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NO RADIO REPORT THIS WEEK: We're on the road this week and, as luck would have it, at least one of us is under the weather to boot. So we'll be taking a very very rare week off from fresh Green News Reports, but will return next week with more independent green news, politics, analysis and snarky comment! We apologize to you, and the planet, for any unforeseen inconvenience....

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Tim DeChristopher convicted; Pacific NW coal-free by 2020; Waxman rails against Koch influence; China’s 5-Year Plan on environment; Suit blocks new Massey permit; CEJ: No energy policy; Climate change deniers mislead congress; GOP dismantles enviro protections; 10k EV vending machine charging stations for Japan; Fears of EPA "overreach" wrong; Suppressed NASA data on toxic rain from BP oil spill; EPA scrutiny of fracking pollution in PA; Climate deniers needed to establish "social consensus" on climate change?; ExxonMobil victory in Alaska spill; Tongass NF to get fed protection ...PLUS: A Dark Warning on Global Oil Demand....

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Lots of stuff going on even if we aren't covering it!)...

• Climate Activist Tim DeChristopher Convicted of Trying to Save Your Public Lands:
• Tim DeChristopher Deserves the Medal of Freedom Today, Not a Prison Sentence (Jeff Biggers, Huffington Post Green):
  
  When President Obama conferred the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal on several American heroes yesterday, including Kentucky poet Wendell Berry, he forgot one last award: The Medal of Freedom to Tim DeChristopher.
  
  Instead of being convicted today on two felony accounts for placing bids and disrupting an auction for pristine wilderness Utah sites that would have been opened to gas and oil exploration, 27-year-old Tim DeChristopher should have been receiving our nation's highest honor for "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States."

  In truth, according to DeChristopher supporters, the leases auctioned to DeChristopher were later overturned by the Obama administration on the grounds that the George W. Bush administration's Bureau of Land Management had failed to complete the analysis required by federal law for the "protection of national and cultural resources."

  Mr. President: Just as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. admonished critics in 1963 from his Birmingham jail cell that our nation's indifference to the civil rights crisis demanded acts of civil disobedience, Tim DeChristopher has followed in King's call "to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation."

• Bidding farewell: Tim DeChristopher found guilty, shows power of nonviolent civil disobedience (Grist)
• Bill McKibben: As climate crime continues, who are we sending to jail? Tim DeChristopher (Grist):
  
  So far, no bankers have been charged, despite the unmitigated greed that nearly brought the world economy down. No coal or oil execs have been charged, despite fouling the entire atmosphere and putting civilization as we know it at risk.

  But engage in creative protest that mildly disrupts the efficient sell-off of our landscape to oil and gas barons? As Tim DeChristopher found out on Thursday, that'll get you not just week in court, but potentially a long stretch in the pen.

• DONATE to the Tim DeChristopher Defense Fund: PeacefulUprising.org
• More information: Bidder70.org
• We need big, brash, nonviolent climate protests. Are you in? (Grist)
• So long and thanks for all the asthma: Pacific Northwest sends coal a Dear John letter (Grist)
• Last coal plant in Pacific Northwest to shut down starting in 2020 (LA Times)
• Waxman rails against Koch’s influence on climate change efforts (Grist)
• China’s 12th Five-Year Plan: How does it address energy and the environment? (World Resources Institute)
• Suit seeks to block new Massey permit (WV Gazette)
• No Serious Energy Policy In Sight (CEJournal):
  
  you’d think the U.S. Congress could put aside its childish games and have an adult conversation about energy. They could, for example, debate ways of spurring innovation in energy technology, and also the use of tax policies to incentivize efficiency and a switch to renewable energy sources. (Back in a February 22 column, Thomas Friedman made a proposal that was at least worth debating.)

  Oh, never mind. [Tuesday], the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, chaired by Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), will hold a hearing titled “Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulations.”

  They just can’t resist, can they?

• Scientists: "Self-described climate change deniers...continue to mislead Congress and the public." (Politico)
• 8 Ways the GOP is Trying to Dismantle Environmental Protections (Treehugger)
• Japan to Build 10,000 EV Charging Stations onto Vending Machines by 2012
• Research: Given limits on EPA authority in Clean Air Act, fears of agency “overreach" misplaced
• Canadian Government cuts funding to asbestos industry lobby group
• Suppressed NASA data strengthens reports of toxic rain from Gulf oil spill (Huffington Post Green)
• E.P.A. Steps Up Scrutiny of Pollution in Pennsylvania Rivers (NY Times)
• Engagement with climate deniers needed to establish "social consensus" on climate change (NY Times)
• Exxon Mobil wins ruling in Alaska oil spill case (Seattle Times)
• Tongass Nat'l Forest in Alaska to get federal roadless protection (LA Times)
• A Dark Warning on Global Oil Demand

                 

Article Categories: Environment, Green News, BP Oil Disaster, EPA