Two Days of Post-Equinox Rage with Tim Hermack, Robert Kraig and Lauren Randall, the Sierra Club

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KBOO
Program:: 
Air date: 
Tue, 03/24/2015 - 10:00am to 10:15am
Two days of interviews: Tim Hermack, Robert Kraig and the Sierra Club's Lauren Randall

1,  It's a literal demonstration in front of the Capitol steps to draw attention to debate on the Coal to Clean Energy legislation (SB 477; HB 2729), which would move electric utilities toward more local, renewable energy., more than 200 people are expected at the rally, which will feature speakers from the public health field, academia and business.
The rally is part of the Oregon Conservation Network's Clean Green Lobby Machine day at the Capitol, and several environmental bills will be highlighted.   Linfield College chemistry professor Jim Diamond will be at the rally to show support for the legislation from a scientific perspective.   "Recent studies indicate that the social costs of carbon associated with coal leads to costs on the order of 40 cents per kilowatt-hour, as opposed to the 11 or 12 cents per kilowatt-hour most people pay," says Diamond. "It's due to the health and environmental effects of coal."
71 percent of Oregon voters support the legislation, which would require Pacific Power and PGE to eliminate coal from their energy mix by 2025. Oregon's last in-state coal plant is scheduled to retire in 2020.
 
2, It’s time to talk Enbridge once again and the main group taking action against the energy giant, MICATS. When MICATS was born, the landscape here in Michigan was different. Enbridge was not often mentioned in the national rhetoric on tar sands, the infamous Line 6B was in the middle of being expanded, and Michigan was barely on the map in the world of tar sands activism, despite being home to the largest and costliest inland tar sands oil spill in this country’s history: the Kalamazoo River Spill. The community of southeast Michigan was suffering largely in silence from racist and calculated poisoning at the hands of Marathon Oil, the refinery that has been using Detroit as a dumping ground for decades. Silenced, ignored, and disregarded by decision-makers and regulatory bodies, this community is a classic example of environmental injustice and racism and is complicit in the perpetuation of tar sands crimes.
 
3, And then there’s this: Poised right in between a budding middle-class district and a neighborhood with a lower socio-economic status sits the Collingwood Garden in Toledo, Ohio. Intentionally placed in a formerly vacant lot (which had been empty for the twenty years prior), the Garden attempts to act as a bridge for the two very separate communities, and from my experience in attending a community event here at it’s near-inception, that intention seems to be playing out nicely. It was here that the metaphorical flag was hoisted on May Day in 2013. It should be added that this project began as, and still is, a guerrilla project. They now have the blessing of the city, who seems to be glad that someone is doing something with the land in a city where much of the infrastructure is collapsing, and where the people are fleeing, as is with much of Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and probably soon to be the newborn boom-towns with their fracking projects in North Dakota and Texas.
From the Toledo Blade
 
4,  4, Our main chemical safety law – the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) – is outdated and deeply flawed, allowing more than 80,000 chemicals that have never been tested for safety to be used in the United States.1
Senators Tom Udall (D-NM) and David Vitter (R-LA) have now introduced a bill to reform TSCA, but it is even worse than the existing law. Incredibly, the bill may have even been written by the American Chemistry Council, the lobbying arm of the chemical industry.2
Despite opposition from countless environmental groups and public health experts, this dangerous bill already has the support of a handful of Democrats.3 We need to stop Senate Democrats from helping Republicans do the bidding of the chemical industry.
 
5, Greenwashing children?  Shouldn’t that be illegal? In Vancouver yesterday Rising Tide ‘scientists’ laid out the case against fracking outside Science World in Vancouver.. The event was timed to coincide with  Science World’s way of celebrating  World Water Day.
Rising Tides’ said “we can’t sit idly by while Science World is working alongside Christy Clark to greenwash the Liquified Fracked Gas industry. Today we are not only engaging with and educating children in the dangers of fracked gas and its impact on the climate and environment but also reaching out to the management of Science World to consider the impacts of their actions”.
Rising Tide adds,  “as our popular education stalls showed today fracked gas is hugely environmentally damaging, opposed by local communities and fundamentally not an ethical or viable energy solution. The young kids passed our fracked gas quiz today, if only the same could be said for those planning the energy infrastructure of the region.”
 
6, Shell’s Arctic drilling fleet is on the move - even before the US government has approved the final permits.
The Greenpeace ship, Esperanza, is in the Central Pacific about 4,000 nautical miles off the West Coast of the US. They have been tracking Shell's monstrous oil rig the Polar Pioneer since it left Brunei Bay in Malaysia. Right now, Shell is heading North via Seattle to begin drilling for oil in the Arctic this summer.
The Pacific Ocean is the largest body of water on the planet. Finding one oil rig in its vastness was like finding a needle in a haystack - but Greenpeace’s ship, the Esperanza,  now have them in sight.
 
 
7, Washington has accused Israel of spying on closed-door international talks with Iran about its nuclear program and relaying information from the meetings to the U.S. Congress as a way to build a case against the deal, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Citing more than a dozen current and former U.S. and Israeli officials, the WSJ said Israel eavesdropped on the negotiations and gathered information from “confidential U.S. briefings,” “informants” and “diplomatic contacts in Europe.”

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