EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Refuse Allegiance to Coal
There are some 614 coal-fired power plants in the United States, and it is up to us to shut them down. No one in the White House will do it. No one in Congress will do it. And no one at the coming U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen will do it. We will build local movements to carry out acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to halt the burning of coal, or the polar ice caps will continue to dissolve, the Greenland ice sheet will disappear, the glaciers in the Alps, the Himalayas and Tibet will melt, and widespread droughts, rising sea levels and temperatures, acute food shortages, disease and gigantic mass migrations will envelop the globe. We are killing the ecosystem on which human life depends. One of the major polluters is coal, which supplies about half of the country's electricity. NASA's James Hansen has demonstrated that our only hope of getting our atmosphere back to a safe level-below 350 parts per million CO2-lies in stopping the use of coal to generate electricity. We are currently at 390 parts per million carbon dioxide.
"The world political system is not about to keel over and give us a treaty that will get us to 350 parts per million anytime soon, or in fact do anything of great note," the writer and environmental activist Bill McKibben told me when I met him in New York City. The author of "The End of Nature" and "Deep Economy" said: "The news that the Obama administration had punted on the Copenhagen talks is discouraging. The good news, to the extent that there is any, is that we finally have the beginning of a real global movement about climate change."
McKibben and his group, 350.org, this year organized perhaps the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history: On Oct. 24, people in 181 countries joined in calling for environmental reform. But such popular calls for change have largely been ignored by the leaders of industrialized nations. The climate crisis will be solved by widespread and sustained civil disobedience or not at all.
"There were no celebrities, no rock stars, no movie stars," McKibben said of the October protest. "People were rallying around a fairly obscure scientific data point, and the 25,000 pictures or so that have come into the Flickr site from the 5,200 events in 181 countries make it clear that the canard that environmentalism is something for rich white people is crazy. It is mostly something for black, brown and yellow people and mostly something for poor people. We are all going to bear the consequences before very long, but Bangladesh and places like Bangladesh get it first. This is why it was so great to see them heavily involved. We have about half the countries in the world that have endorsed the 350 [parts per million] target. Unfortunately they are the poorest countries on Earth. They will not carry the day at Copenhagen or anywhere else, but they have begun to challenge the right of the rich countries of the world to submerge them, burn them up or whatever else."
There are five countries that are responsible for over half of fossil-fuel-related CO2 emissions. The United States and China alone account for more than a third. We in the U.S. have been the world's largest emitters for more than a century, although we have now been overtaken by China, where growth in emissions has been driven by a rapid increase in coal consumption. China is currently opening an average of two coal-fired power plants a week. Emissions there have more than doubled since 1990. The burden to act rests on us, our major trading partner and a handful of other highly industrialized nations.
"The average American family uses more energy between the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve and dinner on Jan. 2 than the average Tanzanian family uses all year," McKibben said.
The projected rise of sea levels, as much as six feet this century and 23 feet if the Greenland ice sheet disappears, will submerge coastal nations such as Bangladesh, a country of 160 million people, as well as places such as the Mekong Delta, the Maldives and the Marshall Islands. The disappearance of glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau-glaciers that feed the Indus, Ganges, Yangtze and Yellow rivers-will create catastrophic water shortages and devastate the rice and wheat harvests in China and India, where about four of every 10 people live. World food prices will rise dramatically. If we can't save countries such as the Maldives and Bangladesh we will also be unable to save Venice, Hawaii, the Netherlands, New Zealand, London, Hong Kong and Manhattan. But don't expect much from Barack Obama and other leaders in the industrialized world. Their loyalty is not to the planet, or to us, but to the oil and gas industry, the coal industry and the huge corporate polluters who own them.
"Even the inadequate bill before the Congress has been postponed until the spring," McKibben said, "which in my political calendar is a little too close to the election to be very comfortable. We are getting no leadership from the president, rhetorical or otherwise. All the problems are obvious. The only good news is that there is finally something that looks like the glimmer of a movement."
It is incumbent on all of us to find out where the nearest coal-powered plant is located-the one closest to me is in Hamilton, N.J.-and begin to organize to shut it down nonviolently. Princeton, where I live, is also home to NRG Energy, the ninth-biggest coal energy producer in the United States. A map of the nation's coal-fired plants can be found here.
"Coal is the key commodity," McKibben said. "The ability to cease the combustion of coal will be the thing that decides whether or not we go over the precipice meteorologically in the decades ahead."
"It is unlikely that the environmental movement, or any other movement, will come up with as much cash as those industries," McKibben said of the corporations he opposes. "ExxonMobil made more money last year than any company in the history of money. We better not compete in that currency. We better find something else to compete in. The only thing I can think of is bodies, creativity and passion. These are the sort of things, with all their strengths, the Exxons of the world tend to lack."
McKibben, along with the writer and activist Wendell Berry, organized a mass act of civil disobedience conducted last March
against a coal-fired power plant in Washington, D.C., near the White
House. Thousands of demonstrators from around the country arrived to
see that in anticipation of the protest a promise had been made to
convert the plant from coal to natural gas. But there are over 600 more
coal plants to close. And McKibben said that local and regional leaders
need to rise up to organize against coal.
McKibben and Berry embrace civility and nonviolence. Protesters in
Washington last March were enjoined to arrive "in their Sunday best."
"If we are going to use civil disobedience we need to reclaim it from people who enjoy taunting the police and showing off," McKibben said.
"I spent last Sunday night out on Boston Common with hundreds and hundreds of young people from across Massachusetts who were willing to very, very peacefully and unaggressively risk arrest, and in fact we were all cited [by the police] before the evening was done," he went on. "They were sleeping in Boston Common and refusing to sleep in their dorms for the rest of the fall because [the dormitories] are powered by dirt energy. They have been lobbying for a bill in the Massachusetts Statehouse to close down all the coal-fired power plants within the next 10 years. There were students from every campus. The biggest contingent came from Clark in Wooster. The prize was whoever brought the most students got to have me sleep in their tent."
McKibben and Berry are right. Nonviolent civil disobedience is the only tool that might work. If we mirror the violence employed by the instruments of state security we will become corrupt, as they are, and obliterate the moral high ground that attracts followers to any movement and sustains the long night of resistance. Violence is a poison that infects all those who use it, even in what can be defined as a just cause. And nothing could make ExxonMobil or the coal industry happier than to see shop windows broken, cars set afire and police lines rushed. The moment we resort to violence the corporate state wins. It will gleefully crush us like flies in the name of law and order and national security. The temptation to violence, especially given the passivity of most of us and the hypocrisy of our ruling elite, including Obama, will mount as climate change begins to create social and political unrest. But it must be resisted. This will be a long, long struggle. The coal companies will only be the start. The other corporations that have disempowered the citizenry, created a state of neo-feudalism and turned our democracy into a sham will be next.
"We are past the point where we are going to stop global warming," McKibben said. "It is happening already, and more of it is coming no matter what we do. One of our jobs is to start figuring out how to cope with it. We need to build the kind of communities that can deal with that. The key question is scale. Communities need to be smaller. Our way of thinking about the world has to shrink. At the same time we need a global movement to continue this fight to bring carbon emissions under some kind of control. If we don't, the kind of change we are talking about over the next decades is so big there is no way to adapt ... no matter what we do, no matter how wonderfully organic your community has become. Communities still require water. People don't quite understand what three or four or five degrees increase in the temperature of the planet will mean. One degree was enough to melt the Arctic. This was a bad sign."
"Nothing important is going to come out of Copenhagen," McKibben warned, "just a lot of spin. ... [Obama's] vast spin machine will be in full gear. There is no obvious route out of all this. We have started exploring mainly popular movements, and hopefully we have introduced a wild card into this game. Our plans are not even plans at this point. It is easier said than done. We shut down one coal-fired power plant and not a very big one. There are 600 left in the country. I don't fancy myself up to the task of figuring out how to shut them all down. Hopefully some people will begin to do it."
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
26 Comments so far
Show AllWe can't stop two illegal wars. So,the chances of closing over 600 power plants is nil. Believe it or not, most Americans don't think global warming is a serious issue. In America, everything is about the economy and our comfort.
This article, like a lot of others on Common Dreams, repeats a common characteristic pertaining to our President's stance on MANY of the CRITICAL issues facing the United States and the world: our President is NOT EXERCISING ANY LEADERSHIP!!!
Demoks lurched to the "supply-side" three decades ago. They now muck in the extreme right gutter orgy with Repuks. The supply-side grotesquely inflates the people's market demand by infesting funny munny in all the wrong places, not to satisfy natural demand, but to FABRICATE UNNATURAL demand.
USan elites' number one priority is to Dominate the World. And the way to achieve that is to churn more munny in this economy than others churn in their economies. Elites surge the churn by infesting in energy/warez over-supply. Over-supply depresses prices, which lure USans into opiate-addictions. The greatest Opium War of all time is right here in 21st Century Merka.
USan elites infest truckloads of funny munny building over-supply and the public is unaware because transactions are censored. Terms are simple: Create more over-supply, no matter the cost. Subsidies, loopholes, and other mechanisms accent the dealz to DUMP fossil-fried energy/warez on the markets to ensure rapid consumption growth.
USan elites violating basic market rules leads to excess consumption, and myriad problems, global warming, mass obesity/apathy. Spoiled rotten USans can't uphold their civic duty. They should take back control of their own demand, and wean themselves off the fossil opiates. The left should be leading the wean.
Ghandi stated that his protests would NOT have been successful if there wasn't a media to report on them honestly for the world to see.
To send people rushing off to nonviolently protest their city's coal power plant without a plan of how to get fair media coverage is a poor move.
Even if you get 500 people in your town to chain themselves to the doors of your power plant the event ceases to exist if the media censors it or distorts it. And they will.
Remember, in our country the media creates REALITY.
The protesters therefore must be prepared to make their protests PERMANENT in order to FORCE fair media coverage.
And protesters must be prepared to provide plans for alternative energy sources along with a plan to fund them. If not, the rest of the people in your town will label you a kook who wants them to freeze during the winter.
Remember, most people don't even believe climate change is occurring.
Clearly, there's a lot of work to do.
Cygnus; Xakttlee. en toto, finis; people's opinions are Fox talking points, the erudite set that watches the news at least.
GandHi. The H is after the D, not after the G.
Civil disobedience will solve the climate crisis? I doubt it. My prediction is that the climate crisis will be solved by technology, or not at all. Forget everything else. Sorry if it sounds a bit cynical.
There is virtually no chance that there will be any meaningful legislation to solve problems like climate change, pollution, healthcare, wars, etc. until the campaign law is changed and politicians are required to use only public money. All the progressive/environmental/anti-war groups would be wise to unite and solve the problem of legalized corruption first. Only then, they might actually have a chance to solve anything else.
It is politicians that would have to pass the legislation to change campaign finance laws. It will never happen with r's and d's.
Wonderful! We all should walk in the foot prints of Thoreau, Gahndi, and King,
before we have to attempt to walk on water.
McKibben.
Is he a rock star too?
Uhm? Sorry but this matter is beyond names, unless it is all of our names.
Ignore the poseurs. Anyway the figure of 350 confuses the matter. We have to seriously consider getting carbon out of now in the atmosphere down to pre-industrial levels.
As for the wars?
Well they are all about control of fossil fuels by people who believe fossil fuels are the future. Stop these people and we can save the planet.
Northern Indigenous Peoples working on Climate Declaration at Mystic Lake, Minn.
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/enews/alerts/70656617.html
Demystifying Climate Change Negotiations -
scroll down to the second PDF
The Tebetebba Foundation - Resources and Statements for the Global Indigenous Movement
http://www.tebtebba.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=18&Itemid=27
Civil disobedience, if conducted on a national scale for a prolonged period that causes serious disruptions in economic matters, will eventually get recognition from politicians and sustained coverage by 'for-profit' 'news' media. However since money rules the political scene and corporations have a strangle-hold on most politicians, the chances of meaningful legislation regarding the carbon emissions issue is remote. Further, the capitalist system does not encourage placing peoples' long term health and survival before short term profits; rather it encourages making as much money as possible regardless of the consequences. I hate to be so pessimistic, but it seems to me that until people literally start keeling over from heat, dehydration, asphyxiation,and radiation it is doubtful that laws will be passed banning coal-fired plants and other industrial pollutants.
I live a mile away from the Sheldon coal power plant in Hallam Nebraska. Trouble is Hallam has less than 300 residents since the 2004 tornado and I don't have any friends in Lincoln because everyone thinks I'm a way out radical. But I'll be standing outside the power plant holding a sign at least even if I'm all by myself, and maybe they'll take my picture as an example of a local lunatic.
Same ratio here on CD, friend.
Same feeling...
Just two things to say:
1. If we shut down all these coal power plants, do we put up nukes in their place? Or do we all read by candle light?
2. I am always amused at such stupidity as Mr. Hedges. Do you think coal power plants magically disappear when they go offline? No. They are dis-assembled, sold, and sent to some place in the third world where such power generation is a radical improvement over what they are currently using. You don't take a power plant off the planet just by closing it locally...it will have a second long life after it leaves the States.
Irritator of the Powerful
I was a medical missionary in Haiti for five years during the 80s. I lived for some part of that time in a palm bark shack with a dirt floor, no running water, no electricity, four miles across 2 mountain ranges from the nearest road. Reading by candlelight is not as difficult as you might think.
But I'm grateful for the warning about how they ship the dismantled plants to the Third World (I know they dump drugs there; we had lots of children in Haiti with CURRENT thalidomide birth defects). I guess we'll have to try and get a law passed that when they close the plants they're classed as toxic waste and can't be shipped. If we get them closed at all but we have to try....
Coal plants do not have to be shut down, they need to be converted to burning powdered or torrefied biomass in place of the coal. The grates and burners can be changed out for between $500 and $1000 per installed KW, biomass can be delivered to most plants for about $4 per million BTUs.
More appropriately, a carbon tax of $5 per million BTUs on coal would be very much in line with the environmental and social costs of burning coal. $5 per MM BTUs would generate $100 B which could be redirected to locally sourced biomass.
Mr. Hedges is absolutely correct - the 614 coal-burning power plants in the U.S. need to be phased out asap (e.g. within five years or so), period.
Those who ridicule the author or deny that there is a need to do anything about climate disruption are fools who, unfortunately, will also benefit when controls are finally put in place. If we could only kick the free riders off the bus........
As for Biomass being the solution to our energy woes? Not. Sure there are sources of "waste" that in today's economy and many of those can be combusted. The question is, does this solve the problem? Given all the negative's associated with burning ANYTHING for fuel, it would be nothing more than a shell game.
In Wisconsin, the U.S. Forest Service is allowing thousands of acres of the Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest be stripped of trees and then stripped of the residual materials left after logging. All in the name of helping to develop a local biomass industry. Say goodbye to soil replenishment after clearcutting.
Go to Ashland, WI where the coal plant that sits on the shore of Lake Superior and check out the huge piles of so-called "wood waste" waiting to be burnt so some shit-hole gas station can keep their lights burning 24 hours/day.
Remember how burning trash was going to be a major energy source? It's the same flawed idea, stemming from the faulty logic that ignores biogeochemical cycling of all materials. The key is to figure out how to power our lives without interrupting the global cycles of toxic materials. Mining coal is simply a human-caused acceleration in the cycling of carbon that has resulted in a roadblock in the cycle; carbon is now building up in the atmosphere where it causes us problems.
Coal is a Cancer on Earth and, like lead and mercury, it needs to remain buried deep in the ground forever.
Love,
Dr. Crackbaby
Big CH fan, but he, like so many libs/progs continue to believe that logic, facts and morals will win the day.
Hasn't worked since 'Silent Spring,' won't work now.
There is only one answer: 'we' have to pay Big Coal to go away, or they never, ever will. Period.
Like, when your company pays you to quit, or when we pay farmers not to grow crops on their land, or when we pay the Taliban $1.6 BILLION to not kill us anymore...
We need to buy and close some coal plants and subsidize the conversion of the others to 'new energy' production. That's they only way the profiteers will be satisfied - by the guarantee of profits.
Will we ever grow up and learn to use 'their' game against them? Or will we continue to live in some fantasy world where, any minute now, the right words will trigger a worldwide reversal of the Greed Epidemic?
...
frank1569 - With all due respect, "They have to go". Period. Full stop. The coal industry is the core of the "Extraction" model. Extraction occurs on two fronts - one is the environment and the other is us. Extract from the planet - and extract maximum profits from us - by any means necessary. Their end game is the total impoverishment of 80% of the population - incahoots with the Oligarchy, the ENTIRE corporate structure, and our political class. They are monsters. By their decisions and their actions they have separated themselves from the body of humanity. They are no longer sane in their desires, their values, and their actions. To repeat: "They have to go". You don't put down a rabid dog because it's guilty.
Peace.
What would Noah do?
Whatever else is added to the mix by "homo-carbon-cleverass", we have to admit that the forces that were in play for the turning of the last four interglacial cycles are in play now, as well.
The ideas above about personal and local preparation are important. Could happen that states might act, but forget national, the corporatists will act to preserve the status quo until they become food for worms...or mobs.
Aside...it's just as important, if not more so, to shut down the nukes... the most likely CC scenario includes massive ice storms. An improperly de-powered nuke plant covered with a foot or two (+?) of ice will become a radioactive steam chimney.
I hope I'm wrong.
Three UK groups studying climate change have issued an unprecedented statement about the dangers of failing to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.
The Royal Society, Met Office, and Natural Environment Research Council say the science underpinning climate change is more alarming than ever.
Apocalypse Now - The Christo Crazies have finally brought Armageddon to the world.
The news that TWO more coal plants go on-line in China PER WEEK has me catching my breath.
Solar is the best answer. Who cares what it costs? Subsidize it. It doesn't leave the ground uninhabitable for 600 years like Nuclear has ( Chernobyl). Most power consumption is the daytime anyway, if we would switch to aluminum foil cells on the roofs and southern sides of everybody's house we could shut down most of the coal plants most of the time in the south. But big robber barons hate solar because they can't monopolize the power source and inflate the price like they can with coal, oil and soon Uranium.
What we should do is start our own solar grids between neighbors and when the man comes over to stop it he gets to meet the second amendment in the form of a militia. There's no freedom at all in the US any more. There's a law against everything. And laws are only for little people, big corporations like ENRON ignore them at will. Chris Hedges is right to demand coal plants get shut down. Let's also demand RESIDENTIAL solar, since if it's corporate, Big Oil will just buy it and shut it all down like they did in the past.
It's just stupid to be running coal plants in the south. That's what I think.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Okay Chris, andf you will replace coal fired electrical generation with more exactly what?...
Poet
I am in total agreement with Chris Hedges on all points.
However, some in this forum have responded about the lack of alternatives to coal. Well, I can report in an uncharacteristically happy way- at least for me :-) that the news is extremely good with regards to alternative technologies.
The world is on the threshold of a renewable energy revolution. Solar and wind energy are rapidly becoming (or have already become) technologies that can replace the need for building another coal fired plant.
Add to this SECOND generation biomass, geothermal energy (Stephen Chu referred to this as an effectively unlimited energy source), fourth generation nuclear, improved soils management- that will increase CO2 sequestering naturally, forest preservation, conservation, etc. and you have more than enough technology potential to produce clean energy and make producing another coal plant an obscene and unnecessary crime.
Without addressing at the moment the need for systemic change- which I profoundly agree with the need for- the reason we are still relying on coal and oil relate to the paralysis in our political system- the corruption at all levels of government- the system of bribes called campaign contributions. Add to this the jadedness of too many- public leaders who should know better- and you have a partial explanation of the desperateness of the situation.
Yet, instead of a system of cap and trade with carbon offsets- that will allow companies to circumvent true carbon emission reductions- we need a carbon tax that will be fair to consumers and further incentivize the development of renewable energy sources.
With the Greenland and Antarctic glaciers rapidly melting and with multiple threats to national security and global food and water supplies, the United States, Canada and the rest of the so-called industralized world must fully mobilize and incentivize industry to produce renewable and non-carbon emitting sources of energy.
Regarding solar & wind...
"...A 2005 study by researchers at Stanford University found that there is enough wind worldwide to satisfy global electricity demand seven times over, even if only 20% of the power could be captured. Enough solar energy hits the Earth in an hour to supply all the world's electricity needs for a year. " "...A 100-square-mile area of Nevada, if equipped with solar devices, could supply the U.S. with all the power it needs, according to the Energy Department. Again, such pronouncements don't address the real-world practicalities. But given that neither coal nor nuclear power is a practical solution to global warming, U.S. research priorities are badly skewed."