April, 29 2011, 03:23pm EDT
Agreement Reached to Retire Only Coal-Fired Power Plant in Washington
Public Health Protections, Community Investment are Cornerstones of Landmark Agreement
SEATTLE, WA
The Sierra Club announced today that this past weekend, the Washington State Senate approved a landmark agreement between the Sierra Club, Governor Chris Gregoire and TransAlta to phase out the state's massive 1600MW coal plant between 2020 and 2025. This agreement continues Washington's transition away from dirty coal to clean energy. With growing pressure from the public (including environmental groups, clean energy advocates, health professionals, students and the faith community) to move away from dirty coal, Governor Gregoire convened a group of stakeholders to discuss ways to transition the state off of coal. The agreement approved by the Senate on Saturday (formally Senate Bill 5769), is the result of those meetings.
"This agreement reflects a reasonable and thoughtful approach to a complex situation," said Doug Howell, Washington Representative for the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign. "Retiring this plant will protect the families and national parks that have for four decades been choking on this plant's pollution. The orderly retirement will also ensure that the Centralia community will be protected during the transition away from coal.
"We are very grateful for the leadership of Governor Gregoire and the willingness of TransAlta to find a solution that works for all interested parties and brings an end to this longstanding controversy," added Howell.
The agreement, reached by the Sierra Club, TransAlta, Governor Gregoire and conservation and clean energy advocates including Climate Solutions, the Northwest Energy Coalition and Washington Environment Council, calls for one of the Centralia plant's two coal-fired boilers to be retired in 2020, with the second boiler scheduled to be retired by 2025. Both boilers will install pollution controls in 2013 that will reduce the amount of health-threatening nitrogen oxide pollution from the plant.
Importantly, the agreement would also create a $60 million transition fund that will be invested in the Centralia community to help transition away from relying on the plant. Not only will tens of millions of dollars be invested in Centralia community development, but a significant portion of the transition fund will additionally be dedicated to innovation and new technologies that will help reduce Washington's carbon pollution.
"As the Northwest and the nation begin to transition away from coal, we must ensure that the workers and families who have dedicated their lives to producing coal-powered electricity are helping lead the way into a clean energy future," said Mary Anne Hitt, Director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign. "This agreement will help ensure that Washington's economy, air, and water will be healthy for decades to come, by providing resources that will spur innovation in the Northwest to move the region and the nation beyond coal."
If SB 5769, which was approved by the Senate on Saturday, is approved by the Washington State House of Representatives, the agreement would make TransAlta's Centralia plant the latest victory for a healthy and thriving clean energy future in America. Together with the plan to close Oregon's one coal plant - Portland General Electric's Boardman plant - in 2020, the Pacific Northwest will end its coal-burning pollution throughout the next 14 years. Thanks in part to the work of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, plans for 150 new coal plants have been shelved since the beginning of the coal rush, keeping more than 570 million tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and encouraging America to follow the path to a new clean energy economy.
"The future of America's energy will not be in dirty, dangerous and outdated coal-fired power that makes people sick," said Hitt. "It will be in clean and sustainable energy that will put people to work. This is another step on our shared path to a clean energy future."
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
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'No Tennis on a Dead Planet': Climate Activists Disrupt US Open
"The climate is already more disruptive than any activists can possibly be," said a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion.
Sep 08, 2023
A group of climate activists wearing shirts that read "End Fossil Fuels" delayed the semifinal match of the U.S. Open Tennis Championships by around 45 minutes Thursday night in an effort to call greater public attention to the planetary emergency that is wreaking deadly havoc worldwide.
One of the demonstrators glued his bare feet to the concrete in the stands at New York City's Arthur Ashe Stadium, requiring additional effort by medical personnel and police to remove him and take him into custody.
The protesters were associated with the climate group Extinction Rebellion NYC, which said in a statement Thursday that there is "no tennis on a dead planet."
"The climate and ecological crisis threatens everything on our planet, including sports," the group said. "This action and similar actions are the response of a movement that has no other recourse than to engage in unconventional means of protest to bring mass attention to the greatest emergency of our time."
Nineteen-year-old Coco Gauff won the semifinal match after it resumed. In an interview following her victory, Gauff said she supports "preaching about what you feel and what you believe in."
"It was done in a peaceful way, so I can't get too mad at it," she said of the demonstration. "Obviously I don't want it to happen when I'm winning up 6-4, 1-0, and I wanted the momentum to keep going. But hey, if that's what they felt they needed to do to get their voices heard, I can't really get upset at it."
The U.S. Open—which counts JPMorgan, a major funder of fossil fuels, as an official partner—kicked off late last month amid growing concerns about the impact of extreme heat on the sport.
During a match earlier this week, Russian player Daniil Medvedev looked into a courtside camera between points and warned that an athlete is "gonna die" from the scorching temperatures.
The Associated Pressreported that "it got so hot and humid at the U.S. Open on Tuesday that the folks in charge adopted a new policy for the rest of this year's tournament: They will partially shut the Arthur Ashe Stadium roof in extreme conditions to offer some extra shade."
"An Associated Pressanalysis showed the average high temperatures felt during the U.S. Open and the three other major tennis tournaments steadily have gotten higher and more dangerous in recent decades, reflecting the climate change that created record heat waves around the globe this summer," the outlet noted. "For athletes, it can keep them from playing their best and, worse, increases the likelihood of heat-related illness."
Earlier this week, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed that this summer has been the hottest on record, and a separate global report led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed that greenhouse gas concentrations hit a record high last year as fossil fuel extraction continued.
A recent survey found that experts on social movements believe disruptive protests of the kind launched by Extinction Rebellion are important to the success of a particular cause, even though the initial public reaction to such tactics can often be negative. The U.S. Open protest drew loud boos from attendees.
Miles Grant, an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson, said Thursday that "the climate is already more disruptive than any activists can possibly be."
"Just look at the U.S. Open and other big tennis events—year after year, the average temperatures have been rising, making it hotter and more dangerous for the players and spectators," said Grant. "At some point, there will be fewer outdoor sporting events due to excessive heat."
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Watchdog Finds Trump Border Wall Harmed Environment, Indigenous Sites, and Wildlife
"This racist political stunt has been an ineffective waste of billions of American taxpayers' dollars—and now we know it has caused immeasurable, irreparable harm," said Congressman Raúl Grijalva.
Sep 07, 2023
A U.S. government watchdog agency on Thursday released a report exposing how former President Donald Trump's wall construction along the nation's border with Mexico negatively affected cultural and natural resources, as critics have long argued.
"The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Department of Defense (DOD) installed about 458 miles of border barrier panels across the southwest border from January 2017 through January 2021," according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. "Most (81%) of the miles of panels replaced existing barriers."
"The agencies installed over 62% of barrier miles on federal lands, including on those managed by the Department of the Interior," the report continues. "Interior and CBP officials, as well as federally recognized tribes and stakeholders, noted that the barriers led to various impacts, including to cultural resources, water sources, and endangered species, and from erosion."
The GAO document details how the border wall work caused severe erosion; disrupted natural water flows; damaged native plants while spreading invasive species; disturbed wildlife habitats and migration patterns, including for threatened and endangered species; and destroyed Indigenous burial grounds and sacred sites.
"From the start, President Trump's border wall was nothing more than a symbolic message of hate, aimed at vilifying migrants and bolstering extreme MAGA rhetoric," said U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who requested the report in May 2021. "This racist political stunt has been an ineffective waste of billions of American taxpayers' dollars—and now we know it has caused immeasurable, irreparable harm to our environment and cultural heritage as well."
"So much damage has been done, but we still have the opportunity to keep it from getting worse," he stressed. "Environmental restoration and mitigation work must be led by science and input from the right stakeholders, including tribes and communities along the border. So many corners were cut in building the wall—let's not repeat history by cutting corners in repairing the damage it caused."
"The report also makes clear that federal land management agencies, like the Interior Department and U.S. Forest Service, must be involved in environmental restoration and mitigation. These agencies have the utmost expertise and scientific knowledge of the borderlands," he added, calling on Congress to include funds for Interior and the Forest Service in the fiscal year 2024 budget "to make sure they have a strong leadership role going forward."
The GAO's report broadly recommends that the CBP commissioner and Interior secretary jointly document "a strategy to mitigate cultural and natural resource impacts from border barrier construction that defines agency roles and responsibilities for undertaking specific mitigation actions; identifies the costs, associated funding sources, and time frames necessary to implement them; and specifies when agencies are to consult with tribes."
The document adds that "the commissioner of CBP, with input from Interior, DOD, tribes, and stakeholders, should evaluate lessons learned from its prior assessments of potential impacts." The agencies have agreed to implement the recommendations, according to the GAO.
Building the border wall—which also increased rates of serious injuries and deaths among migrants—was a prominent pledge in Trump's 2016 campaign messaging. It was part of a broader anti-migrant platform that continued into his presidency, which also featured the notorious family separation policy.
When Democratic President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he delivered on a campaign promise to suspend work on the wall. The following month, he ended Trump's related emergency declaration and halted funding toward wall construction. That April, DOD announced that it was canceling all border barrier projects paid for with funds originally intended for other military uses.
While Biden was widely praised for those moves, the GAO report points out that "pausing construction and canceling contracts exacerbated some of the negative impacts because contractors left project sites in an incomplete or unrestored state as of the January 2021 pause, and the sites remained that way, at times, for more than a year."
Biden—who has faced criticism from rights groups for some of his immigration policies—is seeking reelection in 2024. He is expected to face the Republican nominee. Trump is currently the GOP front-runner, despite his various legal problems and arguments that he is constitutionally barred from holding office again after inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
The GAO report was released the same day as a United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) alert that the number of kids traveling major migration routes in Latin America and the Caribbean hit a new record, due to gang violence, instability, poverty, and the climate emergency. As Common Dreamsreported earlier Thursday, CBP has recorded more than 83,000 children entering the United States in the first eight months of this year.
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Private Equity Exposed for Profiting From Fossil Fuels and Disasters They Cause
"Firms like Blackstone should be ashamed of this sinister investment strategy that contributes to catastrophe and rebuilds after it strikes," a report author said.
Sep 07, 2023
In yet another instance of disaster capitalism, private equity companies like Blackstone have found two ways to profit from the climate emergency: first by investing in fossil fuel infrastructure and then by buying up restoration companies that clean up after increasingly extreme weather events.
That's one of the main takeaways from a report released Thursday by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) and Resilience Force titled Private Equity Profits From Disaster at the Expense of Workers, Communities, and Climate.
"Firms like Blackstone should be ashamed of this sinister investment strategy that contributes to catastrophe and rebuilds after it strikes," report co-author and PESP research coordinator Azani Creeks told Common Dreams.
"The investments Blackstone has made in both ServPro and its fossil fuel companies have long-term consequences that are borne primarily by already marginalized communities in the United States."
The report documents a shift that took place in the disaster recovery industry following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Before that historic storm, cleanup work in a given area was usually done by smaller local companies.
"After the massive efforts required post-Hurricane Katrina and the increasing frequency and magnitude of climate disasters, private equity firms saw an opportunity to consolidate the market by buying up smaller companies," Creeks wrote in the report.
And the trend continues. Private equity firms bought 72 restoration companies between January 2020 and June 2023, with the number of purchases rising each year. They acquired 13 in 2020, 20 in 2021, 25 in 2022, and 14 during just the first six months of 2023. If that pace continues through the end of the year, the 2023 total will rise to 28, more than double the yearly purchases three years ago.
The report includes a list of 14 major disaster relief companies owned by private equity firms, five of which also invest in fossil fuels. For example, Blackstone, which owns ServPro, also bought Ohio's General James Gavin Power Plant—one of the leading single sources of coal pollution in the U.S.— in 2017.In another example, Louisiana-based disaster relief company the Lemoine Company also manages Lemoine Pipeline Services. The company is owned by the private equity firm Bernhard Capital Partners.
This profit-making strategy has major environmental justice implications.
"The investments Blackstone has made in both ServPro and its fossil fuel companies have long-term consequences that are borne primarily by already marginalized communities in the United States," Creeks told Common Dreams, adding that ServPro often hires immigrants and people of color who are vulnerable to unfair and unsafe labor practices like wage theft.
"Furthermore," Creek added, "Blackstone's financing of fossil fuel assets also inflicts direct harm on these same communities, who bear the brunt of toxic emissions and climate disasters."
Even if private equity firms aren't funding fossil fuels, their acquisition of restoration companies still means they have a responsibility to workers and communities, the report argues.
As disaster restoration companies have consolidated and gone national, they have organized themselves in a series of franchises and subcontractors. Of the 72 companies acquired in the last three years, more than 80% of them were instances of larger companies buying up smaller ones. These often-opaque corporate structures can make it difficult for workers to challenge their employers over issues like wage theft or unsafe working conditions. Undocumented workers are especially vulnerable, because any complaint may be met with a threat to contact immigration authorities.
"Though issues with wage theft and worker health and safety have long existed in the construction and disaster restoration industries, with an investment from the world's largest asset manager, you would expect to see these issues less frequently as more resources can be implemented to protect workers," Creek said. "Instead, the problems at ServPro and other private equity-owned disaster restoration companies persist, with even less mechanisms for accountability and public scrutiny than before."
One worker named Joél Salazar, who is also an organizer with Resilience Force, shared his experience ServPro subcontractor Royal Services. He said the company offered to pay his way from Florida to Colorado in early 2022 to help with wildfire recovery there, and promised him 40-hour workweeks and weekly paychecks when he arrived. But the travel costs never materialized, weeks started out closer to 20 hours, and the pay ended up being every other week instead.
"The company is stealing from me."
What's more, the payment was made via a Visa card. When Salazar said he had to return to Florida, the company canceled his card despite the fact that a significant amount of his earnings were still on it.
"The company is stealing from me," he said in the report.
Salazar said he wanted private equity firms and investors to be aware of what their companies were doing.
"Investors, I'm calling to ask you to consider worker safety at the companies you invest in, especially the private equity firms you rely on for profits," he said.
Another problem is unsafe working conditions. Companies owned by private equity firms racked up a total of 194 federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration violations between January 2015 and January 2022. The most common violations were exposing workers to asbestos and failing to provide them with respiratory protection, followed by failing to communicate dangers and protect workers from falls.
Recovery workers are organizing to protect themselves through the group Resilience Force, which says it is "building a strong, stable, inclusive, million-strong workforce that will be able to perform year-round climate preparation and adaptation work, as well as rebuild after disasters."
The group's founder and director Saket Soni said in the new report, "We must ensure that these companies, and their private equity backers who profit from disaster, pay and protect the resilience workers who are essential to helping communities adapt and recover."
What's better for workers will be better for the communities they help, as well. The report found that the private equity-owned firms engage in price gouging. For example, a ServPro franchise settled with the state of North Carolina for overcharging residents following Hurricane Florence.
The report highlights the legislative efforts of U.S. Rep. Pramilla Jayapal (D-Wash.), whose Climate Resilience Workforce Act would fund jobs and training through grants and make workers less vulnerable by providing a pathway to citizenship for immigrant workers and banning employers from asking about criminal history.
"The innovative Climate Resilience Workforce Act responds to the worsening climate crisis at the scale necessary by investing in a skilled workforce that is capable of not only responding to but preparing for the destructive impacts of climate change," Jayapal said when the bill was introduced in 2022. "As we create millions of good-paying, union jobs and center the very communities who are disproportionately impacted, we are finally building back better, greener, and stronger."
The report also issues recommendations to private equity firms to better protect the workers at the companies they own, such as setting up complaint lines, minimizing the use of subcontractors, funding programs to monitor their companies, and allowing their workers to unionize.
Finally, Creeks noted that firms like Blackstone manage public pensions, and have a responsibility to these workers as well.
"Public employees, such as teachers, nurses, and firefighters, have a right to know that their pension dollars are being used to purchase fossil fuel plants that are contributing to climate disasters all over the country," Creeks told Common Dreams. "In turn, their retirement capital is also being used to buy companies that profit off of these very disasters."
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