Here in Sonoma County, we’re sitting pretty sweet getting ready to launch such fine programs as Sonoma Green Power to put energy in the hands of the people, something Germany does well, which will save huge money a few years down the road – energy alternative to oil that will save Sonoma County over $245 million a year (estimate I heard).

But the oil industry is working faster than our sustainability friends are and we continue to frack (fracture) the earth faster and faster to get to difficult to reach poor quality shale oil from Canada and ship it off to Mexico, much of it to be exported to other countries, making billions for Big Oil, zip for USA. That’s if we don’t protest this wrong-headed action (completion of the XL Pipeline) that NASA scientist, James Hansen, has called “game over for the planet”.

How could big oil companies damage the planet with fracking? Though it sounds crazy, we really can’t AFFORD to burn all this additional oil with its accompanying pollution. At least not if we wish to live on the planet as we know it.

Naomi Klein on a recent Bill Moyers show said the big oil companies CURRENTLY hold reserves that if burned would create the havoc of about 5 times the amount of pollution the earth can sustain – a total increase in temperature not of a barely sustainable 2 degrees (there is global agreement we cannot withstand over 2 degrees temperature change) – to possible 8 or 10 degrees hotter! That would mean droughts and floods and mass migration of millions or billions of people – way too closely approaching a Mad Max world for my liking! Wrong direction!

Wrong enough that the Sierra Club, long seen as a moderate but powerful voice toward a sustainable planet, is protesting the Pipeline by marching along with 40 other organizations nationally.

Fund manager, Jeremy Grantham, had this to say in an article in Fortune on the CNN Money page:

Jeremy Grantham to join Keystone pipeline protest

“Last year, we had the hottest summer in history and Manhattan floods,” he tells Fortune. “It is becoming clear this is a man-made problem and it is serious. We can’t afford to burn tar sands, or our goose will be cooked. What we are trying to do is buy time, buy time for the world to wake up. If that means months or years of delaying new pipelines, then all the better.”

At the site, TarSands Action, you can find a list of those who have pledged to risk arrested TODAY, February 13th, to call out to Obama to block the Pipeline: including the always present Bill McKibben and James Hansen, but also Julian Bond and many other famous and brave souls.

Here’s the skinny on Sunday in SF:

More info at
FORWARD on CLIMATE RALLY
San Francisco ~ Sunday, February 17
Encircle the State Department Office at One Market Plaza * 1-3pm
March in Solidarity with the LARGEST climate demonstration
in Washington D.C. yet!
See 350BayArea.org for more info.

(and more from 350.org)
The action isn’t all in DC.

It’s true that tens of thousands of people will converge in Washington, DC for the largest action against climate change in US history, but we understand that not everyone can make the trip.

In fact, there’s important work to be done all across the country — from divesting our schools and cities from fossil fuels, to keeping the pressure on politicians who want to build Keystone XL no matter what Obama says.

This will be the biggest climate march that we know of in Bay Area history, with folks coming from as far away as Sacramento and Santa Cruz. California has made extraordinary and bold progress toward halting the climate crisis, but if Obama does not take similarly bold action, our state will suffer the consequences along with the rest of the world.

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