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Grassroots Activism: Northwestern Activists Block Yet Another Coal Export Terminal Sierra Club activists celebrated a huge victory last week when the energy company Kinder Morgan announced it was dropping its plan to build a coal export terminal on the Columbia River in northern Oregon, meaning that three of the original six proposed coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest are now either shelved or off the table entirely. Thousands of activists and community members signed petitions and turned out for hearings to oppose the proposed export terminals, arguing that the trains carrying coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana to the export terminals would threaten the health of residents by blowing toxic coal dust into communities and would increase climate-disrupting global carbon emissions. Read more about the public health and environmental victory in the LA Times. Grassroots Activism: Virginians Celebrate Mountaintop-Removal Decision With jugs of contaminated water from their home taps in hand, residents from across the Appalachian region traveled to Washington, D.C., last week to demand that Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency stop mountaintop-removal coal mining and protect their air and drinking water. While persuading their representatives to do the right thing, the activists heard the amazing news that the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy had denied a surface mine permit for the Ison Rock Ridge mine in southwest Virginia. This is a critical victory for Virginians, as the mine would have obliterated approximately 1,300 acres of mountainous terrain near the town of Appalachia, Virginia; buried approximately 14,000 feet of streams; and polluted communities. We're sending a big congratulations to the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, which is composed almost entirely of local residents, including former underground miners, and Sierra Club activists for their years of hard work to save this mountain. Learn more in this column by Sierra Club National Program Director Sarah Hodgdon. Grassroots Activism: Calling on Facebook to De-Friend Big Polluters The Sierra Club is leading the charge by environmental and immigration-rights groups against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's political ads that support dirty energy and approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The Sierra Club was all over the papers last week, pressuring Zuckerberg's political action group, FWD.us, to do the right thing and pull the ads. As Sierra Club Director of Public Advocacy and Partnerships Cathy Duvall put it to the New York Times, "When the ads came out they were politics as usual and divisive and pitting one issue against another. We were really surprised that Silicon Valley would be moving into the political space by doing the worst of business-as-usual politics." |