Today, 350.org has made 2 invalid claims on its facebook page related to Keystone XL and the Environmental Impact report.

First: They posted an image on their facebook page claiming that John Kerry made the statement that the pipeline poses no environmental threat. This is entirely false. That claim is made by the environmental impact study, which was not produced by John Kerry.

Second: they posted a link to a Grist article, written by the director of the organization that created the false image, implying brazen corruption in the State Department, because the study was funded by the owners of Keystone.

Unfortunately, the article implies that this is a startling development. It’s not.

It is standard operating procedure, and has been for quite some time, because we’ve gutted the funding of our regulatory agencies. The process that was used is not remotely unique to KXL.

This is what happens when we do nothing but cut, cut, cut, while ignoring the purpose of the budgets that are being cut. If we want independent review, we have to be willing to pay for the expertise needed to conduct such reviews. For far too long, it’s been a case of getting what we pay for – studies with no real independence whatsoever.

And yet legal experts said it had become common for companies applying to build government projects to be involved in assigning and paying for the impact analysis. Some say such arrangements are nearly inevitable because federal agencies typically lack the in-house resources or money to conduct these complex studies. “What’s normal is deplorable, and it’s NEPA’s dirty little secret,” said Mr. Echeverria, acting director of the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School, referring to the law. He said federal agencies are supposed to review the findings, but often lack the expertise to do so.

I happen to believe the current law regarding EIS studies should at least be revised to require contractors to pay the US government to institute independent reviews, but as of today, under current law, the review being done by a company with ties to the contractor is exactly what is expected to happen.

The important thing relative to the items on 350.org’s facebook page: the claims in the report are not the claims of the State Department, never mind Secretary Kerry, or, as the Grist article states, “John Kerry’s State Department.”

Why was the report released, last week, if the State Department wasn’t trying to give the go-ahead to the project?  

When the State Department received the report, it became public record, and was thus released as part of the normal process for such studies. The release does not indicate approval.

The next step for the State Department is to review the study’s claims, and for the public to take advantage of the public comment period. The State Department and either accept the report, or reject it.  It will be very helpful to know where the State Department (and Secretary Kerry) stand on this, but as of now, we don’t know – despite the implications in a certain viral image.

All the poutrage ginned up over people following the process that everyone follows is enough to make your head spin. And pointing fingers at Kerry because his agency posted the report it was supposed to post, is a waste of energy.

I am a big fan and early supporter of 350.org. This kind of sloppy promotion of a non-troversy (the false implication of Kerry) does the organization a disservice, by creating the impression that they play fast & loose with the facts. That’s not a good thing for an organization dedicated to getting out the truth about warming in the face of intense, well-funded opposition.

I hope they will correct the error, and will do a much better job of investigating claims before promoting false, if “catchy” images and hyperbolic stories from questionable sources.

In the mean time, public comment period is in effect, so it’s incumbent upon US to use it.

The fifth and sixth deliberation meetings of the Governor’s Energy Generation Siting Policy Commission will take place on:

Dates:

Tuesday, March 12

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Time:

9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Location:

Giga Conference Room, 3rdfloor, Vermont Public Service Department, 112 State Street, Montpelier, Vermont.  

More below the jump…

Meeting Purpose

The Commissioners will continue to deliberate upon options to address their charges, some of which are presented in the Draft Options Paper available at sitingcommission.vermont.gov/publications, in the Deliberative Session #3 materials.

Public Comments Period

The Siting Commission continues to welcome comments on the Draft Options Paper.  Comments should be submitted no later than, and preferably before, April 5, 2013.

Comments can be made using the Open Comment Form at sitingcommission.vermont.gov/public_involvement.

Dates, times, and locations of Commission meetings and public hearings are subject to change. Interested parties are encouraged to consult the Siting Commission’s website, sitingcommission.vermont.gov, for any updates.

All meetings of the Commission are open to the public. Any member of the public who requires reasonable accommodation for the March 12 meeting should make his or her request by 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 6; requests for accommodation for the March 20 meeting should be made by 4 p.m. on Friday, March 15. Requests should be made to Michelle Hughes at (802) 828-3065.

The Public Service Department is an agency within the executive branch of Vermont state government. Its charge is to represent the public interest in matters regarding energy, telecommunications, water and wastewater.

There is a gas leak at the auditorium, requiring the site to be closed. Voting materials have been moved to the Old Labor Hall.

A phone number from Vermont, identified in Caller ID as belonging to “America Now” is robo-calling voters in NH and telling them the wrong polling location.

Please share with folks from NH.

NH residents can find their polling place by going to http://cfs.sos.nh.gov/app/Publ…

If you are a NH voter and you receive one of these calls, it would be very helpful if you notify OFA.  

Michael “Heck-of-a-job Brownie” Brown digs deeper today.

Apparently, in Brownie’s special world, the President should have, first & foremost, considered the political “mileage” he could have wrung out of delaying action on Hurricane Sandy, so governors would have to beg him to come to the rescue. In Brownie’s twisted calculus, thinking about the actual [bleeping] lives at stake and acting proactively was the wrong thing to do, because it wasn’t politically showy enough.

I am filled with unending gratitude that this weasel and his enablers are nowhere near the halls of power today:

“The President should have just-he could have just made a comment while he was in Florida that says, “you know my FEMA director is on top of this and we’re gonna do everything we can when the states ask us to come in and help.” Boom. …

   He would have been better served politically to let everybody else-Bloomberg, Christie, Cuomo, O’Donnell [sic] – all of them make whatever statements they were going to make. Call for their evacuations. And then he could have stepped up, very presidentially, and said “And by the way, I have instructed my FEMA director to give the states whatever they need as the storm approaches.” I think he would have gotten more mileage out of it. In other words, he peaked too soon.”

Yesterday’s statement below the jump, for those who missed it.

Bush’s FEMA Director During Katrina Criticizes Obama For Responding To Sandy Too Quickly

“One thing he’s gonna be asked is, why did he jump on [the hurricane] so quickly and go back to D.C. so quickly when in…Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas?” Brown says. “Why was this so quick?… At some point, somebody’s going to ask that question…. This is like the inverse of Benghazi.”

This from the man who was more responsible than almost anyone else for the prolonged torture of the survivors of Katrina in New Orleans.  

There is a new popular trope about where Vermont’s air pollution comes from, that’s intended to imply that installing wind in Vermont does nothing to protect our air quality.

Some people are going to ask why I’m being so persistent on this issue. It’s simple:

We face an imminent, unprecedented planetary emergency.

Due to the chemical composition of the source of warming gases, at 6 degrees C temperature rise, the earth will have air and water so acidic, it will be incompatible with most life forms – including humans. We are currently on track for 7 degrees C. Every moment we waste in shifting from coal and other fossil fuels increases our momentum toward this catastrophe.

We need to ensure future wind installations are handled much better and with greater transparency and community involvement than the installation in Lowell. In my opinion, far more damage was done by the process used in Lowell than by the actual installation – because cramming an already planned and approved project down the throats of locals without bringing them into the process from the start has led to this incredible, angry backlash against all wind projects.

We don’t have time to mess around with the kind of angry opposition that was created by the greed, lax attitude toward & enforcement of environmental regulations, and the patronizing attitudes of those who dropped the Lowell development into the middle of a caring community.

The opposition created by this failure on the part of the state and the developers leaves us with a greater likelihood of facing the obscene devastation that will be wrought by the impending changes in climate.

In a world where few mammals and no sea creatures can survive due to the acidity of all planetary water, and where trees are reduced to little more than tinder for massive wildfires, the unnecessary problem caused by poor handling of the Lowell project is tragic. Even Shakespeare could not write a tragedy as heart-rending as the one humanity faces if we do not stop burning fossil fuels as quickly as possible, and stop burning coal quickest of all. The lousy handling of this project makes it just that much harder to do so.

Which brings us back to the topic of the diary. When people are angry, they tend to hold tenaciously to ideas that support their anger – even if those ideas are entirely wrong. Here’s one of many instances of one of those ideas, which has appeared in various outlets over the last several weeks:

In our part of the world, greenhouse gas emissions come from our chimneys and tailpipes, not our electrical outlets

Usually that claim is made in the form of calling someone else misinformed about energy and pollution, which is a tad ironic.  

Given the pervasiveness of this false pollution claim, it’s important to put this information in plain sight:

These graphs are taken from this NH study. While the study is specific to NH, the general principles hold true for all of New England. Here’s the “money” quote:

During periods of unhealthy air quality for ozone and small particles in [the state], approximately 92 percent to nearly 100 percent of this pollution originates from sources located outside of [the state]. These pollutants are transported into the state with the wind over great distances.

::

Coal Plant Emissions Trajectories:

Moved the rest to after the jump…

::

Mercury deposition. Yellow = arrives via long-distance transport in upper air currents:

::

Where our air comes from on high-pollution days (left) vs clear days (right):

Did you note the common thread? Our air pollution – and the majority of air pollution in New England – comes from the coal burning region of the country.

18% of the electricity fed into the New England grid comes from coal fired power plants [as of 2000, I’ve seen varied claims of the percentage since, generally lower, due to changes in efficiency and power sources – like the addition of wind & solar].

Offsetting the coal-powered electricity in the regional grid reduces the amount of coal those plants must burn. This in turn reduces the level of coal-fired pollutants in our air.

There’s another claim making the rounds that also needs to be understood in context. Wind opponents claim that it is second only to mountain top removal in terms of the damage it causes (ignoring, of course, the not-too-distant future in which climate change wipes out most of the ecosystems on the planet).

Second Only to Mountain Top Removal

Here’s a map of the state of Vermont showing the impact of the Lowell Wind project compared to the impact of one small mountaintop removal project in Kayford, WV.

The little dot in the upper right is roughly 4 times the size of the Lowell project (my drawing tool didn’t have a smaller pen size).

The big square covering just under 1/5 of the National Forest (which turns out to be almost exactly the boundaries of the Breadloaf National Forest), is the size of one, single mountain top removal coal mine in Kayford, WV:

Unlike mountaintop removal, there will be significant regeneration of the forest over the vast majority of the Lowell site. This is not the case in the barren wasteland left behind by every single mountain top removal coal mining project.

Wind, solar, and hydro power replaces coal in our electric mix. ALL of them are needed if we want to replace coal as quickly as we MUST in order to prevent the worst devastation of climate change. Stopping wind will make it impossible to meet the very hard deadline that has been set by the laws of physics.

To get an even better idea of the difference in scale, here is a map of JUST the removal that has happened in the Appalachia Region of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The Kayford site, which is the size of the entire Breadloaf National Forest, is one of the tiny dots just south of Charleston, WV on this map:

There is no VT wind project planned, or possible, that would even show up as a dot in that map.

To those who keep spreading this particular claim, please stop hurting your cause with hyperbolic claims about the damage of wind vs mountain top removal. Continuing to claim that the carefully sited wind projects in VT are even remotely comparable to the damage from mountain top removal seriously harms your credibility regarding your environmental concerns.

You could not be more effective at pushing away those who would happily help you fight for proper environmental controls on wind construction if you repeatedly poked them with a pointy stick.

As I’ve said many times in the past, I believe in strong regulations and equally strong enforcement of those regulations for wind projects. I believe Lowell was handled very, very badly on several fronts.

Hyperbolic and specious claims about the actual harm are not helpful to the cause, and will do nothing to strengthen regulatory oversight in future projects.

Some further perspective is provided by Bill McKibben in an article about the opposition to Cape Wind (which sounds remarkably similar to the opposition to VT wind):

But those criticisms, however valid, are small truths. The big truths are these: Each breath of wind that blows across Nantucket Sound contains 370 parts per million of carbon dioxide, up from 275 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution, before we started burning coal and gas and oil. That CO2 traps the sun’s heat-about two watts per square meter of the planet’s surface. Right now the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher than it’s been for four hundred thousand years. If we keep burning coal and gas and oil, the scientific onsensus is that by the latter part of the century the planet’s temperature will have risen five degrees Fahrenheit, to a level higher than we’ve seen for fifty million years.

…

Big truths have to trump small ones. It becomes a caricature of environmentalism to object that windmills kill birds or fish-in fact, new windmills kill very few birds compared with the original models. In fact, says Greenpeace, offshore windmill platforms in Europe have often turned into artificial reefs providing prime spawning ground for fish. But even if windmills did kill some birds, that’s a small truth-the big truth is that rising temperatures seem likely to trigger an extinction spasm comparable to the one that occurred when the last big asteroids struck the planet. Already polar bears are dying as their ice empire shrinks; already coral reefs are disappearing as rising sea temperatures bleach them, and by some accounts, they may be gone altogether before the century ends.

The choice, in other words, is not between windmills and untouched nature. It’s between windmills and the destruction of the planet’s biology on a scale we can barely begin to imagine. Charles Komanoff, an independent energy consultant in New York, calculates that Cape Wind’s windmills could produce as much as 1.5 billion kWh annually. Or, looked at another way, if  they aren’t built, twenty thousand tons of carbon will be emitted each week as coal and oil and gas are burned to produce the same amount of energy. The windmills won’t provide all the power for the Cape, but they might provide something like half, which is a lot.

This post began as a response to this comment:

…

I spent eighteen years working in environmental law and education and only when our mountain ecosystems began to get blasted did I shed the scales from my eyes and see these giant turbines clearly.  It’s insane to destroy Vermont in order to save it.

But I thought it important to make the point very clear right on the front page. Here’s my response:

You seem to misunderstand the definition of “destroy,” so let me help.

Destruction:

Mountain top removal turns former mountains into barren, infertile, moonscape plateaus, surrounded by toxic waste, with downstream waters poisoned for hundreds of miles. That IS destruction.

NOT Destruction:

The Lowell wind farm changes a small portion of the landscape in a way that is largely recoverable, and does not endanger the life on the mountain (alters somewhat, yes; endangers, no). That is NOT destruction.

Quiz:

In the photo below, which state is being destroyed – West Virginia (top) or Vermont (bottom)?

It’s VERY simple:

We MUST replace earth-destroying carbon sources with lower-impact energy sources.

Whether you like it or not, the impact of a typical wind project with modern turbines is NOTHING compared to the damage from coal mining, fracking, or other fossil fuel extraction.

Nothing.

And that doesn’t even count the planetary emergency being caused by CO2 production (nice coal-fired smog, there, in Lowell – obliterating the views in the distance, eh? So much more attractive than those turbines…).

We no longer have time to wait for “perfect” energy solutions. It is absolutely imperative we move to “good enough” solutions that stop CO2 inputs into the atmosphere. Now.

We’ve already “broken the arctic,” as Bill McKibben says. We can’t break any more of our planetary climate ecosystems. The planet will be incompatible with human life if we continue the carbon path.

We have two choices: accept a future that involves a lot of wind power in conjunction with other renewables and efficiency, or kill of most of the population (including animal populations) on the planet.

You do not get to choose the latter for the rest of us. Sorry.

That’s the headline on a blog post by the Vermont Food Bank.

50%

– Just as we head into winter.

– While many families are still reeling from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Irene.

We may have gotten most of our roads and bridges back in place, but that can’t replace the jobs lost when businesses were washed away. It doesn’t help the families whose homes are still gone. It doesn’t feed our kids.

The Vermont Foodbank and its network of 270 food shelves, meal sites, shelters, senior centers and after-school programs are experiencing record demand for our services.  Thousands of families are finding it harder to make ends meet, struggling with only one wage earner or reduced hours and wages.  And as the need for food assistance dramatically increases, the charitable food system is working with fewer and fewer resources.

The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) is an income-based federal program that provides food at no cost to low-income Americans in need of short-term hunger relief through organizations like the Vermont Foodbank.  During FY 2012, the Foodbank saw a 50% reduction in its allotment of TEFAP food; that is over one million pounds of food.

TEAP is one of those social programs the republicans love to cut. After all, it benefits the working poor and their “moocher” children.

At the very time when food prices have skyrocketed. At the very time when heating season is about to hit – with record high fuel prices. At the very time it is needed most, the funding is cut, leaving children and their families hungry.  If you’ve ever been in the situation of having to decide to not eat for a couple of days so you can make sure there’s enough food for your kids, you know just how evil these cuts are. If you’ve ever had to explain to your children that the dinner they had at the local free church supper is all they get today, you know.

I don’t generally post to ask for money, but the situation in Vermont is becoming dire. If the proposed cuts to food assistance (SNAP) are passed, it’s going to get much, much worse.

“This lack of food is having a ripple effect,” said John Sayles, Vermont Foodbank CEO.  “Many of our partners are struggling to keep food on their shelves while providing for those in need walking through their doors.  And while grocers, food manufacturers and financial donors have been generous, the Foodbank still struggles to fill the void of the 1.2 million pounds of food that we were counting on.”

Short by 1.2 million pounds of food. Think of how much hunger that would represent if we weren’t still recovering in the aftermath of the most destructive hurricane in nearly 100 years.  Think of how much hunger that would represent if SNAP benefits weren’t also on the chopping block. Think of all the families who will sacrifice heat for food.

Please help by donating to the Vermont Food Bank. A donation of $25 = 150 meals. Even the smallest donation can fill the void for a child for a day.

Donate, because no child deserves to go to bed hungry.

Supposedly, police are trained in a “use of force continuum” for determining the level of force required to bring a person under control.

The following is the recommended escalation procedure, from the National Institute of Justice, for use by police departments in the US.

Officer Presence – No force is used.

Considered the best way to resolve a situation.

The mere presence of a law enforcement officer works to deter crime or diffuse a situation.

Officers’ attitudes are professional and nonthreatening.

Verbalization – Force is not-physical

Officers issue calm, nonthreatening commands, such as “Let me see your identification and registration.”

Officers may increase their volume and shorten commands in an attempt to gain compliance. Short commands might include “Stop,” or “Don’t move.”

Empty-Hand Control – Officers use bodily force to gain control of a situation.

Soft technique. Officers use grabs, holds and joint locks to restrain an individual.

Hard technique. Officers use punches and kicks to restrain an individual.

Less-Lethal Methods – Officers use less-lethal technologies to gain control of a situation.

(See Deciding When and How to Use Less-Lethal Devices.)



Blunt impact. Officers may use a baton or projectile to immobilize a combative person.

Chemical. Officers may use chemical sprays or projectiles embedded with chemicals to restrain an individual (e.g., pepper spray).

Conducted Energy Devices (CEDs). Officers may use CEDs to immobilize an individual. CEDs discharge a high-voltage, low-amperage jolt of electricity at a distance.

Lethal Force – Officers use lethal weapons to gain control of a situation.

Should only be used if a suspect poses a serious threat to the officer or another individual.

Officers use deadly weapons such as firearms to stop an individual’s actions.

Unfortunately, according to the State Police press release regarding the tasing-to-death of an unarmed, suicidal person, the officer in question skipped the empty-hand methods altogether, nor did he attempt to use old-fashioned “less lethal” methods, such as blunt force.

“The Trooper noticed that Mr. Mason was unarmed, unarmed,  therefore he lowered his weapon and drew his taser.  The Trooper ordered Mr. Mason on the ground and Mr. Mason lowered to a squatting position, the Trooper continued to tell  Mr. Mason to get on his stomach, at which time Mr. Mason stood up and moved toward the Trooper with a closed fist yelling aggressively at the Trooper.  …  The Trooper continued with verbal commands for Mr. Mason to get on the ground, and after several failed attempts for Mr. Mason to comply, the Trooper deployed his taser, striking Mr. Mason in the chest.   Mr. Mason went to the ground and the Trooper immediately rendered first aid as he observed Mr. Mason was unresponsive.  The Trooper administered CPR and continued so until Rescue personnel took over the care of Mr. Mason and transported him via ambulanced to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH, where he was pronounced dead at the hospital. ”

This scenario of instant escalation to tasers is becoming all-too-common in Vermont and elsewhere.

In 2008, the VT Attorney General’s investigation of back-to-back taser incidents in Brattleboro, resulted in the AG calling on the police in VT to implement escalation of force policies and training.

The history of taser use is not a pretty one. For more stories and information about tasers in Vermont, you may want to peruse some of the past GMD coverage:

Police use taser to subdue man experiencing seizures

Police using tasers “frequently”

Brattleboro Cops Use Taser on Handcuffed Protesters

Sorrell on tasers: “The police blew it.”

VSP wants 260 Tasers

Brian Dubie Says Stun Guns Are Nonlethal

Valley News floods the zone on the Taser story

Get Ready for the Whitewash

What is the purpose of a Taser?

And Don’t You Scream or Make a Shout

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