January 30, 2012 -- The Washington State Chapter of the Sierra Club enthusiastically announces its endorsement of Jay Inslee to be Washington State’s 23rd governor. “Jay Inslee brings both a vision and expertise for making Washington a leader on clean energy and forging the good jobs and economic future for the 21st century,” said Andrew Lewis, Chair of the Sierra Club's Washington State Chapter. “We need the leadership that he brings to address the most pressing issues of our time - creating real jobs here in our state and addressing global climate change.”

Lewis said Inslee has consistently been a real leader in protecting and enhancing Washington’s air, land and water - working tirelessly to protect pristine wilderness areas, clean up Puget Sound, and curb dependence of foreign fossil fuels while growing clean energy at home. Jay even wrote a book about how to get our economy going again through clean energy development.

This year will present acute challenges to our efforts to advance an environmental agenda at the State Capitol. At the Sierra Club, we believe that environmental protections improve our quality of life and are essential to a long-term sustainable economy. Environmental programs and policies may have upfront costs, but will prevent staggering future costs. In 2012, our priorities in the Legislature are:

• No rollbacks of environmental standards in a difficult budget situation;
• Sustain I-937, the Renewable Energy voter-approved standards;
• Ensure clean water and realistic, data-based management of limited water resources;
• Sustainable transit funding in a transportation budget that emphasizes maintenance.

Learn more about our 2012 legislative priorities and get involved!

You may have heard that we scored a huge victory against oil refineries last December. In a landmark decision, a federal judge ruled that the Washington Department of Ecology, Northwest Clean Air Agency, and Puget Sound Clean Air Agency have unlawfully failed to regulate climate change pollution from the five oil refineries operating in Washington State.  Now we need your help raising funds to keep the pressure on the state. Please attend our fundraiser!

The Washington Environmental Council and the Sierra Club initiated the lawsuit in March, which claimed that state agencies have the duty to regulate climate change pollution from oil refineries because this pollution fits within the definition of “air contaminants” in Washington’s State Implementation Plan, which was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and is enforceable under the federal Clean Air Act.

The Washington State Chapter of the Sierra Club invites you to attend a free forum to explore food justice issues.

Guests will include:

• Mike O’Brien, Seattle City Councilmember, will moderate the panel discussion.
• Reverend Robert Jeffrey, pastor at New Hope Baptist Church in Seattle and founder of Clean Greens Farm, will speak about the role of food in the social justice movement.
• Eddie Hill, founding Program Manager for Seattle Tilth Farm Works Program, will speak about food as infrastructure and healthy food as a right.
• Ann Seiter, Fish Consumption Rate Project Coordinator for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, will discuss fish consumption guidelines and impacts on Tribal people who eat a lot of fish and are potentially at a greater level of risk from water pollution.

After the panel presentations, there will be small group discussions lead by the panelists and other special guests who are actively engaged in food justice issues. Healthy local snacks will be provided.

Wednesday night, January 25, in the town of Clatskanie, on the lower Columbia River, the St. Helens Port Commission held the first public meeting on coal exports in the state of Oregon. Despite having only a 6-day notice for the meeting, we had a large turn-out of citizens concerned about the impacts of coal exports—from Clatskanie and communities upriver and downriver and along the rail line in Oregon and Washington. 150 people packed the room and flowed out into the hallways. The public comments weighed in at 29 opposed to coal exports and only 7 for coal exports, with passionate speeches from Sierra Club volunteers and our coalition partners, especially Columbia Riverkeeper.

Would you like to learn more about your Chapter and find out how you can get involved? Great! This meeting is open to members and activists interested in learning more about and getting involved with national forests, transportation and energy efforts underway by The Sierra Club and the WA State Chapter. In the meeting we'll look at how these efforts are specific to and unique for East King County.

Location:

Salud Room at the Bellevue Whole Foods located at 888 116th Avenue Northeast Bellevue, WA 98004.

Time: 6:30-8:30 PM, Feb 2, 2012

As always, it will be a full day of transportation lobbying with your legislators, getting to know fellow advocates, and possibly testifying in conference committee for transportation funding, policies, and projects.If you’ve never been, you should check it out. If you have been, you’ll want to join us again in this huge year for our issues.

Zip Car will be offering free rentals again, and TCC will be coordinating carpools. We need help to make this a success!

Get involved now!

Captain Charles Moore, a prominent seafaring environmentalist and researcher, shares his shocking discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean, and inspires a fundamental rethinking of the Plastic Age and a growing global health crisis. Captain Moore is speaking in a 5 Western Washington cities in January: Seattle, Bellingham, Port Angeles, Tacoma, and Olympia. Don't miss this important talk to learn how our oceans are being polluted and how you can help.

In the summer of 1997, Charles Moore set sail from Honolulu with the sole intention of returning home after competing in a trans-Pacific race. To get to California, he and his crew took a shortcut through the seldom-traversed North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a vast "oceanic desert" where winds are slack and sailing ships languish. There, Moore realized his catamaran was surrounded by a "plastic soup." He had stumbled upon the largest garbage dump on the planet - a spiral nebula where plastic outweighed zooplankton, the ocean's food base, by a factor of six to one.

The Sierra Club is part of a coalition with Surfrider Foundation, People For Puget Sound, Environment Washington and Zero Waste Seattle that is asking the Seattle City Council to pass a bag ordinance. Plastics harm (choke, poison, entangle) our wildlife, such as birds, fish, and whales. A big problem is that plastic bags are light-weight and easily blow into our waters. They break down into tiny bits but don’t biodegrade for hundreds of years. The tiny pieces of plastic, including plastic bag pieces, are called microplastics, and are floating in Puget Sound. Every water sample taken in Puget Sound so far by researchers at UW Tacoma have plastic bits. Another problem is that plastic attracts toxic chemicals like a sponge. Fish eat these plastic bits.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE : December 2, 2011

Challenge to reduce dangerous greenhouse gas emissions from WA oil refineries advances

Seattle, WA —A federal judge today ruled that the Washington Department of Ecology, Northwest Clean Air Agency, and Puget Sound Clean Air Agency have unlawfully failed to regulate climate change pollution from the five oil refineries operating in Washington State. Washington Environmental Council and Sierra Club initiated the lawsuit in March of this year. The lawsuit claimed that state agencies have the duty to regulate climate change pollution from oil refineries because this pollution fits within the definition of “air contaminants” in Washington’s State Implementation Plan, which was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and is enforceable under the federal Clean Air Act.