MN 350, the Sierra Club, Honor the Earth and others are fighting Enbridge Energy of Canada before the Public Utilities Commission on April 3. Enbridge seeks to increase its enormous oil transport system using its existing Alberta Clipper Pipeline through Minnesota, increasing the barrels per day of tar sands crude oil from 450,000 to 800,000 piped from Alberta, Canada, to Superior, Wis. Many Minnesotans do not even know that this pipeline exists.
Poor people in Minnesota may run out of money to pay for heat in a winter that has seen skyrocketing propane costs and a record number of plunging subzero days. So the first act of the Minnesota legislature as it reconvened this year was to add 20 million dollars to the emergency low income assistance heat fund that could run out soon.
City Council members are considering modifications to the city’s current contracts with two large utility companies in an effort to achieve cleaner and more sustainable energy in Minneapolis — changes some University of Minnesota students and community members have deemed necessary.
Communities of Light Cooperative is a self-sufficiency, training and assessment organization whose first product is solar energy-related. In 2009 an organization named Communities of Light was formed by several Phillips Neighborhood residents, and in 2010 they began their Solar Lanterns and Solar Generators project/workshops due to great interest in helping to build healthier neighborhoods.
The recent explosion — both literal and figurative — of railroad shipments of crude oil from North Dakota has opened a new front in the long-running tension over which interests are served by our transportation system: people’s or commerce’s. Continue Reading
I have lived in the Land of 10,000 Lakes since 1964. There have been times when the lakes and streams have receded below normal levels, but the water has never been a shut off. Water shut-offs in Addis Ababa happens on a weekly basis. In some unfortunate barrios water can be off for a whole week. People will travel by foot to a public faucet with large recycled plastic jugs to gather water for cooking and washing. Bottled water is sold just about everywhere. It looks to me that many people don’t drink water directly from the faucets…not tourists, not residents. Continue Reading
On Monday night, February 3, over 270 vigils were held nationwide, with people in all 50 states gathering to express their dismay with the new U.S. State Department’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) issued Friday January 31, claiming that the Keystone XL Pipeline would “not significantly worsen global warming.”In the Twin Cities, rallies were held in St. Paul and in Minneapolis, at the State Department office downtown. There, a coalition of activists from diverse groups mobilized through Credo, Climate Parents, Interfaith Power and Light, Rainforest Action Network, Oil Change International, OccupyMN, Sierra Club, MN350.Org and more gathered at 7:00 p.m. for a rally to express their continued commitment to stop TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline and Enbridge’s Alberta Clipper.Tom McSteen, lead organizer of MN350.Org’s Tar Sands Campaign, opened the rally with a warm greeting to the 160 people gathered on such a cold night. Lighting candles and holding signs, participants welcomed MC Karen Monahan (Sierra Club) who facilitated an envigorating line-up of speakers. Paul Densmore (MN350) inspired listeners with news of the over 76,000 people committed to nonviolent direct action through the Credo Pledge of Resistance to Keystone XL, should President Obama actually sign the permit. Continue Reading
Thanks to MN2020 reader Kim L for a suggestion to map out the freight rail routes on which up to nine trains a day traverse Minnesota, each carrying 3 million gallons of North Dakota crude oil, nearly all of it on the way to far distant refineries. Continue Reading
