I want you to imagine something. Imagine being held responsible for what you do. If you create a mess, then you have to clean it up. When you make a plan, you are required to make sure that your plan won't harm others.
That's not hard to imagine, because you are a person living in today's world.
Now imagine something just a little bit different. Imagine that you are a fossil fuel company being held to the same standard - being required to fully assess the harms that may result from your activities.
While that may sound like a far fetched scenario, it actually happened today. And it's big news.
The proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal in Cherry Point WA is a plan to export up to 48 million metric tons of US coal per year to China to supply their ever-growing collection of coal fueled power plants. The site owner, Pacific International Terminals, filed a permit application this last March. Three permitting agencies are now conducting an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the proposed project.
Over 125,000 comments were provided, including powerful spoken testimony at the six public hearings. The comments identified well over 101 reasons to be concerned about the project.
[For loads of background, check out
www.coaltrainfacts.org, or read any of the 18 prior entries in this series, listed at the bottom]
Today, the agencies announced the scope of that EIS, meaning that they defined what types of adverse impacts will be considered when evaluating the permit applications. Amid lots of good news (and bad news for the coal companies), perhaps the single biggest victory this line item in the EIS, mandated by the State of Washington Department of Ecology:
An evaluation and disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions of end-use coal combustion.
The coal will emit as much as 100 million tons of CO2 per year when it is combusted in China. As measured over years, this is a gigaton-scale impact, as big or bigger than Keystone XL.
According to over 97% of scientists, we share the same planet as China, so these emissions will affect us, our oceans, and our climate, just as much as it will affect anyone.
Terminal proponents have pushed strenuously against considering the effects of burning the coal. "We should be allowed to pee in the pool as much as we want, as a long as we do it in a place that's pretty far away from where you're swimming right now," they argue. "By the time it gets to you, it won't be possible to prove that it's our pee, so we're good, right?"
Okay, that's not actually what their press release says. That initial draft was improved by small army of public relations firms, who have been spending a million dollars a month on behalf of the fossil fuel industries to promote coal exports in the northwest U.S.
And now the State of Washington is recognizing and seeing through the scam of outsourcing the global pollutant of CO2 emissions.
This would not have happened without determined and persistent action on the part of thousands of people in our region and throughout the world.
Beyond the immediate issue of this particularly egregious proposal, it sets a powerful precedent. A global pollutant is a global pollutant. Responsibility goes to any and all of the fuel suppliers, transporters, fuel burners, and those who consume the resulting products. This precedent, that a permitting agency in the US will evaluate attempts to outsource pollution, could affect other carbon export schemes such as Keystone XL and others.
The saga of the Gateway Pacific Terminal is not over. They will continue to spend their millions on slick advertising and PR firms. We'll continue to work to protect our community and environment. But make no mistake - this is a huge victory for taking responsibility. For our environment. For our future.
Our Future - Worth Saving
Any time you think that you don't have a choice, you actually do.
Any time you think you have to do something that's wrong, you don't.
Not Here
Not Today
Not Any More
We shall not participate in our own destruction.
Previous entries in this series, in chronological order first to most recent:
We shall not participate in our own destruction
Pretty much the dumbest idea ever
Can a community defy a cabal of multi-national corporations?
Great for the coal cabal! For us, not so much
And So it Begins
Right Brain for This Decision?
101 Reasons to be Concerned About Coal Export
On Refusing to be Rounded out of Existence
Who Are the Welfare Queens Now?
There Is No Daylight
Tis the Season to Decide Our Future
They've Got the Money. We've Got the Humans!
The House of Actual Reality
Permanence
Collision With Reality
Climate Change and Coal Export - Taking Responsibility
Corps of Engineers Designs Henhouse, Excludes 99 Percent of Chickens