Dear friends,
I hope that you got some rest this weekend. We have a busy day!
Before I get to all of today’s climate action, I want to celebrate activists working on another issue. In a show of creative online action, TikTokkers crashed the Texas Right to Life’s website for reporting anonymous tips if “you think the law has been violated.”
Young people were already woke when it came to combatting the new anti-choice legislation from Texas. The good news to come out of so much bad climate news is that some people are awakening to the dangers of climate change and beginning (finally!) to seeing the necessity of doing something.
Tell Governor Hochul and the DEC: the Astoria NRG fracked gas power violates NYS law and does not align with our climate goals! Here’s a ready-made message.
New York State’s Climate & Community Investment Act (CCIA) is still viable. The bill (S.4264A/A6967) is a critical piece of legislation designed to make corporations pay into a Community Just Transition Fund, based on their greenhouse gas emissions. Those funds will be used to invest in infrastructure to protect frontline communities and facilitate green transportation and manufacturing.
Call the Speaker & Majority Leader to tell them that we need the Climate and Community Investment Act! A script is provided!
The crypto-mining creepers who brought us bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have rapidly expanded their business model to include other financial services. While this seems rife for all kinds of abuse and criminality, the larger concern for most of us is that crypto-mining is an environmental disaster.
NYS legislators have proposed a moratorium on energy-intensive crypto-currencies.
According to the Senate bill, which passed in June:
The magnitude of computer processing output required to authenticate a single block of a blockchain with a proof-of-work method uses as much energy as an average American household uses in a month.
I cited this language back in June, without having any clue how much blockchain is involved in producing one bitcoin. I still don’t know, but now I could do the math, because I have learned that producing one bitcoin requires
9 year’s worth [of household electricity]. (Put in terms of a typical home electricity bill: about $12,500.) Value of one Bitcoin today: about $50,000.
It’s clear that crypto mining is a waste of energy. Apparently, Bitcoin is not actually untraceable, so even if one has criminal intent, I fail to see the appeal. We need to get the Assembly to pass the moratorium, which has already passed the Senate.
Contact your representative to get their support for a moratorium. The bill is A7389 and it amends the environmental conservation law. Here’s a ready-made message.
It’s time to hold those who are responsible for the crisis accountable. What did they know and when did they know it? And are they doing anything now to mitigate the damage they are causing?
In an effort to burn off toxic chemicals before and after Hurricane Ida, many industrial facilities sent the gases through smoke stacks topped with flares.
But the hurricane blew out some of those flares like candles, allowing harmful pollution into the air.
Because of the power outages, many air quality tracking systems are still out of commission.
Demand that fossil fuel executives testify before Congress!
Retweet this! We’re building a movement.
On Friday, Congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush joined a Minnesota state senator, Mary Kunesh, to call on the president to stop Line 3. The press conference in Minneapolis was a prelude to the weekend visit to the site in northern Minnesota where work on the pipeline is nearing completion.
“We are here because the climate crisis is here,” Omar said. “The climate crisis is now. The climate crisis is happening and the last thing we need to do is allow the very criminals who created this crisis to build more fossil fuel infrastructure.”
Call the president and tell him to stop Line 3!
There’s a powerful campaign to stop the New York Times from producing and publishing advertisements to promote the false idea that fossil fuel companies are working to fight climate change. These advertisements often appear online beside reports of some decidedly unnatural disasters, thereby undermining the message of factual reporting.
Called Ads Not Fit to Print, the campaign argues that fossil fuel advertisements endanger Times readers’ health in the same way now-banned cigarette ads did—and likely, even more.
“What the Times is doing right now is shameful,” said Genevieve Guenther, whose group End Climate Silence is spearheading the campaign. “On one hand, they’re trying to seem like part of the reality-based community who acknowledges the climate crisis and wants to solve it. On the other, they're doing everything they can to keep the fossil fuel economy going because it is one of the sources of their own power and they believe in it.”
Sign the petition to tell the New York Times to stop promoting fossil fuels!
Dr. Genevieve Guenther, who is behind the campaign, has this reminder for us about what I call collective relentlessness:
Collective action means that every person takes one small step. It doesn't mean that a few people take gigantic steps. So even if signing a petition doesn't seem like a big deal, it is a big deal. Every single signature builds up into. . . a social movement.
Did you take at least two actions today?!
Saving the planet is care work. And care work — the work of caring for other people — is part of changing the climate.
Every time disaster strikes, care workers are on the front lines, saving lives. Care can anchor a new kind of economy.
Watch Care Work Is Essential Work. It's Also Climate Work.
Tonight, a documentary called Care by the filmmakers Deirdre Fishel and Tony Heriza will stream on public television at 8 PM ET. Following the film, you can be part of the conversation with Ai-jen Poo, co-founder of the National Domestic Workers Alliance; Robert Espinoza, Vice President of Policy of PHI National; and Sarita Gupta, Director Future of Work at the Ford Foundation.
Watch the documentary and register for the conversation with the directors following the screening.
Resilience is part of the language of climate adaptation and our own ability to carry on in the face of difficulty. Yusef Salaam, the embodiment of resilience, was wrongfully convicted as a teenager for the rape of the Central Park jogger. Salaam, one of the Exonerated Five, is running for the state senate seat that Brian Benjamin is about to vacate as he steps up to become lieutenant governor.
Associates said Salaam, 47, plans to focus, in part, on issues that made his name synonymous with wrongful conviction: criminal justice and prison reform, police brutality, and the abolition of juvenile solitary confinement.
Salaam has written a book, Better, Not Bitter: Living On Purpose In The Pursuit Of Racial Justice.
I wish you a sweet new year.
with love,
L