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.

Please join us for our Annual End of Year Volunteer Celebration

It’s time again for us to celebrate each other, our friendships, and our work together.

We’ll have food, beverage, and entertainment, and, most of all, we’ll have great company and good times. As always, there will be no fundraising at the event, just fun.

When: Friday, December 9th; 6:30 to 10:pm

Where: Fremont Abbey, 4272 Fremont Ave N, Seattle 98103 (map)

The Washington State Chapter of the Sierra Club is proud to present leaders in environmental justice at the first of our series of EJ forums. At a time when human rights and environmental concerns closely intersect, our panelists will explore the effects of energy extraction, production, and transportation on disadvantaged and underrepresented communities. Learn and share ideas about what we can do. Panelists will include:

• William Anderson, Chairman of the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians, which struggles with a coal-fired power plant located adjacent to their reservation.
• Sandi Cioffi, documentary filmmaker of “Sweet Crude”, who has seen first hand the impacts of oil extraction on the people of the Niger Delta and was even been jailed in the process.
• Patty Martin, former Mayor of Quincy, Washington, where large, energy intensive, data centers owned by Yahoo and Microsoft impact low income neighbors.
• Steve Chestnut, attorney for the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, with a long history of working on coal mining issues on and near their reservation.
• Becky Castilleja, Sierra Club staff, who works in Oregon and Washington to stop coal companies from exporting coal to Asia through our region’s ports.

 

In a unanimous decision issued in NEDC v. Brown, a case involving logging roads on Oregon State lands, the Ninth Circuit ruled that polluted stormwater generated by logging roads is subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). The August 2011 decision requires that logging roads meet the standards of the Clean Water Act that would protect our clean water and salmon and steelhead. We are stunned that Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna would join with very conservative states such as Arkansas in urging the Supreme Court to overturn this court decision.

Without a coordinated effort, Seattle is at risk of losing 70% of its forests in just 20 years.

Join us and 1,000 of your neighbors for Green Seattle Day 2011. This event is the kick off to our planting season and is a celebration of our neighborhood parks and committed neighbors. Green Seattle Day is a fun way for you and your family to get involved by planting native trees and shrubs in a park near you.

For event details and to register, click here: http://greenseattle.org/events/2011-events/november/green-seattle-day-11-5

PCBs pollute Washington’s waters. From the Duwamish to the Spokane, this group of industrial compounds associated with liver dysfunction and cancer is a risk to human life and wildlife. PCB manufacture is now banned in the U.S. EPA and Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology) should be prompt in developing cleanup plans to protect the public interest. They are not – raising troubling questions.

On a sunny Saturday morning on September 24th, Washingtonians around the Puget Sound were abuzz with plans for attending Moving Planet Seattle.

In celebration of 350.org's annual day of action on climate change, the Sierra Club, Earth Ministry, Climate Solutions, 350 Washington, Washington Environmental Council, Transportation For Washington and many other community organizations came together to host Moving Planet Seattle. A local event in solidarity with thousands of events around the globe, Moving Planet Seattle focused on the need to end our reliance on coal and oil and take action on urgent issues facing Washington state and the Northwest, including stopping coal exports and fighting for more transportation choices.