Solar Payback in California

Dear Gabriel,

As the most anti-environmental Congress maintains their relentless pursuit of dirty energy and dirty pollution in Washington, California is on the verge of a game-changing decision that could help nearly double the amount of customer-produced solar power in our state.1

The California Public Utilities commission (CPUC) will vote next month on a plan that would fix a loophole which currently allows utilities to unfairly limit benefits to producers of solar energy in California, (a program called net metering.)

Naturally, many utilities are fighting back hard. But if the PUC hears from enough Californians there’s a very good chance they could move forward with this important plan which would be a boon to solar power in the Golden State.

Tell the Public Utilities Commission: Support solar in California! Close the loophole that allows utilities to restrict access to net metering.

The net metering proposal under consideration is technical, but here’s how it works:

When a solar system produces more energy than it uses, that energy goes into the grid, and utilities credit the customer on their electric bill with the retail value of the energy provided.

Utilities are supposed to provide net metering credits to customers for renewable energy equaling 5% of California’s energy demand. But because no uniform standard exists for calculating the 5% cap, some utilities use a cheapskate formula that results in about half the net metering credits than the law originally intended.

The proposal at the PUC would fix the problem, making more net metering credits available to Californians. This would help ensure continued growth of rooftop solar around the state, and our clean energy industry.

That would be a very big deal for clean energy in our state. But PUC needs to hear from a lot of Californians to make it happen. Please submit a comment now:
http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=6881726&id=39180-266627-AGy71ix&t=7

Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

The Land Is Wasted

Dear Gabriel,

Emmanuel Kuru’s livelihood was destroyed.

In August 2008, the Shell Oil pipeline that ran through his property in the Niger Delta burst, smothering everything in its path with crude oil. His life as a fisherman and a farmer was wrecked.

“The land is wasted. Oil kills everything. We are stranded.”

Shell’s oil spill took away Emmanuel’s livelihood, his drinking water, the economic value of his land — his very way of life.

His neighbors, and tens of thousands of people living along the Niger Delta, have suffered the same devastating fate caused by oil spill after oil spill. While the Niger Delta has been awash in pollution, Shell has been swimming in profits — $30.9 billion globally in 2011.

Tell Shell — Own up. Pay up. Clean up. Make this message loud, clear and inescapable — add your name to Amnesty’s petition demanding justice for Emmanuel and the people harmed by Shell in the Niger Delta.

Ahead of Shell’s Annual General Meeting this May, Amnesty will deliver the signatures of hundreds of thousands of activists from around the world in an unsparing public message to CEO Peter Voser and Shell shareholders.

Oil spills are endemic in the Niger Delta, and Shell is the biggest culprit. Why does the oil giant refuse to come clean about its spills in Nigeria? Just yesterday, Amnesty International and the Nigerian NGO, the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development, released new analysis showing that at least 103,000 barrels of oil were spilled over 72 days in Emmanuel’s town of Bodo — more than 60 times the volume that Shell repeatedly has claimed leaked.

But thanks to activists like you, corporations like Shell can’t hide their human rights abuses anymore. Amnesty International is calling Shell out in a big way, urging the company to make a clear and public commitment to contribute $1 billion as an initial payment to an independent clean-up fund.

People like Emmanuel deserve justice: a full clean-up, real reparations and a beginning to an end to their nightmare.

It’s time to hold Shell accountable and ensure it cleans up its act in Nigeria. Add your name to Amnesty’s petition against Shell today.

In solidarity,

Tanuka Loha
Director, Demand Dignity Campaign
Amnesty International USA

Changing Lives In Rwanda

News from the Rwandan Orphans Project

Great Leaps Forward

It was April 2010 when the ROP Center moved from a dark and dingy warehouse to the beautiful site we occupy now. That move was a giant step forward for the organization, one that we’re still very proud of today. In the last two years a lot of ideas, work and money have been put into what was once just an abandoned school on the outskirts of Kigali, reshaping it into the wonderful orphanage and school it is today.

But this month that reminds us of our past has also brought with it some great news about the future of the ROP. Engineers Without Borders, a large international organization, has chosen to partner with the ROP to build a new school and education center on the land we acquired late last year. This comes as great news because it will be the first facility constructed on what will be the future home of the entire ROP Center, and it will feature classrooms and learning facilities custom built to address the needs and challenges of teaching and learning in Rwanda. Everyone from the children to the teachers to the administration is very excited to see the project get started in June when the first team of EWB engineers is scheduled to visit the site and begin planning the design and construction.

This is just another remarkable milestone in the short history of the ROP. In just a few short years we have gone from an overcrowded warehouse with a leaky roof and no electricity to our current home that, while great, we are having to rent for a large fee each month. Now we are on the verge of building on our very own land, and we couldn’t be more excited about the future of the ROP.

The new ROP school will be just one facility of many we hope will someday occupy our sprawling land in the Kibaya valley. Of course we also hope to build new living spaces and other necessary needs for the orphans and vulnerable children who live with us. But we also want to expand the ROP to be more than an orphanage and school. One day we would like it to be an all encompassing community center where local impoverished families can seek help educating and caring for their own children through our academic and vocational training programs, where they can seek the advice and assistance of our social workers, and benefit from other programs.

While the ROP is still a small grassroots organization, our dreams and ambitions are large. We feel that, with the ongoing support and enthusiasm of our donors (people like you) we can reach them and even surpass them. So stay tuned. More good news to come!

Ready To Act

Dear Gabriel,

Act.

That’s what 15,000 of you told me Amnesty does best. Here are some other things I learned from last month’s survey responses:

You believe Amnesty International makes an impact on human rights by mobilizing supporters like you.

You’re ready to act — you want to attend rallies, get online and use social media to contact elected officials, write letters, and connect with families and friends.

You’ve got priorities. You want to work on behalf of individuals, defend the human rights of women, and respond to crisis situations around the world as they develop. And we see strong interest in working on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights; immigrant rights; and corporate responsibility.

A big thank you to everyone who took the survey. We are already using the information to develop cutting-edge tools that will create an even greater impact and help us respond quickly to developing situations.

Let’s get started today. Congress is about to vote on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). This legislation aims to protect women from violence and exploitation, but at this moment, many critical parts of the bill — provisions that would protect Native American women, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and immigrant women in particular — are in danger of being left out.

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill within a week – Tell your Senator that we need a strong Violence Against Women Act that protects ALL women.

Thanks again for all you do for Amnesty,

Suzanne Nossel
Executive Director
Amnesty International USA

Turtles, Dolphins & Oil

Dear Gabriel

It can take a female loggerhead up to 30 years before ever laying one egg. And all it takes is one layer of oil to cause damage or death to the baby sea turtles inside.

Two years ago, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill proved how disastrous drilling can be for wildlife. Now Congress is proposing to open even more areas to drill in the Gulf of Mexico – putting adult and baby loggerhead sea turtles at risk. Will you help us keep them safe?

Help us protect Florida’s animals from the threat of oil spills – just $10 will make a difference!

Loggerhead turtles are already threatened with extinction, and their numbers continue to fall as their habitats are destroyed. Eighty percent of loggerheads in the U.S. call Florida their home – so damage to their nesting beaches could be catastrophic to the species’ survival. But in the past several months, members from both chambers of Congress have pushed for legislation to open up the Eastern Gulf of Mexico to drilling – an area that has been historically off limits.

We are pushing back, and have organizers on the ground in Florida to show Congress how strong our movement is. So far we have been successful, but the threats to Florida’s wildlife keep coming, and we need your help.

Your support helps keep Florida’s nesting grounds clean and safe. Give $10 or more by April 30 and help protect sea turtles and other wildlife from danger»

All it takes is one spill like the Deepwater Horizon accident to put turtles, dolphins, and manatees at devastating risk. It’s just not worth it.

It’s up to us to prevent needless deaths. You and I are the oceans’ protectors, and with our combined efforts, we can keep Florida’s waters safe from oil drilling.

For the oceans,
Emily Fisher
Oceana

Accountable Tax Reform

From Nation of Change
by Simon Johnson
22 April 2012

That Old Tax Magic

Tax time in the United States – the dreaded mid-April deadline for filing annual income-tax forms – has come and gone. The system, Americans have been reminded, has become painfully complex, with many a loophole through which one might try to squeeze. The fear of an audit by the Internal Revenue Service lurks in homes across the country.

At such a sensitive time, it is no surprise to hear politicians pitching the idea of “tax reform” – suggesting that they can simplify the system, close loopholes, and use the proceeds to reduce tax rates. The allure of such appeals is that a crackdown on others’ tax avoidance will mean that you personally will pay less in taxes.

Follow Project Syndicate on Facebook or Twitter. For more from Simon Johnson, click here.

In the policy jargon increasingly heard in today’s political discourse, tax reform will be “revenue neutral” – meaning that it will not worsen the budget deficit or drive up the national debt. The broader subliminal message is that you can have whatever you currently expect in terms of government services for less than it costs you now.

The problem with this vision of tax reform is that it is magical – an attractive illusion with no basis in reality. Consider the recent pronouncements of Mitt Romney – now the presumptive Republican candidate to challenge President Barack Obama in November. Romney wants to cut tax rates, mainly benefiting those at the upper end of the income distribution. He also wants to close loopholes, but none of the details that he has offered add up to much. His boldest proposal – eliminating deductions for interest paid on mortgages on second homes – is trivial in terms of generating revenue.

Obama is only slightly better. While he talks less about “tax reform,” he is currently communicating the message that merely raising taxes on rich people – the infamous 1% – will bring the budget and national debt under control. That, too, is a pipedream.

Americans – and taxpayers in many other countries – need a more transparent approach to assessing candidates’ budget proposals. In the US, there are groups that offer their own assessments. For example, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget performed an admirable service in “scoring” the fiscal plans of rival candidates for the Republican nomination.

The problem is that in an election with high stakes and deep polarization, who, exactly, can voters trust? Everyone has an agenda, perceived or real. The veracity of any organization that is funded by particular individuals, or through less transparent corporate channels, will be called into question.

What the US and many other countries need is an independent, competent, and experienced body that leans neither right nor left. Fortunately, the US has the Congressional Budget Office, which scores legislation in terms of its budgetary impact, assesses official budget proposals, and formulates its own economic projections. (I serve on the CBO’s Panel of Economic Advisers, which comments on the draft forecast twice a year, but does not assess budget proposals or anything else.)

Because the CBO reports to the relevant congressional committees – those dealing with tax and budgets – both Republicans and Democrats watch its every move. But the CBO, created in the 1970’s precisely to bring greater transparency and accountability to the rather byzantine congressional budget process, really is independent and run by professionals.

The CBO does not, however, score proposals by political candidates, and that is part of the problem. In the run-up to the pre-election debates between Obama and Romney, both sides should agree to submit detailed budget proposals in the correct format for CBO assessment. The relevant congressional committees also should agree to this exercise.

Read entire article at Nation Of Change.

Mining Law of 1872?

Dear Gabriel,

Chicago Peak is located in Western Montana’s Cabinet Mountains Wilderness Area, and is a holy place for the Salish and Kootenai native tribes.

In other words: It’s a terrible location for a massive proposed copper and silver mine.

But under the shockingly antiquated General Mining Law of 1872, the National Forest Service says it has no choice but to approve the mine. Even worse, this relic of a law will hand nearly $20 billion dollars worth of publicly owned minerals to Canadian company Revett Minerals, totally for free.2 We get nothing.

This mine is only one example. Overall, Congress’s failure to update our 140-year-old mining law is one of the most egregious, expensive and destructive failures in federal land management.

Tell Congress: It is long past time to update the General Mining Law of 1872! Click here to automatically sign the petition.

The General Mining Law of 1872 is literally an artifact of another era. In 1872, Women could not vote in America. There were only 37 States in the Union. And our government sought to settle the vast Western territories by handing out mining rights to fortune-seeking settlers.

Yet today, this relic continues to govern hard rock mining of metals like copper, uranium, silver and gold. The result is a massive giveaway to giant mining companies that rips off taxpayers to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.3 Under the law:

• Mining leases can be purchased at 1872 prices of $2.50 — $5 an acre.
• Companies can mine publicly owned mineral resources without paying any royalties. We just give it away!
• Federal land managers must prioritize mining over all other land uses.
• The law contains NO environmental protections — which has led to the pollution of more than 40% of Western U.S. watershed, and left us holding the bill for an estimated more than $30 billion in mine cleanup and reclamation.

Tell Congress: Update the Mining Law of 1872! Click here to automatically sign the petition.

In today’s world of giant, international mining conglomerates using massive pieces of equipment and polluting huge volumes of water to rip up the earth — as opposed to Wild West times of risk-taking prospectors and their pack mules seeking fortune — this law should be a page in history books, not our actual law books!

Congress has twice tried and failed to reform the law. But it’s long past time for an updated mining law that allows land managers to protect unique public lands from mining, implements strong environmental standards for mines, collects funds for mining reclamation, and puts a fair royalty on the extraction of these publicly owned resources.

It is crazy that our mining law pre-dates the invention of the telephone and the light bulb. Tell Congress to stop this massive, outdated giveaway. Click below to automatically sign the petition:
http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=6038698&id=38593-266627-COAUwNx&t=10

Thanks for helping to bring our mining laws into the 21st century.

Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

Empowering Rwanda’s Children

I was on the board of The Ihangane Project and continue to support their work. This is a wonderful article.

From The Huffington Post
by Suzanne Skees
15 April 2012

Rwanda Now: Healing the Grandchildren of the Genocide

Julienne was just four during the 1994 genocide. She is HIV-positive and works as an artisan for this member-owned women’s collective through The Ihangane Project. Ihangane brought solar lighting to the health clinic where she gave birth safely without transmitting the virus to her 4-month-old son, Kingi; they also provide nutrition supplements for Kingi and gardening and nutrition training for Julienne.

Ruli: Rwanda: Far up in the hills of central Africa in a village called Ruli, families live as do 90% of Rwandans, working the land. To get to Ruli, you have to go off the map, over 2.5 hours of bumpy roads, winding your way northwest of Kigali; and you have to be willing to leap backward in time. Here, people live mired in the past, swinging hoes and hoisting water, centuries behind in infrastructure, yet also suffering the aftereffects of a more recent past — the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Already challenged by poverty, this land-locked country with a legacy of colonizer-instilled tribal conflict experienced decades of violence that culminated in a gruesome genocide of nearly 1 million Tutsis and Hutus. Another 2 million fled to hellish refugee camps in neighboring countries. Houses burned, livestock died, fields languished, and the economy nosedived. It took years to discern whom to prosecute and forgive, who owned what, and how to live together again. Women were widowed, children orphaned, and an already-high prevalence of HIV skyrocketed among women survivors of rape.

2012-04-12-WendyIhangane.jpg

Dr. Wendy Leonard practices family medicine and HIV/AIDS/TB care in California and Rwanda.

U.S. physician Dr. Wendy Leonard decided to take action. She boarded a flight in 2006 as the first physician volunteer for the Clinton Foundation’s HIV clinical mentoring program in Rwanda. They sent her to a remote village called Ruli, and told her to oversee government health initiatives. She found, instead, that she had a lot of listening — and learning — to do.

“It’s really about understanding who it is you’re trying to help,” Wendy says. “Every time I’m in Rwanda, I learn more about the people and the culture.”

The first week on the job, Wendy’s mentor, Dr. Jean de Dieu Ngirabega, told her, “If you want to help our community, you must first get to know us.” He took her to a local wedding, a Catholic/traditional ceremony that carried on all day. Hundreds of guests sat patiently in searing heat on wobbly wooden benches, trading stories and gossip, watching a never-ending procession of neighbors bearing gifts in agaseke, hand-woven lidded baskets borne atop women’s heads filled with rice, beans, seeds — anything the new couple may need to start their life together. The father of the bride presented them with a cow. Wendy knew the hosts were among the poorest of Africa’s poor, and all her theories about charity evaporated in the stifling air as she watched them feed every single person who showed up.

“Everyone gets a Fanta, and everyone gets fed — even if only corn on the cob,” she marvels. “No matter how poor you might be, everyone provides for each other.” She saw this practice again at the clinical level. For example, surveys revealed that 200 community health volunteers wished for increased nutrition training — not salaries. “It makes sense to try and raise funds to pay even a small stipend,” Wendy reflects now, “but just by asking, we discovered that was not their motivation at all.”

Then, the doctor from America flipped the model — from top-down development to community-based grassroots–and launched The Ihangane Project in 2008. The name means being patient; its mission is to improve healthcare and economic development. Ihangane is “just facilitating what Rwandans are already doing,” Wendy explains. “All our projects are initiated by Rwandans. We always ask, What can we do to strengthen their capacity?”

45-year-old Dr. Avite runs the 168-bed Ruli District Hospital, where he sees patients for accidents on motorbikes and in “unofficial local mines”; cardiovascular and cirrhosis problems. Throughout Rwanda, the population suffers a high rate of alcoholism and PTSD, anxiety, and depressive disorders: Part of the legacy of the genocide. Dr. Avite and his wife have three adopted teenage children.

Ihangane provides technical and financial support for community-created models:

artisan sales by microenterprise collective
cross-sector collaborations
solar power initiative
maternal and infant care
rural hospital improvements
local healthcare linkages
nutrition, gardening, and pig-farming projects

Ihangane aims for self-sustaining solutions that soon will graduate from donor inputs. “For example,” explains Wendy, “for HIV-exposed infants in Ruli at high risk for malnutrition, we provide sosoma, a porridge of soya, sorghum, and maize fortified with vitamins and minerals. This supports one of the many truly beautiful protocols from the government [Ministry of Health]; but the funding is not there. So, we are building farming collectives to grow component grains. We’ll grow locally and sell to Ruli hospital at a much more affordable cost. The farmers also can sell their surplus crops for an additional profit.”

The day we visit, rain falls softly at the top of one of Rwanda’s “thousand hills,” and the red soil looks rich. However, this land has been stripped by one-crop farming and poisoned by toxic pesticides. Many farming families have been reduced to a diet of rice and maize. Banana trees carpet the hills, yet only a few still produce fruit — often used to make beer. Now, Ruli residents have asked for diversified garden inputs and training on how to grow high-yield crops and cook nutritious meals.

The main hospital has electricity; however, several of the eight outlying health centers previously had no power. Women who went into labor at night had to give birth in the dark. “Now we have solar lighting in eight health centers,” Isaac, an Ihangane volunteer and lab technician, tells us. “We can light the maternity ward 24 hours a day, power a microscope and a radio phone used to call for an ambulance if needed.” Partnering with Catapult Design, “the Ihangane solar project is just on time,” Isaac smiles.

Gratien, another intern, bicycles from his father’s nearby farm to help the Ruli Women’s Cooperative launch a pig farming enterprise in nearby Nyange. Livestock farming will diversify their income and allow them to increase their membership. “Pigs are simple,” Gratien laughs. “They are not complicated. They need only a small pen. They eat slop.” Ihangane will raise funds for initial building and livestock materials, and then Ruli will take it from there.

A few of the thirty artisans of the Ihangane Women’s Association. Each member pays $25 to join. They put 10 percent of profits into savings, create group loans for one another, and divide the remaining 90 percent among members. Founding president Madeleine (far right) taught the members to dry sisal fibers, dye them, and weave into traditional wedding baskets. They also produce cards, pictures, and jewelry.

“Sometimes when we want so badly to help, we just come in and try to help,” Wendy muses. “If we come in to learn who they are first, sometimes we find amazingly rich resources already in the community.” For the artisans, Ihangane provided startup materials, and will provide follow-up training through local fair-trade expert from Rwanda Economic Development Initiative (REDI).

Read complete article and see video at The Huffington Post.

Help Family In Bahrain

Dear Gabriel,

No one wanted it to come to this, but it has.

My father, prominent Bahraini human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, is on a 9-week hunger strike protesting the life sentence he received for peaceful protest.

In prison, security forces broke his jaw in four places and subjected him to severe physical, psychological and sexual torture. Since his arrest last year, my mother was fired from her job, my sister was arrested five times, and my brothers-in-law were arrested and tortured.

Authorities decide when to let anyone from my family see him. The human rights of my family and of thousands of peaceful Bahrainis like us have been deeply violated by the government.

My father doesn’t want to end his life. He wants to end injustice and violence against the Bahraini people.

Help me break through now, to save his life. Demand the immediate and unconditional release of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and all prisoners of conscience in Bahrain.

Many governments have shamefully ignored the daily and widespread human rights violations in my country. As controversy swirls around Bahrain’s plans to host the Grand Prix auto race this month, Bahraini authorities desperately try to assure the world that all is back to “business as usual.” But the people of Bahrain continue to call for change, and my father may pay for that goal with his life. Pressure from people like you may force action.

As one activist to another, I ask for your help securing the release of my father and of all of the unjustly imprisoned activists in Bahrain. Delay could mean death.

Please take action for my father today. I am forever grateful for your support.

In solidarity,

Maryam al-Khawaja
Head of Foreign Relations, Bahrain Center for Human Rights
Daughter of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja

Gay Adoption Advocate

From Nation of Change
16 April 2012

CNN Includes Gay Adoption Advocate in ‘Heros’ Series

CNN has named David Wing-Kovarik, who founded Families Like Ours to help gay and lesbian people adopt children from the foster system, as one of its Heroes of 2012. “I’m fighting for the right of that child to have that family,” Wing Kovarik says. “It’s why I keep doing it every single day.” Watch a short segment about his work:

http://www.nationofchange.org/cnn-includes-gay-adoption-advocate-heros-series-1334592700