Unconventional Sources

The American public seems to have understood: The reality is that there is no such thing as clean coal. But, have the politicians received the message yet?

Politicians, Democrats as much as Republicans, are trying to get government funding for new dirty coal burning power plants at every opportunity. To get elected officials to listen to the clean energy majority of Americans, and stop government support for dirty coal energy, citizens are going to have to speak loudly enough to counter the dollars of the coal industry’s lobbyists.

That’s just what’s going on in South Carolina, where the people say no to new to coal. It’s a simple, direct campaign: SC Says No opposes all new coal plants in the state.

Americans’ annoyance at the proliferation of pubescent personal water craft has grown since the onset of the recession and the returned rise of energy prices. As the rest of America seeks to establish responsible energy conservation, saps on seadoos burn gasoline like it’s 1975, just to go riding around and around in circles. Jerks on jet skis pollute the air and water with their inefficient engines going just a mile or two per gallon. Egocentric, they drain the economy of its real strength, pouring dollars into preschool fantasies of listening to loud motors make a vroom vroom sound.

Public anger at the dangerous and dirty jet skis has been growing for years. More recently, there’s been a movement to ban jet skis, recognizing the unsustainability of the mostly useless mini boats.

The following video makes a personal point of criticism against the predominantly out of shape people who ride jet skis instead of exercising their own muscles:

Shell Oil is one of those corporations with a name that lends itself to activist mottos. So, the Save Our Wetlands activist web site in Louisiana seeks an end to the shell game that threatens an important storm-surge-blocking wetlands for the sake of a Shell Oil liquid natural gas plant.

To be honest, I cannot decipher any word play in the listing of Shell Oil as among the Most Wanted Corporate Human Rights Violators – because it’s in Italian.

It couldn’t be more clear, however, that Shell Oil is playing its own word games, given a recent report in Congress by Congressman Ed Markey about the way that Shell Oil advertised on TV and testified before Congress that it was working to develop solar, wind and other sustainable energy sources last year, but has since quietly announced that it won’t be spending money on those projects after all.

That’s what they call greenwashing – but there’s no way to paint a shell coated in crude oil as an ecofriendly enterprise.

Some industry lobbyists are trying to argue that, since their bosses have messed up the economy, climate change is no longer an important issue that matters to the American people. Thanks to the people who organized the Capitol Climate Action today – a protest at a coal-burning power plant in Washington, D.C. They proved the industry lobbyists wrong – and proved that Americans can keep their eye on the ball. Economic recovery cannot come without environmentally sustainable energy reform. We can’t rebuild America’s engines using the same old dirty fossil fuels.

Given that President Barack Obama is supporting the hoax of “clean coal”, this message could not be more timely. We don’t need climate change – but we do need real change of the political climate in Washington D.C.

It’s become clear that alternate energy isn’t just good for the environment, it’s desperately needed for the economy as well. The fossil fuel economy has failed us, as stocks are crashing downward and foreclosures are rocketing upward. The Earth’s climate is careening on a helter skelter path of wild fluctuations that are sending natural ecosystems and human communities alike into crisis.

For too long, corporate right wing political leaders have pretended that nothing is wrong. They’ve left us a disaster of neglect and denial. It’s time to consider the alternative visions offered at AlternativeEnergy.com instead. Alternative Energy offers news and social networking centered around cleaner and more efficient ways to power our lives.

When we think about how far our society is willing to go in fueling its rollocking good time disposable material culture, this ought to be an icon in everyone’s memory: A mountain gone where once it stood, and the land all around laid to waste. Mountains are supposed to be eternal – at least in the scope of human imagination. Now, they’re regarded as just more resources for corporations to exploit.

This is not a mythological fantasy imagined by Lorax-mimicking tree huggers. It’s a reality, and it’s been documented by a dedicated non-profit organization: Appalachian Voices.

Recently, they’ve teamed up with Oil Change International to produce the database behind the following widget, which you can use to see how much dirty coal money your congressional representative in Washington has taken.

(I find that incoming U.S. Senator from New York Kirsten Gillibrand has taken $1,000 in dirty coal money from Entergy Corporation, for example.)

U.S. Senators and Congressional representatives have accepted $40,404,519 from the coal industry since 2000.
Enter your zipcode to see how dirty your congresspeople are:

The hour of the Earth is not quite yet here… It’s on March 28th at 8:30 PM. That’s the time of Earth Hour this year.

During Earth Hour, people across the world will make a simple act: They will turn off the lights. Wherever they are, at home or at work, they will choose not to participate in the unsustainable economy of artificial energy.

Will this one hour make a big difference, in the economy or in the ecology of the planet? Well, for that one hour it will.

Think of it as a warmup exercise. Right now, the idea that we can exist without artificial lights after dark is perceived as something radical. In fact, it’s the most natural thing there could be.

With 6 billion people on Earth, an Earth Hour is something we need a lot more of. Maybe after this year, people could celebrate a true Earth Day, expending no artificial energy. In 2010, we could extend that to an Earth Week, and from there on in, we might start to actually make a difference.

Know why the Republicans really want to do offshore drilling? It’s because they’ve got Prius envy.

The Republicans are just all burned up, hotter than global warming, that environmentalists thought up a good idea to make our economy run more efficiently and cleanly, and made it work. The hybrid car is an expression of environmentalism moving America forward, and the Republicans were caught just sitting on their rear ends next to their Lincoln Town Cars, saying that everything should continue to be done the old way.

So, now, the Republicans are trying to show that they can do something new: New offshore oil drilling!

The trouble is that this new offshore oil drilling is kind of like new Tide, now with extra cleaning power – it isn’t really new at all. It’s just the same old thing.

The old offshore oil drilling was dirty and inefficient and vulnerable to hurricanes. The new offshore drilling would be dirty and inefficient and vulnerable to hurricanes. The old offshore drilling couldn’t keep pace with our energy needs. The new offshore drilling wouldn’t keep pace with our energy needs either.

This offshore drilling plan is the last gasp of a dinosaur economy of rusted industrialism. What we need is a new vision that can do better than offshore drilling. More of the same will just bring us more of the same, and more of the same means more failure.

The time for new offshore drilling is history.