Peak PIELC:
Public Interest Environmental Law Conference

PIELC states up to 3,000 people attend the conference. But recent PIELCs have had smaller audiences. Perhaps PIELC has peaked, and new holistic approaches for the conference — and the environmental movement — are needed for broader public participation.
Practical permaculture steps to implement ecological shifts and cross partisan divides might extricate environmental groups from devolving into part of a political party.
— Mark Robinowitz
from a flyer distributed at PIELC, March 5 - 8, 2015

 

David Brower’s Legacy

David Brower, one of the main environ-mentalists of the 20th century, was a speaker at PIELC for many years. In 2000, at his final PIELC appearance, he said that environmentalism has merely slowed down the rate that things got worse and that wasn't good enough for our survival.
Brower helped expand the Sierra Club from a modest hiking club into a powerful force for environmental protection. After years of service, the Club kicked him out, his effectiveness was not universally welcomed.
Brower's last act on his deathbed was to vote for Nader for President, although he didn't live to see the theft of the election.

“Compromise is often necessary, but it ought not to originate with environmental leaders. Our role is to hold fast to what we believe is right, to fight for it, to find allies, and to adduce all possible arguments for our cause. If we cannot find enough vigor in us or our friends to win, then let someone else propose the compromise, which we must then work hard to coax our way. We thus become a nucleus around which activists can build and function.”
— David Brower

Brower was a staunch opponent of nuclear power:

David Brower: "Is the minor convenience of allowing the present generation the luxury of doubling its energy consumption every 10 years worth the major hazard of exposing the next 20,000 generations to this lethal waste?" www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/ dont_mini-mize_the_dangers_of_nuclear_power/

"Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Brower was also instrumental in leading environmentalists to rethink their early support of nuclear power." www.browercenter.org/about/who-was-david-brower

Greenwash is Sustain-a-bull

Governor Kitzhaber’s resignation is an opportunity to look closer at greenwashing — false claims of environmental protection.  Cylvia Hayes was an energy consultant allegedly promoting green power, yet it was more of a get-rich-quick scam than a serious effort to mitigate fossil fuel depletion and climate change.  Hayes and Kitzhaber knew how to speak green(wash) while pushing highway expansions, clearcuts, incinerators and other toxic practices.
It’s likely that the new Governor, Brown, will not be truly green.  As Secretary of State, she was on the State Lands Board along with Kitzhaber where they voted to sell state forest lands to timber companies.

Helicopter Herbicide Sprays: Regulate or Ban?

For four decades, downwinder communities have tried to stop helicopter spraying of herbicides over clearcuts. Two bills in the Oregon legislature address this.
A bill promoted by Beyond Toxics and other groups would require better buffers for these sprays, although helicopter rotors can blow the poison for miles and the State Dept. of Forestry rarely enforces existing regulations. It also would require record keeping of the spraying.
After some downwinders complained that this bill would not prevent poisoning, a second bill was introduced that would ban aerial spraying — House Bill 3123.
Banning toxic abuses has been more successful for protecting public health than regulations. Air pollution from lead was reduced by banning it as a gasoline additive, not by permits to permit pollution.

Clearcutting the Climate

“Clearcutting the Climate” was a conference held in Eugene, Oregon in January 2008 co-organized by Josh Schlossberg, Shannon Wilson, Samantha Chirillo, and Mark Robinowitz. We brought together forest scientists and climate experts to discuss deforestation. An archive of videos is at ForestClimate.org
Slowing climate change would need to include bans on clearcutting and allowing tree plantations to grow back into forests. Deforestation not only emits carbon and methane, it also disrupts rainfall patterns.

Democrats vs. Forests

In 2014, Senator Wyden and other Democrats passed a rider that virtually eliminates safeguards on 45 million acres of National Forests, without opposition from environmental NGOs. Now they are pushing S.132 to increase BLM logging.

 

billboard sponsored by Eco Advocates Northwest, along Interstate 5

Freeway Fighters Bypassed

PIELC has repeatedly rejected panel proposals to discuss how to use federal transportation law to stop highway expansions. Instead, this year, there is a panel on “Funding Sustainable Transportation” with Karmen Fore, Governor Brown’s highway advisor, Travis Brouwer, ODOT’s spokesperson, and a road planner from the City of Eugene.
ODOT is planning over $18 billion in highway widenings and new bypasses. These expansions are ignored by Oregon environmental groups. Two new bypasses started construction in 2013: Newberg -Dundee Bypass through farmland and Sunrise highway in Clackamas County.
This writer did the technical work that resulted in “No Build” for the West Eugene Porkway, a bypass planned through the West Eugene Wetlands nature preserve. But this work was apparently not worthy of a PIELC panel to discuss highway laws.
Federal law requires federally funded highways to plan for traffic two decades in the future. If Peak Energy and Peak Traffic were included, this would negate the “purpose and need” for new bypasses and highway widenings. Nationally, highway expansion plans exceed a trillion dollars. Details: PeakTraffic.org

 

City of Eugene: Carbon Neutral Highway Widening

In 2014, the City of Eugene passed a law declaring the City will become “carbon neutral.” This was done in response to pressure from Our Children’s Trust and was cheered by environmentalists. It sounds great unless you look at the details.
The City’s law requires purchase of “carbon credits” to supposedly offset pollution. The City plans to continue highway widening, overdevelopment and paving farmland. These plans include widening Beltline highway to 11 lanes. Giving public funds to consultants cannot offset this pollution. A serious examination of carbon credits is at carbontradewatch.org and a satire is at cheatneutral.com Details on the City’s law at SustainEugene.org

 

100% renewable? Code for “energy depletion”

Many environmental groups advocate for “100% renewable” energy, but without mention that fossil fuels are more energy dense than the “alternatives.” This also distracts from the math of peak energy, since we will all reduce our carbon footprint as the oil, coal and unnatural gas deplete.
After using solar PV panels for nearly a quarter century, I’ve concluded the most important response to energy overshoot would be to relocalize food production since solar does not power food delivery trucks.

 

Keystone and XL Pipelines

While protests have focused on the Keystone XL pipeline segment, the rest of the Keystone project has been approved by the Obama administration and built, without much public awareness.
Meanwhile, the Alaska Pipeline, which powers motors in the Northwest, continues to decline toward “low flow” shutdown. www.PeakChoice.org/peak-alaska-pipeline.html
Discussion about tar sands pipelines ignore how it is “scraping the bottom of the barrel” now that the easier to get oil is mostly used up. Welcome to Peak Oil.

 

Import - Export - Import

Proposals to “export” oil, natural gas and coal through Northwest ports are based on the lie that there is so much fossil fuel that we can export vast amounts to Asia.
In reality, we import nearly half our oil, conventional nat. gas is in sharp decline, coal has peaked and fracking is a short term bubble that is near or at its peak.
The best work debunking these false “export” claims has been done by Post Carbon Institute, PostCarbon.org Fracking is toxic but the other half of the story is exaggerated estimates of supply.

www.resilience.org/stories/2015-02-25/obama-s-veto-of-keystone-xl-bittersweet-for-texans-forced-to-allow-the-pipeline-on-their-land (photos of Keystone’s southern part, opened January 2014)
Obama's Veto of Keystone XL Bittersweet for Texans Forced to Allow the Pipeline on Their Land

www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/04/dancing-around-the-collapsing-edges-of-industrial-civilization/

MARCH 4, 2014
Dancing Around the Collapsing Edges of Industrial Civilization
by MICHAEL DONNELLY

excerpt

Let's get back to this year's theme: "Running into Running Out." Perhaps the first clue that this wasn't going to lead to what I thought it would was that the hourglass used as logo with the theme was upside-down – 95% of the sand was still in the top chamber.

I perused the agenda for panels and Keynote addresses on just what strategies and sacrifices we were going to have to commit to in order to effectively address that "Running Out." Out of 138 panels, just one was on Population and Consumption – the underlying cause of it all: "Advocacy in the Anthropocene: How to Talk about Population to Save the Environment." The excellent presentation was organized by the Center for Biological Diversity's (CBD) Population and Sustainability wing. And, there is no denying just how needed their population program is, especially when the other big greens studiously avoid this elephant. ....

One panel was on "Federal Forest Litigation in the Context of Collaboration" and another one was "New Science on Fire, Water and Forests" which looked into how the actual results of Collaborative Restoration Forestry's chainsaw surgery does far more harm than good for forest ecosystems. As with Oregon Wild, no groundswell of grassroots membership ever directed any of these groups to "collaborate" with industrial forestry on yet another excuse for stump-creation. That directive came directly from their funders and Democrat Party allies. That hoodwinked CBD, like duped Oregon Wild, is also now opposing huge Southwest timber sales that the Forest Service claims are based on Restoration precepts bodes well. (Though it does remind me of when the 1940s Vichy French "collaborators" whined when the Nazis arrested 11 of their top leaders AFTER said leaders had "collaborated" and sent 65,000 Jews to Germany.)

Anything at all, but Sacrifice

I heard a lot over the weekend on what's wrong. Yet, every "solution" I heard proposed all weekend was as bad, or worse, as the one I heard before it. Trees converted to jet fuel!!; Nukes, small-scale Nukes, Carbon fees and dividends, Sabotage, Forest Health/Restoration logging "collaborations," Cascadian Secession, Socially Responsible Investing, all sorts of minor policy tweaks, "We the People against Corporate Personhood," multiple panels on "Crushing Patriarchy" "Misogyny & Ecocide," Revolution,…it was surreal. Cascadian Secession was the sole pipedream "solution" I could get behind, though there may be hope for yet another Teamsters and Turtles coalition with labor.

Yet, there was nothing at all about sacrifice…about drastic reductions in consumption. NOTHING!

 

Deadly Energy

Of course, the main indicators that we are "Running Out" of time is Carbon Pollution and resultant Climate Chaos and Extinctions. So, also of course, one would expect that that and strategies on how to combat it would be THE major focus of the conference and indeed a large presence was climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, who appeared on various panels and gave a Keynote address.

I arrived early for his first panel "Merging Climate Science with the Law and Communication" figuring it'd be packed. It was. Anti-nuke activists were handing out info at the doors on Hansen's pro-Nukes position.

A very good reporter for the good local Eugene Weekly asked what she should ask Hansen a few days ago before he arrived. I asked her in the hall before the panel if she had asked my question "what is your personal carbon footprint and where does it come from?"

In a great irony, after flying into Beijing, Hansen was hospitalized in China two days before flying to PIELC due to foul air quality and couldn't respond to any of her list of questions!

Hansen delved into the science and then trotted out a cockamamie "solution" he and fellow scientists (and funders, no doubt) concocted. It would have a Carbon Fee collected on carbon at its source. Some sort of new bureaucracy would be set up to collect the fees and instead of the fees going into the Federal Treasury; they would then be redistributed as Dividends to consumers. This preposterously unworkable idea then purports to be the driver behind lowering carbon use and pollution; so much so that the increase in planetary temperature would be then kept below 1.5 degrees Centigrade before 2080, instead of a more disastrous 2 degrees or more.

It wasn't long before the crowd got dazed and confused by that line of thought and someone brought up Nukes. Hansen responded with "No one has ever died from a nuclear accident."

"That's not true" rang out from the crowd and it was on. The rest of the time was a debate on the merits of Nukes. Hansen noted that "one million people die from coal in China every year." Others countered with deaths from radiation.

As soon as the panel ended, a group of his questioners approached Hansen and started in on the topic. I went up to get a photo. As I snapped the shot, Hansen told the stunned group, "More people have died installing solar panels on roofs than have died in nuclear accidents."

One wag said, "I've said it all along; this is the epicenter of Greenwashing in North America this weekend."

 

False Solutions squared

Mind blown myself, I rode off to another part of campus to attend a panel with a title right up my alley: "False Solutions: The Flaws of Green Energy." Two guys from something called the Fertile Ground Environmental Institute had the facts down as to how "Renewable" Energy is really reconstituted fossil fuel and , thus, more inefficient than just burning the fossil fuel for electrons in the first place. They examined the vast amounts of coal that go into making solar panels, wind towers, steel, cement, etc. They had photos of massive mines, including the huge Rare Earth metals mine in China that provides batteries/magnets for 80% of our iPhones, iPads, wind power generators, Pius batteries, etc. – the basis for this form of industrial energy. They claimed that 1.2 million Tibetans have died in the forced labor (slavery) of the mines – 20% of all Tibetans alive! (Yes. I'm checking into that.)

I've been waiting for a solid analysis of "Renewable Energy" and this was the first time I've seen such a panel discussion on it at a green event. Even with massive subsidies to wind and solar, these provide fewer than 2% of overall power in the US grid and even that is unusable without base-load steam-generated power – coal, nukes, Biomass or natural gas. What really passes for "renewable" under the odious "25 x 25 renewable portfolio" plans adopted by most states is Biomass – the burning of trees for electrons. Getting those trees to the steam plants is the real underlying purpose of the many new logging plans that Oregon Wild and others now oppose.

As my buddy Jeff notes, "And since 90% of "clean energy" is the biomassacre, every time I hear someone want to deal with "climate" I hear the march of the bio-suicides: Bio-char, bio-mass, bio-fuel. Therefore, I despair every time I hear anyone talking about climate, because I see it as a symbol of the environmental movement, if there ever really was one, having lost its mind, and its way, and only being comfortable with nothing that will make any difference at all, as intended.

Right now from Michigan to Vermont to Wisconsin to California THAT is the suicide of the planet being most ramped up, and despite the lies of those pushing renewable energy, is going to double, triple, ten times more as we promote "getting off fossil fuels" to save the climate; thereby assassinating nature in the name of green.

So for me, when I hear "climate" concern, I hear the trees and orangutans and tigers and wolves and life I love being slaughtered even faster. The planet and the climate are being destroyed even faster in the name of preventing climate change."

Sabotage, then what?

Well, the False Solutions panel devolved quickly enough. Admitting their ties to DGR, the panelists then trotted out their "solution." It was Sabotage! Take down the grid! They praised efforts that have damaged the grid and other energy supply routes. No talk at all of how, if that succeeded, then what? As the Population and Consumption panel noted; 60% of our food is grown with natural gas-derived fertilizers, it's delivered via fossil fuels…cutting off fossil fuels cold turkey means genocide. The great irony of Industrial Civilization is that we cannot live much longer with it and billions cannot/will not live without it.

 

www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/13/garden-variety-environmentalism/

WEEKEND EDITION MARCH 13-15, 2015

The Band-Aid Wing of the Green Growth Economy
Garden Variety Environmentalism
by MICHAEL DONNELLY

“The environmental movement needs shaming at this point.”
– Denise Boggs

[excerpt]

It was 60+ degrees and sunny – had been for weeks – in western Oregon, as I arrived in Eugene for the annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC) at the University of Oregon Law School – the planet’s oldest such conference. The conference, attended by over 3000 attorneys, activists, wonks and government officials, is put on by law students at the UofO. Other students from other top environmental law schools (Lewis and Clark, Vermont Law …) also pitch in organizing and moderating panel discussions. The organizers did a remarkable job juggling speakers, attendees and all the little things necessary.

While suffering from a bigger than usual allergy attack brought on by many types of trees and flowering plants budding out at the same time; I, as usual, perused the conference brochure for panels and Keynote addresses that would take on the big eco-threats of the day.

Out of over 200 panel presentations and twelve Keynote speakers, there were 1) three panels on citizen activism (two at the same time); 2) one panel on Consumption; 3) one panel on Population; 4) one on the “false solution” of “Green” Energy;…and NONE at all on Biomass/Biofuels! Not at all promising.

The first sign that PIELC was headed down the rabbit hole was the Fund for Wild Nature’s panel presenting the Grassroots Activist of the Year Award. A grand total of five people attended as Arlene Montgomery was honored. Us five heard inspiring tales of how she and the two other women panelists have carried on with great success against all odds and little money.

I found it quite an irony that the award was presented by Doug Bevington, author of the “Rebirth of Environmentalism,” in which he wrote that the Center for Biological Diversity was the model for grassroots activism in the 21st Century. No one from the high-budget, big green litigation shop was there at the grassroots panel, though CBD staffers dominated the conference overall, appearing on five times as many panels as any other group. CBD has perfected the suing to get endangered species listings and garnering millions in Attorneys Fees in the process. Yet, rarely is there any critical habitat set aside in these listing victories – rendering them hollow, at best.

And, with the abject failure of the Clinton Option 9 Northwest Forest Plan to save the Northern Spotted Owl, there is deafening silence from CBD and the rest of the professional Endangered Species listings camp on an overdue Upgrade Petition for the owls, as Endangered, rather than the current more mild Threatened Status would result in real set asides – likely ALL old growth habitat remaining (8% of original, at best), if not all national forest lands in owl habitat – and the funders and Democrats will have none of that. The owls have no chance.

In a way, Bevington sadly was right. CBD is a new model, not of grassroots activism by any means; but of how to become an undemocratic, well-compensated big green outfit masquerading as a citizen membership group quicker than any predecessors.

....

Ultimately PIELC is a Job Fair for eco-law students. It is not the more activist entity is started out as. In those days, grassroots activists, like Cyril Scott and allies, identified an issue and set up resistance to it. When needed, legal teams were assembled to carry out the paperwork resistance. Now, it is inverted with high-paid pro-Democrat foundation agents dictating eco-policy and even what issues are on the radar and fundable. It has devolved into a multi-billion dollars per year growth industry run by big foundations (whose wealth came/comes mostly from energy production), lawyers and Democratic Party factotums. Many “green” groups have annual budgets in the tens of millions – The Nature Conservancy alone (one of the proponents of Biomass) has over $20 billion in assets while dogged grassroots activists show up whether paid or not, often getting undermined (or their efforts fund-raised upon) by the big greens.

The problem with having a “movement” lead by a professional class who collectively are a combination of General McClellans and Marshal Petains is that you get either hubris-ridden ineptness (paid to pull punches) or proud collaborators calling the shots and driving off the activists necessary to carry any issue to true victory. This top down mindset ultimately ends with: promoting, rather than opposing Biomass/Biofuel schemes; eliding consumption and population; failure to walk the talk… and planting milkweeds-in-a-garden being the only “victories.”

During the course of the job fair, some 800 species went extinct. The professional Green Growth industry is a dead end. It’s way past time to walk the talk. There are NO Law Jobs on a Dead Planet.

MICHAEL DONNELLY lives in Salem, OR. He was plaintiff in the first successful Ancient Forest lawsuit. He can be reached at Pahtoo@aol.com

 

 

 

PIELC keynote speaker (2019)

Norris McDonald promotes nuclear reactors, "clean" coal, LNG, DDT

www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Norris_McDonald
"African American Environmentalist Association"

describes himself as "a black conservative environmentalist" and supports nuclear fuel reprocessing (the most toxic technology invented), "clean coal," a LNG terminal, DDT

 

Norris McDonald signed the attached letter asking Trump to "make nuclear great again."

www.environmentalprogress.org/trump-letter/

www.dailycaller.com/2016/12/19/greens-and-experts- want-trump-to-stop-nuclear-industrys-collapse/

An Open Letter on Nuclear Energy to President- Elect Donald Trump and Governor Rick Perry

Dear President-Elect Donald Trump and Governor Perry, We are writing as scientists, economists, conservationists and citizens to urge you to take strong action to save and grow America's nuclear energy sector.
Nuclear power plants in the U.S. are struggling against cheap natural gas, heavily-subsidized renewables and low electricity demand. At the same time, global demand for electricity is set to rise 70 percent in 25 years thanks to the rise of energy-hungry developing nations around the world.
And technological advances mean that new nuclear reactor components can increasingly be mass- manufactured in factories and shipped around the world for assembly on-site.
Meeting rising global demand for electricity with advanced nuclear reactors instead of coal will do more to reduce air pollution and mitigate climate change than any number of United Nations treaties.
In the 1960s and 70s, the US was the world leader in nuclear technologies. Today, unfortunately, we are forcing innovative and well-capitalized entrepreneurs like Bill Gates to go abroad to build new projects.
China is making a big investment in at least five different advanced nuclear designs, and last September signed a deal to develop and manufacture a new nuclear reactor designed by Gates' company, Terrapower. Company officials say they wanted to develop the reactor in the U.S., but outmoded federal licensing regulations made doing so impossible.
Those regulations create unnecessary delays. After 16 years and $500 million in Department of Energy and private sector investment, the U.S. firm NuScale — whose smaller plant design includes novel safety features — must wait another three and half years for approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build its first commercial plant.
Meanwhile, Canada is supporting the development of a first-of-kind reactor that uses chemical salts rather than water as a coolant. The design precludes meltdowns and could be cheaper than current models.
We can't afford to leave global competition to chance. A better approach would be modeled on President Dwight Eisenhower's 1953 "Atoms for Peace" initiative. Recognizing that cheap electricity is a key driver of economic growth and job creation, Eisenhower's program financed the peaceful use of nuclear power around the world "to provide abundant electrical energy in the power- starved areas of the world."
This starts with the U.S. significantly expanding the financing of US-made nuclear reactors through the Export- Import Bank, World Bank and other development agencies.
Because the U.S. government does not offer financing, "U.S. companies continue to lose significant market share to an ever‐increasing number of foreign government‐owned or led competitors, including Russia, Japan, France, China and the Republic of Korea," warned the Department of Commerce recently.
What's needed are not subsidies but rather long-term loans and loan guarantees to foreign customers seeking to buy American technologies.
Ensuring that US firms have a competitive edge in global nuclear energy markets would do more to protect the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty than any amount of diplomatic maneuverings at the United Nations.
Back home, we must level the playing field for nuclear. Solar and wind receive large federal and state subsidies that nuclear plants don't get. Until there is a single, technology-neutral incentive for clean energy, subsidies to every form of clean energy should be made equal.
We encourage you to authorize the Departments of Defense and Energy to buy and use advanced nuclear reactors for use at military bases and laboratories to demonstrate their safety, and bring down their price.
DOE should create a "test bed," perhaps with ocean access for easier export, where private sector entrepreneurs can quickly demonstrate their new designs, and rapidly bring them to global markets at low cost.
The DoD already does this with the nuclear reactors it uses in submarines and aircraft carriers. Indeed, the Navy originally developed the pressurized light-water reactor technology now used in most nuclear plants.
All of this will require new regulations to take account of the inherent safety features of new designs. It makes no sense to regulate jet planes the same way we do propeller planes and yet that is precisely how the federal government treats new nuclear reactor types—an approach that needlessly slows their development.
We know you and the new Congress will seek to deliver on industrial jobs for working class voters, and work
together on a new infrastructure program. Making nuclear great again should be a key part of those efforts.

Signed*,

Mark Muro, Senior Fellow and Policy Director, Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings Institution, co-author, "Post- Partisan Power"

Steve Hayward, Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley, co-author, "Post-Partisan Power"

Michael Shellenberger, President, Environmental Progress, co-author, "Post-Partisan Power"

Mark Perry Ph.D., scholar, The American Enterprise Institute, Professor of Finance and Business Economics, School of Management, University of Michigan-Flint

Hansen, James, Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions Program, Columbia University, Earth Institute, Columbia University

Steven Pinker, Harvard University, Better Angels of Our Nature

Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize recipient, author of Nuclear Renewal and The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Peter H. Raven, President Emeritus, Missouri Botanical Garden. Winner of the National Medal of Science, 2001 Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Atmospheric Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Steve McCormick, Former CEO, The Nature Conservancy

Nicholas Gallucci, Nonproliferation and National Security Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL)

Andrew Klein, President, American Nuclear Society

Jacopo Buongiorno, Nuclear Science and Engineering Director, Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems (CANES),Massachusetts Institute of Technology

James Conca, Earth and Environmental Scientist

Walter Horsting, Principal, Business Development International

Pushker Kharecha, Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions Program, Columbia University, Earth Institute, Columbia University

Gwyneth Cravens, author, Power to Save the World

Mark Lynas, author, The God Species, Six Degrees

Steve Kirsch, CEO, Token

Joe Lassiter, Professor, Harvard Business School

Heather Matteson and Kristin Zaitz, co-founders, Mothers for Nuclear

Jeff Terry, Professor of Physics, Illinois Institute of Technology John Crary, Crary Family Foundation

Joe Lassiter, Professor, Harvard Business School

Joshua S. Goldstein, Prof. Emeritus of International Relations, American University

John Lavine, Professor and Medill Dean Emeritus, Northwestern University

Martin Lewis, Department of Geography, Stanford University Michelle Marvier, Santa Clara University

Norris McDonald, President, Environmental Hope and Justice

Carl Page, President, Anthropocene Institute

Rachel Pritzker, Pritzker Innovation Fund [billionaire family who backed pro-nuclear Obama)

Canon Bryan, Director, Co-Founder, Terrestrial Energy

Eric Meyer, President, Generation Atomic

Jose Reyes, Chief Technology Officer, NuScale Power [NuScale is in Oregon]

Aries Loumis, President, University of Illinois Student Section of the American Nuclear Society

Gene Grecheck, immediate past president, American Nuclear Society

Jeff Terry, Professor of Physics, Illinois Institute of Technology Barrett Walker., Alex C. Walker Foundation

David W. Keith, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics for the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University.

*Organizations listed for identification purposes only

not suitable for PIELC: Public Interest Environmental Law Conference refused presentation about Section 4(f) and lessons learned protecting West Eugene Wetlands

Between 2004 and 2010, I co-organized panel presentations about ecological implications of fossil energy depletion at the annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference at the University of Oregon Law School. The conference scheduled many panels simultaneously, so these presentations were not the dominant paradigm of the event but they attracted lively participation. They were the only discussions at those conferences about limits to growth, how decreases of conventional fossil fuels were leading to more toxic practices (fracking, tar sands), economic, foreign policy and military implications of the "musical chairs" approach to controlling the last reserves, and ways that learning to live well with less energy could be encouraged on household, community and global levels.

But in late 2010, I committed the unforgiveable sin of opposing nuclear power - the most dangerous way to boil water - at a Law School speech by climatologist James Hansen. He is justly famous for being a leading voice calling attention to the dangers of global warming. I remember hearing his 1988 testimony to Congress which was his first entrance onto the global media stage and was impressed by his clarity. It was also good timing his testimony was on a hot summer smoggy day in D.C. In 2006, I heard Hansen speak at the "Beyond Peak" conference at George Washington University where he gave a great summary of the science behind these warnings and prospects for ecological collapse if we continue to choose business as usual. In 2008, Hansen was persuaded that nuclear energy was actually the solution to climate change, and with the fiery energy of the newly converted has become an atomic zealot. He sent a letter to incoming President Obama saying that people who don't want to escalate the use of this ultrahazardous technology are the biggest threat to Earth's climate, since we supposedly will force the use of more coal (which has peaked in terms of its potential mining and burning in the US). Using less is not on his agenda.

In the next several years, my panel requests somehow never got approved. At first it seemed like an oversight since the conference gets more requests than they can honor. However, after several rejections - and worse, no approval of any other similar panels - I decided to test the system. I requested a space for a panel about Section 4(f) - the 1966 federal law that prohibits federal aid highways through parks - and how I had used it to prevent the West Eugene Porkway through a federal nature preserve with critical habitat for federally listed endangered species. Surely the legal eagles at PIELC would allow that discussion? Nope.

After that year's conference I had the opportunity to ask a conference organizer about this oversight. He said that since I'm not a lawyer, therefore I would not be an appropriate choice to organize a panel presentation about anything. After I stopped laughing at his response, I reminded him they welcome anarchists who advocate property destruction to give presentations and the real reason was likely challenging Hansen, both in 2010 and later when he was a PIELC keynoter. A different co-organizer quietly apologized to me for this pettiness, an example of "cancel" culture.

 

When I first attended PIELC in 1999, it was a large and significant legal, activist and cultural event attracting thousands of people. The most famous keynoter each year was David Brower, one of the giants of modern environmentalism, who made the Sierra Club into a powerful force in the 1960s (and then he was kicked out for being too effective). He went on to co-found Friends of the Earth and later Earth Island Institute, which spawned numerous projects big and small all over the planet. His last appearance was in 2000, when he said at our best the environmental movement has slowed down the rate that things got worse and that was not good enough for our survival. Brower died that fall, a couple days before the Bush v. Gore election (he voted absentee for Nader from his death bed).

Among many other concerns, Brower raised alarms about the dangers of nuclear power, helping prevent reactors on the San Andreas fault just north of San Francisco and convincing many environmental groups to oppose this supposedly "fossil free" technology. Nuclear energy makes climate change worse: reactors use huge amounts of fossil fuels to build and operate and emit heat. details at www.PeakChoice.org/green-new-deal.html

Another UO law school project is Our Children's Trust, a lawsuit demanding the federal government adopt a plan to end climate change so kids can have a future. And what plan do they seek? The graphic on the right is from a technical report done for OCT and it considers nuclear reactors to be "zero carbon" despite the enormous energy requirements of reactor operation, the nuclear fuel cycle from mining to enrichment to fuel fabrication, and the impossible requirement to keep deadly nuclear wastes isolated from the biosphere longer than civilization has existed. So this partially explains why PIELC is touchy about anti-nuclear activists who say more reactors would be a disaster.

In 2019, the last PIELC conference before Covid, a keynote speaker was Norris McDonald of the African American Environmentalist Organization. He is a shill for nuclear power and other toxic industries. PIELC states they are allies to indigenous campaigns against pollution but the conference seems oblivious to how most of the uranium mining in the US has been done on Native lands (especially in the Four Corners region).