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Global Warming: How to Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit – Part 2

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By John Lawrence

This series of articles is based on an excellent book by Tom Rand: “Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit– 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World.”  InPart 1 we dealt with all the possibilities for solar power generation.  In this article we will consider wind.  For centuries wind powered ships and windmills drew water out of the ground.  We are now in a position to reconnect with this form of energy and convert it into electricity.  How it works is very simple:  As the wind blows, enough force is created to spin a turbine which in turn generates electrical energy.  These days a single wind turbine can power a decent sized town.

The US Department of Energy has calculated that wind could generate 15 times the total world energy use.  That’s 15 times all the energy generated by oil, coal and nuclear at the present time.  Even oil magnate T. Boone Pickens has called the US the “Saudi Arabia of wind.”   [Read more…]

Extreme Weather Watch: December 2013 – Power Outages, Canceled Flights, Bitter Cold, Freezing Rain

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By John Lawrence

Snow, sleet, freezing rain and extreme cold left millions of people without power in the US, Canada and western Europe. December 2013 was packed full of bitter cold, snowy and icy extremes which resulted in pile-ups on the highways, canceled flights and people trying to survive bitter cold with no heat in their homes.

Winter Storm Cleon produced a significant bout of freezing rain and sleet across the Dallas-Ft. Worth area Dec. 5-6. Freezing rain and sleet accumulations of up to 1.5 inches led to nasty travel conditions. Hundreds of flights were canceled by the icy weather. In addition, more than a quarter million customers were without power in northern Texas.

The first phase of Winter Storm Cleon hammered parts of northeast Minnesota with heavy snow Dec. 2-4. Two Harbors, Michigan took the title as the location that had the most snow from Cleon with a total of 35.6 inches. Just down the road in Duluth, Minnesota, Cleon dumped 23.3 inches of snow. This was the sixth largest three day snowfall total on record in the city.   [Read more…]

USS Ronald Reagan Sailors to Refile Suit For Fukushima Radiation Poisoning

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At least 71 sailors from San Diego-based carrier have reported radiation sickness and will file a lawsuit against Tokyo Electric Power Co.

By Brandon Baker / EcoNews

After U.S. Navy sailors on the USS Ronald Reagan responded to the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan for four days, many returned to the U.S. with thyroid cancer, Leukemia, brain tumors and more.

At least 71 sailors—many in their 20s—reported radiation sickness and will file a lawsuit against Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), which operates the Fukushima Daiichi energy plant.   [Read more…]

San Diego vs. SeaWorld: Let the Battle Begin

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By Eva Posner

Blackfish has been on my DVR since it aired on CNN for the first time in October. I knew I should watch it but I didn’t want to. I’ve never been to SeaWorld, and I wanted to go. I wanted to see the whales. I wanted to watch them jump in the air and wave at me. It’s really selfish, and maybe not the best thing to admit, but I didn’t want to see Blackfish because I didn’t want to feel guilty about thinking the whale show was super cute.

Last night, I decided to woman up and turn it on. Which lead to the most depressing 90 minutes I have spent in front of a TV in a long time, and relief that I never did make it SeaWorld. Because I would have been disgusted with myself.   [Read more…]

All I Want for Christmas: A Youth’s Statement of Solidarity with Joe Solomon

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By Anonymous Youth

Editors Note: We received this essay over the holiday in response to our December 24 post by activist Joe Soloman. Because of the personal nature of subjects covered herein, we suggested anonymity to the author.

I write in solidarity with Joe Solomon’s desire for more youth-led climate justice.

I am 26 years old. I hold degrees as a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Juris Doctor. I have $230,000 of student loan debt and growing. I have already began and finished a career as a public defender.

I am young and I want climate justice.

I want a livable future for myself, my loved ones, and the rest of the world. I want the current extinction rate of 200 species a day to stop. Forever. I want more whales off the San Diego coast this year than the year before. I want less deforestation. I want the kids in Barrio Logan to be able to breathe. I want the rich to stop stealing from the poor. I want to see a grizzly bear in California again one day.   [Read more…]

All I Want for Christmas: More Youth-Led Climate Justice

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A holiday vision for global activism in 2014

By Joe Solomon / Common Dreams

When I shut my eyes, I am grateful for all the growth the student divestment has seen in the last two years. Just in the last month, the divestment movement has made headlines in USA Today, The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, TIME, and Al Jazeera. Half a dozen schools have committed to divesting, and while the Harvard and Brown Presidents are bemoaning their students rising voices and defending their schools’ dirty endowments – it means student campaigns are working. And just earlier this month, Alberta’s premier oil magazine said oil companies underestimate the divestment movement – with this headline: “The energy industry ignores the fossil fuel divestiture movement at its own peril.”

All of that is a testimony to the progress you’ve made.

And yet, when I shut my eyes—I imagine this youth movement seizing far more of its potential.

We need youth power far more than ever before.   [Read more…]

Saving San Diego from “The Paper Bag Tax” and Other Political Misnomers

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By Doug Porter

Paper, Plastic or Save The Planet? It’s about time we had that discussion in San Diego.

Apparently the approved strategy for the right wing in opposing just about anything these days is to call the thing that you’re opposing a “tax”. And, as is the case with the Neighborhood Market Association’s opposition to a proposed ban on plastic bags, any time the word “tax” is used is a good time to manifest a sudden concern for working class families.

It was this deep concern for the lives of “taxpayers, mothers, fathers, brothers and working class San Diegans” that prompted “community leaders, including Mark Arabo, president of the Neighborhood Market Association” to call a press conference yesterday in front of Rainbow Market in the Chollas Creek neighborhood.   [Read more…]

An Analysis of The City of San Diego’s Climate Action Plan

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By John Lawrence

The City of San Diego has developed an elaborate Climate Action Plan (CAP), the goal of which is to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The County of San Diego has one too as does the City of Chula Vista as does the Port of San Diego as does SANDAG as does the University of California at San Diego as does the San Diego County Water Authority. In fact, as mandated by the state, almost every political jurisdiction in the state has developed a CAP. The CAPs in general are long on bureaucracy and time frames and short on specific mandates and orders for compliance.   [Read more…]

Governor’s Bay Delta Conservation Plan Point Man Resigns

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By Dan Bacher/fishsniffer.com

Jerry Meral, Deputy Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency and Jerry Brown’s point man for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral tunnels, announced his retirement from “state service,” effective December 31. 

The resignation was announced the day after over 400 people, including fishermen, Tribal leaders, farmers, Southern California water ratepayers, environmentalists and elected officials, rallied at the State Capitol in Sacramento against the proposed water export tunnels. 

In spite of a rapidly accumulating pile of evidence against the project, including the $54.1 billion estimated total cost and the scathing criticism of the plan’s “science” by federal scientists, Meral forecasted that the plan’s implementation is “virtually certain.”   [Read more…]

Barrio Logan Community Plan Process Was Truly Democratic

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By Georgette Gomez

Editor’s Note: The following presentation was given by Georgette Gomez, Associate Director of the Environmental Health Coalition, at the San Diego City Council meeting on December 17. Ms. Gomez has been at the forefront of the struggle to get the Barrio Logan Community Plan approved. At this meeting there were only two options available for the council: rescind the Barrio Logan Plan or move forward with the Maritime Industry backed referendum. Residents and advocates chose to go to the ballot box. For more information on this issue go here.

Good afternoon, Georgette Gomez with Environmental Health Coalition.

Here we are again, defending the action that the majority of the Council took, not once but twice and now for the third time. You will hear today from residents, allies and our union workers, urging you to stand behind your adoption of the new plan for Barrio Logan and take it to the June ballot.

The Plan that the Council adopted is a great compromise plan that finally addresses the environmental injustice that Barrio Logan has endured for decades.   [Read more…]

The Narrative Shifts in the Battle for Barrio Logan

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Alvarez comes on strong, shipyard labor calls out maritime lies and affordable housing advocates join the fray

By Brent E. Beltrán

On an unseasonably warm winter’s day in the heavily polluted community of Barrio Logan a shift in Maritime Industry’s false jobs narrative occurred.

At the home of Barrio Logan resident Hector Villegas (the same home that Councilman David Alvarez grew up in and caught asthma) the Environmental Health Coalition, under the leadership of Georgette Gomez, organized a press conference featuring Alvarez, Villegas, union leader Bobby Godiñez and affordable housing advocate Susan Riggs, executive director of the San Diego Housing Federation.

Before the assembled media hordes David Alvarez called out, in no uncertain terms, Maritime Industry lies and deception [see full text of his presentation below]. In his strongest opposition to the referendum yet he emphatically stated, “out-of-state billionaires launched and funded a referendum process to scare voters and overturn the democratically created and approved plan. It is truly regrettable that their paid petition gatherers have spread outright lies to fool voters into signing the referendum petition, threatening the City Council’s effort to create jobs and a healthy community for children.”

He went on to say, “The most egregious lie told by signature gatherers is also the easiest to disprove: it is categorically false that all maritime business must leave under the plan, all existing businesses can stay and expand up to 20 percent.”   [Read more…]

Managing the Planet One Organizer at a Time: A Kenyan Initiative

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By Jim Bliesner

Editors note: Jim Bliesner spent the last month traveling through Africa. This post from the road is about a trip from Nairobi to the Lale’enok research camp near the Tanzania border.

You drive for four hours, south out of Nairobi on a two lane rutted road that spirals down into the South Rift Valley. By the time you reach the bottom of the winding decline and into the Valley floor the “city” has receded into the background and plains stretch into the clouds in all directions.

Black sprinkles of cattle tended by figures robed in bright reds and blues break the landscape. Periodically the car stops while cattle are walked across the road to greener pastures. Now and then a speed bump slows the journey and we are introduced to local vendors selling vegetables, fruits, bright colored candies, tourist trinkets, mementoes of the culture and geography.

We arrive at Olorgesaile the sight of a regional meeting of Maasai landowners assembled to discuss their collective future at the First Annual Maasai Cultural Heritage Festival. The Maasai tribe dominates the geography in the South Rift Valley and is organized into the South Rift Association of Landowners (SORALO) headed by John Kamanga. The movement percolated through the African Conservation Center, a Kenyan national non-profit dedicated to “saving African biodiversity through sound science, local initiative and good governance”.   [Read more…]

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