Canadian Government’s visit to London greeted by Tar Sands protests
March 20th, 2010
A high-level delegation from Canada were greeted this morning by protesters with banners that read: “Canadian Tar Sands – Climate Crime”, outside Canada House in Trafalgar Square. The protest, on Thursday 18 March, is part of a growing campaign by UK groups against the tremendous human and ecological devastation caused by extracting oil from Canada’s tar sands – and is taking place in solidarity with First Nations and Canadian environmental justice organizations. The Canadian delegation is being hosted by UK Trade and Investment, a government department that exists to promote the interests of British industry.
“The Canadian and British governments should know that people in the UK are very concerned about the tar sands,” said Alice Hargreaves of the UK Tar Sands Network which has organised the protest along with members of Rising Tide and Camp for Climate Action. “The tar sands are the world’s most destructive project. Canada is ripping up an area larger than England, creating sprawling toxic lakes and ever-expanding carbon emissions. This environmental horror story is violating indigenous peoples’ rights – they are losing their traditional ways of life, and some are getting cancer from the pollution. The tar sands is a project that needs to be stopped, yet British companies like Shell, BP and RBS are involved, and with this event, UK Trade and Investment is actively promoting further British involvement.”
TAKE ACTION! Help Copenhagen Activists Accused of Terrorism
March 18th, 2010
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” These powerful words were penned in a prison cell in 1963, by one of the best-known advocates of equal rights – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
scroll down for action form!
Australian honours student ‘indignant’ over charges of organising violence and disorder at climate summit as trial opens.
Two environmental activists appeared in court today accused of terrorism-related offences during the Copenhagen climate summit in December.
Natasha Verco, an Australian honours student, and Noah Weiss, an American citizen who lives in Denmark, will face similar charges in a trial which is due to last all week.
Verco, who has organised non-violent direct action in her native country and who has been part of the Climate Justice Action (CJA) network in the lead-up to the summit in Copenhagen, has been charged with organising violence, organising public disorder, significant damage to property, and organising disorder during the international talks on climate change which took place in Copenhagen last year. If found guilty, Verco faces a maximum of twelve and a half years in prison.
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Activists Risk Arrest with Elaborate Protest at EPA HQ; Demand Immediate Action to Stop Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining
Group Erects Purple Mountain Majesty At EPA; Say “If Administrator Lisa Jackson Won’t Visit the Appalachian Mountains, They Will Bring The Mountains to Her”
In an attempt to further pressure EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to enforce the Clean Water Act and halt mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR), activists early this morning erected two 20-foot-tall, purple tripod structures in front of the agency’s headquarters. A pair of activists perched at the top of the tripods have strung a 25-foot sign in front of the EPA’s door that reads, “EPA: pledge to end mountaintop removal in 2010.” Six people are locked to the tripods and say they won’t leave unless Administrator Jackson commits to a flyover visit of the Appalachian Mountains and MTR sites, which she has never done before.
This is the latest in a series of actions and activities aimed at pressuring the EPA to take more decisive action on mountaintop removal coal mining. Today’s tactic is modeled on the multi-day tree-sits that have been happening in West Virginia to protect mountains from coal companies’ imminent blasting. Called the worst of the worst strip mining, the practice blows the tops off of whole mountains to scoop out the small seams of coal that lie beneath.
“We’re losing our way of life and our culture,” said Chuck Nelson, Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: action, cap-and-trade, civil disobedience, climate, coal, mtr, trees and forests | 
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Earth Hour, corporate sponsors and burning planets
March 15th, 2010
A Green Left editorial
“Earth Hour” will be held around the world on March 27. The event is organised by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and involves participants switching off their lights for the hour as a symbolic declaration of support for environmental action.
The Earth Hour website is sponsored by, among others, Woolworths Limited, the giant supermarket and retail corporation. With the amount of waste and pollution associated with the retail industry in frivolous consumption, built-in obsolescence and so on, this would seem an odd choice for sponsor.
WWF has a shocking record for quite uncritically accepting sponsorship from polluting industries. Back in 2002, Counterpunch co-editor Jeffrey St. Clair exposed WWF’s links with logging corporation Weyerhaeuser, writing on Dissidentvoice.org that WWF “rakes in millions from corporations, including Alcoa, Citigroup, the Bank of America, Kodak, J.P. Morgan, the Bank of Tokyo, Philip Morris, Waste Management and DuPont”.
Greenpeace’s Corporate Overreach
March 11th, 2010
Controversial Hire is an Opportunity to Start Building a Democratic Environmental Movement
Dru Oja Jay in Counterpunch
Greenpeace has come a long way since the Rainbow Warrior, the retrofitted trawler used to challenge nuclear testing and whaling, was enough of a threat that the French government dispatched commandoes to sink her in 1985.
On February 13th, Greenpeace International announced that was hiring ForestEthics founder Tzeporah Berman as director of its global climate and energy campaign. The move has provoked intense outrage among many Greenpeace supporters, staff and activists. The conflict raging within Greenpeace has the potential to be an important first step in addressing two heretofore taboo subjects in the environmental movement: the corrupting influence of corporate cash and the absence of democratic structures.
The announcement marked an acceleration of a long-term drift away from Greenpeace’s origins in direct action environmental and anti-war work. Back in 2007, Greenpeace lauded Coca-Cola for its “commitment to use climate-friendly coolers and vending machines.” (The same year, campaigns against Coke’s complicity in paramilitary assassination of union leaders in Colombia were in full swing, while a year earlier, the government of Kerala had banned Coca-Cola after a revolt over overuse and pollution of groundwater.)
Climate & Capitalism | Activists Push to Save Greenpeace
March 9th, 2010
March 8, 2010
Putting a Canadian Liberal in charge of its international climate change program could put one of the world most successful environmental organizations on the fast track to corporate collaboration
by Ian Angus
I like DeSmogBlog. It does wonderful work exposing the machinations of the climate deniers and their corporate funders. Climate Cover-Up, by DeSmogBlog founder James Hoggan, should be mandatory reading for anyone who to understand that disinformation campaign.
But DeSmogBlog also supports the not-very-green Liberal machine in British Columbia. It exposes lies about global warming, but the most radical corrective measure it espouses is that province’s feeble carbon tax — a measure implemented by a government whose environmental record is otherwise appalling.
So, unfortunately, I wasn’t at all surprised that DeSmogBlog recently published a vicious and ill-informed attack on long-time radical environmentalist and anti-tar-sands campaigner Macdonald Stainsby.
Why?
PNG: Big NGO Greenwashing of the Palm Oil Industry
March 6th, 2010
Environmentalists argue that what began as an initiative to clean up dirty palm oil production practices, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil has become little more than an NGO-endorsed greenwashing tool. Rebecca Zhou, of Reportage/enviro reports.
Due to an increase in worldwide demand for food, palm oil production has grown dramatically since it began in the 1970s. Image: CELCOR.
Pacific Scoop:
Special Report – By Rebecca Zhou.
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was set up by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to involve companies in creating more sustainable ways of producing palm oil. However environmental experts believe that not only is the RSPO ineffective, it has become a way to green wash poor practices.
“The RSPO gives the companies a green front and encourages more consumption, which is precisely the cause of the problem,” said Valerie Phillips, forest campaigner of the Greenpeace branch in Papua New Guinea, one of the three countries most adversely affected by the palm oil industry.
The Nation: The Wrong Kind of Green
March 5th, 2010
Why did America’s leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests–and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as “unworkable” and “unrealistic,” as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal?
At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups like Conservation International are among the most trusted “brands” in America, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world’s worst polluters–and burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.
I have spent the past few years reporting on how global warming is remaking the map of the world. I have stood in half-dead villages on the coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean and say, “Do you see that chimney sticking up? That’s where my house was… I had to [abandon it] six months ago.” I have stood on the edges of the Arctic and watched glaciers that have existed for millenniums crash into the sea. I have stood on the borders of dried-out Darfur and heard refugees explain, “The water dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left.”
While I witnessed these early stages of ecocide, I imagined that American green groups were on these people’s side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path–one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation.
Environmental groups used to be funded largely by their members and wealthy individual supporters. They had only one goal: to prevent environmental destruction. Their funds were small, but they played a crucial role in saving vast tracts of wilderness and in pushing into law strict rules forbidding air and water pollution. But Jay Hair–president of the National Wildlife Federation from 1981 to 1995–was dissatisfied. He identified a huge new source of revenue: the worst polluters. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: big business, big greens, cap-and-trade, coal, congress, COP15, Copenhagen, denial, disaster, environmental justice, EPA, greenwash, media, politics |
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“Save Greenpeace” Website Launched in Canada
March 5th, 2010
—for immediate release—
Website calls on employees, public to “Save Greenpeace”
Hiring Tzeporah Berman jeopardizes 39 year legacy of environmental activism
VANCOUVER, March 4–Since Greenpeace International announced its hiring of ForestEthics founder and current Power Up Canada director Tzeporah Berman as co-director of its climate campaign, a chorus of long-time environmental activists have voiced their strong opposition.
Today, activists launched a new website they hope will amplify these voices and help convince Greenpeace to change direction: www.SaveGreenpeace.org
Greenpeace International co-founder Rex Weyler (not affiliated with www.savegreenpeace.org) called the decision to hire Berman “an all-out betrayal of environmentalism, of the groups and activists who built the environmental movement in Canada and in the world, and a betrayal of the Earth itself.”
Indigenous voices challenge Royal Bank tar sands policies, supported by hundreds at shareholder meeting
March 4th, 2010
Joshua Kahn Russell on The Understory
Today more than 170 people rallied outside of the Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC’s) Annual General Shareholder meeting (AGM) in Toronto after a series of creative non-violent actions all morning. Inside, First Nations Chiefs and community representatives from four different Nations demanded RBC phase out of its Tar Sands financing and to recognize the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent for Indigenous communities. Afterward, Indigenous leaders lead the crowd in a march to rally outside both RBC Headquarters buildings.
Other cities across Canada supported the First Nations voices inside the AGM as well with solidarity actions from (click on a city for pictures) London, Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton, Victoria and more. Check out photos from those and our events in Toronto.
And see some preliminary media coverage from the Wall Street Journal and Yahoo.
Since 2007 RBC has backed more than $16.7 billion (USD) in loans to companies operating in the tar sands—more than any other bank. Called, ‘the most destructive project on Earth,’ Alberta’s tar sands projects will eventually transform a Boreal forest the size of England into an industrial sacrifice zone complete with lakes full of toxic waste and man-made volcanoes spewing out clouds of global warming emissions.
Outside the shareholder meeting school children, bank customers of every age, First Nations community representatives joined Rainforest Action Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, No One Is Illegal, and Council of Canadians made their outrage at RBC’s investments heard – to the thumping beats of street Samba band, the crowd shouted “Cultural Genocide: who do we thank? Dirty investments from Royal Bank!”
The Climate Movement is Dead… Long Live the Climate Movement!
March 2nd, 2010
Rising Tide North America is pleased to announce the release of our latest publication:
The Climate Movement is Dead… Long Live the Climate Movement!
In the aftermath of the COP15 talks in Copenhagen, the inability of the Big Greens, governments, and market approaches to find genuine and sustainable solutions to climate change is undeniable. As author Naomi Klein so aptly observed at the end of COP15 talks, “A particular model of dealing with climate change is dying.”
DOWNLOAD HERE [PDF]
In the same uncompromising spirit as Rising Tide publications such as Deal or No Deal, and Hoodwinked in the Hothouse, CMID:LLCM delivers a timely critique of the failures of this “particular model” as exemplified by the mainstream NGOs who have grown all too cozy with corporations and the political establishment. It explores the ways in which “green” capitalism,electoral politics, and market mechanisms, far from solving the climate crisis, are some of the climate movement’s biggest obstacles.
Not content with mere polemic, CMID:LLCM charts a course that diverges from the dominant discourse of the mainstream climate movement. The essay lays out a strategy of supporting and escalating frontline struggles againstdirty energy while building a new global climate movement from the ground up, based around core principles of climate justice, grassroots power, solidarity, and direct action.
The Climate Movement Is Dead: Long Live the Climate Movement is a must-read for anyone left disenchanted by the mainstream climate movement, and all who are ready to step it up and fight for climate justice.
You can download a digital copy to view online or print yourself.
Or send us an email to contact (at) risingtidenorthamerica (dot) org with your name, address, and how many copies you would like to receive. We are happy to provide this publication for free but as an all volunteer collective we greatly appreciate donations. Also consider joining in our print run collaboration:
Rising Tide North America is excited to announce a “Print-Run Collaboration” project for CMID:LLCM. Local groups and allies can help us raise the funds necessary for an initial print-run of several thousand copies, and in return, receive a big stack “hot-off-the-presses” at approximately the cost of printing (cheaper than photocopies!).
Click HERE to join in
Grass-Roots Organizer Jumps From Nature Conservancy to API
March 1st, 2010
[NY Times original story - pub. 2/26/2010]
The oil industry’s biggest trade group has nabbed one of the environmental community’s top grass-roots organizers as it ramps up efforts to build a network of citizen lobbyists.
Deryck Spooner, who ran Nature Conservancy’s push to spur legislative action on climate change, will now head American Petroleum Institute’s grass-roots activism arm. The hiring move sends a nervous flutter through environmental groups. By recruiting Spooner, green groups said, API adds someone with both credibility and deep knowledge of grass-roots strategy. Spooner previously ran campaigns for labor group AFL-CIO and abortion rights organization NARAL.
“He’s a big dog,” said Tyson Slocum, energy program director at watchdog group Public Citizen. “It gives API somebody with enormous grass-roots experience running major campaigns. This indicates that API is taking their grass-roots strategy in a very serious direction.” Read the rest of this entry »
Local Citizens ‘Die-in’ at Xcel HQ in Coal Protest (Colorado)
February 27th, 2010
Group calls on Xcel to Keep Comanche 3 Closed and Produce 100% Renewable Electricity by 2020
Denver, CO – At 11:45am on Friday, February 26th, local citizens demonstrated at the Denver headquarters of Xcel Energy – located at the corner of 17th St. and Lawrence St. – in protest of the utility’s impending plan to bring a new coal-fired power plant online in Pueblo, CO. The lunch hour protest called on Xcel executives to move Colorado in the right direction by keeping the Comanche 3 coal-fired power plant closed. Protestors demonstrated in a ‘die-in’ in front of the building’s main entrance to highlight the grim consequences that coal has on our lives and those of future generations. Simultaneously, two activists clad in hazmat suits dropped a banner off an adjoining bridge on Lawrence St. Police arrived on scene but no arrests were made.
The 750-megawatt Comanche Unit 3 would be the largest coal-fired power plant in the state, surpassing even the mammoth Cherokee coal plant in North Denver. “At a time when the costs of coal are becoming increasingly clear and the benefits of clean energy are ever more apparent, building the largest coal-fired power plant in the state is taking us 180 degrees in the wrong direction,” said Amy Guinan, an activist with Power Past Coal. Read the rest of this entry »
Environmental leader attacks Greenpeace climate appointment
February 27th, 2010
By Andrew MacLeod February 26, 2010 10:02 am
A prominent British Columbia environmentalist has written a letter to Greenpeace International criticizing the recent appointment of Tzeporah Berman to a position heading the organization’s climate and energy campaign.
Berman’s record of collaborating with corporations in B.C. has been disastrous, says the letter signed by the Valhalla Wilderness Society’s Anne Sherrod. “This approach means environmental groups collaborating with some [of] our most destructive corporations and most anti-environment governments,” she wrote. “It is based on the fact that corporations are always willing to give a little to conservation in order to get a lot.”
Sherrod criticized Berman’s group ForestEthics, and others, for endorsing an agreement that allows logging in two-thirds of the Great Bear Rainforest and for supporting the mountain caribou recovery plan even though it fails to appreciably reduce logging in the animal’s habitat.
“Last year Bermann [sic] shocked many B.C. environmentalists by becoming the leading advocate of private power projects on B.C.’s rivers and streams at a time when most of the environmental movement and a large swathe of the general public were fighting them tooth and nail,” she wrote. “Many of these were projects with huge carbon footprints that would do devastating damage to rivers and coastal ecosystems.” Read the rest of this entry »
Is There Such a Thing as Safe Sex when Sleeping With the Enemy? GE – Greenpeace Electric & tcktcktck
February 26th, 2010
by Cory Morningstar
This is a follow-up piece to ‘Sleeping with the Enemy; EYES WIDE SHUT | TckTckTck exposé’, and ACTION ALERT! Is Greenpeace International set to become GE – Greenpeace Electric?
This is not a good year for Greenpeace.
First the tcktcktck scandal and things just keep getting worse. Kumi Naidoo is the Chair of TckTckTck, as well as the Executive Director of Greenpeace International. One can only imagine what damage control must be necessary as Greenpeace conflicts continue to escalate and disrupt all over the world.
British Columbia, Canada | SAVE GREENPEACE!