Michael Brune is the executive director of Rainforest Action Network, and is a founding Board member of Oil Change International. His book Coming Clean: Breaking America's Addiction to Oil and Coal was published by Sierra Club Books in September 2008. Brune lives in California with his wife and two young troublemakers.

Blog Entries by Michael Brune

Blame Canada! Country Takes Heat as Global Climate Saboteur

Posted December 4, 2009 | 05:32 PM (EST)


With climate negotiations starting next week in Copenhagen, the world is losing patience with Canada.

Since announcing that it would abandon its targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol in 2006, Canada has consistently been seen as a global climate laggard. This was again confirmed earlier this...

Read Post

An Open Letter to Chevron's New CEO

1 Comments | Posted November 23, 2009 | 12:35 AM (EST)


Mr. John S. Watson
Incoming Chief Executive Officer
Chevron Corporation

Dear Mr. Watson:

Congratulations on your promotion to the helm of Chevron. I am writing on behalf of Rainforest Action Network to make you an offer.

Late last month, on October 24th, tens of thousands of...

Read Post

How Trudie Styler Is Winning Hearts and Minds at ... Chevron?

2 Comments | Posted October 29, 2009 | 04:59 PM (EST)


As Joe Berlinger's Crude continues to rack up favorable reviews, a captivating email back-and-forth has been revealed between Trudie Styler and executives at Chevron, the oil giant which has been facing increasing criticism for neglecting to clean up more than 1,000 contaminated sites in Ecuador.

Several weeks...

Read Post

Trudie Styler Invites Chevron Workers to the Movies

3 Comments | Posted September 25, 2009 | 09:06 AM (EST)


Let's say you're like most Americans. You believe that everyone should have the right to clean water and clean air. You think that rain forests are special and ought to be protected. And you think that all people have basic human rights to be recognized and respected in every country....

Read Post

Daring Protest at Niagra Falls

2 Comments | Posted September 16, 2009 | 11:35 AM (EST)


Before dawn yesterday morning, a small team of climate activists rappelled from the US observation deck at Niagara Falls. Dangling hundreds of feet above the ground, they sent a special welcome message to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ahead of his first official visit to the White House to push...

Read Post

Arrested in West Virginia -- A First-Person Account

6 Comments | Posted June 24, 2009 | 05:23 PM (EST)


The horn blasted right outside the window where we slept early this morning.

"Wake up, losers!" two miners yelled from their pickup truck, gunning the engine. "Wake up! Time to get a job! Better yet, time to get the f*** out of town!"

Ah, yes. Mornings in the coal...

Read Post

Palin's Pipeline From Hell

23 Comments | Posted June 17, 2009 | 11:00 AM (EST)


There's a stealth dirty oil mega-project sneaking into the United States. It's arriving piece by piece, pipeline by pipeline, refinery by refinery, and permit by permit -- but it's a singularly immense monstrosity conceived by Big Oil. It's called the Canadian Tar Sands, or as the oil industry prefers, Canadian...

Read Post

Cuomo: Is Chevron Misleading Shareholders?

1 Comments | Posted May 8, 2009 | 12:57 PM (EST)


It's been a rough week for Chevron. First, there was the 60 Minutes public relations disaster on Sunday. Now, as reported by Bloomberg and AP, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has expressed concerns that the country's second-largest oil company may be making false or incomplete...

Read Post

Worst Job in the World: Defending Chevron

7 Comments | Posted May 5, 2009 | 05:08 PM (EST)


Watching Chevron get skewered on 60 Minutes last night had me thinking what an awful job it must be to fight against cleaning up oil spills in the Amazon that are making people sick. And that led me to think of my first encounter with Chevron CEO David O'Reilly....

Read Post

Humans Maul Sumatran Tiger

Posted March 20, 2009 | 03:21 AM (EST)


It's not just Greenpeace activists who are taking a beating. On the Indonesian island of Sumatra, one of the world's largest paper companies is threatening one of the planet's most endangered species.

Sumatran forests are among the world's most biologically diverse, but more than half the island's forests...

Read Post

Color-coding carbon emissions

Posted February 12, 2009 | 04:53 AM (EST)


Quick question: what are the top causes of climate change?

Chances are you thought of one way or another in which fossil fuels are burned. When most people think of climate change, they picture giant smokestacks, belching exhaust pipes, clogged freeways and such.

Fair enough. We clearly need...

Read Post

A Message from the Heart of the Amazon

Posted January 28, 2009 | 03:51 PM (EST)


This year, for the first time ever, the World Social Forum is being held in the Amazon, featuring the largest indigenous delegation in the history of the Forum. In an extraordinary and inspirational demonstration, more than one thousand indigenous leaders from throughout the Amazon and around the world gathered yeseterday...

Read Post

Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben Call for Mass Civil Disobedience Against Coal

Posted December 12, 2008 | 11:35 AM (EST)


This is an open letter released today from Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben:

Dear Friends,

There are moments in a nation's--and a planet's--history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push...

Read Post

Fighting Climate Change: Not an Obligation, an Opportunity

Posted December 11, 2008 | 03:43 PM (EST)


When I think about climate change and clean energy, I'm often reminded of Gandhi's famous quote, "the difference between what we do and what we're capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems."

Consider that enough sunlight hits the earth's surface in 40 minutes to match...

Read Post

The Problem With Palm Oil

Posted December 9, 2008 | 03:28 PM (EST)


Want to save rainforests, fight climate change, protect human rights, and reform the globalized food system all at once? Here's a start: check your cabinets, fridge, and gas tank for palm oil.

Last week, two special reports and a new corporate policy highlighted many of the major problems with...

Read Post

Victory for Appalachia! Bank of America Retreats from Mountaintop Removal

Posted December 7, 2008 | 07:30 PM (EST)


After all the bad news about mountaintop removal how about a little success?

Yesterday, Bank of America, a lead financier of coal, announced that they will be phasing out financing for companies that practice mountaintop removal coal mining, a highly destructive and controversial method of coal extraction. Bank of America's...

Read Post

Day of Action Against Coal

Posted November 14, 2008 | 10:17 AM (EST)


In a stirring column in Monday's New York Times, editorial writer Lawrence Downes urged former Obama campaign volunteers to enlist in another tour of duty.

The country is not in the best shape to simultaneously fix a sinking economy, a withered government and an ailing planet. But it...
Read Post

There's No Such Thing as Clean Coal

Posted October 16, 2008 | 10:11 AM (EST)


An op-ed reprinted from Wednesday's San Francisco Chronicle...

If you are a politician running for national office -- or a coal or utility executive -- the notion of "clean coal" is alluring, much like pledging to lower taxes without cutting services. Like other campaign promises, however, citizens are well...

Read Post

Blockading Global Warming

Posted September 23, 2008 | 12:48 PM (EST)


It's called the climate crisis for a reason: global warming is the biggest and most urgent global issue of our time. A crisis of this magnitude compels us to ask a very simple question of ourselves:

"What can I do about it?"

As I wrote in my new book,...

Read Post

The Democrats' Clean Energy Choice

Posted August 27, 2008 | 03:29 PM (EST)


Kevin Grandia over at Coal-is-Dirty.com wrote yesterday about how the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity is spending upwards of $2 million over the next couple weeks in an effort to convince Democrat and Republican conventioneers that, somehow, coal can be made clean. The industry is doing its best,...

Read Post