By Sher Watts Spooner / Daily Kos
Upcoming weeks offer several opportunities to join the fight against global warming. And in the age of a Donald Trump administration, the environment needs all the friends it can get.
We’re not going to change Trump’s climate change-denying ways. But there are many ways to fight for the environment on our own. [Read more…]
In my essay, Park City is Damned: A Case Study in Civilization, I described the vicious cycle Park City, Utah is caught in and explained how the city cannot exist for much longer.
There are far more humans in Park City than the land can support, so the necessities of life must be imported. Importing these necessities costs money and requires an industrial infrastructure. Park City makes its money through a tourist industry that relies on snow, but climate change, produced by the same industrial infrastructure bringing the necessities of life, is destroying the snow. The industrial infrastructure must be dismantled to stop climate change so the snow may survive. Either the snow or the industrial infrastructure will fail.
And, Park City will, too. [Read more…]
By Tyson Siegele, SanDiego350
A staunch supporter of Community Choice Energy gave the keynote address at a March 10th forum organized by the Climate Action Campaign. Since clean, renewable energy is one of the main benefits of Community Choice Energy (CCE), you might think the speaker would be a long haired hippy prone to singing kumbaya. Not at all, not even close. The proud Republican Mayor of Lancaster, California, Rex Parris, provided an enthusiastic endorsement of CCE, lambasting the high prices of utility power and praising the savings gained through Community Choice. [Read more…]
By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press
San Onofre nuke owner wants to put lots of high level nuclear waste 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean.
On March 20 Surfer Magazine reported:
“They’re going to put nuclear waste 100 feet from the water.”
On Wednesday, April 5th, Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina — a life-long IB resident and avid surfer — went on KUSI News to expose another sewage spill from Mexico into the Tijuana River after a resident complained of a renewed fetid smell.
Only days before, the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) published “Report of Transboundary Bypass Flows into the Tijuana River,” a subdued 56-page explanation of events with no immediate relief for residents on either side of the border. [Read more…]
By Nicola Moelter / SanDiego350
There’s a new category of climate and environmental champions appearing just as the federal government is fading into the background: corporations. While we’ve been conditioned to think of corporate sustainability programs as greenwashing, evidence of real action is mounting, motivated by consumer and investor demand, and real threats to and opportunities for businesses. I know this because I’ve been working inside the belly of a corporate beast for eight years now as its environmental sustainability officer. [Read more…]
Within moments of Donald Trump’s inauguration, the White House web page on climate change was purged, and on March 28 Trump ordered the dismantling of Obama’s Clean Power Plan which was designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Many members of Congress are still openly climate change skeptics or deniers.
In a representative democracy such as ours, one might conclude that most Americans don’t believe in or are unconcerned about climate change. Two recent polls reveal how wrong this is. [Read more…]
A Note to My Readers: It has not been easy to write this essay and I am scared to see my name displayed publicly next to what follows. I am sure these ideas will win me few friends in Park City and the broader ski community. Nevertheless, what follows is the truth as it has been shown to me. My allegiance belongs, first and foremost, to life, to the land, to both the human and non-human victims of the insanity of the dominant system. I love to ski. I love to walk the aspen groves in the Wasatch Mountains above Park City. I love seeing moose cross Park Avenue almost weekly. In short, I love living here. But my desire to live here should not trump the land’s ability to survive.
At the south end of Brown’s Canyon, about 6 miles northeast of Park City, Utah, there’s always an engine running. Usually, there are more than I can count.
If it’s not commuting car engines coughing to life in cold, winter air, it’s snowblowers blasting snow from driveways. If it’s not cars or snowblowers, its excavators flattening the next hill over, clawing out one bucketful of earth at a time. If it’s none of these, it’s diesel generators compressing air for nail guns popping boards together.
Standing on my small deck, sipping my morning coffee, I try to focus on the winds’ words. The winds speak a harsh tongue, full of curses. They are busy rattling aluminum drains on the roof’s edge, dragging loose gravel across a construction road, and navigating concrete right angles forming condominium building walls. [Read more…]
By Dan Bacher
Proponents of Governor Jerry Brown’s Delta Tunnels plan constantly claim that the project, called the “California WaterFix,” is the “solution” to addressing California’s water supply and ecosystem needs, while tunnels opponents say it will do nothing to address either.
As a sustainable counter proposal to the environmentally destructive and enormously expensive California WaterFix, Restore the Delta (RTD) on March 14 released a survey of water projects and proposals that improve California’s regional water sustainability and provide good-paying jobs.
“California’s Sustainable Water Plan highlights projects in communities statewide that are far smarter investments than Jerry Brown’s controversial and expensive Delta Tunnels (CA WaterFix) proposal,” according to a news release from RTD. [Read more…]
By Amy Knight / SanDiego350
Considered one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history, the record-setting release of methane from SoCal Gas’s Aliso Canyon in October 2015 had both long-term climate altering consequences for the world and immediate health consequences for the people of the greater Los Angeles area. The leak went on for 112 days, emitted 65 billion cubic feet of this potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, and prompted the evacuation of more than 6,800 households.
Today, the California public can make their voice heard, can be part of choosing the path we will go down from here. SanDiego350 calls on you to phone Senator Ben Hueso (619-409-7690) and ask him to bring SB 57 up for vote in the Senate Energy, Utilities, and Communication Committee – and to vote yes on it. The bill prohibits SoCal Gas from injecting any more natural gas into Aliso Canyon until a root cause analysis of the leak is determined. It also calls on the CPUC to finalize by 12/31/2017 its study that will investigate the feasibility of closing the Aliso Canyon facility. [Read more…]
One giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50 million cars. Globalization and the offshoring of American jobs is directly responsible not only for good paying jobs leaving the US, but also for massive amounts of pollution put into the environment leading to increased global warming. These mammoth machines guzzle fuel at a rate of 16 tons per hour — equivalent to nearly 400 tons a day. They consume 86% of the oil exported from Saudi Arabia. So not only would bringing these jobs back home bolster the middle class and decrease the economic divide between the 99% and the 1%, but it would also forestall climate change.
Confidential data from the maritime industry shows that just 15 of the world’s biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world’s 760 million cars. In addition to getting fossil fuel burning cars off the road, we need to be concerned about getting container ships off the seas. [Read more…]
By Sadie Sullivan-Greiner / SanDiego350
When I talk about the danger climate change represents, some of my acquaintances say I’m reverting to adolescence (I protested the ‘dresses only’ policy at my high school, back in my younger days). Others say I’m just reverting to type.
I’ve spent most of my adult life involved with the military in one capacity or another. I’ve observed that as a general truth, the people who have to fight wars are not that eager to start them. I’ve also discovered that, in general, people become aggressive when they are either in fear of something or they are desperate for necessary resources. [Read more…]
