November 3, 2023

Eureka Skulduggery/Fossil Fuel Evi

Below is important information from our allies at Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. We hope you have been reading about the nastiness of Arkley’s initiative. Here’s a chance to get more information and express your views to the Eureka City Council. (For Humboldt County residents.)

Below that is an appeal from Bill McKibben to write a letter to the Secretary of Energy opposing new liquid natural gas export terminals. This is chance to kill a  huge climate-toxic fossil fuel expansion. (For everyone, please send to your friends.)

Thanks,

350 Humboldt Steering Committee

The Collector – CRTP
November 3, 2023
Yes, the Anti-Housing and Anti-Transit Arkley Initiative Is as Bad as We’ve Been Saying
Eureka city staff are out with their official informational report on the Arkley initiative, including an economic assessment from an outside firm. Just as we’ve been reporting, the impacts of the initiative passing in November would be severe. It would block walkable, affordable housing development and prevent hundreds of millions of dollars from being invested downtown. It would put the city out of compliance with state law, creating the potential for legal chaos. Also important but largely undiscussed in the staff report, the initiative would block the much-needed construction of a downtown transit center (the EaRTH Center) which is already funded by the state and would help improve local and regional transit service. The report is scheduled to be discussed by the City Council at next Tuesday’s meeting.
Also on Tuesday’s Council agenda is an update on the regional Climate Action Plan, including the recent decision to re-write significant portions of the plan and delay the environmental review process until next year. Get an overview of the current status of the Climate Action Plan by listening to this week’s EcoNews Report.

 

FROM BILL MCKIBBEN

The US is planning to quadruple the export of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from the Gulf of Mexico over the next few years—there are plans for 20 huge export terminals to add to the seven that already exist. If they are built, the emissions associated with them will be as large as all the emissions from every home, factory, and car in the EU. The emissions associated with them will wipe out every bit of progress the U.S. has made on reducing carbon and methane since 2005.

And along the way it will hurt not only the people who have to live and breathe near these monstrosities, but also all American consumers—because exporting gas abroad drives up the price at home.

If you want a short primer, here is something I wrote this week, and another piece I wrote for the New Yorker.

Happily, we have a realistic chance at stopping this. Which is why I hope you’ll break out your stationery box and roll of stamps. The final decision will be made by the Department of Energy, which can grant or deny export licenses to these companies depending on whether they’re in the public interest.

Please please please write a letter this week to:

The Honorable Jennifer Granholm
Secretary of Energy
U.S. Department of Energy
1000 Independence Ave. SW
Washington DC 20585

Here are some key points you can include in your letter:
  1. These plants are carbon and methane bombs. In the hottest year of human history it’s obscene to be putting up more of them.
  2. We’re already the biggest gas exporter on earth, and have more than enough capacity to meet the needs of the Europeans in the wake of the Ukrainian war.
  3. When we export all this gas, we drive up the price for those Americans who still rely on it for cooking and heating. Rejecting this project will fight inflation, which will help get the president re-elected.
  4. It’s an environmental justice travesty—as usual, these projects are set for poor communities of color.
  5. They’re planned for smack in the middle of the worst hurricane belt in the hemisphere.
  6. So rewrite the criteria (they’re currently using a Trump-era formula) for figuring out if such plans are in the national interest.

If you thought you were getting off without one high-tech task, though, you’re wrong. Could you also take a picture of the letter on your smartphone and email it to [email protected], so we can keep track of what’s happening.