Calendar Announcement:

Local Climate Change Activists Join Sept. 21 Nationwide Protest Against Keystone Pipeline

Saturday, September 21, 10:15 a.m., UGA South Campus

On Sept. 21, the Georgia Climate Change Coalition and a newly created, 350.org Local Group—Athens will host “Draw the Line—Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline.” Protestors will gather at the D.W. Brooks Mall on UGA’s south campus at 10 a.m. The march will pass UGA’s coal-fired power plant through campus to convene at Athens’ City Hall where GC3 will announce an ACC Fossil Free/Divestment campaign. For more information, visit georgiaclimatecoalition.org.

PRESS RELEASE

Local Climate Change Activists Join Sept. 21 Nationwide Keystone Pipeline Protest

Athens, GA – On September 21, a coalition of University of Georgia and Athens climate activists are co-hosting “Draw the Line – Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline.” Protestors from Georgia Climate Change Coalition, 350.Org Local Group—Athens, UGA Beyond Coal, and others will gather on UGA’s South campus at 10 a.m. at the D.W. Brooks mall on Carlton St. near Agriculture Drive. This event takes place on a UGA home football game day, see below for parking/transportation guidance. The march will proceed to UGA’s coal-fired power plant, pass Sanford Stadium, and continue through campus to convene at Athens’ City Hall where GC3 will announce a Fossil Free Divestment campaign for Athens-Clarke County.

This march is affiliated with a nationwide climate rally planned for the same day by 350.org. The non-profit group, founded by author-activist Bill McKibben, announced 113 such rallies across the nation. More are expected. “On September 21st, we will draw the line to protect our communities from climate change and show President Obama that there is no turning back,” said McKibben. “To keep his climate promises, he has to stop Keystone XL and the tar sands.”

Georgia Climate Change Coalition calls for the local government of Athens-Clarke County to divest itself from fossil fuel companies. Worldwide over 400 university campuses, including the University of Georgia, and dozens of cities and states have powerful citizen-led divestment campaigns underway. “Our fellow citizens, UGA and Athens-Clarke County have ‘gone green’ in many important ways, but we need to change laws as well as light bulbs,” said GC3 secretary Rich Rusk. “With 97 percent of climatologists telling us that unchecked carbon emissions threaten to destroy the ecology of the planet, we must respond.”

For more info call 706-202-7802 or visit www.georgiaclimatecoalition.org.

How to get to the Sept. 21 Anti-Pipeline Rally:

GC3 wants to encourage alternative transportation at all times. If you don’t live close enough to conveniently walk or ride a bike to the rally, we suggest you take a bus. This rally takes place on a UGA home game day and traffic & parking will be extremely difficult-if you must drive, please carpool.

—Athens Transit routes 5 stops on campus in front of Park Hall. From here it is about a 20 min walk along Sanford Drive through East Campus to Green St. where one can access the rally site. For info, visit: http://athenstransit.com/routes-and-fares/routes-by-number/route-5/&slot=sat&schtp=3

—Free parking is available at several locations on South and East Campuses within a short walk of the rally site. To view a map of parking areas on UGA campus, visit: http://www.ugaparkingmap.com/?rel=1

Click below for MSWord and PDF versions of this release

GC3PR9.21.13FINAL GC3PR9.21.13FINAL

CC - Coalition, PR, 12-1-12, Do the Math, Athens

Georgia Climate Change Coalition
Through education, advocacy and action, the Georgia Climate Change Coalition aims to increase awareness about climate change and its projected impacts; work in partnership with all Georgians and stakeholders to promote solutions and adaptations to the climate crisis; actively support local, state, national and international energy/climate change initiatives and legislation; serve as a clearing house for climate information.
PRESS RELEASE: for immediate release
Contact: Rich Rusk, Secretary Barton King
706-354-0321 or 706-202-7802 cell 706-340-3140
richrusk@charter.net bartonking@charter.net;
November 25, 2012
Dear Red and Black,
Please publish our calendar announcement and press release for our December 1 “Rally for Climate Change Action.” This is our main event for fall 2012. We will present a local rendition of Bill McKibben’s “Do the Math” tour of North America, which is now underway..
For more information, please visit www.georgiaclimatecoalition.org, www.350.org/math, call Rich or Bart OR:
Dory Franklin. GC3 chairperson 706-340-4870; dfrankln@uga.edu
Thanks again!
Rich
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Calendar Announcement
At 1 - 4 pm, Dec. 1, the Georgia Climate Change Coalition and Sierra
Student Coalition UGA Beyond Coal will co-host a “Rally for Climate Change Action.” Marching from the university’s coal-fired steam plant to north campus to Athens City Hall, activists will convene at New Earth Music Hall for a report on Bill McKibben’s “Do the Math” national tour. www.georgiaclimatecoalition.org.
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Dec. 1 March/Rally for Climate Change Action
Athens activists “Do the Math,” call for Beyond Coal Now
On December 1, in response to Hurricane Sandy, record-setting wildfires, floods, heat waves, droughts and other extreme weather around the globe while political impasse continues in Washington, University of Georgia and Athens environmentalists are co-hosting a “Rally for Climate Change Action.”
Set for 1 p.m., Saturday, Sierra Student Coalition UGA Beyond Coal will lead a march from the university’s coal-fired power plant to north campus to Athens City Hall. This action will demonstrate student and community support for retiring the university’s coal-fired steam boiler and replacing it with renewable energy alternatives. The Athens community must demand that the university takes into account the all too real math of climate change when making decisions on energy infrastructure.
At 2 p.m, marchers will convene at the New Earth Music Hall (227 W. Dougherty St.) for a rally and program, co-hosted by the Georgia Climate Change Coalition (GC3.) There, speakers will present and discuss Bill McKibben’s “Do the Math” program. The famed climate activist and his global climate movement 350.org are currently touring North America. Visiting twenty cities in twenty six days, they came to Atlanta’s Variety Playhouse on November 20.
“Although McKibben was hugely persuasive on stage, we will ask everyone present to help us crunch the numbers and evaluate Do the Math for themselves,” said GC3 secretary Rich Rusk. “We need to strategize where we go from here.” Highlights for this activists’ meet-and-greet include heavy refreshments and a big screen projection of the SEC championship game featuring Alabama and Georgia at 4 p.m.
“We’re inviting Bulldog Nation to share their football passion with climate change,” added Rusk, an avid fan.
“McKibben’s Rolling Stone article – ‘Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math’ – has gone viral on the internet, gathering more reads than any article in the magazine’s history,” said GC3’s Doug Job. “We urge Athens folks to join us on Dec. 1. Without exaggeration, McKibben’s call for action may be the important thing they ever hear.”
In Atlanta and elsewhere, claiming that “we are losing the (climate) fight, badly and quickly,” McKibben stated that the pace and severity of climate change is exceeding even the worst case scenarios of the world’s climatologists. “It has become a huge challenge….to avoid complete and utter climate catastrophe,” he claims. He wants to target carbon and CO2 emissions and the fossil fuel industry, launch a divestment campaign against Big Oil and King Coal, and change the terrifying math of the climate crisis.
“It’s simple math,” warns McKibben. “We can burn 565 more gigatons of carbon and stay below 2°C of warming — anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on earth. The only problem? Fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, five times the safe amount. And they’re planning to burn it all — unless we rise up to stop them.”
Speaking before sold-out venues in Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere, McKibben is not simply trying to explain climate science to the general public. “Do the Math” is about lighting a fire under the climate movement and rallying activists for a major new offensive to save the ecology of the planet.
“After fourteen years of sounding the climate-change alarm, writer Bill McKibben (author of 14 books) realized that gentle persuasion wasn’t cutting it,” wrote Rowan Jacobsen for Outside magazine. “So he got mad. Then he got busy: tweeting, organizing, protesting, getting arrested, and becoming Big Oil’s biggest threat.”
In a rare success against the fossil fuel industry, McKibben and 350.Org encircled the White House on Nov. 6, 2011 with 12,000 marchers protesting construction of the Keystone Pipeline. It was considered a “done deal” by insiders. Four days later, President Obama delayed the pipeline for further study. He then denied Keystone’s permit on Jan. 17. But climate change trends are mostly grim.
“We’re hot as hell,” McKibben said after the collapse of national energy legislation in 2009, the Copenhagen summit, President Obama’s mystifying silence (except Keystone) and other setbacks. “And we’re not going to take it any more.” Sharpening his language, he now calls the fossil fuel industry a “rogue industry” for blocking energy legislation with highly paid lobbyists and millions of dollars to politicians.
“The fossil fuel industry has behaved so recklessly that they should lose their social license – their veneer of respectability,” McKibben tells audiences in building his case for moral outrage.
“You want to take away our planet and our future?” he continues. “We’re going to take away your money and your good name.” His call for a divestment campaign - similar that enacted by 80 U.S. cities, 25 states and 19 countries who protested South African apartheid in the 1980’s – is resonating with climate activists. Although 350.Org’s “Do the Math” tour is still underway, several dozen U.S. colleges have already responded and moved towards divestment. Massachusetts’ Hampshire College was the first.
For information, visit www.georgiaclimatecoalition.org or www.350.org/math.
By Rich Rusk, secretary, Georgia Climate Change Coalition
Athens, GA 833 words

July 17, 2012, Athens, GA – The Georgia Climate Change Coalition is proud to announce the receipt of a national Merit Award from the Soil and Water Conservation Society (SWCS) recognizing the Coalition for its multi-faceted advocacy work over the last year. The award will be presented Tuesday, July 24, 2012 during the 67^th International Annual Conference of the SWCS in Fort Worth Texas.

The SWCS Merit Award is given in recognition of outstanding activity or service by an organization that promotes the conservation of soil, water and related natural resources. Environmental conservation is of critical importance to the Georgia Climate Change Coalition, which formed in early 2011 with a mission of increasing awareness about climate change and its projected impacts in the southeastern United States and beyond.

In its first year of existence, the Athens, Georgia-based Coalition organized a successful march and rally, hosted a series of symposia at the University of Georgia, and developed a web-based Carbon Reduction Campaign highlighting changes in people’s daily lives that can cut carbon dioxide emissions by 10 to 20 percent using water and energy management strategies.

The four-part symposia series, which took place from November 2011 through January 2012, featured more than two dozen scientists, researchers and business professionals who gave brief presentations on the issues, impacts and solutions associated with climate change within their specific fields. Soil, water and other natural resources figured prominently in the discussion of environmental and economic impacts facing Georgia’s forests, agriculture and wetlands.

“Though our coalition is only a little more than a year old, a sense of urgency has propelled us to host, help with, or appear at more than a dozen events,” said Doug Job, Vice Chair of the Georgia Climate Change Coalition. “This timely affirmation by the Society, which has such stature in the scientific community, is wonderful for our morale. We’re encouraged now to reach thousands of Georgians with news they can use about climate change.”

Chere Petersen, Past President of the Georgia Chapter of the Soil and Water Conservation Society and a Georgia Clmate Change Coalition affiliate, will accept the award in Fort Worth on behalf of the Coalition.

Election of Officers

The Georgia Climate Change Coalition also has made significant progress bringing together a diverse base of support from Georgia’s academic, nonprofit, business and local communities. The coalition elected officers at its first annual meeting on April 25, 2012, solidifying the interim leadership that evolved since the group’s founding. The officers are as follows:

• Dorcas Franklin, Chair
• Doug Job, Vice Chair
• Miguel Cabrera, Treasurer
• Rich Rusk, Secretary

About the Soil and Water Conservation Society

Soil and Water Conservation Society (SWCS) is a nonprofit scientific and educational organization founded in 1943 to serve as an advocate for conservation professionals and for science-based conservation practice, programs, and policy. SWCS has over 5,000 members around the world including researchers, administrators, planners, policymakers, technical advisors, teachers, students, farmers, and ranchers. (www.swcs.org)

About the Georgia Climate Change Coalition

Through education, advocacy and action, the Georgia Climate Change Coalition aims to increase awareness about climate change and its projected impacts; work in partnership with all Georgians and stakeholders to promote solutions and adaptations to the climate crisis; actively support local, state, national and international energy/climate change initiatives and legislation; serve as a clearing house for climate information.The group is actively seeking coalition partners from across the state. (www.georgiaclimatecoalition.org)

###

For additional comment, please contact:

Meredith Foley
Project Coordinator, Soil and Water Conservation Society
(515) 289-2331 ext. 112
meredith.foley@swcs.org

Doug Job
Vice Chair, Georgia Climate Change Coalition
(706) 389-0123
doug@evergreenathens.org

Downloadable versions of this release
PDF:GC3_Award_Release
DOC:GC3_Award_Release

Sierra Student Coalition protests campus use of coal

By JULIA CARPENTER on September 26, 2011

Kristin Fairchild, a junior international affairs and romance language major from Lawrenceville, speaks frankly when discussing her own breathing problems — she blames the University coal-fired plant’s pollution.

Fairchild and other students protested the University’s use of coal during an environmental rally and march on Saturday morning.

read more: Sierra Student Coalition protests campus use of coal | The Red and Black.

Climate coalition plans march

By LEE SHEARER - lee.shearer@onlineathens.com

Published Saturday, September 24, 2011

Athens area activists are launching a new “Georgia Climate Change Coalition” this weekend and plan a march from the University of Georgia campus to a rally in downtown Athens.

The coalition, which includes trout fishermen as well as environmental activists, hopes to convince civic leaders and people in general to take steps — both within the government and in their personal lives — to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are fueling climate change.

Read more: Climate coalition plans march || OnlineAthens.com.

Rusk: Climate group wants Stooksbury reinstated

Athens Banner-Herald

Published Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I’m the secretary of a newly formed coalition of Georgia organizations and individuals who are very concerned about climate change and see a great need for more education and action in our state. The recent executive order from Gov. Nathan Deal removing University of Georgia professor David Stooksbury from the post of state climatologist is of grave concern to us, especially in the context of continuing drought in Georgia and the Southeast, recent extreme weather events across the United States, and political acrimony in this primary season that keeps propagating the myth that climate change is a hoax. Our hope is that officials in the state would want the best possible scientific climate monitoring during these confusing and economically trying times.

Read more: Rusk: Climate group wants Stooksbury reinstated || OnlineAthens.com.

State Roundup: Moving Planet Rally, RI Institutes Feed-in Tariff, CT Requires Composting

SustainableBusiness.com News

Worldwide Moving Planet Rally is Tomorrow!

The sequel to 350.org’s historic protest against the imminent approval of the Keystone Tar Sands pipeline is the Moving Planet Rally, which is hosting at least one event in every US state on September 24, this Saturday.

Read more: State Roundup: Moving Planet Rally, RI Institutes Feed-in Tariff, CT Requires Composting.