#Forward on Climate ~ Fight Like Hell For the Living

OVEC’s Maria Gunnoe
with Daryl Hannah at the F13 rally.
Photo by the Sierra Club’s Mary Anne Hitt

OVEC’s Maria Gunnoe
and 350.org’s Bill McKibben at the F13 rally.
Photo by the Sierra Club’s Mary Anne Hitt

Several OVEC members and staff are heading to Washington D.C. for the largest climate rally in history, happening this Sunday, February 17. If you can’t join us in person, please join the rally online. Hashtags in use for the rally include #forwardonclimate, #f17. With your tweets please include #(your zip code), so we get a view of the support from our area. OVEC will be trying to tweet from the event. Follow OVEC here and me here.

In a lead-in event to the rally, OVEC organizer Maria Gunnoe was among 48 people arrested outside the White House yesterday. Their focus was on the Keystone tar sands pipeline and what approval of the pipeline will mean for the climate. As a follow up to that action, please call President Obama to tell him to reject Keystone XL.

Like tar sands extraction, mountaintop removal is climate ground zero. Here’s Maria’s statement from yesterday:

President Obama must end mountaintop removal coal mining. Coal kills from the cradle to the grave. It’s a climate catastrophe and a personal one. We in Appalachia know firsthand what it means when the coal industry moves in and takes over your community. Energy companies and government agencies uproot and pollute the land, air and water that sustains all our lives, with energy as their excuse. This simply is not an acceptable plan for our children’s future. We deserve a healthy energy plan. One that ends mountaintop removal coal mining and its deadly impacts on Appalachian people. No one should have to die for electricity in America.

We’ve collected links to many of the news stories generated from yesterday’s action here (look for the tornado and fist icons).

It’s interesting that these arrests were happening the very day that, 100 years ago, Mother Jones was arrested in Charleston, W.Va. Her arrest helped bring national attention to the plight of coal miners’ working conditions.

Meanwhile, on this St. Valentine’s Day, if you aren’t already in Kentucky for I Love Mountains Day, show your love by joining the event online.

Also, show Maria a little love by helping to garner as many signatures as you can ASAP on her petition here. The deadline for the petition is tomorrow.