H2Olson

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FLOW Funder Park Foundation Among Growing Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement

The New York Times recently featured one of FLOW’s major funders, the Park Foundation, in an article about a group of philanthropic foundations that are collaborating to move their financial investments away from fossil fuels (divestment) in an effort to align their money with their missions to curb climate change. Among the groups involved in… Read more »

Require Cumulative Environmental Impact Statement for Keystone XL and Alberta Clipper Tar Sands Oil Pipelines

FLOW, along with a myriad of policy and environment groups throughout the Midwest led by Sierra Club, signed this coalition letter to Department of State Secretary John Kerry. The letter requests that the Department of State consider developing a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) for the Keystone XL pipeline that also accounts for the Alberta Clipper… Read more »

Pennsylvania Court Precedent on Fracking and How It Relates to Protecting Michigan’s Commons: PA State Supreme Court rules municipalities can limit what gas drillers can do

From the desk of FLOW founder Jim Olson: thoughts on the recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling on how municipalities can limit gas drilling in their community (you can also read the full text of the TribLive.com article at the bottom of this post). In a show of judicial analysis and sympathy toward the importance of… Read more »

Wisconsin Pauses Great Lakes Tar Sands

Congratulations to Alliance for the Great Lakes, citizens and organizations in Wisconsin and Michigan, and Council of Canadians for leading the way to deny Elkhorn’s request to improve a barge dock in Superior, Wisconsin to transport dirty tar sands oil over the Great Lakes.  With citizen vigilance, persistence, and growing awareness that these Great Lakes… Read more »

Let’s Get Together

The Great Lakes Society was formed to sustain the work of FLOW. Now the Great Lakes Society wants to encourage others to join and participate with comments, suggestions for how the Society can foster FLOW’s work to find and apply solutions to address the systemic threats to the Great Lakes. You can join the Great… Read more »

Fracking: It’s All About the Water

Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for oil and gas in Michigan is the subject of scrutiny in the recent Integrated Assessment report series from the University of Michigan’s Graham Sustainability Institute.  The report confirms that the future development of tight shale formations appears to be massive and intensive in size and scope and will require unprecedented quantities… Read more »

#FAIL – It’s a Good Thing

As FLOW’s Communications Designer, I have been working in our Traverse City office since January, creating print and web content that gets the word out about FLOW’s policy programs that help protect the integrity of Great Lakes water with the vision of the commons. I have been given the great opportunity to work with our… Read more »

Do We Have a Blue Future?

By Guest Blogger Maude Barlow, National Chairperson for the Council of the Canadians and longtime partner of FLOW. Read the original post here. The world is running out of accessible clean water. Modern humans are polluting, mismanaging and displacing our finite freshwater sources at an alarming rate. Since 1990, half the rivers in China have… Read more »