Swagger like [a] Mine
Environmental matters aren’t something I usually write about. Largely because discussions about the same eventually have to take into account stuff like chemistry and physics. Science is hard, and it makes my brain hurt. I’d much rather write about The Cramps and the Palestinians. I’d rather write about stuff I can actually see. Talking about Volatile Organic Compounds remind me of the days I spent studying Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse. That sorta thing.
And, too, the issues are often muddled–and by folks on the side of the angels–by overmuch sentimentality. When kids are being gunned down each week a few miles from here in Roxbury, it’s hard to get too worked up about whether the caribou are going be less satisfied with the quality of their lovemaking due to Exxon’s noisy equipment. And, hell, if as many people cared about the plight of chickens as they do about wild wolves the national food factory would take a sharp change for the better. It’s the same all over–it’s the glam animals what gets all the good press.
But all this “green” business–the word has been co-0pted to such an extent its practically a joke now–is no longer about edenic visions of an unspoilt ANWR. It’s about the survival of all species, including mine. And like everything else these are matters are too important to be entrusted to the experts. Or at least the experts we’ve trusted (video) to date, swindlers who have often received satisfying paychecks from the companies that profit from blowing up pristine mountaintops, strip-mining wide swaths of woody terrain, converting the seriviceable output into electricity and spewing the waste into the air and thereby contributing mightily to our overall CO2 emissions (and asthma and tumors and etc) and, hence, ozone depletion; and which, not incidentally, make some mighty nice payments to the politicians in the districts in which they operate, from local to federal legislators.
These are the companies involved in the mining, refining, distribution, burning and conversion of coal. Namely, mining operations and your friendly neighborhood electrical utility.
Thus, I’m not exactly an expert on carbon composition, its properties, and its alternatives. True, I was born in a town bearing the enchanting name “Carbondale” (PA) in the shadow of some towering slag heaps I’d later wander, extensive enough that I could get lost in them. Also true that my great-grandfather worked in the mines—for a long time too: I have in front of me a newspaper article from the 1930s, with his picture—he’d been working 62 years as of that date. As an aside, it’s grimly amusing to see the way this life was celebrated by the newspaper, beginning with the headline, “Old Age No Bar to Employment in Mines, Records Here Reveal: William Bartholomew [Still] Working] at Coal Brook for Over Seventy Years”:
These records show that age need not mean idleness but some new form of activity, and many who have experience, but no longer exuberant vigor, find opportunity and even distinction in minor bossing jobs in and outside the mine, for the industry has no dead-end jobs nor jobs that end with a sudden jolt from relative comfort to a penurious jobless old age… The active life is rough, it’s true but the exercise and the moving air in the mine are conducive to good health and manly vigor; so men of years are not few. The company takes pride in finding jobs suitable to their declining years.
(My great-grandfather’s name was Michael Francis Howard; his pic is at right).
The article, en toto, is an essay itself, but for now, you can draw your own conclusions. But that and puttering around in old coal cellars is as close I’ve come to the stuff.
Wiser heads than mine, though, have made it abundantly clear how significant an issue this is. As for as the consequences of continuing in this vein—pursuing the endless American fantasy of having your cake and eating it too—listen to and read a couple of short pieces by James Hansen. Or have a look at the bullet points presented by SecureGreenFuture.org. And by Maggie Zhou.
And more aware, and more courageous folks are doing more than reading and writing about it.
Like drawing a line in the sand, as a few pissed-off locals did in West Viirgina.
Like singlehandedly monkey-wrenching power plants.
Like engaging today in what will be the single largest example of civil mass disobedience in regard to climate DC has witnessed, when thousands converge on an outdated, outmoded coal-fired plant within view of the Capitol building itself (update here). .A plant owned by Congress. And a plant which provides the Senators and Congressfolk their electricity. (Explanatory video here).
Coal Mines are Gold Mines
Senators like these:
Campaign Contributions: Electric Utilities
Rank Senator State Party 2008/ Lifetime
1 Voinovich, George V OH R $114,050 $551,066
2 Graham, Lindsey SC R $112,090 $517,427
3 Domenici, Pete V NM R $79,000 $498,673
4 Obama, Barack IL D $382,498 $487,698
5 Bingaman, Jeff NM D $12,000 $458,076
6 Burr, Richard NC R $27,500 $431,645
7 Baucus, Max MT D $130,542 $430,743
8 Clinton, Hillary NY D $273,554 $429,946
9 Landrieu, Mary L LA D $67,458 $427,254
10 Specter, Arlen PA R $84,700 $408,247
11 Inhofe, James M OK R $82,300 $367,863
12 Lieberman, Joe CT D $352,842
13 Craig, Larry ID R $28,500 $342,045
14 McCain, John AZ R $183,740 $338,240
15 McConnell, Mitch KY R $68,150 $312,400TOTAL $1,646,082 $6,354,165
AVERAGE $117,577 $423,611
Campaign Contributions: Coal Mining
Rank Senator State Party 2008 /Lifetime
1 McConnell, Mitch KY R $80,400 $399,549
2 Rockefeller, Jay WV D $74,000 $194,300
3 Specter, Arlen PA R $12,550 $162,656
4 Voinovich, George V OH R $20,750 $158,549
5 Byrd, Robert C WV D $124,500
6 Shelby, Richard C AL R $113,000
7 Bond, Christopher S ‘Kit’ MO R $18,200 $106,850
8 Bunning, Jim KY R $106,160
9 Inhofe, James M OK R $37,500 $93,550
10 Conrad, Kent ND D $2,300 $90,612
11 Bayh, Evan IN D $86,000
12 Sessions, Jeff AL R $23,900 $85,600
13 Allard, Wayne CO R $81,875
14 Warner, John W VA R $74,550
15 Craig, Larry ID R $3,000 $73,406
TOTAL $272,600 $1,951,157
(americanprogressinaction.org; data from Center for Responsive Politics. Charts includes contributions from 1990 to first quarter 2008 for all of the Senators’ federal campaigns: House, Senate, and Presidential races).
“No one on the corner got swagger like mine,” indeed.
Here’s the summary of a very useful report published by the Institute of Southern Studies:
Using the most recent data available from the Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets.org website (updated with Federal Elections Commission data as of Dec. 8), the Institute for Southern Studies examined campaign contributions from electric utilities to members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in the 2008 elections. We found that the industry gave members of this key committee a total of $1,079,503….The 10 majority Democratic members received a total of $541,939, for an average contribution of $54,194. The nine minority Republican members received a total of $537,939, for a per-person average of $59,729. The committee’s biggest recipient of the industry’s money was Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) at $297,877. She was followed by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) at $173,643, George Voinovich (R-Ohio) at $163,010 and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) at $146,704.
Overall, electric utilities contributed $18.8 million to members of Congress in the latest cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org. The two major parties’ nominees for president were the biggest recipients of the industry’s largesse, with Barack Obama receiving $612,306 and John McCain getting $521,184. Clinton’s contributions put her in third place.
Italics mine. The coal/utility complex is obviously as enamored of the Democratic platform as it is the Republicans. Astonishing, no? You can draw your own conclusions from that, too.
And don’t think for a second that the “clean coal” people have neglected the big media when it comes to distributing their largesse. Why does CNN trump the virtues of a non-existent technology? Watch.
“We’re Doing This for the Grandchildren”
As far as the electric utilities, coal mining companies, and Senators and Congresspeople on the take are concerned—and let’s not leave out the President out of that category—well, the demonstration in DC today will be big enough to prick up a few ears, for sure. Ongoing local demonstrations are going to be just as important, especially when they’re attended by taxpayers, local municipal politicians, clergy, and whatever political party isn’t beholden to coal or utility money—that would be the Green Rainbow Party here in Massachusetts, some of whose leading spokespeople (all of whom serve with local activist groups as well, and who were joined yesterday by along with assorted community leaders, and clergy, and officeholders) addressed a small crowd on a blustery cold Sunday afternoon in Somerset, the site of a particularly noxious coal-burning plant, The Brayton Point Power Station (there was another demonstration north of Boston in Salem).
It was bitter cold standing on the Brightman Street Bridge connecting Fall River to Somerset. But it was worth it. Worth it to hear Green Rainbow Party co-Chair Jill Stein bluntly declare that we are out of time. Worth it to hear David Dionne make it patently obvious that there ain’t no such thing as “clean coal,” and to inspire with the phrase, “We’re doing this for the grandkids.” Worth it to hear longtime environmental activist and GRP Secretary John Andrews remind us not to be snookered by corporatized pipe dreams promising yet another technocratic fix, and that it’s not “clean coal” we’re after, but an an end–altogether–to dependence on non-sustainable, non-renewable fossil fuels. Worth it to bid godspeed to a Massachusetts delegation to the DC demonstration led by GRP member Eli Beckerman. And maybe best of all, worth it to hear cars on the bridge honking as they sped by, honking in support.
Here’s my video:
The event was hosted by an array of civic organizations , but it was genuinely heartening to see the Green Rainbow Party taking the lead, because this is truly a political issue–and neither of the two major parties are confronting the problem head on (right, like they do all the other ones…). The fact is you can’t even begin to start solving this on your own, as you can with other problems. For example, when it comes to food, you can pretty much live outside the national factory farm. It takes a bit of effort, but it’s eminently feasible–for some examples, see Bill McKibben’s chapter “The Year of Living Locally” (Deep Economy, 46-94) and Barbara Kingsolver’s recent Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. You won’t bring down the system singlehandedly, no more than you will by personally boycotting sweatshop apparel and avoiding Wal Mart, but you can do the right thing, get a few others to do the same … and in any case, you can live ethically, you can reject that which is wrong. But when it comes to the Grid … well, it takes a supremely self-reliant person to dump the car and live without factory-generated electricity (coal supplies 50% of our current electrical needs). Sadly, we can’t all live
(Scott Nearing’s early autiobiography, The Making of Radical, is probably the most fortifying thing I’ve read in twenty years).
¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!
Now, over the past few years, I’ve walked through the streets of Boston with the antiwar groups a dozen times now. I’ve marched with the anarchists, too. And on more than one occasion, god help me. Knowing full well that wars were not going to end nor governments topple as a result of our noisy spectacles. There’s a reason to do it anyway, but the sense of imminent success isn’t part of it. This … is different. An incredible array of far-flung groups–religious, civic, neighborhood, political–are getting together on this issue–and not just in discussion forums and conference rooms but in the streets– because it transcends ideology ( unless of course you’re a right wing nut job). It’s rare to have an issue that can unite evangelican Christians and anticorporate activists and Sierra Club types and local bankers. Like the sea turtles and trade unions in Seattle.
It’s also rare to face not only an issue on which we have to win, a formidable goliath we gotta take down … but one we can.
So: whaddya want me to do about it?
Well, you could start by turning off your refrigerator. Your microwave. Your stove. Your lights. Your TV.Your lights. Your heat. And finally, yes, even this machine you’re sitting at.
Too drastic? Yeah, probably. Though it wouldn’t hurt to turn the damn TV off. But as I said, this is essentially a political isue, and unlike other causes, you don’t have to give up anything–except your time and energy. You don’t need to go vegan or smoke pot or or drink free trade coffee. Getting the nation–the culture–off coal is as massive a task as is weaning us off oil, it requires the most elemental form of politics, marshalling your forces and finding allies everywhere and pitting power and against power, maybe even keeping in mind the protest chant that sounds hackneyed but whose simple truth is revealed over and again: The people, united, will never be defetaed. This is a political program, and it’s gonna take a whole lotta people to stand up against the big-time donors to leaders of both parties, including the President himself. Who, if I recall correctly, stated outright that voting was one thing, but that he was gonna need your help, in spades, if he’s really going to affect anything vaguely resembling change once in office. In other words, voting changed nothing. Active participation will. Again, this is what we’re up against:
At the same time, the fossil-fuel industry is preparing for a major political fight. An alliance of utilities, coal and mining companies has pledged $40 million to influence any climate-change legislation. And some 770 companies have hired more than 2,300 lobbyists to work on climate issues, which means that there are four climate lobbyists for every member of Congress, according to the Center for Public Integrity.
So join an organization that provides the political counterforce to the bribery and proganda utilised by the profiteering power companies. Preferably a local one. If you can’t find one, drop me a line and I’ll find one for ya. Look at the national organizations involved, especially Power Past Coal and McKibben and company’s 350.org. If you’re in Massachusetts, check out SecureGreenFuture, or Toxics Action Center or Healthlink (North Shore) or Mass Coalition for Healthy Communities. Show up on March 14th at the Statehouse for a rally. And to make a real statement against the entrenched political establishment that just can’t give up its carboniferous mistress, register with your state Green party–in Massachusetts, the Green Rainbow Party.
Here’s Merle Travis.
