Seattle just became the first city to call for a statewide moratorium on all new oil by rail infrastructure.
Senators pull off all-nighter for climate
30 U.S. Senators stayed up all night to talk about the challenge of climate change
Middle school video contest
For middle school parents and teachers on the North Olympic Peninsula: To supplement the national contest described below, Olympic Climate Action is offering a $50 cash prize for the best short (30-120 seconds) video on climate change submitted by a middle-school student on the North Olympic Peninsula. Rules: · Entries must have been submitted to …
Photos from Plant-for-the-Planet
Here are some images from Presidents Day week 2014, when Mike, Zoe, and Stella Foster came to the Olympic Peninsula as climate ambassadors, visiting schools and planting trees and shrubs. Link to video: "Here's a worm"
Why we must reject Keystone XL
Comments sent to the State Department by Seattle Climate Reality leader Ken Lans.
Comment to feds on Keystone XL
It's time for Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama to stand up to oil companies and just say no. Submit your official public comments on the Keystone XL pipeline by March 7.
OCA joins U.S. Climate Action Network
Today Olympic Climate Action joined the U.S. Climate Action Network, part of the worldwide Climate Action Network. This move puts OCA in touch with other climate activists, the better to collaborate with our colleagues worldwide.
OCA Sponsors Climate Ambassadors to Local Schools
Climate Reality Leader Michael Foster and his two daughters, Plant-for-the-Planet Ambassadors Zoe and Stella, visited schools across Clallam County the week of Presidents Day 2014. Peninsula Daily News story The Fosters' itinerary
Let’s get down to work
From David W. Orr, Ecological Literacy: It is easy...to throw up one's hands and conclude with the Kentucky farmer that "you can't get there from here." That conclusion, however, breeds self-fulfilling prophecies, fatalism, and resignation--in the face of an overwhelming need to act. We also have the historical examples of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and …
If not us, then who?
James Adcock left these thoughts on the Sightline blog (paraphrased): http://daily.sightline.org/2013/05/07/harnessing-our-dark-optimism/ 1) Even tiny little partial successes represent saving millions of human beings from death or untold suffering, including watching their children die of starvation, heat stroke, or lack of water. 2) The morality of one’s actions is not dependent on the morality, or lack thereof, …
Divest from fossil-fuel companies
Take a stand against an industry whose cynicism and misinformation are wreaking havoc on the planet: move your investments out of fossil fuels. Join the pledge drive to make no new investments in the largest 200 fossil fuel companies, divest existing investments over the next 5 years, and reinvest in a healthy new economy. Or start a …
Warmth in Alaska, Cold in the Midwest – Signs of a Shifting Climate?
NASA authors explore the cause for the recent enormous avalanche that blocked the only land link between the ice-free oil port of Valdez and the rest of Alaska. What does this have to do with the rest of us? In essence, Alaska’s warmth is the “flip side of the coin” to the Midwest and Northeast’s …
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Comments to State Leg on proposed spill bills
OCA comments on proposed oil-spill bills to WA State Legislature Here are the letters we sent; we urge you to write as well. Both legislators responded positively to our letters, so we're encouraged. 2014-02-03 Hargrove 2014-02-03 Tharinger
4-H environment club forming
4-H-environment club flyer
Feeling overwhelmed?
Here are some things you can do in the community and as an individual.
100 Demonstrate vs Keystone in Port Angeles & Port Townsend
Calling on President Obama to Reject Keystone XL; State Department Study Is Flawed As part of a national day of protests, Olympic Climate Action in Port Angeles and Fossil Fuel Action in Port Townsend conducted rallies on February 3, calling on President Obama to reject the controversial Keystone XL pipeline following the release of the State …
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PDN story on vigil vs. Keystone
Peninsula Daily News: OCA vigil Feb. 3 to protest Keystone XL pipeline
Scientific case for radical emissions reductions
The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in England just hosted a conference underscoring the point that we need to get very serious very quickly about reducing our greenhouse-gas footprint. The conference website includes videos of all the talks, including a keynote address by Naomi Klein.
Wendell Berry: It starts with love
"The world and our life in it are conditional gifts. We have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it. And to take good care of it we have to know it. And to know it and to be willing to take care of it, we have …
The moral challenge of our time
In this reply to a Cal Thomas column ["Ice breaking climate change fears", 2013-09-19], we challenge this so-called "man of values" with a very simple value: If you make a mess, clean it up. There is little doubt about the mess: climate scientists have never been in greater agreement (98%) that human-caused greenhouse gases are the …
Rhetoric does not trump science
Cal Thomas is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts, to paraphrase wise words attributed to the late Senator Daniel Moynihan. In Thomas's commentary, "Ice breaking climate change fears" (published in the Peninsula Daily News on 19 September 2013), by egregiously cherry-picking data and misrepresenting facts and/or, perhaps, simple ignorance, he represents a philosophy …
Climate disasters are already taxing us
Crop losses. Floods. Wildfires. Climate change and extreme weather are fundamentally changing the United States, and American taxpayers are paying a huge, and growing, cost. LINK
National Geographic on rising seas
"By the next century, if not sooner, large numbers of people will have to abandon coastal areas in Florida and other parts of the world. Some researchers fear a flood tide of climate-change refugees. 'From the Bahamas to Bangladesh and a major amount of Florida, we’ll all have to move, and we may have to …
Haiyan – let’s not beat around the bush
When do you say, "It’s Time to Start Talking About Climate Change?"
Churchill on climate change
"In the face of the plainest warnings, we have now entered upon a period of danger. The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences. We are in it now…I see great reason for intense vigilance and …
EPA wants feedback on power plant standards
The EPA is asking for the public's input on new limits on carbon emissions -- add your name to show your support. About 40 percent of all carbon pollution in America comes from our power plants, but we don't have anything in place on a national level to regulate the amount of carbon they put into …
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Whatcom County votes against coal export
In a council election unlike any other in the history of Whatcom County, voters sided with representatives believed to be against a proposed coal export facility. READ MORE »
Greenhouse gases soar to record levels
The amount of planet-warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2012, with rapid growth in both carbon dioxide and methane concentrations, according to a report released by the World Meteorological Organization.
Comment on Longview coal export terminal
The biggest potential impact of our state on climate change is not from our own emissions but from the emissions we may facilitate elsewhere, for instance through proposed new coal-export terminals at Cherry Point and Longview. The Washington Department of Ecology has announced the dates of scoping for the Longview proposal, during which time it …
World economic leader calls for broad energy policy reform
In a speech last week, the Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) called for immediate worldwide reform of economic and political policies to avert climate disaster. Included in his speech was the imperative that we leave most existing reserves of fossil fuels in the ground and provide a credible and stable …
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Send comments to State Climate Workgroup
Washington State is working on a strategy to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions statewide, and your testimony is needed by Oct. 30: Background about the State Climate Workgroup and how to submit public comments Background info from Climate Solutions Testimony submitted by OCA
Study points to spreading unlivability
Urgent time frame seen for climate change Researchers at the University of Hawaii have developed a "climate departure" index: the year when the mean climate of any given location on Earth will shift completely outside the most extreme records experienced in the past 150 years. NBC News story Full article in the journal Nature
Clallam County to discuss Climate Plan
ClallamCounty has a Climate Action Plan for its own governmental operations which sets the following carbon-emissions reduction targets: 10% by 2012 20% by 2015 50% by 2030 80% by 2050 At this coming Monday’s County Commissioner work session (Courthouse, Board meeting room 160, 9 a.m.), the Commissioners will hear an update on progress related to this plan. …
Bold words from climate scientists
The International Panel on Climate Change (a body of the UN) today released their summary of the entire science underpinning climate change. This summary is aimed at policymakers. "The IPCC called the evidence of climate change "unequivocal" and that the "human influence is clear" and goes a step further to endorse "substantial and sustained reductions …
Olympic Climate Action 