It’s a gas, gas, gas: Chicago to get coal gasification plant

A few weeks ago, I wrote a review of the eco-documentary “The Last Mountain” and discussed the many negatives of coal mining. We know how destructive mining for coal can be and how important it is for our country to move towards clean, green energies. Renewable energies have so many positives and the continued use of nonrenewable so many negatives. Chicago and the state of Illinois is a major player here as we are 5th in the U.S. for coal generation. For those not in the know, we have coal mines in the southern part of our state.

SWEET HOME CHI”COAL”GO

Now, Illinois Governor Quinn would like to move more coal processing even closer to home – East Chicago area to be exact at 115th and Burley Ave, close to the Calumet River. According to this article today, in the SouthtownStar, Quinn has just signed a coal gasification plant bill. The plant would be built on the site of the former LTV Steel Coke Battery plant that shutdown down back in 2001 which now considered a “brownfield” site. Plans to get this plant up and going has been in the works since 2010 with considerable opposition and concerns from environmental groups such as Sierra Club. The project is a proposal by Chicago Clean Energy, a subsidiary of Leucadia National. See this link for a history of this plan.

So what is coal gasification? According to Wikipedia, coal gasification is the process of producing coal gas, a type of syngas–a mixture of carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen (H2), carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapour (H2O)–from coal. So, first off, obviously you still need to mine that coal out of the ground (or destroy the mountain tops) to get it. So, nothing has been “greened” in that step of the process even though in the SouthtownStar article, Quinn called “the plant a ‘clean energy project’ that would convert Illinois coal to natural gas in an ‘environmentally positive way.’” In addition to coal the plant would use coke, an oil refinery byproduct, as feed stock. Well, that doesn’t sound isn’t very “clean or green,” does it? We are still mining and burning coal. Maybe there is some “greenwashing” going on?

In the bill, Leucadia National and Chicago Clean Energy are required to “capture and sequester 85 percent of the plant’s carbon emissions.” Sequestered carbon emissions get stored underground. Well, that sounds better than not capturing them at all and letting all those emissions – also known as “greenhouse gases” go right into the atmosphere, right? After all, we have more than enough of these gases to deal – why would we want to build a plant that increases this?

THE JOBS? OUR HEALTH?

According to the SouthtownStar article, Tom Mara, an executive vice president with Leucadia and president of Chicago Clean Energy says the plant “would create at least 1,000 construction jobs and 200 permanent jobs.” This is great! But, green energy can produce jobs too – and ones without health risks.

According to “The Last Mountain” website, wind farms are providing a strong clean alternative to coal with jobs being created. Fact: “The wind Industry operates more than 35,000 turbines and employs 85,000 people in the U.S. – the same number the coal industry employs. In 2009, enough turbines were built to power 2.4 million homes.”

After the plant is completed, what about the cost to residents of the area and workers at the plant in the form of health problems? According to the Sierra Club, the plant will burn waste from oil refineries, which is known to contain heavy metals that cause birth defects and cancer. This is all very familiar as we look back on recent protests by concerned Chicago residents and the Sierra Club to close old coal-fired power plants in Chicago because of mercury exposure. And if you don’t believe the local residents of our city, take a look at the facts from the movie “The Last Mountain” and the health concerns of living near a plant that processes coal.

“CLEAN COAL “= “GREENWASHING”?

Governor Quinn states that the Chicago plant “would cost $3 billion to complete, would consume at least 1 million tons of coal annually and would be instrumental in helping the United States become more energy independent. He also hinted that securing a reliable domestic energy supply might trump environmental concerns.” Hmm, well, surely all Americans would be in favor of having a local supply of energy – this is true. But the environmental concerns do not go away – they are still there. I don’t believe they will be “trumped.”

So, are the health and environmental risks worth it? How else could we be spending that $3 Billion? We would be further advancing into the future of green energy by turning a “brownfield” into a “greenfield” instead of “browning it all over again.” Shouldn’t Chicago be taking steps towards the “green” renewable energies of the future instead of holding on the nonrenewable “brown” energy of past? After all, one day that “brown” energy will be gone forever – what will we do then?

Governor Quinn states “We have to be practical and realistic in our country. Ultimately, we have to have energy.” Of course, this is true. We all know this. But are we taking two steps back by not embracing a greener form of energy in Chicago? Chicago has a history of trying to be a “green” city. We have green buildings, green offices, green businesses, green restaurants, green roofs, green homes even the Green Festival now makes a yearly stop here. Where are we at with green energies? Chicago, are we “greenwashing” our “brown” energy?

“The two most abundant forms of power on earth are solar and wind, and they're getting cheaper and cheaper…~ Ed Begley, Jr.
 

The "Greenwashing" of Coal:  Mr. Coal has an epiphany



Share

Chicago Green Film Review: “If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front”

Last evening, eco-Andersonville featured a premiere one-night showing of “If a Tree Falls” at Chicago Filmmakers as part of Chicago’s Andersonville Green Week. I was able to attend the screening. “If a Tree Falls” is the story of the radical environmental activist group, Earth Liberation Front (ELF) who are often viewed as an “eco-terrorists.” The film has won several awards: Sundance Film Festival -Documentary Editing Award, Dallas Film Festival - Environmental Visions Award, Nashville Film Festival -Best Documentary and Santa Cruz Film Festival - EarthVision Environmental Jury Prize.

The original philosophy behind ELF was created in 1977 by John Hanna and was called Environmental Life Force before Earth First! (1979) and the Earth Liberation Front. The Earth Liberation Front is said to have actually started in 1992 coming from the concepts of the original ELF. This documentary features an in-depth look into the 1992 Earth Liberation Front with one of its former members, Daniel McGowan.

PASSION PAYS A PRICE

Throughout the film, Daniel McGowan gives us his personal story of his involvement with ELF as he experiences house arrest while awaiting his trial in NYC and the possibility of life in prison. Coming from a typical upbringing in Rockaway, NY, with his father being a NY cop, Daniel’s childhood is doesn’t paint a picture of someone who you would think to become a radical environmental activist. He majored in business in college because he thought that was the smart thing to do. One day someone approached him on the street about environmental issues and, being very passionate about these issues, he attended a meeting at the “Wetlands,” an environmental resource center. There he saw some films on the environment that deeply affected and changed him into taking more direct action. In 1998, he moved to the Northwest which was a very active center in environmental activism.

With protest after protest, Daniel and other young environmental activists grew tired of their voices not being heard took a more destructive path to direct action. The non-violent protest and street demonstrations they was partaking in were not accomplishing anything and even being met with resistance and violence by area police. So, even though he had his reservations, Daniel starting taking a more destructive action in the form of arson to communicate a message he felt very strongly. Daniel says, “When you're screaming at the top of your lungs and no one hears you, what are you supposed to do?”

Daniel took part in only two arson events in 2001, out of the many actually done by ELF. One was at Superior Lumber Corporation, an old growth logging company in Oregon, and Jefferson Poplar Farms, which was suspected to be performing genetic engineering on trees, which turned out not to be the case. After participating in these two actions, he decided to leave the group in 2001 as he was uncomfortable with the direction being taken and felt remorse about the arsons. He moved back to NYC. Four years after the arsons, he was called out by Jake Ferguson and other ELF members who cooperated with the FBI in Operation Backfire. He pleaded guilty for in November 2006 for the two arsons he participated in. After being on house arrest for 8 months, he was sentence to 7 years, although was originally set to a life sentence. He is now considered a “terrorist.” Jake Ferguson who participated in these arsons too received no time at all.

Daniel looks back on the arsons in this interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now and states, “I have regrets that I, you know, employed arson as a tactic. I don’t think morally I’m wrong about what I did, but I do think, strategically and tactically it is unwise decision.”

ACTIVIST OR TERRORIST?

The term “eco-terrorism” is a “buzz word” that is said to have been created by Ron Arnold, who is “anti-environment” and an adversary of the environmental movement. According to Wikipedia, its definition is as follows: “Eco-terrorism usually refers to acts of violence or sabotage committed in support of ecological, environmental, or animal rights causes against persons or their property.”

The film brings up several thought provoking questions about the term after hearing Daniel’s story and the reasoning’s behind his actions and, through several interviewees in the film, one gets to thinking about the definition of terrorism, especially in the light of 9/11 terrorists attacks which the film touches on. How can an activist like Daniel be labeled a terrorist in the vein of the same people who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks or the Oklahoma City Bombings? ELF members in their direct actions always took extreme precautions that no person or animal was in the building or areas where they performed their arson but yet they are labeled terrorists and imprisoned with the same terrorists responsible for the death of many Americans? Who would be considered to be a greater threat to the nation?

One interview with a worker from the Native Forest Council states that he “is not against cutting down trees but the fact that 95% of the native forests in the U.S. have been cut down. That is radical. So, why is saving the remaining 5 per cent of the US's native standing trees radical when the actions of the logging companies, which have cut down 95 per cent of the nation's native standing forests, are not seen as radical?"

So, how is what the logging corporations are doing any different than what the radical protesting groups are doing? Isn’t cutting down 95% of the native forests with trees aged 500 years old or even older, radical also? Can ravaging the old growth forests and destroying the homes of the creatures that live in these forests also be considered “eco-terrorism”? Who are really the “terrorists” or the “radicals” here? – the corporations that destroy the forests for profit or a group of passionate people who try to save them? These are the questions that the film very effectively brings to the viewers mind.

IT’S ALL IN YOUR P.O.V.

Another interviewee also brings up interesting point, an Oregon Police Caption states, “If you disagree with their motives, they are a terrorist. If you agree with their motives, they are a hero.” This is definitely something to take into consideration when judging the actions of others. How you may view depends on where your point of view starts in the first place.

“If a Tree Falls” does just that- it presents another side to something to which, on the surface, seems like it will be so simple to take a side, but when you dig deep into it like director Marshall Curry did, you find something surprisingly intricate. As he states, in this interview with IndieWire.com, “But as we started digging, it just became more and more interesting. Each of the characters surprised me. There are some topics for documentaries that on the surface seem really great. Then you start digging and things are what you expect. In this case, it was the opposite..... This movie has a point of view. It’s complex.”

“Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we can't eat money.” ~ Native American Indian Cree proverb

Share

Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time – A Visual Journey about the Connection of past and present environmental movements

On Thursday June 2, 2011, the Spertus Institute, The Center for Humans and Nature and the City of Chicago Department of the Environmental held two free premiere screenings of the eco-documentary film “Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time.”

Aldo Leopold (January 11, 1887 – April 21, 1948) was an American author, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and environmentalist. He is best known for his non-fiction work entitled “A Sand County Almanac” (1949). This ecological best seller helped inspire and grow the modern environmental and conservation movements of the present day. This film is a visual tribute to his life’s journey, his work and the connection to his legacy of nature ethics that can be seen here in Chicago today.

Forestry was part of Leopold’s early life as was hunting and other outdoor activities taught to him by his father. Leopold spent hours documenting local birds near his home where he keenly developed naturalist observational skills. After his college studies at Yale, part of Leopold’s early work was working for the US Forest Service in wildlife management that involved controlling populations of bears, wolves, and mountain lions in New Mexico to help local ranchers control livestock losses from these predators. At the beginning, he viewed the control of these populations as necessary as hunting was a familiar part of his childhood.

THE NATURE OF CHANGE

It was during this time back in the 1930s that he began to see things in a different light. A new type respect for nature and its inhabitants grew and, he started to realize the importance of predators in the balance of nature. This balance, he stated, lies in the conservation of the wilderness not in the dominance of it by humans that he once thought was correct.

So what exactly changed Leopold’s view of the wilderness? This turn of the mind can be best seen in a passage in his book “A Sand County Almanac” which describes an incident of Leopold’s own doing, the shooting of a wolf in New Mexico.

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949

This passage also explains the name of the film “Green Fire” as the fire in question was the look of death in the wolves’ eyes. This was moment that altered Leopold’s thinking towards the wilderness. The look of “Green Fire” shaped an idea that can be in conservation efforts today. In the film, viewers are challenged to look at their own relationships with the land, environment and the other living creatures that we humans share this space with. It invokes a question: How can humans live in harmony with the land in the ecologically troubled 21st century? The film goes on to document several local Chicago organizations and group who are trying to answer this question, influenced by Leopold’s thinking.

THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY

One of these is the Eden Place Nature Center in Chicago’s Fuller Park Neighborhood. Eden Place is an environmental education center whose purpose is to educate the local communities on urban ecology. Eden Place now flourishes with native landscaping, vegetable garden, monarch butterfly sanctuary and resident ducks and chickens in a former illegal dumpsite which tested for the highest level of lead poisoning in the city of Chicago.

Featured in the film, one of the things the staff of Eden Place focuses on teaching children the connection of the food they eat with the land. When the children are asked, “Where does this egg come from?” They answered, “It comes from the Jewel,” which is a Chicago chain supermarket. In response, the staff asks “But where does the Jewel get the egg from?” Here the children confused: Where does the Jewel get that egg from? It has to come from somewhere, right? This is where Eden Place fulfills its mission: with resident chickens, that the public can interact with, the children learn where that egg really comes from. It is the purpose of the local urban ecology movement and evidence of Leopold’s vision to connect people with the land. This is especially important in our modern day society where many people live their whole lives in cities that offer almost no exposure to nature.

The Chicago Wilderness Alliance leans on Leopold’s teachings for inspiration in finding new solutions to today’s conservation challenges and connecting people with nature. It’s “Leave No Child Inside” program is another good example of local efforts made to ensure that children today who are growing up in a world where they are mostly disconnected from nature are given the opportunity to connect with local nature.

The Might Acorns is another program of The Chicago Wilderness Alliance is also seen in the film. The Might Acorns are yet another action to connect Chicago’s urban dwelling kids with nature through a one-of-a-kind, hands-on experience where they can participate in restoration projects and learn the concepts with a school-based ecology curriculum.

These examples show evidence of “Green Fire.” When we confront the death of our environment, we recognize the need for change. Connecting ourselves to the land and understanding our fragile ecosystem is a necessity for change and once that understanding is reached - may a “Green Fire” be started in all of us.

Green Fire film:
http://www.greenfiremovie.com/

Eden Place Nature Center:
http://www.edenplacenaturecenter.com/

Chicago Wilderness:
http://www.chicagowilderness.org/index.php

The Aldo Leopold Foundation:
http://www.aldoleopold.org/

The Mighty Acorns:
http://www.mightyacornshome.org/history.html

Share