Category Archives: Stories/News

Harvey is a Particularly Urgent Warning

Satellite Image, Digital Globe

Brookshire, Texas                                                                                                                                           Satellite Image, Digital Globe

Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana, deadly monsoon rains in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, mudslides in Sierra Leone . . . these tragedies deserve our kindest thoughts and our aid for the victims.

At the same time, these are grim reminders of the inevitable trajectory of our society’s current energy choices.  If we continue to warm the water and the air, these tragedies can only get worse and more frequent.

This is time to intensify our efforts toward 100% clean energy. Now is the time to impress those in positions of leadership with the urgency of this message-from-the-planet, even if the only language they can understand is monetary. How to confront the titanic economic costs we are incurring on into the indefinite, frightening future?  We must ultimately curb our reliance on fossil fuels. If not now, when?

Hurricane Harvey Response Toolkit

Northern Olympic Peninsula supports Pull Together

North Olympic Orca Pod performs at the Elwha Klallam Heritage Center to raise funding for Pull Together.

Fundraising events last week to support the work of Pull Together against the Kinder Morgan Pipeline have brought in over $6000 in contributions from residents of the North Olympic Peninsula!  Way to go!

  • To find out more about this effort, and to contribute visit RavenTrust.
  • Peninsula Daily News Article
  • From: “Coast Protectors” <info@coastprotectors.ca>
    Subject: New video! Kinder Morgan Construction & Know Your Rights Webcast

    We all have a lot of questions about what will happen with Kinder Morgan’s Transmountain pipeline in September, so in concert with our friends at Stand.Earth we put together a webcast! You can watch it (and share with your friends!) here:
    http://www.coastprotectors.ca/km_construction_know_your_rights_webinar

    The new BC government recently announced that without five or the eight remaining permits related to First Nations and Indigenous consultation being fulfilled, construction cannot start [1].

    But according to the September construction schedule they have filed with the National Energy Board (NEB), Kinder Morgan plans to:

    • Work on the oil tanker loading facility on Burrard Inlet
    • Start expanding their Burnaby Tank Farm
    • Begin tunneling under Burnaby Mountain
    • Construct equipment and supply depots along the entire route of the pipeline

    The situation is changing every day – get the latest details from the webinar: http://www.coastprotectors.ca/km_construction_know_your_rights_webinar

    For more events like these, please become a Coast Protectors monthly ally: www.CoastProtectors.ca/donate_monthly. If donating monthly isn’t for you, consider a one time gift of $10, $25, $50 – whatever you can afford.

    Even $10 a month means the world to our ability to work to stop Kinder Morgan and fight climate chaos. Together, we are many, we are strong – and we will stop Kinder Morgan.

    In solidarity,

    Don Bain
    Executive Director
    UBCIC/CoastProtectors

Another Sad Story…

In a message from 350 we just learned that:

The Trump administration just disbanded a federal advisory committee on climate change.

The US National Climate Assessment Advisory Committee (mostly scientists, public health, agricultural and forests/natural lands experts, oceanographers, biologists, risk, weather and water experts,etc) has been disbanded. They were in the middle of developing the 4th National  Climate Assessment. If the outside Advisory Committee is dismantled,  employees working inside federal agencies and departments are likely to be next–reassigned to ???

Trump’s appointees are busy systematically dismantling, cutting budgets and redirecting or blocking staff from doing climate science and planning.  California has our own climate assessment working with our University of California scientists but the vast majority of states are entirely or largely dependent on climate modeling data, analysis, mapping, tools and guidance coming from this national climate assessment process.    There is still a requirement that the US conduct a climate assessment every 4 years, but it may also be dismantled.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/08/20/the-trump-administration-just-disbanded-a-federal-advisory-committee-on-climate-change/

Forget Shorter Showers

“The problem is that individual action, while admirable, is not adequate given the magnitude and trends of climate change or pollution. Please see the short video Forget Shorter Showers.” poet and climate activist, Scott Starbuck

Three Policy Pillars of the Neo-Liberal Age

“Indeed the three policy pillars of the neo-liberal age—privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and the lowering of income and corporate taxes, paid for with cuts to public spending—are each incompatible with many of the actions we must take to bring our emissions to safe levels. And together these pillars form an ideological wall that has blocked a serious response to climate change for decades.”

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein

A century of global warming in 35 seconds

Video: A century of global warming in 35 seconds

A revealing animation created by Antti Lipponen.  You are free to copy, adapt, and build on the material.

Truth to Power

Just a few weeks away from the release of An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, the new film featuring former Vice President Al Gore.

Check out the powerful video featuring One Republic’s song, “Truth to Power”!