Four States Investigating Exxon for Fraud Over Climate Denial

The following is a presentation by climate activist Bill McKibben about the global Break Free from Fossil Fuels movement. This is a global civil disobedience campaign directed at fossil fuel companies rather than government policy. Its aim is to pressure these companies to leave untapped coal, oil and gas reserves in the ground.

It’s a bad news/good news presentation. First McKibben gives us the bad news: despite all the hype, the outcome of the Paris climate change conference in 2015 was pure rhetoric. The treaty signed at the conference won’t lower carbon emissions sufficiently to prevent catastrophic climate change. See Global Civil Disobedience

However there is good news on two fronts: the speed at which many countries are transitioning to renewable energy and the remarkable success of the global Break Free campaign.

Among the successful actions McKibben describes: the 2015 Keystone civil disobedience at the White House that persuaded Obama to cancel the pipeline; the Australian campaign that blocked construction of the largest coal mine in the world; the Washington State campaign blocking construction of coal terminals in Longview and Cherry Point; the Seattle blockade of Shell’s Arctic drilling rig; and the global anti-fracking movement, which has led to a ban on fracking in New York, Quebec, Wales, Scotland and France.

The best part of the presentation concerns the recent Columbia School of Journalism expose revealing Exxon knew about climate change in 1977 and funded a massive public relations scam to convince the public it was a hoax. According to McKibben, the attorney generals of New York, California, Massachusetts and the Virgin Islands are investigating Exxon for fraud over their role in the climate denial movement.

Q&A’s start at 46:00.

The Growing Coal Train Movement

Momenta

Directed by Andy Miller and Robin Moore (2014)

Film Review

Momenta is about the growing grassroots movement to stop the coal trains that are creating environmental havoc in the Pacific Northwest. The movement owes its diversity to the devastation the trains create in nearly all the communities they pass through.

Hurt by the rapid shutdown of coal-fired power plants (for environmental and economic reasons), the US coal industry is seeking to cut their losses by selling as much coal as possible to China. Coal exported to China via Pacific deep water ports comes from Montana’s Powder River Basin. The coal trains carrying it it follow a circuitous route through Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. They endanger the health and livelihoods of hundreds of communities along the way. Including Montana ranchers facing catastrophic water shortages as the mining companies deplete the Powder River Basin aquifer.

The number of coal trains varies between 18 and 120 a day depending on the community. The trains are uncovered and each sheds 31 tons of coal dust daily. The coal dust contains high levels of mercury and arsenic. This is in addition to the heavy metals contained in diesel particulates given off by the train engines produced by train engines. The latter substantially increases residents’ risk of asthma, heart attack and stroke.

In urban areas, such as Billings, Spokane, Portland, Longview, Seattle and Bellingham, the trains always travel through the poorest neighborhoods. In more sparsely populated areas, they contaminate pristine waterways essential to recreational fishing, water sports and tourism.

The documentary also emphasizes the need to reduce global reliance on coal to reduce overall carbon emissions. The coal industry is indifferent to these so-called “externalities.”

They refuse to cover their trains to reduce the spread of coal dust and are only willing to pay 5% of the $500 million infrastructure necessary to accommodate the increased train traffic. According to one activist, “all they care about is squeezing the last bit of profit out of a dying industry.”

The documentary concludes with a discussion – and a tour of a Marysville solar panel factory – of the beneficial effects of the renewable energy industry on the US economy. The latter creates far more jobs than exporting coal to China and is less dependent on fluctuations in the Chinese economy.

For more information on the anti-coal train movement go to http://www.powerpastcoal.org/