This Friday is the deadline for public comments on the stricter vehicle efficiency standards from EPA and the Department of Transportation. The docket is likely to be overrun with statements for and against the regulation that would make cars and light trucks 30 percent more efficient in 5 years.

From an economic perspective, the social benefits of the rule outweigh the costs. The environmental, health, and energy security benefits -- most especially from reducing the tailpipe emission of greenhouse gases -- could more than double the estimated costs to manufacturers of installing more fuel efficiency technologies: social benefits could total over $800 billion, compared to around $400 billion in compliance costs.

But there will also be the straight up savings to consumers, who will spend a fraction of the current cost of filling their tanks. The benefit to Americans' pocket books could reach as high as $2 trillion.

Sources here and here (PDF).

This line item alone swamps the price tag on the rule making it overwhelmingly justified -- but some opponents of the rule may want the EPA to nullify these savings.

Their argument goes something like this: Consumers have the option to buy more fuel efficient cars right now, and they do not. Therefore, there must be something about having bigger, heavier, more powerful cars that benefits American consumers. Since this regulation could limit their ability to buy these larger, those citizens would have to do without something they value.

Opponents of stricter fuel standards admit that it is almost impossible to value that preference for bulkier cars, but they might try to convince the agencies that it is at least as much as the fuel savings we'd see at the pump. Since consumers could have those same fuel savings today by buying a Prius or an Insight, but forgo those cars for an Explorer, then the lost consumer benefit would need to be at least that amount.

But how consumers choose and value cars is more complicated than that. A car's newness, size, and power are valued not just for their functionality, but for their relation to the others in the parking lot. Consumers value horsepower not just for speed but as a status symbol and for the ability to out-accelerate others at a traffic light. People don't necessarily want a big car, they just want a bigger car.

The problem with prestige goods is they don't actually increase welfare or status. If Smith buys a bigger car, Jones has to buy a bigger car as well to catch up; relative to average car size, neither has really moved ahead. By devoting resources to conspicuous features like size, less visible features like fuel efficiency and financial savings are sacrificed.

The proposed CAFE regulations correct a market failure and accomplish what the non-cooperative marketplace cannot: fuel efficiency increases, Americans get the value of fuel savings, and consumers do not have to risk their positional status, since over time the entire fleet's average size and power will shift.

This is one of the chief reasons to regulate: to increase consumer welfare by doing what the market can't on its own. It might take consumers some time to grow accustomed to the new vehicle options, but relatively quickly they will be just as happy with their new, more fuel-efficient models, and they will be thrilled by the trillions in savings at the pump.

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Time to Speak Out Against the Biggest Polluters

Why won’t Lisa Jackson/Nancy Sutley visit a mountaintop removal site?

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Wednesday and Thursday of this week are big days if you live in Arlington, Virginia, or Chicago, Illinois. Those are the two days of public hearings on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “Big Polluters” rule. But of course, this whole issue is huge whether you live in Virginia, Illinois, or anywhere else in the U.S. – it affects everyone.

Right now only a handful of pollution sources, including coal-fired power plants, are responsible for more than half of all of the global warming pollution in the United States. Cleaning these up is a large step towards stopping global warming, so EPA is proposing a new rule to start cleaning up these Big Polluters under the Clean Air Act. By targeting the worst offenders, the Big Polluters rule is an important step that will cut global warming pollution while still helping our economy grow.

That’s why we’ve helped organize crowds of folks to turn out to the Wednesday and Thursday hearings: These mega-polluters should be held responsible for their share. (You can also check in on the hearings by following the #bigpolluters hashtag on twitter. We’ll have lots of folks tweeting from inside the hearing rooms)

This rule will bring the most bang for the buck—resulting in real pollution reductions and helping spur growth and development of clean energy technologies.

And forget the nay-sayers spreading false information about the government trying to regulate churches, hospitals, schools and Dunkin Donuts (why do they always bring up Dunkin Donuts?): The rule would only apply to offenders emitting at least 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases each year, exempting small businesses, churches and apartment buildings, while addressing the bulk of the nation’s global warming pollution.

Under the Big Polluters rule, big new facilities that would create large amounts of global warming pollution—like new coal plants—would have to install technology to clean up their carbon emissions. These safeguards would also be required for large existing facilities when they are expanded or modified.

Again, this proposed EPA rule uses the time-tested Clean Air Act, which has already succeeded at cleaning up other sorts of pollution all over the country, to help control global warming pollution. 

To provide a little more detail about EPA’s proposal: The Clean Air Act requires all new ‘major emitting facilities’ – big sources – to use the ‘best available control technology’ to limit their emissions.  Existing polluters that make big physical changes to their plants and increase their emissions in the process have to update their controls to meet this standard, too. 

This best available control technology requirement has been used for decades to reduce many other types of air pollution. EPA must consider the “energy, environmental, and economic impacts” before deciding on the right controls for any particular plant.  There are a number of simple, proven methods for controlling global warming pollution, including using energy more efficiently, replacing old equipment, or burning cleaner fuels.

The sources that EPA will focus on under this rule already have decades of experience with this process.  Having used best available control technology to reduce many other types of pollution, they have the engineering expertise to work with EPA and community groups to select appropriate, cost-effective controls.

Global warming pollution controls will also reduce emissions of other pollutants, including those that cause smog, heart attacks, and lung disease. 

By focusing on these big sources, EPA is spending its resources wisely.  Although global warming pollution comes from many places, EPA can cut down on the lion’s share by taking on the largest sources first. 

The Big Polluters Rule marks one of EPA’s most important commitments yet to moving us towards a clean energy economy and away from dirty power sources like coal.

If you can’t make it in person to the hearings Wednesday and Thursday, you can still send in your comments to EPA on this important rule – simply use our Big Polluters website:

And don’t forget to follow along with the #bigpolluters hashtag on Twitter for tweets from inside the hearing.

For a recap of how these hearings went, be sure to check in on my colleague Greg Haegele’s column later this week for photos and a wrap-up.

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

I think at the Obama administration we all believe that everybody has the right to live in a clean, healthy environment and a prosperous economy. And we're working towards that. We need to reach out to communities whose voices have been ignored and where there are disproportional impacts, whether it's environmental protection or promoting [a] clean energy economy. -- Nancy Sutley interview, July 31, 2009

Question of the week: Given all of their agencies' beautiful rhethoric about "reaching out to communities whose voices have been ignored and where there are disproportional impacts," why haven't EPA chief Lisa Jackson and CEQ administrator Nancy Sutley found three hours in their schedules to visit a mountaintop removal site -- the most egregious environmental tragedy in their administration?

Will they ever visit Coal River Mountain in West Virginia -- the mountaintop removal battleground for clean energy and a healthy environment?

The EPA announced "environmental justice showcases" in 10 communities today, to "highlight the disproportionate environmental burdens placed on low-income and minority communities all across the nation."  Not a single community in the entire Appalachian region was included.

On June 11, in responding to the national outcry over the tragedy of mountaintop removal mining, the Obama administration promised it would, "engage the public through outreach events in the Appalachian region to help inform the development of Federal policy."

And the EPA, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Department of Interior jointly announced their intent to "work in coordination with appropriate regional, state, and local entities to help diversify and strengthen the Appalachian regional economy and promote the health and welfare of Appalachian communities."

Five months later, where is the Obama administration and its promises to visit the besieged coalfields of Appalachia?

EPA chief Lisa Jackson flew 1,687 miles to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado this week to speak to a high school in Denver, but she -- or any top level of her staff -- has yet to visit a nearby mountaintop removal mine in Appalachia. (In May, Jackson flew 2,001 miles to visit the less controversial Black Thunder Coal Mine in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming.)

In the meantime: An estimated 1.6 billion pounds of ammonium nitrate fuel explosives have ripped across the lush Appalachia mountains, as part of mountaintop removal operations, since the Obama administration took power in January.

Appalachian mountaintop removal.Photo courtesy farukahmet via Flickr 1.6 billion pounds of explosives.

Since Jackson began her career with the EPA in the mid-1980s, over 500 mountains have been blown up, 1.2 million acres of hardwood forests have been clear cut, an estimated 2,000 miles of waterways have been jammed with mining waste, and untold numbers of American citizens have been forced to relocate, through mountaintop removal operations.

Horrific violations of the Clean Water Act have reached a state of emergency in the coalfields -- and the front page of the New York Times.

And while affected Appalachian coalfield residents have made numerous visits to Washington, D.C. to plead for environmental justice and their lives in a virtual war zone, and while over 20,000 petitions were hand delivered to the EPA headquarters last month calling for a single visit to the region, there is still no word, no announcement, no plans for a visit by Lisa Jackson and Nancy Sutley.

Where's the love?

Nancy Sutley believes environmental justice is a civil rights issue, and she traveled over 1,000 miles to New Orleans last month to assure American citizens concerned about coastal restoration and levee safety issues that: "We've heard before and we've heard here again today the need for urgency and we certainly understand the need for urgency."

But Nancy Sutley -- or any top level of her staff -- has never visited a mountaintop removal site in Appalachia where American citizens are literally dying from coal slurry-contaminated drinking water, and have been forced out of their homes from reckless blasting, fly rock, and coal dust.

While the EPA made an important step to actually apply the law with greater scrutiny of mountaintop removal permits in September, only one federal agency has made any attempt to keep the Obama administration's promise to reach out to Appalachia, in Appalachia: The Army Corps of Engineers, and they held quite possibly the most disorganized, chaotic, and violation-ridden hearing in West Virginia in the recent history of the coalfields; residents are still calling for an investigation by the Department of Justice.

And where are those green jobs "to help diversify and strengthen the Appalachian regional economy"?

While small efforts have been made for some reforestation projects, the coal barons and the pitiful West Virginia politicians all know that mountaintop removal has plundered the Appalachian economy, beleaguered the region in eternal costs, and wiped out any diversified economic development and even stopped a tiny tiny initiative for green jobs in West Virginia from passing through the state legislature.

Faced with a declining domestic and world coal demand, the out-of-state global warming-denying union-busting coal barons (CEOs from Virginia, Texas, and St. Louis) held a bizarre seance with faltering West Virginia politicians last week and whipped them into an unfounded frenzy about job losses from environmental regulations.

And that is why mountaintop removal blasting began last month on historic Coal River Mountain, less than a football field away from a dangerous and weak coal slurry impoundment -- to wipe out any attempt at clean energy and a healthy environment. The out-of-state coal barons want to stop the Coal River Wind Project, which would provide more jobs, more energy, more tax revenues, and a healthy environment for the coalfield residents.

Will Lisa Jackson and Nancy Sutley ever find three hours in their schedules to see mountaintop removal first hand and visit Coal River Mountain?

Do they truly believe, as Sutley declared this summer: " ... everybody has the right to live in a clean, healthy environment and a prosperous economy. And we're working towards that. We need to reach out to communities whose voices have been ignored and where there are disproportional impacts, whether it's environmental protection or promoting [a] clean energy economy"?

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

It's widely assumed that if Congress fails to pass a clean energy bill, the EPA will step in with regulations on CO2 under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court ruled in 2007's Mass. v EPA that it must do so if it finds CO2 to be a dangerous air pollutant -- and sure enough, the agency sent the White House its final endangerment finding Monday. EPA regulations now appear inevitable and unstoppable. But don't be so sure.

The threat of EPA CO2 regs is a thorn in the side of fossil-fueled legislators and one of the few points of leverage green Dems have. It has hovered over congressional climate negotiations, bringing recalcitrant lawmakers to the table. It's generally agreed by both sides that regulatory emission restrictions would be worse for power companies than legislative restrictions; a recent Wall Street Journal story covered several utilities lobbying for legislation on that basis. EPA regs would be "more arbitrary, more expensive, and more uncertain for investors and the industry than a reasonable, market-based legislative solution like cap and trade," said Exelon head John Rowe. Some enviros have gone so far as to claim that it would be preferable for the weak legislation in Congress to fail so that tougher EPA regs could take its place. (A dangerously wrong notion, IMO.)

Is it true, though, that EPA regulations are inevitable and unstoppable? It might seem so, given the stark clarity of the Supreme Court's ruling. But never underestimate the plasticity of congressional procedure or the willingness of conservatives to use any means necessary to protect their corporate constituents.

I put the question to a senior Senate legislative aide a while back: Is there really nothing Republicans and conservative Dems can do to stop the EPA? He smiled ruefully and told me to look into what happened to CAFE standards in the mid-'90s. This Congressional briefing paper (PDF) tells the story:

In October 1993, less than one year after taking office, the Clinton administration issued its Climate Change Action Plan, and this included a process that was to be co-chaired by the White House National Economic Council, Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Environmental Policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles. In April 1994, it published an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking to develop fuel economy standards for light trucks for model years 1998-2006. Seven months later, Republicans won control of Congress and promptly began to attach "riders" on annual appropriations bills to prevent funding for administration activity to develop or implement new fuel economy rules for light trucks. These riders blocking progress on fuel economy improvements remained in place until President Bush took office.

Could the same thing happen to EPA regs that happened to CAFE regs under Clinton? Well, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has already tried once, back in September. Her amendment was poorly written and she ultimately backed down without forcing a vote on it. But as the aide told me, it would be possible for a more adept legislator to write a more carefully tailored amendment that would block only the stationary-source regulations and leave the (more popular) vehicle regulations untouched. Obviously Republicans don't control Congress now, and unless the most catastrophic predictions play out, won't in 2010 either. But hostility to EPA regulations on power plants cuts across party lines. And remember, what's needed here isn't 60 votes against the EPA regs per se -- just 60 senators who think passing an appropriations bill is more important than standing up for the EPA. The thing about appropriations bills is that they really need to pass or parts of the federal government go unfunded. There's enormous pressure; that's why members of Congress are fond of attaching riders to them.

EPA opponents will have plenty of opportunities to build a coalition, as E&E reports (sub rqd):

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who cosponsored Murkowski's amendment, said there would be "extremely dangerous consequences" if the administration is allowed to "unilaterally" regulate greenhouse gas emissions and that the cost of gasoline, food and manufactured goods would skyrocket. He said the EPA regulations should be delayed until Congress has had a chance for a full and open debate on the issue.

"This issue will be back," Thune vowed. "Senator Murkowski will bring it back; I will bring it back."

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the ranking member of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, welcomed the senators' opportunities to air their grievances on the floor.

"I'm glad it was debated and I think Senators Murkowski and Thune were right to bring it up and it got them the chance to make the point," he said, adding that the point "will be made over and over again."

Over and over again, whee! In terms of raw numbers, there are probably more than 60 senators hostile to EPA regs. The question is whether some core number of coal-state Dems can be kept in line in the name of party discipline. You know how Senate Dems love party discipline.

What happens if an appropriations bill with an EPA-blocking rider comes to a vote? The only option for green Dems would be to filibuster. There are certainly legislators who seem willing to do so. In a conversation with National Journal last week, Sen. John Kerry said this:

I'm going to make this as clear as I can: I don't think anybody is going to wind up repealing [EPA CO2 regulations] because there's filibuster-proof capacity to prevent that from happening. ... I'll personally stand on the Senate floor day and night to prevent that from happening, and there are plenty of procedural ways in which to do that. So that's not going to happen. I don't see any scenario in which that does, and there are plenty of people who would stand there with me. This is not a solo effort by any sense of the imagination. As I've said, there is a clear number of votes that would not allow that to happen, assuming we're moving in good faith down the road.

This is tough talk. And there's plenty of precedent for blocking appropriations bills (see this section of Filibuster: obstruction and lawmaking in the U.S. Senate, by Greg Wawro and Eric Schickler). Dems famously filibustered a defense appropriations bill with a rider that would have opened the Arctic Refuge to drilling.

But Kerry's talking about mustering 40 liberal senators to block a much-needed bill on behalf of a policy that both the White House and EPA have spent the last year badmouthing and that most "centrist" senators oppose. That will be tricky political terrain, to say the least.

If there's a sufficiently large bloc of senators motivated to block the EPA, they'll probably find some way to block it. But the point here is not so much to try to predict what might happen. It's just to say that EPA regulations of CO2 are not "inevitable." Nothing in politics is inevitable; nothing's a sure thing; everything's a risk; everything's a fight. Those who would abandon legislation in Congress in favor of EPA regs run at least some risk of consigning the U.S. to years without any restrictions on CO2 emissions.

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Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel are EPA attorneys who have taken up advocating against cap-and-trade on behalf of rebated carbon taxes, most recently in a Washington Post op-ed. They also posted a video to YouTube making many of the same arguments at somewhat greater length. Now the EPA has instructed them to take the video down by the close of business today, at pain of disciplinary action from EPA ethics officials, and to submit any future drafts to EPA officials before posting. Here it is (likely gone soon):

The issue is in how Williams & Zabel identify themselves. In the WaPo op-ed they are identified merely as "EPA attorneys." In the video they say the following:

Our opinions are based on more than 20 years each working as attorneys at the US EPA in the San Francisco regional office. However, nothing in this video is intended to represent the views of EPA or the Obama administration.

Later, Zabel says:

In my work at EPA I have been overseeing California's cap-and-trade and offset programs for more than 20 years. My unique and extensive experience has convinced me that carbon offsets won't work.

EPA officials have informed Williams & Zabel that they may not reveal that they've worked at EPA for 20 years, or that Zabel has direct experience with offsets. They may only mention, once, that they are "EPA attorneys."

Williams & Zabel are consulting with EPA ethics officials and seeking legal counsel. EPA Press Secretary Adora Andy said on Friday evening that she was gathering information on the issue before commenting.

When Bush administration NASA officials attempted to monitor and control what scientist James Hansen said to the press, they were rightly criticized. By the same token, even though I think many of Williams & Zabel's policy arguments are deeply flawed, I can't see any justification for refusing them the right to communicate honestly about their backgrounds to the public. EPA should back off.

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Capturing the massive social benefits of fuel efficiency requires regulation

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency still does not know the exact number of coal ash dumps at the nation's power plants, but it's moving ahead with plans to regulate them.

Those are among the findings of a report [PDF] released last week by the Government Accountability Office on the status of EPA's efforts to improve oversight of coal combustion waste. The GAO is an independent, nonpartisan watchdog agency that serves Congress.

The report was prepared in response to a request from U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Their request came following the December 2008 coal ash spill disaster from a surface impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston plant in eastern Tennessee.

That spill covered more than 300 acres with toxic waste, destroyed three homes and damaged 23 others, damaged nearby roads and rail lines, and sent toxic pollution into the nearby Emory River. TVA has estimated it could cost as much as $1.2 billion to clean up the mess and take up to three years.

As of mid-September, the EPA had identified over 580 coal ash waste surface impoundments nationwide, GAO reports. A surface impoundment is a depression, excavation, or diked area where the liquid coal waste is stored. Sometimes the solids in the waste are left to accumulate in the impoundment, while in other cases they are dredged periodically and taken to another disposal unit, such as a landfill.

Coal ash is also disposed of through minefilling, where it's dumped into abandoned mines. And a significant amount of the coal combustion waste produced at power plants goes to manufacture products such as cement and wallboard or structural fill for roads and other development, an application known under the law as "beneficial use."

Of the 131 million tons of coal combustion waste generated by U.S. utilities in 2007, 38 percent went toward so-called beneficial uses, 36 percent into landfills, 21 percent into surface impoundments, and 5 percent into mines, according to the GAO. Between 2000 and 2006 alone, power companies reported dumping into surface impoundments and landfills coal ash waste containing more than 124 million pounds of six toxic pollutants: arsenic, chromium, lead, nickel, selenium, and thallium.

Among the risks associated with surface impoundments are collapses such as the one at the Kingston plant; the leaching of coal ash contaminants such as arsenic, chromium, and lead into surface or groundwater supplies; and the discharge of wastewater containing coal ash contamination into rivers and other surface water supplies.

Following the Kingston disaster, the EPA sent out information requests to 162 electric generation facilities and 61 corporate offices in an efforts to gather information on coal waste surface impoundments. It's created a database with information on 584 surface impoundments or similar facilities in 35 states -- but the EPA says this number is likely to change as it conducts site visits.

Over the past 10 years, 26 facilities have reported spills or other unpermitted releases from a total of 35 surface impoundments. EPA has also identified 49 impoundments that have a high hazard potential rating, meaning that a failure would probably kill people.

The EPA is further assessing these potentially dangerous units. It's also considering whether to regulate the structural integrity of coal ash waste surface impoundments through wastewater discharge permits -- a move that came one day after three environmental groups announced they planned to sue the agency for failing to properly regulate such discharges.

The EPA recently completed a study of toxins in wastewater discharges from coal ash impoundments [PDF]. It concluded that current guidelines should be revised because of the significant toxic releases from impoundments and the likelihood that these will increase significantly over the next few years as new air pollution controls are installed.

The GAO report looked at federal oversight issues that still need to be resolved as EPA develops proposed regulations for coal ash waste disposal. It noted that while the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 is the key federal law regulating hazardous waste, a 1980 amendment to the law sponsored by now-deceased Congressman Tom Bevill (D-Ala.) exempted coal combustion waste from RCRA.

EPA is considering several options for regulating the material:

* Regulating the waste as hazardous under RCRA Subtitle C. While supported by environmental groups, this approach is opposed by the industry because of the potential cost and complexity.

* Regulating the waste as non-hazardous solid waste under RCRA Subtitle D. This approach is supported by industry but opposed by environmental groups because EPA could not routinely inspect disposal sites or require permits and because the opportunity for public involvement in permits would be limited.

* A hybrid approach in which the material would be regulated as ordinary solid waste under certain conditions or a hazardous waste under others, such as designating wet disposal in surface impoundments as hazardous and dry waste in landfills as non-hazardous.

Lisa Evans, a coal ash expert with the environmental law firm Earthjustice, told the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette's Coal Tattoo Blog that she had concerns about the hybrid regulatory approach, noting that dry disposal of coal ash waste also presents significant risks to health and the environment:

... [I]t would be a big mistake for EPA to leave landfilling entirely to the states. Current state laws are inadequate, and they will likely remain inadequate without EPA's hazardous designation.

EPA plans to issue its proposed rule on coal ash disposal next month.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Minority members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) followed through on their threat to boycott the scheduled markup of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S.1733) today, demanding more analysis of the bill before they are willing to participate. Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) proceeded anyway with opening statements from Committee Democrats, and George Voinovich (R-OH), who tried to make the case for the Minority, presenting a more reasonable face than Jim Inhofe (R-OK) the ranking Republican on the Committee.

Voinovich's arguments fell flat in the face of effective rebuttals by Committee Democrats and a skillful appearance by David McIntosh, EPA's Associated Administrator for Congressional Affairs. McIntosh appeared before the Committee to defend EPA's analysis of S.1733 and answer any questions Senators might have. The Republicans who claimed to have so many questions about EPA's analysis did not bother to show up for this opportunity, suggesting that they weren't really all that interested in getting answers after all.

In fact, the information Republicans say they want is already available and they have not accepted the results of such analyses in the past.

Key points to keep in mind about this dispute include:

Economic analyses of comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation by EPA, EIA, CBO and independent analysts all show that such legislation will not interfere with robust economic growth. There is no reason to believe that delaying Committee action for additional computer runs would change any votes on the Committee given the extensive analysis that is already available.

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On Nov. 3, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is scheduled to begin debate and vote on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (CEJAPA), sponsored by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). At this writing it appears that the committee's Republican members plan to boycott the debate and votes, thus denying a quorum necessary for these deliberations. These members are concerned that there has been inadequate analysis of CEJAPA.

However, this overlooks the fact that CEJAPA is very similar to the House-passed global warming bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). The latter bill has received extensive evaluation and scrutiny from a number of government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Congressional Budget Office, and Energy Information Administration. On Oct. 27, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson testified before the Senate Environment Committee that the two bills were so similar that they will likely have the same impact on costs, energy use, and other variables. She said:

Earlier this year, EPA ran the major provisions of the House clean-energy legislation through several economic computer models. When it comes to the specifications that the models can detect, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act is very similar to the House legislation. Nevertheless, EPA has examined the ways in which the Senate bill is different and determined which of the conclusions reached about the House-passed bill can confidently be said to apply to the Senate bill as well.

In other words, the updated EPA analysis of the CEJAPA that is based on its assessment of the ACES provides an accurate portrait of the Senate bill's projected impacts. The more in-depth analysis desired by the dissenters would not shed additional light on CEJAPA's estimated impacts. Opponents of the bill are using this as an excuse to block the CEJAPA that they oppose regardless.

Their real agenda is to block action on clean-energy jobs legislation. Such efforts would please big oil companies and other special interests who are spending millions of dollars to block this bill. For instance, the New York Times reports that "the oil and gas industry in the third quarter outspent all of the other sectors lobbying on climate ... Exxon Mobil Corp. led its sector with $7.2 million in lobbying work, more than the total of the entire alternative energy sector."

While the obstructionists attempt to block progress, they will also stop many provisions that would benefit Americans. The list below describes a number of important benefits that government and academic analyses determined about ACES that also apply to the CEJAPA. This list is part one, with more reasons to follow. They provide ample evidence for senators planning to block consideration of the CEJAPA to reconsider, and allow this critical legislation to move forward.

1. The Clean Energy Jobs Act will enhance national security

In 2007, the Military Advisory Board of CNA -- a distinguished panel of retired high-ranking military officers-determined that global warming posed a direct threat to the United States' security. Their conclusion was that "projected climate change poses a serious threat to America's national security ... Climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world."

On Oct. 28, 2009, Former Senate Armed Services Committee Chair John Warner (R-Va.) testified before the Senate Environment Committee, urging "this committee to take action [on climate change]." He warned that "If left unchecked, global warming could increase instability and lead to conflict in already fragile regions of the world. ... We ignore these threats at the peril of our national security."

Warner noted that the CEJAPA "has established a beachhead. Now is the time for Congress to move forward."

2. The Clean Energy Jobs Act will create jobs

The House-passed ACES would create a net of 1.9 million jobs, according to a new state-of-the-art economic model developed by the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Illinois, and Yale University.

The study predicted that from 2010 to 2020, ACES would lead to:

These findings are consistent with "The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy" by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts and sponsored by the Center for American Progress. This study projected that ACES, combined with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, would produce a net of 1.7 million clean-energy jobs.

Since CEJAPA is very similar to ACES, it is a safe bet that it too would create a substantial number of jobs and spur additional economic growth.

3. The Clean Energy Jobs Act will increase American competitiveness

A book about the last eight years of our government could be called While America Slept. We have done little to invest in the development, commercialization, or production of the clean-energy technologies that a carbon-constrained world will want. Meanwhile, many of our foreign competitors -- Germany, Japan, China, Spain, and other nations-have invested heavily in them. The United States went from making nearly half of the world's solar photovoltaic cells to making 10 percent of them, while China is now the leader.

Venture capitalist John Doerr and General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt warn, "There is still time for us to lead this global race, although that window is closing. We need low-carbon policies to exploit America's strengths -- innovation and entrepreneurs."

CAP President and CEO John Podesta testified about competitiveness measures in the CEJAPA before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Oct. 29. He noted that the Clean Energy Jobs Act puts a price on carbon pollution, which would

... level the playing field between the prices of dirty and cleaner energy sources ... [and] combined with companion measures before the Senate, would create a clean-energy investment program that would cut greenhouse gas pollution, spur clean-energy technology innovation, create new jobs, and increase American energy independence.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote that reducing global warming pollution would boost competitiveness and provide an economic stimulus.

"A commitment to greenhouse gas reduction would, in the short to medium run, have the same economic effects as a major technological innovation: It would give businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities even in the face of excess capacity."

4. The EPA finds the Clean Energy Jobs Act is affordable

Because the CEJAPA is very similar to ACES, EPA's analysis determined that "the impacts of CEJAPA would be similar to those estimated for ACES." Most importantly, EPA found that "the average loss of consumption per household will be relatively, on the order of hundreds of dollars per year." In fact, EPA estimates the average annual household cost of ACES to range from $84 to $110 in 2020.

EPA concluded that differences in the bills produce "relatively small differences in estimated costs and may even cancel each other out."

5. The Clean Energy Jobs Act will save oil

The National Wildlife Federation, using data from the Energy Information Administration, estimates that ACES would reduce oil use by the equivalent of 590,000 barrels of oil per day in 2020, rising to 948,000 fewer barrels per day in 2028. From 2012 to 2030, the United States would use 4 billion fewer barrels of oil, and save $658 billion. This is a savings of $5,600 per household.

The American Council for an Energy Efficiency Economy estimates similar oil savings due to ACES. It predicts that Americans would consume 640,000 fewer barrels per day in 2020, and 1.4 million barrels per day less in 2030. In addition to reducing global warming pollution, lower oil use would enhance our national security by reducing our dependence on foreign oil. It would also shrink the dollars sent to other countries to buy their oil -- often from unfriendly regimes. These funds could be used more productively at home. In 2008, the United States spent an estimated $1 billion per day buying foreign oil.

6. The Clean Energy Jobs Act will produce income for farmers

Both the CEJAPA and ACES provide an opportunity for farmers to increase their income by sequestering carbon pollution in their land via farming practices. EPA's analysis found that ACES would create up to nearly $19 billion annually in net benefit to farmers from offsets. This is an average of $9,500 per farm. The Senate version would allow 50 percent more domestic offsets, which creates an even bigger opportunity for farmers.

The offsets program enables polluters to pay farmers or others to capture or store carbon pollution instead of reducing their own emissions. Since such offsets can be cheaper, they can reduce pollution at a lower cost. The offsets must be measurable, additional, and verifiable. Farmers can create offsets by employing farming practices that store carbon in the Earth, such as no till plowing, erosion prevention, soil conservation, reduced tillage, planting perennial trees and shrubs, utilizing rotational grazing and methane capture with livestock, applying less fertilizer, and restoring watersheds.

According to Ohio State University's Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, agricultural lands have the potential to store the equivalent of one-third of the carbon pollution produced in the United States. The Consortium for Agricultural Soils Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases notes that "increasing soil carbon through soil carbon sequestration improves agricultural soil quality, fertility, and productivity ... while reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture evaluated ACES's impact on farm income. In the short run, it would have less than one cent per dollar impact on net farm income. USDA notes that "Other studies...find that ACES leads to higher agricultural incomes, even without offsets."

The Agricultural Carbon Market Working Group also predicts a more profitable future for agriculture under a policy that reduces global warming pollution. "Analysis indicates the increase in farming income from offsets, biofuels, and commodity prices resulting from a cap-and-trade system more than offsets any potential increase in the price of fuel, fertilizer, or other inputs for the agricultural sector," the organization has reported.

Read Part 2 here.

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It's funny how these embarrassing announcements always come on late Friday afternoon.

While anti-mountaintop removal protests spread across the nation and at the EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. last Friday, a legal representative for the Department of Interior checked the empty parking lot of the National Press Club and then scurried over to the dark corridors of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., and filed the DOI's intention to consider a revision of the blatant Bush-era hijacking of the 25-year-old stream buffer zone rule, which was intended to stop mine waste from being dumped within a 100 feet of streams ... in 2011.

Wow, cracking down on mountaintop removal by 2011?

Hold on a minute, says Bush-relic and Acting OSMRE director Glenda Owens. In her statement to the District Court, she resolutely declared, "it would be premature at this point to speculate on a timeline for completion of any final rule."

Noting that 1,400 miles of streams have been directly impacted by coal mining waste in Kentucky alone, Teri Blanton, of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, asks: "In the meantime, what is the DOI's interim plan? Without the Clean Water Protection Act, what rule is going to be protecting the streams now? Where is the sound science in two more years of unchecked destruction of the streams."

A critical process in mountaintop removal operations, the dumping of coal mining waste has jammed and sullied an estimated 2,000 miles of streams in the Appalachian mountain region headwaters and waterways.

As the DOI tarries, the plunder of Appalachia for the small seams of needless coal will continue unabated, despite Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's statement in June that, "The steps we are taking today are a firm departure from the previous administration's approach to mountaintop coal mining, which failed to protect our communities, water, and wildlife in Appalachia."

Million of pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives detonate daily across the lush Appalachian mountains through needless mountaintop removal operations -- including the clean energy landmark of Coal River Mountain.

Owens, a career bureaucrat who infamously defended George Bush's disastrous mining policy on mountaintop removal operations, is still sorta figuring out the OSMRE's ruling on the "approximate original contour" -- 32 years after the passing of SMCRA. Her testimony at the Congressional hearings for the 30th anniversary of SMCRA in 2007 is now considered notoriously out of touch with coalfield realities.

In effect, Owens' embarrassing statement to the U.S. District Court last Friday is a wakeup call on why Friend of Big Coal Joseph Pizarchik's [video] nomination for directorship of the demoralized OMSRE agency in charge of administrating the rules of the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act has been blocked in the Senate.

Given his disingenuous testimony on mountaintop removal at his nomination hearing, Pizarchik would simply continue the OMSRE lackluster reign of errors and delay.

According to the Alliance for Appalachia: "In April 2009, DOI Secretary Salazar requested that the Stream Buffer Zone Rule change be vacated; this decision was applauded by groups working to protect Appalachian streams and communities. This recent decision by the Department of the Interior appears to run counter to the Department's earlier actions and statements, including those outlined in a June inter-agency Memorandum of Understanding."

When a federal court rejected the DOI's initial attempt to reverse the Bush-era changes this summer, the cowed DOI pitifully responded that it was "determined to improve mining practices and we will do so within the context of the court's ruling, which we are reviewing."

The Sierra Club points out that the DOI is spinning its wheels.

In the meantime, as the DOI flounders, lobby efforts by coalfield residents and national clean water advocates continue to appeal to the EPA, and to members of the U.S. Congress to pass the Clean Water Protection Act and the Appalachian Restoration Act.

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Kirsten Gillibrand was in the midst of her second term in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving New York's 20th District, when Gov. David Paterson selected her to replace Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate. (Clinton, you'll recall, was chosen by Obama to serve as secretary of state.) Gillibrand will serve in the Senate at least until a special election in 2010 to serve out the remainder of Clinton's term, which ends in 2012. She's viewed as a strong favorite to win that election and, more generally, as a rising star in the Democratic Party.

As a member of both the Environment & Public Works Committee and the Agriculture Committee, Gillibrand will be heavily involved in the development of the Kerry-Boxer clean-energy bill. She is considered a likely "yes" vote, and her advocacy for the bill has had three notable features, each reflecting her state's interests:

We asked Sen. Gillibrand about these issues, and she was gracious enough to answer the questions via video (full transcript below):

Here's the full transcript:

-----

Hi, I'm Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York. I'm pleased to be here today to answer some questions from Grist.org on climate change legislation.

Question #1: The first question asks: Do other senators share your support for EPA Clean Air Act authority? Will it survive the coming negotiations?

Absolutely. Other senators do share my view on this issue, but for a number of the senators who don't serve on the [Environment & Public Works] Committee they haven't been as engaged yet on this discussion, which is why they need to hear from constituents like you so that they know how important it is that they preserve the Clean Air Act. These protections, as you know, are critical to New York 'cause we are the ones that suffer from a lot of the air pollution that comes across the country from coal-fired plants. We suffer from acid rain, we suffer particularly in the Adirondacks increasing contamination in all of our rivers and streams. In New York you can only eat one fish a month because of the high mercury content in our waters. And we also have a growing asthma rate throughout our state, so for me this is a critical issue that I will continue to fight for.

Question #2: Second question. How are you working to persuade your Senate colleagues to support the creation of a carbon market involving many financial instruments?

I'm very concerned that we make sure we have a robust financial market that will fuel investments in carbon reductions. I think it's very important that we have proper oversight and accountability, good regulations that provide transparency, and also capital requirements. I think this kind of regulation will be a derivative market that will be regulated through the [Commodity Futures Trading Commission], and I think it's critical that we regulate this alongside the other derivatives legislation that we are going to do. We want to make sure that capital is available for investing in clean energy generation like large-scale wind and solar projects, so we have to make sure that we have the kind of products that are necessary to do this. I've been advocating for both standardized products and customized products with oversight and accountability and capital requirements for both.

Question #3: Third, What type of measures would you like added to the climate change bill to serve the interests of farmers?

Well, I think farmers can play a very important part in this climate change bill. We want to make sure that the agriculture section can achieve the overall parts of the bill or the overall goals of the bill which is to make sure there is verifiable reductions in carbon emissions, but there are so many opportunities for our farmers whether they're going to be part of wind energy or solar energy or whether they're going to be part of anaerobic digesters and cellulosic ethanol, they have a lot of opportunity to be part of the climate change bill and do those offsets by the things they can create throughout agriculture. We also want to make sure that our farmers have the resources and technical assistance available for smaller projects and working with aggregators who can connect for example multiple dairy farms for large methane digestive projects or make the project not just achieve reductions but also be economically feasible for those farms who are participating. So there is a lot of opportunity out there and I just want to make sure our farmers have a voice in this climate change bill.

Question #4: Fourth question: Which Senate Republicans do you think will support climate change legislation?

Answer: Well, I really think this issue is not about Democrats or Republicans, I think climate change is not going to wait for anybody so we need to bring colleagues together to actually achieve results. I think Senator Graham, Senator McCain have both spoken out in favor of climate change in the past, and I'm hopeful that they will join us in our efforts. But the bottom line is, as Chairman Boxer said, that this is something we all have to care about. It's the future of our country, its our national security, its our economic strength, and it's the one thing that's going to turn around global climate change, so I think we will have a lot of allies in this and my goal is that for all Americans we need to support these kinds of efforts to achieve energy independence, grow green jobs in a clean economy, and stop all of the threats of global climate change.

I want to thank Grist.org for giving me the opportunity to discuss these very important issues. The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act will lead to long-term economic prosperity, energy security, and the protection of our environment for generations to come.

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Mountaintop removal funeral procession at EPA in D.C.Photo courtesy Chris Eichler of RAN Field Photography via Flickr The Coalfield Uprising is spreading across the nation.

As millions of pounds of explosions rip across their mountain communities, including the clean energy landmark of Coal River Mountain, scores of residents from the Appalachian coalfields have joined with supporters from across the country in a series of sit-ins, die-ins, protests, and a haunting "Day of the Dead" funeral procession and sit-in in the courtyard of the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Clean energy and clean water supporters across the country are also sending emails to the EPA and President Obama to stop the tragic blasting of Coal River Mountain.

"Inaction on the part of the EPA will affect the future of Appalachians, and generations to come," says Bob Kincaid, with the Coal River Mountain Watch organization in West Virginia. "If Coal River Mountain is blown up, the green energy future of Appalachia, and the entire nation, will be imperiled."

UPDATE: 3:3pm EST: The EPA Desk released this statement:

"EPA respects the concerns around the issue of mountaintop mining and
understands the high emotions felt by many Americans. Under the
leadership of Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, the Agency has taken a
number of unprecedented actions within the scope of the law, and in
partnership with other federal agencies to ensure the safety and health
of mining communities. We welcome and seek the voices of all Americans,
and look to them to guide our efforts to protect health and the
environment. We will continue to solicit the input of affected
communities, and engage with the public on this important issue."

Coal River Mountain has been recognized by the Obama administration's Council on Environmental Quality, and energy experts around the nation, as one of the most important sites for wind energy in the region, and a model for clean energy transition in the nation.

Instead of being destroyed for a limited dirty coal operation, the Coal River Wind project [PDF] slated for the historic mountain range would provide enough clean energy for 150,000 homes, hundreds of long-term jobs, and millions of dollars in tax revenues and local commerce.

Protester outside of EPA in D.C.Photo courtesy Chris Eichler of RAN Field Photography via Flickr As part of a nationwide "End Mountaintop Removal Day of Action" organized by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and coalfield activists and clean energy advocates across the nation, sit-ins and "die-in" and protests are taking place in over twenties cities at EPA regional offices from Kansas City to Denver to San Francisco, and at JP Morgan Chase offices from New York City to Chicago to Kentucky.

Today's sit-in at the EPA in D.C. is directed at Lisa Jackson, who recently invoked the agency's veto power to stop the massive Spruce Mine mountaintop removal operation in West Virginia. Declaring a state of emergency that threatens the lives of thousands of coalfield residents, the protesters (who include former coal miners) are calling on Jackson and the Obama administration to intervene in the new mountaintop removal operation on Coal River Mountain in a similar fashion, where the initial blasting took place last week. Operated by Massey Energy, the Coal River Mountain mine is setting off explosives that potentially jeopardize the 8-billion-gallon Brushy Fork coal sludge held back by a precarious earthen dam.

According to the mining company's own evacuation plan, if the Brusky Fork dam broke, local residents and children would have only a few minutes to escape a 70-foot high tidal wave of coal sludge.

"Every day, more than 3 million pounds of explosives are detonated in our state to remove our mountains and expose the thin seams of coal beneath," says Bo Webb, a resident of Coal River Valley, W.Va. and a participant in today's rally. "President Obama, I beg you to re-light our flame of hope and honor and immediately stop the coal companies from blasting so near our homes and endangering our lives. As you have said, we must find another way than blowing off the tops of our mountains. We must end mountaintop removal."

Protests are also underway at JP Morgan Chase offices in New York City, Chicago and elsewhere. As one of the biggest financiers of dirty coal endeavors, JP Morgan Chase has bankrolled Massey Energy's mountaintop removal operations. Coalfield and clean energy advocates are calling on JP Morgan Chase to follow the example of the Bank of America [PDF], which announced their refusal to bankroll mountaintop removal operations last December.

Here's a clip on JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon's doublespeak on clean energy investment:

For more information on the local of the protests, see the RAN's End of Mountaintop Removal Day of Action page.

For more photos and videos, check out RAN's Flickr page.

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Environmental justice leaders representing more than a dozen polluted communities from six Southern states met with Environmental Protection Agency leaders this week and asked them to take action to better protect the health of low-income communities and communities of color.

The leaders from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee met in Atlanta on Tuesday with EPA Region 4 Acting Administrator A. Stanley Meiburg to present documentation of environmental injustice and unequal protection on the part of the EPA as well as state environmental agencies. The leaders are part of a group of 36 environmental justice, civil rights, faith, and other groups from all eight Region 4 states that signed a letter [PDF] to Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) asking him to press for an investigation into Region 4's environmental justice record.

Among the concerns the letter pointed to was the recent decision to transport the coal ash spilled at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in eastern Tennessee last year to a landfill in a predominantly African-American community in Alabama. It also cited instances of dioxin pollution in Florida, contaminated wells in Georgia, chemical plant contamination in Mississippi, and radioactive pollution in Tennessee.

Earlier this year, Robert J. Bullard of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University -- an organizer of this week's meeting -- issued a call for "fundamental change" in Region 4, pointing to its legacy of slavery, segregation, and resistance to civil rights and equal environmental protection. He reported on a number of harmful and discriminatory decisions in the region that have exposed many low-income communities and communities of color in the region to unnecessary environmental health risks.

Bullard noted that while people of color comprise 28.5 percent of EPA Region 4's population, they are over-represented among the region's residents living within two miles of commercial hazardous waste facilities, observing:

Many of the bad Region 4 EPA waste facility permitting and disposal decisions flow directly from backroom deals and compromises made with state and local government officials, often at the expense of African Americans and other people of color communities.

A statement about this week's meeting posted to the EJRC's website noted that many environmental justice leaders view the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry -- a division of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- and EPA Region 4 as "'evil twins' that have historically provided unequal protection and a 'Katrina response' to toxic health threats to low-income and people of color communities long before that deadly storm ravaged the Gulf Coast."

This week's meeting with the EPA -- the first of its kind in Region 4 in more than a decade -- took place at the same time as the CDC's National Environmental Public Health Conference, which drew thousands of environmental health professionals, policymakers and grassroots activists to discuss public health and chemical exposures.

For a full list of the communities and organizations that were involved in issuing the call for environmental justice, click here.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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Time to Speak Out Against the Biggest Polluters

Today's hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee -- the first of three days of hearings on the Kerry-Boxer clean energy bill -- didn't contain any big surprises. As Keith Johnson notes, Senators generally played their appointed roles.

There are four stories out of today that seem notable.

1. Republicans are completely out of the game.

This has been true ever since Obama was elected, of course, but today's hearing threw it in sharp relief. They're just not involved in the conversation. On the far end you have Inhofe, still shouting at clouds about the science. But Barrasso, Bond, and the rest simply repeat, robotically, absurd claims about the economics of emission reduction that have been utterly debunked -- by the EPA, by the CBO, by the EIA, and by the witnesses at today's hearing. With a few exceptions, every time it was a Republican's turn to talk, it was as if the whole hearing ground to a halt, taking a break to watch a sideshow before the adults resumed their business.

Lacking anything of substance, Republicans are resorting to procedural ratf*cks, as usual. They want the EPA to take five weeks to do a full analysis of Kerry-Boxer, even though the agency, like everyone else, knows that the economics are roughly the same as for Waxman-Markey. They're threatening to boycott the markup to prevent quorum unless the EPA accepts their absurd demands. They all left today before the four cabinet secretaries were done testifying, just to be, you know, deliberately rude. Expect these adolescent tantrums to ramp up over coming months.

Conservative Democrats (and a few Rs like Voinovich) are at least grappling with the substance of the bill. But Republicans on the committee, for the most part, are engaged in increasingly irrelevant theater.

2. Baucus is a problem.

Here's what Baucus had to say at the hearing today:

I have some concerns about the overall direction of the bill before us today, and whether it will lead us closer to or further away from passing climate change legislation. For example, I have serious reservations with the depth of the mid-term reduction target in the bill and the lack of preemption of the Clean Air Act's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The 2020 target of 20% reductions from 2005 levels is, as Sen. Merkley (D-Ore) pointed out later, easily achievable. It could be hit with efficiency alone, at a profit. It could be hit with natural gas switching alone. We'll get a quarter of the way there just via the recession! With the suite of tools available, it will be a cakewalk. The only way you could look at that target and find it impossible is if you think carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is the only technology capable of producing reductions. That certainly won't be ready by 2020! But that's an absurd perspective, one shared mainly by Republicans like Voinovich and ... Max Baucus.

Baucus phrases his reservations in the language of concern trolling -- he's just worried about getting the votes, you know. But even if bending on those two items will ultimately be necessary, why on earth would you broadcast your willingness to do so before negotiations even begin? Can we look forward to another months-long, futile quest for bipartisan support from Baucus? Is he going to weaken and slow-walk this bill like he did with health care reform?

See Elana Schor and Greenwire for more on this.

As to the EPA thing:

3. EPA authority emerges as central battle.

Many progressive groups like MoveOn are drawing their red line here: EPA authority under the Clean Air Act must be preserved in the bill. (It is in Kerry-Boxer; it wasn't in Waxman-Markey.). But several Senators, including Baucus and Specter, openly discussed it as something that will have to be given up to gain enough votes for passage.

It also has its champions in the Senate, including Gillibrand and Whitehouse. Speaking of which, check out Whitehouse's righteous pro-CAA, anti-coal remarks (taken from this great post by Ben Wessel):

Expect this to become an increasingly heated fight. It was certainly good to see Lisa Jackson point out that even with legislation there are still "common sense" ways to use the Clean Air Act to reduce emissions.

4. The administration steps up

Alongside the hearing today, where four cabinet secretaries testified, the Obama administration is ramping up its general involvement on this issue. Today saw the announcement of $3.4 billion in funding for smart grid initiatives; Biden announced the reopening of a shuttered GM plant to make hybrids; Obama spoke at a new solar plant in Florida, hyping clean energy and federal legislation; and a New York Times headline blared: Administration Steps Up Efforts on Climate Bill.

Everyone has been saying for months that the fight will succeed or fail based on Obama's investment. It looks like the White House is responding.

Altogether, it is a good day for the forces of climate sanity. The jobs and economics messages were front and center, and wavering conservative Dems were grappling with the legislation in a way that showed they're taking the possibility of passage seriously.

The hearings tomorrow and the next day will last allll day and get into some serious weeds. Watch Grist's Kerry-Boxer page for updates.

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WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama's Senate allies launched a major push Tuesday behind sweeping legislation to battle climate change, with time running short before a high-stakes global summit in December.

"Today, we begin the formal legislative process to lead the world in rolling back the urgent threat of climate change," said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the lead author of a Senate bill to create a cap-and-trade regime.

Obama, showing during a trip to Florida that he will not wait for lawmakers to act, was to unveil the largest-ever upgrade of the U.S. electricity grid, in a $3.4 billion bid to unleash a new era of renewable energy consumption.

Some 100 firms, manufacturers, utilities, and cities will get awards worth from $400,000 to $200 million to help build a nationwide "smart energy grid" to cut costs and improve reliability of the creaking system.

In Washington, Obama's secretaries of energy, interior and transportation, as well as his Environmental Protection Agency chief, were urging senators to act quickly to curb pollutants blamed for global warming.

The administration power-players were to appear before the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee as it opens three days of hearings on legislation written by Obama's Democratic allies to fight climate change.

Obama has said he wants to make as much progress as possible to reassure skeptics at the December global talks in Copenhagen that the United States is pressing ahead with aggressive climate change remedies.

But Obama aides have already warned that the legislation may clear Boxer's committee but not the full Senate before the U.N. climate change conference -- a delay that could cripple hopes of a major new international treaty.

Kerry crafted the legislation with the committee's chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who said as the hearing began that "our bill is the best way to proceed."

"It provides flexibility to businesses and powerful incentives to drive innovation. It helps consumers, workers, agriculture, transportation, energy efficiency, wildlife, cities, counties, and it will launch an economic transformation," she said.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved a cap and trade emissions regime in June, and the Senate is now poised to take up the measure with a new poll showing nearly six in 10 Americans support such a plan.

Under the expected cap-and-trade regime, the government would set the total level of domestic emissions allowable and then allocate quotas to companies.

Firms that emit less than their quota would be allowed to sell their surplus allocation to others that exceed theirs. Those in excess could also face fines.

The House bill calls for cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and by 83 percent by 2050. The Senate's slightly more ambitious bill calls for a 20-percent cut by 2020.

The Senate text also makes a push for nuclear energy research and training, and promotes natural gas as a clean energy source.

About sixty percent of respondents to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey said they favor such an approach, while 37 percent said they oppose it.

The survey's error margin was plus or minus three percentage points.

Obama's Republican foes have mostly rejected the administration's approach, with some warning it would inflict severe economic pain on traditional industries as the U.S. economy makes the transition to cleaner energy.

"The bill is no doubt ambitious, but it's also extremely costly," Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a longtime climate change doubter, said as the hearing began, disputing an Environmental Protection Agency study that found it would cost most U.S. families no more than 30 cents per day.

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That’s from the EPW news release from late Friday night.  The full text of the Chairman’s Mark is here [big PDF].  The main difference between this text and the draft of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act released late last month is that it “specifies distribution of emissions allowances” (details here).  The allowance allocations are similar to the house bill but not identical, but the bottom line is the same -- “Ensures that the majority of investments in the bill are for consumer protection” (see also Harvard economist Stavins here).

Equally important for moving the bill forward in an expeditious manner, the EPA released its analysis of the Chairman’s Mark (click here).  EPW described that analysis and the process going forward:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also released a detailed economic analysis of The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act that found no significant change in the estimated cost to American families, compared with H.R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey legislation passed this summer by the House of Representatives. EPA’s analysis of the House bill found that “average household consumption would be reduced by less than 1 percent in all years” compared with a business-as-usual scenario, and estimated the overall impact on the average household would be 22 to 30 cents per day ($80 to $111 per year).

On Tuesday, Oct. 27, the Environment and Public Works Committee will start comprehensive legislative hearings on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. Senators will hear testimony from nine panels totaling 54 witnesses over the course of three days. Senator Boxer has indicated that the EPW Committee will mark up the legislation as soon as possible following the completion of legislative hearings.

These results are comparable to the major analyses of the House bill:

The Senate EPW bill, of course, doesn’t include all of the efficiency provisions in the House bill, since that is the domain of the Senate energy committee which has already passed out its legislation (which is considerably wimpier on efficiency than the House).  The result (page 14 of EPA):

In total, because there is no provision comparable to the CERES in H.R. 2454, the building codes provision does not specify target energy use reduction levels or provide federal authorities to ensure compliance, and the energy efficiency-related allowance allocations are lower, EPA expects the impacts (e.g., changes in energy demand and prices) of energy efficiency provisions in S. 1733 to be approximately half those estimated in our  analysis of H.R. 2454.

This suggests an important strategy for progressives when the bill reaches the Senate floor or when the bill gets to a House Senate conference:  If moderates and conservatives are going to insist on major expansions of policies and incentives for nuclear power, coal with carbon capture and storage, drilling, and natural gas, then progressives need to fight to keep the House efficiency provisions in the final bill.

One final point, in its analysis, EPA also looks at the climate bill in the context of international action, to see what the full impact might be in various scenarios:

The result:

In the reference scenario, CO2e concentrations in 2100 would rise to approximately 936 ppm [aka "Hell and High Water "].  If the U.S. and other developing countries took action to reduce emissions to 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050, and developing countries took no action until 2050, then CO2e concentrations in 2100 would rise to approximately 647 ppm. If the G8 goals are met, then CO2e concentrations would rise to approximately 485 ppm in 2100. It should be noted that CO2e concentrations are not stabilized in these scenarios. To prevent concentrations from continuing to rise after 2100, post-2100 GHG emissions would need to be further reduced. For example, stabilization of CO2e concentrations at 485 ppm would require net CO2e emissions to go to zero in the very long run after 2100.

Given the CO2e concentrations for the various scenarios, we can also calculate the observed change in global mean temperature (from pre-industrial time) in 2100 under different climate sensitivities. Assuming the G8 goals (reducing global emissions to 50 percent below 2005 by 2050) are met, warming in 2100 would be limited to no more than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels under a climate sensitivity of 3.0 or lower.

So the Senate climate bill is consistent with a set of international policies that keep warming at levels that greatly reduce the risk of catastrophic impacts.

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Inhofe to Boxer: “We Won, You Lost, Now Get a Life!”

Bee there, do that: organic beekeeper Ross Conrad. Beekeeping is rising in popularity--from urban rooftops to backyard hives, the world is abuzz with interest in homemade honey. And who better to comment on the nature of bees than the former president of the Vermont Beekeepers Association, Ross Conrad. He's led bee-related presentations and taught organic beekeeping workshops and classes throughout North America for many years, and Conrad's small beekeeping business supplies friends, neighbors, and local stores with honey and candles among other bee related products, not to mention provides bees for Vermont apple pollination in spring. I talked to Conrad about organic beekeeping, the state of pollination, and tips for aspiring bee farmers.

Makenna Goodman: Your book, Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture, offers up a program of natural beehive management, and an alternative to conventional chemical-based approaches. So—why organic beekeeping?

Ross Conrad: History has shown us that the industrialized "economy of scale" approach does not work when applied to agriculture because we are dealing with living biological systems, not an inert assembly line food production system where the economy of scale approach can be applied across the board.  One of the biggest issues is the large number of chemical contaminants that are being found in beeswax and pollen, often at very high concentrations. Toxic chemical contamination has been implicated in Colony Collapse and the reality is that there is no effective regulation of chemicals in Western society. Let me tell you why:

When the EPA was created in 1970 and sanctioned with the task of regulating chemicals, all the chemicals that were already used in commerce up to that time were grandfathered in. Additionally, since the EPA is given very limited personnel and financial resources, the agency ends up relying on the chemical manufacturers for the majority of the scientific data that is used to evaluate the safety of the regulated toxins...a serious conflict of interest. When chemicals are evaluated for toxicity, they are studied in isolation. Little thought is given to the chemical's break down products which can prove to be more toxic and longer lasting than the original chemical itself, such as in the case of Imidacloprid Olefin, which is produced as the neonicotinoid, Imidacloprid degrades. Once in use and released into the environment, chemicals, and their breakdown products, will combine with other chemicals already in the environment to form new compounds. The synergistic effects of some of these combinations have proven themselves to be hundreds of times more toxic than either compound on its own.

Recent research into endocrine-disrupting chemicals (the kind often used as pesticides), reveals that the timing of exposure combines with the amount of exposure to produce a chemical's effect. Thus, a certain dose might be very toxic to an organism in its developmental stage, while not having any obvious detrimental affects on the organism once it has matures, or vice-verse. To make matters worse, in some cases low doses of a chemical can be more damaging than higher doses. These new understandings of chemical toxicity have proven wrong Paracelsus's 450-year-old maxim, "The dose makes the poison." Today we know that often the timing can make the poison and that sometimes less is actually worse.

Add to this the many studies that now show that a cocktail of “insignificant” doses of several chemicals each acting on their own can combine to have significant results. In other words, exposure to very low concentrations of several chemicals at the same time can cause biological effects that none of the chemicals would have on their own. Thus when an living organism is exposed to a mixture of chemicals, every component contributes to the overall effect, no matter how minute their concentration. The only sane answer to our ignorance in the use of these toxic compounds is to stop using these chemicals, not only in our hives, but in our everyday lives. Thus, organic beekeeping came into being in just the last 20 years as a response to the fact that chemical use in bee hives has became the common way to try to control Varroa mites. Organic beekeeping is not only possible, but necessary.

What are the biggest obstacles faced by organic beekeepers today?

The biggest challenge beekeepers face today is the same challenge facing all of Western industrial civilization...

In his 1980 book, Overshoot, William Catton, Jr. states, “Infinitesimal actions, if they are numerous and cumulative, can become enormously consequential.” This statement refers to the problem of cumulative impacts where actions that are harmless or tolerable at the individual level can degrade the planets life support systems if thousands or millions of people do them. One person fertilizing their lawn near Chesapeake Bay for example makes no significant impact, but when thousands do it the bay becomes degraded and Blue Crab populations decline precipitously.

When it comes to chemicals the current regulatory approach to controlling pollution does not deal with global pollution. The main focus has instead been on the maximally exposed individual.  In the United States, we conduct risk assessments (used when conducting “cost-benefit” analyses) to evaluate the risk to a hypothetical “maximally exposed” individual. If the threat to that individual (or honey bee) is found to fall within acceptable limits, then regulation does not occur and these so-called acceptable amounts of contamination are allowed to be released forever after. Then another risk assessment and cost benefit analysis gives the go-ahead to another acceptable release or use of a different toxic substance or harmful activity. Then another and another. What we have not started to look at until recently is the total impact of all these acceptable risks. Our society has assumed that it could tolerate unlimited small amounts of harm as a byproduct of economic growth. It is only when a particular activity is demonstrated to fail to provide a net benefit to society that most of our property and environmental laws are permitted to interfere with economic activity.

Biochemist and lawyer, Joseph H. Guth, legal director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, has analyzed this situation and offered solutions in several scholarly papers one of which was published in the Barry Law Review, titled “Cumulative Impacts: Death-Knell for Cost-Benefit Analysis In Environmental Decisions.”  In this paper Guth points out that our laws only forbid damage when the perceived benefits are not considered to outweigh the cost or destruction to the environment or human health. The law also puts the burden of proof that an activity is creating more harm than good on the injured party, or the government. If the victim (or the government) can not meet the burden of proof, then the damaging action is allowed to continue by default. This burden of proof transforms doubt, and missing scientific information into a barrier to legal protection for the environment (and honey bees). The default presumption is that the benefits of economic activity always outweigh the costs unless a specific cost-benefit analysis (often based upon incomplete or faulty research conducted by those that stand to profit) can show otherwise.

According to Joe Guth, "These laws do not permit regulators broadly to take account of what is happening to the world around them. They embed regulators in a decision-making structure that may seem scientific but in fact is profoundly unscientific because it prevents them from responding to the ever more detailed findings by the world scientific community that we are overshooting the Earth's ecological capacities. Rooted in the assumption that ecological overshoot does not occur, our current statutes are incapable of containing the cumulative scale of ecological damage... It is an approach that has become outdated because it is based on assumptions that are no longer valid."
Guth sums up by stating, “To maintain a functioning biosphere in which humans can prosper, the law must turn its attention to the problem of cumulative impacts. The law will have to abandon its use of cost-benefit analysis to justify individual environmental impacts and instead adopt the goal of maintaining the functioning ecological systems that we are so dependent upon.”

In Section II of his “Cumulative Impacts” paper, Joe Guth states that “Our legal system already harbors examples of decision-making structures that establish a principle of standard of environmental quality or human health and do not rely on cost-benefit balancing.” and that these examples “show that such legal principles or standards can enable the legal system to contain the growth of cumulative impacts.” The cumulative impacts of our culture are destroying the life support systems of the planet and the bees are simply acting as the proverbial "canary in the coal mine."  As a result we don't have an environmental problem that we can "solve" we have a situation we must learn to adjust to.  The actions that needed to be taken to rectify our predicament should have been taken years ago. At this point the damage is done.  The only real question left is whether our actions today are going to result in our great grandchildren living a difficult life in a crippled world that is a shadow of the world we live in today, or are we going to inflict damage that is so devastating that we will have created a total catastrophe for future generations?

Describe briefly beekeeping as a business. How much energy do you focus on honey production?

Honey production is not the focus of my beekeeping business at all.  The focus is on caring for the honey bees and keeping the colonies as healthy and vibrant as possible. This means primarily reducing stress on the bees.  In fact the only consistent observation that has been made of hives suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is that the bees in infected colonies are always suffering from stress that has caused the bee's immune systems to collapse.  While there are numerous stresses that the bees must deal with that we cannot directly control (see below), there are numerous other stresses on the hive that we do have control over.  Such stressors include reducing chemical contaminants in the hive, eliminating the presence of antibiotics in the hive, making sure that the bees are fed a healthy diet of honey and pollen from a wide variety of plants and that the hives have access to clean uncontaminated water.  When the bees health needs are taken care of, a honey harvest tends to be the natural result.

Let’s say I’m an aspiring small-scale farmer, or beginning life on a homestead, or merely thinking of expanding my urban garden. Why should I keep bees, in terms of honey production, and their pollination benefits, etc?

The biggest benefit honey bees provide is pollination.  Pollination fees are what is keeping the beekeeping industry alive today. Honey is really a byproduct of pollination. Why should anybody keep bees? As suggested above, the life support systems of our planet are collapsing. The forests are disappearing, desert regions are growing, the climate is shifting so that some areas are getting dryer, other areas are getting wetter, some areas are getting colder, other areas are getting warmer, and our oceans are collapsing with large dead zones, acidification, giant "islands" of floating plastic debris, collapsing fisheries, and ocean animals that are dying in greater numbers every day from cancer. My observation is that it is our industrial civilization that is, if not the actual cause of all this destruction, it is certainly contributing to the devastation. As a member of this society then, I am partly responsible and part of the problem.  This is a wonderful thing, for if I am part of the problem, then I have the responsibility and am empowered to be part of the solution.

One of the greatest lessions we learn from the honey bee is in observing how they go about making their "living" here on earth.  As they go about their business collecting pollen, nectar, propolis and water (everything they need to survive) they do not harm or kill anything in the process.  Unless they feel threatened and are forced to defend themselves, not so much as a leaf on a plant is harmed.  In the process of taking what they need to survive they in turn give back more than they take and make the world a better place through the pollination the plants.  This gift of pollination ensures that the plants can thrive and reproduce in vast numbers which produces a large variety of seeds, nuts, berries, fruits and vegetable in all shapes and sizes, which in turn ensures an abundance of food for all the rest of the insects, animals and people on the planet.  This is the ultimate lesson that the bees teach us and challenge us to accomplish: How to live our life in a way that by taking what we need from the world around us we leave the world better than we found it.

Each one of us who takes care of the honey bees and makes sure that there is adequate habitat and flowering plants for the native pollinators in our regions, is indirectly through the good work of these pollinators, making the world a better place for all of creation.  This is the kind of healing our beautiful blue-green planet needs desperately at this time in history.

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So long and thanks for all the fish

Big News: In a historic move, Lisa Jackson's EPA threw down the gauntlet on mountaintop removal mining last Friday -- after they had just compromised on another massively destructive mountaintop removal operation. Is this the beginning of the end of the plunder of Appalachia -- or is the EPA moving sideways to regulate what its own science has called an irreversible violation of the Clean Water Act?

Within the backdrop of the EPA's extraordinary announcement to employ its veto authority at the largest mountaintop removal mine site in West Virginia, the coalfield uprising is moving on several fronts this week. Today, besieged coalfield residents in the Coal River Valley are delivering an urgent letter to West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin to stop an impending mountaintop removal operation near a dangerous coal slurry impoundment in their communities that will destroy jobs and their homeland and an internationally acclaimed wind farm. Updates of the action at the governor's mansion will be posted at Climate Ground Zero.

Meanwhile, the Alliance for Appalachia and and other coalfield groups are also continuing to collect statements against the Army Corps' NWP 21 permit process and their chaotic hearings last week.

Charleston Gazette/Coal Tattoo journalist Ken Ward broke the news on the EPA on Friday: The EPA announced its historic intentions to "issue a public notice of a proposed determination to restrict or prohibit the discharge of dredged and/or fill material at the Spruce No. 1 Mine project site consistent with our authority under Section 404 (c) of the Clean Water Act and regulations 40 C.F.R. Part 231." In a line: For the first time in decades, the EPA is moving to invoke its veto power to stop a St. Louis, Mo.-owned Arch Coal mountaintop removal mining operation from unacceptable adverse impacts on the environment and water quality.

The EPA has concluded that the Army Corps of Engineers' plan to adjust the permit would still result in the destruction of seven miles of streams. So, why did the EPA accept a compromise at the St. Louis, Mo.-owned Patriot Coal's massive Hobet mountaintop removal mine, which would reportedly still allow half of the affected streams to be destroyed? In truth, Lisa Jackson and the EPA have recognized that thousands of miles of streams have been sullied and jammed with mining waste from mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia over the past three decades -- and the impacts are "immense and irreversible, and there are no scientifically credible plans for mitigating these impacts," according to Margaret Palmer's U.S. Senate hearing testimony last June.

West Virginia state environmental biologist Doug Wood has noted:

We now have clear evidence that in some streams that drain mountaintop coal quarry valley fills, the entire order Ephemeroptera (mayflies) has been extirpated, not just certain genera of this order ... The loss of an order of insects from a stream is taxonomically equivalent to the loss of all primates (including humans) from a given area. The loss of two insect orders is taxonomically equivalent to killing all primates and all rodents through toxic chemicals.

Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County, W. Va. is not only the largest mountaintop removal site in West Virginia -- it has been the quintessential battleground for science and law-based mining policies over 10 years. So, is this the beginning of the end of the plunder of Appalachia ... or just more of regulating an abomination? A searing new collection of photos and essays -- Plundering Appalachia -- asks this question in one of the most gripping and informed books in years. Examining the cradle to the grave impacts of mountaintop removal mining, and coal in general, Plundering Appalachia shows the indisputable destruction of reckless mining on the local communities, the mountains and valleys, the watersheds, and the nation at large. Here's a video clip from the book:

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Lorelei Scarbro speaking with Gov. Joe ManchinPhoto: Chris EichlerAs a supportive crowd sang, "This land is your land, this land is my land," seven peaceful sit-in activists were arrested in Governor Joe Manchin's office at the West Virginia state capitol at 5 p.m. this afternoon, as part of the growing national coalfield uprising to stop mountaintop-removal mining. Today's protest called on the governor to intervene in his state's spiraling emergency over mountaintop removal mining and blasting.

Among the arrested was Miranda Miller, a student born and raised in West Virginia, who declared: "We're here on behalf of the people of the Coal River Mountain Community and we're here to draw attention to the dangers presented to them by the impending mountaintop removal coal mining. "

The world is watching this coalfield uprising: This was the 16th action of civil disobedience by nonviolent coalfield residents and protests this year. Over 100 people have been arrested.

Here's a clip from the protest:

With clear cut forests paving the way for a mountaintop removal permit in process in the historic Coal River Mountain range, the coalfield residents and nonviolent protesters today coaxed Manchin out of his office for a short meeting. Faced with massive mountaintop removal blasts within a dangerously short range of the earthen Brushy Fork impoundment dam, which holds back billions of gallons of toxic sludge, the residents are concerned for their safety -- absentee Massey Energy's own evacuation plan noted 998 potential deaths as the minimum number in the case of a catastrophic breach of the earthen dam. Meanwhile, coalfield residents and protestors also noted the mountaintop removal mine would destroy a widely acclaimed proposal for a Coal River Mountain industrial wind farm that would bring millions of dollars in revenues and hundreds of jobs to the community.

Miranda Miller, arrested at W.Va. CapitolPhoto: Chris EichlerThe governor's response? He told the coalfield residents: "What we're trying to do is find a balance and that's tough to do in an extractive state."

Extractive state? Is that who Gov. Manchin represents? Extraction companies like Richmond, Va.-based Massey? St. Louis, Mo.-based Arch Coal?

For coalfield residents and other West Virginians, West Virginia is the mountain state. In their letter presented to the governor, the residents declared:

As residents of West Virginia's Coal River Valley we write you to declare a state of emergency. Coal River Mountain is our last mountain untouched by mountaintop removal and it is in imminent danger of blasting. This would not only threaten our communities, it would also destroy our chance to have permanent jobs and renewable energy through ridge-top wind power. You have the power to rescind these permits.

At any moment, Massey Energy could blast part of the Bee Tree site, on the containing ridge of the Brushy Fork sludge impoundment. Brushy Fork impoundment, permitted to hold 9.8 billion gallons of toxic sludge, is the tallest dam in the hemisphere, and it sits on top of a network of abandoned underground mines.

We live in fear that the blasting could cause the dam to fail and create one of the greatest industrial disasters in our nation's history. The emergency evacuation plan for the Brushy Fork sludge dam states that should it fail, a wall of water 50 feet high would hit Whitesville and result in the deaths of at least 998 people. Given this risk, blasting should not be allowed until your Department of Environmental Protection has conducted a thorough geo-technical examination of the impoundment's stability in regards to the underground mines.

For more information on the Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment, see the great background story and maps at the Journey Up Coal River website. Coal River Valley residents have called on the governor to, with a particular urgency on the Bee Tree Branch mountaintop removal permit that would destroy the area for the widely acclaimed Coal River Wind Project. The Brushy Fork impoundment has also been a focus of several recent protests. Coal River resident Lorelei Scarbro spoke recently about the Coal River Wind project for her community at risk:

For more information on today's protest, visit: www.climategroundzero.org or mountainjustice.org.

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

This week has seen some very tense and passionate hearings on mountaintop removal coal mining permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Local residents who support clean energy say they have been verbally and physically threatened at the West Virginia and Kentucky hearings so far.

Here's a video of the Charleston, WV, hearings, where pro-coal people harassed clean energy activists by pinning them against the wall. The clean energy activists were then removed before the hearing by police for "security reasons."



This harassment was also reported in several news articles, including one from the Associated Press and another from the Lexington Herald-Leader.

And despite all that proof, the Army Corps is saying the hearings were "conducted in an orderly fashion." We can and will dispute that statement 100%.

Big Coal claims that ending mountaintop removal coal mining will cost jobs and hurt local economies. Yet this week Sierra Club and the Appalachian Center for the Economy & the Environment released a report from economists showing the opposite: The United States can have affordable electricity without mountaintop removal.

According to the report:
·    Ending mountaintop removal would have a negligible effect on electricity prices in the eastern United States, where mountaintop removal coal is currently burned.
·    We have an abundance of cost-effective alternatives to mountaintop removal coal.
·    Other types of mining in Appalachia employ more workers.
·    Mountaintop removal coal mining costs state budgets more than it generates.
·    Mountaintop removal destroys clean energy sources.

Despite being outnumbered at these events so far, our clean energy activists will continue attending the other hearings this week – there are three more on Thursday night, in Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Appalachia residents who support clean energy jobs should not be verbally or physically intimidated into staying away or being quiet. Their message is crucial. Clean energy will benefit Appalachia's economy. Mountaintop removal coal mining is destroying communities and offers fewer benefits than clean energy.

Help us get that message across by taking action today. Submit your own comments on the Army Corps’ review of all these mountaintop removal permits. Your voice is needed!

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

UPDATE: Every American -- including the Army Corps of Engineers -- must watch this powerful new 20-minute film by Chad Stevens on the real costs and consequences of mountaintop removal mining: Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining.

Now, the good news: on behalf of their children's future, coalfield residents and miners calmly came together in the Coal River Valley last night, as the Raleigh County School Board announced its intention to formally request funds for a new Marsh Elementary School, which currently sits near a toxic coal dust silo and downslope of a 2.8 billion gallon coal sludge impoundment and mountaintop removal operation.

"The main agenda item at last night's Raleigh County School Board hearing was one that has been long awaited," said Bo Webb, a local resident and Vietnam veteran. "Five years ago a campaign led by a few local concerned citizens began with the goal of obtaining a new school for the children and staff of Marsh Fork Elementary. Thanks to so many people this campaign grew into a movement that spread across America. Last night was the culmination of thousands of people's support from across our great land as the school board voted to formally request funds to construct a new school."

If only Big Coal and their supporters could have put the future of the region's children first at another meeting last night. Despite recent studies [PDF] that prove that mountaintop removal and coal mining have devastated the Appalachian economies and health, cost the coal states more in services than tax revenues, and holds back [PDF] sustainable development for the future, Big Coal continues to threaten coal mining communities with impending doom if they consider any alternatives.

While their profits continue to soar amid job losses, Big Coal let loose the hounds of chaos and hatred at last night's Army Corps of Engineers public hearing in West Virginia on mountaintop removal permits.

In the process, Big Coal Gone Wild also raised a new question: given their increasingly inflammatory and distorted propaganda, should certain Big Coal instigators be investigated by the Department of Justice and FBI for sowing the seeds of potential hate crimes?

It begs the question: What's it going to take to get the Obama administration and West Virginia state officials to publicly denounced the violent rhetoric by Big Coal hacks and mountaintop removal operators?

Busing in a huge, nearly uncontrollable gathering in West Virginia, (the hearings in Kentucky and Tennessee were raucous, though without problems), Big Coal Gone Wild did its best to turn these important Army Corps of Engineers public hearings on the specifics of following the laws for mountaintop removal permits into a shouting match and general mayhem. On the heels of a violent summer in the coalfields, last night's shouting match capped a week of bizarre but dangerous comments by Big Coal operators.

Consider these nuggets from this week:

Big Coal supporters called the EPA a "modern day Gestapo."

Big Coal supporters referred to nonviolent Gandhian protesters as suicide bombers.

Big Coal is running ads of besieged coalfield residents as masked "bandits."

Big Coal supporters held a sign that declared, "hang a tree hugger, save a miner," in a Wall Street Journal article lsat week.

Here's a report on last night's hearing in Charleston, W. Va., from Chuck Nelson, a retired coal miner in West Virginia:

There were about 10 of us, who were the last group leaving from inside. We were waiting to give our comments, when word was brought back in, what was happening outside. As we talked with each of our groups inside, things just kept getting more crazy. We decided to leave then as a group, to proceed to make our departure. Insults were hurled at us as we were leaving, with a bunch of thugs following. Once in the lobby, I went directly to a Charleston city officer, and requested an escort to our vehicles, with an angry group outside the doors. The officer told me, that we should have known, what was going to happen when we came there. He did escort us to the front doors, and told Ben, as we were leaving, you are on your own. We made our way outside, only to be met with more insults, that followed us practically all the way to our vehicles. We made calls on our phones, and tried to make sure everyone was all right. I think everyone finally did. I too, wondered where the state troopers were, not one was ever visible. I wonder, how in the world can the Army Corp make a decision on an important permit, when they can't even conduct a proper, and peaceful hearing.

Vernon Haltom, from the Coal River Mountain Watch nonprofit, added:

I went to the Charleston, W. Va., hearing hosted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but was unable to get in and give comments because the place was full. This was after enduring a gauntlet of coal cult thugs hurling every insult imaginable at me and the people who came with me to see and listen. Although a few other people and I were in line and had filled out the registration forms to give comments, the Charleston police made us go out of the building where we were surrounded by more thugs pushing against us, threatening our lives, and again hurling insults. Our group included an 80-year-old woman enduring 300-pound thugs screaming obscenities within three feet of her ears. After 15 minutes or so of this shameful display, the Charleston police required us to leave. Because it was easier to control a group of six or seven peaceful people than a mob of hundreds of violence prone thugs, and because the police did not want any of us or the police to get hurt, they escorted us off the premises. Essentially, police inability to control the mob resulted in our inability to give verbal comments. While the building was full, we were prepared to enter once a few people left, but the police removed us from our place in line and removed us from the premises while the insult-hurlers were allowed to stay.

Our friends inside the hearing were able to give comments, but were drowned out by the mob. When they complained to the hearing moderators, they were told the clock was ticking. When they left, the police refused to escort the last small group to their vehicles, forcing them to run the gauntlet without protection. The police said, "You all knew what you were getting into; you're on your own," or a similar reply when asked for escort to cars. The TV news channels didn't show this side of the night, and no one from the pro-mountain side appeared on TV. Instead, the TV news interviewed coal supporters and implied there was no one from our side giving testimony. From one of the hearings, I don't know which one, one of the Corps of Engineers people said, "This is democracy working," or something like that. This was not democracy working. It was a mob intimidating both the Charleston police and the U.S. Army, as well as the peaceful citizens who came to give comments to protect their homes, live, and communities.

At the Pikeville, Ky. meeting, coal miner Carl Shoupe reported:

As a third generation underground coal miner who is totally disabled from a roof fall accident, who has watched his father, grandfather, and father-in-law die from the dreadful disease of Black Lung, the Army Corps meeting was status quo. It is a proven fact the coal industry is historically anti-regulation and against any law that creates safety for coal miners or environmental issues that would cost them in terms of money. No where did the elected politicians or coal owners speak about cleaning up the environmental impact of coal. They only spoke about the economics or frankly, "how much money it would cost to mine the coal correctly."

You're never going to make everyone happy, but if we are going to continue our consumptive practices, we need to make some decisions. Coal has been very much a part of my past, but in the last 10 years (mountain top removal of coal) has done more damage to the environment than deep coal mining did in the previous 100 years. If those young coal miners who climbed on those buses and received their days pay only knew what "participatory democracy" was, they would be calling the United Mine Workers Labor Union, sign a union card, and after signing a union card get rid of every politician that spoke or even was there last night in Pikeville. History remembers people who embrace change, not those who resist it.

Eastern Kentucky coalfield resident Mickey McCoy reported:

"God bless the coal and miners and to Hell with the tree huggers!" shouted an elected official from an Eastern Kentucky coal producing county while addressing an estimated 3,800 people, mostly mine workers, their families and related industry representatives, in attendance at the Army Corps public hearing in Pikeville, Ky. last night. By the time the meeting wound down sometime after midnight earlier cat calls, insults, and bursts of applause had ended and only a couple of hundred folk were in attendance to hear the last of those giving testimony. Scores began to file out once the Corps started to receive thanks at the microphones from members of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and other environmentally minded individuals who praised the possible elimination of the rubber-stamping of mining permits under NWP21.

As McCoy told a congressional briefing in Washington, D.C. last month: It's time to end the bombing of Appalachia and bring peace and justice to the coalfields:

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7