NewEnergyNews Coal Corner

WALL STREET JOURNAL'S Environmental Capital quotes NewEnergyNews:

  • 06/05/2007

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    WALL STREET JOURNAL selects NewEnergyNews as one of the "Blogs We Are Reading" --

  • 05/14/2007
  • 04/16/2007
  • 03/28/2007

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    FEATURED BOOKS:

  • Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that will ReCharge America by Sherry Boschert: "Smart companies plan ahead and try to be the first to adopt new technology that will give them a competitive advantage. That’s what Toyota and Honda did with hybrids, and now they’re sitting pretty. Whichever company is first to bring a good plug-in hybrid to market will not only change their fortune but change the world."
    • Plug-in Hybrids, The Cars That Will Recharge America

  • Oil On The Brain; Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline by Lisa Margonelli: "Spills are one of the costs of oil consumption that don’t appear at the pump. [Oil consultant Dagmar Schmidt Erkin]’s data shows that 120 million gallons of oil were spilled in inland waters between 1985 and 2003. From that she calculates that between 1980 and 2003, pipelines spilled 27 gallons of oil for every billion “ton miles” of oil they transported, while barges and tankers spilled around 15 gallons and trucks spilled 37 gallons. (A ton of oil is 294 gallons. If you ship a ton of oil for one mile you have one ton mile.) Right now the United States ships about 900 billion ton miles of oil and oil products per year."
    • Oil On The Brain

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  • Ethical Markets TV: A remarkable TV series showcasing people who “…illustrate the triple bottom line, respecting people and the environment while earning a profit…” Part of Ethical Markets: “Your gateway to cleaner, greener 21st century economies.”

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  • My Novels: OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades & OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction
  • Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades by Mark S. Friedman
  • OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades, the second volume of Herman K. Trabish’s retelling of oil’s history in fiction, picks up where the first book in the series, OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction, left off. The new book is an engrossing, informative and entertaining tale of the Roaring 20s, World War II and the Cold War. You don’t have to know anything about the first historical fiction’s adventures set between the Civil War, when oil became a major commodity, and World War I, when it became a vital commodity, to enjoy this new chronicle of the U.S. emergence as a world superpower and a world oil power.
  • As the new book opens, Lefash, a minor character in the first book, witnesses the role Big Oil played in designing the post-Great War world at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Unjustly implicated in a murder perpetrated by Big Oil agents, LeFash takes the name Livingstone and flees to the U.S. to clear himself. Livingstone’s quest leads him through Babe Ruth’s New York City and Al Capone’s Chicago into oil boom Oklahoma. Stymied by oil and circumstance, Livingstone marries, has a son and eventually, surprisingly, resolves his grievances with the murderer and with oil.
  • In the new novel’s second episode the oil-and-auto-industry dynasty from the first book re-emerges in the charismatic person of Victoria Wade Bridger, “the woman everybody loved.” Victoria meets Saudi dynasty founder Ibn Saud, spies for the State Department in the Vichy embassy in Washington, D.C., and – for profound and moving personal reasons – accepts a mission into the heart of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. Underlying all Victoria’s travels is the struggle between the allies and axis for control of the crucial oil resources that drove World War II.
  • As the Cold War begins, the novel’s third episode recounts the historic 1951 moment when Britain’s MI-6 handed off its operations in Iran to the CIA, marking the end to Britain’s dark manipulations and the beginning of the same work by the CIA. But in Trabish’s telling, the covert overthrow of Mossadeq in favor of the ill-fated Shah becomes a compelling romance and a melodramatic homage to the iconic “Casablanca” of Bogart and Bergman.
  • Monty Livingstone, veteran of an oil field youth, European WWII combat and a star-crossed post-war Berlin affair with a Russian female soldier, comes to 1951 Iran working for a U.S. oil company. He re-encounters his lost Russian love, now a Soviet agent helping prop up Mossadeq and extend Mother Russia’s Iranian oil ambitions. The reunited lovers are caught in a web of political, religious and Cold War forces until oil and power merge to restore the Shah to his future fate. The romance ends satisfyingly, America and the Soviet Union are the only forces left on the world stage and ambiguity is resolved with the answer so many of Trabish’s characters ultimately turn to: Oil.
  • Commenting on a recent National Petroleum Council report calling for government subsidies of the fossil fuels industries, a distinguished scholar said, “It appears that the whole report buys these dubious arguments that the consumer of energy is somehow stupid about energy…” Trabish’s great and important accomplishment is that you cannot read his emotionally engaging and informative tall tales and remain that stupid energy consumer. With our world rushing headlong toward Peak Oil and epic climate change, the OIL IN THEIR BLOOD series is a timely service as well as a consummate literary performance.
  • Oil history journal articles by Dr. Trabish: Oil Stories and Histories
  • Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction by Mark S. Friedman
  • "...ours is a culture of energy illiterates." (Paul Roberts, THE END OF OIL)
  • OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, a superb new historical fiction by Herman K. Trabish, addresses our energy illiteracy by putting the development of our addiction into a story about real people, giving readers a chance to think about how our addiction happened. Trabish's style is fine, straightforward storytelling and he tells his stories through his characters.
  • The book is the answer an oil family's matriarch gives to an interviewer who asks her to pass judgment on the industry. Like history itself, it is easier to tell stories about the oil industry than to judge it. She and Trabish let readers come to their own conclusions.
  • She begins by telling the story of her parents in post-Civil War western Pennsylvania, when oil became big business. This part of the story is like a John Ford western and its characters are classic American melodramatic heroes, heroines and villains.
  • In Part II, the matriarch tells the tragic story of the second generation and reveals how she came to be part of the tales. We see oil become an international commodity, traded on Wall Street and sought from London to Baku to Mesopotamia to Borneo. A baseball subplot compares the growth of the oil business to the growth of baseball, a fascinating reflection of our current president's personal career.
  • There is an unforgettable image near the center of the story: International oil entrepreneurs talk on a Baku street. This is Trabish at his best, portraying good men doing bad and bad men doing good, all laying plans for wealth and power in the muddy, oily alley of a tiny ancient town in the middle of everywhere. Because Part I was about triumphant American heroes, the tragedy here is entirely unexpected, despite Trabish's repeated allusions to other stories (Casey At The Bat, Hamlet) that do not end well.
  • In the final section, World War I looms. Baseball takes a back seat to early auto racing and oil-fueled modernity explodes. Love struggles with lust. A cavalry troop collides with an army truck. Here, Trabish has more than tragedy in mind. His lonely, confused young protagonist moves through the horrible destruction of the Romanian oilfields only to suffer worse and worse horrors, until--unexpectedly--he finds something, something a reviewer cannot reveal. Finally, the question of oil must be settled, so the oil industry comes back into the story in a way that is beyond good and bad, beyond melodrama and tragedy.
  • Along the way, Trabish gives readers a greater awareness of oil and how we became addicted to it. Awareness, Paul Roberts said in THE END OF OIL, "...may be the first tentative step toward building a more sustainable energy economy. Or it may simply mean that when our energy system does begin to fail, and we begin to lose everything that energy once supplied, we won't be so surprised."
  • Oil history journal articles by Dr. Trabish: Oil Stories and Histories

    • About Me

    My Photo
    Name:
    Location: Agua Dulce, CA

    *Doctor with my hands *Author of the "OIL IN THEIR BLOOD" series with my head *Student of New Energy with my heart

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    CONTACT: herman@newenergynews.net

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    Pay a visit to the HARRY BOYKOFF page at Basketball Reference, sponsored by NewEnergyNews and Oil In Their Blood.

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    • NewEnergyNews

    NewEnergyNews HEADLINES:

    Sunday, August 15, 2010

    WANT CHANGE? THIS IS HOW – HARD, GRINDING, UNRELENTING WORK

    This incredible story of dedicated work leading to an important victory in the war against coal was picked up from the No New Coal Plants email group operated by the Energy Justice Network. Don't look for eloquent prose. These are just the facts. Reitman, a Sierra Club Field Organizer, is way too busy working to protect this good earth to polish the writing. NewEnergyNews could, of course, do so - but it seems more respectful to what happened in Cleveland to let Reitman's raw account stand.

    A story of success
    Matthew/Mattie Reitman, August 13, 2010

    Background
    The Medical Center Company, a non-profit district heating operation formed in 1932 to provide aggregated utility services to University Circle institutions in eastern Cleveland, burns 40,000 tons of coal/year to heat the city's leading institutions. After operating its ancient plant without a permit for 6 years running, this spring the Ohio EPA finally set a renewal process for their Title V air permit.

    University Circle, formerly powered by coal (click to enlarge)

    The plant is part of a hospital complex, a couple hundred feet from college apartments and commerce, and a few hundred feet from Case Western Reserve University, an emerging regional clean energy leader. University Circle has a history of sucking development money away from surrounding neighborhoods, which are predominantly Black, have high levels of poverty and abandonment, and generally feel disconnected from the University world.

    The coal plant not to be (click to enlarge)

    A few years ago, a Baltimore-based consultant recommended that MCC build a new coal-fired plant. Probably around the same time, their largest customer Case Western Reserve University signed the President's Climate Commitment. Hmmmm


    A few months ago
    Sierra coal campaign rep Nachy Kanfer asked the OEPA for a public hearing on this permit renewal, and one was granted (250 blocks away on the other side of town, but with a handful of angry phone calls we got that changed...). The hearing presented a fixed opportunity to bring attention to this issue, which is especially timely since the company has been planning to replace their aging facility.


    We met with MCC President Mike Heise in July, who confirmed the company's desire to move beyond coal. Heise said their consultant's report from just a few years ago was no longer relevant, and the costs of coal have become prohibitive for them. He seems to understand that those costs will continue to rise because of fuel prices and coming regulations. We made it clear that our members will push on this issue, and that we want to see a specific date and public announcement from them.

    Sierra Club Ohio protests (click to enlarge)

    Organizing
    We had two great contacts in East Cleveland who were total gatekeepers to the local community, local politicians, non-profits, and active University Circle types I met with them and the rest was something of a snowball effect.


    Here's what I did:
    -meet with representatives from the Social Justice Alliance and Sustainability Alliance faculty groups
    -meet with each of the groups organizing environmental justice community groups nearby
    -presentation at one of those group's meetings
    -meet with the northeast Ohio Sierra Club coal committee
    -door-to-door in East Cleveland (poor, Black, high abandonment, 1 mile from plant, right next to proposed site for new plant)
    -door-to-door on Murray Hill (college neighborhood mere hundreds of feet from the stacks)
    -meet with President of University Circle Inc which functions as the area CDC
    -phone conversations with Council members from Cleveland and East Cleveland
    -phone and email conversations with MCC President, emails with Board Chair
    -Convio emails
    -HELEN phone banking
    -4 rounds of media pitches including developing a media advisory and press releases
    -3 organizing trips to get it all done, for a total of 6 days on the road

    click to enlarge

    Coal Free!
    The public hearing was scheduled for Tuesday August 10th. On Saturday I came into the office to finish up the phone bank, and saw an email from Bob Brown, who's the Treasurer at Case and Chair of the MCC (and also just so happens to be Sen. Sherrod Brown's brother). He said "MCCo has posted some new information on its web site, including a statement regarding coal." They even used our campaign language - "Medical Center Company Moving Beyond Coal"!

    A Sierra Club Ohio human windmill at a protest against coal. (click to enlarge)

    Uhhhh, we've still got this hearing... So I returned the email with congratulations, and finished the phone bank. Thankfully, a proactive journalist from the Plain Dealer (main Cleveland newspaper) followed this and ran a story the day before the hearing. On Monday I updated key allies, and on Tuesday we still had a packed room of 70+ for the hearing. Nobody spoke in favor of the plant, many people requested a renewal conditional on a specific plan to move away from coal.


    Unfortunately, no television or newspapers attended the hearing (jerks!). Fortunately, we don't need them! Check out this powerful video compilation of citizen testimony that I made as soon as I got home from the hearing (love that flip cam!). Our friend at the Plain Dealer did run a follow-up story today as well.

    click to enlarge

    The Future
    MCC will finish its coal-free strategic plan by the end of 2011. From what I hear, the company is likely to give up its existing facility in its own backyard in favor of a natural gas plant in, you guessed it, East Cleveland. Three steps forward, two steps back, no?


    My main focus from here on will be working with a professor at Case to do a community dialogue project around the proposed site, and work with our lead volunteers and grasstops to maintain a level of public involvement in this planning process.

    From mattiereitman via YouTube

    Matthew/Mattie Reitman
    Beyond Coal Field Organizer, Ohio
    Sierra Club, 131 N High St #605, Columbus OH 43215

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 12:01 PM

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