Mobilization for Climate Justice

Posts Tagged ‘tar sands’

There are comments on some of the individual photos on Flickr.

Here’s a video from our protest - www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j-63k0472w

The call-out for the event said -

Join us Friday, December 10th upstairs at the Covent Garden Market at 5:30pm.

We will walk over to the RBC around the corner at 6pm, reclaim the space to share food and information and have.

A BITE AT THE BANKS!

Banks are a fundamental part of the capitalist system that is destroying our planet and exploiting people.

During our potluck we would like to discuss these issues and how we can contribute to fundamental change.

In particular, RBC is the main financier of the Albertan Tar Sands (london.actforclimatejustice.org/campaign s/tar-sands/), from which we demand they withdraw their support immediately.

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So, spread the word!

Also, with the dish of your choice, please bring a plate/bowl and utensils to use.

Any creative and fun contributions, such as music or games, would also be greatly appreciated!

Anything else you would like to offer, or not, would be great as well.

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This event is connected with the call-out for 1000 Cancuns, across the world -
ccjn.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/mobilise-a ll-over-the-world/

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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WHAT IS IT?

On June 23rd, environmental justice organizers will be guiding a tour through Toronto to expose institutions most responsible for the environmental and social impacts of Canada’s extractive industries both at home and abroad. Canada is home to 75% of the world’s mining and exploration companies, making it a global leader in this industry. Canada’s place within the G8 nations is largely due to the exploitation of Indigenous peoples, their lands and rural poor for mining, tar sands and oil/gas exploitation.

As residents of Canada, we will not standby while the Canadian government, banks, and corporations continue to destroy people’s livelihoods and ecosystems to secure wealth accumulation for a select few.

WHAT SHOULD I BRING?
We encourage folks coming to dress up and challenge those in power with costumes, floats and fancied up bicycles. We will be working on several floats in lead up but encourage all to dress up for our action.

Ideas for costumes: Executives with blood on their hands, corporate zombies, people covered in Tar Sands bitumen,. etc. (fake blood and bitumen will be provided)

WHERE AND WHEN?

Please join us at 11 am on June 23 at Alexandra Park.

For more information or to endorse the event, please contact: toxictourTO@gmail.com

Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=127661243928642

WHY TAKE PART IN THE TOXIC TOUR?

The toxic tour will focus on four themes:

1. The extractive industry is violating human rights and the rights of mother earth. The federal government supports these companies even as human rights workers are killed, local peoples poisoned, and entire communities displaced. From the tar sands in northern Alberta to gold mines in Papua New Guinea to copper mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Canadian companies are exploiting indigenous and poor communities alike, violating their right to self-determination, poisoning their lands, manipulating any leadership that they can access, and often supporting brutal military and security operations.

2. The extractive industry is exacerbating the climate crisis. The tar sands gigaproject is the most destructive industrial project on earth and will be the leading contributor to climate change in Canada, making it impossible for our country to meet its international climate commitments. The climate crisis has been caused by the industrialization of developed countries like Canada, while disproportionately affecting indigenous peoples and the global south who are faced with sea-level rise, drought, permafrost melt, desertification, melting glaciers, and increased extreme weather events. These and other problems brought on by the climate crisis have destroyed the livelihoods of millions who are dying and being displaced from their homes.

3. The education system is taken over by corporate interests. The University of Toronto, Canada´s largest academic institution, is taken over by corporations, many of which are linked to the extractive industry. This corporate influence stifles open, honest, and critical debate in our institutions of higher learning and demonstrates how a wealthy few can dominate and shape the way people think. As an academic institution that strives to create the ‘leaders of tomorrow,’ we must challenge the notion that corporate greed and exploitation has any place in our education system.

4. The Canadian economy is dependent on exploiting marginalized peoples and the environment. Harper would not be at the G8 if it wasn’t for exploiting the resources and people of countries that the G8 is purposely shutting out of discussions. Solutions, however, are there—but the Harper government refuses to give people the ability to determine the future of their own lives and livelihoods.

Steve D’Arcy and Syrah Canyon in The Bullet

“Respect Indigenous Rights” banner at this year's May Day rally in Toronto.

Across Canada, activists have been reacting to the May 18 arson attack on a bank in Ottawa by a group claiming to be politically motivated. The group – calling itself FFFC – set off a fire bomb inside a Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) branch in the Glebe residential neighbourhood near the city’s downtown, and then posted a video of the attack on the internet.

Few amongst the Left could disagree, of course, with a strong condemnation of RBC, Canada’s most profitable and most notoriously immoral financial institution. RBC fully deserves to be challenged, with determination and militancy, whenever possible. However, there is debate on the action taken by the FFFC against RBC. The crux of this debate turns on questions of tactics and strategy.

Political Arson?

Many people have been sharply critical of the arsonists’ use of a tactic that endangered the lives of both nearby residents and the emergency workers who had to deal with the fire (there was also the possibility of there being night workers in the bank cleaning). The actions of the arsonists were irresponsible and reckless. Anyone who has had the unfortunate experience of being in a fire, fighting a fire or treating a fire victim can tell you just how dangerous a fire can be. Fire is very powerful and unpredictable and, even if it was not the intention of the arsonists to do so, it was within the realm of possibility that people could have been seriously injured and/or killed (as occurred in the Greek anti-austerity protests when a bank was firebombed, workers killed, and a huge setback to the momentum to the protests followed). We expect such disregard for human life from the major corporations themselves, not those who oppose them. It is delusional to think that any pain brought on by this action would be borne by the system of capitalism, the state, or even the RBC. You can’t burn those things down. It is business as usual for all of them. In fact, this action has served their interests.
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UK Protestors shut down the Islington based Shell petrol station on the 15th of May 2010 for 5 hours on a sunny Saturday in protest against Shell’s involvement in the Canadian Tar Sands project.

Crank up the volume and enjoy…….

Party at the Pumps is in solidarity with communities around the world who are resisting Shell and BP’s destruction of lives and livelihoods, poisoning of lands and waters, and fuelling of climate chaos. In Northern Canada, Shell’s tar sands projects are ignoring First Nations treaty rights, causing rare forms of cancer and killing wildlife.

This action is jointly called by London Rising Tide/London Tar Sands Network and Climate Camp London.

http://www.no-tar-sands.org
http://www.risingtide.org.uk
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/london

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.

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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).

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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

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.

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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 »

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.”

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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!”

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Sakura Saunders on the Vancouver Media Co-op

The Vancouver Olympics were billed by governments, sponsors and promotors as the “greenest games ever.” But the resistance movement against the Games has decimated these claims, by bringing voices from people on the front lines of environmental destruction to the fore.

The 2010 Olympics has managed its “green” image by using shallow reporting and flawed accountability, says Clayton Thomas Muller of the Indigenous Environmental Network. He spoke out against the environmental impacts of the 2010 Games and its corporate sponsors along with representatives from impacted communities and major environmental justice organizations on the eve of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies.

“When we look at the assessment of the carbon footprint of the Games, the reality of it is that they only looked at very surface issues; they only looked at the flights,” Muller told a press conference on Olympic greenwashing. “They did not look at the forest loss, the tree loss, the impact on wetlands. They did not look at the construction CO2 imprint of all of the machinery that has been going 24/7 for the last year in preparation for the Games.”

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