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Coal River Vally, WV, has become home to a civil disobedience campaign against Massy Energy company in an attempt to halt their destructive mountaintop renewal coal mining practices. Kay Sexton, with her regular run down of environmental protests, has been examining the "imperatives and complexities" of protests that are unique to the environmentalist movement. Here's another data point to add into the discussion. I've mentioned before that I don't always think that the environmental movement benefits from protests. Channeling the Greenpeace mentality of chaining people to trees often seems to generate bad press more then it advances a cause. But, there are times when even my cynical take on the efficacy of protest has to be subverted by out-and-out necessity.

Police arrested 44 anti-coal activists engaged in acts of civil disobedience today to protest expansion of Duke Energy's Cliffside coal-fired power plant. Those arrested will likely be charged with second degree trespassing. Event organizers Stop Cliffside have declared to protest a success: Duke EnergyScryve Corporate Social Responsibility Rating CEO Jim Rogers has publicly said that all of Duke's coal power plants will be shut down by 2050, but considering that many climate change scientists consider shutting down coal-fired power plants to be the single greatest thing that can be done to curb emissions, Rogers' promises have been received with little fanfare.

oncerned locals are taking a stand against mountaintop removal at an upcoming protest march called Related content Leveling AppalachiaOn the MARCC86 the CO2 ASAPArrested EconomyShedding Light on a Deal Related to:walksmytheenergydukecoalprotestremovalsays Walk Past Coal for a Sustainable Future. Sponsored by Footprints for Peace, the walk will protest Duke Energy's expansion of its coalburning Cliffside Power Plant in the Carolinas. The action corresponds with a simultaneous protest at Duke's Charlotte headquarters. The five-mile walk will begin on the campus of Xavier University, pass by the Duke Energy offices downtown and end at Fountain Square. A 15-minute video from Kentuckians for the Commonwealth of Mountaintop Removal will be featured at the end of the march, along with several speakers in opposition to the plant expansion.

The Senate ground to a halt Wednesday in a display of what an individual senator can do to protest his treatment by some of Capitol Hill's most powerful barons. Instead of passing a $33.5 billion measure funding energy and water projects and then moving on to other business, the chamber slogged through a 30-hour protest by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who halted further legislative business after one of his pet ideas was dropped from the bill. At issue is one of Coburn's top issues - greater transparency in government - as well as his sworn enemy, the powerful Appropriations Committee. Coburn had added to the energy and water bill a provision requiring reports that agencies are required to send to the appropriations panels be made available to other lawmakers and to the public. It's part of his drive for greater transparency in government.

The Senate ground to a halt Wednesday in a display of what an individual senator can do to protest his treatment by some of Capitol Hill's most powerful barons. Instead of passing a $33.5 billion measure funding energy and water projects and then moving on to other business, the chamber slogged through a 30-hour protest by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who halted further legislative business after one of his pet ideas was dropped from the bill. At issue is one of Coburn's top issues - greater transparency in government - as well as his sworn enemy, the powerful Appropriations Committee. Coburn had added to the energy and water bill a provision requiring reports that agencies are required to send to the appropriations panels be made available to other lawmakers and to the public. It's part of his drive for greater transparency in government.

The near-death of one of India's most distinguished scientists has halted work on a major hydroelectric dam in the Himalayas. Professor AD Agarwal, 77, former dean of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi at Kanpur, has been on hunger strike for 38 days in protest against a project that would dam the waters of a Ganges tributary. "The water ... is not ordinary water to a Hindu. It is a matter of the life and death of Hindu faith," Agarwal said, before beginning his fast in January. This is his second fast in the past year, which he called off last week only after the Indian government agreed that it would look into electricity generation that would not impede the flow of the holy Ganges. The river must run free in order to maintain its sacred status.

Around 100 Greenpeace activists have occupied a construction site in Rotterdam's harbor to protest against a coal-fired power plant German energy giant E.ON AG is building there. The environmental group says it hopes to force E.ON to change its plans and build a plant that will release less carbon dioxide.

One of the biggest stories in the UK at present is the relationship between democracy and the police - or as it has been expressed several times by Nick Hardwick, chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission - the police needed to remember that they were "servants, not masters" of the public.

"Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday called for a global fund to fight ecological catastrophes like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, as he sought to burnish his credentials as a green leader. Admitting that Russia itself was lagging behind other countries in its standards of environmental protection, he also said Russians should feel free to protest against the authorities on environmental issues. Medvedev said that the oil spill from the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico -- the worst in US history -- had showed that the world had been unable to imagine the scale of such catastrophes."

Last May, protesters took over James E. Rogers's front lawn in Charlotte, N.C., unfurling banners declaring "No new coal" and erecting a makeshift "green power plant" - which, they said in a press release, was fueled by "the previously unexplored energy source known as hot air, which has been found in large concentrations" at his home. And so it goes for Mr. Rogers, the chief executive of Duke Energy. For three years, environmentalists have been battling to stop his company from building a large coal-fired power plant in southwestern North Carolina. They say it will spew six million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually, in addition to producing toxic gases and mountains of fly ash similar to the muck that engulfed a Tennessee community recently.

Robert Redford has come under fire from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). In what seems like a bizarre veering off-mandate for a movie star and the civil rights group who once coordinated the Washington march led by Martin Luther King Jr, they've come to verbal blows over oil and gas drilling. Roy Innis, national chairman of CORE said, "If Robert Redford succeeds in blocking natural gas production in Utah, it's going to hurt a lot of people on the other end of the pipeline-especially low-income families who are struggling to pay their heating bills." And apparently, the organisation is planning to protest against Redford at his own Sundance Festival. Has CORE sold out to gas and oil? Some critics say that CORE has moved away from its key activity because it is funded by the oil and gas industry: Exxon has provided over $250,000 to the group, but CORE says this is part of their role - or as their website says, "Under the banner of TRUTH! LOGIC! & COURAGE!, CORE continues to promote harmony and healing in all aspects of society; calling the shots straight-even when it hurts-and confronting the haters, race-baiters and racial racketeers bent on keeping us apart"

Despite the financial crisis, it seems that wind power is moving up the political agenda everywhere. But as China and the United States continue to develop their wind resources on the ground, a question for Europe is how many windmills can be built out at sea. Inland sites are much less available in Europe than in some other parts of the world. Building windmills at sea also helps to overcome not-in-my-backyard protests from homeowners who complain that windmills are ugly and noisy.

Yesterday, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a Bipartisan Energy Summit featuring experts from MIT, Google, Shell, and others. At one point in the hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) tore into the energy protest House Republicans have been holding for the past several weeks. This political stunt was meant to demand a vote on oil drilling and "attack Democrats for leaving town" in August "without doing something to lower gas prices." After listening all the problems currently facing the country, Whitehouse asked the experts whether anyone thought drilling was the "number one issue" right now. Almost nine seconds went by with complete silence:

About 20 House Republicans have cut short their August vacations, gathering on the floor to protest Democratic energy policy and demand that Speaker Nancy Pelosi call lawmakers back into session to vote on an energy package. The bill would include GOP demands for more domestic drilling.

To understand why fuel prices in the United States have soared over the last year, it helps to talk to the captain of a battered wooden freighter here. He pays just $2.30 a gallon for diesel, the same price Indonesian motorists pay for regular gasoline. His vessel burns diesel by the barrel, so when the government prepared for a limited price increase this spring, he took to the streets to protest.

Last Tuesday I was a witness of a very sad episode. Belgian riot police employed force against a group of French and Italian fishermen marching to the European quarter to protest violently against high price of fuel. A car crash occurred as a consequence of the riots. The frustration of the demonstration is easy to understand, but certainly demonstrations and street fights are not the answer to this problem. Oil prices are high and will go higher. No demonstration can change that.

In this small region of Nigeria known as the "south-south," something huge is happening. The adverse effects of oil exploration have been unfolding in the Niger Delta for the past 50 years. Now, the people have had enough. From environmental activism to peaceful protest to stakeholder dialogs, nothing has worked. A new brand of militancy has emerged in a different kind of attempt to call attention to the desperate poverty and injustice.

Eleven Greenpeace protesters were reportedly arrested today after hanging a banner on Mt. Rushmore. Here is the Washington Post story.