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Going from Angst to Action Focusing on Climate Change

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One of many things causing me angst about Trump is his belief that climate change is a hoax – never mind the scientific community’s consensus to the contrary.

So, rather than sit on my sofa and continue to wallow in post-election depression, I joined my daughter and attended two local climate action events this past week and came away feeling empowered to take action.

The first event was the Hillcrest Town Council monthly meeting – this one featured “sustainability” as its theme. Representatives of San Diego 350 (Lindsay Richardson) and Surfrider San Diego (Roger Kube) discussed their respective programs and focused on practical things we can each do to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions (the stuff that causes global warming and could lead to the destruction of the planet).   [Read more…]

Gregory Canyon Landfill Plan Trashed – Pala Tribe Buys Land to Protect Sacred Sites and Habitat

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A decades-long battle over the proposed Gregory landfill has ended. On Nov. 17 , the Pala Band of Mission Indians announced the tribe has complete purchase of more than 700 acres of the property—including most of Gregory Canyon and Gregory Mountain, a sacred site known as Chokla.

Shasta Gaughen with the Pala Indians called the news “amazing,” adding in an e-mail, ”This means that a dump in Gregory Canyon will never happen. Chokla, Medicine Rock, and other spiritual and cultural sites on the property will now be protected forever. Critical wildlife habitat, endangered species, and the San Luis Rey River will be spared the threat posed by millions of tons of polluting garbage.”   [Read more…]

Police Use Water Cannons in Freezing Weather on Protesters at Standing Rock

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Police used water cannons and tear gas against hundreds of Dakota Access Pipeline protesters in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, late Sunday, Nov. 20. At least one person was arrested and dozens injured.

The confrontation began at 6pm, near the encampment were the protests against the $3.8 billion pipeline have been ongoing for months. According to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department, 400 protesters attempted to cross Blackwater Bridge on state Highway 1806 after removing a burned-out truck.   [Read more…]

It Really Is the End of the World as We Know It

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A little less than two weeks before the election, the Guardian was one of the only media outlets to note the release of a devastating report by the Living Planet Index that outlines how, “The number of wild animals living on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, according to a new report, part of a mass extinction that is destroying the natural world upon which humanity depends.”

One might think that such stark news would have trickled into the Presidential race, but, given the debased nature of the contest and the pathetic state of the national corporate media, it was nowhere to be seen in the slime fest that was the 2016 election.   [Read more…]

The Ecopsychological Imperative to Dismantle Civilization

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The fading roar of an ATV engine leaves silence in its wake. Birds, offended by the intrusion, refuse to sing. Grasshoppers stop their dance to consider their safety. Even the reliable mountain breeze hides. And, with the tidings of violence borne by the sounds of explosion in the engine’s combustion, I know I cannot blame them.

Only the September Utah sun is unbothered. The heat, originating so far away, is oblivious. The last rain fell weeks ago and the dust antagonizes the lump forming in my throat. My co-workers at the Snyderville Basin Special Recreation District Trails Maintenance Department have dropped me off with a water bottle, work gloves, and an ancient, wood-handled rake that leaves half-inch splinters in my hand when I’m not careful.

I’ll be paid $12 an hour today to rake gravel and leaves from a freshly cut trail in the Wasatch Mountains high above Park City, Utah. My co-workers won’t be back for 6 hours. This is the same job I did yesterday and the day before, and I know now, from experience, that each stroke only pulls more gravel into the space my rake passes over. I watch a boulder watching me and wonder if he recalls Sisyphus, too. I wonder if I could move that boulder and push him up the hill. I wonder if the effort might provide some distraction.   [Read more…]

Flint’s Water Crisis Must Be Near Top Trump’s Agenda

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The interminable failure of government to marshal all available resources, brainpower, imagination, and resolution of spirit, to finally solve Flint, Michigan’s contaminated water problem, stands, in relief, as a giant scarlet letter branded on the breast of America. One only needs to supplant the shame-evoking, blood-curdling, familiar image of the red “A” for “adulteress” with an even uglier, ignoble, black “R,” for racist. (And, perhaps, to emphasize this continuing environmental nightmare’s classist features, add an accompanying money-green polo-shirt-emblem-sized “c”.)

Buried in the press cycle of post-election hype, hysteria and dashed-and-undashed hopes around the country, is the fact that, last Thursday, a judge in Michigan – that’s right, in Michigan, not in some underdeveloped country like Rwanda, Somalia, or Ethiopia – ordered the State of Michigan and the City of Flint to immediately start home delivery of four cases of bottled water per resident of Flint, every single week, for the foreseeable future.   [Read more…]

The Dakota Access Pipe Line: The Latest Last Ditch Stand

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Oil Corporation Tramps on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights

Finally, there is an alliance of a major ethnic group – US Indians – and environmentalists who are taking a stand to prevent the furtherance of fossil fuel interests. Bill McKibben of 350.org says we must stop now insofar as building more fossil fuel infrastructure, which is what a pipeline represents, if we are to have a hope and a prayer of saving the planet from the effects of global warming.   [Read more…]

Why Does San Diego Have Such Bad Air Quality?

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It’s Worse than You Might Think…

By South OB Girl / OB Rag

There is a lot of discussion these days about climate change. Global warming. Carbon emissions. The Climate Action Plan. You no doubt have friends talking about going electric, or who are proud owners and drivers of electric vehicles. Or friends or family members who devoutly bike everywhere. You may know some folks too who use public transportation.

The majority of San Diegans are dissatisfied with public transpiration. San Diegans prefer cars — it’s our way of life. Not necessarily across the board — many satisfied bus riders in OB take the 923 bus downtown for work and are quite satisfied — doing work, reading, or playing games on their bus ride.   [Read more…]

The Transportation Justice Argument Against Measure A

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By Jim Miller

In weeks past, I have shared this space with colleagues from labor and the Climate Action Campaign, the Cleveland National Forest Foundation, the Sierra Club and SD 350, as well as the Environmental Health Coalition, all making the case against Measure A. This week, I am pleased to present the final guest column, this one from Mid-City CAN, yet another of the many labor, environmental, and community allies who are part of the Quality of Life Coalition opposing Measure A.   [Read more…]

After Two Wars, Standing Rock is the First Time I Served the American People

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By Will Griffin / Common Dreams

I was in Iraq when President Bush announced the “surge” in January 2007. I was in Afghanistan when President Obama announced the “surge” in December 2009. But it wasn’t until I visited Standing Rock in October 2016 when I actually served the American people. This time, instead of fighting for corporate interests, I was fighting for the people.

The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), or Bakken Pipeline, is a 1,172-mile oil pipeline project that will transfer crude oil across four states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois. From the Bakken fields of North Dakota, the pipeline will carry in excess of 450,000 barrels per day of crude oil to Patoka, Illinois, and possibly on to Texas and near the Gulf Coast areas for refinement or export. The project will cost $3.7 billion while creating 8,000-12,000 temporary construction jobs and only 40 permanent operating jobs.   [Read more…]

The North Dakota Access Pipeline: a Tale of Two Characters

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By Chris Barroso/ SanDiego350.org

As a member of San Diego’s 350.org, I’d followed the story of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) for some time, telepathically urging the protesters on. And then one day, my friend Paul Sasso called me. “Hey, let’s go up and join the protesters. We’ll take my Tesla.” Yeah, I replied. I could do that. The next week wasn’t too busy, or the week after that. When are you thinking? I asked. “I’ll pick you up in a couple hours,” he said. Whoa, I thought for a moment; but I hurriedly packed, and soon we were off to the North Country.

On the way we talked about this 30 inch diameter pipeline, the rivers (Big Sioux, Missouri, and Mississippi) and the tribal lands it would cross. Eminent domain, one of us said, shaking our head. Did it translate in Native American languages to “broken treaty”?   [Read more…]

Measure A: How SANDAG Undermines Transit, Environmental, and Social Goals

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By Murtaza H. Baxamusa / UrbDeZine

Nearly a third of all counties in California are proposing a sales tax increase to fund transportation on this November’s ballot. But one stands out with organized opposition from an unprecedented coalition of labor, environmental and community groups. It is perhaps the only transportation measure where both political parties, and the main newspaper opposes it.

Why? In one word, SANDAG.

The San Diego Association of Governments (or SANDAG) is a unique super-governmental agency with unparalleled power over a single county with over three million residents. It spent almost $670 million of taxpayer funds last year.[i] It collects a tax of half-cents on every dollar of taxable sales in the entire county. And it remains an enigma to most San Diegans.   [Read more…]

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