View
216
Download
1
Tags:
Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
All of the environmental projects and victories described in Nature’s Voice are made possible through the generous support of Members like you. If you like what you read, you are invited to make a special contribution at www.nrdc.org/joingive
Citation preview
FOR THE 1.4 MILLION MEMBERS AND ONLINE ACTIVISTS OF THE NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL Fall 2013
in this issue
Gra
y w
olf
© A
rt W
olfe
• British Company Quits Pebble Mine
• Redford and Other Activists Demand Clean Power
• President’s Climate Plan Embraces NRDC Vision
• New Report: Keystone XL Fails the Climate Test
Good News for Belugas In a crucial victory for the last beluga whales of Cook Inlet, Alaska, a federal judge has ruled in NRDC’s favor, saying that the Obama Administration violated the law by allowing Apache Alaska Corporation to use seismic airguns to survey the inlet for oil and gas. The blasts from the submerged airguns, which would sound 12 hours a day, can easily deafen or kill marine life and are especially dangerous to a population of whales that has plummeted from 1,300 to 312 in recent years. These same whales are threatened by the proposed Pebble Mine, which would put a port for oceangoing ships in the heart of their habitat.
Patagonia UndammedPlans to build a massive hydroelectric dam complex in Chile were dealt another major blow when leading presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet said the project
“should not go on.” It’s a key victory for NRDC and our local partners, who have been fighting the HidroAysén project for six years. The dams would destroy two of Patagonia’s wildest rivers and flood thousands of acres of
pristine forest critical to endangered wildlife. Bachelet has now joined the majority of candidates and Chileans in opposing the project and favoring a move toward more sustainable and energy-efficient alternatives. As political support for the dam continues to dwindle, we will continue waging what has become the longest environmental battle in Chilean history.
in the news
W ith the world at a critical juncture in the fight
to slow global warming, NRDC has launched
a new activism website that aims to help
end our own nation’s dependence on dirty fossil fuels.
DemandCleanPower.org is countering Big Oil’s propaganda
machine by streaming video messages from a range of
cultural luminaries, such as Robert Redford, Julia Louis-
Dreyfus, Van Jones and Carole King, while making it easy
for people to make their own voices heard against energy
devel opment that endangers our planet.
“Our Members know that NRDC is on the front lines when
it comes to fighting for a clean energy future, whether it’s
campaigning to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline
or preventing Shell from drilling in the Arctic or defending
communities from an onslaught of fracking,” says Frances
Beinecke, NRDC’s president. “Demand Clean Power
is allowing us to build a juggernaut of broader public
support as well.”
The new website is focusing its first wave of popular activism
against the climate-wrecking Keystone XL tar sands pipeline,
which President Obama could quash with a stroke of his
pen (see Campaign Update on next page). But as Van Jones
and others remind us, such planet-saving actions by our
leaders are likely only if millions of Americans stand up
and demand them.
2
Pat
ago
nia
© B
rid
get
Bes
aw/I
LCP
Hassle-free holiday gifts that help save wildlife. What could be better? www.nrdcgreengifts.org
Join the Fight: DemanD Clean Power now!
Robert Redford, Carole King, Van Jones and others are speaking out against fossil fuels.
3
Hea
dw
ater
s o
f B
rist
ol B
ay ©
Ro
ber
t G
lenn
Ket
chum
Pat
ago
nia
© B
rid
get
Bes
aw/I
LCP
In a stunning turn of events that has brought new
hope to Alaska’s Bristol Bay, British mining giant
Anglo American — the lead company behind
the controversial Pebble Mine — has announced that
it is abandoning the project. The surprise decision
dealt a heavy blow to the proposed gold and copper
operation, which
would produce some
10 billion tons of
contam inated waste
and threaten the
greatest wild salmon
runs on the planet.
“Anglo American
finally realized that
the Pebble Mine
is a financial and
environ mental
disaster waiting
to happen,” says
Joel Reynolds, who
has led NRDC’s Stop Pebble campaign since 2010.
The company’s wake-up call came after it spent
$541 million trying to develop the mine. It faced
intense opposition from a united front of local residents,
Native groups and commercial fishermen as well
as worldwide protest stoked by an NRDC action
campaign led by Robert Redford.
“Four years ago, the idea of Anglo American’s
throwing in the towel was unthinkable,” notes Taryn
Kiekow, who has coordinated NRDC’s efforts with
local and national partners. “People power has made
the difference.”
For years, Anglo American claimed it could gouge a
vast and toxic open pit out of the Bristol Bay watershed
without destroying the world-class salmon runs that
are the economic, cultural and ecological linchpin
of the region. But an in-depth study last year by the
EPA found that the Pebble Mine posed “catastrophic”
risks to Bristol Bay. More than 600,000 Americans
then called on the agency to use its power under the
Clean Water Act
to stop the mine.
Meanwhile, Anglo
American was
deluged by nearly a
million messages of
protest from NRDC
Members and was
dogged by our full-
page anti-Pebble
newspaper ads that
ran during its annual
shareholder meetings
in London. The
most recent of those
ads called on the company’s new CEO, Mark Cutifani,
to break with his predecessors and avert disaster by
pulling the plug on Pebble. Now he has done just that.
Does Anglo’s exit mean the Pebble Mine is dead?
“Definitely not,” says Reynolds. Northern Dynasty
Minerals, now the sole owner of the project, is already
looking for a new partner to help fund the mine.
NRDC will be focused on making sure that other
companies — including Rio Tinto, which owns a big
stake of Northern Dynasty — aren’t tempted to make
the same bad bet that Anglo American made. Above
all, we will be ramping up public pressure on EPA
to permanently protect Bristol Bay by banning large-
scale mining in this American Eden.
Anglo American Quits Pebble Mine!
At stake: the river systems above Bristol Bay support the greatest wild salmon runs on the planet.
Campaign Update
In June, President Obama drew
a clear line in the sand for the
proposed Keystone XL tar sands
pipeline, vowing to reject the 2,000-
mile behemoth if it would “significantly
exacerbate the problem of carbon
pollution.” So, does the gargantuan
pipeline, which would snake from
Alberta’s tar sands fields through the
American heartland to refineries on
the Gulf Coast, fail that test? “No
question, it fails,” says Susan Casey-
Lefkowitz, director of NRDC’s
International Program.
A new and detailed analysis of the
project by NRDC reveals that the
Keystone XL would add a staggering
amount of carbon pollution to our skies
— up to 1.2 billion metric tons more
than if it carried conventional crude.
In addition, the pipeline, which would
course with some 830,000 barrels of
heavy tar sands crude per day, would
dramatically boost the development
of this dirty fuel. Indeed, the Keystone
XL is the linchpin of Big Oil’s plans
to more than triple heavy tar sands
production over the next 20 years.
Prod uction of tar sands oil requires
more energy than the produc tion
of any other fossil fuel on earth,
generating three times the carbon
pollution of conventional crude, for
example. “The expected life span of the
Keystone XL is 50 years,” says Casey-
Lefkowitz. “That means our grand-
children will be suffering from the
climate chaos produced by this pipeline.”
Given the pipeline’s clear and far-reaching
impacts on our climate, the president’s
declaration would appear to doom the
project — but not so fast. “Big Oil is
now engaged in the bluff of a lifetime,”
Casey-Lefkowitz says. “And the
president’s own State Department has
been buying it.” Charged with evaluating
the project because it would cross the
U.S. border with Canada, the State
Department offered its initial assess ment
in March. Incredibly, the depart ment
concluded that Keystone XL would not
signifi cantly increase carbon pollution.
How is that possible? Officials argued
that if the pipeline weren’t built, the
same amount of tar sands oil would find
its way out of Canada anyway — via
other pipelines, for example, or by rail.
“Basically the State Department is saying,
‘Look, the oil industry is going to
develop these tar sands
no matter what, so all
this global warming
pollution is going to
happen whether or
not the Keystone XL
gets built,’” says
Casey-Lefkowitz.
There’s only one problem with that
logic: It’s not true. “There aren’t any
viable alternatives for moving all that
tar sands oil out of Canada,” says NRDC
attorney Anthony Swift, who has been
working to expose these
claims in the national media.
“The entire tar sands enter-
prise is hanging on the
Keystone XL. If we can
stop that, we can head off
the climate-wrecking
impacts.” Indeed,
industry insiders
and analysts have
conceded as much.
In a report released
in June, the financial
powerhouse Goldman Sachs concluded
that nixing Keystone XL would result
in the cancellation or deferment of
numerous tar sands expansion projects:
“[W]e believe risk would grow that
Canadian heavy oil/oil sands supply
would remain trapped in the province
of Alberta,” the firm’s report states.
Canada’s own RBC Bank has reached a
similar conclusion, saying that rejection
New NRDC report shows tar sands pipeline fails Obama’s climate test, will worsen global warming
4
Gre
at B
ear
rain
fore
st a
nd S
pir
it B
ear
© Ia
n M
cAlli
ster
; tar
san
ds
© J
iri R
ezac
; ow
l © G
erry
Elli
s/M
ind
en P
ictu
res;
tra
in w
reck
© A
sso
ciat
ed P
ress
BiG Oil’s Dirty secret: KeystONe Xl is VitAl tO its tAr sANDs AGeNDA
Tar sands mining operation, Alberta, Canada.
Inset: Boreal owl, imperiled by development.
New NRDC report shows tar sands pipeline fails Obama’s climate test, will worsen global warming
of the pipeline would lead to a $9
billion drop in tar sands investment
over the next seven years, putting the
brakes on as much as one-third of the
industry’s growth plans. As one pro-
oil analyst put it in the press: “The
cheapest way to get from point A to
point B is a pipeline. That is why
Keystone has got to go ahead.”
To be sure, Big Oil is
vigorously pursuing other
means of transporting
Canadian tar sands oil from
the interior of Alberta to
one of the coasts — but
it’s confronting stringent
opposition at every turn.
The proposed Northern
Gateway pipe line could be
called the Keystone XL of the north:
It would carry some 500,000 barrels
of tar sands crude a day across the
Canadian Rockies and through the
spectacular temperate rainforest of
British Columbia’s Spirit Bear Coast.
But in a potentially lethal setback for
the project, the British Columbia
government has announced its formal
opposition to the pipeline, speaking
for the more than 60 percent of British
Columbians who say they are against
it. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil has been
quietly developing a scheme to pump
corrosive tar sands crude east, around
the Great Lakes and through an old
1950s-era pipeline across New England
to Portland, Maine. But as word of the
oil giant’s plan has leaked out, opposition
has surged, with local citizens protesting
the scheme and the city council of
Burlington, Vermont, passing resolutions
condemning the plan.
As for shipping tar sands oil by rail,
“independent sources from Goldman
Sachs to Reuters have demonstrated the
folly of that argument,” says NRDC’s
Swift. “The estimates of how much
crude the oil industry could realistically
ship to the Gulf Coast by rail have been
wildly inflated,” he says. Not only that,
but the extreme danger of hauling oil
by rail was made tragically apparent
in July, when a train carrying crude
derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic,
Quebec, leveling the downtown area
and killing 47 residents. Says Swift:
“The runaway expansion of the tar
sands oil fields in Canada isn’t inevitable:
We can stop it if we stop Keystone XL.”
Take action at: www.stoptar.org
5
Canada’s Spirit Bear Coast, where the Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline would terminate.
BiG Oil’s Dirty secret: KeystONe Xl is VitAl tO its tAr sANDs AGeNDA
A train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded
in downtown Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.
Missouri River
Yellowstone River
Mississippi River
Edmonton
Fort McMurray
Hardisty
WinnipegRegina
Calgary
Superior
Chicago
Saint Paul
Bismarck
Pierre
Lincoln
Steele City
TopekaSt. Louis
CushingOklahoma City
Port ArthurHouston
Austin
Saskatchewan ManitobaAlberta
Ontario
North DakodaMontana
Wyoming South Dakoda
Minnesota
Wisconsin
IowaNebraska
KansasMissouri
Texas
Oklahoma Arkansas
Louisana
Illinois
Colorado
C A N A D A
Tar Sands Region
Keystone Pipeline
Proposed KeystoneXL Pipeline
Our grandchildren will be suffering from the climate chaos produced by this pipeline.“ ”
Spirit Bear.
Despite years of scientific
consensus about the dire
threat of climate change,
the largest single source of global
warming pollution in the United
States has gone almost entirely
unchecked — until now. In June,
President Obama announced a
sweeping plan to tackle climate
change, which includes, for the first
time ever, reducing carbon
emissions at the nation’s existing
power plants. “This is a watershed moment,” says Dan
Lashof, director of NRDC’s Climate and Clean Air Program.
“It’s heartening to see the administration enthusi as tically
embrace the sort of reductions in carbon pollution that
we’ve been advocating.”
Although pollutants such as arsenic, lead and mercury have
long been regulated, never before have federal limits been
imposed on the massive amounts of carbon spewing from
America’s coal-fired and other power
plants, which account for some 2.4
billion metric tons of CO2 pollution
each year, a staggering 40 percent
of the country’s total.
NRDC has long been at the forefront
of the fight to rein in those emissions,
putting forth a detailed plan last
year that would cut carbon pollution
from existing power plants by 26
percent over seven years, even
as it would create some 210,000
jobs and reduce the average American’s electric bill. Many
insiders expect that plan to figure prominently in the
Environmental Protection Agency’s own strategy as it
carries out the president’s climate agenda. “We’re pleased
that the Obama Administration has committed to bold
action,” says Lashof. “But there’s still much more work to
be done, and we have to be vigilant that industry doesn’t
derail the process.”
6
Wha
le ©
Bra
ndo
n C
ole
President’s Climate Plan embraCes nrdC Vision
Sm
oke
sta
cks
© S
kysc
an/C
orb
is
Thanks to a landmark agreement, whales and other marine mammals in the Gulf of Mexico will finally receive protection from the devastating
impact of seismic airguns, which the oil and gas industry uses for offshore exploration. The milestone protections are the result of a settlement reached with the Obama Administration and industry in a federal lawsuit brought by NRDC and our allies.
For years the oil and gas industry has deployed airguns in the Gulf with virtually no restriction, subjecting threatened and endangered marine mammal species to a relentless assault of explosive noise that is destroying their ability to feed, mate and nurse their young — in short, to survive. “Throughout the northern Gulf, recent studies show that noise from airguns alone averages nearly 120 decibels throughout the year,” says Michael Jasny, director of NRDC’s Marine Mammal Protection Project. “The government says that just a single second of exposure to
noise at that level can cause harm, yet that’s what whales and dolphins in the Gulf are routinely having to suffer through.”
The toll of this industrial onslaught has been even more acute in the wake of BP’s catastrophic oil spill in 2010. Many of the Gulf’s marine mammal species, from bottle nose dolphins to endangered Bryde’s whales, are still struggling to recover. The new protections will immediately ban airgun blasting from biologically critical areas, such as important feeding and calving grounds, and will require industry to better monitor for marine mammal activity and to explore more environ mentally sensitive alternatives to airguns, even as the Obama Administration undertakes a compre hensive review of seismic exploration in the Gulf.
NRDC Wins New Protections for Marine Mammals in the Gulf
Pollution from a coal-fired power plant.
Bryde's whale.
Editor: Stephen Mills Writers: Jason Best, Shanti Menon Managing Editor: Liz Linke Designer: Dalton Design Director of Membership: Linda Lopez
All of the environmental projects and victories described in Nature’s Voice are made possible through the generous support of Members like you. If you like what you read, you are invited to make a special contribution at www.nrdc.org/joingive
Natural resources DefeNse couNcil40 W. 20th st., New York, NY 10011 www.nrdc.org/naturesvoice • 212-727-4500 email: [email protected]
SWiTCHBOARD The following entry first appeared online at: www.switchboard.nrdc.org
One Place Left AlonePosted by: Frances Beinecke, President, NRDC
We had already been rafting for several hours when we saw the wolf. I had expected to see wildlife during our trip through Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but the scene unfolding before us was a special treat. It started with the grizzly bear and her two cubs rooting around along the shore. They soon grew tired of the grass and lumbered into the water not far from our raft, letting the current carry them a few hundred feet. As we watched them climb out, we noticed half a dozen caribou grazing on the opposite shore, their tawny coats just beginning to shed their winter thickness. Right beside them stood the wolf. I wondered what his next move would be — lunging at the caribou or running from the grizzlies. Instead, he sauntered slowly through the hot sunshine, lay down in the grass, licked his paws and watched us float by.
I have seen many wild animals in my years of hiking and camping, but never had I seen so many so close. Then again, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge isn’t like most landscapes. It is a place of untamed abundance, from thundering caribou herds to towering mountain ranges to free-flowing rivers. But when we flew out of the refuge in a bush plane, we quickly realized just how close the oil industry is. Only 10 minutes into our flight, we could see the pipelines, road -ways, airstrips and drill pads of the massive oil fields connected to Prudhoe Bay. The oil giants have all this infra-structure next to the refuge; they can’t wait to cross the threshold. But just because drilling in the refuge might be convenient for the richest companies on earth doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice one of our last wild places.
For the entire length of my career, millions of citizens have stood strong
in defense of the Arctic Refuge when Big Oil clamored to invade it. Countless champions have devoted themselves to the task, from forester Robert Marshall to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas to NRDC Trustee Robert Redford. NRDC has been a leader in this effort, and we will continue the fight until the refuge is secure for future generations. They may never visit this spectacular place, and indeed, it doesn’t matter if they do. This isn’t a refuge to see; it is a refuge to keep. To save for wildlife, for stillness and for the very idea that humans can leave something alone.
7
AN
WR
© J
im D
. Bar
r/A
lask
a S
tock
Talk about an amazing turnaround: Where once many of the nation’s legendarily abundant fish stocks had been over fished to the point of collapse, today a
remarkable number have rebounded, thanks to fisheries
protections championed by NRDC. “The United States has
emerged as a global leader in rebuilding overfished stocks,
showing the world that it can be done,” says Brad Sewell,
an NRDC senior attorney.
It’s an environmental success story more than 15 years in the
making. For centuries, thriving fish stocks from the shores of
New England to the Pacific Northwest anchored robust ocean
eco systems and supported generations of fisher men. But by
the early 1990s, many of the nation’s most storied fish stocks
had been all but exhausted. In response, Congress passed the
Sustainable Fisheries Act in 1996, and NRDC has worked
hard to advocate for science-based recovery plans for dozens
of species under the act.
“In a couple of words: It’s working,” says Sewell. A recent NRDC investigation looked at 44 stocks that were previously overfished; 64 percent have returned to healthy levels or have made significant progress toward rebuilding, ranging from summer flounder and black sea bass off the Mid-Atlantic coast to Georges Bank haddock in New England to Pacific Ocean perch. Yet despite this astounding success, antiregulatory zealots in Congress continue their attack on these historic protections, even though a fully recovered, sustainable fishing industry in the United States promises an estimated $31 billion in economic benefits and 500,000 new jobs. Says Sewell, “We can’t afford to go back to the days of depleted
oceans and empty nets.”
Once in Crisis, U.S. Fish Stocks Make Dramatic Recovery
Early fall in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Sea
bas
s: D
on
Dem
aria
/Sea
Pic
s
Black sea bass.
8
In their relentless quest for fuel, giant energy companies are
now clear-cutting southern forests, grinding up whole trees
into wood chips and pellets and burning them to produce
electricity. Adding insult to injury, they’re billing this
environmental disaster as “clean and renewable” energy.
“Burning trees for energy is worse than burning coal,” says
Debbie Hammel, head of NRDC’s Our Forests Aren’t Fuel
campaign. “It not only increases global warming pollution but
also destroys irreplaceable native forests.”
Until recently, burning plant material — called biomass —
to produce electricity was considered a renewable form
of energy, but the idea was to use treetops and branches.
Biomass energy was never meant to consume whole trees,
much less entire forests. Burning trees for electricity is a
widespread practice in Europe. Wood shipments from the
American South have been skyrocketing to feed European
power plants, led by the South’s largest wood-pellet manu-
facturer, Enviva. That region is now the world’s largest exporter
of wood pellets, with exports from southern ports growing 70
percent in the past year alone.
The demand for pellets continues to grow in Europe and
domestically. Two electric utilities — Virginia-based Dominion
Power and Britain’s Drax Group — are the primary players in
the push to burn southeastern forests for electricity. Dominion
and Drax buy millions of tons of wood from our southern
forests, and Enviva supplies them both. Drax now plans to
consume 7 million tons of wood annually; that’s equivalent
to burning a forest four times the size of Rhode Island. And
several major U.S. utilities are ramping up their plans for the
large-scale burning of trees. Dominion recently announced
it would convert three of its Virginia power plants from coal
to wood fuel. The growing demand for energy from trees could
prove disastrous for forests in the Southeast. The Wall Street
Journal recently exposed Enviva’s practice of clear-cutting in
sensitive wetland forests. Alarmingly, the company plans to
double its production of wood pellets in the coming years.
“Southern forests are already under stress from industrial
logging for wood and paper,” says Hammel. “The additional
pressure from the energy industry could be more than these
ecosystems can bear.”
New mapping data from NRDC and the Dogwood Alliance
show that less than one percent of the forest in the sourcing
area for Enviva’s flagship Ahoskie, North Carolina, pellet mill is
protected from destructive logging practices. This puts native
wetland forests, already in decline, right in Enviva’s crosshairs
as it seeks to ramp up pellet production. NRDC and other
groups are calling on Dominion, Drax and Enviva to stop using
whole trees and to pursue true renewables like solar, wind,
geothermal and agricultural waste.
Make your voice heard at: www.nrdc.org/saveforests
New Threat to Southeastern Forests: Burning Trees for Energy
Black bear cub.
Bea
r cu
b ©
Bill
Lea
Phot
o: ©
Jos
eph
Van
Os
www.nrdc.org/legacygift
For information on how to include NRDC in your estate plans or to let us know you’ve already done so, please contact Michelle Quinones, Lead Specialist, Gift Planning, at 212-727-4552 or email her at [email protected]
You can create a lasting environmental legacy by including NRDC in your estate plans. A gift through your will, trust,
retirement plan or life insurance plan will help preserve our magnificent natural heritage for generations to come.
Create Your Own Lasting Legacy