It\’s Getting Hot In Here

“No finer life than a coal miners wife”
–Anonymous post to Rising Tide North America

Last week High Country Rising Tide went public in the Wyoming media with plans to organize West By Northwest, a no coal exports action camp in the heart of Wyoming’s coal country. It will be a place to build constructive solutions to preventable human and environmental catastrophes related to coal exports.

Despite it’s noble intentions, it’s sparked quite the reaction from western coal country. To say the least. Organizers with High Country Rising Tide and Rising Tide North America have gotten a barrage of hate mail and belligerent Facebook posts which include:

The Argumentative-
“I guess im a little confused… none of the powder river coal is shipped overseas. I have worked for almost every mine in the basin and can say for sure all of the coal produced there is used here. The coal that is used overseas is produced overseas. Coal mines are great for the economy as they are a great paying gig which gives more money back to the community, and woth todays carbon capture technology power plants are being built with zero emissions so it’s a win win.”

The Aggressive-
“We will be seeing you here in Campbell County. I would tell you to bring
 your bells and whistles so that we know who you are but I am thinking that
 you won’t be missed in our community. We never forget a coal haters face.”

The Threatening-
“fuck u u guys are a bunch of crying babies going to love when u come to wy will give u a warm fucking welcome just think whats powering your phone your computer the plastic of anything u own u dumb shit cant wait tell u come here going to be nice fucking red day bitch”

We’ve also gotten multiple requests from local media (including invites from conservative talk radio) to discuss the issues. We’ve already been doing interviews and are looking forward to lots more opportunity to discuss the issues. Plus we just love mixing it up on talk radio.

And Gillette Wyoming’s conservative radio host made this video in our honor
Continue reading ‘From Wyoming With Love’

Coal exports is a preventable human and environmental catastrophe. It can still be stopped, but we need to stop it now. Coal companies are digging coal out of the ground in Montana and Wyoming and want to ship it out via mega-ports in Oregon and Washington to Asian energy markets. The burning of this coal will devastate the climate, those Asian countries with environmental regulations still in development and the North American that will be impacted by it’s transport.

This summer, climate activists from all over will be headed to the heart of Wyoming’s coalfields to raise awareness about the impacts of the life cycle of coal (mining, exports, burning). West By Northwest, a No Coal Exports Action Camp will be convened by High Country Rising Tide, Rising Tide North America and host of other environmental and community organizations.

West By Northwest will hold workshops on extraction and coal export related topics, organizing skills and participate in local community projects.

Want to get involved? Here’s a couple of ways:

• RSVP for the camp
• Donate to the camp
• RSVP on Facebook Continue reading ‘No Coal Exports Action Camp in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin; Aug 2-10′

Mountain Activists Board Coal Barge In Kanahwa River, WV

Bold and beautiful.

This morning pro-mountain activists launched a summer of actions with two direct actions in West Virginia.

Five of them boarded a coal barge in the Kanahwa River with a banner that read “Coal leaves, cancer stays,” and then locked their bodies to the barge.

On Kayford Mountain, family home to Keeper of the Mountain Larry Gibson, dozens more have blockaded a strip mine haul road.

Keep up with the action at http://action.mountainjustice.org.

Pro-Mountain Activists Board Coal Barge And Blockade Kayford Strip Mine Haul Road

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Contact: Robert Livingston 304.731.1740

http://action.mountainjustice.org

KAYFORD, W.Va. –Mountain Justice and RAMPS activists blocked coal transport in two locations Thursday morning. Five boarded a barge on the Kanawha River near Chelyan, with a large banner that read “Coal leaves, cancer stays,” and locked their bodies to the barge. At the same time, dozens of concerned citizens obstructed access to the haul road on Kayford Mountain, stopping coal trucks from entering or leaving the Republic Energy mine.

“These actions against coal transport were taken because the viability and health of mountain communities are being destroyed by mountaintop removal—the coal and the profits are shipped away, leaving disease and destruction in their wake,” Rebecca Loeb, one of the people on the barge said. Continue reading ‘Pro-Mountain Activists Take Over West Virginia Coal Barge & Strip Mining Haul Road’

Are you working hard on sustainability – somewhere, somehow, in your school, town or work? The White House wants to hear your story.

Today – that’s Thursday, May 24 – from 3:30-4:30, join a Twitter Town Hall with Nancy Sutley and Jon Carson at #EarthDayEveryDay. Nancy Sutley Chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and Jon Carson is Obama’s Director of the Office of Public Engagement. They want to hear what you’re working on and share successes from the Administration.

Still got more to say? Make your point even more loudly with the White House’ Sustainability Video Challenge.

Remember the tar sands fight that started last summer?  Not the massive civil disobedience at the White House, but the one in Moscow Idaho where concerned residents were putting their bodies in front Exxon’s giant trucks carrying tar sands equipment bound for Alberta.

Our friends in Wild Idaho Rising Tide waged a tenacious fight against the heavy hauls. Now as the trucks are taking new routes, the fight against the tar sands has moved to Spokane WA where the trucks have been re-directed.

In early May, Wild Idaho Rising Tide and Occupy Spokane began protests late at night as the trucks began their late night hauls.

Here’s their press release:

Washington/Idaho Megaload Resistance

At about 11:30 pm on Sunday night, May 20, a dozen activists from Occupy Spokane and Wild Idaho Rising Tide converged in Spokane, Washington, to protest megaloads of oversized equipment bound for Alberta tar sands operations from the Port of Pasco.  ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil has been using Highway 395, Interstate 90, and city streets in Spokane and Spokane Valley since mid-October to transport road damaging shipments weighing up to 400,000 pounds and stretching over 200 feet long.  Diverted in Idaho from their originally intended Highway 12 route by court challenges and from their alternative Highway 95 path by Moscow area protests, these pieces of a tar sands/bitumen processing plant will expand Canadian carbon fuel extraction, American dependence on oil, and continental greenhouse gas emissions, while reaping hefty profits for one of the wealthiest corporations on Earth. Continue reading ‘Tar Sands Megaload Fight Moves West To Spokane’

Maybe it’s the Occupy movement’s proliferation of direct action tactics over the past eight months. Maybe it’s people being beyond fed up in our failed political system and shifting their “theory of change” from the ballot box to the streets. Or maybe it’s the unending flow of big actions and mobilizations from May Day to bank shareholder meetings and people realizing that we need more and more skills development. But it seems like there is an awful lot of action camps coming up this summer.

These camps are great spaces for not only teaching people organizing and action skills, but also networking and building our communities, and our movements. Not to mention lots of fun post-camp direct actions that always accompany them.

It’s the bonding at these camps around late night campfires or in long action planning meetings that builds strong lasting relationships that power us through long hard struggle. I’ve been to lots of action camps over the years and I definitely feel a sense of large family or a clan that bands together in fighting to stop environmental destruction and oppression.

Here’s a list of some of the enviro direct action camps happening this summer.  All free and open to the public.

Mountain Justice May 19-26, Pipestem, WV: “Join us as we build pressure and momentum in stopping strip mining and other exploitative resource extraction in Appalachia. This Summer Action Camp is the place to learn new skills, expand on ones you already have; strengthen ties, meet new friends and get ready for bigger events later in the year.” Continue reading ‘Summer Action Camps A Go-Go’

Solidarity is no longer a four letter word.

NATO (and the Chicago police) will be meeting Occupy Chicago and thousands of anti-war activists and anti-capitalists in Chicago this week for mass protests. The city has responded with heavy handed repressive ordinances and police tactics (sound familiar?). Regardless thousands will be marching and taking action on a whole range of issues from the war in Afghanistan to austerity to immigrant rights to climate change.

In fact, direct actions began this morning as 8 anti-war activists were arrested in Obama For America’s offices in Chicago demanding an end to the war in Afghanistan.

This is all happening with a climate justice twist as Rising Tide Chicago and Chicago based environmental and climate justice groups, aka Climate Action Chicago, are hosting a number of events, marches and actions in solidarity with the anti-NATO protests.

Noam Chomsky recently remarked that the Occupy has created something that never really existed in the U.S.–solidarity.

“The other aspect, which in my estimation may be more significant, is that the Occupy movement spontaneously created something that doesn’t really exist in the country: communities of mutual support, cooperation, open spaces for discussion”

Now, we are seeing unprecedented amounts of “post-issue activism.” The sort of organizing that transcends single issues and becomes about real transformational work around our economy, our environment and our democracy. Occupy has liberated that space.

Now the corporations and the state are fighting back. But so are we. This weekend in Chicago is another opportunity to link arms and march side by side with folks fighting foreclosures, deportations, the war and environmental injustice.

If you are anywhere near Chicago, go join them. Continue reading ‘Climate Action Chicago Joins NATO Summit Protests’

Cross-posted from the Coal Export Action

On Saturday, as part of the international Connect the Dots day of action organized by 350.org, activists in Missoula, MT highlighted the connection between dirty money, government, and climate change.  At the Missoula Farmers Market, organizers from the Blue Skies Campaign, Occupy Missoula, and other local groups enacted a creative street theater routine to draw attention to the Montana Land Board’s support for Arch Coal at the expense of ordinary people and the climate.

In 2010, the Montana Land Board voted 3-2 to lease coal tracts in the Otter Creek area to Arch Coal.  Developing Otter Creek for coal mining would set off one of the largest carbon bombs in the world, facilitating construction of the Tongue River Railroad, and the opening of vast additional tracts of land to mining.  With a quarter of US coal reserves sitting under Montana soil, this is truly one of the most important fights on the planet.

Help diffuse this carbon bomb: join the Coal Export Action this summer!

Fortunately, Land Board members – all of whom are statewide elected officials – still can stop mining at Otter Creek.  It will take massive public pressure to make them do so, though.  The ones who can really diffuse this bomb are the Montana people.

Thus the inspiration for Saturday’s street theater, which showed what it will take to keep Montana’s largest coal reserves underground.  During a tug-of-war match between the people of Montana and pro-coal members of the Land Board, climate activists discovered pro-coal politicians couldn’t be budged as long as they remain tied to the coal industry by dirty money. Continue reading ‘Connecting the Dots: Dirty Money and Politics in Montana’

Striking images and video are beginning to stream in from over 1,000 events in more than 100 countries where people are “connecting the dots” between climate change and extreme weather. The events are part of a global effort called “Climate Impacts Day” organized by the international climate campaign 350.org.

Over then next 24 hours, our crew at 350.org is going to be working hard to compile these images and get them out to the public and press. As Bill McKibben wrote yesterday, It’s time for each of us to get involved in the full-on fight between misinformation and truth.”

Continue reading ‘Climate Impacts Day “Connects the Dots” Between Extreme Weather & Climate Change’

State of the Movement report shows emerging move away from fossil fuels

Posted on behalf of Sam Akiha, Communications and Research Intern at Better Future Project

As a reminder that sustainability is not an annual event, Better Future Project today released The State of the Movement: New England’s Transition Beyond Fossil Fuels, a new report that catalogues sustainability efforts throughout the region. The report details dozens of local projects that are not simply about recycling or solar panels; rather, people investing time and energy to transform their community one garden, one street, or one building at a time.  It demonstrates that the movement beyond fossil fuels is diverse and thriving.

The report is the result of Better Future Project’s Climate Summer program. In the 2011 program, 31 cycling college students toured New England spreading a simple message: New England needs to move beyond fossil fuels. The riders collaborated with local organizations and individuals in the towns they visited. They lent hands to their projects, co-organized events, and connected them to other efforts in the area. These Climate Riders will return to towns throughout New England for the program’s fourth year this June, July, and August.

The State of the Movement focuses on the following categories: sustainable economies, sustainable food systems, waste and materials management, transportation, green spaces, building efficiency, renewable energy, environmental justice, and community resilience. In addition, it includes town profiles that provide information of what specific cities and towns are doing to rely less on fossil fuels.

Better Future Project, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a new, grassroots organization dedicated to moving America and the world beyond energy sources that harm human health, human dignity, and human life. The organization’s first report, Energy Casualties, released in February, explores the public health, security, social justice issues surrounding the fossil fuel industry. With a focus on leadership development, network-building, and engagement platforms, Better Future Project’s main programs include Climate Summer, Ride for the Future, which will launch in New Orleans in May, and 350 Massachusetts.