Dirty Fuels (Oil) - Coming Clean

All posts tagged "Dirty Fuels (Oil)"

December 19, 2014

New York's Grassroots Triumph

In New York State, at least, sanity has prevailed. By banning fracking, Governor Andrew Cuomo has acted to protect his state's citizens from a rapacious industry whose presence would inevitably result in significant health and environmental consequences.

It's hard to overstate how important this victory is. For the past five years, New York has been one of the few states wise enough to maintain a moratorium on a practice that has devastated thousands of neighborhoods and thousands of square miles of landscapes across the United States. Fortunately, after receiving a report from the state's Health Department that found fracking could pose "significant public health risks," Governor Cuomo concluded that even a single fracking site in New York State would be one too many.

The final decision may have been the governor's, but the real credit for victory over the immensely powerful fossil fuel lobby goes to the passionate anti-fracking activists of New York. Thousands of ordinary (and not so ordinary!) people worked tirelessly to spread the word about the dangers of fracking. They pushed for a moratorium when few thought it was possible. They faced years of opposition from the oil and gas industry and their friends in government, and they never gave up. So this is their hard-earned and well-deserved victory, but it's also something more. It's a ringing affirmation that grassroots organizing really is powerful enough to stop these polluters before they can even get started. That lesson will be taken to heart in hundreds, if not thousands, of communities across the country. Organize and work together, and you can stop the frackers, stop the coal trains, stop the gas-export terminals, and start racing toward 100 percent clean energy for everyone.

Activists in New York fought to stop fracking for the same reasons that the Sierra Club opposes it: the appalling risks and destructive footprint. But in New York, as elsewhere, fracking is all the more foolish when much better energy options await full development. New York has a tremendous economic opportunity in renewable energy. Its Renewable Portfolio Standard, with a goal of 30 percent renewable energy by 2015, has already been successful at bringing new projects online, including 21 new wind farms. It has helped create hundreds of new jobs and driven $2.7 billion in direct investments in the state. However, the program will sunset in 2015.

Although the Cuomo administration has launched several energy initiatives to transform the electricity sector, none of those programs includes measurable benchmarks for getting renewable energy to scale. This week, the Long Island Power Authority's Board of Trustees voted to approve just a fraction of the renewable energy contracts promised by Governor Cuomo in his LIPA reform legislation. So although the governor has demonstrated that he's serious about protecting the health and well-being of New Yorkers, he needs to show the same kind of leadership in developing a strong, prosperous renewable energy economy for New York.

One more thing: Now that Governor Cuomo has announced to the world that fracking is too dangerous for New York, how can the governors of other states justify accepting those same risks? Are the risks and the destruction of fracking somehow more acceptable if you live in California, Ohio, Illinois, or Maryland? Do the people living in those states have less to lose than New Yorkers do? Of course not. New York has its fracking ban, which is a wonderful thing. Now it's time to protect the rest of America from fracking and let our country transition to the prosperous, clean-energy economy that we need.

Posted at 09:28 AM in Dirty Fuels (Oil), Natural Gas | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 19, 2014

Tar Sands End Runs

In a narrow victory for common sense, yesterday the Senate rejected an attempt to legislate approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Senators like California's Barbara Boxer, Hawaii's Brian Schatz, and Virginia's Tim Kaine stood up as environmental champions and deserve our thanks for their leadership. But since the beginning, the decision on the pipeline has belonged to President Obama, so there's no good reason for the Senate to have wasted time on trying to circumvent the approval process.

The bigger issue, though, is that there's no good reason to support Canadian tar sands expansion, much less allow more dirty tar sands oil into our country. Even though everything about tar sands oil is destructive, dirty, and dangerous, oil companies (and their champions on the Hill) are determined to bring as much of it as they can across our border, even if it means bending, breaking, or changing the rules. TransCanada failed this week to get the Senate to do an end run, but another tar sands company, Enbridge, has been having more success in a different branch of government.

Enbridge somehow has convinced the State Department to approve its Keystone XL-sized tar sands pipeline expansion. That's right, this is the same company responsible for the largest onshore oil spill in U.S. history, which contaminated 35 miles of Michigan waterways and wetlands in 2010 with diluted bitumen from tar sands. If Enbridge's expansion of its Alberta Clipper pipeline goes through, the increase in tar sands exports will be equivalent to building 20 new coal-fired power plants.

How did this happen? Enbridge had applied to the State Department to expand the Alberta Clipper back in 2012, which was necessary because, like Keystone XL, the pipe would cross our border with Canada. Since then, the State Department has been going through the environmental review process required by law before making a decision. But Enbridge got tired of waiting. Tar sands producers aren't in it for the long haul -- they're eager to cash in while their extreme oil is still economically viable.

So in June, Enbridge sent a letter to the State Department informing it that it had decided to immediately move forward with the Alberta Clipper expansion without waiting for State to complete its review. It would do an end run around the law by diverting the flow of tar sands oil to an adjacent, 1960s-era pipeline called "Line 3" just before it reaches the international border, and then back to Alberta Clipper once it was across the border. Enbridge asserted that the State Department's jurisdiction was limited to the actual border crossing, so State could do nothing to stop it.

Give them points for chutzpah. But, in fact, the State Department has jurisdiction over the entire border, including Line 3. Both pipelines operate under the permission of the State Department. The permits for both pipelines prohibit these kinds of operational changes, and State has the authority to revoke or terminate either permit at any time. Not surprisingly, Enbridge also ignored that the State Department's job is to evaluate whether increased tar sands oil imports into the U.S. are in our national interest, including climate impacts. Just last week, the White House reaffirmed that it is "firmly committed" to that process, which is why we expect President Obama to veto any future legislative attempts to shove Keystone XL down our throats.

Not everyone in his administration, though, seems to have gotten that message, because in July the State Department replied to Enbridge's blatant attempt to avoid the Alberta Clipper permitting process -- by agreeing that the expansion could go forward.

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. After all, this is not the first time that the State Department's ties to the oil industry have raised eyebrows. Twice it has ignored its own conflict-of-interest procedures and come under fire for hiring oil-industry groups to write the environmental impact statements for Keystone XL. The resulting reports naturally downplayed Keystone XL's negative impacts despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In this case, it appears that State privately met with Enbridge to discuss this new scheme as far back as June 3, yet nothing was disclosed to the public until almost three months later. In addition, State has refused to disclose crucial permitting documents despite Sierra Club requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

That's why the Sierra Club, together with a coalition of environmental and tribal allies, has filed a lawsuit challenging Enbridge's illegal scheme to nearly double the amount of tar sands coming across our border, while avoiding public review and the presidential permit process.

Once again, though, it's important to remember that the stakes extend far beyond the approval of any single pipeline -- whether it's proposed by Enbridge or TransCanada. We should be looking for ways to avoid -- not encourage -- extreme oil sources.

Posted at 04:30 PM in Dirty Fuels (Oil) | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 03, 2014

Breaking Big Oil's Grip

Oil prices have dipped lately. In the short term, that's probably good news (unless you're an oil company or a petrostate). If we look at the big picture, though, it's a lot less relevant. That's because oil prices don't reflect the true costs of extracting and burning oil any more than donut prices reflect what a steady diet of crullers will do to your waistline. Eat enough donuts and your health will suffer, regardless of how much you paid for them. Likewise, the more oil we consume, the worse the consequences will be for our climate, our environment, and our democracy. High prices simply add insult to the ongoing injury.

Unfortunately, though, the real costs of oil aren't just keeping pace with our oil use -- they're outstripping it. The oil industry's increasing reliance on risky, high-carbon, extreme sources like tar sands, fracking, and Arctic and deepwater drilling means that we're paying an ever-steeper price -- not just in dollars, but in disasters. On top of that, it's clear by now that, unchecked, Big Oil will stay on this destructive course like an out-of-control automaton. If we let them, oil industry executives will keep drilling long past the point where the planet as we know it can recover.

And let's stop right there, because we are not going to let that happen.

What's more, the oil industry knows it. They know that people don't trust them. They know that people don't like being forced to depend on oil for transportation. And, most important of all, they know that people have the power to move our country beyond oil for good.

They know it's possible because they can already see us doing it. We are loosening oil's grip, and we're doing it from two different sides: supply and demand.

On the supply side, our organizing is already keeping fossil fuels in the ground. We're relentlessly challenging the oil industry's attempts to exploit high-risk and pollution-intensive oil reserves. Have you taken action to oppose construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to transport dirty tar sands oil? Then you've already directly affected the economic viability of that disastrous energy source. A new analysis from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis and Oil Change International found that tar sands producers lost more than $17 billion in revenue between 2010 and 2013 as the result of citizen protests. We haven't completely stopped tar sands development (yet), but we but we are well on the way to ensuring that it is one of the first forms of extreme oil to become nonviable as we shift away from oil entirely.

And that's just one of many fights here and around the world to stop irresponsible drilling for dirty fuels.

At the same time (and this is part of the reason for the current decline in oil prices), we're reducing the demand for oil. As The Economist recently put it: "Energy-saving ideas will not suddenly be uninvented." Standards for more-efficient vehicles and consumer adoption of technologies like electric cars and more-efficient engines aren't going away, regardless of what happens to oil prices. Every single thing we do to promote clean energy and sustainable transportation solutions (like renewable energy, electric vehicles, transit, and walkable/bikeable communities) permanently ratchets down the use of oil in our economy. And as I've said before, once we break up with dirty fuels, there's no way we're getting back together.

Want to really keep oil executives up at night? Check out the Sierra Club's new "Pick a Plug-In" website to find out whether a full-battery or plug-in-hybrid electric vehicle makes sense for you. The U.S. already has more than a quarter million EVs on its roads and, this past fall, the fourth annual National Drive Electric Week drew more than 90,000 people to events in 150 cities and 39 states. Governors, mayors, senators, and city councillors from all over the nation participated and announced initiatives that will put even more EVs on the road.

If you do end up behind the wheel of one of those EVs, you'll join the thousands who've discovered that driving one is not only cleaner and quieter but also way more fun. At the very least, you'll have one less reason to worry about the price of oil.

Posted at 11:33 AM in Dirty Fuels (Oil), Green Fleets | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 20, 2014

Exxon's First Prick of Conscience?

The fossil-fuel divestment movement has been on a roll lately to the tune of $50 billion, but one of its biggest successes happened last month: The world's most profitable oil company squirmed. Exxon Mobil's vice president of public and government affairs published a critique of divestment that concluded by saying that destroying our planet's climate by recklessly extracting and burning fossil fuel reserves is necessary to relieve global poverty.

This sudden concern is interesting from a company that holds the record for the highest corporate profits ever posted in the U.S. and whose CEO made more than $100,000 a day in 2012 (including Sundays). Exxon Mobil hasn't earned those kinds of profits by worrying overmuch about the poor of the world. As the Sierra Student Coalition's Anastasia Schemkes put it: "This is the oil industry saying 'please don't be mean to me' after bullying vulnerable communities around the globe for decades."

The real message of Exxon Mobil's blog post was unintentional. The fossil fuel divestment movement, which started on college campuses but has since spread to foundation boardrooms and beyond, is achieving its principal goal, which is to raise awareness of how morally indefensible the actions of companies like Exxon Mobil really are. I'm not just talking about its core business of extracting as much oil as it can, wherever it can, while it can. This is a company that pretends to care about climate disruption (with lots of talk about "mitigation," which is code for "do whatever it takes to keep burning fossil fuels"), while simultaneously funding the climate-denial industry and lavishing its largesse on obstructionist legislators.

How can we begin to get companies like this to change? It's tough to beat such a Goliath through financial pressure alone. Even the most wildly successful divestment campaign is unlikely to dent this mega-corporation's profits in the near term. But let's not forget that even the hugest corporation is made up of real people. And real people start to get uncomfortable when it's clear that not only is what they are doing terribly wrong -- but that other people are taking note.

That's when they start to get defensive -- and we can see that divestment really is making a difference.

Posted at 03:09 PM in Dirty Fuels (Oil), Dirty Money (Oil) | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 01, 2014

If a Tar-Sands Project Fails in the Forest…

Back in March, I wrote about the Keystone XL "it's not about the pipe," saying that any rejection of new tar sands pipelines serves the purpose of keeping this dirty oil in the ground. Some good news from last week proves the point that I and others have been making. The Norwegian energy firm Statoil announced that it would pull the plug on a planned multibillion-dollar, 40,000 barrel per day destructive tar sands project in Alberta. What reason did they give? Rising costs and "limited pipeline access which weighs on prices for Alberta oil, squeezing margins and making it difficult for sustainable financial returns." (Translation: We are kicking Keystone's keister.)

In fact, Statoil's is actually the third Canadian tar-sands cancellation this year. This latest one, though, is both the largest and the first in-situ project to get the axe. The other two were strip-mining operations, which carry a higher overhead. If you can't make the numbers work for an in-situ tar sands mine, then your business model is in trouble.

And if Statoil's project is in trouble, you can bet the whole tar sands industry is looking over its shoulder. They may wish they hadn't, because we're gaining on them.

Unless you've watched tar sands mining firsthand (an experience I wouldn't wish on anyone but a couple of Wichita billionaires), it's impossible to comprehend how nightmarish it really is. (Last week's "In Focus" photo feature from The Atlantic comes close, though). No rational reason exists for doing this to our planet -- unless you count greed. Sadly, some people do. But even if you are willing to destroy 50,000 square miles of boreal forest just to make a profit, there's no way to justify destroying our future in the process.

No one knows exactly how much oil lies under Alberta's tar sands fields -- perhaps as much as 3 trillion barrels. But we do know that it would take far less than that to put our planet on a path to runaway climate disruption.

I've said before that we cannot let that happen. Today, I'm proud to say that we aren't letting that happen. Over its lifetime, the Statoil project alone would have released a total of 777.4 million metric tons (MMT) of CO2 into our atmosphere. For comparison, the EPA projects that its Clean Power Plan will be eliminating up to 555 MMT of CO2 emissions annually by 2030. Every single tar-sands project cancellation is a huge victory for the hundreds of thousands of people who've stood up to fight Keystone XL.

But as I said, it's not about the pipe. It's about stopping the expansion of tar-sands mining while we still can. The three dominos that have fallen this year in Alberta are just a beginning.

Let's keep 'em falling: Tell President Obama he needs to reject this pipeline for good.

Posted at 02:28 PM in Dirty Fuels (Oil) | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 24, 2014

A Shout Heard Round the World

If anyone doubted the existence of a mighty climate movement in this country, then the sight of more than 400,000 determined, joyful, vociferous people marching through midtown Manhattan in the People's Climate March in New York City last Sunday has set them straight. Even for those of us who knew that people are ready for climate action, the sight of so many people from so many different backgrounds, all united behind the same righteous purpose, was both exhilarating and humbling. I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking, "So this is what it feels like to be part of history."

Only time will tell exactly how big a turning point Sunday was in our progress in stopping climate disruption. Personally, I think it was a huge one. But I also know that what matters most right now is not what we did last weekend, but where we go from here. Our job now is to build on this incredible moment.

Let's not forget, though, that the march in New York was only the largest and most dramatic event on this historic day. People took action at over 2,700 events in more than 150 countries. This was a shout heard round the world -- but it was also heard seven blocks away at the United Nations.

The march was timed to coincide with the UN Climate Summit because, after all, this is the ultimate global issue. We all share the world's climate, and everyone stands to lose if the nations of the world can't agree on a plan to limit carbon pollution. This week's summit and the climate talks scheduled for Paris next year will be critical. As President Obama and representatives from other nations spoke on Tuesday, no one denied the urgency of the crisis, and several countries announced major new commitments.

Among the European nations, France promised $1 billion for the Green Climate Fund, Germany announced that it would not directly finance any new coal plants, and Denmark said it will become fossil-fuel free by 2050. The European Union committed to cutting emissions 80 to 95 percent by 2050.

Chinese vice-premier Zhang Gaoli made his country's first-ever commitment to peak its carbon emissions, but would only set a deadline of "as early as possible." Coming from the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter, that's a start.

As for the U.S., President Obama said only that his administration would announce new carbon reduction goals by next year. He focused instead on how the U.S. will step up its international efforts -- including a new executive order that requires federal agencies be guided by the need to build climate resilience into all international development programs and investments. The president spoke of how "Our citizens keep marching. We cannot pretend we do not hear them." On Keystone XL and the Alberta Clipper tar sands pipelines, on LNG gas exports, and on coal and oil leases, the president will have the opportunity to show us he's listening.

Even before the UN Climate Summit started, though, we were seeing results of the growing moral pressure exemplified by the People's Climate March (and also by the following day's Flood Wall Street protests, which shut down a 10-block stretch of lower Broadway for nearly seven hours).

On Monday, Google chairman Eric Schmidt revealed that his company would no longer help fund the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a free-market lobbying group that has worked to kill renewable energy programs and teach climate denial in schools. "We should not be aligned with such people," Schmidt said, "they're just literally lying."

The Google news was great, but Monday's addition of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to the fast-growing list of philanthropic organizations that have committed to divest from fossil fuel companies was both welcome and wonderfully ironic. These are the heirs, after all, of John D. Rockefeller, the world's first oil billionaire. More importantly, though, divestment is a trend with momentum. The number of institutions that have committed to divest from fossil fuels since the beginning of this year has more than doubled -- and they represent more than $50 billion in assets. Double that a few more times and -- you do that math.

Ultimately, though, the most important message of the People's Climate March was one of empowerment. Although most people believe we have a responsibility to act on climate, the challenge can seem overwhelming to just one person. After this week, no one ever needs to feel alone in this fight. We are millions of people, all around the world. Together, we have power that even the wealthiest corporations in the world will be unable to resist.

The march may have ended on Sunday, but the movement is just getting going.

Posted at 10:09 AM in Beyond Coal, Clean Energy Solutions, Dirty Fuels (Oil), Dirty Money (Oil), Natural Gas | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 08, 2014

The World's Most Ambitious Disaster

I've long known how wasteful, destructive, and dangerous the process of extracting oil from tar sands is. To get one barrel of oil, you have to dig up four tons of dirt and rock. Beautiful old-growth boreal forest becomes a wasteland. And that single barrel of oil? It creates three times as much climate pollution simply to produce it as a barrel of conventional crude.

So, yes, I knew that tar sands were bad news. That's why I was willing to go to jail for protesting the Keystone XL pipeline. But it's impossible to really comprehend the brutal reality of tar sands mining without seeing it firsthand.

I spent four days in Alberta with filmmaker Darren Aronofsky and First Nations leaders. We met with officials from Suncor Energy, one of the companies most involved in extracting tar sands, and walked through the dismal wreckage of what the company calls a "reclaimed" area. We took a tour of the massive open-pit mines that spread across the landscape, and received a sobering briefing from Erin Flanagan at the Pembina Institute. We also visited with leaders from the Athabasca Chipewyan and Mikisew Cree First Nations, whose communities have been devastated by the immediate environmental consequences of tar sands extraction.

First Nations communities downstream of tar sands operations have suffered a higher than normal incidence of rare and deadly cancers. Photo: Niko Tavernise

The tar sands are the most outsized example I can imagine of misspent energy and ingenuity. About a fifth of tar sands oil is extracted using open-pit mines -- some of the largest strip mines on Earth. But the other four-fifths of the oil is extracted with an even more dangerous process. Basically, they pipe in natural gas, which you can think of as clean energy's antithesis. They then burn that fuel to generate steam to liquefy and extract the bitumen. The bitumen then gets separated and "upgraded" using massive amounts of water and, frequently, toxic chemicals.

There is no dirtier, more inefficient way to get oil than by tar sands mining. Photo: Niko Tavernise

As part of this process, the boreal forest is fragmented, cut down, or completely obliterated. And all of this happens before the bitumen is diluted (more toxic chemicals) and then piped under high heat and intense pressure up to a thousand miles or more to where it's refined and stuffed into our cars and trucks. It is immense, complex, and at a scale that arguably dwarfs any other industrial activity on the planet. When you see it happening, you can't help but be impressed by the scale and audacity of the whole crazy process.

What a waste -- not just of forests, habitat, energy, air, water, health, and our climate. What a waste of human talent. Watching all this, I found myself contemplating how much could be achieved if all of this effort, ingenuity, and engineering prowess were instead directed toward developing clean power? What if, instead of extracting oil by brute force using mining trucks and shovels the size of apartment buildings, these engineers and technicians were designing better wind turbines or perfecting advanced battery storage? Why go to so much trouble to do something so difficult and so destructive when you could invest the same effort into something positive that can literally save the world and power it to boot?

Tar sands mining destroys entire landscapes. Photo: Niko Tavernise

Maybe it's just a question of human nature. History is filled with examples of those who stubbornly clung to old paradigms even when it was against their own best interest. Of course, the better way of doing things eventually wins out. But in the case of tar sands and other carbon-intensive, extreme energy-extraction methods, we simply can't afford to wait any longer for common sense to prevail. Not if we want to stop climate disruption.

That's why it is so important that, as a society, we increase the pressure on our leaders to take action right now to advance clean energy solutions and to resist the temptation to drill, mine, and frack as if there were no consequences and no tomorrow.

In a couple of weeks, on September 21, I will be marching along with thousands of Sierra Club members and so many others in New York City. The People's Climate March will be the biggest climate demonstration in U.S. history. The march will include a "Tar Sands Bloc" of people affected by tar sands at every stage -- from First Nations communities in the north to refineries in the south and along the pipelines and train routes in-between. There'll be blocs of families with young children, gatherings of clean energy advocates, and much more. We'll be calling on President Obama other world leaders to take more-significant action to curb carbon pollution. Join us, and take a stand where you stand.

Because we're starting to move in the right direction toward clean energy. We are already building an economy based on clean energy that is creating more jobs than building pipelines or stripmining forests for oil. We're replacing power plants, switching to wind and solar, and improving fuel efficiency. It's not fast enough, nor at the scale that we need -- yet -- but momentum is building. Every day, smart people are coming up with new ideas and innovations. But just think what we will accomplish once our civilization commits all of its genius to making this transformation happen and stops working overtime to prolong the use of fossil fuels.

Forget about "if we can put a man on the moon" analogies. Any society that can conceive of and execute something as recklessly ambitious as tar-sands mining should find the transformation to a clean-energy economy to be a walk in the park.

See you in NY. Please RSVP and find out more about the People's Climate March here.

Posted at 01:00 PM in Clean Energy Solutions, Dirty Fuels (Oil) | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 11, 2014

Look What You Did!

I returned from the Arctic last week, and the beauty and peacefulness that I experienced there still occupy my dreams. Sure, the grizzly we encountered in our camp the first night has a starring role, but mostly it's the grandeur and sublime tranquility that were so captivating.

I knew the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was big, but I didn't really comprehend how big until we flew into it. For miles and miles and miles on end, we passed over one mountain, broad valley, and watershed after another. Such an expanse of untouched wilderness was inspiring, humbling, and breathtaking all at once.

Could there be any better way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act than to explore (in my case, for the first time) the most completely wild place in the United States? If you want to be as far as possible from any human trail, road, or settlement, then this is where you come. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge encompasses more than 19.6 million acres, of which eight million are designated as a federally protected wilderness area.

(See more trip pics from me and my awesome traveling companions here.)

It's not called a wildlife refuge for nothing, either. This is as north as North America gets, but animals ranging from shrews to grizzlies call it home, along with more than 160,000 free-roaming caribou. Every year, the Porcupine caribou migrate 1,500 miles to their calving grounds on the coastal plain by the Arctic Ocean. That's like walking from Boston to Miami. It may be the greatest wildlife spectacle in North America.

I wondered whether we would see the Porcupine herd, but not for long -- there must have been a thousand caribou in the grassy valley where our plane set us down. After exploring in the valley under the midnight sun, we spent the rest of the week rafting down the Aichilik River to the coastal plain, winding up at the shore of the Arctic Ocean.

What a trip. Along the way, we saw wilderness at its wildest, with the Brooks Range looming at our backs and golden eagles, tundra swans, long-tailed jaegers, and even snowy owls watching from above. Just like the caribou, though, we were making another kind of journey -- from the part of the Refuge that is safe from oil and gas drilling to the part that is not.

The coastal plain of the Refuge, where the caribou give birth to their calves each year, has an odd name: Area 10-02. When the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was expanded in 1980 as part of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, proponents of oil and gas drilling insisted on adding a section (10-02) to the bill that mandated an inventory of potential oil and gas resources. How much oil is there? No one can say for sure, other than that it's not enough to affect global market prices. Undoubtedly, it would have a devastating effect on the caribou and other wildlife.

It would be easy to lose count of how many times during the past four decades we've come close to losing the fight to keep oil companies from invading the coastal plain. It's been a near thing way too many times. Yet we've always managed to keep the drills at bay -- and by "we," I mean the millions of Americans who've signed petitions, contacted their representatives, and otherwise played a part in, first, creating the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and then in making sure that the oil companies stayed out.

That, above all, is what kept going through my mind as I marveled at this wilderness. Just look at what we did, together! Somehow, we've kept all of this safe. We all should be proud of that.

When at last we reached the shore of the Arctic Ocean, we had another surprise. We'd hoped we might be able to venture onto the frozen sea and perhaps climb an ice ridge. Instead, waves lapped at the shore, with only a few isolated small icebergs offshore -- a reminder that the climate in Alaska is warming more rapidly than anywhere else in North America. A decade ago, the sea ice would definitely have extended all the way to the shore.

(One more reason to be in New York on September 21 for the People's Climate March.)

Our visit to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ended at the Inupiat village of Kaktovik (pop. 293). None of the local people I talked to were in favor of drilling, either offshore or on the coastal plain. Their main concern was to ensure they would continue to be able to do subsistence hunting to provide for themselves. None of them wanted the oil industry to move into the Refuge.

If that ever were to happen, we don't have to wonder what it would look like. West of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge lies the largest oil field in North America -- a sprawling complex of oil wells, gravel roads, air strips, gravel pads, and equipment-storage sites that covers an area the size of Rhode Island. And as usual, where there is oil, there are oil spills. The largest was in 2006, when a corroded BP pipeline ruptured and leaked about 267,000 gallons of oil.

Could that happen in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Yes, as long as there's still money to be made from selling oil, and as long as the status of the coastal plain remains in limbo. The current U.S. House of Representatives would happily turn the coastal plain into a Chevron parking lot -- as long as oil companies could still erect their drilling rigs.

We can never let that happen. So until the coastal plain is truly protected once and for all, we all need to keep up the fight. Join the millions who've helped keep this wilderness wild: Ask the Obama administration to do everything it can to establish a lasting legacy by protecting the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Posted at 08:39 AM in Dirty Fuels (Oil), Natural Gas, Our Wild America | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 01, 2014

An American Moment

You might want to save this date: September 21. Here's why.

Activists working to address the climate crisis have been cautiously cheering President Obama this year -- for telegraphing that he's likely to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and for the Clean Power Plan, an important set of standards that his Environmental Protection Agency has proposed for cutting carbon pollution from existing coal-fired power plants.

Yet as scientists know, as polar bears know, and as people who've experienced extreme weather know, the nation and the world are still moving too slowly to avert climate disaster.

The drumbeat for urgency is growing, however, and it's not just coming from the tree-hugging contingent. Last week, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, retired hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and other leaders known for keeping an eye on bottom lines released a report called "Risky Business." It makes a sobering case for why the nation cannot afford the economic costs of climate change.

The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has already reached levels not seen since long before we even evolved. The human suffering that results may be incalculable, but the economic consequences are not. The International Energy Agency has estimated that for every year the world delays taking significant action to curb climate change, we will have to spend an additional $500 billion down the road.

At a Senate hearing that many Republicans hoped would undercut the EPA's proposed Clean Power Act, four former heads of the EPA, under Republican presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush testified instead that action is imperative. Noting that businesses and states are already taking the crisis seriously, William Ruckelshaus, who headed the first EPA under Nixon, said: "There is a lot happening on climate. It's just not happening in Washington."

Indeed, our government may be gridlocked by the Republicans who control the House while hamstrung by ties to a fossil fuel lobby that demands utter fealty, but local leaders and the American people are moving forward fast.

Just last year, Al Gore and I stood and watched as then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's history-making plan to stop using coal-fired power by 2025 and replace it with cleaner energy sources.

That was a proud moment for Los Angeles, and Al Gore ended an impassioned speech that day on a hopeful note about the ability of our society to quickly evolve: "If somebody had told you four years ago," he said, "that on this beautiful March day, 60 percent of the American people would say, 'we are in favor of gay marriage,' you would have said, 'no we can't change that much that fast.' But we can, and we did." The same will be true of attitudes about cutting carbon, he predicted.

My guess is that even Al Gore is surprised by how soon his prophecy has become reality. When this month the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced its Clean Power Plan for cutting carbon emissions from power plants, polls found about 70 percent of Americans in favor.

This really is a potentially defining American moment. We cannot let it slip from our grasp, for while momentum is on our side, time is not. And so on September 21, tens of thousands of people will converge on New York City to urge the president to show the hundreds of world leaders gathering in that city for the United Nations Climate Summit, that America is ready to lead a global response to this global crisis.

We're going to make 2014 the tipping point year in the international effort to solve the climate crisis, and contrary to what those who remain corrupted by the influence of the coal, oil, and gas industries would like you to think, the world we're already tipping toward is not one of diminished lifestyle, but one of rare historic opportunity.

Already, people across America are finding well-paying, meaningful jobs building the wind turbines and installing the solar panels that will let us walk away from the dirty 19th-century fossil fuels that are making us sick and wreaking havoc on our planet's climate. Already, investors are profiting from the technological innovation that is creating an era of clean energy prosperity, while communities that have long borne the brunt of fossil-fuel refining and burning are demanding an energy future that does not perpetuate sacrifice zones in places like Wilmington, Detroit, and Houston.

Every day, more people recognize the obvious course we need to take. And on September 21, the cross section of people rallying at the People's Climate March will state the obvious more loudly and assertively than ever before in New York City and around the country.

Posted at 10:38 AM in Beyond Coal, Clean Energy Solutions, Dirty Fuels (Oil) | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 24, 2014

Reject = Protect

On the day that President Obama finally rejects the Keystone XL pipeline, the connection between tar sands development and climate disruption should be only one of the reasons (although it's certainly reason enough). For someone like Obama, whose first real job was as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago, the effect of the pipeline and its toxic payload on the people and communities in its path will surely also be a factor.

This week, the president will hear the voices of those people loud and clear, thanks to the Reject and Protect encampment and march on the National Mall. Reject and Protect is being led by the "Cowboy Indian Alliance" -- a group of ranchers, farmers, and tribal communities from along the pipeline's route. I visited them this week and was both impressed by their determination and moved by how they placed this fight in the greater context of environmental injustice.

It's hard not to be inspired by people like Texas rancher Julia Trigg Crawford, who was there to lend support even though she has already lost her own battle to stop TransCanada from routing part of Keystone XL through her property: "Basically they came in and said a foreign corporation building a for-profit pipeline had more of a right to my land than I did."

That was echoed by Ihanktonwan Oyate spiritual leader and elder Faith Spotted Eagle, who said, "We stand here as Mother Bears to defend our land, our farms, our ranches, our treaty territory. They are violating our treaty land and our treaty water."

The more time goes by, the more evidence we're seeing of just how toxic tar sands oil really is -- and what its effects would be on those unfortunate enough to live near a spill or a refinery. Of course, if a major spill were to happen on the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska, the disaster would be both unparalleled and irreversible for millions of Americans.

Already, the Obama administration has heard from more than 2,000,000 people who believe the pipeline would not be in our national interest -- an unprecedented number. Just as important, though, are the individual voices being heard this week -- the voices of Americans who see the health and welfare of their communities under attack. Many of these communities already bear an unfair share of the consequences from fossil fuel pollution. Can we really ask them to suffer even more for the sake of oil industry profits?

There's still time to join the Reject and Protect march in D.C. this Saturday. You can sign up here. Can't make it to the capital? Then join the thousands of people from the around the country who will be simultaneously posting messages of solidarity.

Posted at 04:09 PM in Dirty Fuels (Oil) | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)