FOR THE 1.4 MILLION MEMBERS AND ONLINE ACTIVISTS OF THE NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL Fall 2013

in this issue

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• British Company Quits Pebble Mine

• Redford and Other Activists Demand Clean Power

• President’s Climate Plan Embraces NRDC Vision

• New Report: Keystone XL Fails the Climate Test

Good News for Belugas In a crucial victory for the last beluga whales of Cook Inlet, Alaska, a federal judge has ruled in NRDC’s favor, saying that the Obama Administration violated the law by allowing Apache Alaska Corporation to use seismic airguns to survey the inlet for oil and gas. The blasts from the submerged airguns, which would sound 12 hours a day, can easily deafen or kill marine life and are especially dangerous to a population of whales that has plummeted from 1,300 to 312 in recent years. These same whales are threatened by the proposed Pebble Mine, which would put a port for oceangoing ships in the heart of their habitat.

Patagonia UndammedPlans to build a massive hydroelectric dam complex in Chile were dealt another major blow when leading presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet said the project

“should not go on.” It’s a key victory for NRDC and our local partners, who have been fighting the HidroAysén project for six years. The dams would destroy two of Patagonia’s wildest rivers and flood thousands of acres of

pristine forest critical to endangered wildlife. Bachelet has now joined the majority of candidates and Chileans in opposing the project and favoring a move toward more sustainable and energy-efficient alternatives. As political support for the dam continues to dwindle, we will continue waging what has become the longest environmental battle in Chilean history.

in the news

W ith the world at a critical juncture in the fight

to slow global warming, NRDC has launched

a new activism website that aims to help

end our own nation’s dependence on dirty fossil fuels.

DemandCleanPower.org is countering Big Oil’s propaganda

machine by streaming video messages from a range of

cultural luminaries, such as Robert Redford, Julia Louis-

Dreyfus, Van Jones and Carole King, while making it easy

for people to make their own voices heard against energy

devel opment that endangers our planet.

“Our Members know that NRDC is on the front lines when

it comes to fighting for a clean energy future, whether it’s

campaigning to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline

or preventing Shell from drilling in the Arctic or defending

communities from an onslaught of fracking,” says Frances

Beinecke, NRDC’s president. “Demand Clean Power

is allowing us to build a juggernaut of broader public

support as well.”

The new website is focusing its first wave of popular activism

against the climate-wrecking Keystone XL tar sands pipeline,

which President Obama could quash with a stroke of his

pen (see Campaign Update on next page). But as Van Jones

and others remind us, such planet-saving actions by our

leaders are likely only if millions of Americans stand up

and demand them.

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Hassle-free holiday gifts that help save wildlife. What could be better? www.nrdcgreengifts.org

Join the Fight: DemanD Clean Power now!

Robert Redford, Carole King, Van Jones and others are speaking out against fossil fuels.

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In a stunning turn of events that has brought new

hope to Alaska’s Bristol Bay, British mining giant

Anglo American — the lead company behind

the controversial Pebble Mine — has announced that

it is abandoning the project. The surprise decision

dealt a heavy blow to the proposed gold and copper

operation, which

would produce some

10 billion tons of

contam inated waste

and threaten the

greatest wild salmon

runs on the planet.

“Anglo American

finally realized that

the Pebble Mine

is a financial and

environ mental

disaster waiting

to happen,” says

Joel Reynolds, who

has led NRDC’s Stop Pebble campaign since 2010.

The company’s wake-up call came after it spent

$541 million trying to develop the mine. It faced

intense opposition from a united front of local residents,

Native groups and commercial fishermen as well

as worldwide protest stoked by an NRDC action

campaign led by Robert Redford.

“Four years ago, the idea of Anglo American’s

throwing in the towel was unthinkable,” notes Taryn

Kiekow, who has coordinated NRDC’s efforts with

local and national partners. “People power has made

the difference.”

For years, Anglo American claimed it could gouge a

vast and toxic open pit out of the Bristol Bay watershed

without destroying the world-class salmon runs that

are the economic, cultural and ecological linchpin

of the region. But an in-depth study last year by the

EPA found that the Pebble Mine posed “catastrophic”

risks to Bristol Bay. More than 600,000 Americans

then called on the agency to use its power under the

Clean Water Act

to stop the mine.

Meanwhile, Anglo

American was

deluged by nearly a

million messages of

protest from NRDC

Members and was

dogged by our full-

page anti-Pebble

newspaper ads that

ran during its annual

shareholder meetings

in London. The

most recent of those

ads called on the company’s new CEO, Mark Cutifani,

to break with his predecessors and avert disaster by

pulling the plug on Pebble. Now he has done just that.

Does Anglo’s exit mean the Pebble Mine is dead?

“Definitely not,” says Reynolds. Northern Dynasty

Minerals, now the sole owner of the project, is already

looking for a new partner to help fund the mine.

NRDC will be focused on making sure that other

companies — including Rio Tinto, which owns a big

stake of Northern Dynasty — aren’t tempted to make

the same bad bet that Anglo American made. Above

all, we will be ramping up public pressure on EPA

to permanently protect Bristol Bay by banning large-

scale mining in this American Eden.

Anglo American Quits Pebble Mine!

At stake: the river systems above Bristol Bay support the greatest wild salmon runs on the planet.

Campaign Update

In June, President Obama drew

a clear line in the sand for the

proposed Keystone XL tar sands

pipeline, vowing to reject the 2,000-

mile behemoth if it would “significantly

exacerbate the problem of carbon

pollution.” So, does the gargantuan

pipeline, which would snake from

Alberta’s tar sands fields through the

American heartland to refineries on

the Gulf Coast, fail that test? “No

question, it fails,” says Susan Casey-

Lefkowitz, director of NRDC’s

International Program.

A new and detailed analysis of the

project by NRDC reveals that the

Keystone XL would add a staggering

amount of carbon pollution to our skies

— up to 1.2 billion metric tons more

than if it carried conventional crude.

In addition, the pipeline, which would

course with some 830,000 barrels of

heavy tar sands crude per day, would

dramatically boost the development

of this dirty fuel. Indeed, the Keystone

XL is the linchpin of Big Oil’s plans

to more than triple heavy tar sands

production over the next 20 years.

Prod uction of tar sands oil requires

more energy than the produc tion

of any other fossil fuel on earth,

generating three times the carbon

pollution of conventional crude, for

example. “The expected life span of the

Keystone XL is 50 years,” says Casey-

Lefkowitz. “That means our grand-

children will be suffering from the

climate chaos produced by this pipeline.”

Given the pipeline’s clear and far-reaching

impacts on our climate, the president’s

declaration would appear to doom the

project — but not so fast. “Big Oil is

now engaged in the bluff of a lifetime,”

Casey-Lefkowitz says. “And the

president’s own State Department has

been buying it.” Charged with evaluating

the project because it would cross the

U.S. border with Canada, the State

Department offered its initial assess ment

in March. Incredibly, the depart ment

concluded that Keystone XL would not

signifi cantly increase carbon pollution.

How is that possible? Officials argued

that if the pipeline weren’t built, the

same amount of tar sands oil would find

its way out of Canada anyway — via

other pipelines, for example, or by rail.

“Basically the State Department is saying,

‘Look, the oil industry is going to

develop these tar sands

no matter what, so all

this global warming

pollution is going to

happen whether or

not the Keystone XL

gets built,’” says

Casey-Lefkowitz.

There’s only one problem with that

logic: It’s not true. “There aren’t any

viable alternatives for moving all that

tar sands oil out of Canada,” says NRDC

attorney Anthony Swift, who has been

working to expose these

claims in the national media.

“The entire tar sands enter-

prise is hanging on the

Keystone XL. If we can

stop that, we can head off

the climate-wrecking

impacts.” Indeed,

industry insiders

and analysts have

conceded as much.

In a report released

in June, the financial

powerhouse Goldman Sachs concluded

that nixing Keystone XL would result

in the cancellation or deferment of

numerous tar sands expansion projects:

“[W]e believe risk would grow that

Canadian heavy oil/oil sands supply

would remain trapped in the province

of Alberta,” the firm’s report states.

Canada’s own RBC Bank has reached a

similar conclusion, saying that rejection

New NRDC report shows tar sands pipeline fails Obama’s climate test, will worsen global warming

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BiG Oil’s Dirty secret: KeystONe Xl is VitAl tO its tAr sANDs AGeNDA

Tar sands mining operation, Alberta, Canada.

Inset: Boreal owl, imperiled by development.

New NRDC report shows tar sands pipeline fails Obama’s climate test, will worsen global warming

of the pipeline would lead to a $9

billion drop in tar sands investment

over the next seven years, putting the

brakes on as much as one-third of the

industry’s growth plans. As one pro-

oil analyst put it in the press: “The

cheapest way to get from point A to

point B is a pipeline. That is why

Keystone has got to go ahead.”

To be sure, Big Oil is

vigorously pursuing other

means of transporting

Canadian tar sands oil from

the interior of Alberta to

one of the coasts — but

it’s confronting stringent

opposition at every turn.

The proposed Northern

Gateway pipe line could be

called the Keystone XL of the north:

It would carry some 500,000 barrels

of tar sands crude a day across the

Canadian Rockies and through the

spectacular temperate rainforest of

British Columbia’s Spirit Bear Coast.

But in a potentially lethal setback for

the project, the British Columbia

government has announced its formal

opposition to the pipeline, speaking

for the more than 60 percent of British

Columbians who say they are against

it. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil has been

quietly developing a scheme to pump

corrosive tar sands crude east, around

the Great Lakes and through an old

1950s-era pipeline across New England

to Portland, Maine. But as word of the

oil giant’s plan has leaked out, opposition

has surged, with local citizens protesting

the scheme and the city council of

Burlington, Vermont, passing resolutions

condemning the plan.

As for shipping tar sands oil by rail,

“independent sources from Goldman

Sachs to Reuters have demonstrated the

folly of that argument,” says NRDC’s

Swift. “The estimates of how much

crude the oil industry could realistically

ship to the Gulf Coast by rail have been

wildly inflated,” he says. Not only that,

but the extreme danger of hauling oil

by rail was made tragically apparent

in July, when a train carrying crude

derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic,

Quebec, leveling the downtown area

and killing 47 residents. Says Swift:

“The runaway expansion of the tar

sands oil fields in Canada isn’t inevitable:

We can stop it if we stop Keystone XL.”

Take action at: www.stoptar.org

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Canada’s Spirit Bear Coast, where the Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline would terminate.

BiG Oil’s Dirty secret: KeystONe Xl is VitAl tO its tAr sANDs AGeNDA

A train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded

in downtown Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.

Missouri River

Yellowstone River

Mississippi River

Edmonton

Fort McMurray

Hardisty

WinnipegRegina

Calgary

Superior

Chicago

Saint Paul

Bismarck

Pierre

Lincoln

Steele City

TopekaSt. Louis

CushingOklahoma City

Port ArthurHouston

Austin

Saskatchewan ManitobaAlberta

Ontario

North DakodaMontana

Wyoming South Dakoda

Minnesota

Wisconsin

IowaNebraska

KansasMissouri

Texas

Oklahoma Arkansas

Louisana

Illinois

Colorado

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Tar Sands Region

Keystone Pipeline

Proposed KeystoneXL Pipeline

Our grandchildren will be suffering from the climate chaos produced by this pipeline.“ ”

Spirit Bear.

Despite years of scientific

consensus about the dire

threat of climate change,

the largest single source of global

warming pollution in the United

States has gone almost entirely

unchecked — until now. In June,

President Obama announced a

sweeping plan to tackle climate

change, which includes, for the first

time ever, reducing carbon

emissions at the nation’s existing

power plants. “This is a watershed moment,” says Dan

Lashof, director of NRDC’s Climate and Clean Air Program.

“It’s heartening to see the administration enthusi as tically

embrace the sort of reductions in carbon pollution that

we’ve been advocating.”

Although pollutants such as arsenic, lead and mercury have

long been regulated, never before have federal limits been

imposed on the massive amounts of carbon spewing from

America’s coal-fired and other power

plants, which account for some 2.4

billion metric tons of CO2 pollution

each year, a staggering 40 percent

of the country’s total.

NRDC has long been at the forefront

of the fight to rein in those emissions,

putting forth a detailed plan last

year that would cut carbon pollution

from existing power plants by 26

percent over seven years, even

as it would create some 210,000

jobs and reduce the average American’s electric bill. Many

insiders expect that plan to figure prominently in the

Environmental Protection Agency’s own strategy as it

carries out the president’s climate agenda. “We’re pleased

that the Obama Administration has committed to bold

action,” says Lashof. “But there’s still much more work to

be done, and we have to be vigilant that industry doesn’t

derail the process.”

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Thanks to a landmark agreement, whales and other marine mammals in the Gulf of Mexico will finally receive protection from the devastating

impact of seismic airguns, which the oil and gas industry uses for offshore exploration. The milestone protections are the result of a settlement reached with the Obama Administration and industry in a federal lawsuit brought by NRDC and our allies.

For years the oil and gas industry has deployed airguns in the Gulf with virtually no restriction, subjecting threatened and endangered marine mammal species to a relentless assault of explosive noise that is destroying their ability to feed, mate and nurse their young — in short, to survive. “Throughout the northern Gulf, recent studies show that noise from airguns alone averages nearly 120 decibels throughout the year,” says Michael Jasny, director of NRDC’s Marine Mammal Protection Project. “The government says that just a single second of exposure to

noise at that level can cause harm, yet that’s what whales and dolphins in the Gulf are routinely having to suffer through.”

The toll of this industrial onslaught has been even more acute in the wake of BP’s catastrophic oil spill in 2010. Many of the Gulf’s marine mammal species, from bottle nose dolphins to endangered Bryde’s whales, are still struggling to recover. The new protections will immediately ban airgun blasting from biologically critical areas, such as important feeding and calving grounds, and will require industry to better monitor for marine mammal activity and to explore more environ mentally sensitive alternatives to airguns, even as the Obama Administration undertakes a compre hensive review of seismic exploration in the Gulf.

NRDC Wins New Protections for Marine Mammals in the Gulf

Pollution from a coal-fired power plant.

Bryde's whale.

Editor: Stephen Mills Writers: Jason Best, Shanti Menon Managing Editor: Liz Linke Designer: Dalton Design Director of Membership: Linda Lopez

All of the environmental projects and victories described in Nature’s Voice are made possible through the generous support of Members like you. If you like what you read, you are invited to make a special contribution at www.nrdc.org/joingive

Natural resources DefeNse couNcil40 W. 20th st., New York, NY 10011 www.nrdc.org/naturesvoice • 212-727-4500 email: naturesvoice@nrdc.org

SWiTCHBOARD The following entry first appeared online at: www.switchboard.nrdc.org

One Place Left AlonePosted by: Frances Beinecke, President, NRDC

We had already been rafting for several hours when we saw the wolf. I had expected to see wildlife during our trip through Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but the scene unfolding before us was a special treat. It started with the grizzly bear and her two cubs rooting around along the shore. They soon grew tired of the grass and lumbered into the water not far from our raft, letting the current carry them a few hundred feet. As we watched them climb out, we noticed half a dozen caribou grazing on the opposite shore, their tawny coats just beginning to shed their winter thickness. Right beside them stood the wolf. I wondered what his next move would be — lunging at the caribou or running from the grizzlies. Instead, he sauntered slowly through the hot sunshine, lay down in the grass, licked his paws and watched us float by.

I have seen many wild animals in my years of hiking and camping, but never had I seen so many so close. Then again, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge isn’t like most landscapes. It is a place of untamed abundance, from thundering caribou herds to towering mountain ranges to free-flowing rivers. But when we flew out of the refuge in a bush plane, we quickly realized just how close the oil industry is. Only 10 minutes into our flight, we could see the pipelines, road -ways, airstrips and drill pads of the massive oil fields connected to Prudhoe Bay. The oil giants have all this infra-structure next to the refuge; they can’t wait to cross the threshold. But just because drilling in the refuge might be convenient for the richest companies on earth doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice one of our last wild places.

For the entire length of my career, millions of citizens have stood strong

in defense of the Arctic Refuge when Big Oil clamored to invade it. Countless champions have devoted themselves to the task, from forester Robert Marshall to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas to NRDC Trustee Robert Redford. NRDC has been a leader in this effort, and we will continue the fight until the refuge is secure for future generations. They may never visit this spectacular place, and indeed, it doesn’t matter if they do. This isn’t a refuge to see; it is a refuge to keep. To save for wildlife, for stillness and for the very idea that humans can leave something alone.

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Talk about an amazing turnaround: Where once many of the nation’s legendarily abundant fish stocks had been over fished to the point of collapse, today a

remarkable number have rebounded, thanks to fisheries

protections championed by NRDC. “The United States has

emerged as a global leader in rebuilding overfished stocks,

showing the world that it can be done,” says Brad Sewell,

an NRDC senior attorney.

It’s an environmental success story more than 15 years in the

making. For centuries, thriving fish stocks from the shores of

New England to the Pacific Northwest anchored robust ocean

eco systems and supported generations of fisher men. But by

the early 1990s, many of the nation’s most storied fish stocks

had been all but exhausted. In response, Congress passed the

Sustainable Fisheries Act in 1996, and NRDC has worked

hard to advocate for science-based recovery plans for dozens

of species under the act.

“In a couple of words: It’s working,” says Sewell. A recent NRDC investigation looked at 44 stocks that were previously overfished; 64 percent have returned to healthy levels or have made significant progress toward rebuilding, ranging from summer flounder and black sea bass off the Mid-Atlantic coast to Georges Bank haddock in New England to Pacific Ocean perch. Yet despite this astounding success, antiregulatory zealots in Congress continue their attack on these historic protections, even though a fully recovered, sustainable fishing industry in the United States promises an estimated $31 billion in economic benefits and 500,000 new jobs. Says Sewell, “We can’t afford to go back to the days of depleted

oceans and empty nets.”

Once in Crisis, U.S. Fish Stocks Make Dramatic Recovery

Early fall in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

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In their relentless quest for fuel, giant energy companies are

now clear-cutting southern forests, grinding up whole trees

into wood chips and pellets and burning them to produce

electricity. Adding insult to injury, they’re billing this

environmental disaster as “clean and renewable” energy.

“Burning trees for energy is worse than burning coal,” says

Debbie Hammel, head of NRDC’s Our Forests Aren’t Fuel

campaign. “It not only increases global warming pollution but

also destroys irreplaceable native forests.”

Until recently, burning plant material — called biomass —

to produce electricity was considered a renewable form

of energy, but the idea was to use treetops and branches.

Biomass energy was never meant to consume whole trees,

much less entire forests. Burning trees for electricity is a

widespread practice in Europe. Wood shipments from the

American South have been skyrocketing to feed European

power plants, led by the South’s largest wood-pellet manu-

facturer, Enviva. That region is now the world’s largest exporter

of wood pellets, with exports from southern ports growing 70

percent in the past year alone.

The demand for pellets continues to grow in Europe and

domestically. Two electric utilities — Virginia-based Dominion

Power and Britain’s Drax Group — are the primary players in

the push to burn southeastern forests for electricity. Dominion

and Drax buy millions of tons of wood from our southern

forests, and Enviva supplies them both. Drax now plans to

consume 7 million tons of wood annually; that’s equivalent

to burning a forest four times the size of Rhode Island. And

several major U.S. utilities are ramping up their plans for the

large-scale burning of trees. Dominion recently announced

it would convert three of its Virginia power plants from coal

to wood fuel. The growing demand for energy from trees could

prove disastrous for forests in the Southeast. The Wall Street

Journal recently exposed Enviva’s practice of clear-cutting in

sensitive wetland forests. Alarmingly, the company plans to

double its production of wood pellets in the coming years.

“Southern forests are already under stress from industrial

logging for wood and paper,” says Hammel. “The additional

pressure from the energy industry could be more than these

ecosystems can bear.”

New mapping data from NRDC and the Dogwood Alliance

show that less than one percent of the forest in the sourcing

area for Enviva’s flagship Ahoskie, North Carolina, pellet mill is

protected from destructive logging practices. This puts native

wetland forests, already in decline, right in Enviva’s crosshairs

as it seeks to ramp up pellet production. NRDC and other

groups are calling on Dominion, Drax and Enviva to stop using

whole trees and to pursue true renewables like solar, wind,

geothermal and agricultural waste.

Make your voice heard at: www.nrdc.org/saveforests

New Threat to Southeastern Forests: Burning Trees for Energy

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