Last week, I had fun test-driving the Ford Focus Electric, which goes on sale this month in California, New York, and New Jersey -- and in other markets later this year.  Like the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MiEV, the other full battery electric vehicles I’ve had the chance to ride, it had a smooth and quiet feel with powerful pick-up. One of the exciting benefits of the Focus plug-in is its shorter charging time.  It takes just over three hours to charge from empty using a level-two charger, and it travels up to 100 miles per charge.

Consumers will also benefit from the plug-in Focus' 10 year battery warranty, longer than the eight-year battery warranty offered by other manufacturers. The base price tag, at $39,200 is more expensive than the Leaf and the i-MiEV and similar to the Chevy Volt, but the $7,500 federal tax credit is available for all models.

What fascinated me most about the plug-in Focus was what was possible with the MyFord Mobile app. Not only does it allow you to heat or cool the vehicle before you get inside it  -- conserving your state of charge -- but it will also show you directions to your destination through your vehicle navigation program and let you know what charging stations are available along the way. Additionally it will tell you how you can save emissions and/or money by charging your vehicle at off-peak times.

Tom Bowes, Assistant Director of the Detroit Electrical Industry Training Center, described on our panel how many electricians are now taking advantage of training programs where they are learning to install EV charging units –both at EV drivers’ homes and in public settings.

Our other panelist was the Ecology Center’s Charles Griffith who touted the 38,067 workers in 97 Michigan auto-related facilities and the fact that many of the newest jobs focus on advanced vehicle technologies. He also spoke about Built by Michigan, a coalition advocating for federal and Michigan EV incentives and programs that will give a boost to EV purchasing, manufacturing, jobs, and charging.

While Michigan is the U.S. capital of vehicle manufacturing, there are at least 19 states where vehicle and parts manufacturing is taking place, thanks in part to stimulus funding. To achieve the jobs, emissions, and oil savings we need, EVs like the Focus Electric need to shift into the fast lane. 

-- Gina Colon-Newfield, Sierra Club's Senior Campaign Representative for Electric Vehicles/images by Ann Mesnikoff. Top: Ford's Gina Colon-Newfield and Brian Peterson; bottom: Tom Bowes, Gina, Charles Griffith, and Mike Tinskey.

While the Sierra Club notes that no plan is perfect, the Chapter leaders concluded that the list of projects that the Atlanta transportation ballot measure would fund was flawed to the point of outweighing its benefits. Concerns range from a lack of a cohesive vision for the area's transportation system, a failure to have an equitable and representative regional transit governance in place, a failure to address the core need of the existing transit infrastructure, and that even transit projects that the Club supports in concept are vaguely defined and underfunded.

The Chapter is calling for voters to hold out for Plan B to stop Atlanta's transportation future from heading in the wrong direction, and questions tax booster's claim that this must be passed because it's the only option. The Sierra Club points out "that there is indeed great potential for an alternative plan that achieves meaningful progress on commute alternatives for Georgians without needlessly subsidizing another wave of sprawl." It is hard to make a tough decision on a ballot measure that includes transit funding. As my colleague, Colleen Kiernan, notes in her op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, this is not a first for the Club:

A major American city faces a hotly debated referendum to expand its road and transit network. The local business community is solidly behind it, claiming that passage is vital to the region’s economic competitiveness. Meanwhile, a motley group of community organizations, including the state chapter of the Sierra Club, are opposing the measure.

The reaction to this opposition from proponents is fierce. "There is no Plan B!" they loudly proclaim. "This is the only chance we'll have for a generation!" others cry. "The political climate won't allow anything better!"

This may sound like Atlanta today, but the city in question is in fact Seattle, and the year is 2007. That city's "Roads and Transit" referendum, an awkward mixture of popular transit projects and sprawl-inducing road construction, would eventually go down to defeat at the polls.

Despite predictions that another chance was a generation away, a Plan B was put to voters the very next year, this time focused entirely on expanding and enhancing the region's SoundTransit rail and bus network — without the massive road expansion. The 2008 "SoundTransit 2" initiative passed handily, and Seattle is now actively building out an ambitious regional transit vision.

We can look further back to 1998, when the Club's San Francisco Bay Chapter opposed Measure B, a transportation ballot measure that was similar to those in Atlanta and Seattle. When the ballot measure failed, the then head of one of the involved transit agencies (AC Transit) said optimistically, "It just means we have to try and try and try again until we get it right. We'll fine-tune Measure B and put it back on the ballot."

And that's what happened. Two years later an improved Measure B passed Colleen's op-ed notes, "While the tax would fund initial segments of some popular transit projects like the Beltline, every new track-mile of light rail built would be matched by 16 lane-miles of road expansion — enough asphalt to cover Turner Field more than 200 times."

For the Sierra Club that was too much of a bad thing. Like San Francisco and Seattle, Atlanta can get this right. This position has disappointed some and created a vigorous debate. But we will continue to work to increase transportation choices that will help Americans literally move beyond oil -- in Atlanta and everywhere.

-- Ann Mesnikoff, Director of the Sierra Club Green Transportation Campaign

Drums and prayer songs, dances and garden-grown gifts greet riders on the Freedom Train wherever they stop on their journey across Canada. The riders represent the Yinka Dene Alliance and other First Nations groups who want the crude oil transporter Enbridge to hear their message: Our people have declared your tar sands pipeline project illegal. We have banned you from our land. We have rejected your hollow promises of jobs and profits. Respect our existence or expect our resistance.

The alliance fears, though, that the Canadian government will ignore First Nations law and help Enbridge push the project through. The riders, indigenous women and men aged 15 to 72, set off from their traditional territories near the Pacific coast bound for Toronto's financial district, thousands of miles away. The journey is part of the years-long movement of resistance to Enbridge's proposed "Northern Gateway Pipeline" that would transport tar sands oil from Alberta to British Columbia's Pacific coast, where it would be loaded onto huge tankers that then must navigate precarious and stunningly pristine waterways on the way to market. 

In Toronto, the Freedom Train riders will lead a rally as Enbridge convenes its annual shareholders meeting. This will put Enbridge on notice that the First Nations have banned the Northern Gateway Pipeline from their land, in accordance with First Nations law, and that the company should not attempt legislative acrobatics to push the project forward.

The Freedom Train was inspired by two First Nations struggles that are now at key turning points: the effort to assert the right of self-government, and the effort to avoid environmental disasters on First Nations lands. The alliance is especially concerned about the Northern Gateway pipeline project because it would transport tar sands oil, which is especially corrosive and much more likely to cause a spill than conventional crude. It is also far more hazardous to human health, contains far higher levels of heavy metals, and is far more difficult to clean up when it does spill. These facts were undeniably confirmed after repeated spills in the United States, including the Kalamazoo disaster of 2010 and the Yellowstone River spill of 2011.

The area has also seen a decline in endangered caribou herds due to tar sands mining expansion, but the solution offered by the Albertan government hasn't been to curtail the industry’s expansion.  Instead, the government has culled more than 500 wolves -- poisoning them, or shooting them from helicopters. Tar sands oil has frightening global consequences, too. It produces 20 percent more climate change pollution than conventional crude, and has become the fastest growing source of climate change pollution in North America.

Two out of three British Columbians support the Freedom Train, and yet the alliance has received no word from Enbridge that the project will be scuttled. That’s why the Freedom Train rolls on. “We can’t sit by and watch as our relatives in northern Alberta are harmed by even more unmanaged tar sands development which these pipelines will allow,” said Chief Jackie Thomas of Saik’uz First Nation. “This isn’t just about us. We are part of an unbroken wall of opposition from more than 130 First Nations from the Pacific Coast to the Arctic Ocean who are saying we will not allow these pipelines to be built.  We will use every lawful means at our disposal to guarantee it. There’s no way around us.”

This kind of opposition is precisely why the tar sands industry is working so hard to build pipelines through the United States. Canadian communities have rejected tar sands pipelines as too dangerous and too irresponsible. The industry is counting on Americans to put up less resistance, and to buy the notion that these pipelines – like Keystone in the Midwest and Trailbreaker in New England – are worth the risk.  Tar sands pipelines jeopardize local communities, the global climate, the boreal forest, and First Nations groups who are fighting for their land, their law, and their lives.  To stand in solidarity with the Freedom Train, visit http://freedomtrain2012.com/ .  Then help us resist the tar sands industry in the United States at www.sierraclub.org/tarsands.

Images courtesy Freedom Train.

-- Richard Brown, Sierra Club's Beyond Oil Campaign

A Member of the Sierra Club Board of Directors, Aaron Mair is a twenty-six-year veteran urban environmental activist, regional and national Environmental Justice organizer and strategist from the State of New York, and Former Atlantic Chapter Chair of 41,000-member New York State Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter.

The Sierra Club stands with Dr. Cleghorn in opposition to the dangerous natural gas drilling known as "fracking," which is known to contaminate drinking water, pollute the air, and cause earthquakes.

The above photo: Dr. J. Stephen Cleghorn (left), owner of Paradise Gardens & Farm, greets Aaron Mair, a national board member of the Sierra Club, during an event Thursday at the farm. (Photo by Tom Chapin/The Punxsutawney Spirit)

As the director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, I have to do a lot of traveling, which means spending more time than I would like away from my two-year-old daughter, Hazel. Just this Wednesday, I got home from a trip to find Hazel and her dad pretty exhausted after three days without Mom. I hope that someday, she'll understand that I had to be away sometimes because I was working hard to protect her from the pollution that is a very real threat to her future.

For Hazel, I hope when she's my age that the air and water are clean and safe, the mountains of her home state of West Virginia are still standing, and the threat of climate disruption has passed. I think that future is within our grasp, thanks to the work we are doing to move America beyond coal.

In the past year, we celebrated a historic victory that brought us much closer to that cleaner, safer future, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the first-ever national mercury standards for coal fired power plants. Believe it or not, while coal plants are our nation's #1 source of mercury pollution, until this year there were no national mercury standards in place for coal plants. None at all! Coal plants could just spew 100% of their toxic mercury into the air, which then made its way into our waterways and the fish that we eat.

These protections are long overdue, and will safeguard our families. According to the EPA, every year over 300,000 babies are born exposed to high enough levels of mercury to put them at risk of developmental problems, like lowered IQ and delays in walking and talking - problems that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Babies come into contact with this toxic mercury if their mothers eat a lot of certain species of fish, even before they become pregnant.

I was one of hundreds of thousands of moms and dads who worked hard to secure these new mercury protections, which were finalized in January. Now these safeguards are under attack, and we have to defend them.

Unfortunately, Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma is preparing to file a measure in Congress that would not only stop these mercury protections, but would also prevent the EPA from ever taking action on mercury again. Yes, you heard that right.

This Mother's Day, my wish is that you will join me in taking action to defend these crucial mercury protections. I know all you moms and dads out there are busy, so we've made it simple for you - just click here to send a note to your Senator. Our kids are counting on us, so it's time to speak up in defense of these long-overdue safeguards from toxic mercury pollution.

Thank you. And happy Mother's Day!

-- Mary Anne Hitt, Director of the Beyond Coal Campaign

-- Nicole Ghio, Campaign Liaison

The call comes six months into the United Nations Sustainable Energy for All (UN SEFA) campaign, which seeks to deliver universal energy access by 2030. In order to make good on that pledge the International Energy Agency (IEA) has found (http://bit.ly/zNduXr) that half of all energy services must be provided by off-grid clean energy.

Unfortunately, today’s investments in energy access are heavily skewed toward traditional grid extension, with billions going to large scale centralized power projects which are often heavily polluting coal plants.  Worse, according to the IEA, an over reliance on these investments at the expense of off grid clean energy investments will leave one billion of the world’s poor without energy access by 2030.

“There are literally one billion reasons to change our current approach to energy access,” says Justin Guay, Washington Representative with the Sierra Club’s International Climate Program. “The World Bank has a tremendous opportunity to do just that by committing to rapidly scale up investments in off grid clean energy at Rio.”

The entrepreneurs expressed their support for existing World Bank programs such as Lighting Africa, Lighting India, and Green Power for Mobile and asked for increased funding for programs like these going forward.

The market potential in serving the world’s poor is enormous. Lighting, just one of many energy requirements, is a $36 billion a year industry. However, while the poorest fifth of the world currently pays one-fifth of the world’s total lighting bill, it receives only 0.1 percent of the lighting benefits. Worse it comes from heavily polluting and dangerous kerosene which can cost as much as 25 to 30 percent of a family’s income. Diverting this expenditure to clean energy can reduce pollution and expenses over time.

 “A continued reliance on huge coal, nuclear, and hydro plants has done little to alleviate energy poverty, forcing the poor around the world to rely on kerosene for their meager energy needs,” says Harish Hande, founder of SELCO-India (http://selco-india.com/), and recent recipient of the prestigious Magsaysay award. “The poor are best served by small scale, distributed clean energy which is faster, cheaper and more effective for addressing their needs and delivering on the world’s energy access goals.”

Entrepreneurs like Hande are doing so by providing, small scale solar home systems for communities and households that don’t have access to the grid. The combination of prohibitive costs of grid extension, highly innovative business and financial models, and plummeting cost of renewable energy have enabled them to demonstrate the financial viability of the sector.

Now a new generation of entrepreneurs are experimenting with ‘pay-as-you go’ systems, mobile banking payments, and community power that extends clean energy from off-grid cell phone towers to surrounding communities. In essence they are laying the foundation for the developing world to leap frog the expensive, polluting, and inefficient grid that dominates the developed world.

“The opportunity this presents is just tremendous,” says Simon Trace, CEO of Practical Action (http://practicalaction.org/). “These entrepreneurs are laying the foundation for a clean energy future by serving those who need it most. It’s high time they got the finance they need.”

“Rio +20 is an incredible opportunity for the World Bank Group,” added Jake Schmidt, International Policy Director for Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) (http://www.nrdc.org/). “This is a global platform and the time is right to make a statement on off grid clean energy.”

And this week it’s become clearer than ever that the Production Tax Credit is working.

According to the American Wind Energy Association’s first quarter report, the U.S. wind industry installed 1,695 megawatts during the first quarter of 2012 (53% more than in the first quarter of 2011) bringing the total U.S. wind power capacity installations to 48,611 MW.

AWEA’s report is great news, but it’s clear that without renewing the PTC this progress will stop in its tracks. If Congress drops the ball on the PTC, the wind industry predicts that half of all wind jobs will be lost. Already we’re seeing foreign wind power companies, once committed to developing in America, moving back overseas and domestic companies, uncertain about government action, are already discussing layoffs.

Plus - the PTC only costs about 1/8 of what the US gives in subsidies to the five richest oil companies.

In this economy we should continue supporting American made jobs and helping move our country towards cleaner energy solutions which will save us all money in the long run. Republicans and Democrats alike support the PTC, but the House Republican leadership has failed to bring the issue for a vote. Whether they are holding it hostage for the benefit of big polluter backers or just failing to make it a priority, the result is the same: American families will lose their livelihoods.

It’s time to stand up to those who are protecting dirty outdated dinosaurs and putting new innovative American jobs at risk. Tell Congress to renew the production tax credit now.

-- Dave Hamilton, Director of the Sierra Club Clean Energy Program

Even the schools here push out coal industry propaganda, telling students they don't need to get an education, they can become miners. Dustin's nephew was given an assignment to write a report on reclamation, and the school tried to fail him when he turned in a report saying you can never return a mountain to what it was before mountaintop removal coal mining.

But it wasn't always this way. West Virginia's first industry was water. Rich people used to travel here for the clean, pure water, long before mountaintop removal mining left it contaminated with mercury, selenium, and other heavy metals.

Dustin (pictured at the left) always felt that he owed something to the coal companies, but that all changed when he flew over the coalfields. He told us one of the hardest things he has ever faced was sitting next to his mother as they looked down on what is left of Cook Mountain, which his family has lived on or near since 1849. All that remained was the cemetery where generations of Cooks are buried, surrounded by the mine. The cemetery wouldn't even be there if Dustin's uncle hadn't stopped by to care for it as the coal company was preparing to destroy it. His family was never told, even though they had maintained the cemetery for over a century. (Read more about Dustin and how coal is threatening his family cemetery in this Sierra magazine article)

Over in Beardsfork, another mountain community is fighting for its very existence. Regina Gilbert told us she had a similar experience to Dustin flying over the coalfields in a small plane. First she was devastated, and then she got angry. Her neighbor Catherine South was worried that that if mountaintop removal coal mining continued they might not have a community left; it would be filled with rocks. Outsiders and coal spokespeople say there isn't anything worth saving in Beardsfork, but for Gene Underwood this is his home, his community. He has lived here all his life.

But Debi Goenka brought a message of hope from India. In his forty years of working on environmental issues against seemingly insurmountable odds, he has become convinced that a couple of determined individuals who refuse to give in can win. The key is that they have to be willing to fight; no one will do it for you. That's what is happening in India when entire villages rise up to halt new coal development, and it is what is happening in West Virginia when residents and workers stand up to the coal companies behind mountaintop removal coal mining.

Dustin calls what is happening in Appalachia the eradication of a people. The history is being blown up with the mountains, and the future generations are being killed. West Virginia has some of the highest birth defect rates in the country. The clinic where his mother works used to be quiet. Now it is filled with people on oxygen carrying shopping bags full of medications.

Everything comes back to the mountains: the destruction of people's bodies, the destruction of people's communities, and even the destruction of people's souls. Cynthia Rawlands from Beardsfork explained it another way. "These mountains are our heart, and we need our hearts to love. Please don't take our hearts."

-- Nicole Ghio, Sierra Club Campaign Liaison. Photo of Dustin White by Shawn Poynter.