The struggle to protect the residents of the Chicagoland area from the harmful emissions from the Fisk and Crawford power plants has achieved a stunning victory. On Feb. 29, 2012, the owner of these two plants, MidWest Generation, announced it had agreed with the city of Chicago and with the Clean Power Coalition to close the Fisk plant by the end of this year and to close the Crawford plant by the end of 2014. See the Clean Power Coalition website for more details.

This is a victory for the activists who have been fighting for more than a decade to force these old, dirty, power plants to at least clean up their emissions. Members of our local have been in the middle of this fight since 2002. We put advisory referendums on the ballot in two precincts in 2004, one in Pilsen and one in Little Village, asking the City Council to take action against these polluters. Both referendums were approved by over 90% of the voters. We participated in the forming of PERRO (the Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization). PERRO participated in the different coalitions which formed to fight the pollution from these old plants. PERRO was one of the founding members of the current Clean Power Coalition.

This fight is not over. PERRO and the Chicago Southwest Side Greens will continue to work to make sure that the coal plant properties are properly remediated, that the workers who are displaced are treated fairly, and that MidWest Generation fulfills its responsibility to repair the damage to the health of community residents that its emissions have caused.

Nevertheless, this is a huge victory for the people! We should savor the moment and celebrate our victory.

[This article is reposted from the DuPage County Green Party website.]

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Steve Alesch

A crime of unthinkable proportions was perpetrated by the Obama administration and the other developed countries during the last two weeks in Durban, South Africa, at the latest UN Global Warming conference, which concluded Friday.

At that conference, a deal was struck that put profit over people resulting in the escalation of global warming deaths that are currently occurring at the rate of tens of thousands per year worldwide and are now, based on this deal, estimated to exceed hundreds of thousands of deaths per year by the end of the decade. Global warming apartheid is disproportionally impacting Africa because of their tropical climate. Scientists measure that for every 1 degree global temperature increase, Africa’s temperature increases 1.5 degrees.

Predictably, the US media, of which 80% is controlled by 5 CEOs, is filling the echo chamber with stories indicating that an agreement was reached that is the next step in the previous Kyoto agreement and that the world’s government, including the US, are working together to deal with Global Warming by 2020. This fabrication is also being echoed by the BBC and other worldwide news sources.

The reality is that what has been agreed to, as a result of strong arm tactics by the US and other developed countries, much to the resistance by and detriment to poorer countries, is a deal that allows global warming causing polluters to continue polluting at current or higher levels until 2018, which is when the first binding global warming reduction requirements take affect per this agreement.

World scientists have reached consensus that the 1990 global warming pollution levels need to be reduced by 40% by 2020 to insure that the global temperature does not exceed 2 degrees Celsius by 2020. With this agreement which delays enforcement another 7 years, global warming pollution is expected to actually exceed current levels by 2020, resulting in a 4 to 5 degrees Celsius increase, meaning a 6 to 8 degree increase in Africa.

Fortunately we still do have news sources outside the tenacles of those 5 CEOs. The majority of today’s DemocracyNow.org’s one hour news broadcast is devoted to describing the details about this crime that just went down. Note that, if you are reading this after Dec. 12, 2011, you will need to go to the show archives and search for the Monday, December 12, 2011 show.

Further compounding the harm done to the 99% by this unfair deal, due to the US presidential debate monopoly created by the Democratic and Republican Party controlled Presidential Debate Corporation, Green Party and independent presidential candidates will be kept off the debate stage once again in 2012, resulting in little or no discussion regarding the looming catastrophic global warming crisis during the upcoming 2012 presidential campaign, which may be our last chance before we hit the tipping point, when all the money in the world won’t be able to reverse massive human extinction.

The 99% have much work to do. This is yet another reason why I Occupy.

Steve Alesch
DuPage County Green Party, Chair, IL, USA
Occupy Naperville, Occupier since October 22, 2011

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.org

For Immediate Release:
Friday, April 22, 2011

Contacts:
Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, cell 202-904-7614, mclarty@greens.org
Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, starlene@gp.org

On Earth Day, the Green Party urges the US to get serious about
global warming, clean energy, and transition to a carbon-free,
nuclear-free economy

• Green Party Speakers Bureau: Greens available to speak on
ecological sustainability, global warming, and population
http://www.gp.org/speakers/speakers-ecological.php

WASHINGTON, DC -- On Earth Day 2011, Green Party leaders
called on the White House and Congress to provide strong
leadership on fighting global climate change and converting
the US to safe and clean energy.

"It's time to replace the ideology of unlimited growth with
a set of principles based on sustainable use of land and
resources.  We need to keep alive the ecosystems that support
life on our planet.  We need to make access to fresh water a
human right instead of a privatized commodity.  We need energy
policies that address our dangerously high rates of consumption
and the threat of a climate catastrophe before the end of the
21st century.  And we need democratic reforms that limit the
power of major corporations, which have too often fought
measures to protect the earth's delicate ecological balance
and provide for human needs," said David McCorquodale, treasurer
of the Green Party of Delaware.  (See Mr. McCorquodale's guest
column "Renewables, not nuclear power, are the way forward,"
Delaware Online, April 11, 2011,
 http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110411/OPINION07/
104110316/Renewables-not-nuclear-power-way-forward)

Green Party Agenda on Energy

• Creation of millions of new jobs in conservation,
safe and clean energy cultivation, and retrofitting buildings:
President Obama has not followed through on his promise of
new jobs in these fields.

• Incentives, legislation, and reforms to provide renewable
energy technologies (solar, wind, geo-thermal, marine, and
other clean renewable sources) and encourage their use,
combined with enactment of a progressive carbon tax and
rebate in the form of a graduated refundable tax credit,
with the goal of a carbon-free economy.

• Replacement of car traffic with energy-efficient
mass transportation.

• Absolute limits on greenhouse gas emissions, under a
strong international climate treaty under the auspices
of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.  President
Obama and Congress must do far better than the US offer,
during the Copenhagen talks, to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by 4% below 1990 levels.  Greens favor a minimum
40% reduction by 2020 and 95% reduction by 2050, over 1990 levels.

• No more false solutions: Carbon emissions trading schemes
("cap and trade"), which allow polluting companies to trade
licenses to pollute, are full of loopholes and ineffective
at curbing global climate change.

• No more subsidies and tax breaks for fossil-fuel industries;
no more off-shore drilling contracts: The problem isn't just
dependence on foreign oil, it's the addiction to fossil fuels
regardless of their source, say Greens, who point to last year's
BP-Deepwater Horizon disaster as a warning of the risks of
oil consumption.

• No nuclear power: The tsunami that devastated parts of
Japan in March exposed the dangers of nuclear energy, which
no private company will invest in without billions in
publicly funded subsidies and loan guarantees.  President
Obama's plans to build new nuclear plants on the taxpayers'
dime are a concession to powerful corporate lobbies that
want to reap high profits while forcing the public to assume
the high cost and extreme liabilities of nuclear energy.
Existing nuclear plants must be phased out and the 20-year
license extension granted for aging reactors must be rescinded,
say Greens.  More: http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=401

• An end to mountaintop removal mining: The detonation of
mountaintops has wreaked untold destruction on the natural
environment and posed a massive threat to public health,
through contamination of water and other resources in
several states.  Greens have called West Virginia "ground
zero" for global warming in the US.

• An end to hydrofracking. Water supplies and landscapes
are endangered when millions of gallons of water mixed
with sand and chemicals are forced through shale formations
to release natural gas.
More: http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=2440

• No biofuels subsidies that promote the burning of crops
and forests and support the expansion of genetically engineered
plants and trees to feed large-scale biomass burners.
The corn-to-ethanol scam already consumes 2/5 of US
corn production and has aggravated the global food crisis.
More: http://www.pfpi.net

MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
• Green candidate database and campaign information:
 http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml
• News Center http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml
• Speakers Bureau http://www.gp.org/speakers
• Ballot Access Page http://www.gp.org/ballotstatus
• Livestream Channel http://www.livestream.com/greenpartyus
• Video Page http://www.gp.org/video/index.php

2010 Platform of the Green Party of the United States,
section on Ecological Sustainability:
 http://www.gp.org/committees/platform/2010/ecology.php

Green Party Eco-Action Committee
 http://www.gp.org/committees/ecoaction/index.php

"Greens call for a new kind of national defense:
defense against catastrophic climate change"
Green Party press release, August 6, 2010
http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=336

Earth Day Release from the Green Party of New York,
April 22, 2011
http://www.gp.org/press/pr-state.php?ID=416

'GreenStream Wednesday': News and discussion
on the Green Party's Livestream channel
http://www.livestream.com/greenpartyus

Green Pages: The official publication of record of the
Green Party of the United States (Fall 2010 issue now online)
http://gp.org/greenpages-blog

~ END ~