15 people, including a couple of youth no older than 10, risked arrest by sitting in front of a main entrance to EPA. They sat next to about 75 one-gallon containers of dirty and toxic water brought to DC by Appalachian residents, the kind of water produced by mountaintop removal operations.

Appalachia Rising, the coalition of groups which organized the action, demanded that the EPA “sign for our delivery” of the water “and acknowledge the fact that Appalachian people are being exposed to toxic drinking water every day.

“Water contamination from surface mining is widespread throughout the Appalachian region, and more than 20 peer-reviewed studies have shown devastating health impacts. Citizens near mountaintop removal sites are 50% more likely to die of cancer and 42% more likely to be born with birth defects compared with other people in Appalachia.”

For two hours the sit-in went on, supported by the other demonstrators, most of whom stayed. People sang and chanted and several spoke as the time went by. They chanted, “EPA, Do Your Job,” and “Clean water is what we need, and EPA has got the key.” They sang Which Side Are You On, Woke Up This Morning With My Mind Stayed on Clean Water, Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around and others. One of the speakers, Kathryn Hilton, from the Mountain Watershed Association in western Pennsylvania, spoke about the connections between mountaintop removal and fracking for shale gas.

Finally, Nancy Stoner, head of the Water Division at EPA, did come down, was read a short declaration of why we were there by Kentuckian Teri Blanton, briefly acknowledged receiving hundreds of pages of documentation of this issue earlier in the week and said she would be looking into it.

It was an effective and well-organized action. Without question Appalachia Rising will be following up on it. To find out more and learn what you can do, go to http://appalachiarising.org.

Brian’s latest posts on his website, http://www.1future.net, report on both his continuing resolve but also the hunger and physical difficulties he is experiencing. On the 26^th day he wrote, “The days are dragging on and hunger has become quite intense, but the sacrifice I am making here is modest. . .”

I know what he is going through. I have done three long hunger strikes of 25 or more days on water only. On the last two, one in 1992 and one in 2007, it was right around that time that my body began telling me that I needed to do one of two things if I was not to put myself at greater risk: slow down and use even less energy than I’d been using up to that point, or consume something that had calories.

On the 1992 one I slowed down and stayed on water-only, ending the fast with about a dozen others after 42 days. The purpose of it was to call attention to the need for US society to finally turn away from what Christopher Columbus set in motion 500 years before–the destruction of the ecosystem and the decimation of the Indigenous peoples of what is now called the Americas.

On the 2007 one, a climate emergency fast similar to Brian’s, I decided to go onto liquids after 25 days and, for the next 82 days, consumed fruit and vegetable juices and liquid-only soups and broths.

When I heard about Brian’s planned hunger strike several months ago, I seriously considered joining it but ending up deciding that it wasn’t the right thing for me to do at this time. But I support Brian and know that what he is doing is an important contribution to the process of building the kind of climate movement that has a fighting chance of making a renewable energy revolution in enough time to prevent runaway climate catastrophe.

“I am on hunger strike,” Brian writes, “because I can think of no action which could adequately express the urgency of humanity’s present situation. There are more than a few trends which, left unchecked, are likely to make life impossibly difficult for future generations. Global Warming, of course, seems to be the one that we have the least time to fix. Given the urgency of what is coming, every one of our lives should, first and foremost, be dedicated to preventing this coming catastrophe.”

I’ve recently read Proof of Heaven, a book which has been at the top of the New York Times Best Seller list for 25 weeks. It is written by a prominent, formerly non-religious brain surgeon, Eben Alexander, who nearly died in 2008 of an acute form of meningitis. During his seven days in a coma, he experienced what can only be described as an other-worldly, Heaven experience, and it changed his life.

In the book Alexander has an incisive quote which, I would say, helps to place what Brian is doing in its proper context:

“For all of the successes of Western civilization, the world has paid a dear price in terms of the most crucial component of existence—our human spirit. The shadow side of high technology—modern warfare and thoughtless homicide and suicide, urban blight, ecological mayhem, cataclysmic climate change, polarization of economic resources—is bad enough. Much worse, our focus on exponential progress in science and technology has left many of us relatively bereft in the realm of meaning and joy, and of knowing how our lives fit into the grand scheme of existence for all eternity.”

Fasting for more than a few days is one of the most effective ways, from my experience, to connect with what is most important in this world, and it definitely isn’t money and power. It is a way to develop one’s spiritual resources and resolve in the face of what often seem like very long odds.

Each of us as individuals will be strengthened if we take time to think about Brian’s sacrifice. We should reflect upon how we can speak up and take action beyond our current comfort level, at a level commensurate with the seriousness of the climate crisis.

-Thomas Edison, 1931

I’ve been doing just about all I can for the last 10 years to help build the climate movement. For virtually all of that time I’ve done so without much hope that we can defeat Dirty Coal, Oil and Gas in enough time to prevent massive climate disruption.

In all honesty, many times I’ve felt that I was doing this work mainly to be able to live with myself, to know when I die that I have done all I could to try to stabilize the earth’s unraveling climate and the extreme, catastrophic weather that would come with that unraveling.

But over the last month or two, for very specific reasons, I’m coming to see things differently. I’m beginning to believe that the human race has a fighting chance of preventing runaway, catastrophic climate change and, in so doing, open the way for a much more just, peaceful and democratic world.

Why do I think this?

One reason was the Obama victory and the Congressional losses for the climate-denying Republican Party. It isn’t that I expect great things from Obama and the Democrats, especially if left to make energy decisions without any major political pressure; it’s that their winning gives the climate movement, and other movements, openings we wouldn’t have with Republican control of the White House and Congress.

Another reason is Obama speaking more substantively than he has in years about the climate crisis in both his Inaugural and State of the Union speeches.

Then there is the important initiative taken by the national Sierra Club, joined in by 350.org, the Hip Hop Caucus and 165 other groups, to organize the first actual “march on Washington” by the climate movement. And that demonstration was a big success, 40,000 or more determined and high-spirited people on a very cold mid-February day, from all over the country.

There is the on-going development of the No Keystone XL pipeline movement, from the cutting-edge actions of Tar Sands Blockade, to demonstrations taking place when Obama or Kerry leave their offices to speak publicly, to legal action winning initial victories in Nebraska, to over 52,000 people signed up to engage in “peaceful civil disobedience” if Kerry/Obama approve the pipeline, to much more, and much more to come.

There is the emergence of a nationally-connected, impacted-communities-rooted and activist-oriented movement against fracking via Stop the Frack Attack that will likely be organizing a national week of action against fracking in late spring or summer.

And there are the continuing series of polls that show, in part because of all the extreme weather events in the US in 2012, growing numbers–about 2/3rds of the US American people–who support action to deal with the climate crisis.

All of these developments, essentially political and movement-building developments, are evidence that we are winning the “hearts and minds’ battle, at the same time that we are ramping  up and deepening the climate movement.

Just as significantly, the last couple of months have made me aware of good news as far as the developing economic and social shift from dirty fossil fuels to clean renewable energy, particularly wind and solar.

At the national Stop the Frack Attack conference in Dallas, Texas I was inspired by solar entrepreneur Danny Kennedy’s presentation about how solar energy is poised to take off in the United States (it’s already doing so in Europe, China and elsewhere). Reading his book, Rooftop Revolution, provided a deeper understanding of what is going on: solar panels are becoming more efficient, they are coming down in a big way in price, and there are new ways for people to have them installed that make them much more affordable to many more people. As a result, rooftop solar in the US grew by 76% in 2012. China “recalibrated the target in its 12^th five-year plan to 15 gigawatts installed by 2015—50% higher than the previous target.” (p, 22) “Globally, solar is the fastest-growing industry, valued at more than $100 billion. And in the US, it’s the fastest-growing job creating sector.” (p. 24) “The year 2011 marked the first time in history that [Europe, China and the US] invested more money in renewable energy than in fossil fuels.” (p. 28). “I think that history will look back on this period and see that the tide turned in 2010 when fully half of new electric generation coming online globally was renewable.” (p. 102)

As I wrote about in my March 17 column, 49% of new electrical generating capacity in the U.S. in 2012 was from renewables, primarily wind. This has never happened before, not even close. And in January of 2013, ALL new electrical power capacity, 100% of it, came from renewables.

And just today the front-page story in the New York Times Week in Review section, entitled “Life After Oil and Gas,” by Elisabeth Rosenthal, details both this economic/social shift and reports favorably on a recent analysis which shows that New York State, “not windy like the Great Plains, nor sunny like Arizona, could easily produce the power it needs from wind, solar and water power by 2030. ‘It’s absolutely not true that we need natural gas, coal or oil—we think it’s a myth,’ said Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and the main author of the study, published in the journal Energy Policy.”

Finally, in an insightful article spreading over the internet by Australian writer and sustainability advisor Paul Gilding, Victory at Hand for the Climate Movement?, some extremely important contextual points are made:

Gilding says, “Considering how long other great social movements took to have an impact – such as equality for women or the end of slavery and civil rights movements – then what’s surprising is not that the climate movement hasn’t yet succeeded. What’s surprising is how far it has come and how deeply it has become embedded in such a short time. And now is the moment when its greatest success might be about to be realised – and just in time.”

Gilding explains that 2012 wasn’t just a year when we saw an increase in extreme weather events worldwide; we also saw institutions of the 1% like the World Bank, IMF and International Energy Agency all make strong statements about the need to shift away from fossil fuels, with the IEA actually saying that a majority of the fossil fuels in the ground need to stay there.

He points to the significance of “a disruptive economic shift already underway in the global energy market. There are two indicators of this, with the first being the much noted acceleration in the size of the renewable energy market with dramatic price reductions and the arrival of cost competitive solar and wind. It is hard to overstate the significance of this as it changes the game completely. . .

“Of equal importance is the awakening of the sleeping giant of carbon risk, with open discussion in mainstream financial circles of the increasing dangers in financial exposure to fossil fuels. This has been coming for several years because of the financial risk inherent in the carbon bubble. As Phil Preston and I argued in a paper in 2010 and I further elaborated in The Great Disruption, the contradiction between what the science says is essential, and the growth assumptions made by the fossil fuel industry is so large it represents a systemic global financial risk.”

Gilding summarizes what this all means:

“ – The financial markets are waking up to the transformation logic – if the future is based in renewables and these are price competitive without subsidy, or soon will be, the transformation could sweep the economy relatively suddenly, even without further government leadership.

“ – This then puts in place an enormous and systemic financial risk – in particular investments in, or debt exposure to, the multi-trillion dollar fossil fuel industry.

“ – This risk is steadily being increased by activist campaigns against fossil fuel projects (worsening each projects’ financial risk) and arguing for fossil fuel divestment (putting investors’ reputation in play as well).

“ – In response investors and lenders will reduce their exposure to fossil fuels and hedge their risk by shifting their money to high growth renewables.

“ – This will then reinforce and manifest the very trend they are hedging against.

“ – Thus it’s game on.”

I’m not enough of an economist or a student who has studied these economic trends to wholly endorse what Gilding says, but what he says has the ring of truth to it. It should be constructively criticized, or built upon, by those who are able to do. It’s a very important article.

All of us who are doing this work need to internalize that we are in a new period for our movement. We should take heart from these recent developments, realize that, as powerful as the dirty fossil fuel corporate honchos seem to be, there are very concrete and practical reasons to believe that their power and wealth is reaching its limits and will soon decline. Let’s keep the faith, step up our activism, bring new people into our ranks and keep broadening and growing our movement. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, the light of the sun combined with the light of our people-powered movement.

When I heard a few weeks later that Obama had directed White House staff to come up with proposals for what he should be doing in his second term on climate, I was encouraged. When he finally spoke substantively about climate in his Inaugural speech, I allowed myself to hope that things could well be different in his second four years. When, a few weeks later, he made climate one of the main issues of his State of the Union message, I was glad to hear it, though there was little specificity.

Two days ago Obama gave what the White House billed as a “major speech” on climate and energy in Chicago at the Argonne National Laboratory. In connection with that speech a document, “President Obama’s Blueprint for a Clean and Secure Energy Future,” was released publicly.

Unfortunately, the one, new, specific proposal from Obama in his speech was for the creation of an Energy Security Trust. $2 billion would be spent over a 10 year period–$200 million a year—for “research into a range of cost effective technologies—like advanced vehicles that run on electricity, homegrown biofuels, fuels cells and domestically produced natural gas.” That was it; nothing else, a lousy $200 million a year. And there are very real questions about biofuels and, more significantly, amply-documented, serious environmental and climate problems when it comes to natural gas, particularly because most of it will be produced by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

This proposal in Chicago was consistent with the content of the “Blueprint” document. There are positive things in it for sure, though the general approach is for incremental shifting to a more energy efficient and renewables-based economy. As would be expected with an all-of-the-above approach, there is no serious prioritization of wind, solar, geothermal and other renewables.

The “Blueprint” reiterates Obama’s commitment to the originally-Republican approach of “all-of-the-above” as far as where the US is going to get its energy. It is self-congratulatory for all of the “responsible oil and gas production” that has “increased each year” under Obama. It projects US support for nuclear power exports. It calls for “doubling” renewable electricity generation over the next eight years which, given the fact that it doubled between 2009 and 2013, would mean an actual slowing down of the rate of renewables growth over the rest of the decade.

Given the acceleration and deepening of climate disruption, as seen by the growth of extreme weather events worldwide, a record-smashing reduction of Arctic sea ice in 2012 and an apparent acceleration in the rate of annual growth of carbon in the atmosphere, these approaches don’t come close to reflecting the urgency of our situation.

But what is most troubling about “Blueprint” is that it continues the Obama administration’s “all-in” approach to fracking and natural gas. This includes a plan for a “streamlined system for oil and gas permits” for new drilling. Once again, as Obama has done in the past, it describes gas as a “nearly 100-year resource,” which is inaccurate, essentially gas industry pr. It projects a measly $40 million for “research to ensure safe and responsible natural gas production” (please!!!).

Presented as a major bulleted item in bold letters, it “commits to partnering with the private sector to adopt natural gas and other alternative fuels in the Nation’s trucking fleet. . . The President is committed to accelerating the growth of this domestically abundant fuel and other alternative fuels in the transportation sector.” And finally, it projects that, internationally, the U.S. will help other countries develop their oil and gas and “work to help countries with unconventional natural gas resources [shale gas] to identify and develop them safely.”

It is beyond ironic that the Obama administration put forward this very problematic approach at the same time that the United States and the world are seeing a dramatic increase in wind and solar energy production. The day before Obama’s speech, the Solar Energy Industries Association released a Solar Market Insight Report for 2012, which reported that US photovoltaic solar installations—rooftop solar—grew 76% in 2012 to reach 3,313 Megawatts. It reported further that “the U.S. accounted for 11% of all global PV installations in 2012, its highest market share in at least fifteen years.”

A recent article at Grist.org quoted from a Bloomberg report on projected solar growth worldwide in 2013: “New solar generating capacity expected to be installed around the world in 2013 will be capable of producing almost as much electricity as eight nuclear reactors, according to Bloomberg, which interviewed seven analysts and averaged their forecasts. That would be a rise of 14 percent over last year for a total of 34.1 gigawatts of new solar capacity, thanks in large part to rising demand in China, the U.S., and Japan.”

And check this out: for 2012, as far as new electrical generating capacity coming on line in the US, just about half, 49% of it, was from renewables, primarily wind. This has never happened before. In January of 2013, all new electrical power capacity, 100% of it, came from renewables, again primarily wind. (from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s “Energy Infrastructure Update.”)

These hopeful developments make Obama’s “major speech” on climate look downright timid and weak, at best.

It is clear that the climate movement must rise up, refuse to be chumped, as Van Jones advised us on Feb. 17 in DC. And we are doing so. Over 52,000 people, so far, have “pledged, if necessary, to join others in my community, and engage in acts of dignified, peaceful civil disobedience that could result in my arrest in order to send the message to President Obama and his administration that they must reject the Keystone XL pipeline.” Actions around the country, including at the White House on Thursday, are taking place this week as part of a Tar Sands Blockade week of action. And we’re just getting rolling. “We are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.”

A Religious Call to Civil Disobedience at 12:00 Noon, Thursday, March 21^st

 At noon on March 21^st, religiously and spiritually rooted Americans of all traditions will gather at the White House for a moral act of loving nonviolent civil disobedience.  This action, organized by the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate (IMAC), will make clear to President Obama that his inspired pledge to halt the destruction of the Earth from climate change requires that he take bold and courageous actions, including rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

As religious leaders and individuals who recognize the moral imperative of taking unified, visible action to ensure that our nation’s leaders act responsibly to address climate change, we invite you to join us at the White House on March 21^st, either to engage in civil disobedience, or to stand with others in a circle of support for those who do choose to risk arrest.

Our March 21^st action will occur at a critical moment:  Many of our religious communities will be preparing for Passover and Holy Week, (Palm Sunday begins Holy Week on March 24; the first night of Passover is on Monday, March 25), even as our President faces a profound decision that will affect our planet – teetering on the edge of a climate tipping point – and the human communities throughout the Earth already suffering the effects of the climate crisis and threatened with more and worsening disasters.

As we observe the upcoming holy days, our ancient sacred wisdoms remind us that top-down power must be called to account for us to win through to the Promised Land, the Beloved Community.

Super-storm Sandy, the drastic droughts in our corn country, record-breaking Arctic ice melt, disasters in Australia, Russia, Pakistan and Africa, and the realization that 2012 was the hottest year on record in the continental United States all warn us: the disruption of our planet will not wait for our “normal” political paralysis to end.

We are inspired by the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who was among the leaders of a profoundly religious and spiritual movement to heal us from the great dangers of war and injustice in his day:

“We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now…. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words:  ’Too late’.”

And we take note that even a leading secular journalist, Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, has called for civil disobedience to insist on strong measures to heal the climate crisis.

If we go over the Climate Cliff now, experiencing Plagues in our own generation as the Bible describes the Ten Plagues – all eco-disasters — long ago, our grandchildren will live in misery and suffering.

Today’s Plagues endanger the web of life upon our planet, including the human race – and inflict the greatest harm on the poorest and most vulnerable among us.  We are especially concerned by the effects on local communities and our planetary future of destructive, extreme energy extraction: mountaintop removal, fracking, Arctic and deep sea offshore oil drilling, and tar sands mining.

Out of our moral commitment to protect and heal God’s Creation, our religious communities need to be calling for a set of first-step changes that will sow the seeds of greater change, by committing the President and Congress to vigorous action.

As we prepare for civil disobedience at the White House, we address not only our government, but also religious communities throughout the country: In the name of Creator Spirit, Holy One of Being — JOIN US!

On Thursday, March 21^st at 12:00 Noon, we will gather in Lafayette Park (directly across from the White House on Pennsylvania Ave., NW) carrying three sacred symbols:

• The Palms that greeted Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, — green fronds of life to challenge the deadliness of the Roman Empire;

• The Matzoh, unleavened bread that began as the food of the poor and afflicted but became the bread of life and freedom when the People of Israel hurried forth in the fierce urgency of Now.

• The Globe of the planet we share, God’s Creation — for all our traditions, a symbol of sharing and wholeness of the Earth for which we sing:

“We’ve got the whole world in our hands, We’ve got rivers and mountains in our hands, We’ve got frogs and polar bears in our hands, We’ve got our children and their children in our hands  – We’ve got the whole world in our hands!”

What will we be urging that the President do to meet the needs of this critical hour in planetary time?  He must take actions necessary to heal our communities and the Earth, such as these:

1. Permanently refuse permits for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, because tar-oil is among the most dangerous of the planet-heating forms of carbon.

2. Call now a National Summit Conference on the Climate Crisis to meet with the urgency that the crisis demands — including leaders of business, labor, academia, religious communities, governmental officialdom, science, and other relevant bodies.

3. Publicly support and advocate for a carbon fee that will generate hundreds of billions of dollars, with provisions to ensure that working families and the poor are not harmed by higher carbon prices; for an end to subsidies to the coal, oil and gas industries; and for substantial subsidies for research, development, and use of renewable, sustainable and jobs-creating clean energy sources.

In the Name of the God whose Names are many, we invite and urge you to join us on March 21^st at the White House.  To endorse this action or indicate your intention to take part, please contact Cindy Harris at cynthiaharris4930@gmail.com.

With blessings of shalom, salaam, pax, paz, peace,

IMAC Supporters* and Steering Committee Members

*Asoka Bandarage, author, Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy (Palgrave MacMillan, forthcoming).

Rev. Tom Carr, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church, Hartford, CT, co-founder of Interreligious Eco Justice Network, CT,

Rev. Terry Ellen, Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice in the National Capital Region

Ted Glick, Chesapeake Climate Action Network

Cynthia Harris, IMAC Steering Committee

Dr. Mark Johnson, Fellowship of Reconciliation

*Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, Director, Social Justice Organizing Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College

Fr. Paul Mayer, Climate Crisis Coalition

Jacqueline Patterson, Director, Environmental and Climate Justice Program, NAACP

Ibrahim Ramey, Muslim American Freedom Society

*Catherine Skopic, Chair, Environmental Task Force of the Congregation of Saint Saviour within the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine;

Karen Scott, Center for Liberty of Conscience

Lise Van Susteren, MD, Advisory Board Member, Center for Health and the Global Environment; National Wildlife Federation

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Center, Philadelphia

*Dr. Donald Wheeler, New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability / Emmanuel Baptist Church

http://interfaithactiononclimatechange.org.

Yesterday over 100 people from dozens of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware groups joined together in one of the most empowering actions I’ve been part of in a long time. For two and a half hours, led by Maya Van Rossom and Tracy Carluccio of the Delaware Riverkeepers Network, we nonviolently and creatively took over the latest meeting of the Delaware River Basin Commission.

We took this action because of the DRBC’s complete failure, so far at least, to deal with the 13 natural gas pipelines that are being built or are planned to be built through the Delaware River watershed. These pipelines will bring fracked gas from Pennsylvania and elsewhere to major east coast markets and, the gas industry hopes, to export terminals for sale overseas.

Yesterday, when it became clear that the commission had no intention of even discussing this issue despite official requests over several months from Delaware Riverkeepers and other groups, the no-fracking movement literally stood up and made their voices heard. One by one, from the audience, people got up to speak, following one another, without commission permission but eventual commission acquiescence. Dozens did so.

The stories people told were inspiring. There was the father of Alex Totorto speaking passionately about his son and others locking down and tree sitting to try to prevent the cutting down of trees to build the Tennessee gas pipeline. There was Maya Van Rossom articulating clearly and in commission language why this was their responsibility and how they had so far failed to do their job. There were speakers who pointed out that there is still a DRBC moratorium on fracking in the Delaware River basin and that it was hypocritical or worse for the commission to then allow all these fracking pipelines to go through the area. There were young people in their 20’s and one man who looked to be in his 80’s. There was a woman who sang a song for the commission and talked about how she didn’t have anything to give them in writing but she was giving them her heart via her song.

None of it visibly moved the commission. After two hours of heart-felt testimony, the commission chair literally said nothing about that testimony and proceeded to try to move ahead with their planned agenda. They didn’t respond to Maya Van Rossom’s request that they put the issue of the Tennessee gas and the other planned pipelines on this agenda. But we weren’t done.

Prior to the meeting a song sheet with the words to This Land Is Your Land had been distributed, and as the commission chair used her microphone to try to conduct business, we all stood up and began loudly singing this Woody Guthrie song. We moved forward towards the commission, blocked about 10 feet away from them by security personnel. Within a couple of minutes, the commission was forced to stop attempting to do their business and, instead, they sat silently as, for the next half hour, until they officially adjourned, we sang and chanted. We sang This Land several times, as well as We Shall Not Be Moved and We Shall Overcome, substituting in those civil rights songs appropriate verses for this 21^st century struggle for a clean energy revolution, for our threatened Mother Earth and all of its life forms.

James Connolly, the Irish nationalist, socialist and labor leader martyred after the Easter Uprising in 1916, wrote over 100 years ago about the importance of song to a genuine mass movement. He wrote, “No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses, they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, the fears and hopes, the loves and hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most distinct marks of a popular revolutionary movement.”

The fracking movement is popular, and it is growing in strength and in organization. Just this past weekend there was a highly successful national conference in Dallas, Texas organized by the Stop the Frack Attack network, attended by 300 or more people from around the USA. There was no question at this conference but that this movement is about nothing less than a revolutionary change in where we get our energy and who controls it. We need to move away from centralized, dirty, climate-wrecking fossils fuels to clean, renewable energy sources like the sun and the wind, all happening as part of a process of a truly democratic transformation of society.

One of our chants yesterday as we stood, sang and chanted close to the commission was this one: “Tell me what democracy looks like; This is what democracy looks like.” People speaking up, speaking from the heart, refusing to stand by and allow injustice and destruction to take place without a fight, putting what is right for us and future generations before anything else. This is truly what democracy looks like, and we need more of it.

-Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners

Rev. Lennox Yearwood, leader of the Hip Hop Caucus and the MC at yesterday’s massive Forward on Climate rally in Washington, D.C., talks all the time about this being the climate movement’s “lunch counter moment.” And, thank God, it looks like he has been prophetic.

“Lunch counter moment” refers to the point in 1960 when the African-American freedom movement took off. It did so when young black people all over the South began sitting in at segregated public lunch counters, refusing to leave until served. For these actions, they were beaten, spat upon, arrested and more by white racists and racist power structures, but their courage and nonviolent direct action galvanized a south-wide and then national movement which, five years later, forced the federal government to pass a Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act outlawing legal segregation.

Without this movement, Barack Obama would never have been President. Much more importantly, without it we would not have seen the end of 1950’s McCarthyism, the rise of a powerful anti-war movement, women’s movement, environmental movement, lgbt movement and more.

The climate movement’s lunch counter moment: what was it about Feb. 17 in DC which makes it realistically possible that history will record this action as the launching pad for the “yes, we did,” massive popular movement which literally pulled human society back from the cliff of looming, catastrophic climate disruption?

Numbers: Size is sometimes important, and it definitely was yesterday. All the main organizers expected tens of thousands, but I don’t think too many expected 40,000 to 50,000. Especially given the incredibly cold weather, this was a huge accomplishment for our movement.

Determination: It was really cold yesterday, with a wind chill that had to be around 10 degrees at times when that wind whipped across the mall, and it did so often. Yet the crowd kept growing all morning and into the early afternoon, and virtually no one left. People could have said, after an hour or two, well, this is important, and I’m glad I came, but I’ve got to get to somewhere warm. IT DIDN’T HAPPEN. For four hours, from 12-4, for some longer, we persevered and, indeed, we stood (and jumped) strong.

Unity: The Sierra Club is to be commended for their courage in calling for this action right after the November election and for the resources which they threw into it, as is 350.org, the Hip Hop Caucus and many of the 168 organizations that both formally supported it and worked hard to mobilize. Despite tensions and differences, the coalition held together and, as a result, yielded the powerful harvest of the day.

Geographic breadth: People were there from all over the country. Over 150 buses came from 30 states, some of them on the road for over 24 hours one-way. And with the 20 or so solidarity rallies mainly in faraway locales, this breadth was magnified.

Diverse Leadership: It was truly refreshing to have Rev. Yearwood MC this rally, clearly in his element, to hear the powerful statements from the Canadian First Nation leaders Chief Jacqueline Thomas and Crystal Lameman, and Van Jones urging young people not to be “chumped,” to demand that Obama follow through and get real both in word and action on climate. Although the crowd did not have the full diversity needed, it is important that the surging climate movement is supporting and bringing forward leadership coming out of communities of color on this issue.

Not just the pipeline: The tar sands Keystone XL pipeline was the prime issue that brought this effort together, but it was much more. It was a vision of a future where our energy sources are clean, renewable and democratically controlled by the people, not dirty fossil fuel, corporate honchos. It is a vision which opposes all of the extreme energy extraction industrial processes: mountaintop removal, oil drilling in the Arctic ocean and in deep water offshore, fracking, as well as tar sands. Everyone understands that victory on the pipeline is just the first step, the turning point, towards what we urgently need.

Multi-tactical: Finally, it was striking to experience the activities which took place in the week leading up to February 17. It began with a civil disobedience action on Wednesday, close to 50 people locking themselves to the White House fence, highlighted by Sierra Club leader Mike Brune taking part, the first time in their 120-year history that they have done so. The next day, with Bill McKibben and Mike Brune there to offer words of support, US Senators Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer publicly announced their introduction of a “gold standard’ fee-and-dividend bill that Boxer hopes will go to the floor of the Senate this summer. And then came yesterday’s massive demonstration.

The students who sat in at the lunch counters in February of 1960 and who then formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, were clear that to defeat segregation they would need to engage in essentially non-stop organizing and action. Today’s climate movement must do the same, and more need to figure out how they can do more on a personal level. We need to step up nationally coordinated actions at the scale of the problem, this year, this spring. “Affairs are now soul size.”

The first and most immediately significant event is what is being described (accurately) as the biggest climate demonstration in US history, taking place February 17^th in Washington, D.C. Tens of thousands of people have already signed up indicating their intention to take part, and momentum is building.

This action was called by the Sierra Club soon after the November elections. The official call to action that went out in December came from them, 350.org and the Hip Hop Caucus. Since that time close to 100 organizations have endorsed it, mostly environmental and climate groups but also including the League of Women Voters, MoveOn, the Nebraska Farmers Union, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Public Citizen and United for Peace and Justice.

The demonstration is happening on President’s Day weekend, on purpose. The major target is President Obama. He is being called upon to give real content to his inaugural call for action on climate, to lead practically on this urgent issue, and, most specifically, to permanently reject the tar sands Keystone XL pipeline.

The tar sands, without question, has become a “line in the sand” for enviros, climate activists and most progressives in the US and Canada, and we are having a real impact.

There is the broadly-based, effective and escalating actions of Indigenous and others groups in Canada and the just-won’t-give-up organizing of Bold Nebraska. There’s the harassing activities of Tar Sands Blockade in Texas and organizing in New England against another potential tar sands pipeline proposed for that area. There is the on-going work of various national enviro and climate groups. And finally, with the replacement at the State Department of Hillary Clinton by former U.S. Senate climate champion John Kerry, big shots at TransCanada and within the oil and gas industry and the conservative Canadian government cannot be feeling so good these days.

Let’s really “make their day” on February 17^th, come out in such large numbers that history will record this as a turning point day for the Keystone XL pipeline, all the various tar sands pipeline proposals, the tar sands itself and, indeed, the whole dirty fossil fuel corporate enterprise in North America.

Stop the Frack Attack Convenes

Two weeks after Feb. 17, the no-fracking movement will convene for a national conference right in the belly of the beast of the gas industry, in Dallas, Texas, from March 2-4. Organized by Stop the Frack Attack, the coalition which brought thousands to DC on July 28^th last year, this event will be attended by hundreds, not tens of thousands, but it will still be significant. This will be the first major national conference of the movement against fracking that has grown up over the last several years.

As explained at http://stopthefrackattack.org, people from across the US will “attend to share stories, build skills, become better spokespeople, learn about the clean energy alternatives to oil and natural gas, celebrate victories and help build this national movement. We are also organizing a rally on Monday, to welcome the Texas State government back to work and remind them that they work for the people and not the oil and gas industry. . . The Dallas/Fort Worth area represents urban fracking at its worst; as you fly in you can see well pads as far as the eye can see, and once you land you are greeted by a compressor station right outside the airport. Dallas/Fort Worth is also home to many of the oil and gas companies destroying our communities around the country.”

Without question, the problems with fracking will be part of what is said from the stage and printed on the signs and banners of those attending the Feb. 17 DC demonstration. President Obama is in serious need of a wake-up call about how problematic fracking is. So far, he has been an unabashed cheerleader for this polluting and destructive industry, not just for those who live near fracking wells or who drink water downriver from them but for the earth.

Fracking leads to significant releases of methane, a greenhouse gas between 72-105 times as powerful as carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it enters the atmosphere. Recent studies by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that, in Colorado and Utah, there was a 4% and 9% methane leakage rate, respectively, in areas where there are large numbers of gas wells. These leakage rates alone, not counting other methane released over the life cycle of natural gas, make the gas produced in these areas worse than coal as far as greenhouse gas emissions.

Natural gas, however it is produced, is a fossil fuel that when burned and when released into the atmosphere makes our historic task of reducing atmospheric ghg’s more difficult. The current “gold rush” to produce fracked gas has without question weakened the absolutely essential, urgent need to move from fossil fuels to clean, jobs-creating, renewable energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal.

We need a nationally coordinated, unified movement that recognizes fracking for what it is, that slows and stops the mad rush toward a massive expansion of gas infrastructure intended to dramatically accelerate overseas gas exports, and that works closely with the broader climate and progressive movements to accomplish this absolutely essential goal.

Proposed legislation would harm environment and, opponents say, constitutes a confession that Dominion has accepted $77 million from ratepayers without properly fulfilling intent of current law

RICHMOND—Dominion Virginia Power has informed environmental groups that the company has reached a tentative agreement with Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to support legislation that would effectively repeal the state’s signature clean energy law.  The move, environmentalists said, would not only harm the environment but also represents a de facto admission of guilt by Dominion. The company has already accepted $77 million from ratepayers without making the clean energy investments that the General Assembly first intended with its original 2007 law.

Cuccinelli, a nationally known global warming denier who has sued the US EPA and the University of Virginia in the past to advance a radical anti-environmental agenda, has been critical of the state’s “Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS)” law for some time. Dominion, meanwhile, has been publicly criticized for months by environmental and health leaders in the state for exploiting loopholes in the RPS energy law to gain millions of dollars in incentive payments from customers without developing a single wind farm or large solar project in the state.

Rather than work with lawmakers and advocates to strengthen the renewable energy standard and close controversial loopholes, Dominion has formed an alliance with Cuccinelli to render the law useless through a de facto repeal. As detailed to environmental advocates, Dominion and Cuccinelli are moving to repeal the performance incentive that serves as the law’s only mechanism for holding utilities accountable to fulfilling their clean energy goals. The Dominion-Cuccinelli proposal is a radical move that clean energy advocates statewide described as out of step with mainstream voters, a claim supported by recent polling.

“This is a sad, sad day for the state of Virginia,” said Dawone Robinson, Virginia Policy Coordinator, for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “Citizens should tell Dominion and Cuccinelli to close the loopholes in the current clean energy law, not cynically repeal it completely.”

Hundreds of activists picketed Dominion’s downtown Richmond office for a week in October demanding that the company instead follow the proper intent of the law and earn its clean-energy incentives by investing in wind and solar power. Senator A. Donald McEachin and Delegate Alfonso Lopez are introducing common-sense legislation that would strengthen the RPS law by requiring Dominion to invest in wind and solar power in Virginia in order to qualify for these financial incentives, thus fulfilling the intent of the law to spur a clean energy industry in the commonwealth. A September statewide poll of likely voters showed that 63 percent of Virginians back this approach.

“Kids with asthma, Hurricane Sandy victims, and tourists who want to see the Shenandoah Mountains instead of smog—they all want clean energy in this state,” said Robinson. “And as in dozens of other states, our current clean electricity law can succeed if it is firmly reformed and Dominion agrees to stop gaming the rules. We need to fix the RPS law, not repeal it.”

Critics point out that the Dominion-Cuccinelli alliance to repeal the clean energy law in Virginia is consistent with nationwide efforts by the controversial and archconservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). With funding from major oil and coal companies, ALEC has stated that it will prioritize efforts to repeal RPS laws in states from coast to coast in 2013 through its model “Electricity Freedom Act” legislation. The group is known for promoting a wide array of ultra-conservative policies, including the “stand your ground” gun law in Florida that police believe played a role in the death of an unarmed teenager in 2012.

Meanwhile, as climate scientists in Virginia and worldwide continue to document record heat, drought, sea-level rise, and storms linked to global warming and fossil fuel use, Dominion Power continues to declare its overwhelming commitment to combusting dirty energy to meet the state’s future energy needs. In its most recent 15-year plan, Dominion said it still expects to generate the majority of its power for utility customers by burning fossil fuels, like coal and gas, in 2027.  The company stated an astonishingly small 3.9 percent as its expected generation from clean, renewable energy sources in that year.

Resources:

• Read FAQs on the RPS, how it should be strengthened, and what the Cuccinelli-Dominion plan would do.
• Read the December 2012 report, “RPS Report Card: How Virginia’s Renewable Portfolio Standard Rewards Utilities for a failing Performance—and how to fix it.”
• See the Virginia renewable energy polling data from September 2012.
• Ken Cuccinelli Receives $50,000 Koch Brothers Contribution.