Green Options

Friday February 27th will begin the four day Powershift 2009 conference, which is set to become the largest ever youth conference on climate change. But history will be made on Monday, March 2nd, when thousands of youth lobby Congress and thousands of others march to the Capitol Coal Plant to take part in what should become the largest ever act of climate change related civil disobedience.

Over 10,000 high school and college aged students are expected to turn out to this year’s Powershift conference. 2007’s conference had thousands of attendees and speakers such as Van Jones, Ralph Nader and Nancy Pelosi. This year is expecting some of the same big names, and more.

Power Past Coal has been putting together an extensive list of actions across the country that are happening in the next 100 days to put an end to our coal-dependent economy. As the slew of recent coal disasters has shown us, the time to put an end to coal use is now.

NASA Climate Scientist James Hansen has put it eloquently:

“We must halt all new coal plants now, and we must begin shutting down existing ones as soon as possible. Otherwise, we should face up to the truth– as a world, we are driving off the edge of a cliff with the accelerator pressed to the floor. Power Past Coal is the wake up call we need to put on the brakes.”

Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America today. As one of the first moves of his presidency, he has suspended all of former-President George Bush’s midnight regulations. The order was issued by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel directly following the swearing in of Obama.

The regulations will not go into effect until Obama has had a chance to review their legality. Hopefully, this will undo some of the damage Bush attempted to leave our country with, such as his permitting coal companies to dump waste near rivers and oil companies to drill without reviewing the endangered species act.

Soon-to-be-President Barack Obama has appointed animal advocate Cass Sunstein to head the relatively obscure, yet powerful Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
The regulatory czar, as the position is generally called, is responsible for every regulatory agency in the country, such as the EPA, and will oversee all administration rules.

Sunstein is best known for his balanced views between government regulations and cost-benefit analysis and for his theory of behavioral economics and he is widely considered to be a great choice for the office. However, a new controversy is arising over his views on animal rights and animal welfare.

Water contamination by toxic chemicals appears to be the cause of a mutation which resulted in the deaths of thousands of bass larvae in Australia. The two headed fish survived a mere 48 hours before dying off en masse.

Dr. Matt Landos of the Australian College of Veterinarian Sciences specializes in aquatic animals, and says that this is the first time he has ever seen anything like this. He sees no natural explanation for the deaths and is pinning the likely cause on the chemicals being used by a local macadamia nut plantation.

Approximately 15,000 species of plants used in traditional medicine are at risk of dying out because of pollution, habitat depletion and over-harvesting. Millions of people may lose their medicine for a host of dangerous and even deadly diseases.

Plants like these are the primary source of health care for the majority of the world, being used to treat everything from fevers to symptoms of AIDS. Their depletion is leading to a loss in traditional knowledge as well as the essential plants themselves. Some doctors believe that traditional medicine may the key to helping us find breakthroughs in fighting diseases such as cancer.

Climate action group Rising Tide is joining forces with City Life/Vida Urbana, a housing justice organization, to announce a mass action against Bank of America. Instead of the usual sign holding and chanting (which has also been taking place), they are asking people across the country to close their bank accounts on February 14th- Valentines Day.

Why?

Because Bank of America continues to kick poor families out of their foreclosed homes and finance the ecologically devastating practice of mountaintop removal. The two causes may seem unrelated, but house foreclosures affect primarily low income families- many of them minorities, and harmful coal extracting practices often take their biggest toll on poorer rural families. According to Rising Tide, the pollution from mountaintop removal poisons the water in Appalachia and has forced people to leave their homes.

Contributions to animals welfare and rights organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals rose 11 percent in 2007 (the most recent figures available), even with the economic downturn that began that year. The farming industry-friendly Animal Agriculture Alliance attributes this rise in funding as playing a key role in the increase in campaigns and actions being taken against the livestock industry.

While some of the most prominent US based animal welfare organizations, such as PETA and the Humane Society, saw modest to negligible increases (11% and <1%, respectively), other groups saw huge increases in funding. The World Society for the Protection of Animals saw its donations nearly double between 2006 and 2007, and the brand new Animal Acres received almost five times as much money in 2007 as it had the prior year.

Though President Bush remains in office for only two more weeks, he has left a final trail of devastation to cement his legacy in place. From gutting the endangered species act to allowing toxic waste to flow freely, Bush is pushing 11th hour executive orders at a potentially record setting pace.

His list of last minute domestic atrocities is not limited to the environment, but many of his most egregious final offenses are those that spoil sensitive habitat and natural resources. This list is merely a sample of Bush’s midnight regulations, along with what is being done to stop him. Here are George Bush’s top five most disgraceful efforts to ruin our environment once more.

5) Actual pine woods to be replaced with a suburb named “Pine Woods”. Plum Creek Timber, the nation’s largest private landowner, has crafted a back door deal with the Bush administration to allow them to pave over logging roads and develop the previously inaccessible land. Local forest agencies are furious about the back door deal, which is being finalized this week. It might not be too late to stop it, so call 1-800-832-1355 and tell Forest Service director (and former timber industry lobbyist) to stop opening up our forests for development.

If all goes as planned, conservation groups such as the Sierra Club will be buying 3,000 acres of land that was previously set for a clearcut. The parcels, located in Washington’s Skykomish Valley, include ecologically sensitive old growth forests and provide the scenic view that the neighboring areas are known for having.

Charlies Raines of the Sierra Club, who is spearheading the project, insists that the trees in these parcels are “not even high-value” for logging companies. On top of being valuable for the environment, they might bring in more money as trees than they would as lumber and paper.