Thousands Pay Tribute to Judy Bonds: She Has Been to the Mountaintop--and We Must Fight Harder to Save It 4JAN11

FROM HuffPost, a tribute to a great lady, JULIA "JUDY" BONDS OF Marfolk Holler, West Virginia. She died on 3 JAN, after a short struggle against cancer and a long struggle against mountaintop removal mining. Be sure to watch the videos and to share with others. We have an obligation to continue her work in her memory and for the future of all to come.
She was a tireless, funny, and inspiring orator, and a savvy and brilliant community organizer. She was fearless in the face of threats. As the godmother of the anti-mountaintop removal movement, she gave birth to a new generation of clean energy and human rights activists across the nation. In a year of mining disasters and climate change set backs, she challenged activists to redouble their efforts.
As one of the great visionaries to emerge out of the coalfields, Julia "Judy" Bonds reminded the nation that her beloved Appalachians had been to the mountaintop--and in her passing last night, thousands of anti-mountaintop removal mining and New Power activists from around the country are reminding the Obama administration and the country's environmental justice movement of Bonds' powerful legacy and parting words to "don't let up, fight harder and finish off" the outlaw ranks of Big Coal and end the egregious crime of mountaintop removal.
In a special email message last night, Coal River Mountain Watch director Vernon Haltom announced the passing of Bonds, the Goldman Prize winner and Executive Director of Coal River Mountain Watch. Bonds, 58, had battled advanced stage cancer over the past several months. "One of Judy's last acts was to go on a speaking trip, even though she was not feeling well, shortly before her diagnosis," Haltom wrote. "I believe, as others do, that Judy's years in Marfork holler, where she remained in her ancestral home as long as she could, subjected her to Massey Energy's airborne toxic dust and led to the cancer that wasted no time in taking its toll. Judy will be missed by all in this movement, as an icon, a leader, an inspiration, and a friend."
Here's a clip from a special tribute to Judy by On Coal River filmmakers Adams Wood and Francine Cavanaugh:

Judy Bonds from On Coal River on Vimeo.
Judy Bonds from On Coal River on Vimeo.
A little more than a decade ago, sitting on the coal dust-swept front porch with her grandson--the ninth generation of their family to reside in Marfork Hollow in West Virginia--Bonds was outraged to hear her 7-year-old grandson describe an escape route should a nearby massive coal waste dam break and flood their valley. "I knew in my heart there was really no escape," Bonds told an interviewer in 2003. "How do you tell a child that his life is a sacrifice for corporate greed? You can't tell him that, you don't tell him that, but of course he understands that now."
Forced by an encroaching strip mine to move from her family's ancestral land, Bonds spent the next decade as a full-time crusader (and coal miner's daughter) to bring her grandson's message of central Appalachia's role as a national sacrifice zone from the devastating impact of mountaintop removal strip mining to millions of Americans across the country.
For fellow activist Bo Webb, who went to jail and organized side-by-side with Bonds for years in the Coal River Valley, "the death of Judy Bonds inspires a call to rise." Webb added: "In the mortal world death implies an ending, a decisive finality. The death of Judy Bonds leaves a void in the hearts of all who knew and loved her, but her death shall not signify the end of her work, nor shall it imply a pause in our fight for the abolition of mountaintop removal. Judy's passing from this mortal world shall serve as a call to rise. Her work will not be finished until we finish it for her. Although Judy has physically left our earthly world, let us acknowledge her spirit to live within each of us. Judy sometimes quoted "you are the one you have been waiting for." Let us now call upon unity in this movement; big greens, grass roots, top to bottom, bottom to top, to speak with one voice, to rise to a new level, re-energized, re-focused as never before."
For Webb: "I can feel Judy nudging each of us; "Hey Guy's, We are the ones We have been waiting for." Let us fill the void in our hearts with Judy's strength of mind to fight on. Let her passing serve as inspiration to hundreds of thousands of Appalachians and activists throughout our nation to unite in solidarity to demand the abolition of mountaintop removal."
"Judy was fiercely honest, unwavering and compassionate," Grammy-winning artist Kathy Mattea wrote. "She challenged me, inspired me and made me laugh. Not just a leader, she was a Force, and I feel blessed to have known her."
"Judy Bonds was our Hillbilly Moses," added Bob Kincaid, president of the Coal River Mountain Watch board. "She knew better than anyone that we WILL make it to the Promised Land: out of the poisonous bondage of coal companies. She will not cross over with us on that great day, but her spirit will join us, and inform the freedom that sings from our hearts. Mother Jones, meet Judy. Judy, Mother."
In a special Living on Earth radio interview with Jeff Young in 2003, Bonds recalled her grandson holding a handul of dead fish contaminated by coal waste. "And I looked around him and there were dead fish laying all over the stream. And that was a slap in the face."
From the United Nation to the halls of Congress, and at universities and conferences from Maine to California, Bonds testified to the ravages of strip mining on her community's waterways, economy and culture. Her riveting speeches galvanized activists from the hollers to the urban neighborhoods, and among national environmental organizations.
"Judy was a strong, powerful voice that always sang wisdom, inspiration, passion and determination to my soul," wrote Chris Hill, the National Field Organizer for the Hip Hop Caucus in Washington, DC. "She was a voice that will forever speak volumes to the reasons why I fight for justice from the mountains to the inner cities."
"Judy often remarked how she proudly stood shoulder to shoulder with outside groups like Rainforest Action Network," added Scott Parkin, Senior Campaigner for RAN's Coal Campaign. "During an E.P.A. action last March, I saw her beaming with a big smile and much excitement as we worked together to make mountaintop removal a national issue and take the fight to end it out of the hills and hollers of Appalachia into offices of the power-holders in Washington D.C."
"She inspired thousands in the movement to end mountaintop removal and was a driving force in making it what it has become," Haltom wrote in his email message to national activists. "I can't count the number of times someone told me they got involved because they heard Judy speak, either at their university, at a rally, or in a documentary. Judy endured much personal suffering for her leadership. While people of lesser courage would candy-coat their words or simply shut up and sit down, Judy called it as she saw it. She endured physical assault, verbal abuse, and death threats because she stood up for justice for her community."
"One of the happiest days of my life was when we announced the funding for a new school to replace Marsh Fork Elementary," said filmmaker and activist Jerry Cope, who worked with Coal River Valley residents to move a school imperiled by coal dust and a dangerous coal slurry impoundment. "Without Judy's inspiration, I would have never become involved and she will forever be a source of inspiration to me."
In a special tribute to Judy by filmmakers Jordan Freeman and Mari-Lynn Evans, Judy asked for the right to go home. "I miss my home," she pleaded. "I want to go home."


Like generations before her, Judy Bonds has finally gone home to her Marfolk Holler.
And thousands of coalfield residents, activists and leaders will continue the battle to ensure that Coal River Mountain--the last mountain--remains in her view, and mountaintop removal is abolished once and for all.

Greed Explains the Disasters and the Lying Afterwards 14JUN & It Will Take a Mission - SojoMail 06.17.10 & BP CEO Tony Hayward Re-Recites Ad Copy In Congressional Hearings (VIDEO) 17JUN10

GREED is one of the seven deadly sins, and the greedy pigs like blankenship and hayward should not be allowed to escape criminal prosecution for the deaths, injuries and environmental and economic damage their greed has caused. But it is not only their greed that has caused these disasters. Yes, they, along with their corporate executives and corporate boards of directors profit the most but every person who invest, individually or through their personal or 401-K portfolios in these companies is also guilty of the results of corporate greed. There are investment options that do not invest in gas, oil and coal companies, and government bonds are also a lesser evil than the corporate worlds dirty energy sector. As long as Americans continue to invest in these companies, and elect politicians bought and paid for by these companies (i.e. joe barton, jim inhofe, michelle bachman, jon cornyn just to name a few) these environmental and economic disasters will continue to happen. When the next one does happen and you wonder how it could and who is responsible just go look in a mirror....
The first and last are from the Huffington Post, the second is from SOJO, a great article on the mission in the Gulf of Mexico and how we need to address our national needs and greeds.

As oil mucked the Gulf of Mexico and families mourned 11 dead rig workers, BP officials proclaimed that the corporation's priority always was safety.
This tracked the tack taken by Massey Energy, whose officials also declared safety was paramount after an explosion in the corporation's Upper Big Branch mine killed 29 workers.
CEOs commonly make such incongruous assertions to protect profits after corporate-caused disasters. They're driven by the same factor that is fundamental to the catastrophes -- greed.
Nothing wrong with that, right? Not in a society that has converted greed from a vice to a virtue. Not in the place that inspired the book, Greed is Good: The Capitalist Pig Guide to Investing. Surely it's no problem in the land where "Greed" has its own game show on Fox and where Ayn Rand, the "money-is-the-root-of-all-good" philosopher, reigns as Republican queen long after her death.
Americans worship God on the Sabbath and the rich every other day. Billionaire Warren Buffett's word is investment gospel. Americans gave Wall Street banksters hundreds of billions in bailout money -- protecting their multi-million dollar bonuses. But in the midst of the Great Recession caused by Wall Street recklessness, America has repeatedly delayed renewal of unemployment benefits and now is terminating federal health insurance support for the furloughed middle class.
Middle class workers are the ones who die in coal mines and on oil rigs.
Afterwards, CEOs say anything to save the bottom line -- the one that will determine their bonuses.
Discussing the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, Massey CEO Don Blankenship told stock analysts in a conference call late in April:

"Some of the implications have been that we don't focus on safety or we put dollars in front of safety and nothing could be further from the truth."

Though the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) issued 1,342 safety violation notices to Upper Big Branch over the past five years, Blankenship explained that's just life in the coal business:

"Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process."

In addition, Blankenship said the titles of two Massey programs proved safety was supreme:

"The naming of those two programs speaks for itself: S1 -- safety is job one; P2 -- production is job 2. That's been the case for my entire tenure."

Still, 29 miners are dead. And dozens died at Massey mines in the past decade. Three died at Upper Big Branch between 1998 and 2010. The Massey dead include two workers who suffocated in a mine run by Massey subsidiary Aracoma Coal Co. on Jan. 19, 2006, just three months after Blankenship issued a memo ordering underlings to produce coal to the exclusion of other activities, such as building ventilation systems called overcasts. Aracoma officials pleaded guilty in December, 2008, to removing and failing to replace ventilation devices, the lack of which contributed to the suffocation deaths.

And Massey workers aren't as sure as Don Blanekship that safety is job one. Several spoke to NPR about it. Teddy Cole, who worked a dozen years at Upper Big Branch, said Blankenship prioritizes production:

"It's supposed to be safety first, but to me, it was production first."

Former co-worker Brian Jerral agreed:

"A lot of times, it's production first and safety third."

Adam Vance, who worked at two Massey mines, described a culture of greed:

"They cover [themselves] with their safety meetings, but the main thing Massey's out for is to get that all-mighty dollar. If the coal ain't running, they ain't making no money."

And it's a lot of money for Massey -- $1.02 million a day in 2008.
Massey miner Ricky Lee Campbell 24, of Beckley, W.Va., told reporters about his safety concerns on April 7. Massey suspended him a week later, then fired him. He has filed a federal whistle-blower complaint.

Similar to Massey, BP officials claim safety is job one.
Shortly after BP named Tony Hayward CEO in 2007, he told the Houston Chronicle:

"I think we have the opportunity to set a new benchmark in industrial safety. . .We have to have a work environment where people don't get injured or killed, period."

That was significant since an explosion two years earlier had killed 15 workers and injured another 170 at BP's Texas City, Texas oil refinery, and federal regulators blamed the catastrophe in part on cost cuts initiated by Hayward's predecessor. The following year, BP admitted oil leaks into Alaska's Prudhoe Bay were caused partly by cost cutting.
Despite Hayward's safety assertions, another 11 workers are dead. And survivors told CNN that PB routinely cut corners and pushed production despite potential safety problems. They also told CNN co-workers had been fired for raising concerns about dangerous practices that could delay drilling if remedied and that BP had insisted on an unsual process shortcut on the day of the blast.
Immediately after the rig explosion, BP contended its under-Gulf pipe was spewing only 1,000 barrels of oil a day. Fairly quickly, it revised that estimate to 5,000 barrels, but continued to refuse to make public its live video of the oil-churning pipe.
After a freedom of information request and Congressional pressure forced BP to release the video, federal officials estimated as much as 40,000 barrels are being discharged daily.
Still, BP's Hayward flatly denied the existence of underwater oil plumes, saying:

"The oil is on the surface. There aren't any plumes."

And he discounted the effect of the unleashed oil on the environment:

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume."

Hayward had a good (greed-based) reason to deny access to the video, discount the amount of oil spewing into the sea and defy the assessment of government and university researchers who confirmed the plumes of dispersed oil stretching for miles beneath the ocean surface. BP will be fined based on the number of barrels of oil its well disgorges into the gulf - somewhere between $1,100 and $4,300 a barrel -- depending on whether the government can prove gross negligence.
David Leonhardt, an economics columnist for the New York Times, described BP's Texas City, Gulf of Mexico and Alaska crises this way:

"Much of this indifference stemmed from an obsession with profits, come what may."

Greed.
It's one of the seven deadly sins. When it afflicts corporate CEOs, it's deadly to workers.
Honest profit is fine. But it's perverse to celebrate greed, to elevate it over human life.

It Will Take a Mission - SojoMail17JUN10

This week, in President Barack Obama’s Oval Office speech on the oil spill, he used the term “mission.” That’s the right word. Most of the media coverage, and even much of the presidential address Tuesday night, was about “management” -- but the real and deeper meaning that is now emerging out of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is indeed the call to a new mission.
The ongoing discussion about who’s to blame, who’s responsible, and who’s in control of the oil spill disaster -- which is now the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history -- has been constant in the media, and the speech was in response to many of those questions. The clear financial, and perhaps criminal, responsibility of BP is a fundamental moral and political issue here, of course; as is the continuing frustration of people in the Gulf Coast region with the government’s response and leadership in the crisis. The need for more skimmers, more boom, more equipment, more people, more help, and much more coordination in protecting and cleaning up the endangered Gulf Coast from the gushing assault of toxic oil is very clear; but missing the deeper meaning would be an even greater disaster now.
It will take a purposeful commitment to a mission of change, of transformation in the way that our entire society and culture is energized and powered, to truly respond to the epiphany in the Gulf. After Obama described what he plans to do in response to the immediate and long-term consequences of the oil spill, he returned to more moral and even theological language in admitting how “our addiction to fossil fuels” had taken us to deeper and more and more dangerous waters -- drilling more than a mile under the ocean.
“For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered,” Obama said. “For decades, we’ve talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades we have failed to act with a sense of urgency that this challenge requires. Time and again the path forward has been blocked, not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor. The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight.”
But will the consequences in plain sight be enough to change us? Last night, Jon Stewart did a very funny and very sobering review of how the last eight Presidents now -- Obama, Bush 2, Clinton, Bush 1, Reagan, Carter, Ford, and Nixon -- have called for and promised to end our dependence on foreign oil. It’s time to indeed call this an addiction -- and it is time for an intervention.
Obama continued, "today as we look to the Gulf, we see an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude. We cannot consign our children to this future. The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now. Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash American innovation and seize control of our own destiny.”
But to change our addictive oil habit -- which is killing the environment, killing wildlife, killing us, killing the Gulf, and threatening our children -- will take a mission to:

• Change the practice of seeing oceans as mere drilling opportunities for our insatiable addictions, instead of as an integral part of Gods’ creative ecosystem.

• Change an economic ethic based on growth at any cost to one governed by the ethics of sustainability.

• Change corporate greed and recklessness into accountability and even commitment to the common good.

• Change government accountability and regulation from the cozy relationship of political appointees looking for future work in the industries they allegedly oversee, to an independent and respected vocation as civil and public servants.

• Change the vocational trajectory of millions of our poorest youth from flipping burgers to retrofitting a society for a clean energy future.

• Change our foreign policy based on dependence on corrupt oil regimes, on sending our sons and daughters off to fight and die for their crude product, on both fueling and paying for the violent terrorism that is eventually used against us.

• Change the political will to overcome the entrenched, special, selfish, and partisan interests of Washington.

• Change a culture to find new ways of living, thinking, working, transporting, and even measuring success.

• Change our values and very spirituality to rewire both ourselves and the energy grid for a cleaner and renewable energy future.

• Convert the faith community to provide a leadership role both by example and prophetic witness and advocacy.

At the end of his speech, President Obama described the tradition on the Gulf Coast of “the blessing of the fleet” -- before the region’s fishermen head out to sea, often for weeks at a time -- and quoted a priest and fisherman who once said, “The blessing is not that God has promised to remove all obstacles and dangers. The blessing is that he is with us always, a blessing that’s granted even in the midst of a storm.” Then Obama said, “Tonight we pray for that courage, we pray for the people of the Gulf, and we pray that a hand may guide us through the storm to a brighter day.”
It will take seeing this as mission of God, and not merely our own; and it will take our faith in God to see this mission through.

BP CEO Tony Hayward Re-Recites Ad Copy In Congressional Hearings (VIDEO)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/17/bp-ceo-tony-hayward-re-re_n_616284.html

Anyone who was tuned in to this morning's session of Congressional hearings featuring various angry members of the House of Representatives, BP CEO Tony Hayward, and Hayward's pet parakeet, "Representative Joe "Rationalizin' and Apologizin'" Barton (R-Tex.) probably noticed the same strange thing about Hayward's opening remarks that I did -- a large part of his opening statement seemed to be a robotic recitation of the ad copy used in BP's famous "Sorry about that oil spill" ad.
Well, as it turns out, it was. HuffPost's own Ben Craw went ahead and spliced together the relevant portions of Hayward's statement and the BP ad and if you close your eyes, you won't be able to tell the difference.
WATCH:

JPMorgan’s War on Nature from MOJO 30MAR10

Click the header for the story at MOJO and cancel your Chase credit card if you have one.

How the Wall Street darling underwrites environmental Armageddon.
— By Andy Kroll

Unlike virtually all of its competitors, JPMorgan Chase steeled itself early for the collapse of the subprime market and emerged from the rubble of the global financial meltdown with both its balance sheet and reputation intact. But the storied firm stands alone among its Wall Street rivals in another area, too. JPMorgan backstops one of the most destructive mining practices in the world: mountaintop removal coal mining. And it continues to do so even as other major banks have cut ties to this practice.

"Chase is the single largest remaining player in this game," says Scott Edwards, advocacy director for the Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental advocacy group comprised of lawyers, scientists, and activists, among others. "They just absolutely refuse to take responsibility for their role in this absolutely devastating industry."

Mountaintop removal (MTR) mining, focused in Appalachian states like West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, involves deforesting huge swaths of land and blasting the summits off of mountains to expose the black veins of coal underneath. The waste and rubble from the demolition is then dumped into nearby rivers and streams, burying local water sources in toxic byproducts, choking off tributaries that feed into larger rivers, and wiping out plants and wildlife, according to numerous scientific studies. Despite the mining industry's claims, there are no successful ways to mitigate the effects of MTR, according to Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. The effects on the nearby environment, she says, are long lasting and often irreversible.

The impact of MTR mining is global, too. When mining companies deforest a mountaintop before demolition, they engage in a practice that overall contributes 25 to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions each year. Between 1992 and 2012, MTR will have leveled 7 percent of Appalachian forests in areas studied by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Nonetheless, over the past 17 years, JPMorgan Chase has helped to underwrite nearly 20 bond or loan deals, worth a combined $8.5 trillion, for some of the biggest players in the MTR mining business, according to data from Bloomberg. Other large banks have either halted financing companies engaging in the practice outright or signaled their intent to do so. In December 2008, for instance, Bank of America publicly announced plans to "phase out financing of companies whose predominant method of extracting coal is through mountain top removal." Wells Fargo has cut ties with coal giant Massey Energy. And a Credit Suisse official says the bank has a "global mining policy" that ensures "we explicitly do not finance the extraction of coal in a mountaintop removal setting." But JPMorgan continues to back the practice.

By underwriting MTR, JPMorgan ties itself to some of the nation's biggest polluters. Take Massey Energy, which leads the nation in MTR mining. In 2008, the company extracted more than 21 million tons of coal using mountaintop removal mining, according to opensourcecoal.org, an online database for coal production statistics. That same year, JPMorgan acted as lead manager on a $690 million bond offering by Massey, according to financial records.

Over the past decade, Massey has mined nearly 190 million tons of coal in Appalachia using mountaintop removal, according to opensourcecoal.org—and it has essentially disregarded the law and surrounding landscape to do so. Between 2000 and 2006, Massey violated the Clean Water Act more than 4,500 times by dumping sediment and leftover mining waste into rivers in Kentucky and West Virginia, the EPA said in 2008. (Environmental groups say the EPA's tally is a lowball figure; they estimate that the true number of violations is more than 12,000.) As a result of these breaches of the law, the company agreed to pay the EPA a $20 million settlement.

Don Blankenship, Massey's CEO and an avowed climate change denier, even admitted in a January debate that it's practically impossible to engage in MTR mining without violating the Clean Water Act.

Another major client of JPMorgan's is Arch Coal, the second-biggest American coal company and a powerful opponent of climate change regulation. In 2009 alone, Chase helped finance $600 million for the Missouri-based company, which that same year mined 4.7 million tons of coal using MTR. Arch has had its run-ins with the EPA, too: It's currently locked in a decades-long battle with the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers, which issues MTR mining permits, over the fate of its Spruce No. 1 mine. As first envisioned back in 1998, the MTR mine would have been the largest ever, but environmental activists fought the project, and the Army scaled back the permit in 2007 so that the mine would bury eight miles of nearby streams instead of 10. (Activists are still fighting the permit, and a new court ruling is expected later this month.)

All of this begs the trillion-dollar question: Why has JPMorgan remained in the MTR business? It's hard to know with any certainty: Like most banks, JPMorgan keeps its decision-making private. Public financial filings offer little insight, either. The bank's environmental guru, Jim Fuschetti, a managing director who oversees its Office of Environmental Affairs, declined to be interviewed for this story. Several groups, including Rainforest Action Network and JPMorgan shareholder Boston Common Asset Management, a socially responsible investment firm, say they've met with the bank about its MTR financing, but members of both groups declined to discuss negotiations other than to say JPMorgan is actively examining its backing of MTR mining.

There's no doubt growth and profit underpin much, if not all, of JPMorgan's MTR activities. Coal is still a top energy source for the US and the developing world, and companies like Massey and Arch play a role in providing that coal for power companies here and abroad.

But even the economics of MTR are up for debate. A 2009 report by West Virginia University found that while the coal industry generates $8 billion a year for the state and other Appalachian areas in earnings and taxes, the estimated cost of excess deaths attributable to MTR mining is $42 billion a year—more than five times the economic benefit. And the authors of that report considered it a conservative estimate.

For years, environmental activists have highlighted the economic and environmental impacts of MTR in an effort to ban the practice, a goal that has the public's backing, polls show. San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network in particular has zeroed in on JPMorgan. The group launched a social media campaign day—using blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.—to protest JPMorgan, and delivered letters to branch banks calling on CEO Jamie Dimon to end the bank's MTR support. The Sierra Club produced a video specifically singling out Dimon—a media darling and frequent visitor to the White House—for JPMorgan financing policies, contrasting Dimon's statements about the importance of sustainability with the bank's financing. "Tell Jamie Dimon," the video's narrator says, "that if he's going to talk the talk, JPMorgan Chase needs to walk the walk."

In mid-March, members from a progressive ministry called The Church of Life After Shopping placed mounds of allegedly toxic mud from West Virginia outside JPMorgan's New York headquarters as well near other branch banks in New York. The Church's Reverend Billy Talen said his group was launching an "as long as it takes" campaign to shift JPMorgan financing away from MTR mining.

Some JPMorgan shareholders have similarly protested the bank's backing of mountain top removal mining. At least two shareholder groups have filed resolutions in 2010 highlighting JPMorgan's support for the practice. One of them, Loyola University Chicago, called on the bank to publicly report on the impact of MTR mining by its clients, like Massey and Arch Coal, as well as the financial impact on JPMorgan if it banned MTR financing. The pushback from the university grew out of a visit to MTR sites in Appalachia by Loyola students, who were shocked at the devastation wrought on the landscape and surrounding communities, says Elaine Lehman, secretary of Loyola's shareholder advocacy committee and a director of corporate relations at the school.

Another resolution, filed by Boston Common Asset Management, a firm focusing on sustainable and responsible investing, demands that JPMorgan adhere to a 2008 agreement called the "Carbon Principles," an effort among big banks—and which JPMorgan has signed—to improve environmental disclosures and ultimately shift more funding into green, sustainable projects. (Boston Common recently withdrew its resolution due to ongoing negotiations with JPMorgan officials, a Boston Common official, Dawn Wolfe, says.)

Environmental groups also point to JPMorgan's membership in the "Equator Principles," a voluntary set of guidelines (and predecessor to the Carbon Principles) calling for more disclosure on project financing and urging a shift toward greater investment in sustainable energy sources. If JPMorgan honored its participation in the Equator Principles, these groups say, the firm would better document its MTR financing.

Ultimately, however, environmental groups want JPMorgan to stop financing mountaintop removal mining altogether. Amanda Starbuck, who leads the Rainforest Action Network's global finance campaign, says that if the bank is to satisfy its critics, "Nothing less than a blanket ban of mountaintop removal by Chase will suffice."

Correction appended: A previous version of this story misstated the resolutions filed by two JPMorgan Chase shareholders. The story has been corrected to reflect the nature of each organization's resolution.