking carbon emissions and temperatures, the U.N’s mass extinction prediction, and local governments constantly rolling out carbon reduction plans (like NYC, LA, Washington), it’s no surprise that climate change was one of the big issues at the meeting. The intergovernmental convention brings together leaders from the eight countries neighboring the Arctic every couple years to draft an agreement for the sustainable use of the region’s resources.

“A majority of us regarded climate change as a fundamental challenge facing the Arctic and acknowledged the urgent need to take mitigation and adaptation actions and to strengthen resilience,” Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini wrote in a 10-page statement. Only when the statement touched on climate issues, like pollution, carbon sinks, and loss of biodiversity, did he use the tell-tale “a majority.”

“I don’t want to name and blame anyone,” Soini said of the agreement’s failure to pass.

Reuters’ sources reported that Pompeo disagreed with phrasing in the document that stated climate change was a serious threat to the Arctic. He didn’t want the most recent information on climate science included in the report, diplomats present at the council told the New York Times.

His refusal to sign meant that no declaration could be passed. Instead, the council members each signed a statement committing to proceed with Arctic development sustainably, but that didn’t mention climate change.

Pompeo has a different story — he claims that he backed out because of concerns that the unbinding agreement would not hold Russia and China accountable enough moving forward.

On Sunday, the day before his refusal, he made a policy speech where he sang praises for an Arctic less swathed in ice sheets. He lauded the potential oil, gas, and metal extraction in newly uncovered regions, while simultaneously warning of the threat a squabbling Russia and China would pose. Not once did he mention climate change, nor the communities most immediately affected by retreating sea ice and warming seas. Still, acknowledging the economic potential created by the Arctic’s warming seemed at odds with his refusal to sign an agreement that assigned a name to the effect.

Funny, then, that he should tell the council that “collective goals … are rendered meaningless, even counterproductive as soon as one nation fails to comply,” in explaining why the U.S. would not sign the agreement. Exemplary performance, Mr. Pompeo.

You can see his whole speech here:

Original post:

The Arctic Council brought up climate change, and the U.S. couldn’t handle the heat

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Arctic Council brought up climate change, and the U.S. couldn’t handle the heat

How Linda Garcia risked everything to keep Big Oil out of her community

This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Every time Linda Garcia’s cellphone pings, she wonders if it will be another death threat. The environmental activist has been targeted by anonymous callers for five years since taking on Big Oil to save her community from environmental devastation.

Garcia lives in Fruit Valley, the kind of close-knit place where everybody knows everybody. The low-income community in Vancouver, Washington, sits just across the river from Portland, Oregon, and is home to a thousand households. It also has a severe air pollution problem. In 2013, when Garcia, 51, first heard of a plan to put a massive fossil fuel transportation hub on the edge of her neighborhood, Fruit Valley was suffering the worst air quality in the city. Parents were regularly warned to keep children indoors to protect them from the dark industrial smog that descended across the river.

Goldman Environmental Foundation

Concerned about how the new development might exacerbate the problems, Garcia, who was secretary of the Fruit Valley Neighborhood Association, started asking questions. She was skeptical of dubious claims being made by executives from Texas-headquartered oil company Tesoro (as it was then called) and elected officials about impressive job creation and minimal environmental risks.

“They made it sound amazing — jobs, jobs, jobs — which in a low-income community like Fruit Valley that was still recovering from the recession sounded great … But most of it turned out to be slick PR,” Garcia told HuffPost.

The deeper Garcia dug, the bleaker it looked: She believed the mega-terminal would have devastating consequences — health, environmental, and social — for the community and across the region.

The project would be North America’s largest oil terminal. The plan was to transport up to 11 million gallons of oil every day halfway across the country on mile-and-a-half-long trains from fracking fields in North Dakota through the Columbia River to the industrial Port of Vancouver, where the proposed terminal would be located less than a mile from most Fruit Valley residents. The oil would then be loaded onto ocean tankers at the terminal and shipped to Asia, where rapidly rising energy demands are enticing U.S. fossil fuel companies.

The oil company’s environmental and safety track record rang alarm bells for Garcia, especially the death of seven workers at one of its refineries in nearby Anacortes in 2010. In 2016, as the community continued its fight, the Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency fined Tesoro $10.4 million for air pollution violations relating to six refineries and $720,000 for alleged safety breaches at Anacortes refinery.

The more Garcia chipped away at the project’s marketing veneer, the more worried she got, which motivated her to organize the community to oppose the oil giant and forestall environmental devastation. Over the course of her long campaign against the terminal, she kept up the momentum — despite multiple death threats that continue even today.“I didn’t give up; I’m not backing down. I am doing the right thing, that’s who I am,” she said.

Six years later, the Tesoro-Savage terminal is dead in the water and Garcia is the recipient of one of the world’s most prestigious environmental awards.

It was her steely determination that stood out to the committee, which awards the annual Goldman Environmental Prize to six grassroots environmentalists, one from each inhabited continent, in recognition of their leadership and efforts to protect the natural environment at significant personal cost. (This year’s other winners come from Chile, Liberia, North Macedonia, Cook Islands, and Mongolia.)

“Despite personal risks, political and legal obstacles in her path, and challenges with her own health, Linda demonstrated steady leadership throughout a long campaign — and didn’t stop until the terminal was defeated,” said Goldman prize spokesman Ilan Kayatsky.

Garcia was relentless. Through the neighborhood association, she met with company and council officials and organized public meetings to share information with friends, neighbors, and local businesses about the terminal.

Goldman Environmental Foundation

She also works with the Washington Environmental Council — a nonprofit that focuses on sustainability and climate action throughout Washington state — which helped her garner support from outside environmental groups like Columbia Riverkeeper and the Sierra Club. As the community got educated and organized, the company stopped turning up at public meetings.

In response, the community got political, voting out two of the three elected port authority commissioners who had twice voted for the mega-terminal despite widespread public opposition and growing concerns about safety.

Garcia testified as a community witness at public hearings and city council meetings, using general safety reports published by the federal agency PHMSA (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) and experience from similar projects to argue that the daily procession of rail and river traffic would threaten fish and wildlife species, and cause harmful air and water emissions damaging to human health.

The community was also deeply concerned about the risk of accidents and spills especially following the Lac-Megantic disaster in Quebec in July 2013, when a 14-car oil train derailed and killed 47 people in a fiery explosion. And in June 2016, as the battle heated up, a Union Pacific train carrying 3 million gallons of oil derailed in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area in Oregon — the same area the Tesoro-Savage railway would pass through.

The company accused activists of using “scare tactics,” claiming the trains would be safe and the project would bring jobs and economic growth to the community.

As Garcia gained prominence as a key leader in the community resistance, the death threats started. In addition, she suffered a life-threatening illness during the campaign and would often travel directly from chemotherapy to council meetings to testify on behalf of Fruit Valley residents.

“I was fighting for my own life and the lives of others … I knew that the second the terminal went online we’d be living with 24/7 toxic fumes that would exacerbate or cause conditions people could die from,” she said. “This kept me motivated.”

Garcia and the other campaigners convinced the city council to appeal the project at the state level, and in late 2017, the Washington Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (the state agency responsible for sanctioning new projects) recommended against the oil terminal on the grounds it posed significant, unavoidable harm to the environment and community. In January 2018, Governor Jay Inslee denied the necessary permits. It was over, Fruit Valley had defeated Big Oil.

Fruit Valley’s triumphant resistance was remarkable, but not isolated.

The Pacific Northwest, a politically progressive region that identifies strongly with the environmental movement, has for almost a decade been under siege by the fossil fuel industry as it eyes the lucrative Asian energy market.

The plan of energy companies was to turn the picturesque Pacific Northwest into a fossil fuel highway for the next 50 years by expanding refineries and building terminals, trains and pipelines to transport millions of tons of coal (from the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming), oil (extracted by fracking in North Dakota), liquefied natural gas (from the Montney Formation in western Canada), and petrochemicals.

In total, 30 or so infrastructure projects were destined for communities in the region, including federally protected Indian tribal territories. If constructed, the combined capacity could be at least five times greater than the massive (and massively maligned) Keystone XL pipeline, according to analysis by Sightline Institute, a sustainability and energy think-tank, bringing huge pollution and climate implications.

But the region’s response was to unite. The coordinated opposition movement, known as the Thin Green Line, has beaten back all but four of the proposed projects (two relatively small expansion projects were sanctioned; two other battles are ongoing).

The unity took work. At first, communities and tribes took on the projects individually, until it became clear that the threat was regional, said Eric de Place, a researcher at Sightline Institute, which coined the term “Thin Green Line” to describe the commonality of the threats. Local and state organizations — including Garcia’s Washington Environmental Council — formed a coalition that spearheaded three campaigns: Power Past Coal, Stand Up to Oil, and Power Past Fracked Gas.

“Regional coordination stopped the industry being able to pit communities against each other, as together our negotiating bottom line was no, not one ton, not one community, just no,” de Place said.

The coalition pooled resources to investigate the economic, environmental and safety risks, which in turn helped persuade diverse sectors including tourism and commerce that it was in their interest to resist the fossil fuel corridor. Together, they turned out thousands of people to every public meeting, in every community, to take on the company executives and local officials.

“It was aggressive activism,” said de Place. “Our hard-line stance made it clear to elected officials that this was a binary issue and taking any money from coal or oil would be a political death sentence. This might not work everywhere, but it worked here.”

It’s noteworthy that the Pacific Northwest’s coordinated resistance has targeted transport and infrastructure projects, not the actual oil fields and coal mines. By disrupting the only economically viable transport options, they have made the intended extraction of millions of tons of coal economically unviable. “Find the weakest point in the supply chain, and go after it, that’s what we showed was possible,” said de Place.

The region’s opposition strategies and successes have served as rallying points for the larger climate movement and “keep it in the ground” campaign (which advocates against further fossil fuel burning), said Hilary Boudet, associate professor of sociology at Oregon State University’s School of Public Policy.

But, she warned, with huge profits at stake, Big Oil isn’t giving up. “A proposal’s defeat in one location doesn’t necessarily mean that fossil fuel export won’t happen somewhere else … The Trump administration has been very vocal about its policy of ‘energy dominance,’ which includes fossil fuel export,” Boudet said. Local and state-level politics are crucial to opposing this, she added.

As Garcia’s personal story shows, things can get ugly. At times, community leaders, especially tribal leaders, have been attacked as anti-development, anti-jobs, even anti-American for trying to protect their corner of the planet. But staying united has been their key to prevailing.

Garcia said: “There’s a tremendous sense of responsibility in our communities to take care of the planet so that it can be passed on to our children, and their children. We need more people to speak out, stand up, and form armies of resistance.”

Read original article:

How Linda Garcia risked everything to keep Big Oil out of her community

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, Anker, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Linda Garcia risked everything to keep Big Oil out of her community

Green New Deal activists make first 2020 endorsement in wildfire-burned California

This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Green New Dealers are making their first endorsement of the 2020 election.

At a rally on Saturday, Sunrise Movement, the youth-led grassroots group whose protests pushed the Green New Deal into the political mainstream, endorsed Audrey Denney, an agricultural educator running to replace Rebulican Representative Doug LaMalfa in California’s wildfire-scorched 1st congressional district.

“She’s spent her life working to help farmers and rural communities in the district put food on the table for their families and be part of environmental solutions,” Varshini Prakash, Sunrise Movement’s co-founder, said in a statement. “Representative LaMalfa’s constituents are dying because of climate change, yet he’s spent his career in Washington cozying up with the same oil and gas lobbyists who profited at the expense of his constituents’ lives.”

The rally, the latest stop on Sunrise Movement’s tour to promote the Green New Deal, took place in Chico, a northern California city with nearly 94,000 residents, which was hit repeatedly last year by deadly wildfires.

LaMalfa, who rejects what he calls the “bad science” behind climate change, beat Denney last November to win a fourth term.

But the Democrat faced extraordinary personal challenges in her debut bid for elected office. She advanced to the general election despite entering the primary race late. But midway through the campaign, she underwent surgery after her doctor diagnosed a football-sized tumor on her ovary. Eighteen hours after her procedure, she shot a video from her hospital bed reflecting on the limited healthcare access in her district.

She lost the race but managed to shrink LaMalfa’s usual 20 percent margin of victory to 9 percent. At the time, Sunrise Movement — then a much smaller operation working on just a handful of progressive campaigns, including that of New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez  — did not endorse her. But this time the group is betting that its newfound clout and the sobering climate realities that voters in California’s 1st now face will propel Denney to victory in 2020.

Already last summer, the Carr Fire ripped through the district, killing eight. But, days after the election, a utility equipment failure ignited the Camp Fire. By the time its final flames went out, the blaze killed 85, reduced the entire town of Paradise to ash and displaced thousands in the deadliest wildfire in California history. Though mostly spared, the Chico City Council declared a climate change emergency earlier this month.

“In 2018, 93 lives were lost in my district in the Carr and Camp Fires,” Denney said in a statement. “I’m running for Congress because we need a representative who is only beholden to their constituents, not to corporate interests and political gamesmanship.”

Denney pledged to reject money from fossil fuel companies and executives, and she vowed if elected to support Green New Deal legislation in Congress. That stands in stark contrast to LaMalfa, who’s received over $162,330 from energy and natural resource corporate political action committees and over $100,000 from the oil and gas lobby, according to data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. A LaMalfa spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

Sunrise Movement is expected to play an expanded role in 2020. Last November, the group’s protests mainstreamed the Green New Deal, a movement for a sweeping national plan to zero out emissions and provide clean-energy and climate infrastructure jobs to millions. Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey released a joint resolution outlining the core values of a Green New Deal in February. With notable exceptions, including former Vice President Joe Biden, nearly every major contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination backed the plan.

The group is in the midst of a nationwide tour with roughly 250 events at churches, classrooms and town halls meant to drum up support for the Green New Deal.

See original article here:

Green New Deal activists make first 2020 endorsement in wildfire-burned California

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, Casio, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Paradise, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Green New Deal activists make first 2020 endorsement in wildfire-burned California