Archive for April, 2010

Action in British Columbia

[Photos are available here]

Historic homes are being demolished, and ancient indigenous sites are under threat from the South Fraser Perimeter Road (SFPR) project here on the Fraser River bank. The est. $2 billion SFPR is part of the controversial Gateway program, which would greatly increase greenhouse gas emissions in BC.

The action took place at River Road and Centre Street in Delta. It coincides with the multi-faith Pilgrimage to Burns Bog, and is visible from the pilgrimage route across the Alex Fraser Bridge. Pilgrims and activists aim to raise awareness about Burns Bog, a large, carbon-sequestering peat bog also under threat from the SFPR freeway.

“Our neighbours are being forced out of their homes, and ecosystems are being bulldozed,” says Delta resident Ernie Baatz. “Schools and programs are being cut across the province to pay for this climate changing freeway. We have to stand up to this appalling waste.”

Baatz and fellow activists also planted trees at the site today, to highlight the area’s potential as a riverfront park, not a riverfront freeway. Although preparatory work has begun on some sections of the SFPR, no build contract is in place. A request for proposals was issued by the Ministry of Transportation in April 2009.

The action is part of a week of events dubbed “Earth Action Week” by GatewaySucks.org and the Council of Canadians (Delta/Richmond chapter).

Countdown to the Walk

We have three weeks to let folks in New England and beyond know about The Quabbin Walk.  Starting Monday, May 17 and going until Sunday, May 23 beginning in North Orange, MA going eastward toward Petersham and ending in New Salem, the Walk hopes to raise awareness that future survival of life on Earth for all species is being threatened by deforestation all over the planet. Here in Massachusetts forests had at long last begun to return to their lush and varied pre-Colonial state. Now they are once again threatened. We abhor the careless and thoughtless practice of so-called “even-age” management, a euphemism for clear-cutting, particularly on our public lands and especially without public input and transparency. These trees are part of our defense against the coming climate crisis. Their destruction adds to that crisis. In light of the recent promotion of biomass incineration by corporations and the state, the clear-cutting of public lands adds to the growing concern that our forests will be degraded and destroyed in the name of hyped “green” energy.  Biomass incineration is NOT a “renewable”, it is NOT “green”.

The Quabbin watershed, once a showcase for eco-forestry, is now under siege. Clear-cuts are devastating various sites throughout the reservoir lands. The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, who administer the area, must be held responsible for this destruction, but only raised public awareness will bring a stop to such practices. It is for that reason we ask you to join us on the Quabbin Walk and to help spread the word about this event.

In the coming days we will be posting information and updates here: http://quabbinwalk.blogspot.com

letting you know about the issue and what you can do to save the forests. Please bookmark this page and PLEASE tell your friends, family and neighbors about this effort.

Contact: maforestwalk@gmail.com

Our home is NOT a laboratory!

ETC Group, Friends of the Earth, Indigenous Environmental Network, Rising Tide North America, Biofuelwatch, Via Campesina, Global Exchange, Jubilee South and many more organizations want you to have a hand in the H.O.M.E. (Hands Off Mother Earth) campaign to raise the movement to stop geoengineering experiments.

Join in the Hands Off Mother Earth campaign now and upload your hand to join a massively burgeoning photo petition to ban geo-engineering experiments! This visual gallery of resistance (available online and growing) will be printed out and brought to key UN meetings, mobilizations, protests and public events throughout 2010 in the lead up to next UN COP climate convention in Cancun this coming December.

The HOME campaign was launched in April 2010 at The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba Bolivia by a coalition of  international civil society groups, indigenous peoples organizations and social movements. These groups invite other organizations worldwide as well as individuals to sign up in support of the campaign.

There is nothing acceptable about using our one home planet earth as an open air laboratory for unjust and risky geoengineering schemes!

Log on, give your hand and power the movement at handsoffmotherearth.org

cross-posted from Global Justice Ecology Project Climate Voices:
From Thirty Thousand Feet Above Mother Earth

by Jeff Conant

En route to Bolivia – that is, somewhere 30,000 feet above Mother Earth – I crossed paths with Alberto Saldamando, the legal council for the International Indian Treaty Council, and a member of the Indigenous Environmental Network delegation to the Cochabamba climate summit. As we stood in the aisle of the airplane, raising the hackles of the flight crew, I asked him his vision of the week ahead. Alberto is a friend, someone I’ve worked with in the past, so he may have been more candid with me than he might be in public; when I asked his opinion on the state of the climate negotiations and his hopes for Cochabamba, he said, “I’m pessimistic. You know, greed has no bounds.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Andy Rowell on the Oil Change blog

If you have never been to an oil company AGM it is worth going to watch two parallel words colliding for a few hours.

On the one side are the protestors arguing passionately for the company to listen to how their activities are destroying someone’s homeland or are polluting the earth.

Up on the top table sit the company’s top brass, who go through the motions of this annual public inconvenience.

They bat the questions away like an experienced cricketer annoyed to be outside in the mid day sun. In the middle are the shareholders who shuffle in, listen and then shuffle out.

In the early nineties, I routinely attended both BP’s and Shell’s AGMs, as a whole host of environmental and social concerns was put to their boards and raised before shareholders.

But questions about corporate pollution or human rights abuses would be dismissed by the board and booed from the floor.

The shareholders were there for their day out, that included a free lunch and as much free wine they could drink in the proscribed time limit.

Any questions from the floor were an inconvenience that ate into the amount of time they had to scoff their free wine. But scoff they did.

So if they were doddery before they came in, they were certainly doddery on the way out.

Read the rest of this entry »

Action in the UK -

An excellent day of action, including the closure of three BP petrol stations!

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BP hit by tar sands protests in London, Brighton, Oxford and Cambridge

Oil company targeted by nationwide protests in advance of crucial AGM vote

Protesters demand BP pulls out of “the most destructive project on Earth” – the Canadian tar sands

For photos, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/no-tar-sands and http://www.no-tar-sands.org. Brief reports of the London and Oxford actions can be seen at http://www.demotix.com/news/297925/bp-party-pumps and http://www.demotix.com/news/298075/bp-tar-sands-protest-oxford.

Today, oil giant BP was struck by multiple protests over its controversial plans to extract oil from the Canadian tar sands (1). Hundreds of climate activists in London, Brighton, Oxford and Cambridge (2) targeted the company with simultaneous demonstrations and street parties, including forecourt invasions which closed three BP petrol stations in London and Brighton (3), (4).

Read the rest of this entry »

TWO women chained themselves to petrol pumps at a Plympton garage yesterday in a protest aimed at petrol giant BP.

The two women locked themselves to pumps at the BP Chaddlewood Service Station garage in Ridgeway after 2pm in a demonstration against BP’s investment in tar sands oil.

Tar sands is a type of heavy bituminous oil found chiefly in Canada and Venezuela which has been criticised by environmentalists. They claim the extraction process generates two to four times as much greenhouse gas per barrel of product as conventional oil refining.

Six people from the Plymouth Rising Tide (PRT) and Kernow Anarchist Network groups demonstrated, but only two chained themselves to pumps while the others handed out leaflets and held banners.

The station, which is run by a franchise but supplies BP petrol to customers, was shut during the protest. Sarah Mana, of PRT, protested but was not one of those arrested. “We saw it as necessary to make a radical call,” she said. A BP spokesman said: “We support the demonstrators’ right to express their views, but not to put their lives or the lives of others in danger. “Our prime concern was the safety of staff, customers and the site. We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience this caused.”

Two people were arrested by police in connection with the incident.

http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/Greens-protest-closes-petrol-station/article-1992261-detail/article.html

April 21st, 2010 will Mark the fall of the Mainstream Environmental ‘Movement’

For many in the climate justice movement, the growing trend of cozy alliances between many of the mainstream ENGOs with multinational corporate partners has been a toxic recipe; the price of which may be nothing less than complete ecological devastation. The result of these unscrupulous relationships is undeserved legitimacy for transnational corporations, as compromised NGOs run hand in hand with CEOs and executives in a race to the lowest common denominator. The common denominator is money and the finish line is paved in gold – but at what cost? Species extinction is happening at a scale of epic proportions, droughts and storms are happening at unparalleled magnitude; irreversible climate change catastrophe now stares at us in the face. The most inconvenient truth of all – that today – we now stand on the cusp of epic collapse of civilization. Has Earth Day become nothing more than a day of greenwash opportunism and will it mark the fall of the mainstream environmental movement.

Creating Climate Wealth Summit

Invitation from the ‘Earth Day Network’:

“Please join Earth Day Network and the Carbon War Room on April 21, 2010 from 6:00 p.m.-10:00p.m. at the Ronald Reagan Building for a celebration on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day! Join Sir Richard Branson, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and celebrities. Join attendees from the Creating Climate Wealth Summit, our keynote speakers Richard Branson and Lisa Jackson, and enjoy a night conversing with other professionals that are making a difference in the climate change market! Held at the beautiful Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington, D.C., this night will not only bring together those that are making a difference in the climate marketplace, but it will provide superb dining, excellent entertainment and a night of networking not to be missed! Seats are limited and will sell out; tickets will only be available in advance. Purchase before March 31, 2010 and receive a 10% discount! Ticket prices: $450 – Full Ticket, $295 – Non-profit and Academic, Please contact us regarding government rates. Leadership Celebration Dinner Guests include Richard Branson; Founder and Chairman, Virgin Group Denis Hayes Honorary Chair, Earth Day Network Organizer, Earth Day 1970 Lisa Perez Jackson Administrator, EPA.”

Executive board members of the ‘Carbon War Room’ include CEO of Virgin Unite and former CEO of Richard Branson’s Virgin Mobile (partner of original Havas tcktcktck campaign), and George Polk; currently leading a new $1 billion initiative by George Soros to invest private equity in climate change business models.

Richard Branson is ubiquitous. His corporations Virgin and Virgin Atlantic are partners in ‘The Climate Group’ (comprised of corporations and government) and he has worked with tcktcktck in the past. In 2007, HSBC announced that The Climate Group, along with WWF, Earthwatch, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, would be a partner in the HSBC Climate Partnership, and donated US$100 million to the group – the largest-ever single corporate donation. As of December 2008, The Climate Group coalition includes more than 50 of the world’s largest corporations and sub-national governments, as well as several partner organizations. The Climate Group also works on other initiatives, one being that of the ‘Voluntary Carbon Standard’, a new global standard for voluntary offset projects.

‘Sir’ Richard Branson is presently working with the New Royal Society initiative on ‘solar radiation management’ with “the right stakeholders” to “create a strategic roadmap for governance and regulation” in the geoengineering “battle area.” As well, Branson is fervently developing “tourism ventures into space”. You can book your place in space on Richards “sexiest spaceship ever” at your earliest convenience, because, according to Richard, “Everybody should have the chance to experience space travel one day”. Branson also has massive investments in biofuel research including palm and soy – both of which have had devastating consequences.

Turning food and Displacement into Corporate Profits

Read the rest of this entry »

Before COP15, during COP15 and POST COP15, there has been a global 350.org campaign. At COP15, states such as Bolivia, and the ALBA group, and some scientists and activists were calling for parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide to return to 300 ppm.  When people from the 350.org campaign were asked why they did not respond to the lower demands, their response was ‘350.org is our campaign’.

However, more and more, leading climate activists and leading world scientists are advocating the necessity of returning to 300 ppm.

BACKGROUND

Given that there were already serious consequences related to climate change in 1992, when at 350 ppm, humanity must aim for 300 ppm as the uppermost limit. Even in 1988, the global community recognized the seriousness of climate change.  At the ‘Changing Atmosphere’ conference in 1988, in Toronto, scientists, politicians and non-government organizations (NGOs) acknowledged the following:

“The stabilizing of the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 is an imperative goal. It is currently estimated to require reductions of more than 50 per cent from present [1988] emission levels. Energy research and development budgets must be massively directed to energy options which would eliminate or greatly reduce CO2 emissions and to studies undertaken to further refine the target reductions.”

They warned that:

“Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequence could be second only to a global nuclear war and that it is imperative to act now.”

Governments, coerced into inaction by industry, industry-front groups, industry-funded academics and industry-controlled states, have failed to address the urgency of the crisis through their reluctance to enact effective legislation.  Before this, the unheeded warnings of scientists go back to at least 1956.

Climate activists say the safe atmospheric CO2 concentration target is 300 ppm

300.org (see: http://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/300-org) was formed to educate the public about the urgent need to reduce atmospheric CO2 from the present damaging level of approx. 390 ppm to a stable level of 300 ppm.  From the site: “300.org exists to inform people about the Climate Emergency and the need to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂ ) concentration to a safe and sustainable level of about 300 ppm. 300.org is informed by the advice of top world climate scientists as set out below.”

Below statement from leading world scientists, leading climate activists and respected climate action organizations.  The scientific evidence at this time concludes that there is an urgent need to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentration to 300 ppm for a safe and sustainable existence for all peoples and all species.

Read the rest of this entry »

SAN FRANCISCO- Rising Tide North America released the following statement on the influence of corporate polluters on Big “Greens” groups:

“For far too long Big Green groups like the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), Conservation International (CI), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and many others have allowed their financial and political relationships with Corporate America to compromise their positions on the biggest ecological crises in history. These groups, ostensibly fighting on our behalf, have chosen to ally themselves with the very corporations that we must stop to avert catastrophic climate chaos. Rising Tide North America opposes the influential hold that corporate polluters have held on the Big “Green” groups for decades and calls on those groups to sever these relationships.

“We think transparency from environmental organizations is important. While some of these organizations happily accept monetary donations from corporations, some do have public policies that appear to limit such direct contributions. However, just as corporations and politicians have learned to circumvent campaign-finance and donations laws – a similar shell game is often played in the philanthropic world. Direct corporate monies may not always appear in organizational operating budgets – money and influence from corporations dramatically influence and sway the priorities, politics, and agendas of these organizations.

Read the rest of this entry »

London, Ontario, Canada celebrated Fossil Fools Day by organizing blitz actions against 3 branches of RBC (the Royal Bank of Canada), as well as a Critical Mass bike rally, in which a breakaway group took over a highway.

[Clicking any of the photo thumbnails will take you to more photos from our actions. And here are some more photos from our bike rally.]

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RBC Actions:

Instead of just protesting outside, a group of activists brought their message inside RBC during their peak hours, to temporarily disrupt the bank’s dirty business.  The plan was simple and easy to replicate.  We marched into the branch, chanting with a megaphone to get the attention of bank managers, tellers and customers with our boisterous entry.  We handed out and threw around flyers to explain what we were up to, and more importantly, why we were there.  One of the flyers was about Fossil Fools Day, and the other one was about campaigning against the tar sands.  A large “Climate Justice” banner was also displayed, inside the RBC building.

One activist read a speech over the megaphone; this speech was written collectively by the participants minutes before the first disruption:
“RBC is Killing the Planet.  They are the leading financiers of the world’s most environmentally destructive project: The Albertan Tar Sands.  The bank you do business with and work for is literally killing First Nations people by poisoning the Athabasca River.  RBC is profiting off the destruction of native communities and turning forests, wetlands, and lakes into open pit mines, poisonous tailing ponds, and toxic wastelands.  By investing your money into this bank and its projects you are selling out the future of life on earth by accelerating climate change.  RBC and other corporations who put profit above all other considerations are unsustainable and incompatible with life on this planet.  Close your accounts and invest yourself in the future.”

Read the rest of this entry »

MONTREAL – On Thursday, April 1, 2010, a group of over 70 left Dominion Square in the heart of Montreal to make the 15 km journey to the city’s east end to shine a light on the largest urban oil refining center in Canada. Drawing contingents of activists from various student, social and environmental justice groups, the Bike Bloc organized by Climate Justice Montreal made its way down Rene Levesque to Berri and up to Sherbrooke Street, heading on a collision course with the Enbridge Trailbreaker Tar Sands expansion pipeline.

“The east end of Montreal is a seldom seen and discussed region, but it is the largest urban oil refining center in Canada,” said Pierre-Olivier Parent, an organizer with Climate Justice Montreal. “It is a vast wasteland of oil, gas and chemical storage tanks, threatening the health of local residents and all Montrealers. If completed the Trailbreaker would bring the direct effects of the Tar Sands right here.”’

The bikes entered the post-apocalyptic petroleum wasteland just beyond the last metro station, passing first by Shell Canada’s Montreal Development. The massive refinery has recently been put up for sale, announced by “A Vendre” signs lining the road, proudly offering up “800 skilled employees” as part of the package deal for any eager buyer.

“Rather than expanding the petroleum infrastructure that is destroying ecosystems and communities, we need to build a clean energy economy, creating meaningful jobs for thousands of people including those working at the Shell Refinery. Our society needs jobs that are not dependent on unstable, destructive resources that soar and crash, creating environmental and economic catastrophes,” says Cameron Stiff, a local sustainability organizer and activist.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post was submitted by Cameron Fenton.

photo credit: Tristan Glenn Cyclists at an oil refinery in East Montreal

In the spirit of April Fools day, 13 Cities in Canada have pulled creative pranks on fossil fuel industry supporters, or “Fossil Fools,” pleasantly confusing security guards, police, and the general public. People for Climate Justice, a national coalition of concerned residents in Canada, announced 6 nominees for the dubious Fossil Fool of the Year Award: Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, Environment Minister Jim Prentice, Royal Bank of Canada CEO Gordon Nixon, and Shell Canada President Brian Straub. All nominees have a history of supporting Canada’s tar sands industry and related projects such as pipelines and refineries, with no consideration for the human rights violations and environmental atrocities associated with tar sands developments. In the spirit of Fossil Fools day, 13 Cities in Canada have taken action and pulled creative pranks and tricks on tar sands supporters.

7 communities in Canada: Toronto (ON), Waterloo (ON), Peterborough (ON), London (ON), New Westminster (BC), Duncan (BC), and Victoria all targeted RBC as the top financier in dirty tar sands projects. In Waterloo, one indigenous activist was arrested after a banner drop at a local branch of Royal Bank of Canada. This is the second day of action in which RBC was targeted. On March 3^rd, the same day as the bank’s Annual General Shareholders Meeting where 11 communities in Canada held rallies and actions at RBC branches. “This is the second year that Royal Bank of Canada is receiving the Fossil Fool of the year award,” says Taylor Flook, organizer with the Rainforest Action Network Toronto.

In Montreal, 70 people staged a bike bloc protest shutting down the roads in and out of Montreal’s oil refining sector with clean, green people power. Read the rest of this entry »

Today the Yes Men called a faux press conference and posed as Shell Oil apologizing for human rights violations in the Niger Delta.

Great fun. Hopefully we’ll see more pranks and publicity stunts tomorrow as Fossil Fool’s Day kicks into high gear.