Serena
Well, this is rad: startups to reduce food waste, largely founded by Millennials. My favorite one profiled here is Baltimore’s Hungry Harvest, which “recovers surplus produce from farms and wholesalers, and sells it in CSA-style boxes at a steep discount to what non-cosmetically-challenged produce would cost. For each box sold, a healthy meal is donated to someone in need.”
A more sustainable way to die? Yes! Magazine explains. (And if you haven’t seen it yet, check out the Urban Death Project as well.)
A can’t-miss overview of environmentalism’s racist history.
Anna
Thank you, Pramila Jayapal, for helping me better understand the ways I kept twisting myself up in different knots after Bernie Sanders failed to speak at his Seattle rally when Black Lives Matter activists took the stage. (Pramila was also excellent on this on All In With Chris Hayes on MSNBC.)
What I realize is that all those knots are here to stay. And mine are nothing compared to those of the women on that stage. Things need to change. (See, as just one example: Police killings since Ferguson in one map). So, I say thanks also to an old friend, who is white but whose husband and children are black, for sending this: White Person’s Guide to Activism: How to be an interrupter.
In other not great news: The Guardian is on fire with their climate coverage (no pun intended), including excellent muckraking on fossil fuel money in politics. This week:
- GOP presidential hopefuls have already hauled in $62 million in campaign support from donors with fossil fuel ties.
- And, the Canadian government spent millions on secret tar sands advocacy!?! Yep, you heard that right. The Conservative government has been paying for dirty fuels PR and ad campaigns (in Canada, the US, and Europe), including efforts to “advance energy literacy amongst BC First Nations communities.”
Finally, check out OEC’s [hu]man-on-the-street video where Oregonians react to the fact that oil lobbyists spent over $2m in 2014 to change the state’s clean air laws.
Eric
If you have a few bucks to spare, here’s a good cause: put something in the tip jar for photographer Paul Anderson, so that he can document the Lummi Nation’s totem pole journey. Paul is an absolutely first rate photographer whose work on coal and oil has been the visual backbone of the thin green line. He has generously allowed Sightline to use his work for free—you’ll find his images all over our site—and it’s time for all of us to give something back to him.
Speaking of coal exports, here’s a good piece by Ross Macfarlane at Climate Solutions: as Arch Coal falters, so too do its hopes for an export terminal in the Pacific Northwest.
Today is a day that ends with Y, so that means there’s a new reason to worry about whether Tesoro can be trusted to responsibly operate the nation’s largest oil-by-rail terminal that it has planned for the Columbia River. The firm just agreed to pay $4 million in fines for repeated pollution violations at its Martinez, California refinery.
Related, new documents just released by the Port of Vancouver indicate that Tesoro may be aiming to build an even bigger site—400,000 barrels per day—than they have previously told the public.
On the other hand, they can be trusted to turn a buck. Research from a consumer group in California finds that Tesoro benefited from a price spike to notch up record profits at its refineries. We’re talking about $668 million in the second quarter of 2015.
The Northwest has been up in arms about oil-by-rail schemes. But what about water-by-rail schemes, delivering Cascadian H2O to drought-stricken regions like California? It’s not as far-fetched as it might sound.
Finally, two great video documentaries from two of my favorite videographers.
Spencer Chumbley (who did an excellent piece on oil trains for VICE News that featured Sightline) takes a look at the aging pipelines below the Great Lakes, and the dicey record of the Canadian oil company that owns them.
Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele examine the study of ecology in a changing world. They give the mic to some of the most interesting ecologists practicing today to give a sense of what ecology means now, and what it should mean. It’s powerfully done.
Trisha
If you’re worried about the aftermath of Cascadia’s ‘Big One,’ you’ll want to pay attention to the lessons we’re still learning from Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast 10 years ago this month. A decade later, New Orleans continues to rebuild. The changes brought by the storm still linger. Coastal cities all over the United States have been keeping an eye on the big 50-year $50 billion plan (some funding for which comes from a settlement involving the Deepwater Horizon oil spill) to protect cities from future large-scale natural disasters all while ensuring the protection of wildlife and wetlands.
Another major change brought to fruition by Katrina is the ongoing experiment of the country’s only all-charter school district (this extensive NPR coverage is from last year but worth reading). Additionally, what Katrina also did was reveal, and exacerbate, the already existing tensions between the communities of the city. This KUOW story offers a look at how groups (white, black, Asian, Latino, rich, poor) have seen very different outcomes through the last 10 years of recovery efforts.
Keiko
Our friend Rex Burkholder, founder of Bicycle Transportation Alliance in Portland, has recently released The Activists Toolkit, a new book on effective leadership and community activism. Burkholder has been an active citizen for over forty years and provides a ton of practical advice towards addressing community issues. In Burkholder’s words, this is a great resource to “communicate authentically, advocate effectively, and lead productively towards a better world.” Burkholder spoke about his new book in this radio interview.
What’s a “shade ball” and why are they pouring 20,000 into a reservoir in LA? The video is quite mesmerizing.
