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Mark Hertsgaard the American journalist reports on ‘the biggest climate victory you never heard of’ in an article he published on Aljazeera about ‘the fight against coal in the US [that] has achieved great success due to activists’ passion and commitment’. Hertsgaard in the article states “Coal is going down in the United States, and that’s good news for the Earth’s climate. …the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive conventional fossil fuel, generated only 36 per cent of US electricity in the first quarter of 2012. That amounts to a staggering 20 per cent decline from one year earlier. …a persistent grassroots citizens’ rebellion that has blocked the construction of 166 (and counting) proposed coal-fired power plants… At the very time when President Obama’s “cap-and-trade” climate legislation was going down in flames in Washington, local activists across the United States were helping to impose “a de facto moratorium on new coal”… Like the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Beyond Coal [activist] campaign has shown that the status quo is not all-powerful. When large numbers of people unite around a compelling critique of the existing order and build political power at the local level, they can change the world. And perhaps even the planet.”

Inspired by Aljazeera ow.ly/bs9Gm image source Twitter ow.ly/bs9wO

Ellen Cantarow the US peace and climate change activist claims a minor revolution is occurring in the US as anti-fracking develops its own Occupy movement, “a resistance movement that has arisen to challenge some of the most powerful corporations in history”. Cantarow released an article on TomDispatch.com stating “At a time when the International Energy Agency reports that we have five more years of fossil-fuel use at current levels before the planet goes into irreversible climate change, fracking has a greenhouse gas footprint larger than that of coal… Fracking uses prodigious amounts of water laced with sand and a startling menu of poisonous chemicals to blast the methane out of the shale. At hyperbaric bomb-like pressures, this technology propels five to seven million gallons of sand-and-chemical-laced water a mile or so down a well bore into the shale. Up comes the methane – along with about a million gallons of wastewater containing the original fracking chemicals and other substances that were also in the shale, among them radioactive elements and carcinogens. There are 400,000 such wells in the United States.”

 

Inspired Ellen Cantarow http://ow.ly/8TlDz by image source http://ow.ly/8SzzN

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