Climate Change, Fossil fuel divestment

Tufts students stage sit-in to urge fossil fuel divestment

Repost from The Boston Globe
[Editor: For more on fossil fuel divestment, see 350.org and GoFossilFree.org.  See also The Daily Mail: “Hydrogen fuel breakthrough: Clean power generated WITHOUT relying on fossil fuels” – RS]

Tufts students stage sit-in to urge fossil fuel divestment

By Aneri Pattani, April 22, 2015
Students protested Tufts University’s fossil fuel investment at the president’s office. David L Ryan/Globe staff

Tufts University students and alumni entered the university president’s office Wednesday morning and began a sit-in, vowing to persist until the administration commits to fossil fuel divestment.

The protest began just before 9 a.m. when members of the student group Tufts Climate Action entered president Anthony Monaco’s office in Ballou Hall, said Shana Gallagher, chairwoman of the student group.

Gallagher, 20, said the group wants the university to commit to divesting its endowment from fossil fuel companies over a five-year period and freeze all new investments immediately.

“We are planning on staying here until we are given some commitments,” she said. “The president is out of town, but we will be right here waiting for him when he gets back.”

The sit-in at Tufts is the latest in a series of protests staged at Boston-area schools recently to urge fossil fuel divestment. Last week, a group of Harvard students and their supporters rallied in Harvard Yard.

Tufts issued a statement Wednesday saying it recognizes the diversity of opinions on the subject of divestment and welcomes continued discussion that is thoughtful and respectful.

“Tufts University is proud of its students’ active involvement in a wide range of issues,” the statement said. “However, it is important that the debate about divestment not overshadow the progress Tufts is making in support of environmental stewardship.”

The university said it has launched a new sustainability investment fund, has begun construction of a high-efficiency central energy plant, and is making new investments in recycling and waste-reduction programs.

For the 33 students, alumni, and local supporters involved in the sit-in, as well as numerous other students who participated in a divestment rally at noon, the efforts need to go further, Gallagher said.

“We are hoping to reopen that line of communication and make sure we can be working with the administration on the issue of fossil fuels,” she said.

Tufts executive vice president Patricia Campbell met with some members of the student group Wednesday morning after the sit-in began, Gallagher said. Another round of negotiations is scheduled for Thursday morning.

“This was the step we felt we had to take to initiate these negotiations,” Gallagher said.

The university determined last year that divestment “would have an immediate adverse impact on the educational experience at Tufts,” and it “would not be prudent to expose the university to that kind of risk at this time,” the university said in the statement.

The university said a group of students, trustees, faculty, and staff concluded that “divestment would likely result in a significant reduction in operating funds.”

“We will continue to examine the feasibility of divestment in the future,” the statement said.

Ben Weilerstein, 21, a member of Tufts Climate Action, said he thought the protest was a necessary step to bring attention to the role of fossil fuels in causing climate change.

“This is important because Tufts has millions of dollars invested in an industry that is destroying communities across the world,” he said.

Federal Regulation (U.S.), Positive Train Control, Rail Safety

Positive Train Control Safety Act (S. 1006) – to grant shorter extensions

Repost from Progressive Railroading

Sens. Schumer, Blumenthal, Feinstein, Boxer and Gillibrand propose shorter extension of PTC deadline

4/21/15

Responding to recent fatal passenger train crashes and crude-oil train derailments, U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) yesterday announced new legislation that would require railroads to install positive train control (PTC) technology by 2018.

The senators said their Positive Train Control Safety Act (S. 1006) also would require railroads to report on their PTC implementation status and require trains carrying crude oil to run on tracks installed with PTC.

The bill would extend the federal government’s PTC deadline by three years by allowing one-year extensions, on a case-by-case basis, until 2018. The current deadline is Dec. 31. Recently, other legislation has been introduced to extend the deadline by five years.

The senators said they believe their legislation is necessary “to ensure railroads are moving forward swiftly” to install the crash-prevention technology. The bill would also improve rail inspection practices, in addition to enhancing safety at grade crossings and work zones in response to reports of lax inspection and oversight and numerous fatal accidents, they said.

“The Positive Train Control Safety Act will require railroads, including both passenger and freight trains, to implement PTC by 2018 and the legislation makes sure railroads are transparent about their efforts and requires regular status updates on implementation,” said Schumer.

Also sponsoring the bill are Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).

“This bill will hold railroads’ feet to the fire and ensure they’re moving forward to install PTC, receiving deadline extensions only on a case-by-case basis and year-by-year, and only if factual evidence shows a valid, credible need for more time,” Blumenthal said.

Alberta Canada, Economy, Electoral politics, Oil prices, Tar sands crude

Alberta, the Home of Tar Sands, has “Increasing Income Inequality”

Repost from Oil Change International

Alberta, the Home of the Tar Sands, Has “Increasing Income Inequality”

By Andy Rowell, April 21, 2015

As the Albertan election heats up, the worsening economy – in large part caused by the plunge in oil prices – is taking centre stage in the province’s election campaign which comes to a head in early May.

The early election comes as Alberta, the home of the tar sands, is feeling the full force of the declining oil price, with some 8,000 job losses expected in the energy sector.

The province’s government is grappling with a multi-billion deficit and is scrambling to reduce the reliance of the province on the tar sands industry.

“The premise for calling the election … was that we need a structural shift that is going to take the economy off of oil so that the proportion of the budget that’s accounted for by oil and gas resources goes down,” Bruce Cameron, a local pollster told the Globe and Mail.

Not only is the tar sands industry responsible for this boom and bust jobs cycle, it is also contributing to a widening gap between rich and poor.

A new analysis, published yesterday by the Parkland Institute, entitled From Gap to Chasm: Alberta’s Increasing Income Inequality, concluded that “the gap between the rich and the poor in Alberta is the widest in the country”.

The bottom line is that over the last couple of decades, as the tar sands industry has grown, so has the gap between those earning huge petro-inflated wages and those not.

The Institute, which is an Alberta research network situated within the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta, found that the disparity between those Albertans at the top of the income ladder and those at the bottom has been growing faster than in any other province in Canada.

Back in 1990, Alberta was roughly comparable to Canadian national averages of income inequality levels. However by 2011, the most recent year for which the data is available, it was the worst province.

The author of the new factsheet analysis, who is a public finance economist, Greg Flanagan said “The data show clearly that Alberta is now the most unequal province in Canada, and that the gap between those at the top and those at the bottom widened in Alberta over the past 20 years twice as much as the national average.”

Flanagan added that “Equally worrisome is the fact that because Alberta is the only province without a progressive taxation system, Alberta saw the least improvement in income equality after taxes.”

The rich have certainly got much richer, with the share of total income enjoyed by the top 10% of income earners in Alberta climbing by almost 30% between 1992 and 2007.

Meanwhile, the share of total income that went to the bottom half of earners in the province dropped over the same period, and has flatlined at or below 16% of total income since 2000.

“All the parties in this election should be presenting plans to address what is clearly a serious inequality problem in Alberta, and one that is getting worse, not better,” says Flanagan, who called on a significant shift to progressive taxation in Alberta to help reverse what he called “this troubling trend”.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, DOT-111, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.)

New York Times op ed video: A Danger on Rails

Repost from The New York Times
[Editor:  This is another good locally-based video, this time focusing on crude-by-rail in the Albany NY region.  We have seen similar professional quality videos featuring the Pacific Northwest (by Columbia Riverkeeper and VICE News) and an Inside Climate News / Weather Films documentary, “Boom” that is broad in scope, focusing in on a bridge in Alabama.  We need someone to create a prime time video documenting the looming threat of increasing oil trains here in our beautiful California, focusing not only on safety concerns, but also on the part our corporate decisions will play – or won’t play – in the desolation of land in Alberta Canada and the Upper Midwest and the massive release of toxic fossil fuel chemicals that contribute to climate change.  – RS]

‘A Danger on Rails’

This short documentary warns about the dangers posed by trains that transport explosive oil across North America.

Op-Docs, by Jon Bowermaster, April 21, 2015 

 

In recent years, small towns across the United States have begun hosting an increasingly common phenomenon: long trains, made up of 100-plus black cylindrical cars, rolling slowly past our hospitals, schools and homes.

Few who see them know what they carry: highly flammable crude oil from the shale fields around North Dakota.

I live in the Hudson Valley and see these trains daily; Albany is a major hub, and trains traveling south down the Hudson River toward mid-Atlantic refineries hug its shores. Every day on the East Coast, as many as 400,000 barrels of this explosive mixture travel through our backyards over shaky bridges, highways and overpasses.

As this Op-Doc video shows, there are reasons to be very concerned about this increased train traffic, which is directly related to the boom in oil and gas drilling in the Midwest. These trains can be very dangerous, prompting some to call them “bomb trains.” There have already been horrific railway accidents in North America caused when these trains go off the tracks, some of them fatal.

No one wants the responsibility, or expense, of improving the safety of the cars, fuel, tracks or related infrastructure that would reduce the threat. While new regulations are expected in May from the United States Department of Transportation, environmentalists are not hopeful for much change — given the powerful lobbying efforts of the oil and rail industries.

Already this year there have been four serious derailments, resulting in spills, explosions and fires. Safety and Homeland Security officials have mentioned these “rolling bombs” as potential terrorist weapons. And the Department of Transportation has estimated that at this rate there will be 15 major accidents in the United States this year alone. I hope we will do our best to prevent them.

Jon Bowermaster’s most recent documentaries include “Antarctica 3D, On the Edge” and “Dear Governor Cuomo: New Yorkers Against Fracking in One Voice.’’ He is a 30-year resident of the Hudson Valley.
Op-Docs is a forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with creative latitude by independent filmmakers and artists. Learn more about Op-Docs and how to submit to the series.

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