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A moment of truth for Appalachia, Obama and EPA on mountaintop removal coal mining

A moment of truth has arrived for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and President Barack Obama, who has promised “unprecedented steps” to rein in the devastating practice of mountaintop removal coal mining that is wrecking havoc across wide swaths of Appalachian mountains, valleys and communities. Anti-mountaintop removal activists are hoping President Obama and EPA […]

On eve of Senate showdown and COP15, the climate movement locks in

Photo: 1SkyAside from all the immense negatives, the recent Van Jones character assassination has done one very important thing for the climate movement: catalyzed our passionate opposition to dirty energy and politics as usual, while cementing our determination to achieve clean energy solutions this fall.   It’s as if you can hear the collective fist-clenching of […]

Dominoes Keep Falling for Clean Coal Coalition

Only a week after the nation’s third largest utility, Duke Energy, announced it was terminating its membership in the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), citing disagreement over clean energy legislation, another company has followed suit. Alstom Power is joining Duke for similar reasons. From the NY Times/Greenwire article: Alstom Power, a French company […]

Growing hope and fighting hunger on the Gaza Strip

Gaza gardeners, with harvest.Photo: Grassroots InternationalThis is the time of year when gardeners start to reap their rewards–fruits and vegetables that make for a healthy feast. But for the people of Gaza, gardens produce a serving of self-sufficiency, too. Urban gardens usually bring to mind savvy urbanites indulging in an organic lifestyle–witness Michelle Obama and […]

Arkansas’ Blanche Lincoln grabs Senate ag committee chair [UPDATED]

Blanche Lincoln: bully for industrial cotton growers; bad for climate change mitigation. [Note: This post has been updated to reflect confirmation that Blanche Lincoln will take the top Senate Agriculture Committee post. Additional updates at bottom of post–including information about Lincoln’s status as a favorite of agribusiness funders.] Late yesterday afternoon marked a dark moment […]

Joe Klein compares Van Jones to ‘white supremacist,’ ‘Nazi’

Cross-posted from Wonk Room. Joe Klein, the prominent Time Magazine liberal columnist, has embraced the right-wing assault on Van Jones, the White House green jobs advisor who resigned this weekend. Stung by a successful boycott for calling the president a “racist,” Glenn Beck led a campaign against Van Jones as a “self avowed communist” who […]

81-year-old Activist Leads Blockade, Courts Hear $85 Million Suit

Big Coal giant and mountaintop removal king Massey Energy is getting stripmined of its “Friends of America” rhetoric, and charged for sponsoring job-taking, water-polluting and land-destroying operations. Hours after the West Virginia state Supreme Court considered new arguments in an $85 million damage suit brought against Massey Energy, 81-year-old paratrooper-trained veteran and Christian activist Roland […]

Ask Umbra on big families

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I have recently become a grandmother. (Eek! Doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that I made the decision to have a child.) Though I had just one child, my daughter is pregnant again. She married a guy with seven sibs, and they want to have […]

Big business’s hidden hand in the smear job on Van Jones

If you thought the targeting of Van Jones for vilification by the right was about his race, his youthful flirtation with socialism, or a petition he signed about the 9/11 attacks, you’d only be a little bit right. And if you think it was about the Color of Change campaign against Glenn Beck’s show on […]

Fox News blurts out agenda: With Jones down, stop cap-and-trade

Having taken Van Jones down, the job destroyers and climate destroyers of the right wing most certainly smell blood. Now Phil Kerpen, policy director for Americans for Prosperity, has laid out the right-wing strategy for how “the Van Jones affair could be an important turning point in the Obama administration,” in a piece on FOXNews.com. […]