Actions spoke louder than words today as Blue Ridge Earth First! (BREF!) and Mountain Justice (MJ) blockaded Dominion’s Richmond Headquarters early this morning. The all-woman lock down team anchored a climber who hung off a suspension bridge in protest of the air permit awarded to the company’s proposed coal plant in St. Paul, Virginia last week. This blockade is another in a line of escalating actions against coal plants and mountaintop removal in Virginia.

Backing up traffic for miles, police eventually cleared their way through to cut the activists out of the lockboxes and barrels. The climber came down on his own. The police also detained eight other support people standing on the sidewalks supporting the lockdown team.

Non-violent direct actions against coal-fired power plants and mountaintop removal coal mining are increasing this year as it becomes more and more apparent that challenging the plants legally, legislatively and in the regulatory process are only parts of the strategy and that radical action is needed as well.

Earlier this year, U.S. based-activists engaged in civil disobedience actions in Boston, New York, North Carolina and Richmond in protest of coal and coal finance. Earlier this month, U.K. activists stopped and occupied a coal train headed to the Drax power plant for combustion.

Last week, Dr. James Hanson, NASA’s climate scientist, called for “radical steps” to stop the “perfect storm” of catastrophic climate chaos.

In the spirit of Dr. Hanson’s call to action, BREF! and Mountain Justice’s message was loud and clear this morning: “We Won’t Stop Until You Do.”

While plants in Florida, Kansas, Florida and beyond are being stopped in the courts, boardrooms, regulatory commissions and statehouses, the coal industry is mobilized, motivated and well-funded to lock the U.S. into decades of coal-fired power.

We must move out of our comfort zones and step up the actions against King Coal.

We Won’t Stop Until They Do.

WE NEED YOUR DONATIONS FOR BAIL! To donate to BREF! please login to your paypal account and send your donation to Drumplaya112@yahoo.com

Check out the pictures here.

Check out the press release here.

This morning in Richmond, Virginia, twelve activists from Blue Ridge Earth First! were arrested while participating in a blockade of the Dominion property on Tredegar Street. The blockade was to protest the development of Dominion’s coal-fired power plant in Wise County, VA and the construction of new reactors at the Lake Anna nuclear facility. If you want to see what went down, here are photographs of the action.

Protesters called for conservation, efficiency and investment in renewable sources of energy rather than in coal and nuclear investments. All involved in the blockade and ground support were arrested and are being held by Richmond City Police. They are in need of contributions to release those being held. If you feel able to contribute funds to aid in bailing out these young activists, you can donate via PayPal (send donation to Drumplaya112@yahoo.com), or you can send checks to:

BREF! Care of Hannah Morgan
1226 Stonegate Way Crozet, Virginia 22932

Below is the press release sent to local media:

Early this morning activists with Blue Ridge Earth First! (BREF!) and Mountain Justice (MJ) blockaded the entrance to Dominion’s corporate headquarters on Tredegar St. in Downtown Richmond. They are protesting Dominion’s promotion of new coal and nuclear facilities as solutions to climate change. The blockade consists of four activists locked to a weighted barrel and a fifth suspended above the road.

While other states like Florida, Kansas and Texas have canceled plans for new coal plants, Dominion plans to begin construction this week on a new, 585 MW plant in Wise County, Virginia.

“Accelerating the rate of mountaintop removal mining to supply the citizens of Virginia with dirty energy is an irresponsible use of the most valuable resources of this Commonwealth. This is an issue of environmental destruction and a crime against public health. Dominion should further conservation and efficiency measures and develop solar, wind, and other renewable sources of power in order to do justice to the land and the people of Virginia.”

This blockade is the latest action from BREF! and MJ in the campaign against the new, coal plant in St. Paul, Va, and a direct response to last week’s decision from the Citizen’s Air Control Board to approve the final two permits required for Dominion to begin construction.

While the Air Board reduced the permitted emissions of Dominion’s proposed plant, its members declined to address pressing issues raised by over a hundred concerned Virginians at the June 24 hearing.

BREF! and Mountain Justice hold that when corporations, politicians, and regulatory agencies risk the health of communities for the sake of profit, measures beyond the accepted political avenues must be used to ensure environmental justice. Non-violent civil disobedience, like today’s, is an important part of citizen action to better our world.

Already, strip mining and mountaintop removal mining for coal have permanently razed over 25% of Wise County VA’s land mass. The practice has buried over 1,200 miles of headwater streams across Appalachia, leaving leveled mountains and poisoned communities. BREF! and MJ see the Dominion plant as a direct threat to the people and mountains of Appalachia.

Today’s action is also in protest of Dominion’s plans to expand their nuclear facilities at the North Anna plant in Louisa Co., VA. Both nuclear and “clean coal” are false solutions to the specter of global climate chaos. The impact of uranium mining, radioactive waste disposal, and nuclear plant operations on communities across the Southeast are unacceptable trade-offs for the continuation of business as usual energy policy. Renewable, decentralized energy, efficiency, and conservation are the real solutions to climate change that must be pursued by Dominion, Virginia, and the United States.

BREF! And MJS are dedicated to holding the blockade until Dominion agrees to build no new nuclear facilities, to halt construction of the Wise Co. plant, and cease burning MTR coal in existing plants.

Thanks to Hilary Lufkin for the majority of this content.

Contacts:
Hannah Morgan, 434-960-2080
Hilary Lufkin, 804-357-4826

The World Youth Forum in advance of the G8 Summit has just concluded; it was an amazing weekend for sharing best practices, planning for future campaigns and taking action on the spot. Organized by the Japan Youth G8 Project, A SEED Japan, and the Japanese Youth Ecology League, the summit brought together close to 250 youth - over 200 from across Japan and about 20 from overseas.

The conference was held in order to provide youth input into the upcoming G8 Meeting on climate change. The negotiations are anticipated to reinforce false solutions of CCS and all together ignore the need for mid-term targets, so the young people here felt it was essential to make our voices heard and encourage bold leadership. The statement adopted at the conference included calls of banning construction dirty energy facilities, supporting green employment, and recognizing human rights, but the most relevant point was:

In order to avoid dangerous and irreversible effects of climate change we urge the G8 to set a goal of stabilizing CO2 concentration at 350 ppm in order to avoid a global temperature increase of 2Cº above preindustrial levels. To achieve the above long-term target, it is critical that the G8 leads the world to reduce greenhouse gas emission by at least 40% of 1990 level by 2020. We demand Japan and G8 countries take us to a strong post 2012 agreement in 2009 under the UN Climate Process.

The statement was presented by an international panel of youth at a roundtable discussion with representatives of the Japanese Ministry of Environment and Foreign Affairs and it will be taken with the youth to the actual summit to be included in their actions and protests.

In addition to crafting and advocating for our statement, we took the time to learn from each other about our campaigns, so that we could share best practices and strengthen all of our efforts. We heard from Christian from the European Youth Alliance for Future Energy and Raju from Global Young Greens about their efforts to network youth from dozens of countries and organize coordinated campaigns. On the more local level, Midori from Eco-League Japan told us about what the 300 chapters of the organization are doing to promote campus sustainability. I had the opportunity to speak about the Campus Climate Challenge and Power Shift 2007, and everyone present was relieved to hear that the youth climate movement in the U.S. is thriving and pushing our government to finally take action on global warming.

With all of the hyperlinks above, you’ve probably got the sense that a global youth movement is brewing. Everyone at this summit was pumped to find ways to continue working together and we are thinking hard about how to coordinate grassroots action across seas to demonstrate the power of youth and our demands for climate solutions. We all felt the sense that if we come together, and work together, we will be stronger and more effective. The next couple of months will be dedicated to making it happen.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings today issued a decision to halt construction of Georgia’s first proposed Coal-Fired power plant in twenty years. Judge Thelma Wyatt has charged the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) with failing to REGULATE CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS from the plant, a decision that will have NATIONWIDE APPLICATION. This is the first time since the April 2, 2007 Supreme Court Decision which required the EPA to regulate Carbon Dioxide Emissions, that the ruling has been applied to emissions from industrial sources like Coal Fired Power Plants.

Students with the Southern Energy Network, community members, and concerned citizens from around the state have been fighting Dyengy’s LongLeaf Proposal in the courts, in shareholder meetings, and in the streets for nearly Seven years.

Yet, today’s ruling is significant far beyond the borders of Georgia, as it puts up yet another economic, political, and beauricratic hurtle for those attempting to develop new Coal-fired power plants in the country. (including the 5 other Coal Plants Dyengy is attempting to build across the country). As one plant falls, we can use these victories to hault the horrors of similar proposals across the country.

Plaintiffs in the Georgia Dynegy case argued that a look into best available control technologies for carbon dioxide were not included when the Longleaf Air Quality permit was issued. Dyengy now has the option of re-completing the air-quality permit application process (which they began 5 1/2 years ago) or appealing the case and risk taking their arguments to the supreme court. The Judge also ruled on several other accounts, including Fine Particulate matter control, that the Georgia Environmental Protection Division was out of compliance with regulations required in writing air quality permits.

Today’s ruling will act as a landmark decision in the fight to transform America’s energy economy away from the dirty grip of our coal affliction and onto a renewable energy and energy efficiency fueled future.

Party Invitations Coming Soon.

Keep Up the Good Fight!

In what is perhaps a beautiful foretelling of our energy future – crowds gathered in St. Paul Minnesota yesterday to watch a coal smokestack come crashing down.

Hundreds of people cheered as they witnessed the skyline and the air quality of the region become a little bit cleaner. The 570 foot coal smokestack was part of the Xcel Energy High Bridge Energy Plant, and its demolition marks a symbolic indicator of what our energy future will look like.

In the words of top climate scientist James Hansen from NASA’s Goddard Research Center

“We’re going to have to bulldoze the old style coal fired power plants.”

Well, in Minnesota, they are taking him at his word. As the movement for clean energy grows – one of our priorities is to take the dynamite currently used to blow up mountains in Appalachia and instead see it used to demolish the smokestacks of the ~600 remaining coal plants here in the US. One down, 600 more to go.

As recently illustrated in Hawaii (where a new bill requires all new homes to include solar technology), and in Rockport Missouri (which installed enough wind turbines to power 100% of it’s energy needs) – the solutions for a clean-energy future are at hand – we just need the political will to make it happen. Building a clean energy economy can provide more jobs (and better jobs!) for our communities, contribute to a low/no carbon energy future, clean up our air quality and save billions in health care costs (and lives lost), and work towards a just economy for all.

Watch this short video below of the demolition.