March 15, 2011: In This Issue
º Nuclear Power: Not the Answer
º Good News for a Rainforest
º Digging a Hole for China
º Hands-On and Knee-Deep
º Visit D.C. with the Marines

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Nuclear Power: Not the Answer

Our hearts go out to the people of Japan in this time of unspeakable tragedy and chaos. Still reeling in the aftermath of a massive quake and devastating tsunami, the Japanese now face a potential nightmare as they struggle to prevent meltdowns in their damaged nuclear reactors. The disaster has reignited the debate over nuclear power in America and around the world.

The Sierra Club has unequivocally opposed nuclear energy for more than three decades: Nukes are dirty, unsafe, deadly, and costly. Some in Washington, D.C., though, are still saying we should build more of them. Please tell your U.S. senators that a "nuclear revival" has no place in America's clean-energy future.

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Good News for America's Rainforest

Last week, the Sierra Club and its allies won a big victory when a federal judge overturned the Forest Service's exclusion of Alaska's Tongass National Forest from the Roadless Rule. That's great news for the old-growth trees and abundant wildlife of this magnificent region.

But what does it have to do with stabilizing our climate? As it turns out, the Tongass is also one of the world's largest rainforests and, as Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune explains in his "Coming Clean" blog, "The health of our forests and that of our climate are deeply intertwined."

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Fake Solutions for Pain at the Pump

When gas prices start to go up, politicians who owe their primary allegiance to the fossil-fuel industry are quick to promote domestic drilling and deregulation, as if that would make the gauge on the gas pump start to run backward.

A little fact-checking, though, shows that all their "solutions" are, to be blunt, fake. In fact, the only thing they'd actually make run backward is our national energy policy.

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Digging a Hole for China

Demand for coal in the United States is dropping, thanks in large part to the Sierra Club's successful fight against coal-fired power plants. But China's economic boom demands more coal than that country can furnish.

Plans are now under way to ramp up coal production in Wyoming's Powder River Basin, put it on trains, and ship it down the Columbia River and overseas. But first they have to go through Longview, Washington, where locals are working to block this climate-altering trade route. Sierra magazine writer Peter Frick-Wright reports from the front lines in the ongoing battle over coal.

Photo: Steve Dykes