Huffington Post
Posted: 09-16-09 06:00 PM

On September 15th, Van Jones addressed his friends and supporters about his recent resignation with the following e-mail message.

Dear Friends:

My family and I want to thank everyone for the outpouring of love and support that we have received over the past week or so. I resigned from the White House on Sept. 6, and I have remained silent since then–in keeping with my promise not to be a distraction during a key moment in the Obama Presidency.

Over the past several days, however, many people have been asking how they can help and what they can do.

The main thing is this: please do everything you can to support both President Obama and the green jobs movement. Winning real change is ultimately the best response to these kinds of smear campaigns. Source

TPMDC

Despite opposing cloture on a previous cap and trade bill, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) says that–whether he supports the underlying bill or not–he won’t support a filibuster of climate change legislation this Congress.

“I’m not going to be part of a filibuster on climate change,” Brown told me today. Brown voted against ending debate on the Lieberman-Warner bill in 2007, but he says he did that because the bill had no real chance of making it to the floor, and opposing cloture was his way of expressing his objection to aspects of that legislation.

“I was not blocking the bill from having a hearing on the floor, because it wasn’t gonna get to that,” Brown said. “I wanted to show that I don’t support this bill unless you take care of American manufacturing.”  Source Article

LA Times

The agreement will at least temporarily resurrect the so-called FutureGen project, which the Bush administration had discontinued in 2008, citing rising cost estimates. The plant, which would be built in Mattoon, Ill., is expected to cost more than $1.5 billion.

Supporters hailed the news as a victory for the Illinois economy and for efforts to curb global warming. The plant would capture the greenhouse gases and store them underground.  Source Article

From ilovemountains.org

Please write your senator today and ask them to become a co-sponsor!

The Appalachian Mountain Restoration Act (S.696) is necessary to protect clean drinking water for many of our nation’s cities. It is also necessary to protect the quality of life for Appalachian coalfield residents who face frequent catastrophic flooding and pollution or loss of drinking water as a result of mountaintop removal.

From the east coast, to the west coast, to the states where it’s taking place, Americans want an end to mountaintop removal coal mining. This is the reason the Appalachia Restoration Act was introduced in to the 111th Congress by Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) and Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN).

Building on that momentum, and with a friendlier administration and Congress, we have a real chance to pass the Appalachia Restoration Act in the 111th Congress.

Source Article

From Alternet

By Bo Webb , AlterNet. Posted February 19, 2009.

Dear Mr. President,

As I write this letter, I brace myself for another round of nerve-wracking explosives being detonated above my home in the mountains of West Virginia. Outside my door, pulverized rock dust, laden with diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate explosives hovers in the air, along with the residual of heavy metals that once lay dormant underground.

The mountain above me, once a thriving forest, has been blasted into a pile of rock and mud rubble. Two years ago, it was covered with rich black topsoil and abounded with hardwood trees, rhododendrons, ferns and flowers. The understory thrived with herbs such as ginseng, black cohosh, yellow root and many other medicinal plants. Black bears, deer, wild turkey, hawks, owls and thousands of [other] birds lived here. The mountain contained sparkling streams teeming with aquatic life and fish.

Now it is all gone. It is all dead. I live at the bottom of a mountain-top-removal coal-mining operation in the Peachtree community.

Mr. President Obama, I am writing you because we have simply run out of options. Last week, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court in Richmond, Va., overturned a federal court ruling for greater environmental restrictions on mountaintop-removal permits. Dozens of permits now stand to be rushed through. As you know, in December, the EPA under George W. Bush allowed an 11th-hour change to the stream buffer zone rule, further unleashing the coal companies to do as they please. Source Article

Courtesy USA Today:

Renewable energy is one of the top issues facing voters Tuesday, along with ballot proposals that would ban abortion, legalize marijuana, protect farm animals, end affirmative action and use gambling to fund education.

Three states — California, Colorado and Missouri — have measures on their ballots that deal with alternative energy sources, including wind and solar power. “This is a fairly new issue to the ballot,” says Jennie Drage Bowser, who has been tracking ballot measures for more than a decade at the National Conference of State Legislatures. “It’s a direct response to the demand for energy independence and the rising cost of energy.”

Also new, she says, are a measure in South Dakota that would repeal eight-year term limits on state lawmakers and one in Colorado that would criminalize abortion by defining a person as “any human being from the moment of fertilization.”

Californians will consider animal rights. An initiative there would require farms to give egg-laying hens, calves and pregnant pigs room to turn around, lie down, stand up and fully extend their limbs. Florida passed a similar measure in 2002 that protected only pregnant pigs, and Arizona approved one in 2006 that covered pigs and calves.

On Tuesday, voters in 36 states will consider 153 ballot measures. Most are referendums placed on the ballot by legislatures; 59 are grass-roots initiatives that needed tens of thousands of signatures to qualify. Many citizen initiatives are controversial, and fewer than half have passed in the past decade. Three of every four referred by legislatures succeeded.

For more on this story, click this link.

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 28, 2008; Page A12

For months, the confrontation mounted, a face-off that arguably held in the balance the fates of two of Alaska’s biggest industries. On one side were companies hoping to open Pebble Mine at a huge gold and copper reserve adjacent to one of the world’s largest salmon runs, Bristol Bay. On the other side were fishermen and environmentalists pushing a referendum that would make it harder for the mine to open.

The two sides spent more than $10 million — unprecedented for such efforts in Alaska — and throughout it all, the state’s highly popular first-term governor, Sarah Palin, held back. Alaska law forbids state officials from using state resources to advocate on ballot initiatives.

Then, six days before the Aug. 26 vote, with the race looking close, Palin broke her silence. Asked about the initiative at a news conference, she invoked “personal privilege” to give an opinion. “Let me take my governor’s hat off for just a minute here and tell you, personally, Prop. 4 — I vote no on that,” she said. “I have all the confidence in the world that [the Department of Environmental Conservation] and our [Department of Natural Resources] have great, very stringent regulations and policies already in place. We’re going to make sure that mines operate only safely, soundly.” Source Article

NY Times/The Caucus

September 24, 2008, 9:18 pm

By Paul Vitello

Al Gore, the former vice president and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is nothing if not passionate on the issue of global warming. But his usual fired-up remarks on the subject took a step into the Gandhian realm on Wednesday when he told an audience at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York that the crisis was so severe and intractable that it was time for direct action.

“If you’re a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration,” he said at the third annual meeting of former President Bill Clinton’s initiative, which arranges partnerships between the very rich and the very needy. Source Article

Huffington Post

September 12, 2008 11:56 AM