Historic California State Capitol Gets Nighttime Facelift: STOP Crude By Rail

“Giant Projections” on Historic Benicia State Capitol During Independence Day Celebrations

By Roger Straw, July 4, 2015
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Benicia State Capitol, July 3, 2015. Photo by Peg Hunter

At dusk on the eve of the Fourth of July, Benicia’s iconic state capitol building was lit up with festive holiday displays and messages calling attention to climate change, pollution and the need to STOP Valero’s dangerous crude by rail proposal.

The City of Benicia, California

Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community (BSHC) teamed up with the San Francisco Projection Department to display startling and magnificent images on the side and front of California’s historic third state capitol building.  The image of the building stands as the symbol of today’s City of Benicia.

The “Giant Projections” followed after Benicia’s traditional Torchlight Parade, while crowds were still celebrating up and down First Street, and as many headed home.

Benicia State Capitol - STOP Crude By Rail July 3, 2015California's Historic Benicia State Capitol - STOP Crude By Rail, July 3, 2015. Photo by Peg Hunter
Benicia State Capitol – STOP Crude By Rail July 3, 2015California’s Historic Benicia State Capitol – STOP Crude By Rail, July 3, 2015. Photo by Peg Hunter

Benicia videographer Constance Beutel interviewed a few of the BSHC parade marchers, and went on to capture scenes along the parade route and the magnificent lightshow at the State Capitol:

Here are a few more scenes from the Torchlight Parade and Giant Projections, thanks to Peg Hunter of San Francisco Projection Department:

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The Lancet: Fossil Fuels Are Killing Us… Quitting Them Can Save Us

Repost from Common Dreams
[Editor:  The Lancet is one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals.  Don’t miss the Lancet Climate Commission video, far below.  – RS]

The Lancet: Fossil Fuels Are Killing Us… Quitting Them Can Save Us

Comparing coal, oil, and gas addiction to the last generation’s effort to kick the tobacco habit, doctors say that quitting would be the best thing humanity can do for its long-term health
By Jon Queally, staff writer, June 23, 2015
Quitting fossil fuels is describe in the new report as a “medical necessity.” (Image: UNICEF)

The bad news is very bad, indeed. But first, the good news: “Responding to climate change could be the biggest global health opportunity of this century.”

That message is the silver lining contained in a comprehensive newly published report by The Lancet, the UK-based medical journal, which explores the complex intersection between global human health and climate change.

The wide-ranging and peer-reviewed report—titled Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health—declares that the negative impacts of human-caused global warming have put at risk some of the world’s most impressive health gains over the last half century. What’s more, it says, continued use of fossil fuels is leading humanity to a future in which infectious disease patterns, air pollution, food insecurity and malnutrition, involuntary migration, displacement, and violent conflict will all be made worse.

“Climate change,” said commission co-chairman Dr. Anthony Costello, a pediatrician and director of the Global Health Institute at the University College of London, “has the potential to reverse the health gains from economic development that have been made in recent decades – not just through the direct effects on health from a changing and more unstable climate, but through indirect means such as increased migration and reduced social stability. Our analysis clearly shows that by tackling climate change we can also benefit health. Tackling climate change represents one of the greatest opportunities to benefit human health for generations to come.”

Put together by the newly formed Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change—described as a major new collaboration between international climate scientists and geographers, social and environmental scientists, biodiversity experts, engineers and energy policy experts, economists, political scientists and public policy experts, and health professionalsthe report is the most up-to-date and comprehensive of its kind. Though many studies have been performed on the subject, the commission argues the “catastrophic risk to human health posed by climate change” has been grossly “underestimated” by others.

The four key findings of the report include:

1. The effects of climate change threaten to undermine the last half-century of gains in development and global health. The impacts are being felt today, and future projections represent an unacceptably high and potentially catastrophic risk to human health.

2. Tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century.

3. Achieving a decarbonized global economy and securing the public health benefits it offers is no longer primarily a technological or economic question – it is now a political one.

4. Climate change is fundamentally an issue of human health, and health professionals have a vital role to play in accelerating progress on mitigation and adaptation policies.

“Climate Change is a medical emergency,” said Dr. Hugh Montgomery, commission co-chair and director of the UCL Institute for Human Health and Performance. “It thus demands an emergency response.”

With rising global temperatures fueling increasing extreme weather events, crop failures, water scarcity, and other crises, Montgomery says the report is an attempt to make it clear that drastic and immediate actions should be taken. “Under such circumstances,” he said, “no doctor would consider a series of annual case discussions and aspirations adequate, yet this is exactly how the global response to climate change is proceeding.”

In a companion paper published alongside the larger report, commission members Helena Wang and Richard Horton explained why human health impacts are an important part of the larger argument regarding climate change:

When climate change is framed as a health issue, rather than purely as an environmental, economic, or technological challenge, it becomes clear that we are facing a predicament that strikes at the heart of humanity. Health puts a human face on what can sometimes seem to be a distant threat. By making the case for climate change as a health issue, we hope that the civilizational crisis we face will achieve greater public resonance. Public concerns about the health effects of climate change, such as undernutrition and food insecurity, have the potential to accelerate political action in ways that attention to carbon dioxide emissions alone do not.

Responding to the findings and warnings contained in the report, Mike Childs, the head of policy for the Friends of the Earth-UK, said the message from one of the world’s foremost institutions on public health has given powerful new evidence to the argument that “radical action is urgently required” to avoid further climate catastrophe.

“When health professionals shout ’emergency’,” Childs said, “politicians everywhere should listen.”

Going from diagnosis to prescribing a remedy, the doctors and scientists involved with the report—who equated the human health emergency of climate change with previous physician-led fights against tobacco use and HIV/AIDS—argue the crisis of anthropogenic climate change demands—as a matter of “medical necessity”—the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels (with special emphasis on coal) from the global energy mix. In addition, the authors say their data on global human health support a recommendation for an international carbon price.

“The health community has responded to many grave threats to health in the past,” said another commission co-chair, Professor Peng Gong of Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. “It took on entrenched interests such as the tobacco industry and led the fight against HIV/AIDS.  Now is the time for us to lead the way in responding to another great threat to human and environmental health.”

The Commission argues that human health would vastly improve in a less-polluted world free from fossil fuels. “Virtually everything that you want to do to tackle climate change has health benefits,” said Dr. Costello. “We’re going to cut heart attacks, strokes, diabetes.”

The following video, produced by the Commission and released alongside the report, also explains:

As Wang and Horton conclude in their remarks, “Climate change is the defining challenge of our generation. Health professionals must mobilize now to address this challenge and protect the health and well-being of future generations.”

“Stop Oil Trains Week of Action” July 6 – 12 – Parade in Benicia

Repost from ForestEthics
[Editor:  In Benicia, we will observe the Week of Action a bit early, walking with our signs in the July 3rd Torchlight Parade – MORE INFO – JOIN US!  – RS]

Join the “Stop Oil Trains Week of Action” July 6 – 12

July 6 is the second anniversary of the tragic Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, oil train catastrophe that killed 47 people. The Stop Oil Trains week of action will call attention to the growing threat of oil trains across North America.

There is NO safe way to transport extreme tar sands and Bakken crude. Two years after Lac-Mégantic, oil trains keep exploding and carbon pollution keeps rising. Oil trains are a disaster for our health, our safety, and our climate.

In July 2014, thousands gathered at 63 events for the first Stop Oil Trains Week of Action. In 2015, we will demonstrate the growing power of our movement and organize more than 100 events across the US and Canada to demand an immediate ban on oil trains.

Join us and host or attend an event in your community!

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Need support organizing an action?  Download the Stop Oil Trains Week of Action Organizing Toolkit!

Billion Dollar Project Will Bring Millions Of Tons Of Coal To Area Next To Bay Bridge Toll Plaza

Repost from CBS San Francisco / 5KPIX / KCBS740AM-106.9FM

Billion Dollar Project Will Bring Millions Of Tons Of Coal To Area Next To Bay Bridge Toll Plaza

By Christin Ayers, July 1, 2015 9:15 PM


OAKLAND (CBS SF) — Coal is so polluting that demand for it as an energy source is way down in the U.S. The industry has to increase exports to survive. To do that we’ve learned it’s got its eye on the Bay Area.

On the grounds of the old Oakland Army Base a transformation is underway. A new billion dollar rail and marine terminal, called the “Trade and Logistics Center” will open in just three years as a world class hub for the export of bulk commodities, mostly to Mexico, Japan and China

“It’s going to be great for Oakland,” said Jerry Bridges. He’s been hired by the developer to run a project centerpiece, a rail to ship transfer facility right next to the Bay Bridge toll plaza. “Our goal is to have soda ash moved through the facility, pot ash, borax, umm sodium concentrate, coal.”

Coal, Bridges says will be a big part of it. He says he’s close to signing a lucrative contract with 4 counties in Utah to receive and ship out 3 million tons of coal a year. “And let me just say about the coal out of that region: It’s the highest quality coal in the country, and thereby it’s the highest quality coal in the world.”

Coal is already exported through a private transfer yard in Richmond, where it sits in open rail cars right next to homes. Residents are complaining about the coal dust, an air pollutant known to cause asthma and cancer. But Bridges says his terminal will be different. “Every commodity that ships through our facility will arrive at the facility on the railroad in covered rail cars,” he said.

But Jess Dervin-Ackerman of the Sierra Club is skeptical. “They could promise to do that and then not do it,” she said. “Nowhere in the U.S. is coal transported with covered rail cars so how can we know that they can actually do that and protect the community,” she said.

And she says it’s not just about Oakland and the Bay Area. The coal will release tons of greenhouse gases in Mexico and China. “What we are saying is not in anybody’s back yard. We want to leave the coal in the ground,” she said.

Oakland leaders agree. In fact they’ve voted to divest in coal. But we’ve learned they may have tied their own hands when it comes to this deal. The development agreement they signed  says “all approvals shall be made by the city administrator,” which leaves the city council and the public out of the loop, even though the city owns the land that the terminal will be built on.

“Right now we are just focusing on getting it built,” said Mayor Libby Schaaf’s spokesperson Erica Derryck. KPIX5 asked her if the mayor was comfortable with coal exports being part of the project. Her response: “I think it’s too early to say what exactly is going to be part of the commodity group that will be coming through the facility.”

But KPIX 5 obtained an email that shows the mayor is working behind the scenes to put the kabosh on the coal deal. “I was extremely disappointed to hear Jerry Bridges mention the possibility of shipping coal into Oakland,” she writes to the developer.  “Stop it immediately.”

But Jerry Bridges says he has no plans to back down. “The CEQA entitlement gives us every right to build and transport what we need to transport in order to be a viable and feasible project,” he said.

The project’s developer and landlord, prominent Oakland businessman Phil Tagami, turned down our request for an interview. In a statement he says it’s not up to him to decide what comes through the new terminal, it’s up to the man he hired to run it, Jerry Bridges.

Phil Tagami’s complete statement:

The City of Oakland approved an agreement to create the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal (OBOT), a multi-commodity bulk marine terminal at the former Oakland Army Base, in 2012. The City’s agreement with California Capital & Investment Group (CCIG) was comprehensively analyzed and endorsed under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and reflects a modern, industry-standard marine terminal facility and operation that is consistent with state and federal law. Nothing has changed since the 2012 approval.  OBOT’s construction and operations are designed consistent with the lawful expectations of potential customers – accommodating three or four of the full spectrum of approximately 15,000 bulk commodities regulated by federal law. This is standard industry practice and uniform at marine terminals throughout the United States.

In analyzing OBOT’s development under CEQA, the City imposed a comprehensive series of mitigation measures and conditions that the terminal operator will adhere to. No commodity may be transported through OBOT without full compliance with all applicable state and federal regulations.

CCIG is constructing OBOT, but is not and will not be the terminal operator. Neither CCIG nor any prospective terminal operator has made commitments to shipping any particular commodity through the terminal at this point in time. But, the issue is not about any single commodity. The City reviewed and approved OBOT as proposed. And in reliance on those approvals, CCIG and others have made binding and enforceable commitments to deliver OBOT for operations as entitled to ensure the viability of the entire revitalization plan for Oakland’s working waterfront.

For safe and healthy communities…