My three-day bike trip on the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, was a 150-mile dream come true. I invited my friends Laura and Paul to go with me, then they did all the work, arranging accommodations and transportation to the starting point, which is the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers to form the Ohio. I had been to that very spot one night a few years ago, led in a procession from the site of a hotel conference to fight gas and oil projects by several indigenous participants. I got a sense of the incredible sacredness of the place, as we were led in ceremony. This time it was broad daylight, and a man who appeared to be overdosing sat on a nearby bench, attended by two cops who motored over from their boat on the river. But it was a beautiful day, and we sat in the shade, watching the people and the rivers.

Even though most folks probably don’t think “Appalachia” when they think of Pennsylvania, this southwest corner of the state definitely is. Paul counted 190 cars on a train filled with coal, and we passed many reminders of the area’s coal-producing past, including a cave that was used to fire coal into coke for use in steelmaking in Pittsburgh (see Laura in photo below), and a rusty red waterfall that an explanatory panel told us was acid mine drainage. Even though the GAP trail took up one rail right-of-way, there are many, many trains still running – almost constantly – on the other side of the river. We wondered what they’re carrying in the closed containers. 

Meanwhile, on the ridges we observed fleets of wind turbines, indicating a new, cleaner, safer form of energy and the jobs that go with it.

The first and third days were sunny and warm, and we were cooled most of the way by riding under the tree canopy along the Monongahela and Youghigheny (yahko-GAIN-y) rivers.

The middle day, Sept. 1, began with a drizzle that turned into a pretty heavy rain, mitigated by the tree cover, so we managed to stay dry. I promptly got a flat on my front tire, which was fortunately easier to fix than a flat on the back, where we were carrying our panniers. Paul fixed it, as I watched avidly, realizing that I’m no longer competent to change a flat on a bike, as I used to do, and that I’d better re-learn fast. Once rolling again I promptly got a second flat, and this time Laura inspected the outside of the tire and found the culprit – a tiny stone that had made a little hole in the tire. As we worked in the rain, many cyclists passed us and asked the exact same question: “Do you have what you need?” We did, so on we rode through Ohiopyle State Park, along the Youghigheny, a stunning place with lots of whitewater rafting/kayaking and hikes going into the forest off the GAP trail.

It had stopped raining when we got to the town of Ohiopyle and the first thing we saw was a hose made available to cyclists to clean off our muddy bikes. We had a delicious lunch at a farm to table place a block away and then walked over to the river, where a country fair was in full swing, including a bluegrass band. I spoke to two guys selling Ohiopyle State Park merch who volunteer with the trail crew there, and they were so nice and so committed to protecting their wild place, as I am to my own local state park. I really wanted to initiate a conversation about politics, but I didn’t. I knew I was deep in Trump territory. I kind of regret it now.

We had our share of trail angels, in the form of bike shops when we needed them and helpful bike mechanics. Back on the trail, Laura had a flat on her back tire. Again the questions if we had what we needed, which we did, except for a standing pump to get enough air into her tire. A trail angel, Bob, came by and escorted us to the next town, where his friend ran a bike shop that was many blocks from the trail. We could have found it on GPS, but he was very nice to personally take us there.

Back on the trail, Laura promptly had a second flat on her back tire. This time another trail angel immediately passed by who shot some CO2 into the tire to pump it up.

We lost so much time on the second day that we missed our chance to visit Fallingwater, architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s master work, which was just a few miles off the trail at Ohiopyle, but it was straight uphill and we needed a shuttle. But that night at our B&B I found a book about it. I really enjoyed looking at the photos and reading a little of his philosophy, about combining architecture with nature. One thing I learned is that he was commissioned to build it when he was 68 and his career was ebbing. Quite a comeback!

After breakfast the next morning we set off in the lovely day and covered the same number of miles as yesterday in about half the time. We hit the Eastern Continental Divide, the Mason-Dixon Line, the Savage Tunnel and one other tunnel all within an hour or so. The Big Savage is half a mile long, but it had lights in the ceiling so it wasn’t that dark (we had our bike lights too). All the tunnels and viaducts (like the one above) were built to make the grade level for the railroad, and it was fascinating to see all the engineering feats.

After the Continental Divide, the ride was noticeably downhill for the last 15 miles, while it had been so slowly going uphill from Pittsburgh that it seemed flat. There were some spectacular views of mountains and wind turbines and hay bales sitting in green fields; felt like a combination of old world and new.  

When we got to Frostburg, we learned the town itself was up a steep hill so if we wanted lunch we had to ride up the switchbacks and then on a steep road. We got to the top and the only restaurant we saw open (since it was Labor Day) was fortunately right in front of us – a Chinese place. So we ordered and our food came immediately, and it wasn’t bad. From Frostburg we coasted/pedaled all the way to Cumberland. We arrived in town, took a few photos, and piled our bikes and ourselves into Paul’s car parked near the end of the trail. Even though it was Labor Day, we didn’t run into traffic and they dropped me home at 10 p.m., the end of a fabulous, Bucket List-worthy adventure. Thanks, guys!
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We had a great trip to the Canadian Rockies in late July-early August. Besides being 8 days of fabulous hiking with perfect weather and gorgeous scenery, it was very educational. Banff National Park and Lake Louise are among the most pristine, beautiful places in the world, but they are in Alberta (on the border with British Columbia), the same province as the infamous tar sands, 460 miles further north. That’s a little less than the distance from San Diego to San Francisco. Alberta is an extraction state – coal, gas, oil, limestone for cement.

We stayed in Canmore and visited a local museum about the history of the town as a coal mining center and then a cement-producing one. It included a virtual reality trip through a coal mine that was pretty cool and gave me an appropriate sense of claustrophobia. The coal mine closed down in 1979. The cement plant still operates, digging into a mountain of pure limestone, and even though the company destroyed half the town to expand its operations, people quoted in the museum all seemed to think it was worth it to preserve jobs. The man who drove us to our hotel from the Calgary airport said the company is very environmentally conscientious and donates to things like Little League baseball. Sounds like greenwashing to me.

Along the hiking trails in town are many exhibits explaining what’s happening there, and they all mention the negative impacts people have on the environment, including other species. It’s kind of a different take than we usually see in the U.S.

Another day we visited the Canadian Rockies Earth Sciences Resource Center. There were three young PhD student geologists there who all talked to us about the history of oil, gas and coal in the region. They said that the oil we’re drilling for is the result of fish (and plant life, I later learned) that decomposed in the water way before the dinosaurs and the creation of oil deposits had nothing to do with dinosaurs, which was news to me. They were gung-ho on continued fossil fuel development, which they said could be done safely for the climate, and added that there are “two sides” to the issue of such development warming the climate. I think Rob and I were both a little shocked, or at least disappointed, but I guess we shouldn’t have been, as they know what side their bread is buttered on. They, of course, hope to see the Keystone XL pipeline built, which would bring 800,000 barrels a day of tar sands from Alberta into the U.S. I mentioned I’d been arrested trying to stop it.

The lead guide on our Road Scholar program was a guy in his mid-60s who wasn’t exactly a climate change denier but had an interesting take on the issue. He said the glaciers – which are currently receding – have always advanced and receded over millennia, so he downplayed the human-caused heating that’s happening now. No sense of urgency.

We drove to Lake Louise (pictured above) and as I was standing looking out at the turquoise water and the glacier behind it, I remembered standing in the exact same place in 1961 on a trip out west with my family. I imagine the glacier was smaller this time, but I really couldn’t say. (Photo below is of Moraine Lake, which was much deeper turquoise. We learned the color comes from refraction of light on the "glacial flour" or finely ground particles that come off a melting glacier.)

It was tough to make the decision to fly, since that contributes so much to CO2 emissions. We might not do vacations that way again.  
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Due to a combination of forgetfulness and fear – forgetfulness in leaving my water bottle in a friend’s car and fear of going on a long bus ride with no water – I bought what might be my very first plastic bottle of water. I got sticker shock – it was $2.52, just about exactly what a medium mug of coffee costs (which I always buy in my reusable mug, thus saving probably thousands of Styrofoam cups over the decades). It’s not that I’ve never used a plastic water bottle before, but I just haven’t paid for it.

Remembering a story I did 30 years ago about how bottled water is much less regulated than the water out of our taps – and is sometimes that very same tap water put in a bottle * – I felt a little like a chump. But off I went, comforted that I had water at the ready if I needed it.

It’s how I feel about air conditioning. For 25 years we’ve been putting a room AC unit in my study, just so it would be there for the few days every summer when I actually used it. Mostly I rely on fans, which we have scattered throughout the house. They are a true lifesaver, draw a lot less energy than AC and thus contribute less to the warming of the planet that will make people feel even more that they need AC (unless they’re powered by renewables, in which case they are a guilt-free pleasure).

This is true on a global scale, and I wish every person on the planet who must live in a hot climate could have access to at least a fan.

It’s about 95 degrees as I write, with humidity to match. I biked this morning to do a little food shopping, and it was bearable. Now it’s not. So I’m hunkered down at home until the yard is in shade, so I can do a little weeding in my garden. The saying “Everything’s relative” certainly applies to heat. My air-conditioned room feels comfortable compared to the upstairs, which is probably 15 degrees hotter. But if I venture outside and then come back in, it feels too cold.

My daughter and her family just spent a week in Paris during a heat wave where the temps topped 100 degrees. They had no AC in their rented house, but she didn’t mind at all. They used fans. There’s still very little AC anywhere in Paris – so much so that any establishment that has it advertises it. There was a three-week European heat wave in 2003 that killed 70,000 people, including 15,000 in France. That is incredible. This one was much shorter and also occurred in late June, not August, when the French go on vacation and leave their elders at home, who died in droves. 

It’s tempting, with the climate crisis, to call this the new normal, but the “new normal” is a moving target, where normal means hotter and hotter unless we humans can motivate enough of us to take the steps needed to rein it in. More trees would be a good start.

* Of course, Dasani is a Coca-Cola product, and OMG, I just looked it up and Wikipedia tells me it is bottled tap water, just filtered through reverse osmosis. Which also means Coke is exploiting the municipal water supplies of cities all over the world. Why would millions of U.S. Americans pay $2.50 a bottle for something that they could get almost free? That is also incredible. And then way too often toss out the plastic bottle. It’s got to be the best marketing scam ever.

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A brave, compassionate young man was on trial in Arizona for giving food, water and clothing to two undocumented immigrants who had crossed the border from Mexico and were found by ICE agents in the desert outpost run by the humanitarian aid group, No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes. This was right after the group had posted a video that went viral of a Border Patrol agent pouring out some of the gallon jugs of water left by the group for migrants to find along their way. Scott Warren is charged with three felonies and is facing 20 years in prison if convicted. Many of us are hoping that this extremely aggressive, hateful move by the Trump administration will backfire. Click here for a background piece I did for Between the Lines with a member of the group in January. Click here for an interview with Scott on Democracy Now just before his trial started.

News Flash! The jury announced on June 11 that it was deadlocked 8 to 4 for acquittal!

On our recent trip to the border (10 women from Connecticut), we saw the unforgiving landscape those who are fleeing violence, drought and poverty must navigate if they choose not to apply for asylum at a border crossing, which carries its own dangers.

We continue to think about the people we met on our journey. We wonder if those waiting on the Mexican side reached their U.S. destinations, where they will pursue their asylum claims. The recent (or not so recent) agreement between the U.S. and Mexico cements the requirement that asylum seekers wait on the Mexican side.

Meanwhile, I just received the newsletter from the Monastery, run by Casa Alitas, where we volunteered for a few days (see my blog from April 9, below). It is full of joys and sorrows, recounting the incredibly rewarding but also frustrating and sad work of volunteers who walk with immigrants who often must deal with tragedy. It made me want to go right back to Tucson. You can read it here, and see how to donate to this extremely effective project, or you can go directly to the donate button here or through their GoFundMe page here.

Another very deserving project is a free health service in Nogales, Mexico, run by a Mexican nurse named Pancho Olachea Martin out of an old ambulance that he parks in a neighborhood where migrants and anyone else in need of health care can get treatment. (That's Pancho and some of his patients above.) He told us he depends for 100% of his funding on the generosity of visitors, mostly from the U.S. I loved his obvious commitment, delivered with a great sense of humor. I’m hoping that my friends who work in health care, especially, might want to support his work. You can donate by visiting his newsletter and scrolling down here:

A third very effective program we visited is el Comedor (the Dining Room) in Nogales, run by the Kino Border Initiative. Volunteers serve lunch every day to hundreds of migrants (see photo below), as well as provide clothing and first aid, with big helpings of love. You can check it out and donate here: 

On the home front, on May 30 the Connecticut General Assembly passed an important update to the Trust Act originally passed in 2013. The update removed most of the loopholes that allowed ICE agents to pick up and detain undocumented immigrants, most of whom were detained due to a prior removal but not convicted of a crime. Those who have a serious felony conviction or are on the terrorist watch list are not protected by the updated Trust Act. This puts Connecticut back near the top of states protecting the rights of the undocumented. Click here to listen to/read an interview I did with the organizer for the Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance about their successful coalition effort with Unidad Latina en Acción, Make the Road Connecticut, Hartford Deportation Defense, Connecticut Bail Fund, Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, 32BJ SEIU, Working Families Party, and CT Students for A Dream. 

Here are links to two more short pieces I filed from my trip, for National Native News, specifically relating to the indigenous folks who are crossing the border. (For the second story, scroll down to April 17.) And here's a half-hour show from WINGS, Women's International News Gathering Service.

It seems like we are making progress in raising the profile of the climate crisis. In the past couple of weeks, the UK -- cradle of the Industrial Revolution and all the fossil fuel pollution it spawned -- declared a climate emergency after some high-profile non-violent civil disobedience involving Super Glue. 

A second youth climate strike on May 3 built on the first one on March 15, at least in Hartford. While the turnout of youth was actually smaller than in March, their alignment with many climate groups and state legislators showed the savvy of these teenage organizers. After a short rally outside, everyone filed into a room in the Capitol where a press conference was in progress, and one “elder” youth leader (age 19), Mitchel Kvedar,  spoke in Greta Thunberg phrases about the crisis and youths’ demands that their real elders take action. He focused, as did several of the legislators and NGO spokespersons, on the need to restore the energy efficiency funds that electric utility customers pay on their monthly bills, which were diverted (stolen) two years ago by the General Assembly to fill a budget hole. Click here to read or listen to a five-minute segment with Kvedar on Between the Lines.

Rep. Mary Mushinsky, the longest-serving member of the House and a climate champion for the past 30 years, said there’s no budget shortfall this year so it should be a no-brainer to stop this year’s diversion of the $54 million in energy efficiency funds. The money is meant to be used for making homes and businesses more energy efficient, which lowers bills and provides many more jobs than, for example, building out fracked gas infrastructure.

In another piece of good news, New York State declined to give a water quality permit to the Williams Company to build a fracked gas pipeline under the New York harbor. But the denial was issued "without prejudice," meaning Williams can apply again, which the company has already said it will do.

A new documentary on Netflix called Knock Down the House is inspiring, and no doubt reaching beyond the usual suspects of those demanding climate action. It follows the 2018 House campaigns of four progressive women, including Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who was the only one who won. Some of the footage highlights her focus on the need to address the climate crisis.

And the youth-led Sunrise Movement just completed a whirlwind 200 town hall meetings in 46 states to call for putting the climate crisis front and center in the 2020 election.

There’s also more incontrovertible proof that investing in renewable energy brings way better returns than fossil fuels, despite Trump’s efforts to promote the latter.

So…it feels like the ocean liner of public opinion and action is starting to make its very slow turn toward survival.

But…a new report says one million species are likely to go extinct in the next few decades if we don’t immediately and drastically lower our carbon footprint, and guess what?

The latest figures show we have reached 415 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, up dramatically from just over 400 in 2013. And since climate scientists say we must reduce CO2 to 350 ppm to have any hope of long-term survival on Earth, it seems we just aren’t turning the ship fast enough.

It’s hard to know where to begin writing about my just-concluded nine-day visit to the Arizona/Sonora borderlands. I went with nine other women connected to Shoreline Indivisible, which has a very active immigrant rights component. I was with them most of the time, as Robin and Susan had already been to Arizona a few months previous and set up most of our excellent itinerary; and I was on my own some of the time, mostly doing interviews for some stories I’m filing.

My Spanish came in very handy, both in volunteering at a shelter in Tucson and for speaking with migrants in Nogales, Sonora.

We worked with several members of the Samaritans group, made up almost exclusively of retirees who drive through the desert looking for anyone who might need help and who also walk various distances to place plastic jugs of water, snack food and socks at locations along migrant routes. Since 2001, more than 2,500 bodies have been recovered from the Tucson Sector, which covers 262 miles of the border. Think about that. No one knows how many more have died and never been found.

One thing became clear: many fewer people are trying to evade Border Patrol and cross through the desert to the U.S. side and many more are coming with their children and presenting themselves to authorities, seeking asylum.

Trump keeps pursuing more and more extreme avenues to keep people out. He even threatened to completely close down the whole southern border while we were there.

We experienced a whole volunteer-run, bi-national series of operations to help the migrants with food, shelter and medical care, who are fleeing the most horrific circumstances: the cartels seems to control everything, and they demand regular extortion payments from folks just trying to sustain small businesses and support their families; when people can no longer pay, the threats follow, and then the loss of everything, and sometimes murder. There was a recent story in the NY Times about the gruesome murders of Honduran women in particular, which is its own unique nightmare.

Then there is the climate-related disaster – the ongoing drought in the “Dry Corridor” of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – which has destroyed cash crops like coffee as well as subsidence crops like beans, corn and tomatoes. Several Guatemalan men I was chatting with in the Monastery, the shelter in Tucson, all told me there was no work and no way to grow food for their families, which led them to flee. “Climate change” is not included among the official reasons that allow asylum, but it obviously should be. The U.S., through its greenhouse gas emissions, is directly responsible for much of the desertification south of the border.

On our first day we went with Shura, a 77-year-old Samaritan volunteer, through the DeConcini gate into Nogales. She’s been doing this work since 2001, and it honestly seemed like she knew all the migrants on the street, all of whom she greeted with hugs and kisses. (In the photo above Shura is holding earrings made and gifted to her by a young migrant boy.) We entered a tiny room with a blanket hung over the door opening to find about 20 migrants inside, sitting on thin mattresses in family groups. They had come from shelters in Nogales and were awaiting their turn to cross the border and apply for asylum. Right after we returned home a federal judge in California ruled  that the U.S. can’t force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico, but a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Trump's favor. More litigation will follow.  

Then we visited el Comedor, a feeding program run by the Jesuit Kino Border Initiative. They feed both people who have been deported from the U.S. as well as those still hoping to get in.

On the U.S. side, we volunteered for a few days at a beautiful former Benedictine Monastery in Tucson that’s being used temporarily as a shelter by up to 300 people at a time. (See photo below.) The volunteers offer food, cots, clothing, medical care, toys and help arranging for their transportation to the migrants’ sponsors around the country – as well as love and respect. Click here to read or listen to an interview I did with the site manager for Between the Lines, and here for my Forest & Trees show featuring many voices. (Note: my show starts 35 seconds in.) Many of the migrants had been bused over from El Paso – Ground Zero for the influx of people fleeing their home countries – where they were forced to sleep on rocks under a bridge, exposed to the elements with just an aluminum “space blanket.” I actually saw one and was dismayed to learn it’s thinner than a piece of aluminum foil. Many of the young kids were sick, and I also met a dad who had a terrible sore throat and other respiratory symptoms. I asked if his young daughter had gotten sick, and he said, “No, because I cradled her in my arms.” For some reason that really got to me.

These were all people who had passed a credible fear hearing, demonstrating to immigration officials their fear of returning to their home countries. I learned from an immigration attorney that 90 percent or more of those who apply for asylum pass this first stage, but that very few actually gain asylum, since the allowable reasons keep shrinking under Trump (e.g., his administration has ruled that violence, including domestic violence, is not a valid reason).

There seem to be as many dads with kids here as moms, including many very young women who are nursing babies. These were the lucky ones who did not have their infants ripped from their breasts and separated from them. There are also intact families of mom, dad, and two or three children.

It’s inspiring to see what volunteers can put together in very short order to care for those in need. It’s the total opposite of how the U.S. government operates.

More border stories to come.

Some random birthday thoughts:

I still like having birthdays. Mine falls the day before the vernal equinox, the official start of spring. I loved hearing from several of my long-time friends, and more recent ones. too. Also heard from all the birds singing.

I had a good start to the day at the gym.

Then I went to Hartford to support an immigrant who was having an asylum hearing. There were about a dozen of us there, in the waiting room, and then the judge called us into court and said he took note that she had a lot of community support. Mike, one of the regular advocates, said this judge is the best one could hope for, that he actually seems fair and compassionate. I was impressed but immediately thought that he’s propping up a rotten system. Mike told me a story of a prosecutor who attended a talk about immigrants’ rights at the prosecutor’s church, and it was clear that he was sympathetic. Mike said even if the system is rotten, it’s better to have compassionate people in those positions than not.

In the evening I went to a screening of the HBO documentary, Say Her Name: The Life and Death of Sandra Bland. It was incredibly powerful, including cell phone video of her encounter with the cop who stopped her, interviews with the Texas district attorney and the sheriff in the lock-up where she died, intimate interviews with her family,  and clips of her own YouTube posts called Sandy Speaks, where she talked about fighting police brutality, why Black Lives Matter, and the need for both black and white people to have more friends of the other race.

Her sister, Sharon Cooper, who was prominently featured in the film, was on a panel afterward, along with two local community organizers, the head of the ACLU of CT and a New Haven cop in charge of Internal Affairs, who explained some NHPD procedures. Sharon said she really appreciated his participation and that it highlighted the importance of not generalizing that all cops are the enemy – although one of the local panelists said her goal was to abolish all police departments, as they had their beginnings in slave patrols and still mostly serve that purpose today, targeting African Americans. One of the panelists called for the white people in the audience to go beyond being supporters to being co-conspirators, to face with them what they have to face in our racist society, and change it.

I plead guilty to being too quick to pigeonhole people and write them off, when it would be more productive to engage them, unless they’re hopeless like Trump and his ilk.

On March 15 I went to the Connecticut Youth Climate Strike in Hartford, organized by teens and attended by some adults as well. It was part of a global youth climate strike inspired by Swedish phenom Greta Thunberg. The rally was, not surprisingly, extremely energetic and fun, though the message was somber. I’ve noticed that young people tend to mention the dangerous impacts on other species, including extinction, more than adults, which to me bespeaks a greater biophilia. Afterward some right-wingers claimed the kids were manipulated by adults with their own “agenda.” I don’t know if they really believed that, but to hear the young people refute it was just more proof of how well-informed and well-organized they are. The photo above is from the event.

Around midnight I went outside to walk under the full moon. I always think that after humans (some disastrously way more than others) have wrecked our beautiful planet, the moon will still rise and fall, and shine, and it gives me a perhaps strange sense of peace.

Despite the current horrors brought to us by the climate crisis, I do think I spy a light at the end of a very long tunnel. Or for another cliché, it’s more like a hundred flowers blooming.

Children in Europe – led by Swedish force of nature 16-year-old Greta Thunberg and other brilliant girls – have been on the march by the hundreds of thousands and have just wrested a pledge of a quarter of a trillion dollars from the European Union to address the climate crisis over the next 7 years. One thing I love about Greta is her absolute refusal to play nice when she sees her future being destroyed before her eyes. She finally shamed the adults into action. And here’s another totally fitting cliché: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." (Margaret Mead) I would add, “or even one citizen.”

In the U.S. young people – though significantly older than the young European activists – founded the Sunrise Movement after the 2016 election and were laser-focused on the 2018 mid-term elections, where they helped turn the U.S. House blue and bring some climate hawks into office. They’re promoting a Green New Deal, and, while several groups have critiqued it from the left – saying it doesn’t call specifically for phasing out fossil fuels or exclude nuclear power from the “carbon-neutral” goal or call for a cut in Pentagon spending to fund it – it has put the climate crisis at the center of public attention.

I went to DC over the weekend to support hundreds of Sunrise activists, and especially a group from Kentucky, who went to Mitch McConnell’s office to “look us in the eyes and tell us your $1.9 million donation from the fossil fuel industry is more important than our future.” More than 40 of them were arrested when they refused to leave his office. And he didn’t meet with them – just like he didn’t meet with them over a Congressional break when he was supposed to be in his district. They went to his district office for three days in a row, then spent a night outside his office in the rain to show their commitment.

The goal of the DC action was to show he can’t stop their momentum by calling for a premature vote in the Senate on the Green New Deal resolution. (They say it’s premature because they need more time to convince more lawmakers to support it.) They were incredibly high-energy, passionate and emotional as they talked about their doomed future if people in power don’t take emergency action. You can see Erin from Kentucky leading the song, “Which Side Are You On?” at the training before the action. That’s a classic protest song, but the Kentuckians pointed out that it was written by a coal miner’s wife from Kentucky about a century ago.

I was so happy to spend time with these young people, who ranged from 17 to their mid-20s. I highly encourage anyone over 30 (not to mention over 70) to engage with them whenever possible to learn their perspective.

There’s other good news. The federal Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) – with a majority of Trump appointees – just announced it’s closing two coal plants because they couldn’t compete economically with other energy sources, despite personal lobbying from both Trump and Mitch McConnell, in whose state one of them is located. The Sierra Club reports that 47 coal plants have announced their retirement or have closed since Trump took office.
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I also just attended the annual winter conference of the CT chapter of NOFA, the Northeast Organic Farming Association. There were several workshops on agriculture and climate change, and no-till, regenerative farming and gardening is gaining enthusiastic adherents. Normal tilling releases tons of carbon into the atmosphere, so the less we do that, the better off we are.
 
They say it takes a long time to turn around an ocean liner. Same is true of our heedless pumping of CO2, methane and other climate-heating gases into the air. The turning is still much too slow, but it finally feels like we are starting to make the turn. To quote one of my favorite singer-songwriters, James Keelaghan:
Hold Your Ground
Somewhere inside my soul there is an echo of my youth
Some pithy little saying that contained a grain of truth
If patience is a virtue, persistence is its mark
It's better light a candle than stand and curse the dark
But if we stand together we might turn this world around
Hold your ground
 
In the corridors of power where our voice is seldom heard
The status quo is what they want, they can get it with a word
For us it takes a thousand voices, a million angry shouts
To notify the ship of state to bring its course about
But if we pull together we might turn this ship around
Hold your ground
 
Oh, this world is changing
Spinning out through space and time
Oh, it's rearranging
All the things we thought were yours and mine
You've got to hold your ground
Hold your ground
Hold your ground
 
Sometimes it seems the motion is strictly retrograde
There are so many reversals of advances that you've made
The things you thought were changing have shuddered to a halt
But if we stand together we might turn this world around
Hold your ground
Hold your ground
Hold your ground
 
It isn't for the faint of heart to bet when the odds are long
And neither is it easy to be right in face of wring
You must proceed from strength to strength, although the road is rough
And sometimes human courage just isn't quite enough
But if we stand together we might turn this world around
Hold your ground
Hold your ground
Hold your ground
Oh this world is changing
 

I’ve often felt that energy efficiency is the poor step-child of the clean energy movement, but I attended a conference today that focused on it front and center. Usually we hear about renewables – solar and wind and whatever else fits into one’s definition of “renewable” – but the cheapest, cleanest energy is the energy that’s never consumed, through efficiencies.

This event was sponsored by Efficiency for All, an outreach and advocacy group founded by a powerhouse Latina woman named Leticia Colon de Mejias. She also runs an energy conservation and insulation business and a youth education project called Green Eco Warriors. She said equity is an essential element of sustainability. What does that look like? Well, much of the energy our state uses goes into heating and cooling our homes and providing electricity for an ever-growing number of necessities and all the non-essentials we don’t need but want. And lower-income folks are the most likely to live in energy-leaking homes. If they can be tightened up to stop those leaks, residents will be more comfortable and healthier and save money at the same time. Those leaks generate in-home pollution and contribute to greenhouse gases escaping into the environment.

Leticia made a great analogy. She said efficiency and renewables are like rice and beans – each is nutritious alone but they are tastier and even more nutritious together. The rice is energy efficiency, and  you can vary the kinds of beans and the seasoning as you wish – adding different amounts of different kinds of renewables, or even a little gas or nuclear or heating oil if that’s what you have – just so everyone has a plate (i.e., energy to meet their needs). She emphasized that not all “beans” are created equal, and that we need to move to renewables as soon as possible.

She also said, as worthy as electric cars and EV charging stations are for reducing carbon emissions, they are not the priority for low-income residents, who can’t afford them and who benefit more from clean air inside their homes and around their neighborhoods.
In fiscal years 2018-2019 the Connecticut General Assembly raided the energy efficiency monies that electric customers pay each month on their bill – which is meant for the express purpose of increasing efficiency – in order to help balance the state budget. The total amount of funds diverted over two years from the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund, the Connecticut Green Bank and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative was a whopping $165 million. Energy efficiency work generates more than 34,000 jobs in the state, and after the raid on the funds, the number of buildings that were retrofitted plummeted 19% from 2017 to 2018 – when the number needs to soar instead – and many workers lost their jobs. Aside from the seeming illegality of the raid, it was extremely short-sighted, since research has shown that each dollar put into efficiency returns $7 in savings.

Leticia was part of a lawsuit joined by several environmental groups that sued the state to try to recover the funds. They lost in federal district court when the judge ruled that the statement on our electricity bills about what the money is for could not be considered a “contract.” The case is being appealed.
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Meanwhile, the 2019 legislative session began on January 9, and the environmental community is unified that returning the raided funds – and ensuring that they are never raided again – is a top priority. With some new “green” legislators in office, and some veteran lawmakers also on board, I hope the big Democrat majorities in both houses will pass it and our new Democratic governor will sign it. He’s said some positive things about the need to address climate change and more people are pushing for that every day.
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The Sunrise Movement, an organization of young people that made its debut after the 2016 election, helped elect several new pro-climate action members of Congress this year and has been raising hell in D.C. since the election, sitting in (and getting arrested) in Nancy Pelosi’s office and visiting the offices of dozens of other Congressmembers – a thousand-strong – to demand that they support a Select Committee for a Green New Deal that would treat the climate crisis as the emergency it is, and includes a jobs creation piece that would provide employment in the clean energy sector for anyone wanting a job. They’re calling for the kind of super-fast transformation that happened in World War II, when in less than a year, for example, all the auto companies were making nothing but tanks.

As a mostly retired journalist and a climate activist, I had my own moving encounter with this cohort in New Haven this week, when I joined four dozen Yale students in occupying the lobby of the building where the Yale investments office traffics in fossil fuels and Puerto Rican debt. The students’ demands were that the university divest from its holdings in at least $678 million in fossil fuel stocks and cancel the holdings that some of its fund managers have in Puerto Rican debt, since the island – a territory of the U.S. – was forced into bankruptcy inn 2016.  The students are demanding that the Puerto Rican people – not wealthy investors – be first in line to get the resources they need to rebuild their shattered island after Hurricane Maria hit in September 2017.

We sat in for five hours, and the students had a five-hour “lesson plan.” Four students did a teach-in about the colonial status of Puerto Rico and the resulting horrors. For example, about a third of the island’s women of child-bearing age were sterilized without their consent between the 1930s and the 1970s, and many were used as guinea pigs by pharmaceutical companies developing their birth control pills.

Another student talked about her senior thesis on the history of Yale’s now-$29 billion endowment.

There was a Skype chat with Bill McKibben, co-founder of the global climate movement 350.org and the guru of fossil fuel divestment.

There was a guided meditation and a time to stretch and dance (we were sitting on the floor, and it got uncomfortable after awhile, at least for me). There were beautiful songs and energetic chants, and toward the end the organizers spread out a 30-foot roll of paper on which we were asked to draw something we’ll miss as a result of climate catastrophe and something we will hold dear going forward, which we shared with a partner.

At 5 p.m., Yale police announced the building was closed and we were being charged with trespassing. As each pair (the organizers had buddied us up) stepped up to get processed and receive our $92 citation, everyone sang, “Courage [their name], you do not walk alone. We will walk with you and sing your spirit home.” My arrest buddy was Justin Farmer, a student at Southern Connecticut State University, a Hamden town council member, and a person who shows up when it counts (our selfie above). When we walked out the door, we were greeted with wild cheers by a hundred people who had attended a rally that began at 3:30 p.m. and waited in the cold for us all to be released around 6 p.m.

These young people know what they’re up against, and they talk about the stress and the fear and the anger they feel. But I’ve never met a group more full of love and joy. I honestly don’t know how they do it, but I sure was happy to be in close proximity to that for an afternoon.