Shareholder resolution calls for Bank of Montreal to stop financing fossil fuels
On Tuesday, March 31, the Bank of Montreal (BMO) shareholder meeting will include a shareholder resolution calling for the bank to make a commitment to exclude or phase out financing for fossil fuels--including coal--in view of the “incongruities” between such financing and BMO’s public positions supporting sustainability. The resolution comes from John Harrington of Harrington Investments (HII), a socially responsible financial manager and NCIO supporter. For several years, NCIO waged a campaign to persuade the bank to drop its efforts to attract investment in an ...
How Phil Tagami Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Coal
Phil Tagami assured City officials and the public in Decenber 2013 that he had no interest in coal; by April 2014, he was in bed with the coal industry where he has remained ever since. Did the prospect of financial ruin change his mind?
Victory for No Coal in Richmond: How It Happened
The scrappy industrial city of Richmond took a bold step toward a fossil fuel-free future on Tuesday night when its city council passed an historic land use ordinance banning the storage and handling of coal and petroleum coke in a three-year phaseout.
This means that Richmond will no longer be the source of one-fourth of West Coast coal exports to Asian markets, and its children will be able to breathe a little easier. The working class city of Richmond, home to the Chevron refinery and a host of other entrenched polluters, has begun at long last to transition ...
Would-be Oakland Coal Baron’s Bankruptcy Exposes Filthy Scheming
Insight Terminal Solutions (ITS) is the new corporate incarnation of the same five year old plot to ship millions of tons of toxic coal through Oakland's waterfront. But they've filed for bankruptcy. And in bankruptcy court, ITS is fighting off a hostile takeover by a hedge fund manager who wants to operate the coal terminal.
It's not the sort of bankruptcy that shutters a business … alas. Instead, it's the kind that gives a bankrupt business a second chance by supervising the reorganization of its finances. But to get that second chance, the business is required ...
NCIO responds to Tagami profile in EB Express
In December 2019, the East Bay Express ran a cover-feature profile of would be coal-developer Phil Tagami ("Phil Tagami is Not Backing Down," East Bay Express, December 10, 2019). Over the signature of of No Coal in Oakland's coordinating committee member Ann Harvey, who identified her affiliation with our ongoing campaign, NCIO responded a few days after the article ran (the letter was drafted collaboratively by several members of NCIO's coordinating committee). Though a number of letters-to-the-editor were published by the paper in response to the profile, the EB ...
Oakland Coal Fires Up Local Press
In October, we called attention to an article by Darwin BondGraham in the UK’s The Guardian, in which the reporter analyzed documents filed in bankruptcy court by would-be coal terminal operator Insight Terminal Solutions (ITS), Phil Tagami’s latest tenant for the Oakland Bulk and Oversize Terminal (OBOT). What BondGraham discovered: fossil fuel executives have been lobbying hard and pouring thousands of dollars into spin-doctoring to revive their effort to ship toxic Utah coal through Oakland.
The lobbying and spin-doctoring has continued in the months since then, ...
No Coal Activists Voice Cautious Optimism After Ninth Circuit Hearing
After a packed Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals hearing Tuesday, No Coal in Oakland activists are cautiously optimistic that the court will overturn District Court Judge Vince Chhabria’s May 2018 decision concluding that the City of Oakland breached its contract with developers.
So-called “Oakland Protocol”: a coal industry falsehood and farce
On Halloween, the Oakland Post published an alarming article about efforts by longtime coal industry executives to revive plans for a coal terminal in West Oakland. No Coal in Oakland contacted the newspaper’s publisher, and was given an opportunity to respond to misstatements of fact and omissions in the article that appear to be part of a concerted plan to lobby key community leaders to overturn the city’s coal ban, as reported by Darwin BondGraham in a Guardian article just a week before.
In the October 31 Post article, Insight Terminal Solutions (ITS), would-be ...
NCIO & San Diego 350: beware fossil fuel contamination in “black box” pension fund investments
No Coal in Oakland's warning against infrastructure investment proposals that conceal fossil fuel projects reached hundreds of pension fund investors in San Diego last weekend. It couldn't have happened without the vital support of activists in San Diego 350 who mobilized to leaflet that city's convention center.
On October 19 through 21, thousands attended the opening days of the 65th Annual Employee Benefits Conference in San Diego. NCIO composed and financed a leaflet warning against “black box” investments similar to the “teaser” that the Bank of Montreal ...
Fossil Fuel Execs lobbying to overturn Oakland coal ban
As reported by Darwin BondGraham in the UK's The Guardian this morning, fossil fuel executives have been lobbying hard and pouring thousands of dollars into spin-doctoring their attempts to ship toxic Utah coal to Asia via the proposed, but now leaseless, Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal on the city's waterfront, near the foot of the Bay Bridge.
From BondGraham's article, "How fossil fuel execs lobbied black leaders to overturn a California city’s coal ban":
Last spring, an unusual meeting took place in Oakland, California, between the NFL star Marshawn Lynch and ...
