It’s great to see this – the launch of “Virginia’s newest Indivisible group devoted entirely to Climate Change.” See below for a press release, followed by videos and photos from the event held earlier today at Great Falls Library. Speakers and topics featured in the videos are (descriptions, photos and videos courtesy of climate super-activist Ali Symons): 1) “Dominion Money & Virginia Politics by Ivy Main“; and 2) “Emily Satterwhite speaking about the resistance effort against the Mountain Valley Pipeline.”
August 15, 2019
EARTH RISE INDIVISIBLE- LAUNCH ON AUGUST 17TH AT GREAT FALLS LIBRARY
This press release details the launch of Virginia’s newest Indivisible group devoted entirely to Climate Change. The focus of the launch is both to introduce the group and engage in an interactive program on the climate crisis.
Earth Rise Indivisible is here! Our primary goals are to engage, educate, and mobilize the public to address the climate crisis. Our launch will include Climate Reality and Green New Deal VA presentations, and impacted community members panel, skills-building workshops, yoga breaks, and most importantly, next steps.
The science on the climate crisis is precise; climate change is happening, and can likely be attributed to human activities. We are impacting every facet of life on our planet destructively. However, we can take action to save our big blue marble. Immediate action can stop or reduce potential adverse outcomes.
“We must force legislators to do what is necessary to save our planet, and they must act now,” said Mrs. Molly Bakal, Founder of Earth Rise Indivisible.”
Please join us on August 17th at Great Falls Library, 9830 Georgetown Pike, Great Falls, VA 22066, as we engage, educate, and mobilize to address the climate crisis. Please sign up at our Eventbrite link for more information on the agenda, speakers, and group:
Check-in will begin at 9:00 am; the program will run from 9:30 am – 4:30 pm. We will provide a vegetarian bag lunch (sandwich, fruit, cookie). Please feel free to bring lunch, should you so desire. Please bring a reusable water bottle and coffee mug. Following the close of the program at 4:30, there will be a Celebratory Happy Hour. Old Brogue, 760 Walker Rd, Great Falls, VA, https://oldbrogue.com/ (5-minute walk)
ABOUT US
Earth Rise Indivisible is a statewide organization which uses Invisible principles of advocacy and organizing to empower progressive leadership and action on environmental justice and climate solutions. By illustrating the intersectionality of climate change with progressive concerns, we will equip attendees to join the team Earth Rise Indivisible team.
Ivy Main, a Virginia energy expert who writes at Power for the People VA, made some great points (see video, below). For instance:
- The power Dominion Energy provides today is “almost entirely fossil fuels and nuclear…You’re hearing a lot about solar these days, but there really isn’t that much of it in here. And you think about where we need to be in 12 years and where we are now, it’s a problem.”
- “One of the big problems here is that Dominion Energy is a bigger gas company than they are an electric company…They are very very big into gas transmission and that’s where the Atlantic Coast pipeline comes in…Right now we’ve got all of these new gas plants and that’s a problem for us.”
- “We have had a series of laws that have gradually reduced the power of our regulators at the State Corporation Commission and increase the profitability of Dominion, made things harder and harder for us to kind of get back control of the situation. The things that we have done trying to empower more renewable energy have have not passed the legislature, so we’re in this situation where we’ve got Dominion really in control of the energy of how it’s supplying energy and how it is proposing to spend. And we hear a lot about laws that are going to transform our energy supply, but they are shaped in such a way that the that the utility is still in the driver’s seat.”
- Dominion is actually claiming that “we’re going to be building solar so we need more gas…if you want more solar you gotta have more gas. And of course you’ve got this seven and a half billion dollar fracked-gas pipeline that they say they need in order to be able to provide all these gas plants. The good news is we’ve shown in filing after filing” that Dominion doesn’t need the gas pipeline capacity they claim they need.
- Tech companies “don’t want the gas…they’re going to be in line for the big solar farms and the big offshore wind build-out.”
- “The problem that we have from Dominion’s proposals is it doesn’t get us anywhere near where we need to be…It’s not like it can’t be done, it just isn’t being done here.“
- Why is this? Basically, Dominion uses political donations, charitable contributions ($30 million per year; this “means that all of these nonprofits are co-opted”), the “good-ol’ boy network” (the “interlocking network in Richmond…these people are all seeing each other at social events,” are on a lot of the same boards, etc.), “fear tactics” (e.g., lies about how rates will go up and the power won’t be reliable if we move towards renewable energy), “propaganda” (e.g., the outrageously false claim that 85% of Dominion’s power comes from clean energy!); “lobbying”/”access” and “abuse of monopoly power” (“they are the only game in town; they have written the laws to make sure they are”).
- “The real crime here is how cheaply [a legislator] can be bought.”
- Bottom line: “We’ve got a utility that is extremely powerful and extremely effective in keeping its power, and the result has been that we are not headed where we need to be…We really ought to be at 100% clean energy by 2030,” yet “we’re locked in so much to natural gas” thanks to Dominion.
Anti-pipeline/environmental activist/VA Tech professor Emily Satterwhite, who on June 28, 2018 locked herself to Mountain Valley Pipeline construction equipment for 14 hours, said (among other things):
- “My neighbors are hurting; we are on the Mountain Valley Pipeline route.”
- “We are resisting every day. You don’t see it in the news, but every day there are people along the Mountain Valley Pipeline route who are trying to protect your water. And we’re trying to continue to be able to farm so that when these global cycles get out of control and food becomes even more precious than it is now that your other neighbors in Virginia can still grow food for you. They are actively constructing unless we get in the way.”
- On April 22, 1970, “before the internet…20 million people took to the streets on Earth Day – 20 million people. That’s what we need; we need bodies in the streets…striking from business as usual.”
- There are already “laws under consideration, written by ALEC, in 18 states or more to criminalize First Amendment protests against critical infrastructure like pipelines. It’s getting worse.”
- “I know it seems like [the Mountain Valley Pipeline is] already being built and maybe we shouldn’t bother maybe we should work on a winnable fight, when it’s not so far along. But I’m telling you the pipeline fights in Virginia right now are the low-hanging fruit for the climate crisis. That pipeline if it goes into commission will double to triple Virginia’s greenhouse gas emissions by itself. Every single one of your officials elected or otherwise should be making that their top priority.”
- “I know climate change seems insurmountable…you can’t
stop the floods” but you can “stop the pipeline that exacerbates the flooding and the droughts and the hurricanes.”
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
