Lone Star Green: ‘Clean’ coal sticks its snout under San Antonio’s tent

My second LSG column went up this week.

In the slow-motion planetary train wreck that is fossil-fuel-derived climate disruption — whether you call it global warming, global ‘weirding,’ or a worldwide conspiracy of the labcoat class — no one factor ranks higher in the blame game than coal. Once burned, the dark rock we level mountains for releases a range of poisonous substances, including brain-addling mercury, lung-damaging sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, airborne radioactive materials, and loads of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as the normally benevolent carbon dioxide.

Coal is killing us in the here and now and destabilizing the planet’s natural processes to such a degree that our survival as a species has become not an infrequent subject of scientific papers. And no state gets more of its electricity from coal than Texas.

Yet last month, San Antonio-owned CPS Energy became the first utility in the nation to make the prescient business decision to close our oldest coal-fired power plant rather than invest in costly pollution-reduction equipment.

More…

lone star green: the new column

No pipebombs were injured in the production of this inaugural column. No lizards, neither.

Endangered Species Act has kept the water flowing in South Texas and won’t stop the oil, either

Imagine you’re flying 20,000 feet above a tempestuous sea, fiddling with a stalling engine. As you walk the wing and hunch over the engine, you’re dropping tools and tossing out obstinate nuts and bolts that twinkle briefly in the sun as they fall below and out of sight. As perhaps the most defining force on the planet, that’s the situation the human race finds itself in today when it comes to species management. Before we even understand a lifeform, it has slipped away. [More at sacurrent.com.]

fukushima dai-ichi triptych

just remembering

… that not everything is wasted. there is this place here at harman on earth. and though i rarely feel there is time to write into it, there is a venue. and there are wonderful people to read and travel with. this isn’t everything, but it’s not the end either. now that i’ve organized and launched nearly 20 contributing blogs at San Antonio Current and survived a (near) complete turnover of the fulltime staff here, perhaps it’s time, at last, to think about what i want to write most deeply. something beyond surviving pace and pressure. i’ll be sure to include notes (and expressions of my new watercolor adventures) here for my far-flung and heart-embedded companions. you know who you are.

logo-botamy

because logos matter

exploding refineries and dumb ways to die

Hello. How are you? I am happily carving new tablets for the crushed granite dispensary: Besides my feature stories on food justice in San Antonio and the exploration of magnetic therapies targeting modern-day melancholy (“Rebooting Depression“), I’ve been blogging, blogging, blogging, daddy.  Which, in case you didn’t know, is twice as addictive as chewing on eraser nubs, so don’t you get started. But, silly monkey, it’s not here. It’s over there at QueBlog. Go ahead click any one that tickles your fancy. But please employ all recommended safety equipment. As I learned reviewing OSHA fatality stats this week, there’s plenty of sudden and stupid ways to die.

DIRTY ENERGY
Is 60-year-old AGE Refinery (yes, the one that blew up in San Antonio) too senile to survive?
http://www.sacurrent.com/blog/queblog.asp?perm=70353

AGE-old question: toxic spills beside the San Antonio River
http://www.sacurrent.com/blog/queblog.asp?perm=70362

Where CPS Energy’s ex-leadership went: from law skool to outlaw drum solos (w/ outraged reader comments)
http://www.sacurrent.com/blog/queblog.asp?perm=70354

CLEAN ENERGY
Solar leader tells San Antonio that coming carbon rules this generation’s ‘greatest wealth opportunity’ (w/ video)
http://www.sacurrent.com/blog/queblog.asp?perm=70355

TIGHT SPACES
Immigration & Customs investigates Port Isabel complaints and finds itself innocent (all the hunger striking was just belly aching!)
http://www.sacurrent.com/blog/queblog.asp?perm=70360

CANNED FOOD DRIVE
Texas’s next governor targeted by garden varieties mob
http://www.sacurrent.com/blog/queblog.asp?perm=70356

NASTY FALLS
gore in the workplace, but not the propeller blades
http://www.sacurrent.com/blog/queblog.asp?perm=70363

leaky nuke, cancer thoughts

Vermont consultants are working to gum up efforts to start expanding Harold Simmons’ Andrews County nuke dump. Looks like they’re scared their leaky nuke (with all that remediated water and soil) won’t have enough room.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has asked the National Academy of Sciences to take on a nukes-cancer study. And on STP nuke pond and water spouts? Anyone?

union victory & texas air quality

Unfortunately, last Friday’s visit by EPA Region 6 boss didn’t break into any local media … and Unite Here’s successful skirmish against the Grand Hyatt deserved more attention than it got. Still, I managed to get a couple tidbits up online.

Read: Al Armendariz on why tougher air pollution regulations are on the way and why San Antonio (and South Texas) will win in a clean-energy economy.

Also: Grand Hyatt’s settlement with the National Labor Relations Board means one union rep is back at work (with back pay). 

texas ozone & limping monarchs

So, you’ve been looking over the World Wildlife Fund’s Top 10 endangered (highly charismatic) species of 2010 and seeing all those big (mostly) cuddly (looking) products of co-evolution in need has got you down?

Maybe you can’t leap out there and save the disappearing Javan Rhino, but if you’re in Texas there’s a limping migration you can help set aright — right now!

Read: Monarch crash has roots in U.S. suburbs, farms — not just Mexican damp. Then make with the milkweed.

Also, a belated welcome to Ozone Season! Check out the new clean-air resistance in Air Wars: AACOG, Bexar fight EPA’s proposed tightening of air regs.

I’ll be up in Austin next weekend making happy over the state Sierra Club’s decision to recognize myself and a clutch of other earth-adoring San Antonians at their annual awards dinner. If you can make it, it’d be all the merrier.

deaths, rocks, fungus

Since breaking news about our county jail’s record-breaking number of suicides (and efforts to implement more humane justice measures), we’ve been able to put together some reasons behind these failures. It seems now the state wants to compound the hurt by cutting 200 mental-health beds. You can find my reaction post at: ‘no new taxes’ mantra leads to more homelessness, mental illness, jail deaths.

Still, i haven’t let go the sustainability rudder completely (and plan to return to it soon).

Some recent blog posts include:

• express-news should tackle fairy fungus before pimping $1-bil ocean desalination pitch.
• would-a-been ground-breaking PACE solar program on the rocks.
• chamber leaders say ‘thank you, sir. may i have another’ to cps energy rate hike.

social media wha?

Since I’ve not only been nominated for this here social media award but seem to have inspired both my parents to write in on my behalf (see if you can spot ‘em!), I thought it fitting to update my stale-ass blog and suggest to anyone looking for stunningly social, jaw-contorting media to kick on over to the SACurrent’s QueBlog for my semi-weekly ejections of outlandish green fruitiness.

This week’s flavors include how a high-profile surgical hack job brings cheer to SA’s Valero and a Texas Supreme Court case that will decide if children can prostitute.

from mérida, with (wild) hopes

Exploring the mystery of Uxmal during the 9th World Wilderness Congress.

I broke the hold of my mother country this past week to attend a major gathering of some of the world’s leading conservationists dedicated to solving the most pressing international issues in wild lands management and protection.

Gathered weeks ahead of the looming climate conference in Copenhagen, delegates of the 9th World Wilderness Congress emphasized the ability of wilderness to help regulate Earth systems slipping so quickly out of balance.

My initial installments, written for the Environment News Service, are: Wilderness and Water Promises in the Land of the Maya and the Message of Mérida: Saving Wild Places Will Save the Planet.

I’ll be building on this work for a pending feature story for the SA Current. Primero, I have to figure out how to smuggle such obviously revolutionary ideas into the land of golf courses, canned hunts, and competitive food eating. Wish me luck.