Earth Day, Paying Dues and Shades of Green

It's Earth Day and oh how my heart aches.

Yesterday it came to my attention that
Environmental Defense
Fund, an organization my own father cofounded, is supporting the
construction
of several new coal plants in Texas! Environmental Defense is supposed
to
Defend the Environment as I understood it. Haven't they heard James
Hansen the
climate scientist repeating ad nauseum his message that eliminating coal
is the
single most important step we can take to address global warming? Did
they fail
to even notice the noisy protest outside EPA offices a week or two ago,
demanding that Lisa Jackson see firsthand the effects of mountaintop
removal
coal mining in Southern Appalachia that has resulted in clear-cutting thousands of acres of some
of the world's most
biologically diverse forests, burying crucial headwaters streams (nearly
2000
miles already) and contaminating the groundwater with lead and mercury?

EDF's Jim Marsten reassures us that these new
coal plants will be
"models" of "green-ness" because they will capture the CO2. Oh good....

Then they are going to use that CO2 for "enhanced
oil
recovery" -- pumping it into nearby oil wells to create pressure that will
push
the last stubborn bits of oil out.

Hmmmm... burning coal and capturing the emissions
to get more
oil out of wells... Is that good for the environment, or a little less
bad, or
perhaps worse?

The plants will also waste less water. That's
good, I think.

But instead of using water to cool the plants,
they will use
fans run off electricity, which will require more coal burning.

They will also have to burn more coal because it
turns out
that capturing carbon and pumping it into the oil wells, requires a lot
of
energy.

So after we burn more coal in order to capture
the carbon
and cool the plant, what will happen to the more CO2 after it is pumped
into
the ground to squeeze out more oil? Will it leak out of the wells and
into the
sky in the end there to mingle with the CO2 from all the other coal
burning, and enhanced oil recovery to wreak
further havoc on earth? The
Greenpeace report "False Hope" says CCS is unproven (a few
demonstrations but
not likely ready until 2030 at earliest), expensive (nearly doubling
plant costs),
energy intensive (using 10-40% of the energy produced), risky (CO2 could
well
leak out slowly or abruptly with severe consequences for human and
ecosystem
health and climate).

It's hard to figure how EDF considers this a
"victory" for
the environment. Maybe board
member Stanley Druckenmiller can explain it for us -- he knows a few
things
about coal, what with 200 million shares in Massey Energy.

Massey Energy. They own the mine that exploded a
week ago,
killing 29 miners and they are responsible for blasting in Coal River
next to
the Brushy Fork impoundment containing 8.2 billion gallons of toxic
slurry
waste that, if it were to break, would obliterate an entire community.

Somehow
EDF's Earth Day
"victory" just doesn't feel very inspirational. I think I can hear my
father rolling over in his grave again.

Johann Hari's recent piece in The Nation spelled
out how the
big greens have either prostituted themselves to corporate foundation
funders,
or become so paralyzed by the constraints on political feasibility
within the
DC beltway culture (again, a construct of corporate influence), that
they have
been rendered inert. Hari's piece
was followed by another recent article in Common Dreams by Gary Houser, who
passionately implores the big greens to regrow their spines and actually
BE
green. Maybe that's possible...

Or maybe it's up to us once again. Just as the
failure of
Copenhagen stimulated the World People's Conference on Climate Change
and the
Rights of Mother Earth, going on now in Bolivia, perhaps we can light
the fires
of an alternative environmental movement in the U.S.. Real
environmental groups
abound -- groups like Indigenous Environmental Network, Little Village
Environmental Justice Organization, WEACT, Energy Justice Network,
Global
Justice Ecology Project, Rising Tide and a host of others don't have the
big bucks,
nor the "ties that bind" that come along with corporate sponsorship.
Nor do
they have the Big Green "branding" and name recognition. What they have
is the
guts and integrity to fight for what is right and to know green when
they see it.

I know where my membership dues will go!

Let's hope next Earth Day offers real reasons to
celebrate.