Search Results
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Summer Update from the Thin Green Line
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Listen In: KEXP and KBOO Highlight the Thin Green Line
In the wake of Canada’s fiscally irresponsible and environmentally unsound Trans Mountain Pipeline purchase from Kinder Morgan, Sightline programs director Eric de Place and Sightline researcher Tarika Powell shared their expertise with radio stations KEXP and KBOO in recent weeks about various aspects of the ongoing Thin Green Line movement. In his KEXP appearance, Eric discusses the Thin Green Line, a decade-long Pacific Northwest resistance movement against fossil fuel export...Read more » -
Small Town Silicon Smelter Plan Tees Up Big Questions
Northwest communities have been fighting an onslaught of dirty energy proposals for nearly a decade, from coal terminals and oil pipelines to petrochemical refineries and natural gas facilities. Many of these projects marketed themselves as environmentally responsible, but they were all, in one way or another, expansions of the fossil fuel industry. They were dirty. But what to make of a big industrial project proposal—one that uses coal and creates...Read more » -
The Seattle Pipeline Expansion You’ve Never Heard Of
The Seattle area is home to a gas pipeline project with the potential to increase Washington’s carbon emissions by a whopping three percent at a stroke. Backed by Puget Sound Energy (PSE) and the pipeline company Williams, the $47 million project will likely win approval from federal regulators in the coming weeks. Yet despite its potential environmental impacts, the so-called North Seattle Lateral Upgrade has flown almost entirely under the...Read more » -
How the Fracked Gas Industry Plays Politics in Washington
The gas industry has big designs on the Northwest. In Washington alone, its agents are busy in practically every corner of the state: backing a pipeline expansion in north Seattle, a controversial LNG facility in Tacoma, an ammonia fertilizer production site in Longview, a giant petrochemical export project on the Columbia River, and amping up gas-fired electricity production everywhere. Meanwhile, the industry is also playing defense: trying to burnish its...Read more » -
How Northwest Communities Are Stopping Fossil Fuel Projects Before They Start
For nearly a decade, the Northwest has been under siege from the fossil fuel industry. Along the sliver of coast from Coos Bay, Oregon to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, energy companies have proposed building coal export terminals, oil-by-rail transfer depots, petrochemical refineries, gas export sites, and more in dozens of locations. As a matter of fact, the recent proposals for Cascadia’s coast are some of the biggest projects of their...Read more » -
Spring Update from the Thin Green Line
“This is more fun than I’ve ever had in my life.” That’s how activist Don Steinke summed up his tireless work opposing a giant oil train terminal on the Columbia River to reporters. His enthusiasm has been contagious: communities all around the Northwest have been chalking up big wins against big oil. Stopping oil trains has been a highlight for the Thin Green Line, the opposition movement to fossil fuel...Read more » -
Event: Environmental Justice in the Pacific Northwest
This Thursday, Sightline researcher Tarika Powell will head to Tacoma, Washington, to discuss the recent local fossil fuel fights and how the environmental permitting process can have unjust outcomes for working-class communities and communities of color. University of Puget Sound groups Loggers Live Green and Puget Sound ECO, along with the school’s English, History, and Environmental Policy departments, will host Tarika for this free, public event. “Tacoma & Environmental Justice,” featuring Tarika Powell...Read more » -
Failure for Giant Oil Train Scheme
Today, Governor Inslee delivered the coup de grâce to the proposed Vancouver Energy oil terminal. Planned for a site within blast radius of downtown Vancouver, Washington, the facility would have been North America’s biggest oil train depot, drawing at least 5 dangerous oil trains each day across the interior Northwest to the banks of the Columbia River. For everyone who cares about clean water, public safety, and climate change, this...Read more » -
The Thin Green Line: 2017 in Review
1. Don’t call it a comeback Despite President Trump’s promise to revive the coal industry, the US coal market is still shrinking. And the industry can’t look to exports to save it. November 2017 saw 20 nations and regions pledge to cease using coal for power generation by 2030, launching the Powering Past Coal Alliance at the United Nations climate change conference in Bonn. (We were especially pleased to see...Read more »