From blowing up mountains to building pipelines for tar sands (the dirtiest energy on the planet) to fracking for natural gas -- all these forms of what opponents call "extreme energy extraction" seem to be alive and well in America.

Fights are going on against all of them, and, even when victories are won, environmental victories are always temporary, until the next proposal comes along to rape and pillage the planet for profit. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the alliteration, and it's true.)

Still, it's worth noting some positive signs along the road.

Mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia destroys the land, fills valley streams with the "overburden" of rocks and dirt, pollutes both air and water, destroys the habitat of native species, and, according to some studies, likely leads to big increases in both cancer and birth defects among humans. Another recent study shows that many fish species have disappeared from area streams, and link that disappearance to mountaintop removal mining. While all this is bad news, the good news aspect is that as proof mounts about the utter destructiveness of this practice, there's more hope of stopping it.

The Keystone XL pipeline to carry tar sands from Alberta to Texas is still on hold, three years after it was supposedly a done deal. The latest news is that construction permits across both Nebraska and South Dakota have expired, leading to more delays until perhaps (opponents hope) TransCanada may decide to give up on this particular project.

Another pipeline is in the news. On July 21 the South Portland, Maine, according to Grist, the city council voted 6-1 "to approve the Clear Skies Ordinance, which will block the loading of heavy tar-sands bitumen onto tankers at the city’s port. The measure is intended to stop ExxonMobil and partner companies from bringing Albertan tar-sands oil east through an aging pipeline network to the city’s waterfront. Currently, the pipeline transports conventional oil west from Portland to Canada; the companies want to reverse its flow."

Of course the city expects to be sued, but good for them for taking a stand. And it will delay the project and raise the cost of doing business.

I covered the original protest in South Portland on a frigid day in January 2013. You can listen to my Free Speech Radio News story or read about it in In These Times here and here.

Finally, another proposal to build a liquid natural gas (LNG) export terminal in southern Maryland is moving ahead quickly, so the Chesapeake Climate Action Network organized the first-ever protest outside the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Sunday, July 13, where over a thousand people wound through the streets of Washington, D.C. with a long "pipeline" and other representations of dirty and clean energy (as depicted above). That was followed the next day by a civil disobedience action blocking the entrances to FERC  in which two dozen protesters were arrested. They said FERC has never met a big natural gas project it doesn't like, and that this one would greatly increase fracking in the Marcellus Shale states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia (and New York and Maryland, if the industry can overcome the moratoriums in those states). You can listen to/read my story about it for Free Speech Radio News here. And click here for one of the speeches at the rally by Sandra Steingraber, a scientist and anti-fracking activist, who talks about the dangers and extreme climate impacts of LNG.

This basket holds the first harvest of beans from my front yard garden, set amidst my luxuriant bean plants (a few purple pods thrown in for color), with a couple of marigolds peaking through. I think surrounding my garden with marigolds helps keep out the six-legged undesirables, though I actually had a lot of insect damage to some of my brassicas (mostly my broccoli and brussel sprouts), so who knows.

I harvested early in the morning, before the sun was on the garden, so it was very pleasant. But bending down to harvest the beans (which took about ten minutes) was very unpleasant -- my back was killing me and I had to straighten out every few minutes.

It's at times like this that I come as close as I ever will to the life of a farmworker, which is to say not very close at all.  But it just reminds me of the bane of their existence, the short-handled hoe, which required bending over like I was for a few minutes, for the entire day of 8, 10 or 12 hours. I believe contracts the United Farm Workers Union won got rid of that particular implement of torture.

And of course having the option of not working under the hot sun is an option that those who do this for a living do not have. And they work in climates that are hotter for more of the year, like southern California or Florida. I'm sure I couldn't take it for more than a half hour before I would faint away and die.

I'm reading The Warmth of Other Suns, a compelling book by Isabel Wilkerson about the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the rest of the country covering a period of 1910 to 1970. She says in the introduction that she interviewed a phenomenal-sounding 1,200 people for the book, then focused in on three who left from different places in different decades and ended up in different parts of the country. She recounts the quotidian details of their lives, and for the woman among the three, Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, that meant following her to the cotton fields as she and her husband picked cotton for a landowner in conditions that seemed little different from slavery -- except they could leave, which they did. Imagine dragging around a hundred-pound sack of cotton in 100 degree heat with almost 100-percent humidity.

Which is all to say -- be grateful for the food on your plate and the t-shirt on your back, because a lot of folks suffered mightily to bring them to you. And support groups like the Coalition of Imokolee Workers, who pick tomatoes in South Florida and have organized to get a penny a pound more from behemoths like Taco Bell, McDonalds, Burger King and others, but are still fighting holdouts like Wendy's and Kroger.