On episode 103 of the Green Root Podcast (the official podcast of Eco-Integrity Alliance), Hudson Kingston, legal director for CURE, battles government plans in Minnesota to greenwash dirty, forest-killing “biomass” energy by ignoring carbon emissions from incinerating trees and trash for industrial-scale electricity.
Host Josh Schlossberg talks with Hudson about:
-How the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission wants to classify biomass energy as “carbon free” despite tree burning emitting more CO2 than coal.
-Risks to environmental justice communities from increased air pollution.
-Devastating impacts on public lands and Native American reservations.
-How we shouldn’t be switching from one polluting, climate-busting energy source (coal) to another (“biomass”).
-How this decision could have ramifications for greenwashing forest and trash incineration in Minnesota and across the U.S.
The mission of Eco-Integrity Alliance (eco-integrityalliance.org) is to unite U.S. grassroots ecosystem advocates through common campaigns of mutual support.
Eco-Integrity Alliance 
While global warming and its resulting climate change are certainly existential problems, they’re not root causes of anything. While this obviously needs to be dealt with, it shouldn’t be obsessed on as if it’s the only major environmental problem that humans are causing, but that’s far from the truth. To make matters worse, people who are not pro-environment are using these problems to advocate for things that will cause more environmental and ecological harms, like biomass. The facts are that global warming/climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels, the only way to fix the problem is to stop burning fossil fuels, and we can’t have anywhere near these modern lifestyles with anywhere near this many people without fossil fuels. Bottom line is, humans can’t have their cake and eat it too. Either return to living naturally and greatly lower human population, or continue heating our atmosphere until the planet becomes unlivable (you like Venus?). There is no eating your cake and having it too, and humans need to grow the f up and act as if they realize that fact.
Jeff Hoffman Berkeley, CA
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We concur and have definitely never claimed climate change to be a root cause, merely a symptom. Our main focus always has been and always will be on preserving ecosystems. The root causes might be embedded in our DNA, and it’s going to take a much deeper effort to look inside ourselves if we’re going to change much if any of this.
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