Climate Justice (News)

By Sarah Terry-Cobo

The latest legal challenge to California's landmark climate-change legislation isn't coming from big polluters faced with a series of new regulations. Instead, groups representing low-income residents are challenging the environmental law as unfairly burdening their beleaguered communities.
A handful of community groups, represented by the San Francisco-based Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment have filed a motion that could delay the implementation of parts of the Global Warming Solutions Act, also known as AB 32.

10 October 2010 - 12:00pm - 5:00pm

Fed up with all the hot air around climate change? Then roll up your sleeves and get down and dirty Oakland-style, with hundreds of your friends and neighbors this October 10 at Laney College!

We'll revitalize Laney College's community garden, offer skills-building workshops, pass the mic to dynamic speakers, and bring together local leaders for climate justice. Help support Oakland's climate action plan by building community access to healthy, affordable food! We'll also kick off a statewide Clean Energy Tour featuring some of Oakland's top hip hop talent, while educating folks about the threat to our communities from Prop 23.

Sponsored by the Oakland Climate Action Coalition, Bay Localize, Ella Baker Center, CommuniTree, Greenpeace, HOPE Collaborative, and Laney College this will be an anchor event among dozens of gatherings happening around the Bay Area as part of 350.org's "Global Work Party" on 10.10.10. Get involved with local climate solutions!

This event is FREE and open to the public. Yummy local food also available.

RSVP today at:
http://action.ellabakercenter.org/site/Calendar?view=Detail&id=100241

Share with your friends on Facebook!
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=123984270983846

Join us for the Bay Area's biggest day of climate action ever!

Sunnyvale Horizon 2035 Committee Public Outreach Meeting

 

Help shape the future of Sunnyvale by attending the Horizon 2035 Committee's Public Outreach meeting on the Climate Action Plan. Help plan for Sunnyvale's future Transportation, Land Use, and Climate policies that will affect everything from the location of businesses to what kind of light bulbs will go in streetlamps!

The meeting will be held at 7:00 PM on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at the City Council Chambers in Sunnyvale (456 W. Olive Avenue). For updates on Horizon 2035, visit www.Horizon2035.inSunnyvale.com

Please see flyer for more information. We hope to see you on the 29th!

The Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission's (MTC) draft Public Participation Plan will set the framework for major decisions that it will make over the next three years in planning for over $200 billion in transportation investments.  MTC is required by SB 375 to implement a Sustainable Communities Strategy, or SCS, that will integrate transportation and land-use planning in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change.

The Public Participation Plan will shape how well the SB 375 process will address the needs of the region's low-income communities and communities of color - communities at greatest risk from the impacts of climate change.  A just and equitable Public Participation Plan that actively empowers low-income communities of color in these important decisions would be an important step in moving the Bay Area toward greater inclusion.

By Joseph Huff-Hannon

“We aren’t demanding a loan or finance; we’re demanding a repayment of a debt, climate debt,” says Bolivian negotiator Navarro

In a central plaza of the Universidad del Valle in Cochabamba, Bolivia, a small group of men and women are presiding over a beauty competition, of sorts. They’re looking after a half a dozen llamas tethered to the base of a nearby stage, and flashing smiles as people come up to have their pictures taken with the tall, wooly animals. Over the sound system, somebody is describing with loving detail the various ecologically important functions that the llama plays in local agriculture, not to mention providing wool for winter clothing.

Nearby an impressive solar panel display has been set up by a local NGO called Energética, which supplies electricity to some of the nearby food stands and feeds into the university’s power grid. “Our goal is to bring clean energy to places in the country that have never before received electricity, rural places where they haven’t even ever had light after sundown,” staff engineer Mauricio Richter tells me, describing Energetica’s work, which is funded by both private grants and the Bolivian government. “We’re here to show that the technology is here, and it’s available.”

By Melanie Mason

As of November 2009, at least 139 cities in the United States had climate action plans, including Portland and Chicago. Oakland doesn’t have one yet, but it does have a goal: by 2020, the city seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 36 percent of what they were in 2005. That goal is more aggressive than those of either San Francisco or Berkeley, which both have climate action plans.

By Juliet Eilperin

Van Jones, the environmental justice advocate who relinquished his post as a White House adviser five months ago after coming under fire from conservative activists, is reemerging on the public policy stage to push for green jobs.

By Gar Alperovitz, Ted Howard & Thad Williamson

Something important is happening in Cleveland: a new
model of large-scale worker- and community-benefiting
enterprises is beginning to build serious momentum in
one of the cities most dramatically impacted by the
nation's decaying economy. The Evergreen Cooperative
Laundry (ECL)--a worker-owned, industrial-size,
thoroughly "green" operation--opened its doors late
last fall in Glenville, a neighborhood with a median
income hovering around $18,000. It's the first of ten
major enterprises in the works in Cleveland, where the
poverty rate is more than 30 percent and the population
has declined from 900,000 to less than 450,000 since
1950.

Editor’s Note: This editorial was produced in association with New America Media (www.newamericamedia.org), a national association of ethnic media, and was published by ethnic media across the country to bring attention to the urgency of addressing climate change.

U.S. public concern about climate change has waned. The climate change summit in Copenhagen – largely viewed as a failure – did little to elevate the issue among the public. Climate change is foremost among the concerns of our communities. It is our responsibility, as the media that serve them, to call for action on this urgent matter. For many ethnic Americans whose family members are at the frontlines of global warming back in their home countries, climate change is a life-and-death issue.

If no action is taken, immigrants will continue to see their family members back in their home countries bear the brunt of rising sea levels and devastating cyclones.

By Frances Q. Quimpo

Copenhagen - The climate negotiation in the Fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP 15) in Copenhagen has come to a sour end. The world's high expectation for a meaningful and binding agreement is doused with icy cold water by a non-binding deal dubbed as "Copenhagen Accord" - a deal primarily brokered by the most powerful and leading polluter country in the world -- the United States.