Rick Piltz's legacy to continue

by Climate Science and Policy Watch, April 2, 2015

As recent events in Florida clearly show, the issues around which Rick Piltz fought so passionately have not gone away. Instead, they still surface at an alarming rate. His timeless voice has never been more crucial, and the Government Accountability Project (GAP) is committed to continuing this fight in his name.  A post from Louis Clark, President of the Government Accountability Project and Michael Termini is Climate Science & Policy Watch Interim Director and GAP’s Corporate & Financial Accountability Deputy Director...

We miss our dear friend, heroic client and wise colleague Rick Piltz. He was a rational voice who would routinely distill and translate scientific complexities into understandable language without doing harm to their meaning. He made climate change science accessible to concerned people across the globe who simply want to know what is happening to their climate and environment, who or what is responsible, and how to evaluate the extraordinarily well-financed propaganda that climate science denialists – a word that Rick coined – continue to pump into the public discussion and decision-making on climate policy.

As patrons of Climate Science Watch well know – now renamed Climate Science & Policy Watch and soon to be expanded in accordance with Rick’s vision for the program – Rick was a Senior Associate in the Climate Change Science Program during the George W. Bush presidency. He was responsible for digesting the science findings on billions of dollars worth of climate science research from thirteen different federal agencies and turning those into comprehensible reports for Congress and the public. On the darker side of that job, he was likewise required by top agency officials to incorporate secret White House edits into the final drafts of those reports. Some of the reports that the agency slipped over to the Bush White House came back with hundreds of hand-written edits penned by Philip Cooney, a former chief lobbyist from the Petroleum Institute – a corporate lawyer, not a scientist. These edits changed the reports substantially, making the actual results appear less definitive about whether climate change was even occurring and if human activity was the cause of that change. In one report, pages of disturbing evidence from the Arctic were crossed out altogether – in effect, shredded.

As is now well known, Rick collected these White House edits, and in June, 2005, he made history by revealing them. According to an Oxford University study, his disclosure influenced the way in which journalists reported about climate science thereafter: Rick shifted the discussion away from a battle of so-called experts toward recognizing scientific consensus. Rick’s laudatory obituaries last fall in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications described this history in detail. In some of these pieces and elsewhere, however, Rick was referred to as a “firebrand” because of his truth-telling. Although he would not have minded that characterization, most of us who knew him well experienced him as humorous, soft-spoken, and quite exacting in his language – certainly not a strident firebrand. Regardless, “tenacious and uncompromising truth-teller” seems more apropos. Rick was one of us and we must remember that so others will also find the courage to come forward.

As a powerful example, in a video filmed in the GAP studio (short version;full length version) Rick reflected upon why he did what he did. In a soft voice, he described his outrage at being required to incorporate inappropriate and political edits from an oil industry huckster into official government reports about the results of this nation’s investment in climate research at the very agency responsible for compiling, reporting and disseminating the results of vast sums of taxpayer research funds. He passionately said:

“When this guy’s edits came to me, there was part of me that said: ‘Who do you think you’re dealing with? Do you think I’m one of you? I’m not one of you.’”

Which brings us to an equally important question, “Who are these people who do go along with these types of demands?” For every whistleblower like Rick, there are hundreds of civil servants and corporate employees who remain silent and quietly follow dishonest orders. Recently, the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting broke a story that employees and contractors working for state environmental agencies were prohibited from using terms such as “climate change” and “global warming” because the Governor of the state did not “believe in it,” as if the scientific data were an ideology or a religious doctrine.

For years, hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals apparently went along with this practice of substituting “faux science” for scientific reality. Given that Florida is arguably amongst the most likely places to suffer the greatest impact from rising sea levels in the United States, it is remarkable that we are into the second term of Governor Rick Scott’s tenure before this secret climate change denialist practice has come to light. Encouraged by Rick and these new Florida whistleblowers, hopefully others now will grasp the courage to come forward with new revelations. It is critical that these new voices join the warning chorus before it is too late.

We should all applaud these former employees and contractors who are stepping forward to expose this policy and practice. This time, perhaps we should spend less time analyzing or questioning what it is about the whistleblowers that compelled them to speak up. It is time to examine this governor, those state agencies and all those people who went along with the practices that allowed the climate denialist charade to thrive. It is time to follow the trail of breadcrumbs – why are people hiding the truth and what do they have to gain from lying to the public? And if they do benefit from hiding the truth, why are they in power?

Or to use Rick’s words: “Who do you think you’re dealing with?” The silence of so many is indeed
an indictment of them and of their state organizations. Who did the Governor think they were? It is obvious. Sheep.

As recent events in Florida clearly show, the issues Rick Piltz fought so passionately have not gone away. Instead, they still surface at an alarming rate. His timeless voice has never been more crucial, and GAP is committed to continuing this fight in his name. Stay tuned for new developments and program updates as we re-launch the latest vision of Rick’s Climate Science & Policy Watch this spring.

Louis Clark is President of the Government Accountability Project. Michael Termini is Climate Science & Policy Watch Interim Director and GAP’s Corporate & Financial Accountability Deputy Director.

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2015/04/02/climate-science-policy-watch-continuing-the-rick-piltz-legacy/

Joe Romm: This Major Newspaper Made a Bold Move in Support of Climate Science

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, March 17, 2015

U.K. Guardian cover wrap, March 17, 2015.

The U.K. Guardian has launched a campaign of science and conscience to reverse humanity’s self-destructive pursuit of burning all of the world’s fossil fuels: #keepitintheground. Journalism professor and media critic Jay Rosen labeled it “an old fashioned newspaper campaign.”

The Guardian starts by calling on Bill and Melinda Gates to divest their foundation from all investments in fossil fuels. Guardian Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger has also asked for help from whistleblowers in fossil fuel industries to help expose the industry.

Full details of the Guardian campaign — including a petition you can sign — are here. Potential whistleblowers, please click here.

The science is crystal clear that we need to leave the vast majority of fossil fuels in the ground unburnt if we are to have any realistic chance whatsoever of limiting total warming to non-catastrophic levels. The journal Nature spelled that out in a January study, “The geographical distribution of fossil fuels unused when limiting global warming to 2 °C.”

The Guardian has posted a video on their website explaining why we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground and why that is the biggest story in the world:

Editor Rusbridger writes that the argument to divest from the biggest carbon polluters is “becoming an overwhelming one, on both moral and financial grounds.” He quotes Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change.” He explains:

The usual rule of newspaper campaigns is that you don’t start one unless you know you’re going to win it. This one will almost certainly be won in time: the physics is unarguable. But we are launching our campaign today in the firm belief that it will force the issue now into the boardrooms and inboxes of people who have billions of dollars at their disposal.

Media campaigns for the public interest and against injustice are nothing new. And what greater public interest is there than not turning much of the planet’s most habitable and arable land into a near permanent dustbowl, sharply reducing humanity’s ability to feed what will then be 9 billion people?

Bill McKibben, one of the founders of the divestment movement whose organization 350.org is partnering with the Guardian, emailed me, “Alan Rusbridger is the finest newspaper editor of his era, and this caps his career — he’s the first editor, I think, that’s ever truly treated the greatest story of our time with the gravity it requires.”

I understand that some people in — and out — of journalism believe that the media’s job is simply to report the news without any judgment as to what truths are in the public interest to expose. That is an ahistorical view of the media. My father, who was editor of the Middletown (New York) Times Herald-Record for decades, certainly understood that a key mission of the paper was to advance the public interest. But then that view was quite noncontroversial in the 1960s and 1970s.

One of the greatest editors of his era, the late Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post, took on the government over the paper’s right to publish the Pentagon papers. And he famously oversaw the paper’s relentless and ultimately triumphant expose of corruption in the Nixon White House.

And 61 years ago last week, the legendary Edward R. Murrow, another one of his my father’s heroes, hosted “A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy,” perhaps the most famous episode of his CBS show, See It Now. In this time of climate crisis and climate silence, Murrow is a reminder that at one time journalists spoke out on the greatest issues of the day:

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent…. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities.

The New York Times has called Edward R. Murrow, “Perhaps the most esteemed American journalist since Ben Franklin.” But now his courage and moral outrage in the face of injustice and intimidation seem to be of a lost era.

Even back in 1990, the Times could write, “Since his day, commercial television has shown little enthusiasm for controversy of the sort that he courted; all the news divisions take chances from time to time, but the intervals seem long, and none of his successors conveys the passionate conviction that came so naturally to him.”

But we must remember that what Murrow did was itself nothing new. In the Progressive Era, “muckraking” journalists and newspapers routinely launched public interest campaigns to expose government corruption, abuse in industries like meat-packing, and child labor practices. Ida Tarbell famously took on robber baron John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil monopoly, with a 19-part (!) series that began in the November 1902 issue of McClure’s. A 2008 biography summarizes her story this way, “How a female investigative journalist brought down the world’s greatest tycoon and broke up the Standard Oil monopoly.”

The main difference between what Standard Oil did and what its descendants (such as Exxon and Mobil) are doing to harm the public interest is that Standard Oil was mostly harming the U.S. public economically through monopolistic practices, whereas today Exxon and other major fossil fuel companies are harming our children and countless future generations around the world through their myriad efforts to block climate action and spread disinformation.

Can journalistic muckrakers go too far exposing corrupt politicians and dangerous pollution? Of course. The great Republican progressive president and trust-buster Teddy Roosevelt, who coined the term muckraker in a 1906 speech, said “the men with the muck rakes are often indispensable to the well being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck….”

Given that media has been far too silent on the biggest story of our time for too long, given that we are headed well past plausibly safe levels of warming and headed toward unimaginably catastrophic levels of warming, it is quite safe to say that the major media have not gone too far. Certainly if we leave future generations a ruined climate, they aren’t going to think the major U.S. media — or any of us — did enough.

Roosevelt said:

There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.

Is there a greater evil than what we are doing now to the climate, which is likely irreversible for many centuries? Is there anything more immoral than what we are consciously doing to the next 40 generations to walk this planet?

Climate science tells us what the facts are. The rest is up to us. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/17/3634483/uk-guardian-climate-campaign/

Remembering Rick Piltz, Scientific Integrity Advocate

by Michael Halpern, "The Equation," Union of Concerned Scientists, October 20, 2014

Rick Piltz, founder of Climate Science Watch and revered whistleblower who exposed political interference in climate science, succumbed to cancer over the weekend. He took a brave and unusual path from civil servant to scientific integrity advocate and climate activist that inspired many of us. His memory will continue to motivate me and many others to work tirelessly for a better world where science more freely informs public policy.

I first met Rick in 2005. A senior official with the U.S. Global Change Research Program, he had grown tired of working in an environment under the Bush administration where political interference in the work of climate scientists had become routine. He resigned from government service and the Government Accountability Project agreed to represent him as a whistleblower.

He came to the UCS offices to talk about everything he knew about the politicization of climate science. Quite frankly, the amount of information he shared exhausted me. We talked for more than three hours. He was completely open with what he knew, and very interested in exploring strategies for bringing attention to what was happening.

Tireless whistleblower and scientific integrity advocate Rick Piltz testifies at a January 2007 congressional hearing on political interference in climate science. Former UCS Senior Scientist Francesca Grifo also testified at the hearing, where UCS released a survey of government climate scientists showing pervasive political pressures on their work. Screengrab from C-SPAN.

Rick became a minor celebrity when The New York Times published an article based on documents Rick provided showing that a high-ranking Bush administration official and former American Petroleum Institute lobbyist had rewritten government scientific reports to downplay the link between human activity and climate change. The official, Phil Cooney, quicklyleft the administration to work for ExxonMobil. (Yup, sometimes you can’t even make this stuff up).

“Rick was one of the few people brave enough to speak on the record about the distortion and suppression of climate science during the Bush administration despite the possible repercussions for him and his work,” said UCS senior writer Seth Shulman, who investigated many cases of the abuse of science at the time. “Speaking out the way he did still took a lot of courage because he was uncertain about his future in the field. I greatly admired him for that.”

Indeed, it takes a ton of courage to become a whistleblower. You risk your livelihood and often take a big financial hit. You (and your family) often become subject to attacks by powerful interests. You may enjoy some protection from retribution, but even then, the deck is often stacked against you. But Rick soldiered on.

“Rick was a public servant in the truest sense, both while he was in the government and after he made the principled decision to resign and to start up Climate Science Watch,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for UCS.

For the next decade, Climate Science Watch paid close attention to the use and misuse of science in government and attacks on climate science and scientists. I knew that whenever I called on Rick, the answer would be an enthusiastic YES. He helped us conceptualize theextensive UCS report on political interference in climate science that was the subject of the House Committee on Government Reform’s first hearing on the topic in 2007 (and testified at that hearing). He contributed ideas that helped us write Federal Science and the Public Good, which remains our basic blueprint for restoring scientific integrity to federal policymaking. He would always be willing to join me to a meeting with an administration official, or meet for coffee to give advice, or send an email to make sure I was aware of a new challenge.

While some deprioritized work on scientific integrity once President Obama took office, Rick knew, personally, that the system that allowed for such rampant abuses of science was still in effect. He did not shy away from criticizing the Obama administration on all kinds of issues when he felt that it was failing to meet the president’s pledge to “restore science to its rightful place” (see here, here, here, here, and here for just a few recent posts).

Rick also saw the danger of attacking the work of climate scientists through criminal statutes and open records requests and public defamation. His organization signed on to numerous letters pushing back on such attacks, and he blogged regularly about developments.

Once he stood up, Rick Piltz never again sat down. He never took his eyes off of the prize, which for him was a world responsive to the consequences of climate change, and a democracy that respected the work of experts who devote their lives to public service.

“He has been such a guiding light for truth as we all have been navigating through calm and stormy waters,” UCS’s Brenda Ekwurzel wrote to me this morning. “I can think of no better way of honoring Rick than by continuing the fight he so bravely met head on.”

Those of us who knew him will always remember his soft-spoken manner, his methodical approach, his wry sense of humor, and his strong sense of justice.

So long, Rick. So many of us will miss you, and do our best to carry your passion forward.

http://blog.ucsusa.org/remembering-rick-piltz-scientific-integrity-advocate-691

Climate Patriot Rick Piltz -- full interview

YouTube.com, published on December 18, 2013

Rick Piltz is a former senior associate in the coordination office of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. In 2005, he blew the whistle on the White House's improper editing and censorship of science program reports on global warming intended for the public and Congress. GAP, which represented Piltz, released edited reports to The New York Times that documented the actual hand-editing -- by White House Counsel on Environmental Quality Chief of Staff Philip Cooney, a lawyer and former climate team leader with the American Petroleum Institute -- which was done to downplay the reality of human-driven global warming and its harmful impacts, and exaggerate scientific uncertainty. This scandal sparked a media frenzy that resulted in the resignation of Cooney, who found a job at ExxonMobil days later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4YXEJ1gJVk

Very difficult to see that the article below was written by Andrew Revkin -- he must have been body snatched in the interim:

Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming 

by Andrew Revkin, The New York Times, June 8, 2005

A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.

In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.

The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.

Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training.
The documents were obtained by The New York Times from the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit legal-assistance group for government whistle-blowers.

The project is representing Rick S. Piltz, who resigned in March as a senior associate in the office that coordinates government climate research. That office, now called the Climate Change Science Program, issued the documents that Mr. Cooney edited.

A White House spokeswoman, Michele St. Martin, said yesterday that Mr. Cooney would not be available to comment. "We don't put Phil Cooney on the record," Ms. St. Martin said. "He's not a cleared spokesman."

In one instance in an October 2002 draft of a regularly published summary of government climate research, "Our Changing Planet," Mr. Cooney amplified the sense of uncertainty by adding the word "extremely" to this sentence: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult."

In a section on the need for research into how warming might change water availability and flooding, he crossed out a paragraph describing the projected reduction of mountain glaciers and snowpack. His note in the margins explained that this was "straying from research strategy into speculative findings/musings."

Other White House officials said the changes made by Mr. Cooney were part of the normal interagency review that takes place on all documents related to global environmental change. Robert Hopkins, a spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, noted that one of the reports Mr. Cooney worked on, the administration's 10-year plan for climate research, was endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences. And Myron Ebell, who has long campaigned against limits on greenhouse gases as director of climate policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian group, said such editing was necessary for "consistency" in meshing programs with policy.

But critics said that while all administrations routinely vetted government reports, scientific content in such reports should be reviewed by scientists. Climate experts and representatives of environmental groups, when shown examples of the revisions, said they illustrated the significant if largely invisible influence of Mr. Cooney and other White House officials with ties to energy industries that have long fought greenhouse-gas restrictions.

In a memorandum sent last week to the top officials dealing with climate change at a dozen agencies, Mr. Piltz said the White House editing and other actions threatened to taint the government's $1.8 billion-a-year effort to clarify the causes and consequences of climate change.

"Each administration has a policy position on climate change," Mr. Piltz wrote. "But I have not seen a situation like the one that has developed under this administration during the past four years, in which politicization by the White House has fed back directly into the science program in such a way as to undermine the credibility and integrity of the program."

A senior Environmental Protection Agency scientist who works on climate questions said the White House environmental council, where Mr. Cooney works, had offered valuable suggestions on reports from time to time. But the scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because all agency employees are forbidden to speak with reporters without clearance, said the kinds of changes made by Mr. Cooney had damaged morale. "I have colleagues in other agencies who express the same view, that it has somewhat of a chilling effect and has created a sense of frustration," he said.

Efforts by the Bush administration to highlight uncertainties in science pointing to human-caused warming have put the United States at odds with other nations and with scientific groups at home.

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who met with President Bush at the White House yesterday, has been trying to persuade him to intensify United States efforts to curb greenhouse gases. Mr. Bush has called only for voluntary measures to slow growth in emissions through 2012.

Yesterday, saying their goal was to influence that meeting, the scientific academies of 11 countries, including those of the United States and Britain, released a joint letter saying, 
"The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action."

The American Petroleum Institute, where Mr. Cooney worked before going to the White House, has long taken a sharply different view. Starting with the negotiations leading to the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty in 1997, it has promoted the idea that lingering uncertainties in climate science justify delaying restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases.

On learning of the White House revisions, representatives of some environmental groups said the effort to amplify uncertainties in the science was clearly intended to delay consideration of curbs on the gases, which remain an unavoidable byproduct of burning oil and coal.

"They've got three more years, and the only way to control this issue and do nothing about it is to muddy the science," said Eileen Claussen, the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a private group that has enlisted businesses in programs cutting emissions.

Mr. Cooney's alterations can cause clear shifts in meaning. For example, a sentence in the October 2002 draft of "Our Changing Planet" originally read, "Many scientific observations indicate that the Earth is undergoing a period of relatively rapid change." In a neat, compact hand, Mr. Cooney modified the sentence to read, "Many scientific observations point to the conclusion that the Earth may be undergoing a period of relatively rapid change."

A document showing a similar pattern of changes is the 2003 "Strategic Plan for the United States Climate Change Science Program," a thick report describing the reorganization of government climate research that was requested by Mr. Bush in his first speech on the issue, in June 2001. The document was reviewed by an expert panel assembled in 2003 by the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists largely endorsed the administration's research plan, but they warned that the administration's procedures for vetting reports on climate could result in excessive political interference with science.

Another political appointee who has played an influential role in adjusting language in government reports on climate science is Dr. Harlan L. Watson, the chief climate negotiator for the State Department, who has a doctorate in solid-state physics but has not done climate research.

In an October 4, 2002, memo to James R. Mahoney, the head of the United States Climate Change Science Program and an appointee of Mr. Bush, Mr. Watson "strongly" recommended cutting boxes of text referring to the findings of a National Academy of Sciences panel on climate and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that periodically reviews research on human-caused climate change.
The boxes, he wrote, "do not include an appropriate recognition of the underlying uncertainties and the tentative nature of a number of the assertions."

While those changes were made nearly two years ago, recent statements by Dr. Watson indicate that the administration's position has not changed.

"We are still not convinced of the need to move forward quite so quickly," he told the BBC in London last month. "There is general agreement that there is a lot known, but also there is a lot to be known."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08climate.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all 

17 WashU students arrested for protesting against Peabody Coal in St. Louis after 17-day sit-in

by Jeff Biggers, EcoWatch, May 2, 2014

On the heels of an earlier arrest of a student at a growing divestment blockade at Harvard University, seven Washington University students were arrested today in St. Louis, as they sought to enter the quarterly meeting of the Board of Trustees.

Today’s action followed a historic 17-day sit-in at the St. Louis campus, where hundreds of Washington University students have joined in a campaign to remove Peabody Energy CEO Greg Boyce from the Board of Trustees, as part of other demands to cut university ties with the coal industry giant. 

World renowned author Margaret Atwood, appearing yesterday to accept the Arts First award at Harvard, summed it up best at an open forum when asked about the protest: “Any society where arrest is preferable to open dialog is a scary place.”

According to Washington University student Caroline Burney, nearly 100 students rallied in front of the Knight Center, where the Board of Trustees meeting was being held, and then marched to the main doors of the building. Students were faced by a line of police, locked arms, and stated that they were not leaving until they were let into the building to speak with Greg Boyce about his role at the University and on the Board of Trustees. After about forty minutes of singing and chanting, seven students were arrested by St. Louis County Police

“I am proud to be standing up to Peabody Coal today,” said Julia Ho, one of the students who was arrested. “For too long, fossil fuel corporations have used their partnerships with universities to legitimize their destructive and unjust business practices. That must stop. Students across the country are fighting back against the fossil fuel industry and will keep fighting back until until fossil fuels are off of our campuses.” 

Photos credit: Students Against Peabody

“It’s really obvious that Washington University is on the wrong side of history,” said Dr. Bret Gustafson, an associate professor of sociocultural anthropology at Washington University. “On top of the concerns of coal, global warming, and the unethical practices of Peabody Coal, the student protests are also raising the issue of the corporate takeover of university spaces, and the threat to academic freedom. That was made visible today.”

“Today’s arrests are part of a larger fight against Peabody Coal in St. Louis, across the country, and around the world,” said Caroline Burney, with Students Against Peabody Energy. “We’re here for ourselves and for all of the other communities that Greg Boyce and Peabody Coal have destroyed, including including Rocky Branch, Illinois, and Black Mesa, Arizona. Our fight will continue here in St. Louis at next week’s Peabody shareholder’s meeting and in Black Mesa at the end of May.”

Added Gustafson, an alumni of Harvard University, where a similar divestment protest and blockade is underway, “It’s amazing the administration is not willing to give an inch. But they’re wrong if they think they can just arrest a few students and this will go away. This is the first wave of a rising tide, and just the beginning of a longer struggle.”

In a press release, the Students Against Peabody Energy reiterated their charges against Boyce’s role as Peabody representative on the Washington University Board of Trustees:

The students point to several of Peabody’s recent actions as the impetus for their campaign. Peabody Coal is currently trying to take over a second community road for its mining operations in Rocky Branch, Illinois. Peabody lobbyists are also attempting to gut The Take Back St. Louis ballot initiative and local democratic processes by inserting amendments into two Missouri House bills that would ban cities or other municipalities from “by ballot measure impos[ing] any restriction on any public financial incentive authorized by statute.” Peabody is also a key leader in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is currently meeting in Kansas City and facing large scale protests from unions and other progressive organizations.

 

Link:  http://ecowatch.com/2014/05/02/students-arrested-peabody-coal/

Climate hero Brian Eister on day 26 of hunger strike at American Petroleum Institute in Washington, DC

This is a call out to all readers. Please help Brian in any way you can. Post his story on facebook, spread the word on twitter, +Google it, write about it on your own blog, and send him words of support. Few people have this type of courage. Lord knows I do not.  He is doing what we all wish we had the courage to do.

Contact:  Brian Eister

Phone:  702-556-9674

e-mail:  planetaryspring@gmail.com

Twitter: @hungry4afuture

Hashtag:  #climatehungerstrike

His blog:  http://www.1future.net/

From Day 24, he writes:

I have not been posting here as consistently as I would like.

Undertaking an extended hunger strike while doing your own press work presents unique challenges, and I am doing my best to balance all of them.

The days are dragging on and hunger has become quite intense, but the sacrifice I am making here is modest compared with the gravity and magnitude of humanity’s situation.

We go about our day-to-day lives as though things are okay. In our minds, we imagine that somehow, someway, this problem will be solved: how, after all, could a world full of responsible adults allow all of our children’s lives (and their children’s lives) to be ruined?

The fact is, the kind of change that is necessary for all future generations not to suffer immensely is nearly impossible under present circumstances.

If all of us get off of the sidelines and dedicate our lives to saving this world and its ability to sustain human life as it does today we have a chance: but if we continue to expect that others will solve the problem we will be in for a very sore surprise.

I am now 24 days into this hunger strike to demonstrate a fraction of the dedication that is necessary to overcome the power of the trillions of dollars of fossil fuel wealth that still sits in the ground, counted on balance sheets and leveraged by the carrots and sticks of campaign finance.

The truth is, I’m not doing enough.

In the name of love, in the name of the care that we have for others, and in the name of our sacred obligation to care for our children, we all have to do more.

http://www.1future.net/

The Great March for Climate Action - 1,000 climate patriots to walk across America

Great March for Climate Action

Posted: 11 Mar 2013 10:04 AM PDT

Former Iowa Lawmaker Organizing Largest March in US History
For more information, contact: Ed Fallon, Des Moines, Iowa, USA,
at (515) 238-6404 or ed@climatemarch.org



On Friday, March 1, 2013, in Des Moines, former Iowa lawmaker Ed Fallon announced the start of a campaign to build greater momentum for action on climate change. The Great March for Climate Action is now in the early stages of recruiting 1,000 people to walk across America, leaving the West Coast on March 1, 2014, and arriving in Washington, DC, the weekend before the mid-term elections. This will be the largest coast-to-coast march in US history.

“Assembling a march of this size is mind-boggling,” said Fallon, “My background in politics and grassroots organizing have prepared me to initiate an undertaking of this scale, but it will involve a veritable army of volunteers, supporters, and donors. Just in these first few days, I’m very encouraged to hear from people across the country telling me they are thrilled and eager to help.”

Much of the basic structure – tax status, website, Facebook page, etc. – will be in place by the end of the week, indicated Fallon. The focus then will shift to fundraising, setting up an office in Des Moines, and getting the word out across the country with a goal of recruiting at least one marcher from every state.

“With the very survival of so many species – including our own – hanging in the balance, we need to mobilize now,” continued Fallon. 

“Marching over 3,000 miles will involve discomfort and sacrifice. But any sacrifice we make to avert the worst consequences of climate change are insignificant compared to the suffering so many people across the planet will experience as things continue to heat up.”

Fallon praised other climate leaders, like Bill McKibben, James Hansen and Iowa State Sen. Rob Hogg, for their work on this issue. “We have great leaders and organizations (like the Sierra Club, PSR and 350.org) doing yeoman’s work,” concluded Fallon. “More of us need to jump on board. I’m willing to take 6 million steps across America in this battle, and I’m confident there are 1,000 other climate patriots who are willing to make this commitment – to go the extra mile, so to speak – to keep our planet livable for us, for others, and for future generations.”

Fallon served in the Iowa House for 14 years before running unsuccessfully for Governor in 2006 and Congress in 2008. In 1992, he beat a ten-year incumbent, and twice was outspent 2-1 by opponents. In his campaigns for Governor and Congress, Fallon raised nearly $500,000 in each race. 

In 1986, Fallon coordinated logistics for the Iowa segment of the Great Peace March. For the past 3 1/2 years, he has hosted “The Fallon Forum,” a political and public-affairs talk show that airs five days a week, both online and on a local radio station.

Iowa City Climate Advocates - — for the earth