“What is this global warming bull shit! It’s cold out here!”

So I harassed my fellow climate activists as they arrived at our recent meeting of the Cleveland Climate Watch, and the Coal Committee of the Northeast Ohio Sierra Club. With a foot of snow on the ground and temps in the teens and twenties, I borrowed denier lingo for a little self-inflicted humor.

Humor aside, climate activists hear this all the time. From meteorologists. From deniers. From neighbors. From friends and family. With a great portion of the Northern Hemisphere under the coldest weather we have seen in some time, deniers are delighting in saying, “What global warming?”

This response is actually a teachable moment on why our society is having such a hard time grasping, much less taking action on, what most environmentalists consider the issue of the century. Houston, we have a problem. In fact we have a bunch of problems, many of which have little to nothing to do with the issue of global warming and climate change. These problems include:

Photo: Greenpeace/Myllyvirta

So we have an agreement on combating climate change from Copenhagen. I am not a policy wonk, or one of the wise ones of the climate movement. Thus I am not going to give a point by point review of the agreement and tell you where we were helped and where we were screwed. You could spend several life times at your computer reviewing the reviews that are now pouring in. I am not going to issue a thunderous denunciation, nor am I going to tell you “Heh, let’s be realistic and take what we can get for now.” I am just going to say how it looks to me, a lowly climate activist in Cleveland, Ohio.

Let me put my biases front and center on what I think of conclaves such as the one that has just wrapped up in Copenhagen. I tend to think that they are jokes. I tend to think they are how the powerful of the world avoid change by promising change.

On the other hand, once one of these conclaves declares that a problem is a problem, the problem starts to at least be taken somewhat, sort of seriously by the main stream of society. So they are of symbolic and moral value. Beyond that they rapidly diminish in value.

Photo: ©Jim Clark

Thursday January 14, 2009
7:00 PM

Bela Dubby Coffeehouse
13321 Madison Avenue
Lakewood, OH

(Get directions)

Film showing presented by the Lakewood Democratic Club.

SPECIAL GUEST: Bill Price, Sierra Club Environmental Justice Program

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

The much-anticipated new documentary by Akron-area filmmaker Mari-Lynn Evans, and writer/director Phylis Geller, about the controversial form of coal mining known as mountaintop removal (MTR) and its devastating effects on the people and regions of Appalachia.

In Appalachia today, miners and residents are locked in bitter conflict. At issue is MTR, the hotly contested form of strip mining in which coal companies blast the tops off mountains to get to the coal and scape the debris into valleys and streams where it pollutes the water, destroys ecosystems, blights the landscape and poses long-term health risks.

Already garnering high-profile attention and rave reviews as it premiers in selected theaters across the country, Coal Country takes an illuminating and moving look at the coal fields upon which this battle is taking place. It presents the stories and daily activities of working miners, as well as those who are combating the coal companies in Appalachia, to allow viewers to form their own opinions about MTR based on the facts.

Evan's and Geller's past work include the award-winning PBS 3-part series The Appalachians.

Movie Trailer

Visit www.coalcountrythemovie.com

When has coal ever been defeated in Ohio?  Coal – the industry that owns Ohio politics.  Coal – the energy source so entrenched that it is not even questioned.  God like in its power.  Unchallenged – even by some in the environmental community.

Today, history was made in Ohio.  American Municipal Power (AMP), the consortium that wanted to build a new 1,000 mw coal fired power plant in Meigs County, announced today that it is canceling the plant.  It is doing what has never been done in Ohio. 

One person stands out in this story, and that person is Elisa Young of Meigs County Citizens Action Network (CAN).  Elisa and her group have been fighting coal in Meigs County for years,  against impossible odds and some of the most powerful interests in Ohio.  There are already five major coal fired power plants in the county.  There were plans to put five more there in the near future.  One of those five was the AMP plant.  One down, four to go. 

Especially in coal states like Ohio, the fight against coal seems like the very definition of a lost cause.  But history is a trickster, and often when it seems that you are down, you win one you never expected. 

This is one Thanksgiving we will not soon forget.  I know that Elisa won’t.

On Saturday October 24th, Cleveland Climate Watch, The Cleveland Mountain Justice Project, 1 Sky and friends hit the streets as part of 350.org's international day of climate action, in front of the Avon Lake power plant in Avon Lake, Ohio. We had two messages: support strong global climate action to prevent us from going over the edge into climate chaos hell, and to demand that the owner of the plant, RRI of Houston, Texas, stop burning mountain top removal coal at Avon and the rest of its plants.

We are starting to do something right. After two to three months of an e-mail blitz in cooperation with the Sierra Club, RRI finally responded to us on the eve of the 350.org event. They agreed that they had been using mountaintop removal (MTR) coal in the plant for two years, because of market conditions (the usual explanation for just about anything in corporate speak), but had no plans to buy any in 2010. It is that last point that we like and that we are going to try to run with, in our response, which is in process now. We do not know what will come next. RRI came out last summer in favor of Markey-Waxman, thus joining many other utility companies that see the writing on the wall and want to be at the table instead of on the table. Therefore, we are relieved to know that dealing with them will not be like dealing with the Don Blankenships of the world, whose typical response to opposition is to kill it before it multiplies.