A growing demand for clean energy from all of us together sends a powerful message to our leaders: American support for clean energy is broad and deep.
We’re beginning to break through. But to get our leaders to listen and make clean energy a reality, we must rise up in numbers to make our voices heard — to overwhelm the voices clamoring for the status quo.
We’re competing with powerful interests who are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to protect their profits and block clean energy reforms at the expense of our families, our jobs, and our planet.
Your participation on The Wall announces that we’re more than ready — we’re tired of waiting, and we want action now.
With every new message you add to The Wall, you demonstrate that the most powerful interest in this fight isn’t the oil or the coal lobby — it’s the American people joining together, speaking as one, for a clean energy future.
Join Heifer International for Celebration of Living Gifts, tomorrow between 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Heifer Village in Little Rock. During Celebration of Living Gifts, visitors can meet some of the animals, including sheep, chickens and a goat that Heifer provides to families around the world. Get inspired to give your family and friends Heifer gifts this holiday season. It is the gift that keeps on giving. Heifer recipients eventually become donors themselves as they “pass on the gift” of offspring of their cows, goats and other livestock to others in an ever-widening circle of hope. You can take pictures with the animals as you make your Heifer donation. Some of the other fun activities include creating a unique picture frame for your animal photo and making your own ornament. Bring your family for a day filled with the spirit of giving to others. Free admission. No reservations required. Learn more at www.heifer.org/heifervillage/familyevents.
I’ve been celebrating Buy Nothing Day for over a decade, and this year is no different. Founded by Canadian artist Ted Dave and subsequently promoted by Adbusters magazine, Buy Nothing Day is an international day of protest against consumerism. North Americans celebrate Buy Nothing Day today. The rest of the world celebrates it tomorrow.
Buy Nothing Day started in Vancouver in 1992. Today, people from over 65 nations participate in the day.
Last year’s Black Friday saw a Wal-Mart worker trampled to death by shoppers eager to shop ’til they drop. This year, why not give Buy Nothing Day a try?
Come join the William J. Clinton Foundation and the State of Arkansas by serving in their innovative residential energy efficiency retrofit program in Little Rock!!
In addition to creating unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions, families living in high-energy-use homes are forced to spend more on utility bills, often diverting resources from basic living expenses. HEAL AR is designed to decrease the cost of utilities for Low to Moderate Income (LMI) people by providing residential energy efficient audits. Once audits are performed, AmeriCorps members in service will retrofit the homes to be more energy efficient.
In addition to receiving AmeriCorps basic training, you will learn–(both on the job and in the classroom) basic building science; skills and theory of energy efficient retrofits and operation of specialized equipment (blower doors, duct blasters, etc.). Project specific training will satisfy all OSHA, EPA and HUD requirements for health (Lead, asbestos, mold and combustion), job site (personal protective equipment, stairways and ladders, scaffolds, fall protection, electrical and fire prevention), and tool safety. Additionally, Standard First Aid and CPR training will be provided, along with applicable “green” training/certifications throughout the project year. HEAL AR will promote a diverse work environment for all of its members.
For the HEAL AR project, your living allowance is $950 per month. In addition, HEAL AR AmeriCorps members may be eligible to receive health insurance, and members who complete a full-time term of service will receive an AmeriCorps Education Award currently valued at $4,725. The education award may be used to pay for schools you currently attend, as well as past loans or future enrollment. Additionally, if you currently have student loans, you may qualify for postponement, or forbearance, of the repayment of your student loans during your term of service.
To apply, go to www.americorps.gov, click on ‘Advanced Opportunity Search’ and search for HEAL AR under ‘Program Name’. If you have any questions, please contact Tammy Agard at tammy@healar.org or Johnnie LaCaze at johnnie@healar.org. Deadline for applications is December 18, 2009.
Today, Tuesday, November 24, is the last day to submit your comment against prolonging the life of the White Bluff coal-fired power plant in Redfield, Arkansas.
Entergy Arkansas is asking the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) to approve an air permit that would prolong the life of its White Bluff coal-fired plant. If ADEQ grants the permit, Entergy will dump $1.04 billion of ratepayers’ money into retrofitting its plant. Instead of sticking ratepayers with a billion dollar charge to keep burning dirty coal, we should instead look to cleaner, less expensive ways to meet our state’s power needs.
Tell the ADEQ to say “NO” to Entergy Arkansas’ plans. Don’t let Entergy Arkansas dump your dollars into a scheme that locks Arkansas into dirty coal and out of a cleaner energy future.
Other energy providers have already expressed interest in replacing White Bluff’s dirty coal power with power from cleaner burning natural gas. With your help, we can wean Arkansas off coal and reduce the state’s carbon footprint.
Chaining ourselves to the fate of a dying coal plant will leave us years behind competing states. Now is our chance to step forward and make Arkansas a cleaner energy leader, but we just have until 4:30 p.m. today. Please take action now.
Catch up with local green folks at the Sierra Club Ozark Headwaters Group monthly meeting, tonight at 7 p.m. at Nightbird Books (205 W. Dickson) in Fayetteville. For more information or directions, visit http://arkansas.sierraclub.org/.
Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church will host a free screening of Why Bangladesh Matters, tonight at 5:30 p.m. in Room D366 at the Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church (4823 Woodlawn) in Little Rock. Discussion will follow the movie. Bring friends and popcorn. Please park in the upper deck off Woodlawn. For more information, contact Scharmel Roussel at sroussel@phumc.com.
Entergy Arkansas is seeking approval to charge ratepayers more than ONE BILLION DOLLARS to retrofit its dirty coal-fired White Bluff Power Plant in Redfield (between Little Rock and Pine Bluff).
The Sierra Club and Audubon Arkansas have intervened in the proceedings, and they want to help you make your voice heard.
Tonight at 6 p.m., the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality will hold a public hearing on the White Bluff plant. At the hearing, citizens can testify about whether or not they want to spend more than $1 billion to prolong the life of a dirty coal-fired power plant. The Sierra Club and Audubon Arkansas will be there.
You can also submit comments online by sending them to: airpermits@adeq.state.ar.us. Tell ADEQ that you don’t want to spend $1 billion to prolong the life of a dirty coal plant, and that you want our state to invest in cleaner sources of energy.
For more information, contact Glen Hooks, Southeast Regional Director, Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign, at glen.hooks@sierraclub.org or (501)301-8280.
Green Faith Alliance of Northwest Arkansas will host its monthly meeting this afternoon at 4:30 p.m. in the Oklahoma Room at the Jones Center for Families in Springdale. Bring a friend! Mac Mayfield will report on the Arkansas Chapter of Interfaith Power and Light. Bring your best ideas as well as your burning questions about sustainability and stewardship of the creation.
If you know me or have been reading the blog for awhile, you know I’ll be at the event below.
The University of Central Arkansas Honors College continues its Local Foods Challenge Week with a lecture by Joel Salatin, a farmer and author of Everything I Want to Do is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front, tonight at 7 p.m. at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock. Salatin operates Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley and was featured in Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma.
The University of Central Arkansas Honors College continues its Local Foods Challenge Week with a lecture by Marion Nestle, a Paulette Goddard professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University and author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, tonight at 7 p.m. at the UCA Ida Waldran Auditorium. Nestle will discuss food revolution.
Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church will host a free screening of Coal Country, tonight at 5:30 p.m. in Room D366 at the Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church (4823 Woodlawn) in Little Rock.
Coal Country is a stunning new documentary that reveals the devastation of mountaintop-removal coal mining to the forests, streams, and communities of Appalachia. Produced by Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller, Coal Country brings us inside the lives of Appalachian residents who are directly threatened by mountaintop-removal, a destructive mining practice where mountaintops are blasted away to expose the coal; the waste is then dumped in the waterways of nearby communities. As it takes us through each stage of coal mining and processing, Coal Country reveals the shocking true cost of America’s over-reliance on coal.
Discussion will follow the movie. Bring friends and popcorn. Please park in the upper deck off Woodlawn.
