Stop Fracking 5/19
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Support Fracking Moratorium AB 1301
873 signaturesStop Fracking California! Support AB 1301!
I support AB 1301 which places a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in California. Fracking to extract dirty, heavy, high-sulfur crude oil that requires enormous amounts of energy to refine will create more greenhouse gases at a time when they MUST be greatly reduced. Fracking will exacerbate the state’s water shortages and contaminate groundwater and the air we breathe. Fracking can increase the risk of earthquakes. Fracking will not bring economic prosperity or energy security to our state. I want California to move forward to clean, renewable energy, not frack for dirty heavy crude oil. I call on the governor and state legislators to enact AB 1301.
Next Step to Stop K XL Volunteers
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Your contribution matters! We are up against some of the richest, most profitable (and dirtiest) enterprises, as Bill McKibben put it, in the history of money.
We appreciate your support for event and meeting logistics, outreach, publicity and general support of local Climate Activism. Every dime will be well spent!
Thanks!
Rand Wrobel commented on Home
2013-02-18 23:29:01 -0800
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Yes, Taylor, we the people. McKibben made that crystal clear in his MSNBC interview: http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/02/17/climate-policy-comes-out-of-exile/ (Suggest to see all 3 segments: Bill McKibben and the Chief Jackie Thomas are interviewed at the site of the Forward On Climate Rally Sunday morning 2/17, along with leaders of NAACP and Public Citizen Energy Program.)
He said (paraphrasing here) we won the science 20 years ago. The “rational” approach that one might expect to address climate change (and had nacient starts) did not happen, essentially due to the fossil corporate money (over $100 million, it turns out) to denialist misinformation groups.
So to overcome those same active groups, where science failed to lead policy, so we the people must make it happen. Like other social transformations (like civil rights) enough people must take action to make it happen. Personally I think we may need 10x today’s numbers in the streets. As Mr. Cohen noted, our biggest day yet has barely moved the media needle. And we have just begun.
My wife ran across this, from Cloud Atlas:
“The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power and influence. Our sole weapon is public outrage. Outrage blocked the Yucca Dam, ousted Nixon, and in part, terminated the monstrosities in Vietnam. But outrage is unwieldly to manufacture and handle. First, you need scrutiny; second, widespread awareness; only when this reaches a critical mass does public outrage explode into being.
We are “raising the temperature of public awareness [however] fractionally toward its ignition point”. Thanks to each of you.
No Tar Sands in the Bay Area
Tar Sands are a bad idea. We can make sure that the Bay Area is not part of this problem. and ensure that area refineries don't process any materials from tar sands mining operations. Help us convince the cities of Richmond and Martinez to prohibit the dirty, destructive and climate-disruptive tar sands within their city limits.
Petition
1,041 signaturesWe request that the city councils of Richmond, Hercules, Benicia and Martinez pass city ordinances to prohibit the transport, processing and refining within city limits of any materials obtained or derived from tar sands of any source. We request that all other city councils in the Bay Area pass resolutions in support of these ordinances.
Petitions
Take a Stand and make your voice heard
These are our 350 Bay Area campaigns' petitions for local climate action:
- Dump The Pump - Cigarettes have warning labels, why not gas pumps? Ask Bay Area City Councils to pass a City Ordinance to put warning labels on Bay Area gas pumps
- Bay Climate Action Plan Petition - Ask the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (which has the mission and the authority) to reduce Bay Area GHG emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.
- No Tar Sands in the Bay Area Petition - Prevent Bay Area refineries from processing the dirty, destructive and polluting tar sands. Ask the cities of Richmond and Martinez to prohibit tar sands within their city limits.
Support AB 1301, a moratorium on Fracking in California - Let California legislators know that you want them to pass Assembly Bill 1301, which places an immediate moratorium on fracking in California.
Also See these 350 Bay Area-Endorsed National Petitions/Letters:
- Sierra Club's phone-call-to-Obama Drive - Tell President Obama to Move Forward on Climate
- Renewable Energy Policy Petition, endorsed by 350.org & 30 other organizations and companies
(Note:350 Bay Area has a reservation concerning the definition of renewable as non-combustion)
- Co-sign this CREDO Letter to President Obama, asking for bold action to confront climate change, signed by over 180,000 people.
League of Conservation Voters petition for increased coverage of the climate by the major networks (completes soon). Note: Be aware of LCV's disclaimer of membership and communications.
The Oil Change International "Exxon Hates Your Children" TV ad (OUCH!): See the ad at: http://exxonhatesyourchildren.com/
Bay Climate Action Plan Petition
The Bay Area emits 100 million tons of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) per year. Scientists tell us that to avoid catastrophic warming we must cut GHG emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 (down to 17.6 million tons in the Bay Area). California aims to reduce GHGs to 1990 levels by 2020. It's a start, but not nearly enough. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) has the power to regulate over 50% of all the GHG emissions in the Bay Area. The Air District needs to lead the way to bring those emissions down to safe, sustainable levels. If the progressive, environmentally aware Bay Area can't lead the way, who can?
Petition
826 signaturesThe Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s Mission is “to protect and improve public health, air quality and the global climate.”
We petition the Air District to use its authority to:
- Declare that catastrophic climate disruption is an escalating emergency
- Act on its mission by adopting aggressive programs by July 2014 to reduce Bay Area greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050*.
*This is the level that the National Research Council determined as a worldwide goal in order to keep global warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius.
Volunteer Opportunities Sign-up Form
Why Rally On Climate Now? Volunteer Partners Posters & Flyers Participant Info
The rally was a great success!!
Help is needed for a variety of upcoming 350 Bay Area Events. If you can, please volunteer & also spread the word about 350 Bay Area.
Tar Sands Background
KEYSTONE XL - PROPOSED TAR SANDS OIL PIPELINE THROUGH THE U.S.
Summary By Ann & Loring Dales, Edited by Rand Wrobel
Main source of information: Williams, Ted: “Tarred and Feathered.” Audubon magazine, Volume 113, No. 4, July-August 2011, pp 24-33.
The Company TransCanada's proposal is for a 3-foot diameter, subsurface pipeline running from Alberta through Oklahoma and Texas to the U.S. gulf coast.
ADVERSE IMPACTS OF TAR SANDS OIL MINING
Tar sands are just that, sands impregnated with tarry oil that, in Canada, underlay perhaps 20% of of the Province of Alberta, with most of the overlying terrain covered with boreal forest.
- Bulldozing, Pits and Toxic Waste
Mining tar sands starts with bulldozing off about 100 feet of soil overlying the tarry deposits, followed by strip-mining out the oil-laced sand. This sand is then steamed with vast amounts of gas-heated water to extract the desired product, bitumen. Waste products of this process include hundreds of billions of gallons of toxic substances.
- Habitat Destruction
Of course, the overlaying boreal forest - which among other things provides habitat for some 30 percent of our continent's landbird species as well as a number of waterbirds - is destroyed. The mining companies' subsequent “restoration” measures seem about as good as the perfunctory habitat restoration practiced by coal strip-mining companies in Appalachia –extremely poor. This converts many, many square miles of fish and wild habitat into pits and toxic waste, much of which leaks farther out into the environment,
- Billions of Tons of Carbon Pollution
The mining and processing requires energy, thereby directly and indirectly consuming huge amounts of fossil fuels with the associated generation of greenhouse gases
ADVERSE IMPACT THREATS OF THE PROPOSED KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE
- Risk Contamination of Drinking Water for Two Million People
The proposed Keystone XL pipeline was to run 1660 miles through a total of 6 Great Plains states in the U.S., a little below the land surface. For many of these miles the pipeline will would have been buried inside possibly the largest underground aquifer on the planet, the Ogallala Aquifer, which charges rivers, lakes, and marshes and supplies drinking and irrigation water to eight states. Initially, TransCanada was non-responsive to requests to revise the pipeline route to avoid this aquifer. Later, when it became clear that local and state governments in this area were increasingly resistant to the idea, the company changed its mind and now proposes the that the Keystone XL pipeline go around the aquifer.
- Risk Contamination of Drinking Water for Two Million People
Because the bitumen is too viscous to be piped as is, it is mixed with a volatile liquid concentrate from natural gas, converting it into thin liquid. This liquid contains all the toxic and carcinogenic fractions found in regular crude oil. And the tar sands oil makes pipeline leaks more likely. It has high concentrations of chloride salts, sulfur, abrasive materials and acids, and it needs to be pumped at high pressure. All of this is hard on pipes, increasing the likelihood of ruptures.
- Past Large Spills
- Kalamazoo River: TransCanada claims it can reliably prevent significant leaks in the pipeline, but empiric experience strongly suggests otherwise. In July 2010 a pipeline carrying this kind of slurry for TransCanada ruptured in Michigan, sending millions of gallons of it into the Kalamazoo River system. (U.S. government investigation of this episode reported many uncorrected erosion problems in the pipeline.)
- Yellowstone River : In July 2011, an Exxon Mobile oil pipeline running along the Yellowstone River in Montana ruptured, spreading crude oil into the river for miles, also with fumes forcing evacuations. And of course the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline - which is only half the length of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline and contains oil which is less abrasive and corrosive than that of the Keystone XL, has experienced multiple significant leaks and ruptures over the years.
- Underground Hidden Leaks
Unlike the Alaska pipeline, the Keystone XL would be underground, making it harder to detect non-massive leaks. Even the proposed project's own environmental impact statement apparently says that some slow leaks will not be detected for long periods.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has sharply criticized the U.S. State Department's draft environmental impact statement for the project. The New York Times has called the project's environmental risks “enormous.” Leaking from the pipeline could pollute the Ogallala Aquifir for great distances, rendering water unfit for use by wildlife and humans.
ACTIONS OF TRANS-CANADA, THE COMPANY THAT WANTS TO BUILD THE PIPELINE
TransCanada has been threatening landowners on the proposed route with eminent domain actions to frighten them into selling it right-of-way easements. An excerpt from to a ranch owner on this subject: TransCanada's letter“While we hope to acquire this property through negotiation, if we are unable to do so, we will be forced to invoke the power of eminent domain and will initiate condemnation proceedings.”
AMONG THE IMPLICATIONS
Opening of the proposed pipeline would:
- Destroy Forests: substantially increase extraction of Canada's tar sands, thereby expanding the destructive impact on the boreal forest in Alberta.
- Explode The Carbon Bomb: Also, of course, the extraction, processing and ultimate use (burning as fuel) - wherever the latter happens - will result huge additional discharges of carbon into the atmosphere with the attendant major impact on climate instability. Exploiting this, the second largest “carbon bomb” in the world after the Saudi oil fields, is what the top NASA climatologist, James Hansen, called, “Game Over for the climate”.
- Not Reduce Gasoline Prices: The petroleum products rendered from the oil slurry after it reaches the end of the pipeline in Texas apparently are planned mostly (possibly entirely) to be sold on the world market, thus not substantively addressing this country's own needs for oil and its products.
- No Long-Term Jobs: Construction of the U.S. segment of this pipeline would help generate some American jobs, but this temporary effect would end when the construction is completed. There will not likely be a substantial increase in employment at the U.S. gulf coast refineries that process the product.
- Corporate Profits From Pollution: The big short and long-term “winners” look to be the corporate owners of the tar sands extraction operators in Canada and the corporate owners of the U.S. gulf coast refineries (as well as their investors). The “1%” and others near the economy's upper end will do fine, short and long-term. But for the working and middle classes, the long-run jobs increase prospect looks slim.
