In Washington, D.C., 21 protesters were arrested Monday for staging a sit-in at the headquarters of the Department of Interior. The protesters were calling for the abolition of offshore oil drilling, coal mining and tar sands extraction. Kristen Owen of High Country Rising Tide in Wyoming was among those arrested. She criticized Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for his recent announcement that the federal government would open up the Powder River Basin in Wyoming for coal mining.

Kristen Owen: “They expect to receive over 758 million tons of new coal from those land leases that will happen on public lands in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, and that coal will be shipped to coal terminals in the Pacific Northwest and then shipped to Asia, a place where we’ll be fueling developing economies, flooding them with cheap fuels that force them to develop coal-based economies instead of renewable-energy-based economies.”