Archive - 2009

The dirty energy lobby and right wing groups have been doing everything possible to derail a clean energy bill and convince Congress that the majority of Americans are against it. They have taken advantage of the channels used by citizens to communicate with their representatives and senators, and corrupted them. It's time for real constituents to make their voices heard!

By Sarah McDonald of Public Citizen Texas, and cross-posted from their blog. -- Luis

Yesterday, the Public Citizen Texas team drove down to Houston to crash the American Petroleum Institute's Energy Citizen event. Billed as a "grassroots" rally against the cap and trade bill currently before Congress, this event was nothing more than a company picnic.

With the first week of recess completed, town hall meetings remain dominated by health care, and complicated by the Astroturfing of right wing think tanks and energy lobbies. With two weeks of recess still to go, grassroots voices will need to be louder than ever to disprove the notion that the anti-climate voice is the majority voice, and to create the necessary momentum for the Senate to pass the strongest possible climate and energy bill in the fall. Public support for climate action is strong (as evidenced by this week's Zogby poll), we just need to ensure that those voices are heard.

When will it end? Just as the dust was somewhat settling on Bonner & Associates’ forged grassroots letters (although it still remains a big issue), Greenpeace USA uncovered a doozy. They obtained a leaked memo from the American Petroleum Institute (API) that details plans to launch a national astroturf campaign to stage “Energy Citizen” rallies and attack clean energy legislation at staged public events. Greenpeace’s wrote a letter to API to verify the memo and reminded the company that these:

By Katy Walter, 1Sky organizer working with Clean Wisconsin. -- Garth

Climate change is happening: we are responsible for it, the consequences will be dire, and we need to stop it. Despite these facts, it has become clear to me while working with 1Sky here in Wisconsin that the public believes there is still ongoing debate. Instead of screaming at the next person who said “I don’t believe in global warming”, I channeled my frustrations into uncovering the source of this dangerous misconception.

It may be vacation time, but 1Sky sure is busy fighting for climate. On Monday, 1Sky supporters and organizers held 69 beach parties in 28 states nationwide to welcome the Senate home for summer recess. And that's just the beginning.

Not only are 1Sky Supporters out in force with their Senate beach parties and rallies; they're hitting the blogs with messages to their senators. Take Mary's blog, A Female New Mexican's Political Point of View. Mary supplies a direct message to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM):

The Senate went on recess last Friday, August 7, and we are turning the heat up today back home (see below on the 85 rallies we have organized around the country in swing states).

We just sent out this press release about the beach parties that 1Sky volunteers organized across the country yesterday:

On the first weekday of the U.S. Senate’s summer recess, community leaders and activists from 1Sky and allied groups held over 65 “Beach Parties” in 28 states nationwide yesterday in front of Senate offices urging a comprehensive clean energy jobs bill when the Senate returns this fall.

Images of the beach parties from throughout the country can be viewed at http://www.1sky.org/beach-party-pics.

Read the rest of the press release here.

It's a sad irony that some of the most vociferous climate deniers and opponents of clean energy are also some of the loudest cheerleaders for skyrocketing military budgets and chest-thumping war mongering -- in other words, self-proclaimed national security "hawks." If they were truly serious about national security, they would heed this latest assessment of the climate threat we face unless we take immediate action:

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.