Category Archives: Coal

U.S. EPA, GA DNR, GA Health Dept., and landfill in Lowndes County @ EPA 2013-11-14



At the

EPA meeting in Waycross about the Seven Out Superfund site,
EPA, GA EPD, and state health officials also had information about
crossover contamination in Lowndes County.




Matthew J. Huyser, On-Scene Coordinator for U.S. EPA,
told me that before

EPA shipped those 196,500 gallons of wastewater from Seven Out to the Pecan Row Landfill in Lowndes County
they had applied procedures that were supposed to ensure those liquids
were no longer toxic and had tested them to be sure.
He said he would send me the specifics on that.
I didn’t ask him whether

CSX toxic wastes were shipped to Lowndes County.



Huyser also said EPA had checked the record of that receiving landfill
before sending anything there, and it had a good record.
He seemed surprised to learn Continue reading →

Buried under nine feet of manure: 19th century horse predictions



There is a big difference between the 19th century horse excrement
crisis and the current 21st century energy crisis,
similar as they may sound.
One was real.
The other is manufactured by the modern equivalent of stagecoach vendors.

Stephen Davies wrote for The Freeman 1 September 2004,

The Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894,

In 1898 the first international urban-planning conference convened
in New York. It was abandoned after three days, instead of the
scheduled ten, because none of the delegates could see any solution
to the growing crisis posed by urban horses and their output.



The problem did indeed seem intractable. The larger and richer that
cities became, the more horses they needed to function. The more
horses, the more manure. Writing in the Times of London in 1894, one
writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be
buried under nine feet of manure. Moreover, all these horses had to
be stabled, which used up ever-larger areas of increasingly valuable
land. And as the number of horses grew, ever-more land had to be
devoted to producing hay to feed them (rather than producing food
for people), and this had to be brought into cities and
distributed—by horse-drawn vehicles. It seemed that urban
civilization was doomed.

Continue reading →

Videos: Solar Canopy Ceremony @ SAVE 2013-11-15



VSU’s president turns out to be a professor of environmental ethics,
as he reminded us at the

VSU Solar Canopy Ceremony 15 November 2013.

Here’s
a video playlist:

Continue reading →

Making this a green campus –Dr. Michael G. Noll @ SAVE 2013-11-15



Dr. Noll remarked on the rain falling and said of the solar canopy:

It’s multipurpose, it provides shade, it provides shelter,
and it provides renewable energy, so that makes it really awesome.



He offered as story about events and world population at those times:

  • 1 billion in 1783: the first hot air balloon in 1783 in Paris, France
  • 2 billion in 1903: Orville and Wilbur Wright’s first flight



  • 1969: Apollo 11 landed on the moon when Dr. Noll was 8 years old

  • 1973: Oil crisis
  • 4 billion in 1977: Jimmy Carter installed first solar panels on White House
  • 1981: Ronald Reagan took down those solar panels

  • 7 billion now: Accelerating climate change



He said we’re entering a second solar age,
the first one being the fossilized solar power of fossil fuels.
He mentioned the solar powered long flights of the

Solar Impulse
airplane as an example of hope, and an example of accelerating change.

Then you know what we are capable of, what we can do.

He concluded: Continue reading →

Anytime we use coal or natural gas we are linked to fracking and of course climate change –Danielle Jordan @ SAVE 2013-11-15

After repeating

SAVE’s request for VSU to
reinvest in more socially responsible options,
Danielle Jordan, President of SAVE, gave one reason why
SAVE supports fossil fuel divestment:


Our actions don't stop here --Danielle Jordan

In our fiscally globalized world, our actions don’t stop here.
Everything we do affects people half a world away.
So anytime we use coal or natural gas we are linked to fracking
and of course climate change.
But that doesn’t have to be.
We can change that.
This proves it.


Crowd

Half a world --with Dr. McKinney

This was at the

Solar Canopy Ceremony 15 November 2013. Continue reading →

More solar jobs already than coal, or oil and gas extraction

Want jobs?
Invest in solar power.



There are more people in the

U.S. employed in the solar energy
marketplace than mining coal. The banal argument that transitioning
to a clean energy economy will cost us jobs is simply false. Solar
is growing more than 10 times faster than the American economy.

Solar already employs more than coal, and that gap is widening. In
2012, solar added 14,000 new jobs, up 36 percent from 2010 and the
industry will add another 20,000 jobs this year. The fossil fuels
industry cut 4,000 jobs last year. So when it comes to employing
Americans, solar is winning.

That 119,000 jobs in the solar industry is also more than
the 106,400 “production and nonsupervisory employees” in the oil and
gas extraction industry, and gaining rapidly Continue reading →

VSU Environmental Issues Committee backs SAVE fossil fuel divestment


EIC went first, and
attached to

the agenda for the VSU faculty senate meeting

that moved to back SAVE and condemn the position of the Board of Trustees
this statement. -jsq

Attachment D

Links and notes from Environmental issues committee


Dl
Link to Physical Plant work order form, where the user can tailor the request to a lighting issue:

https://tma.valdosta.edu/webtma/GenerateRequest.aspx?key=8fMN5Hy6FywdBGVfahdUsPDaD%2bsth%2bE6fXG%2brkvftJ0%3d

D2



Hello,
At today’s EIC meeting, the committee voted on , and passed, the following statement that I am sending onto the
Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate.

“The EIC moved to agree to the following statement as a committee and to communicate it to the Executive Committee
of the Faculty Senate for consideration:

The EIC as a standing committee of the Faculty Senate supports the
efforts of S.A.V.E. (Students Against Violating the Environment) to
encourage the VSU Foundation to consider divesting from fossil fuel
extraction-based investments.”

If you have Continue reading →

SAVE won at VSU Faculty Senate

SAVE president Danielle Jordan

posted on SAVE’s facebook page
about an hour ago:

BIG WIN, SAVE!



The

faculty senate voted, unanimously, to support

our divestment campaign. They also voted to condemn and reject

the BOT response letter.

Way to go, everyone! We’re making progress!

A complete lack of concern with our request –S.A.V.E. to VSU President McKinney

S.A.V.E. never gives up, and the VSU Foundation provided fuel for the fight. -jsq




November 13, 2013

Dr. William J. McKinney

President

Valdosta State University

Dear President McKinney,



Thank you very much for agreeing to be a part of

our ceremony for the new solar canopy this Friday. We are excited
for it, and we are glad that you will be able to come. We definitely
appreciate your support, and we hope to have a nice turnout!

As happy as we are about VSU’s continuing efforts to “go
green,” I am writing to you in regard to
S.A.V.E.’s ongoing
fossil fuel divestment campaign and

the recent response we received
from the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the VSU Foundation. If
you have not yet read the letter, I have attached a copy for your
convenience.

We were clearly disappointed to hear that



our request had been
denied, but what troubled us the most was the condescending tone
used by Mr. Edwards in the last part of his letter. To end his
letter on University (not Foundation) letterhead with sarcasm and
cavalier dismissal of our concerns is unacceptable, especially as we
have acted in a respectful manner throughout this process. Within
his response, Mr. Edwards downplays the importance of practicing
social responsibility and belittles the validity of past divestment
campaigns that have been used to counteract injustices such as

South Africa’s Apartheid regime, which represented an inhumane and
repressive system that needed to be challenged.



We also find Continue reading →

Mississippi PSC required spending docs for Kemper Coal: what about Plant Vogtle?

Maybe Georgia PSC could do about Georgia Power’s nuclear Plant Vogtle
what Mississippi PSC did about Mississippi Power’s Kemper Coal:
hold their parent Southern Company accountable for cost overruns.
And for pipelines!

Sam R. Hall blogged for Daily Ledes 1 November 2013,

Sources: U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to visit Kemper coal plant,



The PSC voted unanimously to require Mississippi Power to provide
additional documents justifying their spending on the Kemper plant.
The hearing is set for May 2014, when the plant was originally
supposed to go online.

“If the PSC rejects some of the spending as imprudent, it
could add to the $1 billion in costs that shareholders have already
agreed to absorb,” the Associated Press reported last month.

Meanwhile, GA PSC Continue reading →