“Our political committee based these decisions on a shared questionnaire with Clean Water Action, sent to every candidate, that focused heavily on what the two groups see as the top challenges and goals of the upcoming legislative season,” according to a news release from the Sierra Club. “The candidates below are the ones the Sierra Club believes are both willing and capable of creating a truly resilient, renewable and environmentally responsible Rhode Island.”

The Sierra Club said it will be “adding more endorsements in the days to come for those unopposed or facing/ posing a November challenge. The below list of endorsements is specifically focused on the candidates involved in races we have determined to be key primaries.”

Representative in General Assembly
Moira Walsh, District 3  – Providence
Marcia Ranglin-Vassell, District 5  – Providence
Grace Diaz, District 11 – Providence
Lisa Scorpio, District 13 – Johnston/Providence
Nicholas Delmenico, District 27 – Coventry/Warwick/West Warwick
Teresa Tanzi, District 34 – Narragansett/South Kingstown
Kathleen Fogarty, District 35 – South Kingstown
William Deware, District 54 – North Providence
David Norton, District 60 – Pawtucket
Jason Knight, District 67 – Barrington/Warren
Susan Donovan, District 69 – Bristol/Portsmouth
Linda Finn, District 72 – Middletown/Newport/Portsmouth

Senator in General Assembly
Doris De Los Santos, District 7 – Providence/North Providence
Matt Fecteau, District 8 – Pawtucket
Daniel Issa, District 16 – Central Falls/Pawtucket
Dennis Lavallee, District 17 – Lincoln/North Providence/North Smithfield
Jeanine Calkin, District 30 – Warwick

The Rhode Island Chapter of the Sierra Club has sent an email to their subscribers asking them to call Governor Gina Raimondo and urge her not to veto the Keable/Fogarty bill that will allow Burrillville voters to vote on any tax agreements their Town Council makes with Invenergy for the proposed fracked gas and diesel oil burning power plant in Pascoag.

The Sierra Club has “made it our top priority to fight the proposed billion dollar fracked gas and oil power plant that a major corporation wants to build in the beautiful town of Burrillville, Rhode Island.”

Here’s the good news: there is legislation making its way through the General Assembly that could stop this insane new plant. In fact, a bill by Rep. Keable and Sen. Fogarty that would give the town of Burrillville the authority to hold a local referendum on the proposal is looking likely to pass both the House and the Senate!

Now here’s the bad news: Governor Raimondo is a big supporter of the power plant, and she has threatened to veto this legislation.

The email goes on to say, “Make no mistake, a veto by the governor would be a betrayal of everyone who cares about our planet, and of future generations of Rhode Islanders. It would represent a suicidal double-down on the dangerous fossil fuel economy that has taken our climate to the brink and that promises so much more destruction in coming years.”

The email conatins a handy button to contact the Governor, reproduced here:

You can also reach her office can be reach by phone at (401) 222-2080, by email at governor@governor.ri.gov, and online here. The Sierra Club asks that callers please repeat this message, as loud and clear as you can:

Governor, I urge you to stand by your campaign commitment to fight climate change. Please do not veto the Keable/Fogarty legislation to give local voters a say in this massive new fossil fuel investment. This decision will define your environmental legacy – I hope you make the right choice, for the sake of our children, grandchildren, and all future generations of Rhode Islanders.

Representative Aaron Regunberg, a co-sponsor of the bill in the House, echoed the Sierra Club ask but also wrote in an email to his constituents that,

“There are a lot of good people in the building trades who support this proposal, and I feel for them – they need work, and they see this project as their best chance to support their families. That’s why I also commit to fighting – just as hard – for a renewable energy agenda that will create good, family-supporting jobs for folks who need them. We know it’s possible, and I’m ready for the fight.”

While Verizon employees are struggling for fair jobs, communities from Baltimore to Appalachia are struggling to transition to the 21st-century clean energy economy without access to high-speed internet due to Verizon’s neglect. This denial of access to an essential tool of the 21st century economy is a prime example of the links between environmental and economic injustice.

Verizon has been raking in billions of dollars of profits every year, yet they are still trying to outsource good union jobs, transfer technicians away from their homes for months at a time, take away employees’ health benefits and avoid paying federal income tax. At the same time, they are still refusing to expand their FiOS high-speed internet to low-income and communities of color, despite getting tax breaks and subsidies to do so. To make matters worse, Verizon is refusing to sit down and negotiate a fair contract with its employees.

In negotiations over their union contract, Verizon employees are coming together to fight the outsourcing of their union jobs and to make sure that everyone has access to quality service. If Verizon employees lose this round of contract negotiations, other companies will see that they too can get away with shoddy service, offshoring jobs, contracting out work, and poor treatment of their employees.

We must ensure that our friends and neighbors have jobs that sustain their families and bolsters the economy in Rhode Island. For good jobs and a just transition, Sierra Club stands in solidarity with Verizon workers.

[From a press release]

The two remaining members of the three who should make up the board serve at the pleasure of Governor Raimondo, who is on record supporting expansion of the “natural” gas infrastructure. As a result, Janet Coit, one of the two board members, is in a bind.  She is Director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and an avid environmentalist.  Last summer, she spoke at the Sierra Club-sponsored rally, “The Environment is Everyone’s Business.”  Coit is painfully aware of the toll climate change is already taking on life in Narragansett Bay.  At the rally, she referred to a “profound experience” she had looking at colonial nesting birds on Hope Island. She said: “There are several islands in the Bay that used to host colonies of nesting terns and now they are submerged.”

Said Lisa Petrie of Fossil Free Rhode Island: “We’re calling on Governor Raimondo to wake up and recognize that building more gas-fired power plants threatens the future of our state and of humanity as a whole.”  Indeed, the Invenergy proposal is inconsistent with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, which determined that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare of current and future generations.  This language parallels that of the 2007 denial of a fossil-fuel plant permit by Roderick Brembly, Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Obviously, team Raimondo is lagging reality by almost a decade.

Fossil Free Rhode Island reiterated that Governor Raimondo’s policies violate Article 1, Section 17 of the Rhode Island Constitution, the supreme law of the state, which clearly specifies the duty “to provide for the conservation of the air, land, water, plant, animal, mineral and other natural resources of the state.”

The Conservation Law Foundation has put forth that, by increasing Rhode Island’s greenhouse gas emissions, the Clear River Energy Center would violate the Resilient Rhode Island Act of 2014. The foundation urged the Board to terminate its deliberations, which would effectively deny Invenergy the permit it seeks.

The Burrillville Land Trust, in a blistering take down of Invenergy’s proposal, argued for the same and writes: “We are being denied an opportunity to respond in a meaningful way because of mis-information, inadequate information and outright absence of information.”

Governor Raimondo has tried to make the case that Invenergy’s Energy Center will bring jobs to Rhode Island.  The Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council, in its request for late intervention, agrees with the governor. This view is untenable and Fossil Free Rhode Island referred to a recent report of the Political Economy Research Institute of UMass in Amherst that states: “New investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy will generate more jobs for a given amount of spending than maintaining or expanding each country’s existing fossil fuel sectors.”

Fossil Free Rhode Island once again drew attention to current research that shows that, given the urgency of dealing with climate change, “natural” gas has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than coal and oil. In other words, Invenergy’s proposed power plant is bad for Rhode Island on all counts: physics, economics and morality.

Sister Mary Pendergast, one of the individual intervenors, said: “I do not think that the spiritual and moral issues of environmental ethics will be adequately represented by excluding my testimony. Any decision the Siting Board makes that is good for the corporation, but not for the environment, is a bad decision and we will live to regret it.”

The Board referred to the ambiguous rules under which they operate.  They seem to interpret the rules as the requirement of attorney representation. This interpretation would exclude virtually all members of the public who filed for the status of intervenor.  Pat Fontes, representing Occupy Providence, said: “The refusal to admit the voice of Occupy Providence in the deliberations of this board would symbolize and contribute to the likelihood that ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people’ will indeed perish from the earth.”

[From a press release]

RI Future covered the hearing here: Strong public opposition to Burrillville power plant at hearing

The plant, called the Clear River Energy Center, would utilize fracking to generate energy with natural gas. Fracking is a process that involves drilling into the earth, and then shooting a high-pressure water mixture at the rock to release the natural gas inside. Environmentalists have opposed the practice for a number of reasons. First, the process uses huge amounts of water that must be transported to the site. Second, many worry that dangerous chemicals used in the process may contaminate groundwater around the site. There are also concerns that fracking causes small earthquakes.

The company that is sponsoring and privately funding the $700 million project, Invenergy, says that the practice is clean and environmentally friendly because the new plant will prevent older, less efficient plants from emitting pollutants like carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulphur oxides into the air.

Invenergy has predicted $280 million in energy savings for Rhode Islanders once the energy center is up and running. There would be an overall economic impact of $1.3 billion between 2016 and 2034. Roughly 300 construction jobs would be added to the state’s workforce to build the facility, over a 30 month time period. There would also be 25-30 permanent, skilled positions to actually run the center.

“The construction of this clean energy generation facility will create hundreds of jobs while delivering more affordable and reliable energy to our businesses and homes,” Governor Raimondo said. “We are tackling our regional energy challenges, committing to cleaner energy systems in the long-term, and putting Rhode Islanders back to work.”

Even with this promise of clean energy, there are still many staunch opponents to the proposed facility. Fighting Against Natural Gas, or FANG, held an emergency rally in front of the Chamber of Commerce as Governor Raimondo unveiled her plan. Some even believed the facility to be a “rape” of Burriville’s air, water, and soil.

Robert Malin from Rhode Island’s chapter of the Sierra Club attended the protest, in opposition to the proposed facility. Malin believes that the government has been less than forthcoming with details for the project, and shouldn’t be trusted.

“The Governor has been saying that she doesn’t know anything about gas or fracking, and that this whole thing is just one little expansion that they’re doing, and by the way, we don’t have any money to build out the renewables, it’s a wish. Maybe in 20 years we’ll get around to actually doing it,” he said. “Then the next thing you know, they can dig into their pockets, they can pull out $700 million, and this thing that they’re planning, had to be planned in advance. They kept this whole thing under the table. Why wasn’t the public able to decide whether we want an explosive power plant building, bringing fracked gas, a deadly practice that was outlawed in New York state, that’s what we’re bringing.”

Malin explained that even though many don’t consider natural gas a fossil fuel, believing it lacks a carbon footprint, the energy source actually leaves what he called a “ghost footprint,” and still contributes to global warming.

“You’re trying to track a colorless, odorless gas,” he said. “Unfortunately, when it gets into the atmosphere, it’s called an accelerant to global warming. So, if you can imagine, you’ve got a big wood fire, and you take some gasoline and throw it on the fire. It flares up really quick. So if you’re not right there when you’re measuring it, when it flares up, then it’s very hard to track. The bad new is that it has the same carbon footprint as other fossil fuels, like coal and oil when it’s done.”

Stephen Dahl, from Fossil Free Rhode Island, said that Raimondo’s plan is short term, and that there are better options and avenues for the state to undertake.

“I think that is a very short gain that they are playing. In the short term, we’ll have jobs. For the longer term, if we follow countries like Germany and Scandinavia, and their mix of energies, in which we can build a transition to 100 percent wind, water, and solar for all purposes, both residential and commercial, here in Rhode Island, by 2050,” he said. “I understand that she has a limited term in office, and she wants to get something done. The way she’s chosen forward, though, is unfortunately, that short-term prospect, which will bring us more catastrophes. So, I object to it.”

Raimondo, and Invenergy’s Founder and CEO Michael Polsky both insisted that fracking, in combination with renewable energy sources, is only one of many puzzle pieces that can be put together to help slow climate change. According to Invenergy, the Clear River Energy Center will add more than 900 megawatts of new, cleaner energy to the regional energy grid, and will displace older, less efficient plants. It will also invest in well treatment and system upgrades, which will benefit 1,200 Pascoag Utility District water customers by contracting on a long-term basis for industrial water supply. Commercial benefits for the town of Burriville include millions of dollars in tax revenue, as well as the reduction of the property tax burden for homeowners.

Once approved, the Clear River Energy Center will begin construction in 2016, with operations scheduled to begin by summer 2019.

Four solid miles of people — 400,000, according to organizers — marched through the heart of New York City to show that climate change is no longer an abstract threat, and to demand action from national and international leaders.

They carried signs and banners, made music, rode bicycles, pushed kids in strollers, and made noise in a line so long that when lead contingent arrived at 34th Street and 11th Avenue, the tail of the march had just begun to move from 86th Street and Central Park West. It made the usual crush of people in Midtown Manhattan seem sparse by comparison. Imagine roughly half of the people in the state of Rhode Island marching together.

There were plenty of Rhode Islanders there, including a half-dozen busses with folks from groups including the RI Sierra Club, Fossil Free RI, the RI Progressive Democrats of America, the Humanists of RI. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was in the march, we spotted him as he stopped to talk with students from Brown and URI.

The march was timed to coincide with Tuesday’s UN Climate Summit, which aims to build international support for action before the next round of climate talks, and in an unusual move, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon himself joined the marchers. RI Future caught up with former Vice-President Al Gore, and he expressed his hopes for action at the Summit.

The People’s Climate March was grouped into six sections, who each had a several-block stretch of Central Park West where they began marshaling early this morning. The weather had been predicted hot, but an overnight rain left the streets cool and damp when people began assembling around 8am. Leading the march at Columbus Circle (an irony acknowledged by the organizers) were the people on the “Frontlines of Crisis” — indigenous people, climate justice groups, and impacted communities. Next was “We can build the future,” comprising labor, families, students, and elders. Following them was the “We have solutions group,” with renewable energy people, food and water justice groups, and environmental organizations. Then came “we know who is responsible,” with anti-corporate campaigns, peace & justice groups, and others. After them — and we were up to 81st street now — was “The debate is over,” featuring scientists and interfaith organizations. Finally, the last group, “To change everything, we need everyone,” included NY boroughs, community groups, neighborhoods, other cities, states, and countries.

Each section had its own floats, banners, and themed signs, and each began the morning with a mini-rally at the head of their staging area. Not only was the street packed, solid, for those twenty blocks, but the sidewalks on both sides and slowed to a crawl as people moved up and down the line to find their contingent.

The tone, energized and upbeat throughout was notable. There was definitely plenty of anger — at corporations, at international leaders, at the system — but from the youth contingent near the front enthusiastically chanting “This is what democracy looks like” to the many folks who had clearly been at this for a while, there was a positive energy.

Sallie Latch, with the group globaljusticecenter.org, held a sign on 81st Street saying “I can’t believe I’m protesting this crap after 60 years.” Smiling, she told RI Future, “More than 60 years. We need to do something. We can’t wait for our politicians and corporations. This is about system change, not climate change.”

Although the march stepped off on time, it still took hours for those in the final groups to begin to move, as the line snaked across 59th Street, down 6th Ave, then across 42nd to 11th Avenue, where they headed south to a post-march celebration/block party between 34th and 37th. This reporter had walked north along the entire staging area to get a sense of the groups (see the photos on Flickr) and was able to catch the subway and get to Times Square in time to meet the frontline group headed West on 42nd Street.

The final marchers made their way along the west side about six hours after the event began. This reporter grew up in NY, and cannot recall seeing anything with this scale since the anti-nuclear protest back in 1982.

With a display of the full-throated, unabashedly leftist critique usually absent from American policy discussions, the NYC Climate Convergence conference kicked off last night at St. Peter’s Church in Midtown Manhattan with a diverse lineup of speakers who all sought to reframe climate change as a social justice issue. Through the two hours of talks — which often prompted prolonged applause from the more than 300 attendees in the hall and a video overflow room — ran a deceptively simple theme: “System change, not climate change.”

“We need to connect the dots,” said Jill Stein, the 2012 Green Party presidential candidate, who served as emcee and introduced the five speakers. It is impossible, Stein argued, to address climate change within a context of neoliberal capitalism and unfettered corporate self-interest, but that through building a collective, human-focussed movement change is possible. “The moment we get together we are an unstoppable force. The name of the game is coming together and overcoming this framing of divide and conquer.”

That’s the aim of Climate Convergence, which has leveraged the People’s Climate March on Saturday to bring together hundreds of scholars, unionists, artists and activists from around the world for a two-day series or talks and workshops exploring how communities around the world are building transformative alternatives and, according to their web site [convergeforclimate.org], to “build and strengthen an environmental movement that addresses the root causes of the climate crisis.”

The evening began with an introduction by the Indigenous Environmental Network and a blessing delivered by water walker Josephine Mandamin, who focused on the link between the water she ceremonially carries and the health of the Earth. “One day, the earth will be clean,” she said. “This is the work that has been left for us to do.” The climate comprises every drop of water, and, “That little droplet of water unites us all.”

Ann Petermann of the Global Justice Ecology Project stepped through the history of failed efforts of previous United Nations conferences to achieve meaningful international agreements. Outside pressure, she argued, was the only way to push for change. “I’m very excited about what’s going to be happening this week around the UN Summit,” she said, citing the Flood Wall Street action planned for Monday. “Direct action is the antidote for despair.”

Hip-hop artist Immortal Technique (Felipe Coronel) talked about his personal journey from Peru to Harlem, and the critical need to be “proactive in our progressiveness” across all the intersectional oppressions that contribute to climate change. “We are human beings who have been conditioned to believe in a non-sustainable system,” he said, “The people who are ruining our planet are not going to be the people who fix it.” He closed with a devastating rap, “Sign of the Times.”

Erica Violet Lee of Idle No More stressed the very direct threat to indigenous people from tar sands work in Canada. “To get to the oil-rich lands, they need to move our families out of the way,” she said. “The intent of Idle No More is to draw awareness to the legacy of colonial and paternalistic policies.”

Nastaran Mohit, a New York labor organizer, challenged attendees to move beyond conferences and marches, and drew pointed illustrations from her work with the people of the Rockaways, an 11-mile long peninsula in Queens devastated by Hurricane Sandy. “Some of the poorest neighborhoods in New York City had the roofs ripped off them,” she said. “Sandy was the first time that Occupy activists had the opportunity to connect with low-income and marginalized communities. As beautiful a movement as Occupy was, it lacked that connection.” She described the difficult, sometimes painful work that volunteers had to do.

“As a labor organizer,” she said, “I look at unions. The New York State Nurses Association sent out hundreds of volunteers, canvassed hi-rise buildings, met some of the most frightened residents. What those nurses came back from that experience knowing, they saw first-hand how frightening it is when a climate catastrophe hits New York.”

“What did you do to help?” She asked attendees; not, she said, to induce guilt, but to prompt consideration of what meaningful action requires. “Am I willing to be uncomfortable? Am I willing to really go out and connect with these folks who are on the front lines of climate change?”

The evening’s final speaker, Oscar Olivera, talked about the work which won him the 2001 Goldman Environmental Prize: building a coalition which successfully overturned the privatization of water distribution in Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third-largest city. He drew a parallel to the United States: “Cochabamba is in Detroit right now.”

There are two interlinked challenges, Olivera said, communication and organization. “When the water was privatized,” he said, “There was a law, there was a contract, and the people did not understand anything. Our biggest challenge was how do we make this technical economic language simple for people to grasp.” Second, he said, “We have to have new means of organizing against that whole cadre of business that are threatening our environment. The only way to prove to those in power that we exist, the only way they will understand us is by mobilizing.”

In Cochabamba, he said, “We didn’t just recover water as a public good, we recovered politics, and for us, politics means our collective capacity to make decisions for today and the future.”

He urged attendees to recognize their responsibility, as people from the North who maintain the largest military, the largest transnational corporations, and the highest consumption. He closed by asking attendees to “Commit not only to resist, but to re-exist.” “We pledge to be like water, transparent and in movement,” he said. “We promise to be like children, joyful and creative. We promise to believe that the power is within us — without leaders, without parties, without bosses. Hasta la victoria.”

After the event, a group from FloodWallStreet.org conducted a training outside the church for a group of about 30 activist volunteers for a direct action that will take place on Monday morning at the New York Stock Exchange. Aiming to spotlight the threat to Lower Manhattan from climate change, the group plans to dress in blue and mimic the flooding that crippled the area in the wake of Sandy. Watching the volunteers “Surge and sit” offered an eerie, powerful echo of Olivera’s call to “be like water.”

Did I mention you can get a Climate March bus ticket roundtrip for as little as $15 and the deadline is Wednesday? CLICK HERE FOR THE TICKET PAGE  (If it says the tickets are sold out, please join the waiting list. More buses are being arranged)

The People’s Climate March is expected to draw more than 200,000 people, all to make the statement that global action must be undertaken to drastically reduce carbon emissions. The film builds excitement for the march by interlacing behind the scenes clips of the amazing organizing work being done to make it all run smoothly with interviews of renowned climate activists. The organizers’ perspective on the march is reinforced by periodically counting down the days until September 21st, beginning 100 days out and ending with 14 to go.

One of the renowned activists who makes an appearance in “Disruption” is our own Senator Whitehouse. The Senator held his annual Energy and Environmental Leaders day, and we were able to pull him aside for a moment to get an exclusive video interview. Among other things we asked him why it’s important to go down to New York City. This is what he had to say:

Even if you know you can’t make it to the People’s Climate March and disregard the Senator’s invitation, I recommend watching the movie to get a sense of the scale of the movement we need to create in the coming decades in order to save civilization as we have known it. It requires unprecedented action, and it’s made more difficult by human psychology, which isn’t biologically designed to grapple with problems that emerge and must be resolved over generations. This challenge is acknowledged in “Disruption.” The theory in the film and behind the march itself is to get enough people onto the streets to reach a cultural tipping point, to find a place in our collective consciousness where we can plan for the long term and act accordingly.

We are closer to this tipping point than we realize, and each new pair of boots on the ground brings us a step closer. In New York and beyond, if we want to disrupt business as usual, we must be the disruption.

Buy Your Ticket Now!

The movie is close to an hour long, and afterward, we’ll have a discussion about what all of us can do together about this crucial issue.

The screening will prepare the way for the People’s Climate March in New York City on September 21st, when a vast quantity of people will converge in New York City for what may become the largest climate march in history to date. As we march, reported world leaders will be attending the UN for a special summit on the climate crisis.

URI students will join with people from other schools, community organizations, unions and hundreds of other groups from across the country and around the world for this historic occasion. We’ll take to the streets to demand the the climate justice that is within our reach.

There will be buses departing from Kingston and Providence to New York City on September 20th (Providence only) and 21st, and returning on Sunday, the 21st.

Tickets will be $30 round trip, with low-income tickets available for $15. You can purchase your bus tickets here.

There also is an RI site for donations.

Please fill out this interest form if you are planning on attending the People’s Climate March.

The screening of Disruption is sponsored by:

• Fossil Free Rhode Island: action for climate justice, urging public institutions that divestment from fossil fuels is the only ethical choice. (Facebook: FFRI and Divest URI
• RI Student Climate Coalition (RISCC), a statewide alliance of students and youth working for a clean, safe, and just future for all
•  URI Multicultural Center, dedicated to the development by means of social justice, change and empowerment of a campus united across culture, identity, and discipline
• The Green Task Force of Unitarian Universalist Congregation of South County (UUCSC), a resource for social and environmental action and peace.
• Sierra Club RI, “The battle for conservation will go on endlessly.”

Finally, here Sophie Robinson explains what motivates her to organize for the People’s Climate March:

… the worst fear

That can ever be hurled

Fear to bring children

Into the world

(Bob Dylan’s Masters of War)