Tag Archives: fossil fuels

BREAKING: North Carolina legislators reject ALEC’s fossil fuel funded attack on clean energy

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Today, those employed by North Carolina’s clean energy industries and anyone concerned about global climate change can celebrate the apparent downfall of an attack on renewable energy incentives.

NC Representative Mike Hager, a former engineer for coal-burning utility giant Duke Energy and a member of the fossil fuel-promoting American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) watched members of the NC House utilities committee vote down his bill to freeze incentives for clean energy 18-3. While the bill technically isn’t dead yet, it will be tough for Rep. Hager to recover this fumble.

The incentive targeted by Rep. Hager is North Carolina’s renewable portfolio standard, or RPS. The NC RPS requires utilities to generate increasing amounts of electricity from cleaner sources of energy like wind and solar (ideally–the law is far from perfect but has been an important policy in helping North Carolina’s rapid growth of wind and solar energy projects). Continue reading →

One Week, Four Oil Spills. Exxon’s tar sands oil spill in Arkansas is not an isolated incident

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As many people who watch the oil industry know, oil spills are not avoidable, preventable, or unlikely. From extraction to combustion oil is a destructive and dirty business, based on sacrificing the health of environments and peoples for corporate profits.

Take action now and say “No to the Keystone Pipeline”, an oil spill waiting to happen.

Smoke pours from an Exxon Oil Refinery after an explosion in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1989

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Congressman and climate science denier Chris Stewart faced with climate change facts

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Representative Chris Stewart (R-UT) is the chair of the subcommittee on the environment, the congressional group in charge of the EPA, climate change research, and “all activities related to climate.” It is therefore extremely troubling that Stewart denies the basic findings of climate science. Stewart has said that he is “not convinced” that climate change is a threat, despite the fact that the EPA, NOAA, and all of the climate science and scientists that he now oversees, disagree with him. In fact 98% of actual climate scientists disagree with his views on climate science.

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A Rough Week for University of New Hampshire President Mark Huddleston

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Written by: Fiona Gettinger, Fiona is a Sophmore at the Univerisity of New Hampshire majoring in Environmental Conservation Studies, she is also a campus coordinator with the Greenpeace Student Network and the President of the Student Environmental Action Coalition.

It’s been a rough week for University of New Hampshire President Mark Huddleston, and the UNH Student Environmental Action Coalition could be to blame for that. Three months into our campaign to get our institution to divest from fossil fuel companies, we received an official statement from the administration saying that divestment isn’t a “practical or feasible option”. Two weeks ago, we decided it was time for action. So, this past week we’ve been turning up the heat, starting with this opinion piece released on Tuesday. On Thursday, forty of us marched into the President’s office to deliver over a thousand petition signatures from the student body in support of our campaign. Continue reading →

October 2012 Photo of the Month

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People look at the burned out ruins of the Breezy Point neighborhood in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. This photo, one of an incredible set of images showing the devastation of one of the most populous areas of the United States by Tim Aubry, is the October 2012 Greenpeace USA Photo of the Month.

Breezy Point Ruins

The ruins of homes in Breezy Point after Hurricane Sandy

 

I chose this image for the way it illustrates the human impact of the disaster. Shot across the grid of streets, groups of people, perhaps families, inspect the ruins of a modest neighborhood obliterated by the powerful storm. Whole buildings were knocked off their foundations releasing gas which ignited leaving blackened trees and poles where wood frame houses stood.

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After Sandy, Global Warming Should Be the Top Priority in Obama’s Second Term

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Greenpeace activists hold a banner in front of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, DC, April 19, 2011. The banner was in reaction to the Obama administration taking the side of polluters in a case before the court, AEP vs Connecticut.

Americans went into the voting booth yesterday with horrific images of the fallout from Superstorm Sandy fresh in their minds. Pictures of homes ripped from their moorings, stories of children whisked away by rushing waters, reports of elderly people trapped on top floors of buildings — the true cost of ignoring science’s warnings about global warming are now all too vivid. Continue reading →

Students Pressure University of North Texas President to Embrace “Green” Slogan and drop fossil fuels

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Students stand for clean energy

Down in Texas, a region that is notorious for its oil and gas men, the idea of switching to 100% renewable energy isn’t exactly an idea that is catching on real quickly for individuals or organizations with the power to make it happen; even at a university that prides itself on being a “Green Light to Success”.

The University of North Texas (located in Denton, Texas) likes to pride itself on just how green it is, what they truly are is guilty of greenwashing. This university still uses 47 percent coal energy and 12 percent natural gas energy. This university also has a fracking site right on campus that borders a dorm! Yet they still plaster this image of being such a green school all over the place.

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Record amounts of ad spending by dirty energy industries, same old deceptions

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This year, the oil, gas and coal industries combined have spent more than $153 million on ads promoting fossil fuels and attacking renewables, according to the New York Times. That’s almost four times the amount spent on clean energy advertising in the same time frame.

It’s also a third more than was spent by the fossil fuels industries in 2008.

So what message is worth the record amounts of advertising dollars?

Well, as it turns out, the fossil fuel industries really don’t like regulation, the EPA, or president Obama, and they want the voting public behind them.

Though the dirty energy industries’ dislike of Obama seems a bit misplaced, (between allowing widespread fracking and his support of drilling offshore and in the arctic, Obama has given the fossil fuel lobby plenty) it does make sense that they would support Mitt Romney.  After all, Romney is not concerned with “healing the planet,” and neither are the oil and coal corporations of America. It’s a natural fit.

However, the majority of the fossil fuel funded commercials are actually repeats of the same messages that the Big Coal and Big Oil have been trumpeting for years

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Zjt03uHaxMY#!

A recent Greenpeace investigation in to coal advertising over the last 40 years has found that the fear mongering and hysterical accusations made today by coal companies – that regulations kill jobs or coal can be “clean” for instance – are literally decades old.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a coal front group, has spent $12 million dollars so far this year on ads that, except for being in color and on youtube, could have been straight from 1970.

“The stakes are high,” said Steve Miller, the recently retired president of ACCCE. Well, hopefully Mr. Miller is high if he thinks people will buy the same tired deceptions that the coal industry has been threatening us with for years.

What’s on ALEC’s polluter agenda tomorrow?

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Tomorrow, the American Legislative Exchange Council–known as ALEC–will host their 2012 Spring Task Force summit in Charlotte, NC. At tomorrow’s meeting, the corporate front group will round up its various committees and prepare to peddle new state-level legislation to attack clean energy laws, protect polluting industries, privatize education, and suppress voters, among other big business schemes.

Need a refresher on ALEC? It’s the group that brings state legislators to the table with representatives from major corporations in the sectors of energy, healthcare, tobacco, private prisons, and other groups to manipulate state politics to maximize their profits and limit their liabilities. These companies help craft template bills for state legislators to bring home and introduce in their respective statehouses.

Documents obtained and published by Common Cause now give us a roster of specific attendees at ALEC’s environmental meetings, a consortium of state legislators and a who’s who of the most offensive polluting political heavyweights including: Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, Duke Energy and Peabody.  Participating legislators know well they’re walking into a dirty party, sometimes using state taxpayer money to foot the bill.

The corporations that fund ALEC are well known for their political spending on both sides of the aisle. ALEC funders include Koch Industries, known for its coordinated political spending against President Obama, and Duke Energy, which is laying down a ten million dollar line of credit to host the Democratic National Convention in their hometown of Charlotte, NC. But these polluting companies are co-conspirators under the banner of ALEC, where partisan politics are set aside to focus on the mission of destroying environmental protections, clean energy competition and liability for crimes against both people and the ecosystems sustaining us.

So what exactly are ALEC and these oil, coal, chemical and public relations companies focusing on tomorrow? Continue reading →

Lucy Lawless joins Greenpeace action against Arctic oil drilling

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by Nick Young, Greenpeace New Zealand.

Lucy Lawless joins Greenpeace action against Arctic oil drilling

Right now Greenpeace activists are stopping a Shell drill ship from leaving the Port of Taranaki in New Zealand for the Arctic.

Climbers – including actress Lucy Lawless -have scaled the rig’s drill derrick and set up camp, equipped with enough gear to last for days Continue reading →