Winds of Change Newsletter, December 2005     See sidebar for table of contents

Miscellany

Not One More Inch of MTR

  A report by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Agriculture says enough biomass could be sustainably produced within the United States to replace 30 percent or more of the country’s current petroleum consumption without affecting food, feed or export demands.

OVEC says not one more inch of mountaintop removal, but how about growing hemp on the already messed land masses? Hemp can grow on very poor land – and mountaintop massacred land is very poor indeed.

“If Americans act immediately, we can innovate our way out of this problem (of global warming). We must use our political institutions, our democracy, our free speech, our reasoning capacity, our citizenship, our hearts and reason with one another, see the reality of this problem, and act as Americans.” – Al Gore

Kudos
Kudos to the Sylvester Dustbusters, Pauline Canterberry and Mary Miller, who were interviewed on Al Franken’s Oct. 6 Air America radio show.

Jimmy Carter: Gore Beat Bush in 2000

(E)x-President Jimmy Carter…told a panel at American University in Washington, D.C., “There’s no doubt in my mind that Al Gore was elected president. He received the most votes nationwide, and in my opinion, he also received the most votes in Florida. And the decision was made as you know on a 5-4 vote on a highly partisan basis by the U.S. Supreme Court, so I would say in 2000, there was a failure.”

2000 was the closest presidential election in American history. Bush “won” the electoral vote 271-266, but lost the popular vote to Gore by a half-million votes.

Community Shares

OVEC is a founding member of the newly-launched Community Shares of West Virginia, created to provide an alternative to United Way for state and higher education employees.

Community Shares is a partnership of progressive nonprofit organizations working to build social and economic equity, along with a healthy environment.

Donations to Community Shares help provide a steady source of income to small organizations like OVEC. Donors are encouraged to designate their payroll deductions to organizations of their choice.

See www.communityshareswv.org or call (304) 543-5811 to learn how you and your coworkers can help.

Welcome!
Please join OVEC in welcoming our newest organizer, Boone County resident Maria Gunnoe, who unfortunately has firsthand experience with mountaintop removal/valley fill-related flooding.

Singin’ the Blues Over Sangin’

New U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rules say ginseng hunters – “sangers” – can’t harvest roots that are less than 10 years old.

The rule is meant to halt the medicinal roots’ rapid disappearance, which the Service says is caused by over-harvesting.

Meanwhile, mountaintop removal operators freely destroy – forever – huge swaths of “sang” habitat, which happens to also be habitat for a vast array of plants and animals and even people! (For instance, the Kanawha State Forest in Kanawha County has 1,000 species of plants!)

This is OVEC saying, protect sangers’ heritage and right to harvest sang. Stop the coal industry’s massacre of the mountains!

Urban dictionary definition for heck of a job:  A complete and total screw-up. From President George W. Bush's infamous comment to FEMA chief Michael D. Brown while the latter was botching the federal response to Hurricane Katrina: “Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.”

Senate punts on mercury

Toledo Blade, Sept. 18, 2005

If there was any doubt that a majority of the U.S. Congress is in the pocket of this nation's electric utility polluters it was erased by the Senate vote the other day to preserve the Bush Administration's grossly inadequate rules on mercury emissions…(M)ercury pollution - some 48 tons a year of the toxic substance, spewing from 1,100 or so coal-burning power plants around the country - is a documented health danger to Americans.