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A victory! EQB upholds DEP decertification of Appalachian Laboratories
by frank young 12 Mar '15

12 Mar '15

Yes! The EQB has upheld the DEP’s revocation of the certification of Appalachian Laboratories based on the guilty plea to falsification of water sampling reports bf one of App Labs samplers. Attached is a copy of the EQB Final Order for Appeal No. 14-17-EQB (Appalachian Laboratories). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “However, as mentioned, Mr. Shelton's admission is evidence of falsification/tampering within the lab, regardless of how many additional employees, if any, were involved. Also, the certification rules give WVDEP authority to revoke the' certification if "any" falsification has occurred. W. Va. CSR 47-32-3.12.4. Thus, the regulation d.oes not require that the falsification/tampering he undertaken by a certain number of employees and/or by an employee who fills a certain hierarchy within the lab in order for WVDEP to issue a revocation order. As a result of the forging, it is ORDERED by the Board that WVDEP's order is affirmed. The parties have a right to judicial review of this order pursuant to W. Va. Code §22B- 3~3 and W. Va. Code §29A~5~4. The Party seeking judicial review must file its appeal within 30 days after the date the party received notice of this final order.”

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It is our great collective misfortune.....
by William V. DePaulo, Esq. 09 Mar '15

09 Mar '15

It is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when an elite minority was enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s Naomi Klein Pacific Ocean V (Gladstones 4 Fish), Santa Monica, USA 2001 © Nadav Kander. Courtesy Flowers Gallery, London. The second in a major series of articles on the climate crisis and how humanity can solve it <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/06/climate-change-guardian-…>. In this extract taken from the Introduction to This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, the author calls the climate crisis a civilisational wake-up call to alter our economy, our lifestyles, now – before they get changed for us. You can read the first extract here <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/06/dont-look-away-now-the-c…> . --------------------------- The alarm bells of the climate crisis have been ringing in our ears for years and are getting louder all the time - yet humanity has failed to change course. What is wrong with us? Many answers to that question have been offered, ranging from the extreme difficulty of getting all the governments in the world to agree on anything, to an absence of real technological solutions, to something deep in our human nature that keeps us from acting in the face of seemingly remote threats, to – more recently – the claim that we have blown it anyway and there is no point in even trying to do much more than enjoy the scenery on the way down. Some of these explanations are valid, but all are ultimately inadequate. Take the claim that it’s just too hard for so many countries to agree on a course of action. It is hard. But many times in the past, the United Nations has helped governments to come together to tackle tough cross-border challenges, from ozone depletion to nuclear proliferation. The deals produced weren’t perfect, but they represented real progress. Moreover, during the same years that our governments failed to enact a tough and binding legal architecture requiring emission reductions, supposedly because cooperation was too complex, they managed to create the World Trade Organisation – an intricate global system that regulates the flow of goods and services around the planet, under which the rules are clear and violations are harshly penalised. The assertion that we have been held back by a lack of technological solutions is no more compelling. Power from renewable sources like wind and water predates the use of fossil fuels and is becoming cheaper, more efficient <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/09/solar-power-drives-renew…>, and easier to store every year. The past two decades have seen an explosion of ingenious zero-waste design, as well as green urban planning. Not only do we have the technical tools to get off fossil fuels, we also have no end of small pockets where these low carbon lifestyles have been tested with tremendous success. And yet the kind of large-scale transition that would give us a collective chance of averting catastrophe eludes us. Advertisement Is it just human nature that holds us back then? In fact we humans have shown ourselves willing to collectively sacrifice in the face of threats many times, most famously in the embrace of rationing, victory gardens, and victory bonds during world wars one and two. Indeed to support fuel conservation during world war two, pleasure driving was virtually eliminated in the UK, and between 1938 and 1944, use of public transit went up by 87% in the US and by 95% in Canada. Twenty million US households – representing three fifths of the population – were growing victory gardens in 1943, and their yields accounted for 42% of the fresh vegetables consumed that year. Interestingly, all of these activities together dramatically reduce carbon emissions. Yes, the threat of war seemed immediate and concrete but so too is the threat posed by the climate crisis that has already likely been a substantial contributor to massive disasters in some of the world’s major cities. Still, we’ve gone soft since those days of wartime sacrifice, haven’t we? Contemporary humans are too self-centered, too addicted to gratification to live without the full freedom to satisfy our every whim – or so our culture tells us every day. And yet the truth is that we continue to make collective sacrifices in the name of an abstract greater good all the time. We sacrifice our pensions, our hard-won labour rights, our arts and after-school programmes. We accept that we have to pay dramatically more for the destructive energy sources that power our transportation and our lives. We accept that bus and subway fares go up and up while service fails to improve or degenerates. We accept that a public university education should result in a debt that will take half a lifetime to pay off when such a thing was unheard of a generation ago. The past 30 years have been a steady process of getting less and less in the public sphere. This is all defended in the name of austerity, the current justification for these never-ending demands for collective sacrifice. In the past, calls for balanced budgets, greater efficiency, and faster economic growth have served the same role. It seems to me that if humans are capable of sacrificing this much collective benefit in the name of stabilising an economic system that makes daily life so much more expensive and precarious, then surely humans should be capable of making some important lifestyle changes in the interest of stabilising the physical systems upon which all of life depends. Especially because many of the changes that need to be made to dramatically cut emissions would also materially improve the quality of life for the majority of people on the planet – from allowing kids in Beijing to play outside without wearing pollution masks to creating good jobs in clean energy sectors for millions. Time is tight, to be sure. But we could commit ourselves, tomorrow, to radically cutting our fossil fuel emissions and beginning the shift to zero-carbon sources of energy based on renewable technology, with a full-blown transition underway within the decade. We have the tools to do that. And if we did, the seas would still rise and the storms would still come, but we would stand a much greater chance of preventing truly catastrophic warming. Indeed, entire nations could be saved from the waves. So my mind keeps coming back to the question: what is wrong with us? I think the answer is far more simple than many have led us to believe: we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis. We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe – and would benefit the vast majority – are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets. That problem might not have been insurmountable had it presented itself at another point in our history. But it is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when those elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s. Indeed, governments and scientists began talking seriously about radical cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in 1988 <http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm> – the exact year that marked the dawning of what came to be called “globalisation,” with the signing of the agreement representing the world’s largest bilateral trade relationship between Canada and the US, later to be expanded into the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) with the inclusion of Mexico. The three policy pillars of this new era are familiar to us all: privatisation of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and lower corporate taxation, paid for with cuts to public spending. Much has been written about the real-world costs of these policies – the instability of financial markets, the excesses of the super-rich, and the desperation of the increasingly disposable poor, as well as the failing state of public infrastructure and services. Very little, however, has been written about how market fundamentalism has, from the very first moments, systematically sabotaged our collective response to climate change. The core problem was that the stranglehold that market logic secured over public life in this period made the most direct and obvious climate responses seem politically heretical. How, for instance, could societies invest massively in zero-carbon public services and infrastructure at a time when the public sphere was being systematically dismantled and auctioned off? How could governments heavily regulate, tax, and penalise fossil fuel companies when all such measures were being dismissed as relics of “command and control” communism? And how could the renewable energy sector receive the supports and protections it needed to replace fossil fuels when “protectionism” had been made a dirty word? Even more directly, the policies that so successfully freed multinational corporations from virtually all constraints also contributed significantly to the underlying cause of global warming – rising greenhouse gas emissions. The numbers are striking: In the 1990s, as the market integration project ramped up, global emissions were going up an average of one percent a year; by the 2000s, with “emerging markets” like China now fully integrated into the world economy, emissions growth had sped up disastrously, with the annual rate of increase reaching 3.4% a year for much of the decade. That rapid growth rate continues to this day <http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n12/full/ngeo689.html>, interrupted only briefly in 2009 by the world financial crisis. Emissions rebounded with a vengeance in 2010, which saw the largest absolute increase since the Industrial Revolution <http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n1/full/nclimate1332.html>. 0:00 / 9:35 Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgu.com%2Fp%2F46d5…> Twitter <https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Naomi+Klein%3A+This+Changes+Everythin…> Pinterest <http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?description=Naomi+Klein%3A+This…> This Changes Everything - excerpt from work-in-progress feature documentary With hindsight, it’s hard to see how it could have turned out otherwise. The twin signatures of this era have been the mass export of products across vast distances (relentlessly burning carbon all the way), and the import of a uniquely wasteful model of production, consumption, and agriculture to every corner of the world (also based on the profligate burning of fossil fuels). Put differently, the liberation of world markets, a process powered by the liberation of unprecedented amounts of fossil fuels from the earth, has dramatically sped up the same process that is liberating Arctic ice from existence. As a result, we now find ourselves in a very difficult and slightly ironic position. Because of those decades of hardcore emitting, exactly when we were supposed to be cutting back, the things we must do to avoid catastrophic warming are no longer just in conflict with the particular strain of deregulated capitalism that triumphed in the 1980s. They are now in conflict with the fundamental imperative at the heart of our economic model: grow or die. Once carbon has been emitted into the atmosphere, it sticks around for hundreds of years, some of it even longer, trapping heat. The effects are cumulative, growing more severe with time <http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1934/20>. And according to emissions specialists like the Tyndall Centre’s Kevin Anderson (as well as others), so much carbon has been allowed to accumulate in the atmosphere over the past two decades that now our only hope of keeping warming below the internationally agreed-upon target of 2C is for wealthy countries to cut their emissions by somewhere in the neighbourhood of eight to 10% a year <http://kevinanderson.info/blog/eu-2030-decarbonisation-targets-and-uk-carbo…>. The “free” market simply cannot accomplish this task. Indeed, this level of emission reduction has happened only in the context of economic collapse or deep depressions. What those numbers mean is that our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature. Fortunately, it is eminently possible to transform our economy so that it is less resource-intensive, and to do it in ways that are equitable, with the most vulnerable protected and the most responsible bearing the bulk of the burden. Low-carbon sectors of our economies can be encouraged to expand and create jobs, while high-carbon sectors are encouraged to contract. The problem, however, is that this scale of economic planning and management is entirely outside the boundaries of our reigning ideology. The only kind of contraction our current system can manage is a brutal crash, in which the most vulnerable will suffer most of all. [image: Pacific Ocean VIII (Gladstone 4 Fish), Santa Monica, USA, 2001 © Nadav Kander. Courtesy Flowers Gallery, London.] <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/08/how-will-everything-chan…> Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgu.com%2Fp%2F46ap…> Twitter <https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=How+will+everything+change+under+clim…> Pinterest <http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?description=How+will+everything…> Pacific Ocean VIII (Gladstone 4 Fish), Santa Monica, USA, 2001 © Nadav Kander. Courtesy Flowers Gallery, London. So we are left with a stark choice: allow climate disruption to change everything about our world, or change pretty much everything about our economy to avoid that fate. But we need to be very clear: because of our decades of collective denial, no gradual, incremental options are now available to us. Gentle tweaks to the status quo stopped being a climate option when we supersized the American Dream in the 1990s, and then proceeded to take it global. And it’s no longer just radicals who see the need for radical change. In 2012, 21 past winners of the prestigious Blue Planet Prize – a group that includes James Hansen, former director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway – authored a landmark report <http://mahb.stanford.edu/nodal-activities/blue-planet-laureates-environment…>. It stated that, “in the face of an absolutely unprecedented emergency, society has no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilization. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us.” That’s tough for a lot of people in important positions to accept, since it challenges something that might be even more powerful than capitalism, and that is the fetish of centrism – of reasonableness, seriousness, splitting the difference, and generally not getting overly excited about anything. This is the habit of thought that truly rules our era, far more among the liberals who concern themselves with matters of climate policy than among conservatives, many of whom simply deny the existence of the crisis. Climate change <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-change> presents a profound challenge to this cautious centrism because half measures won’t cut it: “all of the above energy” program, as US president Barack Obama describes his approach, has about as much chance of success as an all-of-the-above diet, and the firm deadlines imposed by science require that we get very worked up indeed. The challenge, then, is not simply that we need to spend a lot of money and change a lot of policies; it’s that we need to think differently, radically differently, for those changes to be remotely possible. A worldview will need to rise to the fore that sees nature, other nations, and our own neighbours not as adversaries, but rather as partners in a grand project of mutual reinvention. That’s a big ask. But it gets bigger. Because of our endless procrastination *,* we also have to pull off this massive transformation without delay. The International Energy Agency (IEA) warns that if we do not get our emissions under control by a rather terrifying 2017, our fossil fuel economy will “lock-in” extremely dangerous warming. “The energy-related infrastructure then in place will generate all the CO2 emissions allowed” in our carbon budget for limiting warming to 2C – “leaving no room for additional power plants, factories and other infrastructure unless they are zero-carbon, which would be extremely costly”. This assumes, probably accurately, that governments would be unwilling to force the closure of still profitable power plants and factories. As Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist, bluntly put it <http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204358004577027542955102790>: “The door to reach two degrees is about to close. In 2017 it will be closed forever.” In short, we have reached what some activists have started calling “Decade Zero” of the climate crisis: we either change now or we lose our chance. All this means that the usual free market assurances – A techno-fix is around the corner! Dirty development is just a phase on the way to a clean environment, look at 19th-century London! – simply don’t add up. We don’t have a century to spare for China and India to move past their Dickensian phases. Because of our lost decades, it is time to turn this around now. Is it possible? Absolutely. Is it possible without challenging the fundamental logic of deregulated capitalism? Not a chance. I was struck recently by a mea culpa of sorts, written by Gary Stix, a senior editor of Scientific American*. *Back in 2006, he edited a special issue on responses to climate change and, like most such efforts, the articles were narrowly focused on showcasing exciting low-carbon technologies. But in 2012 Stix wrote <http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/03/17/effective-world…> that he had overlooked a much larger and more important part of the story – the need to create the social and political context in which these technological shifts stand a chance of displacing the all too profitable status quo. “If we are ever to cope with climate change in any fundamental way, radical solutions on the social side are where we must focus, though. The relative efficiency of the next generation of solar cells is trivial by comparison.” In other words, our problem has a lot less to do with the mechanics of solar power than the politics of human power – specifically whether there can be a shift in who wields it, a shift away from corporations and toward communities, which in turn depends on whether or not the great many people who are getting a rotten deal under our current system can build a determined and diverse enough social force to change the balance of power. Such a shift would require rethinking the very nature of humanity’s power – our right to extract ever more without facing consequences, our capacity to bend complex natural systems to our will. This is a shift that challenges not only capitalism, but also the building blocks of materialism that preceded modern capitalism, a mentality some call “extractivism”. Because, underneath all of this is the real truth we have been avoiding: climate change isn’t an “issue” to add to the list of things to worry about, next to healthcare and taxes. It is a civilisational wake-up call. A powerful message – spoken in the language of fires, floods, droughts, and extinctions – telling us that we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing this planet. Telling us that we need to evolve. Some say there is no time for this transformation; the crisis is too pressing and the clock is ticking. I agree that it would be reckless to claim that the only solution to this crisis is to revolutionise our economy and revamp our worldview from the bottom up – and anything short of that is not worth doing. There are all kinds of measures that would lower emissions substantively that could and should be done right now. But we aren’t taking those measures, are we? The reason is that by failing to fight these big battles that stand to shift our ideological direction and change the balance of who holds power in our societies, a context has been slowly created in which any muscular response to climate change seems politically impossible, especially during times of economic crisis*. * On the other hand, if we can shift the cultural context even a little, then there will be some breathing room for those sensible reformist policies that will at least get the atmospheric carbon numbers moving in the right direction. And winning is contagious so, who knows? For a quarter of a century, we have tried the approach of polite incremental change, attempting to bend the physical needs of the planet to our economic model’s need for constant growth and new profit-making opportunities. The results have been disastrous, leaving us all in a great deal more danger than when the experiment began. Looking for a Moose <http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/688211.Looking_for_a_Moose> is one of my two-year-old son’s favourite books. It’s about a bunch of kids that really, really, really want to see a moose. They search high and low – through a forest, a swamp, in brambly bushes and up a mountain, for “a long legged, bulgy nosed, branchy antlered moose”. The joke is that there are moose hiding on each page. In the end, the animals all come out of hiding and the ecstatic kids proclaim: “We’ve never ever seen so many moose!” On about the 75th reading, it suddenly hit me: he might never see a moose. I tried to hold it together. I went back to my computer and began to write about my time in northern Alberta, tar sands country, where members of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation told me about how the moose had changed – one woman described killing a moose on a hunting trip only to find that the flesh had already turned green. I heard a lot about strange tumors too, which locals assumed had to do with the animals drinking water contaminated by tar sands toxins. But mostly I heard about how the moose were simply gone. And not just in Alberta. “Rapid Climate Changes Turn North Woods into Moose Graveyard,” reads a May 2012 headline in <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rapid-climate-changes-turn-north-…>Scientific American <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rapid-climate-changes-turn-north-…>*. *A year and a half later, The New York Times was reporting <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/science/earth/something-is-killing-off-th…> that one of Minnesota’s two moose populations had declined from four thousand in the 1990s to just one hundred today. Will he ever see a moose? Then, the other day, I was slain by a miniature board book called Snuggle Wuggle <http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1300618.Snuggle_Wuggle>*. *It involves different animals cuddling, with each posture given a ridiculously silly name: “How does a bat hug?” it asks. “Topsy turvy, topsy turvy.” For some reason my son reliably cracks up at this page. I explain that it means upside down, because that’s the way bats sleep. But all I could think about was the report of some 100,000 dead and dying bats <http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-08/hundred-thousand-dead-bats-after-qld-…> raining down from the sky in the midst of record-breaking heat across part of Queensland, Australia. Whole colonies devastated. Will he ever see a bat? When fear like that used to creep through my armour of climate change denial, I would do my utmost to stuff it away, change the channel, click past it. Now I try to feel it. It seems to me that I owe it to my son, just as we all owe it to ourselves and one another. But what should we do with this fear that comes from living on a planet that is dying, made less alive every day? First, accept that it won’t go away. That it is a fully rational response to the unbearable reality that we are living in a dying world, a world that a great many of us are helping to kill, by doing things like making tea and driving to the grocery store and yes, okay, having kids. Next, use it. Fear is a survival response. Fear makes us run, it makes us leap, it can make us act superhuman. But we need somewhere to run *to*. Without that, the fear is only paralysing. So the real trick, the only hope, really, is to allow the terror of an unlivable future to be balanced and soothed by the prospect of building something much better than many of us have previously dared hope. Yes, there will be things we will lose, luxuries some of us will have to give up, whole industries that will disappear. Climate change is already here, and increasingly brutal disasters are headed our way no matter what we do. But it’s not too late to avert the worst, and there is still time to change ourselves so that we are far less brutal to one another when those disasters strike. And that, it seems to me, is worth a great deal. Because the thing about a crisis this big, this all-encompassing, is that it changes everything. It changes what we can do, what we can hope for, what we can demand from ourselves and our leaders. It means there is a whole lot of stuff that we have been told is inevitable that simply cannot stand. And it means that a whole lot of stuff we have been told is impossible has to start happening right away. Can we pull it off? All I know is that nothing is inevitable. Nothing except that climate change changes everything. And for a very brief time, the nature of that change is still up to us. - Extracted from THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING: Capitalism vs the Climate <http://bookshop.theguardian.com/catalog/product/view/id/281655/> by Naomi Klein published this week in paperback by Penguin, £8.99 William V. DePaulo, Esq. 179 Summers Street, Suite 232 Charleston, WV 25301-2163 Tel 304-342-5588 Fax 304-342-5505 william.depaulo(a)gmail.com www.passeggiata.com

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Fwd: [Coal Volunteers List] from ScienceDaily e-newsletter: Climate science literacy unrelated to public acceptance of human-caused global warming
by James Kotcon 06 Mar '15

06 Mar '15

This is a pretty important article for those of us trying to engage our neighbors and communities on climate change. We have a tendency to think of our opponents as scientifically challenged (to put it mildly), but these data show that opponents of climate action are at least as knowledgeable of what climate scientists think as climate action supporters. After 20+ years of hearing about it, they know the scientific arguments, but the problem is that they view it through the lens of protecting their values and culture. Many opponents view this as an issue of Big Government taking away their communities. The author cites the interesting example of South Florida, where local groups developed a local action plan to protect against rising sea levels. When communities come together to work out how to solve local problems, even the Republicans want to use sound science. I suggest we need to use this concept to develop plans for climate action in West Virginia that avoid debates over global issues. Instead, our focus needs to be on how West Virginia communities can adapt to the changes ahead. The vast majority of West Virginians both support the coal industry, and know that it is declining. The vast majority also pay electric bills, and know that electric rates are going up. And almost all political leaders know that the state budget will face a really big hole as coal severance taxes decline. If we can get a conversation going about solutions to these problems, instead of getting hung up on an "Us versus Them" mentality, we may get some traction. Whaddya Tink? Jim Kotcon ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Paul Wilson <pjgrunt(a)gmail.com> Date: Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 8:17 AM Subject: [Coal Volunteers List] from ScienceDaily e-newsletter: Climate science literacy unrelated to public acceptance of human-caused global warming To: Resilient Habitats Listserve < CONS-AWL-RESILIENT-HABITATS(a)lists.sierraclub.org>, Coal Alerts < coal-volunteers-list(a)sierraclub.org> Climate science literacy unrelated to public acceptance of human-caused global warming <http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/4JD…> Posted: 24 Feb 2015 05:38 AM PST Deep public divisions over climate change are unrelated to differences in how well ordinary citizens understand scientific evidence on global warming. Indeed, members of the public who score the highest on a climate-science literacy test are the most politically polarized on whether human activity is causing global temperatures to rise. <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment?a=4JD…> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment?a=4JD…> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment?a=4JD…> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment?a=4JD…> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment?a=4JD…> -- Paul Wilson Sierra Club Military Outings Project Healing Waters Fly-fishing 504 Jefferson Ave Charles Town, WV 25414-1130 Phone: 304-725-4360 Cell: 304-279-1361 "There is no forward until you have gone back" ~Buddha "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous" ~ Aristotle JUSTICE, ONLY JUSTICE, SHALT THOU PURSUE. Deuteronomy 16:20 -- To access the Beyond Coal Campaign Resource Portal, go to: https://sites.google.com/a/sierraclub.org/beyond-coal-resource-portal/ To sign up for this list, email neha.mathew(a)sierraclub.org with the subject and message "SUBSCRIBE #coal-volunteer" --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "#Coal-Volunteers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to coal-volunteers-list+unsubscribe(a)sierraclub.org. To post to this group, send email to coal-volunteers-list(a)sierraclub.org.

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SOLAR NOW EMPLOYS MORE AMERICANS THAN COAL
by William V. DePaulo, Esq. 23 Feb '15

23 Feb '15

[image: Moneybox] <http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox.html> A blog about business and economics. Feb. 23 2015 12:42 PM The Solar Business Now Employs More Americans Than Coal Mining By Jordan Weissmann <http://www.slate.com/authors.jordan_weissmann.html> [image: 104627690-woker-finishes-installing-solar-panels-funded-by] *You know what this guy isn't going to get? Black lung.* My colleague Dan Gross has a great piece <http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2015/02/apple_kaiser_perma…> on *Slate* about the green energy business' latest coup: Companies like Apple are now buying mass quantities of solar power, as its production costs have fallen far enough in some regions to compete economically with fossil fuels. This, of course, bodes well for the future of renewables; it's one thing when local governments start purchasing solar- or wind-generated electricity as a political gesture; it's a whole other when the private sector jumps on board for the sake of dollars and cents. Anyway, Dan's article reminded me of a cool tidbit I noticed in last week's Economic Report of the President <http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/cea_2015_erp.pdf>: While solar may just be gaining traction with corporate America, by some measures it already employs more workers than coal mining. Here's the story in two graphs from the White House. First the decline of big coal, which according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics directly employs about 80,000 workers these days. [image: pres_coal_oil_1] Economic Report of the President <http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/cea_2015_erp.pdf> And now, the rise of solar. While BLS doesn't break out data for the industry, the Solar Foundation conducts a censuslike survey of employers to track employment trends. As of now, it counts almost 174,000 workers <http://www.thesolarfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Factsheet-Nati…> . [image: pres_solar] You can argue about whether this specific comparison is fair since, as PolitiFact has reported <http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2014/jul/06/sheldon-white…>, other organizations have estimated much higher levels of coal industry employment. A survey by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, for instance, reports that there are more than 123,000 coal workers if you include contractors at mines. Add in transportation jobs, such as the hands who move coal on rail or barges, and the National Mining Association says the industry directly employees some 195,000 Americans. Which number should we rely on? Its a little tough to say. Contractors at mines should obviously be counted. Transport workers are a little trickier, since many of them might still be working if, say, their railroad retooled in order to ship other kinds of freight. But even if you give the trade-group figures the benefit of the doubt, and concede that coal currently supports more jobs than solar, that could change by next year: The Solar Foundation projects <http://www.thesolarfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Factsheet-Nati…> industry employment will grow to 210,000 by the end of 2015. Whether that's sustainable is an open question. Most solar workers are hired to do installations. Presumably, as solar's growth rate slows down at some point in the future, some of those jobs will naturally disappear. And, as *Grist* notes <http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-coal-economy-jobs/>, that day could come sooner rather than later, as an important federal tax credit for renewables is scheduled to expire in 2017. So, from an employment perspective, coal may have a built-in advantage—you need workers to constantly dig more of it out of the ground to burn. Of course, that's also coal's biggest problem.

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Fwd: The Number of U.S. Oil Rigs Continues to Tumble - Bloomberg Business
by William V. DePaulo, Esq. 15 Feb '15

15 Feb '15

ICYM THIS http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-13/number-of-u-s-oil-rigs-co…

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Coal has tumbled more than oil......
by William V. DePaulo, Esq. 07 Feb '15

07 Feb '15

http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2015/02/06/u-s-coal-producers/ U.S. Coal Producers Facing Unprecedented Times <http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2015/02/06/u-s-coal-producers/>*Published Fri, Feb 6, 2015 * | Tim Maverick <http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/author/tim-maverick/>, *Commodities Correspondent* [image: Print This Post] <http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2015/02/06/u-s-coal-producers/print/> [image: Email This Post] <http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2015/02/06/u-s-coal-producers/email/> [image: U.S. Coal Producers Facing Unprecidented Times] <http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2015/02/06/u-s-coal-producers/> While oil is grabbing all the headlines lately, another fuel used to generate heat and light has tumbled even more than the black gold. Global thermal coal prices have tumbled 52% since 2011 alone. And the rout shows no signs of abating with global seaborne thermal prices hitting $62 per metric ton (mt) recently. The reason behind coal’s fall is the same as oil’s – the shale revolution led to a surplus of thermal coal globally, just as demand from China and India started weakening. And like oil, producers around the world are ramping up production, even as prices fall for the fifth year in a row! The strategy is similar to OPEC’s – the lowest-cost coal producers around the world are trying to drive the higher-cost producers out of business. Black Cloud Engulfing U.S. Coal Also as with oil, some of the thermal coal producers in the most trouble are right here in the United States. Thermal or steam coal accounts for over 90% of all domestic coal output. The CEO of *Alpha Natural Resources *(ANR <http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ANR&ql=0>), Kevin Crutchfield, said the conditions facing the U.S. industry are “unprecedented.” In a similar vein, Greg Boyce, CEO of *Peabody Energy *(BTU <http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=BTU&ql=0>), the largest U.S. coal producer, said conditions were “challenging.” And these executives are not exaggerating… U.S. thermal coal prices are at six-year lows, and Appalachian coal recently hit $45.75 per ton, down from more than $56 a ton a year ago. That isn’t far from the $42.20 per ton price hit in the depths of the financial crisis in April 2009. The downturn in domestic demand for coal has been accelerated by the 44% drop in natural gas prices since June. This pushed many utilities, looking to save money, to switch from coal. Exports, which have been a strength the past few years, are also being affected by the aforementioned global glut in thermal coal. Plus, U.S. coal producers are being socked from an unexpected direction too. You see, financial pressure on Russia is forcing the value of the ruble done, which has turned Russia into a competitive low-cost coal producer. These unprecedented conditions can be clearly seen in the price actions of the U.S. coal company stocks. Collapsing Under the Weight In the past five years, Peabody has lost 87% of its value, Alpha 98%, and *Arch Coal *(ACI <http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ACI&ql=0>) 96%. And in the last six months, Peabody is down 59%, while both Alpha and Arch are both down 69%. The stocks have plunged because the financials aren’t pretty. For example, Peabody recently reported an after-tax loss of $787 million for 2014 and slashed its quarterly dividend by 97% to $0.0025 a share. And its operating cash flow of $337 million was less than its interest payment of $414 million, according to the *Financial Times*. Yes, the future for U.S. coal companies looks bleak as conditions continue to worsen, including regulatory pressure from the Obama administration. Unfortunately, exports will not be a salvation. China seems to be serious about cutting pollution coming from coal plants. In fact, many industry observers think we may soon reach peak coal demand in China. Imports of foreign coal into China fell by 11% last year to 292 million mt, says *Bloomberg*. And Chinese consumption of seaborne coal is expected to fall another 9% to 195 million mt this year. So what is the likely end result for U.S. coal producers? As Nomura analyst Curt Woodworth told the *Financial Times*, “I think you’re going to see multiple bankruptcies in U.S. coal over the next 12 to 18 months.” However, that does not mean all U.S. coal firms are headed for the dust bin of history. Peabody has seen some insider buying, and it has more higher-quality assets around the globe, including in Australia, than its peers. So at least it looks to be a survivor. And the chase continues, Tim Maverick Tim Maverick boasts decades of experience in the investment world. He spent 20 years at a major brokerage firm - as a trading supervisor and broker working directly with clients. *Learn More >> <http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/author/tim-maverick/>* <https://www.facebook.com/WallStreetDaily> <https://twitter.com/TimMaverickWSD> <https://plus.google.com/104571546762047448905/posts> <http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2015/02/04/sugar-bear-market/> <http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2015/01/13/a-change-to-your-subscription/> <http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2015/01/14/copper-prices-deficit/> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "kfc-organizers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to kfc-organizers+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to kfc-organizers(a)googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

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New generation capacity from renewables exceeds coal, oil and nukes combined in 2014
by James Kotcon 06 Feb '15

06 Feb '15

?It even beat out new capacity from natural gas! JBK http://theenergycollective.com/globalwarmingisreal/2188916/renewable-energy… [http://theenergycollective.com/sites/theenergycollective.com/files/renewabl…]<http://theenergycollective.com/globalwarmingisreal/2188916/renewable-energy…> New Energy Capacity Installation and Measurement | The Energy Collective It was a close race, but in the end new generating capacity from renewable sources beat out new natural gas capacity by 1.16% in 2014. Of the 49.81% of new capacity from renewable energy, more than one-quarter, or 26.52%, came from wind energy while solar power provided another 20.40% of the total. Read more...<http://theenergycollective.com/globalwarmingisreal/2188916/renewable-energy…>

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NYTimes.com: Investing in Energy Efficiency Pays Off
by William V. DePaulo, Esq. 06 Feb '15

06 Feb '15

OK, not exactly a bulletin, but useful information re what it takes to persuade owners to make investment. William V. DePaulo, Esq. Sent by william.depaulo(a)gmail.com: Investing in Energy Efficiency Pays Off <http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=InCMR7g4BCKC2wiZPkcVUo7tyCrVLZeR&use…> By David Bornstein Colleges are finding that refitting buildings with greener heating and ventilating systems can pay for itself in a few years. Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://nyti.ms/1ELe1HQ <http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=InCMR7g4BCKC2wiZPkcVUo7tyCrVLZeR&use…> To get unlimited access to all New York Times articles, subscribe today. See Subscription Options. <http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=4z5Q7LhI+KVBjmEgFdYACDuqzkg7rwCIjbQi…> To ensure delivery to your inbox, please add nytdirect(a)nytimes.com to your address book. Advertisement <http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&opzn&page=secure.ny…> Copyright 2015 <http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=4z5Q7LhI+KVBjmEgFdYACMlEhIhWVuPIxgan…> | The New York Times Company <http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=4z5Q7LhI+KUv6vqdu/zT/DtUzLlQEcSh&use…> | NYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

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from ScienceDailye-newsletter: Biologists partner bacterium with nitrogen gas to produce more, cleaner bioethanol
by Paul Wilson 03 Feb '15

03 Feb '15

Biologists partner bacterium with nitrogen gas to produce more, cleaner bioethanol <http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/891…> Posted: 02 Feb 2015 06:21 PM PST Biologists believe they have found a faster, cheaper and cleaner way to increase bioethanol production by using nitrogen gas, the most abundant gas in Earth's atmosphere, in place of more costly industrial fertilizers. The discovery could save the industry millions of dollars and make cellulosic ethanol -- made from wood, grasses and inedible parts of plants -- more competitive with corn ethanol and gasoline. <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment?a=891…> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment?a=891…> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment?a=891…> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment?a=891…> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment?a=891…> -- Paul Wilson Sierra Club Military Outings Project Healing Waters Fly-fishing 504 Jefferson Ave Charles Town, WV 25414-1130 Phone: 304-725-4360 Cell: 304-279-1361 "There is no forward until you have gone back" ~Buddha "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous" ~ Aristotle JUSTICE, ONLY JUSTICE, SHALT THOU PURSUE. Deuteronomy 16:20

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NYTimes: XL Pipeline needs crude oil at $65 to $75 to breake even; crude now at $50
by William V. DePaulo, Esq. 03 Feb '15

03 Feb '15

Energy & Environment <http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/energy-environment/index.html> FEB. 2, 2015 Lower Oil Prices Strike at Heart of Canada’s Oil Sands Production By IAN AUSTEN <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/ian_austen/ind…> OTTAWA — For as long as 400-ton dump trucks have been rumbling around the open pit mines of Canada <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/ca…>’s oil sands <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/o/oil_petroleu…>, crews from Kal Tire have been on hand to replace and repair their $70,000, 13-foot diameter tires. But the relationship, going back over a decade, didn’t spare the company when oil <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/oil-petroleu…> prices began plummeting. Dan Allan, the senior vice president of Kal’s mining tire unit, said that customers immediately began looking for price concessions. Others asked Kal to withdraw personnel from some sites or swiftly canceled plans to add more maintenance crews. “We’re sort of caught at the sharp end of the spear,” said Mr. Allan, who is now looking to relocate some employees. “It’s really difficult.” Canada’s oil sands <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/o/oil_petroleu…> — and the 167 billion barrels of reserves — prompted an unprecedented expansion over the last decade. But the roughly $155 billion spending spree left the industry with unusually high production costs. Now, oil sands operators are scrambling to limit the damage, as crude prices hover near seven-year lows <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/business/energy-environment/oil-prices.ht…> . Photo An oil sands operation near Fort McMurray, Alberta, last September. Production costs are high in the oil sands, and low oil prices are a threat to profitability. Credit Todd Korol/Reuters Suncor, the largest oil sands operator, announced plans to eliminate about 1,000 contract jobs. Shell Canada said it would cut its oil sands work force by about 10 percent. Cenovus Energy said that it would reduce investment spending by 27 percent, and set aside plans for two oil sands project expansions. A camp for workers in Northern Alberta, the heart of the oil sands, was permanently closed and another was temporarily shut. Several proposed oil sands projects and expansions are under review or have been deferred. The cuts, though, won’t necessarily translate into lower production. Oil sands production is expected to increase by 25 percent, to 4.8 million barrels a day, according to January estimates by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, partly because of new projects moving into production. The enormous projects are just too difficult to switch off, and the companies must keep pumping crude to cover the sizable debt on their multibillion-dollar investments. They also don’t want to cede market share to producers in other countries. Imperial Oil, which is controlled by Exxon Mobil, said on Monday that fourth-quarter earnings dropped by 36 percent. Even so, the company plans to start production at two new oil sands projects this year. “It really makes no economic sense to bring down production at this point because most of the costs are sunk,” said Stewart Glickman, an energy equity analyst with S&P Capital IQ Equity. While production may keep humming along, the big question is whether oil sands producers can break even at current prices. An oil sands project takes five to 10 years to design and build, and they have a life span of 25 to 50 years. Fort Hills, a project now under construction in a partnership led by Suncor, has a budget of 13.5 billion Canadian dollars (about $10.7 billion). Once such projects are up and running, the expenses are significant, given the process needed to get the oil <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/oil-petroleu…>-laden bitumen from the ground. It must either be dug up or blasted from under the ground using steam. Two energy-hungry steps are then needed to separate the bitumen from the sand and to turn it into usable oil known as synthetic crude. A frequently cited study <http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/221135.pdf> prepared for the United States State Department’s review of the Keystone XL <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/k/keystone_pip…> pipeline estimated that many oil sands projects become unprofitable at prices of $65 to $75 a barrel. Prices are now below $50. But the State Department review, which was released in January 2014, doesn’t necessarily account for the changing environment. Andrew Leach, an economist and professor of energy policy at the University of Alberta, said that the American figure inflated the break-even point by including a 12 percent profit margin for oil producers. The drop in the Canadian dollar has also provided an added cushion for domestic oil companies that are paid for their products in the now more valuable American currency. When those factors are combined, Mr. Leach said, “you’re looking at a reduction of the growth rate at current prices, a stall.” He estimates that the production cost for synthetic crude from the major open pit mine projects is $31 to $39 a barrel, at current exchange rates. He added, though, that a few projects with production problems had much higher costs. The industry thinking, he said, is, “I’m willing to burn through cash on this project because in the long term it will be worth it.” As a result, most oil sands operators are reviewing future projects rather than considering production cuts or stopping projects already under construction. They are also looking to cut costs as swiftly as possible. “Nobody in the oil industry feels very secure,” said Ken Smith, president of the Unifor union local that represents about 3,600 Suncor employees who operate the giant dump trucks and excavators. “We’re kind of at the mercy of these big players like the Saudis and Russia.” Mr. Smith said he believed that none of Suncor’s 1,000 layoffs would involve his members. Sneh Seetal, a spokeswoman for Suncor, said the company had yet to determine the specifics, but noted that it would involve a mix of contract positions and employees spread across the company’s domestic operations, which include refining and gasoline retailing. Companies in supporting roles — such as suppliers for safety boots and cleaning services — are feeling the most immediate squeeze. Photo A Suncor oil sands mining operation near Fort McMurray, Alberta. Such enormous projects are difficult to switch off. Credit Todd Korol/Reuters The Fort McMurray branch of Finning International, a Caterpillar dealer that sold many of the $5 million to $6 million heavy-haul dump trucks, recently laid off about 60 workers. At the end of December, Civeo <http://www.civeo.com>, which is based in Houston, said it was mothballing an oil sands work housing complex with 2,005 rooms and was permanently closing another with 510. Trevor Haynes, the president and chief executive of the Black Diamond Group <http://www.blackdiamondlimited.com/main/index>, another supplier of work housing based in Calgary, Alberta, said he was not yet being pressured to cut rates by oil companies and did not expect to have to close any of the housing in the oil sands. But that does not mean that he is sanguine. “It comes down to one word, which is ‘uncertainty,’ ” Mr. Haynes said. “Those of us who have been around awhile have seen these periods before, so it feels familiar, if vaguely disconcerting.” Continue reading the main story <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/business/energy-environment/lower-oil-pri…> Continue reading the main story <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/business/energy-environment/lower-oil-pri…> Continue reading the main story <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/business/energy-environment/lower-oil-pri…> His main concern is that new construction projects may be indefinitely postponed. If so, he plans to fill the void by supplying housing to proposed liquefied natural gas <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/natural-gas/…> plants in British Columbia as well as that province’s recently announced plan to build a major hydroelectric <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/hydroelectri…> dam. Not everyone is upset or worried about the slowdown in the oil sands. Melissa Blake, the mayor of the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray and most of the major oil sands sites, said she welcomed it. After trying to keep up with a population increase of more than 125 percent since 2000, Ms. Blake said, Fort McMurray needs a break. “The past few years have been just been catching up with the growth we’ve had,” the mayor said. “There’s a bit of an advantage from having a less robust industry.” A break, Ms. Blake, said should allow the community’s infrastructure to finally catch up with its growth. Ms. Blake said she had seen no obvious signs of a slowdown around town, like emptier stores and restaurants. But that, she said, is probably because most of the 79,000 full-time residents of Fort McMurray are in less vulnerable jobs. That’s probably not the case, she acknowledged, for about 39,000 people who fly in to work on oil sands projects but make their homes elsewhere, often on the other side of Canada. But Ms. Blake acknowledged that if the slump in prices proved to be sustained, few would escape its effects. “There’s going to have to be a real battening down of the hatches,” she said.

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