Mobilization for Climate Justice

Dear Friends, Supporters, Comrades and Community,

As you may recall, a lively protest took place on the streets of Chicago’s financial district last November 30, on the 10th anniversary of the “Battle of Seattle” and a week ahead of the big UN climate summit in Copenhagen.  Several groups from across the city had come together to demand just, equitable, and effective solutions to the climate crisis, starting with the shut-down of the Crawford and Fisk coal plants in Chicago’s Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods.  The November 30th (N30) event also targeted “false solutions” to climate change like carbon trading, nukes and agrofuels, and was part of a national day of action for climate justice.

Now, the city has decided to charge these folks $8,340, with a deadline of mid-August to pay the fines.

Please help us raise the funds we need by donating what you can!

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by Jeff Conant

With their 1994 battle cry, “Ya basta!” (“Enough already!”) Mexico’s Zapatista uprising became the spearhead of two convergent movements: Mexico’s movement for indigenous rights and the international movement against corporate globalization.

Skip to 2010: the movements for indigenous rights and against corporate globalization have converged again, this time globally, in the climate justice movement. Following the widely acknowledged failure of the climate negotiations in Copenhagen last December, the greatest manifestation of these converging movements took place this past April at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

While political forces have conspired to make the Zapatistas largely invisible both inside Mexico and internationally, their challenge has always been to propose a paradigm of development that is both just and self-sustaining. It seems fair, then, to see if Zapatismocan shed any light on the muddle of politics around the climate crisis. Can the poetic riddles of Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos serve as signposts on the rough road toward just climate solutions? Read the rest of this entry »

Incinerator Opponents Say Congress About to Pass a “Dirty Energy” Bill

Disguised as Clean and Green Energy

Doctors and Citizen Groups Say That an RES or Other Legislation With Incinerators That Burn Trees and Garbage is Dirty Energy, Will Make People Sick and Cause More Global Warming

Washington D.C.—The Anti-Biomass Incineration – Forest Protection Campaign is telling Congress and the Administration that the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) being promoted by industry groups and some members of Congress is “dirty energy” legislation because it promotes toxic incinerators that make people sick, pollute air and water, destroy forests, and dry up rivers.

“These dirty incinerators emit toxic air pollution that causes cancer, asthma and heart disease,” said Attorney Margaret Sheehan, of the Biomass Accountability Project, “and they don’t reduce global warming, they increase it.”

The Campaign delivered a letter to Congress signed by public health, social justice, and environmental organizations opposing any legislation that further subsidizes dirty incinerators, including the RES, and proposed energy and farm bill amendments.

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August camp will target Trailbreaker tar sands pipeline project

The camp will take place from August 7th to 23rd in Dunham, Quebec with convergence days from the 18-22

Climate Justice Montreal on the Media Co-op

We must act swiftly to tackle the root causes of climate change and create the systemic change needed to avert climate catastrophe. So that’s what we’re doing. Taking action. Building a movement. Collectively, we can become a force to be reckoned with. Come to Dunham this August and be a part of it.

The Quebec Climate Action Camp will bring together rebels and renegades, gardeners and guardians, young and old.  We will combine our hearts, hands, minds and spirits to challenge the Trailbreaker, a pipeline that snakes from the heart of the Tar Sands to the Eastern seaboard.  Specifically, we will be trying to prevent the construction of a proposed pumping station – a key component of the Trailbreaker’s infrastructure – that threatens the local community of Dunham, Quebec.

But the goal of the camp is not only to confront a single destructive entity.We want to show the possibility of another world – green, sustainable, and free of fossil fuels.

The camp will take place from August 7th until the 23rd, with Convergence Days on 18th to 22nd. Run on participatory, non-hierarchical principles, the camp will be the product of the participants. There will be organized workshops and trainings, but also plenty of space for autonomous workshops, discussions, collective cooking and everything in between.

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A primer for climate justice in Quebec and the 2010 Climate Action Camp

Cameron Fenton on the Media Co-op

Montreal – Climate Justice Montreal released its newest publication, entitled Stop the Flow of Destruction, this week to draw attention to the upcoming Quebec Climate Action Camp. The 12 page publication includes information about the camp, and basic primers on climate justice, the tar sands, the Trailbreaker pipeline project, and moving forward on people’s solutions to the climate crisis.

The release comes as organizers gear up for the Quebec Climate Action Camp in Dunham QC, the site of a proposed pumping station to facilitate the a pipeline reversal which would bring tar sands oil through Quebec as part of a project known as the Enbridge Trailbreaker.

The publication is available for download here, and paper copies can be requested at climateactionmtl@gmail.com. A French version of the publication will be available by the end of the week.

Download the report from the Media Co-op -
http://www.mediacoop.ca/sites/mediacoop.ca/files2/mc/stoptheflowofdestructionssmall_1.pdf

A statement from Climate Justice London, Ontario -

Members of our group took to the streets around the G20 Summit in Toronto with concerns about climate change, the Alberta tar sands, assaults on native sovereignty, and other environmental injustices. The Summit police in Toronto threatened, searched, arrested, and detained Climate Justice London activists, while other local climate justice activists stayed away from Toronto to avoid the G20 police regime. Our dissent was not permitted at the Summit. In fact, anyone who was outdoors in downtown Toronto was a potential target for the snatch squads, the riot cops, the mounted horse brigades, and thousands of other police at the Summit.  Our allies and our friends were pulled into this ‘security’ sweep, and all of us are left wondering which of the local police officers we encounter have brought their G20 summit training and hostility back to our cities.

Because we condemn this trampling of civil liberties, and because we always will call for democracy and social justice, members of our group have taken on leading roles in preparing a statement about police conduct and detention conditions at the G20 summit in Toronto.  People for Peace (London) activists helped to develop that London-specific version of the original statement from Toronto.  We hope that more Londoners will sign on to communicate their support.

Threats to our civil liberties will make it even more difficult to continue campaigning against environmental injustices — in a non-violent manner, without destructive sabotage tactics.

More than anyone, the people who need more freedom and more capacity to resist are residents of the front lines of water pollution, oil refineries, and other unjust environmental devastation — in native communities near the Alberta tar sands, in Sarnia, in Nanticoke, in southwest Detroit, and elsewhere, in far too many other areas of the world.  The rest of us also will need more (not less) ways and more resources to support those victims, by challenging the industries, policies, and oppression behind the Alberta tar sands, and other fossil fuel systems.

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Checkout Majora Carter on Democracy Now! on The Struggle for Environmental Justice

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/22/neither_the_destruction_of_the_9th

Description

Come out Monday July 19th to send BP a STRONG message: We will not allow corporations to trash our land, our water, and they will be held accountable! If they have the same rights as humans, they should have the same responsibilities and same punishments!

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=138505366164638&ref=ts

http://www.wix.com/OILSPILLRES/OILSPILLRESOLUTION

Want to get involved? Contact: rebecca.rose.baird@gmail.com

The Stop Spewing Carbon Ballot Campaign announced today a major victory in the fight against biomass incinerators promoted as “clean energy” and as a result will not put its question on the statewide ballot for November 2010.

“Today Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles issued a letter* saying his agency will change our state laws to bring them in line with current science and public policy requiring biomass incinerators to meet strict standards for forest protection, greenhouse gas emissions, and efficiency,” said Meg Sheehan, Chair of the Stop Spewing Carbon Ballot Campaign. “This is a groundbreaking development that means an end to commercial biomass electric power plants in Massachusetts. Science confirms that the greenhouse gas emissions of burning forests are worse than
coal and there’s no reason to subsidize this form of energy,” Sheehan said.
Secretary Bowles’ letter says that to meet greenhouse targets the state should change “the incentives we provide biomass energy under the Renewable
Portfolio Standard.” The Stop Spewing Campaign collected over 120,000 signatures from Massachusetts’ voters to end biomass subsidies. Sheehan
said, “this sent a clear message to Governor Patrick. Ending renewable energy credits for dirty incinerators was the central goal of our ballot question and we have won.” The state also announced that construction and demolition debris incinerators will not get renewable energy credits, another victory for the Campaign.

“Our coalition of social justice, public health, environmental, forestry advocates and fiscal watchdogs have won a victory for the citizens of Massachusetts, the nation, and indeed the planet,” Sheehan said. “Citizens have let government officials know they don’t want their taxpayer and ratepayer money spent on these toxic incinerators disguised as “clean energy.”

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Mariana Jiminez, a 71-year-old grandmother from the Ecuadorean Amazon, dips her hand
into the oil-black water in the precious marshlands off Louisiana's Gulf coast and
holds a dying, oil-drenched crab in her hand. She warns of the petroleum-laced
water, "This is very very dangerous. This is a poison that kills. Not instantly, but
it will kill slowly." 

This week, four Indigenous and community leaders from Ecuador (Mariana, Emergildo,
Humberto and Luis), as well as advocates from Rainforest Action Network and Amazon
Watch, are deep in Louisiana's sweltering Bayou witnessing the depth of BP's oil
disaster. 

The Ecuadorean delegation has come to share the hard-won lessons from Chevron's
Amazon oil disaster [
http://changechevron.org/blog/the-lasting-stain-of-oil-cautionary-tales-and-lessons-from-the-amazon/
] with the United Houma Nation and Atakapa-Ishak tribes, American Indian communities
dependent on a healthy Bayou for their very survival.
[from RAN]
 Read the rest of this entry »

Joseph Nevins

As oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, just one of many manifestations of perilous ecological degradation across the planet, the need to challenge war and militarism—especially in terms of the United States—becomes ever-more pressing. The U.S. military is the world’s single biggest consumer of fossil fuels, and the single entity most responsible for destabilizing the Earth’s climate.

The costs of U.S. militarism and war are high and many. In addition to the growing civilian and military death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, total monies appropriated by Congress for the two wars surpassed the one-trillion-dollar mark on May 30th. Among other would-be purchases, such an enormous sum could provide 294,734,961 people with health care for one year, according to the Northampton, Massachusetts-based national Priorities Project.(1) Instead, the monies are dedicated to death and destruction—all in the name of “national security”—greatly enriching military contractors in the process.

The costs that one rarely hears about—at least here in the United States—are the associated environmental damages that regularly and systematically occur. Indeed, it is far more common to learn of the Pentagon’s efforts to “go green.”

In March, the Center for American Progress, for instance, reported on the Pentagon building’s “big green renovation.” When completed in 2011, “the Pentagon’s 25,000 military and civilian personnel will not only work in one of the biggest office buildings in the world,” the article gushed, “but one of the most energy efficient and environmentally sustainable.”(2)

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by Rachel Smolker (original link at Common Dreams HERE)

It’s downright amazing what people are willing to put their faith in when confronted with a crisis. With ever more dire impacts from a cooking planet, the “biochar worshippers” are doing their best to sell the idea that we can cure just about everything — from global warming to soil infertility, agrichemical runoff, even dirty toilets — by doing a little morecooking. Just cook up some trees, agricultural “wastes and residues” — maybe a few hundred thousand acres of industrial tree monocultures (why not?) and then bury the resulting charcoal in soils to “sequester” it.  This, they refer to as “a powerful tool to fight global warming.” (Footnote: If you think referring to them as “worshippers” is overstepping, see below)

So convinced are they that charred plant matter is the answer to global warming, that the International Biochar Initiative, (IBI), a group consisting of a mix of business, academic and hybrid interests, has spent tons of time and money zealously lobbying to have biochar included in all manner of policies intended to address climate change: from the UN and other carbon trading venues to the proposed “Water Efficiency via Carbon Harvesting and Restoration Act” (WECHAR) bill introduced by Senator Harry Reid from Nevada, which would have us char trees and other “biomass” from National Parks. Read the rest of this entry »

PRESS CONFERENCE: Wednesday June 9, 4:40 p.m., informational session: 4:15 to 5:30 p.m.

WHERE: Springfield, MA, Pynchon Park on the corner of State and
Chestnut Streets, next to the main branch of the Springfield Library
immediately prior to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental
Protection’s hearing on the Global Warming Solutions Act.

WHO:  Stop Toxic Incineration In Springfield, Arise for Social
Justice, Concerned Citizens of Russell, The Enviro Show, Stop Spewing
Carbon Campaign, Massachusetts Forest Watch, Pioneer Valley
Preservation Coalition, Concerned Citizens of Franklin County,
Students for a Just and Stable Society and McKnight Neighborhood
Council in Springfield.

A coalition of health, social justice, and environmental groups  is
letting the state and federal governments know that biomass
incinerators are not a climate change solution but make are a public
health and climate disaster and the state should not be promoting them.

 Read the rest of this entry »

Coming to the U.S. Social Forum? Then, don’t miss THE big action of the Forum to shut down the world’s biggest waste incinerator and demand clean air, good jobs, and justice for all!

Join the People of Detroit on Saturday, June 26 for a Rally, March & Mass Demonstration to End the World’s Biggest Waste Incinerator!

Action starts at 9 am at Detroit Public Library, 5201 Woodward, Detroit.

Help us make history this summer! Join thousands of community activists, environmental groups and labor unions in demanding climate, community and labor justice!

Detroit’s waste incinerator is the largest incinerator in the world, operated by the world’s largest incinerator company – Covanta.

• Burning garbage is one of the primary sources of cancer-causing dioxins in the world
• Burning garbage for energy produces more climate pollution per unit of electricity than coal power plants.
• Over 90% of waste burned can be recycled or composted, generating more than 10 times the number of jobs than burning or burying these valuable resources.
• If all the waste buried or burned in the U.S. were to be recycled and composted, hundreds of thousands of long-term jobs could be created while reducing a massive toxic burden for some of the poorest communities in this country.

Detroit Mayor David Bing can choose to embrace Zero Waste Detroit’s plan for green jobs – expanding curbside recycling throughout the city and ending incineration of Detroit’s trash.

If you wish to join, support or endorse this day of action, email organize@cleanairgoodjobsjustice.org

Stay tuned to http://www.cleanairgoodjobsjustice.org/ for more info!

The Facebook event posting – http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=127846467243004