Rally Tonight, 5/30: Stop the Burrillville Power Plant!

Rally to stop a fracked-gas power plant in northern RI and protect the water, air, forest, and livable climate! 

6-8pm TONIGHT (5/30)

Rhode Island State House

If you haven’t yet signed this petition against the plant, please do (especially if you can’t make it tonight). In both of these cases, it’s good to have lots of people. Burrillville BASE, the FANG Collective, the Burrillville Land Trust/No New Power Plant and many more people and groups have worked extremely hard for a long time to stop this disastrous project. Let’s follow up on the work they have done and are still doing. Hope to see you there.

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In RI? Testify 5/29 to support the Water Security Act!

The Water Security Act ensures that income level isn’t a barrier to safe, clean drinking water, and requires management plans to be accountable to the public. It will help prevent corporate control of water, protect water as a human right regardless of income, and start putting in place ways of handling water equitably and responsibly as the climate changes.

The hearing for this bill is on Wednesday, 5/29 at 4:30 pm. Can you come and testify? If not, can you call the senators on the RI Senate Committee on Environment and Agriculture (especially if one of them represents your district) and tell them why you want them to pass it?

Tell them how important healthy water and healthy public land are to your and your family’s life and well-being!

Tell them about problems you’ve had with drops in water quality or rises in water costs!

Tell them how the water system where you live has been affected, or could be affected, by flood, drought, sea level rise and erosion, high heat or storms!

Tell them how a Percentage of Income Payment Plan (where your water rates are a fixed percentage of your income) would reduce financial strains on you and/or your family!

Tell them why it’s important for water systems to be accountable to the public, and for water users to have input into how water is managed!

Tell them why it’s important for water systems to take into account economic, social and environmental justice in the communities they serve, when they’re making improvements and plans for the future!

I feel like often (and more recently), when we in the US have a need to interact with the people who govern us (to govern is to control, remember), we are trying to stop them from passing a horrible law. This is a chance to encourage the people who make the laws in Rhode Island to pass a law that’s really not too bad!

Here is the bill itself, RI S0820, so you can see what it requires from the towns/cities, agencies, departments, districts, etc. that are responsible for getting water to the people who use it. Please come testify if you can!

No Fracked-Gas Power Plant in Burrillville: Two Ways to Stop the Clear River Energy Center

For several years now, residents of Burrillville RI, along with environmental justice, conservation and climate justice advocates, have been fighting the Clear River Energy Center, the fracked-gas power plant that Invenergy wants to build in their town. You can help them, and help slow down climate catastrophe, by submitting public comments on two upcoming permits.

The most important, because it is likely to be final, is the Energy Facility Siting Board decision. The EFSB decides whether energy companies can build in their chosen location; here’s some background on their role in this case. They are open to public comment on their decision until June 1st, 2019. Commenting through this petition is probably the easiest way: Stop the Burrillville Power Plant!

Come to the RI State House at 6pm, May 30th, to speak out against the plant.

The other opportunity to comment is through the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management: they are taking public comments through July 15th, 2019 on an air quality permit (aka a “major source permit”). Email your comments to dem.invenergyairpermit AT dem.ri.gov, and include the words “formal comment” in your subject line. The RI DEM will also hold a public hearing about this permit; bookmark this page and check it for the date and time.

Here’s a simple but thorough breakdown of the damage this plant would do, and you can use this information to support your comments.

This article shows how Invenergy handles air quality at another of their plants, in PA.

Stopping new fossil fuel infrastructure is a key piece of creating a livable future. If you’ve been feeling helpless, this is something you can do to help.

 

Climate Anxiety Counseling in June 2019!

If you have anxieties about climate change and its effects, you can come talk with me at these times and places in Providence. These are the ones that are for sure right now; I will add more if I can set up more.

Wednesday, June 5th, 2-5pm, Burnside Park (opposite Kennedy Plaza)

Thursday, June 6th, 2-5pm, Burnside Park

Saturday, June 8th, starting at 12pm and going till… in Burnside Park as part of PVDFest

Wednesday, June 12th, 2-5pm, Burnside Park

Thursday, June 13th, 2-5pm, Burnside Park

Friday, June 14th, 2-5pm, Burnside Park

Saturday, June 15th, 2-5pm, Burnside Park

Sunday, June 16th, 2-5pm, Burnside Park

Monday, June 17th, 2-5pm, Burnside Park

*

Wednesday, June 19th, 2-6pm, Sankofa World Market (275 Elmwood Ave)

Wednesday, June 26th, 2-6pm, Sankofa World Market

(I’ll also be at the Sankofa World Market in July and August!)

*

If you come and talk to me, I’ll listen, ask you some questions, possibly make some suggestions and give you a little piece of art to keep, featuring one of our nonhuman RI neighbors.

You can also mark your worries about specific places on a map of the state and nearby waters.

If you want me to come to your Rhode Island town (or even further afield, up to a point), email me at my gmail address, publiclycomplex, or talk to me on Twitter. (Climate Anxiety Counseling has a Facebook page too but I don’t use it very much.)

Some other things that are coming this summer and that I’ll post more about soon:

*Write to the Energy Facilities Siting Board and Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management to stop Invenergy’s fracked-gas power plant in Burrillville! You’ll be able to fill them out at the counseling booth, and I will send them in for you; you can also do them online for the EFSB (a petition with explanations and a comment that you can adapt) and RI DEM (instructions for submitting comments and the email address where you should send them).

*GUEST COUNSELORS! If you would like to be one, please let me know.

*Climate anxiety support group? Maybe? A couple of people have told me they’re interested; let me know if you’re interested too.

Getting back in the saddle with the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge

I decided to do the Food Solutions New England 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge because it seemed like a good idea, relevant to this work, potentially useful, and potentially connective to other people who I could learn with and from.

It’s been winter, so I haven’t been doing the booth (starting up again in May!); recording my responses to the challenge here seems like a good way to get back in the habit of posting here. (I might un-decide to do it, though. We’ll see.)

If anyone wants to do it with me, let me know! I’m fine with people jumping in whenever. If I like doing it and the organization runs it again next year, I might try to do it with people in a more organized way, but I found out about this too late to set that up this time.

Here are some peas that my mom sent me, soaking in preparation for planting.

 

Climate Anxiety Counseling/Call to the Dead TODAY, and Call to Action

Today is the last Sankofa World Market. I’ll be there starting at 3pm and going till sunset. Come and share your climate-change-related anxieties and other anxieties with me.

At the end of my stint I’ll lead a brief ritual honoring all the humans and nonhumans who have already died because of climate change and its effects, and inviting them to speak to the people who have knowingly caused the worst damage.

In the wake of FERC’s decision to allow the LNG plant in Providence to go forward, the FANG Collective is calling for people to participate in a range of direct actions to stop both this and the fracked-gas Invenergy plant in Burrillville, RI. Please read this pledge and see if there’s anything on it that you are willing to commit to; if you want to talk that decision through with me today, I will try to help.

[Image: a Black girl in a parka, drawing on the Rhode Island map of worries, next to the Providence Community Library sign for Knight Memorial Library.]

Fight Fossil Fuels in RI TONIGHT

No LNG in PVD, Burrillville Against Spectra Expansion, the Mashapaug Nahaganset Tribe and others are asking people to speak out against Governor Raimondo’s support of fossil fuel projects, and urge a change of course, at her fundraiser TONIGHT (10/16), 5-7pm, 60 Dorrance St, Providence.

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo is running for re-election, and Rhode Island needs her to actively oppose the two fossil fuel projects proposed for our state. Here is a very full statement of what her priorities have been and why they need to change, from the groups opposing these projects. From the statement:

You have told us to “trust the process” with the power plant. But the process is not a neutral one. Your administration, through various advisory opinions submitted to the Energy Facility Siting Board, has issued several reports that support the project and ignore serious concerns. With the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources even claiming that the construction of the power plant, which would produce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to putting 763,562 cars a year on the road, would be a good thing in the fight against climate change.

For both National Grid’s proposed LNG facility and Invenergy’s proposed power plant, free and prior consent was not reached with the indigenous nations whose land these projects would be built on. This includes your Administration ignoring the Mashapaug Nahaganset Tribe’s December 2017 cease and desist order demanding the halt of the LNG permitting process.

In addition to these local impacts, both of these projects would continue our region’s dependence on fossil fuels and would contribute to global climate change. A report from the United Nations released on October 8th stated that our civilization only has twelve years to confront the climate crisis before the crisis spirals out of control, with devastating impacts. To remain silent, or supportive of these fossil fuel projects proposed for Rhode Island, would mean that you are complicit in the violence and destruction of the climate crisis.

With key permitting decisions coming up for both the LNG facility and the power plant, now is the time for you to do what is right and speak out against these projects. In our opposition to these projects we have always been honest, direct and transparent. We now ask the same from you. We urge you to listen to the people of Providence and Burrillville, and to listen to the people of Rhode Island. The health and well being of your constituents, and your legacy, is on the line.

Please come out tonight, if you can.

Climate Anxiety Counseling at Sankofa World Market/Sowing Place, TODAY

Come and share your climate anxieties and other anxieties with me at the Sankofa Market’s partnership with Sowing Place, at the South Side Cultural Center (393 Broad St, but the market’s in the back, just off Bridgham St).

Or you could go yell at fascists, that’s a choice I would understand and endorse.

Action TONIGHT: End Fossil-Fueled Environmental Disasters in the Port of Providence!

Last night, an 11,000-gallon tanker truck rolled on Allens Avenue in Providence, spilling much of its contents into the Providence River. They’re still working on the cleanup this morning. This is the third accident related to fossil fuel transport in the Port of Providence in 1.5 years. Tonight at 5pm, if you’re able, please join No LNG in PVD at the intersection of Allens Avenue and Ernest St in Providence to demand the city’s plan for preventing environmental disasters caused by the transport of fossil fuels.

TONIGHT: Climate Anxiety Counseling / Poetry Fundraiser for No LNG in PVD

4-5:30pm today (9/28), I’ll be on the corner of Broadway and Sutton St. listening to climate anxieties and inviting people to tonight’s benefit for No LNG in PVD (doors at 6:30, show at 7).