They say FACES. We say farces.

Gone are the days when environmentalists had only to worry about the dirty energy lobby taking our politicians on luxury cruises or using “greenwashing” to trick consumers into believing that products are environmentally friendly. No, the bad guys can’t just stop at buying out our politicians and our message, they have to hijack our tactics too. Exit grassroots. Enter “Astroturf,” a PR ploy disguised as a spontaneous grassroots effort. It may not be a new tool, but it seems to be all the rage right now. Suffice to say, things are getting dirty, as if Big Coal and Big Oil  weren’t dirty enough already.

To kick off their efforts to perpetuate the petroleum industry in response to new climate legislation coming from Congress, a group called Energy Citizen held a rally in Houston to fight back. Or did they? Says Climate Progress: “Despite signs and T-shirts, the Houston rally of more than 3,000 people – which was sponsored by a group calling itself Energy Citizens — actually had a boatload of funding and logistical support from the oil and gas industry, according to an American Petroleum Institute (API) memo leaked late last week by the environmental group Greenpeace.” Click here for the full article.

The coal industry has chimed in with their own citizen front group as well: the  Federation for American Coal, Energy and Security  or FACES.  My question: who exactly are these people anyway? Grist tried to find out, but upon emailing the only contact on FACES’ website, which listed no funders or members of the group, their inquiry bounced back. You can check out the full article here.

As a grassroots organizer, I have always taken comfort in the idea that there are two major forms of power: money and people. The bad guys might have the former, but when we come together, we’ve got the latter. My question: how do we keep it this way? Watch what real activists did in North Carolina.

– Rebecca Van Damm

Owning Our Movement: Turning “Junk” into Action

Now more than ever grassroots fundraising is critical to keeping our organizations and campaigns strong. It’s also a great opportunity for us to both literally and figuratively “own” our movement. Ellie Johnston, SEN Steering Committee member, and other incredible activists in Asheville did just that and raised over $1,000 to support our work.

Students at UNC Asheville clean house and raise money to support climate action

Check out what Ellie had to say about their event:

So as people who want to work towards a just and sustainable future we often face a dilemma in how to get the money to accomplish our goals. Grassroots fundraising should compliment the grassroots organizing that we are doing, right? But how do you sustain and support an organization with grassroots fundraising?

The students at UNC Asheville have renewed an age old method of raising funds–the yard sale. Selling your stuff is a great way to get some dough. If your a college student though, who just wants to support an organization and doesn’t own a bunch of stuff that you can give up, what do you do? Sell other peoples stuff.

At UNCA we had planned to have a yardsale as part of our Greenfest week for months, but 10 days out we still hadn’t gotten any donations in response to the flyers we had put up. So, we took a more proactive approach to getting stuff to sell. We realized that people who have yard sales have stuff they want to get rid of and by the end of the yard sale they still are left with stuff they want to get rid of. So we offered to pick up people’s yard sale leftovers in order to get it out of their hands and more importantly away from the landfill. A day and a half spent picking up yard sale leftovers around town resulted in a ton of really great items that we could then sell at our own yard sale the following week.

Early on we had decided on two things about this yard sale. First this was going to be a yardsale for the Southern Energy Network who has supported our organization on a lot things throughout the year and is going through a financial pinch like the rest of the world. And second, that we weren’t going to dictate to anyone what they would pay for items.

On the day of the yard sale we had it all setup out on UNC Asheville’s Quad and waited for people to come. People came trickling on to the Quad in hopes of seeing the huge yard sale that we had advertised. At the register people would come up with their rollerblades, coffee makers, and flannel shirts while we explained that the proceeds from this yard sale were going to the Southern Energy Network and asked them to make an offer on what they were buying. No offer was ever turned down and many were really quite generous. In all we got just over $1000 from selling people’s leftovers, not bad eh?

People everywhere love a good deal. Now that the weather has warmed the bargain hunters are on the prowl and would love to support your favorite organization (especially when they find that Mt. Rushmore tea cup to complete their collection).

A huge thanks to Ellie and team! Also to Reagan Richmond and students in Tennessee for the $250 they raised for SEN through an art opening and raffle.

Feel inspired, support SEN and our work to promote a youth-led movement for a clean, just and sustainable energy future!

No Coal Lotta Love

After spending millions of dollars to promote the oxymoron that is “Clean Coal”, the coal industry couldn’t shield its investment from a massive coal-ash spill at a power plant in Tennessee just before Christmas. Concerned citizens from all over the U.S. are standing up and declaring coal will always be a filthy energy source and we need to invest the precious time we have into safe, renewable, and clean energy.

The past two months have been a nightmare for the coal industry. First there was the Tennessee spill shortly before Christmas. On New Year’s Day, a coal train derailed in Otero County, Colorado. On Jan. 9, a leak at a second TVA waste pond at the ironically named Widows Creek Power Plant in Alabama spilled some 10,000 gallons of gypsum slurry, that same day a coal train operated by National Coal Corporation overturned, dumping 1,100 tons of coal along the New River in Scott County, Tenn.

NC Coal Plant Setback!

This just in last night. A ruling by the federal judge in Asheville revoked the 800 MW Cliffside coal plant air quality permit because it does not meet Maximum Available Control Technology (MACT) regulations for mercury. This comes on the heels of a ruling by a DC circuit court earlier this year that the EPA’s 2005 mercury rule was illegal because it evaded mandatory cuts in toxic mercury pollution. NRDC and the Southern Environmental Law Center represented Environmental Defense Fund, National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), Sierra Club and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy in this lawsuit. Duke Energy now has 70 days to update their technology and comply with the MACT and if they don’t the court has the ability to halt construction of the plant!! The ruling is available online at http://docs.nrdc.org/energy/ene_08120201.asp

Media release from NRDC, Southern Environmental Law Center and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy on this victory follows.

Youth Summit brings large next steps for NC

Click here to read the whole story

This year’s conference included 2 and a half days of speakers, panels, and workshops that addressed the issues of energy, climate change, and environmental justice. Throughout the weekend all participants discussed topics or importance and attended hands on workshops that empowered and inspired them to return to their communities and campuses ready to implement the changes necessary to build a just and sustainable energy future. Conference speakers include inspiring leaders from throughout the southeast who’s work is making this future a reality.

Very Special Thanks goes to our Asheville conference sponsors:Buddha Bagels , Rosettas, Greenlife, The Hop ice cream parlor, Amazing Savings, Over Easy, and French Broad Food Co-op. Your donations of foods and goodies went a long way and everyone really apprecaited the donations. Thank you for supporting sustainability efforts and this generatiosn endeavors to create a just and sustained future!!

Thanks also to our on-site support team, AASHE students, UNC Asheville, HighSmith Student Union personnel.

NC is getting out the Power Vote!

by Russell Anderson, NC Campus Organizer for Southern Energy Network

Despite the day’s light rains, thousands of people are standing patiently in line to vote around Chapel Hill and Raleigh, North Carolina. Last night in Chapel Hill, more than 1500 door hangers got distributed to students and community members reminding them to use their civil liberties today and Get Out the Power Vote. UNC Asheville continues to Get Out the Power Vote by flyering the dorms with hundreds of Power VOTE door hangers and by partnering with other campus groups to direct people to the polls.

At NC State University, Energy Action Coalition Staff and the BioTour.org crew are talking with students

about the importance of voting and offering free, waste vegetable oil powered bus rides to the polling stations around campus. At UNC Chapel Hill, get out the vote coordinators have hired bicycle rickshaws to offer students climate friendly rides. It’s a similar story across the state and around the country. So many people are helping because so many of us realize how important this election is, how important it is for our voices to be heard and that now is the time to deliver a strong message to our representative’s that we are the force that will usher in a better way of doing things. We will not be silenced.

The power that our vote will have this election is going to be monumental! Don’t let a little rain stop you! We all need to do our parts today and every day to hold decision makers accountable for making sure the world is a better place.

Remember, a little rain never hurt anybody! Get out there and Power Vote!

The Fight to Stop Cliffside is Not Over!

On March 25, 2008 Duke Energy broke ground and began construction on Cliffside, an 800 MW coal-fired power plant located in Cliffside, NC.

Months prior to this, a team of non-profit grassroots agencies, activists, students, lawyers, grandmothers, and outraged citizens had formed a coalition dedicated to stopping this travesty. We were, and are, committed to stopping Duke Energy’s construction of a coal-fired plant that will release six million tons of CO2 per year and lock us into another fifty years of fossil fuel dependence. This disregard for our precarious climatic state is criminal, and our state and federal legislature is simply not taking the necessary steps to slow imminent climate chaos. Instead, our elected officials are permitting the expansion of the fossil fuel industry and, like NC state representative Tim Moore, spouting nonsense such as:

“Coal may not be the best thing in the world but it’s probably the most efficient that we have.”

Mountaintop Advocates Open New Front in Fight Against Coal

BOONE, NC and WASHINGTON, DC – Advocates for the mountains and coalfield residents today opened a new front in the fight against destructive coal mining, filing suit in Washington, D.C. District Court to stop federal investment in new power plants that would enshrine coal for another generation.

The suit, filed by the North Carolina-based Appalachian Voices and Canary Coalition, states that the federal government shouldn’t be in the business of subsidizing coal plants without knowing the true environmental costs – including impacts of ultra-destructive mountaintop removal coal mining. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 included $1.65 billion in tax incentives for new coal plants, $1 billion of which has been allocated to nine projects around the country.

“The fact is that there’s no such thing as clean coal as long as our mountains are getting clear-cut, blown up and bulldozed down,” said Mary Anne Hitt, Executive Director of Appalachian Voices. “Right now, the electricity that powers your home may well come from mountaintop removal coal. We need fewer coal plants, not more.”

Mountaintop removal coal mining is an extremely destructive form of strip mining found throughout Appalachia, with some mines as big as the island of Manhattan. Coalfield residents say that it tears apart communities, poisons water supplies, pollutes the air and destroys our nation’s natural heritage – while only making the climate crisis worse.

“Members of the Canary Coalition and all people who live, work or vacation in western North Carolina are feeling the impact of existing coal-burning power plants on our health and the environment,” said Avram Friedman, Executive Director of the Canary Coalition. “Asthma related to ozone pollution is the largest cause of absenteeism in our public schools. Emphysema plagues the elderly in this region. Heart and lung disease related to fine particulate sulfur dioxide has been documented by the American Lung Association. We are threatened by tropical diseases migrating north due to global warming caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. The status quo of air quality in western North Carolina is unacceptable. Building and operating a new coal-burning power plant such as Duke Energy’s planned expansion at Cliffside is unacceptable.”

Of the nine experimental coal facilities that have received tax incentives, none have conducted an environmental impact assessment (EIA) looking at the impact of coal on the environment – as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The nine facilities include a Duke Energy projects in Edwardsport, IN and in Rutherford and Cleveland Counties, NC; a Mississippi Power Company project; an E.ON U.S. & Louisville Gas and Electric project in Bedford, KY; a Carson Hydrogen Power project in Carson, CA; a TX Energy project in Longview, TX; a Tampa Electric project in Polk County, FL (that is currently delayed); and two anonymous coal gasification projects.

The effort to end mountaintop removal has been gaining steam over the past year. As of today, the leading Congressional plan to end the practice has 129 co-sponsors – dozens more than last Congress, and only halfway through this session.

Bleed Blue, Live Green: Duke Students rock Focus the Nation and ESPN

If you know me at all, you know I’m a Carolina basketball fanatic and you know it’s a little painful for me to write about a job well done by Duke basketball fans.

Rivalries run deep here on Tobacco Road and it’s not everyday that the Cameron Crazies (the nickname for Duke students who go to extremes to cheer for their men’s basketball team in Cameron Indoor Stadium) don anything other than their usual dark blue paint. But for the NC State game on January 31st, the Focus the Nation team at Duke (rockstar Kelsey Shaw and company) convinced fans to wear green t-shirts that read “Bleed Blue, Live Green” and cheer for solutions to climate change along with their (overrated) team.

The shirts were not the only green aspect of the game. Students and other fans were asked to sign the Duke Sustainability Pledge, a commitment to researching and implementing climate friendly lifestyle changes. Furthermore, the University Athletic Department purchased carbon offsets equivalent to the electricity, steam and transportation consumed by the game, working in partnership with the renewable-energy company NativeEnergy.

NC DAQ approves permit for Duke’s Cliffside coal plant (LAME)

Earlier this week, the North Carolina Division of Air Quality (NC DAQ) issued the final pollution permit required for Duke Energy to begin construction and operation of a new 800-megawatt coal-fired power plant at Cliffside. Major bummer.

As you can expect, advocacy groups and citizens in North Carolina are extremely disappointed with the Division of Air Quality’s decision to grant Duke Energy a permit to build this global warming machine in our backyard. We have been working to stop this outcome for almost two years now.

Cliffside is irresponsible beyond belief—at a time of an impending climate crisis, fish advisories due to mercury contamination, and a statewide drought, the NC DAQ has decided to invest over $2 billion of ratepayer money in a coal plant that could be inoperable soon. We’ve been pushing the DAQ particularly hard on the issue of mercury. When the draft permit came out last fall, students around the state rallied to reject it. The following week, the DAQ announced they were re-visiting the permit to specifically look at the mercury levels. The new and final permit only reduces mercury by .001 pounds for bituminous coal and .047 lbs for sub-bituminous coal. Wow! A whopping .001-pound reduction when they burn Appalachian coal. Talk about a token reduction!

It gets worse. The new permit “requires” Duke to take an equivalent number of megawatts offline in North Carolina (other than the existing units at Cliffside) and invest in carbon offsets so the plant is “carbon neutral” by 2018. Sounds nice, right? Wrong. The 800 megawatts comes from several different facilities throughout the state that are not baseline electricity plants. Duke rarely uses them and therefore they are not do not have the carbon equivalent of the 800 megawatts that will run 24/7 at Cliffside. Plus, Duke had announced plans to take those plants offline in 2007 so there is really nothing new here.