Tag Archive for Michael Brune

The People Lead on Climate Change

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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – Earlier this month, almost every Republican in the U.S. Senate went on record that “climate change is real and not a hoax.” All but a handful, however, balked at agreeing that humans are contributing to that change. The “not a scientist” club has a new line in the…

Fracking 101: Two Steps Back

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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – It’s incredible that, despite real progress in reducing climate-disrupting carbon emissions, the United States is still charging ahead with a “boom” in dirty fuels and extraction methods. It’s like swallowing aspirin as you beat your head against a wall. What gives? By now, it’s clear that the dirty…

Tar Sands End Runs

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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – In a narrow victory for common sense, yesterday the Senate rejected an attempt to legislate approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Senators like California’s Barbara Boxer, Hawaii’s Brian Schatz, and Virginia’s Tim Kaine stood up as environmental champions and deserve our thanks for their leadership. But…

Racing to the Top with China

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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – What a difference a week makes. This morning we awoke to the news that President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have negotiated a historic joint announcement on climate change and clean energy cooperation. Coming from the world’s two largest economies and two biggest carbon emitters, the new…

Help Defeat Big Oil’s Wish List

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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – I’m not going to lie, this week’s election was a blow. That’s exactly why we’re doubling down now, and I need to know you are too. Friends of Big Oil have taken control of the Senate, and they have a 100-day action plan that reads like Big Oil’s…

The San Gabriels: Obama’s Lucky Thirteenth

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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – California may be famous for its beaches, but what really defines the state’s geography are its many mountain ranges (and I’m not just saying that because the Sierra Club took its name from one of them). Last Friday, President Obama permanently protected one of those mountain ranges —…

A Shout Heard Round the World

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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – If anyone doubted the existence of a mighty climate movement in this country, then the sight of more than 400,000 determined, joyful, vociferous people marching through midtown Manhattan in the People’s Climate March in New York City last Sunday has set them straight. Even for those of us…

The World’s Most Ambitious Disaster

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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – I’ve long known how wasteful, destructive, and dangerous the process of extracting oil from tar sands is. To get one barrel of oil, you have to dig up four tons of dirt and rock. Beautiful old-growth boreal forest becomes a wasteland. And that single barrel of oil? It…

Who Needs Clean Water?

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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – With a couple of decisions in 2001 and 2006, the Supreme Court managed to break the Clean Water Act by calling into question what Congress meant by “the waters of the United States.” The existing law had been working just fine for almost 30 years. When the Clean…

The Power of the People Defeated Eric Canter

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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – Everyone has an occasional bad day at work, but it’s tough to top the one that Rep. Eric Cantor had last month in Virginia. Overnight, he went from being one of the most powerful figures in Congress to a trivia question: Name the first House majority leader in…

The Power of a Plan

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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – In his 19th-century curmudgeon’s classic, The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defined a plan as “the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.” When the EPA released its “Clean Power Plan” this month for reducing carbon pollution from power plants, the agency was clear about the results it expects…

Natural Allies: The United Autoworkers Union and the Sierra Club?

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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – I was honored to be invited to speak to the United Auto Workers in Detroit at their convention this week. Even though the Sierra Club and the UAW have been working together for years, some people don’t know we’re natural allies. Here are some other things you might…

Score Another One for Wilderness

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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – For more than a century, presidents have been using the Antiquities Act to save our national treasures, and President Obama’s just-announced designation of the Organ Mountains — Desert Peaks National Monument in southern New Mexico — shows exactly why this law is so indispensable. At nearly 500,000 acres…

President Obama’s Climate Action Plan Full of Good Ideas

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Coming Clean By Michael Brune Choose Wisely… We all make choices, and some turn out better than others do. But the choices we end up regretting the most are usually the ones we make against our better judgment. Both individually and collectively, we humans seem uniquely capable of acting as our own worst enemy. We…

Sierra Club’s Michael Brune Delivers Keynote Address at Green Jobs Conference

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Sierra Club’s Michael Brune delivered one of the keynote addresses on repairing America’s infrastructure with green jobs Monday afternoon at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs annual conference, put on by the Blue Green Alliance, a coalition of unions and environmental non-profit groups. With more than 15 million members through 14 affiliated…

Good Jobs, Green Jobs Conference Kicks off at the Washington Hilton

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By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – The opening session of the Good Jobs, Green Jobs Conference for 2014 kicked off Sunday night with a dynamic panel of speakers who are at the forefront of the national discussion about how to address the country’s crumbling infrastructure, while at the same time beginning to deal with…