Category Archives: CO2

MLK and pipeline opposition

The fossil fuel opposition is the child and grandchild of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. With their nonviolence, truth, and action as a model, we shall overcome.

Bill McKibben, The Guardian, 25 August 2011, Martin Luther King’s legacy and the power of nonviolent civil disobedience: In opposing the Keystone XL oil pipeline, demonstrators are getting a sense of the civil rights leader’s courage,

Preacher, speaker, writer under fire, but also tactician. He really understood the power of nonviolence, a power we’ve experienced in the last few days. When the police cracked down on us, the publicity it produced cemented two of the main purposes of our protest: First, it made Keystone XL “ the new, 1,700-mile-long pipeline we’re trying to block that will vastly increase the flow of “dirty” tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico “ into a national issue. A few months ago, it was mainly people along the route of the prospective pipeline who were organising against it. (And with good reason: Continue reading →

Sabal Trail like Keystone XL is for corporate profit not jobs

It would go through our land to be sold everywhere else, with no jobs here. It wouldn’t even be a nominal benefit for those of us whose land, water, and taxes it would take.

President Obama was half right:

Understand what this project is. It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else. That doesn’t have an impact on U.S. gas prices.

In his press conference of 14 November 2014, he was referring to the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. Add Atlantic to Gulf and the above quote applies equally to the proposed Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline.

History has countered his next assertion: Continue reading →

China, U.S., and Russia energy deals: bad news for Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline?

The U.S. and China made a historic deal on climate change this week. Here’s the good (it’s real, it’s huge, and it’s positive economically for both countries), the bad (nuclear is first on the list of those “clean energy” sources), and the ugly. Also this week China made a second huge natural gas deal with Russia: what does that mean to the current U.S. push for LNG exports, including the proposed Sabal Trail pipeline gouge through Georgia?

The Deal

Rebecca Leber, The New Republic, 12 November 2014, The World Has Waited for the U.S. and China to Take Action on Climate Change. They Just Did.

President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced on Wednesday commitments to reduce both countries’ greenhouse gas emissions. The surprise announcement, which came while Obama visits Beijing this week, is the clearest sign yet the two countries are serious on climate change.

After months of negotiations Continue reading →

Sabal Trail pipeline disruptive for what gain? –Valdosta Today

The same Monday that the Dougherty County Commission passed a resolution against the Sabal Trail pipeline, Valdosta Today editorialized against it.

S.E. (Chip) Harp, Valdosta Today Editor, 27 October 2014, Proposed Pipeline will Disrupt south Georgia, but for What Gain?,

SASSER — The proposed (and likely) Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline will impact most residents in south Georgia, bringing additional natural gas supplies to Florida “while increasing the diversity and reliability of the region’s energy-delivery system and positively impacting the economy in the Southeast, specifically Alabama, Georgia and Florida”, per Sabal Trail reports.

However, as has been seen already, it will also have a negative impact on many area businesses, landowners and residents, especially agricultural-based businesses. One of those affected is produce and Continue reading →

NYC Schools to use more solar power; how about in sunny southeast?

Solar high schools: not just for Dublin, Georgia anymore. New York City, and Rochester, NY, too! How about solar Lowndes High School? Or the new Valdosta High School? Or since Valdosta has already put solar at its Mud Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, how about on other city buildings? How about on the county palace? Or in Hahira, Dasher, Remerton, or Lake Park?

Erin Durkin wrote for New York Daily News 29 September 2014, 24 NYC schools getting solar panels in $28M project — and City Hall could be next, Continue reading →

All of the above: mercury water, methane fracking, radioactive waste, water overuse; EPA go clean renewables instead –Susan Corbett

South Carolina Sierra Club Chair Susan Corbett summed up the problem with the EPA’s carbon rule: it opposes one poison while promoting others. We can make a real green clean energy policy based on conservation, efficiency, solar, and wind energy. Remember, you can still send in your own comments directly to EPA.

SC Sierra club, chair at EPA Atlanta hearing, by Elaine Cooper on YouTube 30 July 2014: Continue reading →

Climate Rally and EPA Hearings next week in Atlanta

High noon rally Tuesday and 9AM to 8PM hearings Monday and Tuesday 29-30 July 2014 at the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center, Main Tower Bridge Conference Area, Conference Room B, 61 Forsyth Street, SW, Atlanta, GA. Plus you can comment online, maybe about mercury from coal Plant Scherer in the Alapaha River and how shifting to “natural” gas just promotes more fracked methane pipelines like that Sabal Trail boondoggle. EPA could take a second step on methane, and we can get on with faster, cheaper, cleaner, and far more environmentally beneficial solar power in the sunny southeast. For details see the Sierra Club or WWALS or SpectraBusters postings.

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Solar Power Hot Topic on LAKE blog

Some like pithy posts, and others like long historical summaries: see the Solar Hot Topic for the latter. I’ve just added links about solar parking lots, Oakland, CA, Dublin, GA and Lowndes High Schools, and super-lobbying group ALEC’s efforts in every state legislature to oppose solar power.

Solar will win, simply because it’s already cheaper than anything else and the prices keep going down. The fossil industry will delay as long as possible to suck up more profit, but even Wall Street has turned against fossilized utilities that aren’t doing renewables yet. We the people will win. We just need to stop the fossil junkies from doing more damage before they lose. The sun is already rising.

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Solar freakin’ roadways

Solar Roadways has raised $1,884,633 in six weeks from Earth Day to now on a goal of $1,000,000 in indiegogo (which was already a record for most contributors with 36,000 people at $1.5 million). Yes, to all those who have asked me, I think it could work. Add solar roadways to rooftop solar and solar farms and wind, and the EPA’s new CO2 rule (which doesn’t even do much about coal for years and does nothing about about “natural” gas) will seem like a quaint baby step in a few years after this happens: Continue reading →

Energy Policy Act of 2005 considered harmful

The same Energy Policy Act of 2005 that subsidized dirty oil and fracked methane including LNG exports also funded that oxymoron “clean” coal such as Southern Company’s Plant Ratcliffe in Mississippi, ethanol production lining the pockets of Monsanto, and the $8.3 billion loan guarantee to Georgia Power for the new nukes at Plant Vogtle.

2005 was a very long time ago in solar PV years: prices are halved, and installed solar power production is up more than ten times and growing exponentially like compound interest. We need to stop throwing money at dirty, water-sucking, centralized baseload 20th century non-solutions and get on with clean 21st century distributed solar and wind power for jobs, for energy independence, and for clean air and water, not to mention less climate change.

-jsq