Vote “Yes” on Prop C: for renewable energy, green jobs, and consumer
by Henry Robertson

When you get your ballot on November 4, don’t stop at the top. Go down past the candidates to where the issues are and vote “Yes” for renewable energy. The Clean Energy Initiative will enact a Renewable Energy Standard (RES) — a requirement that electric utilities get an increasing percentage of their sales from renewable sources like wind, solar, biomass and small hydro. This is a tried and tested method that is already in place in half the states.

In Missouri the four investor-owned utilities (AmerenUE, KCPL, Aquila and Empire District Electric) will have to reach 2% renewable electricity by 2011, 4% by 2014, 10% by 2018 and 15% beginning in 2021. Read more...

This CWIP Isn’t Funny
Ameren seeks to shift risk of new nuke to ratepayers
By Henry Robertson

AmerenUE recently announced plans to build a second unit at its Callaway nuclear power plant. It’s not a done deal, they caution. They had to get in line for federal tax credits that are now available only to the first few new nukes. A final decision won’t be made for some time.

Still, Ameren shows every sign of being serious. On July 28 they filed an 8,000-page combined construction and operating license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Read more...

Sierra Club Endorsements
By Rick Haeseler, Political Chair
During each election members of Sierra Club Political Committees at the Group, Chapter and National levels work to determine which candidates deserve the Club’s support. In this issue are endorsements for offices from state legislature to the President. The Political Committees have assessed incumbents based on their voting records in office, and challengers based on their stated positions, gathered from questionnaires and interviews. Issues addressed in the process included global warming, renewable energy, enforcement of regulations and local control over CAFOs. Read more...

The Potential Impact of Climate Change on Missouri Biodiversity
MOSCB Workshop at MONRC
by Alan Journet, MOSCB President

Part One
During the annual Missouri Natural Resources Conference held January 30 – Feb 1 2008, The Missouri Chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology (MOSCB) organized a workshop entitled “The Potential Impact of Climate Change on Missouri Biodiversity” featuring a series of presentation and an open forum question/ answer session. The following summary was written for ‘The Glade’, the newsletter of MOSCB and is reprinted here by permission of the Executive Board. Read more...

Missouri’s touch-screen vote-counting (“DRE”) machines are perfectly FREE!
Free of any public oversight
No public official or independent body has reviewed the proprietary code on these machines.

Free of any independent record of the vote The “paper trail” is not an independent record of voters’ intentions. It can be tampered with. Read more...

Jim Young: Uncommon Commitment
by Cheryl Hammond

Jim Young’s annual, year-end party to thank lemonade volunteers takes place in November as lemonade duty volunteers spread out over Jim and Phyllis Young’s rehabbed, three story Victorian on the near south side of the City of St. Louis, in the historic Soulard neighborhood. But we all know Jim is the chief lemonade volunteer. Averaging $30,000 net sales per year over 25 years, Jim and his team of lemon squeezers have made a major contribution to the work of the Eastern Missouri Group (EMG) and the Missouri Chapter. Read more...

Building the East Coast Trail, Newfoundland
Robert Zeller, Trail of Tears Group

If you have read The Shipping News (or seen the film adaptation of E. Annie Proulx’s novel), then you have some idea of life in Newfoundland. The past two summers I traveled there on Sierra Club service trips to help work on the East Coast Trail.

The Trail, the easternmost hiking trail in North America, is still a work in progress, with one stretch of well over 200 kilometers already open and other sections being worked on. When completed, it will begin at Topsail, proceed north along the west coast of the Avalon Peninsula, then south along the east coast to Cape Race, ending at Trepassey. (The Avalon, at the southeast corner of the island, is home to St. John’s, the provincial capital and the major population center. The completed section of the trail is mostly south of St. John’s.) Read more...

Op-ed: No Drilling Time to Draw a Line in the Sand
By Melissa Hope, Sierra Club Assoc Regional Representative in Missouri and Jill DeWitt, Audubon Missouri Community Outreach Policy Coordinator

With each passing day, hardworking Americans are watching the price of gas climb higher and higher as oil executives watch their profits soar.

The oil industry and its allies are capitalizing on the pain at the pump that we’re all feeling. They’re using it to get their hands on more of our public lands and coastlines. On every front, they are pushing to lift the federal offshore drilling moratorium that has been supported by consecutive Congresses and presidents—including George Bush, Sr.— since 1981. Read more...

The Great Missouri Oil Rush
By Henry Robertson
The energy follies keep getting stranger and more desperate. Only wishful thinking could insist that vast supplies of cheap oil still lie waiting beneath the tapped-out U.S., but our oil-addicted society, egged on by political demagoguery, goes madly searching for a new fix.

In August, Republican gubernatorial candidate Kenny Hulshof ratcheted up the insanity level when he announced his energy plan. He too wants to drill for oil — in Missouri. And he wants to build the state’s first oil refinery. Read more...