Posts Tagged ‘denial’
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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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
Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Streets! (or, How I stopped lobbying and put up my dukes!)
December 20th, 2009
Which direction do you fancy?
(at risk of offense to those that worked stalwartly at ends that haven’t borne fruit-where-expected, as revealed by Copenhagen)
Countering Critics of a Cap-and-Trade Critique
December 16th, 2009
By Bond, Patrick
Patrick Bond’s ZSpace Page
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Eight million people viewed Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff video since December 2007, and her new nine-minute Story of Cap and Trade (http://www.zcommunications.org/zvideo/3310) received 400,000 hits in the two weeks after its December 1 launch.
The film, produced by Free Range Studios, was developed in collaboration with the Durban Group for Climate Justice and Climate Justice Now! networks, which joined Climate Justice Action and other networks to put tens of thousands of activists on the streets of Copenhagen, London and dozens of other cities in recent days, demanding large emissions cuts, the payment of ecological debt to climate victims, and the decommissioning of carbon markets.
But critics abound, so what trends can we discern from the sometimes venomous feedback to Story of Cap and Trade, and what do these tell us about US and global climate politics? Consider three categories:
- libertarian climate change denialists;
- Big Green groups and other carbon trading supporters; and
- self-interested green capitalists.
To start, rightwing extremists are easiest to dismiss because they deny that climate change is a product of human/economic activity – but there’s a schizophrenic double agenda. For although they’re pro-business, libertarians like Fox tv’s Glenn Beck oppose market-based cap-and-trade schemes.
The most dangerous, Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, denies ‘that we’re going to pass a cap-and-trade or we’re going to do something on emissions reduction,’ as he told the rightwing NewsMax agency on Sunday.
Australian climate denialists now control the official opposition party, having overthrown its leader last month due to his cap-and-trade endorsement, in the process halting the state’s proposed emissions trading scheme (http://agmates.ning.com/forum/topics/canberra-protest-rally-live?commentId=3535428%3AComment%3A9579).
Those of us fighting carbon markets certainly *don’t* want alliances with cretins like Inhofe or intrepid videoblogger Lee Doran. After a clumsy rebuttal to The Story of Stuff, Doran offered another zany video-attack (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWjGZNDEH-A), in which he first agrees with the demolition of cap-and-trade, but then replies to Annie’s charge that rich-world overconsumption victimizes those least responsible for global warming:
Annie: ‘Did you know that in the next century, because of the changing climate, whole island nations could end up underwater?’
Lee: ‘Yes, and islands will emerge from the water too, it’s part of the natural cycle of the planet.’ (minute 6)
Enough said about flat-earth libertarian ideologues.
In the second group we find both pro-market ‘green’ ideologues Read the rest of this entry »
The People Speak on Climate Change
December 3rd, 2009
Published on Tuesday, December 1, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
The People Speak on Climate Change
by Karyn Strickler
“If it was easy, they wouldn’t call it a ‘struggle.’” –Rising Tide North America
A mighty, sleeping, giant rose with the sun in the east yesterday and the swell of resistance thundered westward across North America. The Mobilization for Climate Justice called for urgent action on the global climate crisis. Organizers contemplated the protests in Seattle a decade ago, that shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO) and looked ahead to Copenhagen, where the world will go to set international standards for reversing climate change.
Ananda Lee Tan, who helped organize the WTO protests and today’s Mobilization said in an interview with Democracy Now, “I think we’re at a place where once again we’re faced with turning out massive numbers of people on the streets to challenge the corporate interference with international climate policy talks, but also here in the U.S.”
Activists launched non-violent fasts, die-ins and blockades in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Ontario. Bold climate activists in Greenville, SC chained themselves to the Cliffside Coal Plant Power Generator; in Washington, DC, they blocked K Street, where the corporate lobbyists roost; in Chicago, IL, they were arrested by the dozen in the financial district; they held a die-in in Denver; and in San Francisco, CA 200 activists took control of the Bank of America headquarters on Market Street, locking themselves to the revolving doors prior to being arrested. Read the rest of this entry »
For immediate release: October 8, 2009
Contacts:
Brian Tokar, 802-229-0087 briant@pshift.com
Rachel Smolker, 802-482-2848 rsmolker@riseup.net
A controversial article posted last week on a popular environmental website has inadvertently highlighted environmentalists’ skepticism toward the cap-and-trade provisions of climate legislation now before the US Congress. The article, posted on the environmental news site Grist.org on October 1st, was titled “‘No compromise’ faction attacks climate bill,” and attempted to dismiss the activities of Climate SOS (climatesos.org) and other groups highly critical of the legislation, as far outside the environmental mainstream. A review of comments posted in response to the article tells a very different story, according to members of the Climate SOS network.
Out of 55 original, non-duplicate comments posted to the Grist.org site by mid-day October 6th, 34 were critical of the article and of the “cap-and-trade” approach to limiting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Fourteen comments defended the legislation and/or supported the article’s point of view, and five others were ambiguous or uncertain in their position. While far from a scientific poll, comments on mainstream environmental websites such as Grist are seen as a useful indicator of the views of environmentally concerned readers.
“We feel tremendously vindicated by Grist readers’ response to this article,” said Brian Tokar, director of the Institute for Social Ecology Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ACESA, big business, cap-and-trade, climate, congress, denial, protest, Waxman Markey |
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Climate Activists Expose the True “Green†of Big Enviros, Deliver Giant Climate “Bill†to Offices
September 24th, 2009
(New York) Climate justice activists from Rising Tide North America and Climate SOS in New York took to the streets on the final day of the UN Climate summit, making housecalls to the New York offices of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and the Nature Conservancy. NRDC’s street-level banner was festooned with a 14 foot mock “Climate Bill†in the form of $2 trillion bank note (the approximate value of a U.S. carbon market). Imagery on the giant spoof bill critiques roles of many large environmental groups in their push for passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), chiefly for its advocacy of an carbon market. Following NRDC, the offices of EDF and The Nature Conservancy received delivery visits where activists desperately tried to present organizational representatives with their version of the “green”.
These organizations are leading members of the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), which has united them with highly polluting corporations such as Dow, DuPont, General Electric and Alcoa Aluminum under the auspices of lobbying Congress to reduce emissions. This unsavory alliance played a major role in crafting the Waxman-Markey ACESA bill (HR 2454) passed by the US House of Representatives in July, and expected to make its way for a Senate vote imminently. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ACESA, action, big business, biochar, biofuels, cap-and-trade, civil disobedience, climate, congress, denial, direct action, government, greenwash, media, protest, REDD, Waxman Markey |
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Denial, hypocrisy, and false solutions take the lead at the UN’s Climate Summit in NYC
September 16th, 2009
BioTech company Novozymes offers promises of greener futures through the re-engineering of our world without reductions or changes in behavior are another unfortunate mark of how the Corporations-Will-Save-Us mentality is putting us into one hell of a handbasket… Â With biofuels/biomass – the math is bad, the solutions short-term, and the long-term impacts are abominable.
Below is the press release:
Novozymes to Share Insights at United Nations Summit on Climate Change
Biotech to play a leading role in achieving a low-carbon economy.
Franklinton, NC, USA – Heads of state, United Nations agency heads, and CEOs of the world’s top businesses will gather in New York on Tuesday, September 22, at the United Nations Summit on Climate Change to explore the role business and society can play in advancing global efforts to fight climate change. Read the rest of this entry »
UGANDA: Carbon Trading Scheme Pushing People off Their Land
September 3rd, 2009
MOUNT ELGON, Uganda, Aug 31 (IPS) – With the world’s attention focused on climate change, one of the methods suggested to reduce global carbon emissions is causing the displacement of indigenous persons as western companies rush to invest in tree-planting projects in developing countries.The term carbon trading refers to commercial approaches to promoting environmental responsibility. Under carbon trading programmes, companies that release greenhouse gases can either agree to reduce their emissions or buy the right to keep on polluting.
The United Nations considers carbon markets as an efficient system to guide investments toward cutting greenhouse emissions. The clean development mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol allows two types of forestry offsets: reforestation of previously forested areas and afforestation where trees are planted in areas where forests have not existed for over 50 years.
One such an investment in Uganda, by the Dutch organisation called Forests Absorbing Carbon-dioxide Emissions (FACE) Foundation, has generated controversy as indigenous people known as the Benet have been displaced to clear the way to tree-planting projects. Read the rest of this entry »
Toward Climate Justice: Can we turn back from the abyss?
September 1st, 2009
September 2009 by Brian Tokar
printer friendly version Tokar’s ZSpace page
The summer and fall of 2009 will surely be noted in the annals of environmental history. This period could be remembered as the time when the world’s elites slowly began to crawl toward a meaningful solution to the threat of accelerating global climate disruptions. But if events continue along the path of recent months, it could mark the beginning of an inexorable slide toward an increasingly unstable planetary climate regime, an unstable and chaotic world that our ancestors would barely recognize.
Relying on the mainstream media for news, you’d think the outlook was fairly rosy. For example, a somewhat cautious note of triumph accompanied the G8′s pronouncement in early July that the world was committing to holding the global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius. The obstacle? “Developing Nations Rebuff G-8 on Curbing Pollutants,” proclaimed the New York Times headline.
You had to read through most of the article to discover that the main objection of those pesky “developing nations” representatives was to establishing a long-range goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (50 percent by 2050) without proportionate commitments from the major industrialized countries to nearer-term commitments—at least 20 percent reductions by 2020, as accepted by most European governments—that would facilitate meaningful progress toward the more distant goal. One astute European activist pointed out that the G8 outcome was “nothing but hot air,” akin to pronouncing that there would be luxury resorts on Mars by 2050. With no intermediate goals nor tangible steps toward implementation, politicians can pledge to do anything at all 40-plus years into the future. Read the rest of this entry »
Via Campesina: Stop! The UNFCCC is going off the rails
July 3rd, 2009
UPDATE: Â Via Campesina Call to mobilise for a Cool Planet
Tags: agriculture, civil disobedience, climate, COP14, COP15, denial, REDD, trees and forests |
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Good News, There’s a Climate Bill — Bad News, It Stinks
June 26th, 2009
First, the good news: One of the most comprehensive pieces of energy and climate legislation ever drafted by members of the U.S. Congress has finally seen the light of day. After lots of haggling among fellow moderate and conservative Democrats, Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) released their “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.”
Now the bad news: Their bill stinks. I’ll spare you the many odiferous details and just highlight three particularly bad aspects: 1) It won’t protect the poor from price-hikes as the price of carbon is slowly internalized into our energy bills, but will protect polluting industries by allowing them free pollution permits; 2) It opens the door to fraud and shell games instead of real climate action by setting up a huge carbon derivatives market; 3) It makes a mockery of our common understanding of “renewable energy,” favoring dirty smokestacks over truly clean, renewable energy. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: big business, cap-and-trade, climate, congress, denial, government, Waxman Markey |
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Manhattan floods, Chicago heatwaves and withering Californian vines: how scientists see the US in 75 years
June 24th, 2009
White Roofs, Black Dust And Slippery Slopes: Climate Engineers Seek Techno-fix As Global Negotiations Get Underway
June 1st, 2009
source: ETC Group and Biofuelwatch