Moving Beyond Dirty Energy

What do Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and the Koch Brothers have in common? Unfortunately for those of us who want wind and solar energy, more than we feared. A few days ago, Cuccinelli, a famous climate-denier, teamed up with Dominion Power, the biggest polluter in the state, to release a bill that would effectively kill the only broad clean energy law we have in Virginia. This back room deal isn't surprising, as Cuccinelli received a $50,000 campaign contribution from the Koch Brothers, and has ties to Koch Industries.

Every year, the Virginia General Assembly convenes in January to debate and vote on a multitude of issues, ranging from transportation to social issues. But this year, students came together to make sure that their issue was put first and their message clear: We want real steps toward wind and solar, and we want it now.

On Thursday, January 10th, over a dozen students took a trip to the General Assembly in Richmond to sit in on the first meeting of the Commerce & Labor committee. They bore large, bright green stickers asking their representatives to "Fix the RPS: Wind & Solar!"

I encourage everyone to see Promised Land and to bring your family, friends, and these postcards addressed to President Obama to hand out to movie goers. Also, Sierra Club has a very handy discussion guide for you to use after you leave the theater.

Matt Damon's new flick, Promised Land, is a delightful melodrama of Hollywood proportions set in a fictional, southwest Pennsylvania farming town called McKinley. Having grown up in a small, rural town in Pennsylvania and spent my share of time working in fields, I was impressed with the cinematography that presents McKinley as I've experienced my life exploring twisting rural roads, living at a slower pace, and having small businesses named after the folks who run them. I believed the exposition, though no one in the local dive bar is smoking despite ashtrays present at every table.

Matt Damon's character is a gas industry land man who is deployed to McKinley by his billion-dollar company, Global Crosspower Solutions, to sign leases with local residents to allow shale gas drilling on their land. Shale drilling employs a process commonly called hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", where silica sand, chemicals, and millions of gallons of water are blasted down a well bore to break up deep rock layers to release methane and other gases to the surface. Ultimately, I was disappointed that few technical facts or images of drilling were presented in the film, despite the set location in and around Armstrong County where well pads, pipelines, processing plants, compressor stations, and access roads scar the landscape.

Knowing the Tennessee Pipeline is about to cut and dredge its way through my hometown across the Delaware River, bisecting gas leased land and eminent domained properties, this plot hit home for me. Ironically, Promised Land State Park here in Pike County has a hunting camp in the middle that's leased to Chesapeake Energy. If the Delaware River basin, drinking water for 15 million people, is finally opened to drilling and if the state park was leased by the governor, over 3,000 acres would be opened for development near my childhood home. I can't fathom the kind of disrespect for our rural heritage the gas industry landman, not unlike Damon's character, must have, who looked at a place like that and pictured a future chemical-laden industrial site.

Early Friday morning, the Board of Governors sat stiffly facing a large audience of Missouri State University faculty and staff, preparing for their routine meeting.  They seemed a little surprised by the number of students that slowly filed into the room, all sporting a bright yellow Beyond Coal shirt or flashy buttons.  This especially, since it was the first day of Winter Break and most students had already gone home or taken their first opportunity in a long while to catch a few more hours of sleep.  Their looks of surprise changed to bewilderment as even more students an