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Thursday, September 17, 2020

Recycling is Not the Answer to the Plastic Problem

By Mike Buza & Heather Sisto (Sierra Club Nepessing Group)


The national Sierra Club campaign for a “Plastics Free July” successfully spread awareness of the non-sustainable nature of all plastic, and Michigan’s Lobby Day focused on legislation allowing cities to ban single-use plastic and for the state to accept ALL plastic bottles as returnable. SC chapters throughout the state had record participation, but let’s not rest our laurels. We can’t stop at banning single-use plastic and assume that plastic labeled for recycling is somehow okay.

Recycling in this country is broken and indeed has really never worked. When the program launched, Franklin, New Hampshire could break even on recycling by selling it for $6 a ton. As of March 2019, the transfer station is charging the town $125 a ton to recycle, or $68 a ton to incinerate.

The same thing is happening across the country. Broadway, Virginia had a recycling program for 22 years but recently suspended it after Waste Management told the town that prices would increase by 63 percent and then stopped offering recycling pickup as a service. “It almost feels illegal to throw plastic bottles away,” bemoans/laments the town manager, Kyle O’Brien.

Without a market for mixed paper, bales of the stuff started to pile up in Blaine County, Idaho; the county eventually stopped collecting it and took the 35 bales it had hoped to recycle to a landfill. The town of Fort Edward, New York, suspended its recycling program in July and admitted it had actually been taking recycling to an incinerator for months. Determined to hold out until the market turns around, the nonprofit Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful has collected 400,000 tons of plastic. But for now, it is piling the bales behind the facility where it collects plastic.

We see other packaging popping up, so we may be fooled into thinking these are viable alternatives to plastic, but very few facilities exist that can handle layered cartons (of aluminum, plastic and paper) such as TetraPaks. We want to be careful not to replace one problem with another one. Lack of long-term planning is what got us into this mess in the first place.

The end of viable recycling comes at a time when the United States is creating more waste than ever. In 2015, the most recent year for which national data is available, America generated 262.4 million tons of waste, up 4.5 percent from 2010 and 60 percent from 1985. That amounts to nearly five pounds per person a day. New York City collected 934 tons of metal, plastic, and glass a day from residents last year, a 33 percent increase from 2013.

Read: ‘We are all accumulating mountains of things.’

So now what? While we wean ourselves from wasteful consumption, we still need basic necessities like food and personal hygiene items. Some SC regional chapters are adding a “Plastics Alternatives” column to their newsletters with “Readers’ Choice” ratings of brands and suppliers of reusable shopping bags, returnable aluminum cans of hair and skin care products, and products packaged in aluminum or paper. Other support groups are posting blogs and pushing the message out on social media including links to local sources that require no packaging at all such as farm produce and bar soap.

Others suggest lobbying local grocers to influence the products they carry and how produce is displayed. It’s disheartening to learn that healthy, non-GMO foods often come in plastic while they could use cellophane or other biodegradable material. Another tactic is putting pressure on large corporations or restaurant chains to use alternative packaging (or after COVID, allowing customers to bring their own take-away containers).

Once a more favorable administration is in place, federal legislation may be the next step. The federal “Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act” introduced in February was a step in the right direction such as calling for a “pause on creating new plastic producing plants.” But the provisions for clearer recycling labels are too weak. At each stage of a product’s life (source materials, manufacturing processes, use-phase, and end of life) there needs to be consideration of the chemicals selected, the health effects on workers and consumers, and creation of affordable recycle plants that make reused plastic profitable. Each step of the product’s life cycle should be clearly labeled on websites, advertising, and the product itself.

For a long time, Americans have had little incentive to consume less. It’s inexpensive to buy products, and it’s even cheaper to throw them away at the end of their short lives. But the costs of all this garbage are growing, especially now that bottles and papers that were once recycled are now ending up in the trash.

We all need to consume less, trade, share, reuse, and “go paperless” as much as possible. Plastics will probably not be replaced any time soon for media and commercial use, but as consumers we can make small but determined step to say goodbye to plastic in our households and start the “trickle up effect.”

REFERENCES

“China Has Stopped Accepting Our Trash.” Mar 2019. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/china-has-stopped-accepting-our-trash/584131/


“Did You Know That Cellophane Is Biodegradable?”  20 Mar 2020 

https://info.primepac.co.nz/blog/did-you-know-that-cellophane-is-biodegradable


“Federal Bill Seeks to Make Companies Responsible for Plastic Waste.” 10 Feb 2020 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/10/business/recycling-law.html


“How Green are Tetrapak Food Cartons?” 19 Jan 2019

https://theecologist.org/2010/jan/19/how-green-are-tetrapak-food-cartons

Monday, June 29, 2020

It’s Past Time to Dismantle Racism in the Outdoors



Protest sign in Chicago, June, 2020.
Protest sign in Chicago, June, 2020.
Photo by Dalma Dibuz
Tens of thousands of people in Chicago have not slowed in marching for over a month to fight for racial justice, oppose police brutality, and protest the tragic murders of Black Americans at the hands of police.
As I joined demonstrations across the city—miles-long marches that passed by several green spaces—something became clear: Chicago’s public lands and parks have been transformed into militarized zones. The community parks that our neighbors work diligently to clean and protect are now guarded by tanks and police clad in riot gear.

Read more ...

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Racism Is Killing the Planet

Racism Is Killing the Planet 

The ideology of white supremacy leads the way toward disposable people and a disposable natural world 
PROTESTORS IN FOLEY SQUARE, NEW YORK CITY | PHOTO BY MARK PETERSON/REDUX


Last week, my family and I attended an interfaith rally in Los Angeles in defense of Black life. We performed a group ritual in which we made noise for nine minutes to mark the last moments of George Floyd’s life. My wife, my oldest daughter, and I played African drums to mark those nine minutes with the rhythm of a beating heart. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, over and over again. 
While we drummed, I realized how difficult it is to keep up any physical activity for nine minutes straight. Most of us can’t even sit completely still on our butts for nine minutes; if you’ve ever meditated, you understand why they refer to sitting as practice
As I struggled to maintain my posture and keep up the rhythm, I thought about the level of commitment it takes to hold someone down for nine minutes straight. The realization horrified me. The cop who has been charged with murdering George Floyd had to have been deeply committed to taking his life. The police officer had so many chances to let up the pressure, to let George live. Yet the officer made the choice not to. 
To spend nine minutes taking the life-breath from another person: That is what white supremacy does to white people. That is what white supremacy does to the rest of us too. White supremacy robs each of us of our humanity. It causes white people to view Black people as less than human. Every one of those cops watching George die was convinced that the man pinned to the ground was less than human, was in some way disposable. 
Otherwise, how could they hold him down for nine whole minutes? How could they bring themselves to do it? 
You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can't have disposable people without racism.

During the street protests and marches of the past two weeks, many people carried signs that read “Racism Is Killing Us.” It’s no exaggeration to say that racism and white supremacy harm all of us, because in addition to robbing us of our humanity, racism is also killing the planet we all share.
An idea—a long-overdue realization—is growing in the environmental movement. It goes something like this: “We’ll never stop climate change without ending white supremacy.” This argument has entered the outdoor recreation and conservation space thanks to the leadership of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color in the climate justice movement. The idea has taken on new force as folks in the mainstream environmental movement do our best to show up for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and all the Black people still living and subject to police violence.
I know that a lot of people are struggling with the thought that addressing the environmental crises must involve dismantling white supremacy. At Sierra Club meetings, some people hear me say something like that and think, “Damn, fighting climate change wasn’t hard enough already? Now we have to end racism and white supremacy too? Seriously, man?”
I get that feeling of being overwhelmed. It’s a lot to carry. It’s a lot to hold. We all have enough to do without feeling like we’re taking on even more.
But I want to share another lens from which we can view this moment. I really believe in my heart of hearts—after a lifetime of thinking and talking about these issues—that we will never survive the climate crisis without ending white supremacy. 
Here’s why: You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can't have disposable people without racism. 
We’re in this global environmental mess because we have declared parts of our planet to be disposable. The watersheds where we frack the earth to extract gas are considered disposable. The neighborhoods near where I live in Los Angeles, surrounded by urban oilfields, are considered disposable. The very atmosphere is considered disposable. When we pollute the hell out of a place, that’s a way of saying that the place—and the people and all the other life that calls that place home—are of no value. 
In order to treat places and resources as disposable, the people who live there have to get treated like rubbish too. Sacrifice zones imply sacrificed people. Just think of Cancer Alley in Louisiana. Most of the towns there are majority Black, and nowadays they call it Death Alley, because so many Black folks have died from the poison that drives our extractive economy. Or think of the situation in the Navajo Nation, where uranium mines poisoned the wells and the groundwater and coal plants for decades poisoned the air. Or consider the South Side of Chicago, where I used to live, which for years was a dumping ground of petroleum coke (a fossil fuel byproduct) and where residents are still struggling against pollution-related diseases. I’ve lived in a lot of places, and just about every place I’ve ever lived has been targeted by big polluters as a dumping ground.
Devaluing Black and Indigenous people’s lives to build wealth for white communities isn’t new. White settlers began that project in the 15th century, when they arrived in North America. Most Native peoples of North America lived in regenerative relationships with the land; they were careful to take no more than the land could sustain. The settlers had another ethic: They sought to dominate and control. They cleared the old-growth forests and plowed the prairies to make room for their wheat and their beef. They nearly drove the bison to extinction in a calculated scorched-earth tactic that was part of a larger ethnic-cleansing agenda. As the Potawatomi author and scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer put it in a recent essay, “the Indigenous idea of land as a commonly held gift [was replaced] with the notion of private property, while the battle between land as sacred home and land as capital stained the ground red.”
How could the white settlers bring themselves to do it?
They did it by telling a certain story about Native peoples, a story that said Native peoples were less “civilized” than white settlers and therefore deserved to be terrorized and pushed from their lands. This Doctrine of Discovery was a religious belief for many European settlers. The doctrine said that any land “discovered” by Christians was theirs because of the inherent inferiority of non-Christian peoples. Eventually, this pernicious idea made its way into US law. In 1823, the US Supreme Court, in the case of Johnson v. M’Intosh, ruled that “the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to New World lands.” 
It’s no secret that our country was built on a foundation of enslavement of Black people, the theft of Native land, and near genocide of Indigenous people. US institutions, from our government to Ivy League colleges, were built on a foundation of stolen labor and stolen bodies. The compound interest on the profits from that enslavement became the basis of intergenerational wealth for white communities—the intergenerational wealth that perpetuates race-based economic inequality to this day.
But the past isn’t past. Structural racism continues 150 years after the abolition of slavery, only in new forms. As Michelle Alexander wrote in her best-selling book, The New Jim Crow, white supremacy has evolved over generations. After slavery came the debt-servitude of sharecropping. After the Jim Crow era was brought down by the civil rights movement, the prison industrial complex and the war on drugs (read: the war on Black people) rose in its place.
When a kid in East Oakland gets asthma from car pollution because her neighborhood is surrounded by freeways, that is white supremacy.

How does this all connect to today’s environmental crises? It’s all part of 
the same story of dehumanization. The pollution-spewing global mega-corporations that created Cancer Alley are just the latest evolution of the extractive white-settler mindset that cleared the forests and plowed the prairies. And just as the settlers had to believe and tell stories to dehumanize the people they killed, plundered, and terrorized, today’s systems of extraction can only work by dehumanizing people. Back then we had the Doctrine of Discovery, and today it’s the doctrine of neoliberalism that say it’s OK to value some lives more than others, that it’s OK for some people to have clean air while others struggle to breathe.
The crimes may be hiding in plain sight, but many white people are socialized to ignore how these systems of violence and inequality show up in our society. When it comes to racism, many white people are like fish swimming in water: White supremacy is so pervasive that it’s hard to even know that it’s there.
The richest people need for white supremacy to remain invisible so they can continue to plunder our planet. They need those sacrifice zones, and the racism that justifies them, or they’ll have nowhere to put their trash and pollution. In this way, white supremacy serves to divide white working people from Black working people. Today’s one-percenters are able to sacrifice whole communities using more or less the same methods the settlers used: By dividing people into racial categories and directing the worst of their abuse at the people at the bottom of a manufactured racial hierarchy. There’s a term for this: It’s called punching down.
This punching down usually comes in the form of blame. Media and popular culture often broadcast a twisted version of Black life and make it seem like communities of color have caused their own problems. Many people (at least half of Republicans, according to one poll) believe that poor people are poor because they are “lazy.” From there, it’s not much of a jump to believe that “some people” deserve to live next to a coal plant, that they deserve to die of cancer, that their children deserve to live with asthma.
Working-class whites are told a story that such a thing could never happen to them. Since the founding of this country, elites have conspired to divide poor and working people by race. Just think about Bacon’s Rebellion, when a wealthy white land-taker led a multiracial group of indentured servants and enslaved people on a mission of violence against local tribes. Afterward, frightened by the cross-racial uprising that had destroyed the state capitol, Virginia leaders began to offer more rights and privileges to white indentured servants to keep them from allying with enslaved African people and rising up against their rulers. They offered slightly better conditions to the white people they exploited, to keep them from seeing what they had in common with enslaved Africans and Indigenous peoples.
That same racist bargain—“You might be poor, but at least you’re not Black”—is alive and well in America today.
Now polluters tell low-income white families, “Only someone who doesn’t deserve anything better for themselves and their family would choose to live in such a polluted place as Cancer Alley.” If they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, the story goes, white people can work themselves out of the poverty and environmental injustice they experience alongside Black people. Because, after all, at least they’re not Black.
In the Trump era, messages that blame Black folks for our own persecution come even from the White House. The Trump administration tries to explain away the fact that Black communities are dying at elevated rates from COVID-19 by pointing to preexisting health conditions, yet ignores that those health conditions are the result of generations of racism. The administration ignores the fact that the facilities that cause asthma are located in Black neighborhoods. It ignores the fact that living in a society that treats Black people as less than human causes stress on the heart, literally and metaphorically. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, “Being a person of color in America is bad for your health.” Put another way, Black folks’ only preexisting condition is being Black.
I’m still left wondering, how can they bring themselves to do it?




  • I think the answer has to do with the stories a lot of white people tell themselves. Stories that often boil down to a notion that Black people are always guilty and the cops (or the corporation) are always right. Stories that take the form of “he shouldn’t have resisted arrest.”
    If all of this seems too neat a narrative, I’d ask if you remember Hurricane Katrina. In the aftermath of the storm, Black people who were just out looking for essential supplies were described by the news media as “looting” a grocery store. White people who were doing the same thing were described as “finding” bread and water. I’d ask if you remember Eric Garner and Dylan Roof. Eric Garner was choked to death by police for selling “loosies,” or single cigarettes. Dylan Roof murdered nine Black people during a Bible study group at their church; after being arrested, the police bought him a meal at a Burger King on the way to the police station.
    Are you with me?
    By dividing us up into racial categories and economic classes, the one-percenters keep us from seeing that 99 percent of us share the same problems. By focusing their extraction and pollution on Black communities and working-class families, big polluters have bought the silence and collusion of white Americans.
    But let’s be real: White privilege offers no escape from climate chaos. Nobody reading this is going to get a spot on the SpaceX shuttle to Mars (if you think so, that’s white supremacy messing with your head). Earth is the only planet we get. And, thanks to polluters who profit from exploiting Black and brown communities, we’re in the process of making it uninhabitable.
    Just as the settlers had to believe and tell stories to dehumanize the people they killed, plundered, and terrorized, today’s systems of extraction can only work by dehumanizing people.

    When Amy Cooper, a white woman, has an encounter with a Black man birdwatching in Central Park and calls the police—that is white supremacy. She weaponized the police and used them to racially terrorize someone. She knew what she was doing. She knew her threat had power because her target, Christian Cooper, understood the historical relationship between the police and Black people. 
    When a petroleum pipeline corporation calls in the police to bash Indigenous water protectors at Standing Rock, that too is white supremacy. It’s like the Amy Cooper–Christian Cooper incident but on a systemic scale in which a fossil fuel company weaponizes the police to racially terrorize Indigenous peoples. 
    When a kid in East Oakland gets asthma from car pollution because her neighborhood is surrounded by freeways, that is white supremacy. 
    When the Dakota Access Pipeline is built through Native land because the neighboring white communities fought to keep it out of theirs, that is white supremacy. 
    When the United States pours carbon pollution into the air, knowing that people in countries that have contributed much less to the climate crisis will face the worst of the consequences, that is white supremacy. 
    When big polluters try to buy our democracy so they can keep making money by devaluing the lives of people of color, that is white supremacy. 
    When you come to see and understand these intersections between white supremacy and environmental destruction, you’ll find yourself at a crossroads. That crossroads will force you to decide which side you’re on. 
    You can choose—we as a society can choose—to live a different way. Indeed, we must. If our society valued all people’s lives equally, there wouldn’t be any sacrifice zones to put the pollution in. If every place was sacred, there wouldn’t be a Cancer Alley. We would find other ways to advance science and create shared wealth without poisoning anyone. We would find a way to share equally both the benefits and the burdens of prosperity. 
    If we valued everyone’s lives equally, if we placed the public health and well-being of the many above the profits of a few, there wouldn’t be a climate crisis. There would be nowhere to put a coal plant, because no one would accept the risks of living near such a monster if they had the power to choose. 
    Critics of the Black demand for justice and equality like to respond by saying “all lives matter.” It’s true; they do. In fact, that’s the very point of the chants and banners and signs in the streets. After centuries of oppression, the insistence on Black dignity is a cry for universal human rights. If Black lives mattered, then all lives would matter.


    I know that what I’ve laid out here is a lot of dots to connect. I can imagine you thinking, “OK, so how do we end white supremacy then?” 
    I wish I had all the answers, but I don’t. The answer is for all of us to figure out together.
    All I know is that if climate change and environmental injustice are the result of a society that values some lives and not others, then none of us are safe from pollution until all of us are safe from pollution. Dirty air doesn’t stop at the county line, and carbon pollution doesn’t respect national borders. As long as we keep letting the polluters sacrifice Black and brown communities, we can’t protect our shared global climate.
    I also know that as long as police can take Black lives, then none of us are truly safe. I keep coming back to the murder of George Floyd, the nine minutes a cop took to bring the drumbeat of George’s heart to a standstill. I keep asking again and again, How could they bring themselves to do it?
    And now I ask you, What will you bring yourself to do?


    ###

    Sunday, June 7, 2020

    Michigan Chapter Update - 6.7.20 - We cannot protect the planet if racism divide us



    Michigan Chapter Update
     
    June 7, 2020
    In this edition:
    • We Cannot Protect the Planet if Racism Divides Us
      • "Science Isn't a Political Issue" by Aaron Mair
    • ACT: Urge EGLE and Gov. Whitmer to Revoke Nestle's Permit
    • Enbridge Line 5 Cases Heard in Court: More Gaps in Pipeline Coatings Disclosed
    • Historic DTE Settlement To Shut Three Coal Plants and Fund Environmental Justice Projects
    • Join the Michigan Chapter Leadership: Nominations Open for Executive Committee Members Until June 15
    • Commemorative and Memorial Gifts
    • Explore and Enjoy: How are You Doing?
    NOTICE: All Sierra Club offices are closed until further notice in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Please find staff and volunteer emails and phone contacts here:
    https://www.sierraclub.org/michigan/directory
    Lake Michigan sunset. Photo by Petra Daher.

    We Cannot Protect the Planet if Racism Divides Us

    Sierra Club has been fighting to protect the planet for more than a century, but before there was climate change, PFAS, toxic algae or any other environmental ill, there was racism. This fundamental societal ill underlies everything we do in this country, including environmental activism.

    Just as communities of color disproportionately experience police violence and the effects of COVID-19, they are impacted more greatly by negative environmental consequences from industrial polluters and lax enforcement of laws and regulations. This is vividly illustrated in a recent New York Times article spotlighting COVID’s impact on Detroit’s 48217, one of the most polluted zip codes in Michigan.

    Sierra Club is committed to fighting for an end to the entrenched, institutionalized racism in our society that led to the death of George Floyd and many others. It’s the same system that has empowered polluters to create environmental sacrifice zones in communities of color. As Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune and Minnesota Chapter Chair Kamau Wilkins said in a recent joint statement, “We cannot expect to come together to protect the planet if racism continues to tear us apart.” And on June 4 Sierra Club joined with more than 200 environmental organizations in signing a statement in support of the demands of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL).

    As a community and as individuals, Sierra Club members and supporters must rise for justice and systems change. Below on the left are a number of organizations you can support right now to begin to be part of that change:
    Black Visions Collective founded in Minneapolis in 2017 "believes in a future where all Black people have autonomy, safety is community led, and we are in right relationship within our ecosystems.”

    Reclaim the Block is calling on Minneapolis to invest in violence prevention, housing, resources for youth, emergency mental health response teams and solutions to the opioid crisis—not more police.

    Black Lives Matter has chapters in Detroit, Grand Rapids and Lansing.

    Showing up for Racial Justice (SURJ) is a national network with Michigan chapters working to undermine white supremacy and move toward racial justice. Through community organizing, mobilizing and education, SURJ moves white people to act as part of a multi-racial majority for justice with passion and accountability.
    Sierra Club Board member Aaron Mair (above left in Grand Rapids in November), is an epidemiologist with the state of New York. He argues in  Science Isn't a Political Issue that white supremacy is also a driving factor for those who are trying to undermine Governor Gretchen Whitmer's commitment to follow the guidance public health professionals and scientists during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    ACT: Urge EGLE and Gov. Whitmer to
    Revoke Nestle's Permit

     
    The institutional, violent disregard for black lives in policing has also driven policies of water shut-offs to thousands of Michiganders. It is at the root of environmental injustice that puts corporate profits above the health of black, indigenous and low income communities.

    Thousands of Michigan families lack access to clean, safe and affordable drinking water right now. Families across our state have had water service shut off because they couldn’t afford to pay water bills. Others have water contamination issues due to lead service lines, PFAS and other harmful chemicals.

    It is a particular affront to those families that an international corporation like Nestlé can take water that belongs to the people of Michigan, bottle it to sell it back to us and worldwide at a huge profit. There is a connection between institutionalized white supremacy, the lack of running water and the disproportionately fatal impact of COVID-19 in black communities, and Nestle’s campaign to privatize our public waters for corporate profit.

    The waters of our state are a public resource held in trust by our state government as stewards for current and future generations. As leaders, elected officials must fulfill their solemn duty to protect our water and natural resources under this public trust.

    Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation and the Grand Traverse Band of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians are challenging an Administrative Law Judge’s recommendation that Nestle's permit to ratchet up their pumping to 400 gallons per minute in Osceola Township be upheld. The decision is now on the desks of EGLE director Liesl Clarke and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Governor Whitmer’s administration has the power and the legal duty to protect our water resources as she promised to do in 2018.

    Take a moment to send a strong message to Governor Whitmer, EGLE director Liesl Clark and Attorney General Dana Nessel. Right the wrongs of the Snyder administration and revoke Nestle’s permit. Now recruit 10 other folks to take action. If you’d like to be further involved in our work to hold Nestle accountable, email Christy at christy.mcgillivray@sierraclub.org.
    Despite record high water levels throughout Michigan this year, water levels downstream from Nestle's current pumping operations are lower than in the past. Below, Rhonda Huff shows Sarah Tresseder photos of Chippewa Creek before Nestle began withdrawals. Today the once swift moving creek where Rhonda paddled a canoe as recently as 2012 has dramatically changed, becoming shallow, with mud flats and cattails. Photos by Christy McGillivray.
    ACT: Urge EGLE and Gov. Whitmer to Revoke the Nestle Water Withdrawal Permit

    Enbridge Line 5 Cases Heard in Court; More Gaps in Pipeline Coatings Disclosed
     
    Protesters gathered in May 2019 at the Mackinac Policy Conference to urge no oil tunnel and the shutdown of Enbridge Line 5. Photo courtesy Oil and Water Don't Mix.

    Four gaps in critical coating on the Enbridge Line 5 dual pipelines under the Straits of Mackinac were disclosed last month as several court and administrative processes which could affect the future of this oil and natural gas liquids pipeline are underway.

    Two court cases related to Enbridge Line 5 were heard recently, with decisions expected in coming weeks. On May 22, the Michigan Attorney General’s office and Enbridge presented oral arguments in the Michigan v. Enbridge case before Ingham County Judge James Jamo. Attorney General Dana Nessel has brought suit to shut down the existing dual pipelines across the Straits of Mackinac by revoking the easement granted to the Canadian pipeline company’s predecessor in 1953. In this hearing, Assistant Attorney General Robert Reichel boldly spoke up for
    the people of Michigan and stood firm in defense of the Great Lakes and the public trust, labeling Line 5 an “environmental time bomb.”

    Last Wednesday oral arguments were presented in Michigan Court of Appeals on the Enbridge v Michigan case. Enbridge has sued the State of Michigan to overturn AG Nessel’s 2019 opinion invalidating the 2018 lame duck law and subsequent agreements between Gov. Rick Snyder and Enbridge to facilitate the building of an oil tunnel under the Great Lakes. This case is on appeal from a decision in favor of Enbridge in the lower court.

    The Army Corps of Engineers also announced last week that public comment on Enbridge's permit application has been extended until July 14. Guidance on public comment will be put out soon. This application is a joint one with an application to the state Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, which has been returned to Enbridge citing numerous deficiencies. In addition the date has not been set for release of a decision by the Michigan Public Service Commission on Enbridge’s request for a declaratory ruling that would relieve the company from seeking further approval from the utility regulatory commission.

    Contact Gabbie Buendia at gabbie.buendia@sierraclub.org to find out how you can help.

    Historic DTE Settlement To Shut Three Coal Plants and Fund Environmental Justice Projects
     
    After 10 years of court proceedings and negotiations, the Sierra Club secured a historic Clean Air Act settlement agreement with DTE. It requires DTE to fund $7.5 million in environmental justice projects and to retire three of their polluting coal plants. But we need your support to protect this deal.

    Pictured on the right is a playground at Belanger Park directly in front of the dirty River Rouge coal plant, one of the plants that will retire under the settlement agreement. The River Rouge, St. Clair and Trenton Channel plants combined emit more than seven million tons of climate polluting carbon dioxide, 22,000 tons of harmful sulfur dioxide, and 8,000 tons of smog-causing nitrogen oxides annually.

    Scientists have confirmed that exposure to air pollution from coal plants decreases the chance of survival for those who contract the coronavirus. This is a slap in the face
    Photo courtesy of Beyond Coal Campaign.

    to residents of environmental injustice hotspots already facing dire threats. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, this deal couldn’t have come at a more crucial time for Michigan communities.

    Please contact Mike Berkowitz at mike.berkowitz@sierraclub.org to find out how to voice your support for this historic settlement agreement.

    Join the Michigan Chapter Leadership: Nominations Open for Executive Committee Members Until June 15
     
    Michigan Chapter Executive Committee members set priorities, adopt the budget and engage in the policy and advocacy work of Sierra Club.
    Sierra Club is the largest democratically run environmental organization in the world, with the election of our leaders from among our members. The Michigan Chapter Executive Committee governs our statewide work with nine (9) at-large elected members and representatives of each regional group. The schedule for nomination and election of five (5) at-large members this fall is on this webpage.

    The Nominating Committee is accepting nominations until June 15. Contact the Nominating Committee members at nominating.committee@michigan.sierraclub.org with questions or to submit your nomination.

    Commemorative and Memorial Gifts

    Honoring the people you care about by preserving the beauty of nature.
     
    Commemorative Gifts offer a unique way to honor a special event such as a wedding, anniversary or birthday in the life of someone important to you. An attractive note is sent to the individual being honored informing them of the gift and the identity of the donor.

    Memorial gifts, given in memory of a family member or friend, not only affirm your environmental values but also recognize that these values were shared by the individual being honored. If you choose, we will send a card in your name to a friend or loved one close to the individual being honored, informing them of the gift.
    Photo by Jan O'Connell

    To arrange your gift for the Sierra Club Michigan Chapter contact Jan O’Connell at 616-956-6646 or  jan.oconnell@sierraclub.org.

    Explore and Enjoy: How Are You Doing?
     
    The Kansas Chapter posted this wonderful article on their website with many ways to do self-care while at home. Our thanks to author Robert Sommer and Kansas Chapter Communications Chair Mimi Moffat for permission to reprint this article here.

    It’s been life-changing for all of us, hasn’t it? We’d like to be together with family members, grandchildren, and friends, from whom we now have to remain distant for their sake and ours. As we bring out this issue of Waypoints, our concern is for you, our Sierra Club members, and your families.

    In the spirit of the moment, a few of our great Kansas Chapter ExCom leaders have suggested some books, films, activities, and ways in general to keep us whole and enrich ourselves as we navigate this difficult stretch. So here goes, randomly, in no particular order …

     
    Suggested readings:
      - The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, by Andrea Wulf
      - A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir, by Donald Worster (KU professor and keynote speaker at the Kansas Chapter’s 2016 conference)
       - John Burroughs’ America: Selections From The Writings Of The Hudson River Naturalist, essays and excerpts from works by John Burroughs
       - Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, by Edward Abbey (if you’ve been meaning to get around to it, today’s the day)
       - The Overstory, by Richard Powers (you won’t put this down once you get your head around it)
       - Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science, by Carey Gillam (because you would have read this book cover-to-cover after hearing Carey at the Kansas Chapter conference, which we sadly had to cancel)
       - Drawdown, by Paul Hawken (suggested by Gary Anderson, who adds, “It has great info for all kinds of renewable energy around the world.”)
       - The Backyard Birdsong Guide Eastern and Central North America: A Guide to Listening (2nd edition), by Donald Kroodsma (suggested by Elaine Giessel)
       - And for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day: A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold (also suggested by Elaine, who writes: “No one has ever said it better: we need a ‘land ethic.’”)

    Suggested poetry:
    Ask yourself, “Have I read a poem yet today?”
      - The Collected Poems of W.S. Merwin (2 volumes) (open anywhere, read a poem to start or end your day, or any time in between)
      - The Afterlives of Trees, by Kansas Poet Laureate Emerita Wyatt Townley (she’s homegrown – I can live with the pun – and a member of the Kansas Chapter, and also shared her poetry at the Kansas Chapter’s 2016 conference)
      - Ghost Stories of the New West, by Denise Low (another Kansas Poet Laureate Emerita, who read at the fortieth anniversary Kansas Chapter conference in 2014)
      - Learning to Live in the World: Earth Poems, by William Stafford (a native of Hutchinson, Kansas, and U.S. Poet Laureate, 1970-71)
      - The Poetry Foundation (get your daily fix here – amaze your friends next time you see them by name-dropping the current U.S. Poet Laureate. Ah! Now you’re going to have to check.)

    Suggested films:
      - Chasing Ice (2012) (you will see things)
      - Our Planet (recommended by Zack Pistora)
      - Earthwork (2009) (just recently discovered by me – featuring in a supporting role our own Scott Allegrucci, now Director of Appointments for Gov. Laura Kelly. You do want to see this one, trust me. The ironies are too rich. And the music is good too. I rented it on Vimeo for four bucks.)
      - Jutland II (a three-minute meditation on, well, you decide … )
      - 10 Films to Inspire Your Inner Environmental Superhero
      - The Largest Environmental Film Festival Just Went Virtual | Sierra Club

    Activities:
      - Forest bathing (also suggested by Zack – but we do recommend clothing)
      - A neighborhood “bear hunt” for young children (this one from my daughter Erin)

    Times like this remind us that we are truly, just by virtue of being alive, part of the natural world. We’re also reminded of the important role played by advocacy groups like the Sierra Club in demanding transparency in the workings of our government and agencies at all levels.

    Please share your thoughts on our social media sites.

    Stay well, stay safe, and stay at home. We’ll all be together again on the flip side!

    Thanks to Gary Anderson, Elaine Giessel, and Zack Pistora for contributing to this article.

     
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    Please check out Michigan Chapter virtual events and presentations by our regional Groups, Committees and Networks, as well as suggestions for getting outdoors through the links on this webpage.
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    PLEASE NOTE: our U.S. mail is being forwarded and some of you have experienced issues with returned donations sent by mail to our Lansing office. Please notify us of any problems you may have encountered at cecilia.garcia@sierraclub.org or jan.oconnell@sierraclub.org,
    or call Jan at 616-956-6646.
    Thank you for your patience and understanding.