It’s Getting Hot In Here

This is basically Australia’s national song – and here is AYCC’s spoof with new lyrics and images. We’re up to over 30,000 votes and counting!

Have you taken the Climate Pledge of Resistance? I did.

Last summer, the Yes Men launched Beyond Talk calling on thousands to sign up and put their freedom on the line by committing civil disobedience to save the climate.  Now, a coalition of social, environmental, faith-based, indigenous and climate groups have taken beyondtalk one step further and created the “Climate Pledge of Resistance.”

Inspired by the 1980′s Pledge of Resistance solidarity movement against U.S. intervention in Central America, climate groups are moving “beyond talk” and organizing active resistance against climate chaos and climate injustice.

In the 1980′s various faith and peace groups coordinated hundreds of affinity groups around the nation to prevent U.S. sponsored death and destruction in Central America.  The Climate Pledge of Resistance will be creating a similar infrastructure of non-violent direct action and climate justice to challenge governments and corporations complicit in destroying the climate and harming those communities most impacted by climate change.

This year, we’ve already seen mass anti-coal actions in Washington D.C. and Charlotte, NC, ongoing direct actions in southern West Virginia against the mining industry and mass action at Chevron’s Richmond California refinery. In the coming weeks and months, resistance to corporate sponsored climate change will grow and spread.

This weekend, two climate convergences will happen in Richmond, CA and in Pittsburgh, PA.  Next week climate activists will march and take action at the G20 in Pittsburgh.  On Oct 24 will be a global day of action against climate change and on Nov. 30 there will be another day of action against climate change, both leading into the Copenhagen talks in early Dec. [where mass action is expected]. Continue reading ‘Have You Taken the Climate Pledge of Resistance?’

Senior citizens from around the nation are stepping up their efforts to end mountaintop removal.

Roland Micklem is an 81-year-old military veteran from Richmond, VA. State police arrested Micklem and three others for blockading Massey Energy’s regional headquarters in an act of non-violent civil disobedience on the morning of Wednesday September 9. In his statement, Micklem announced his intent to lead a five day, 25 mile march for senior citizens, ages 55 and older, in a protest against mountaintop removal (MTR). Micklem and other participants will depart on the morning of Thursday October 8 from the state capital in Charleston, W.Va.. The march will conclude at the gates of the Massey-owned Mammoth MTR site in Kanawha County on Monday October 12, where those who choose to will engage in an act of non-violent civil disobedience against mountaintop removal.

In Micklem’s open letter, he states, “No substantial gain in our efforts to continually evolve into a more humane and caring society has been made without the willingness of individuals—with non violence as both a creed and a strategy–to step outside the framework of law and tradition in order to correct wrongs when conventional measures had failed. The abolition of slavery, the enactment of civil rights legislation, the right of women to vote, the termination of the Vietnam war could not have come about without the help of the same kind of non violent, direct, and sometime unlawful action that we are using here to stop mountaintop removal. And as a Christian as well as one who basically respects the laws of the land, I see the growth and maturing of my Faith to be in direct proportion to my readiness to stand for truth, and to embrace causes that will contribute to our moral and spiritual uplift as the dominant species on the planet.”

Click here to listen to Micklem’s radio interview excerpts

Click here for more information on the march on the Climate Ground Zero website

Regardless of our faith, we can all learn from Roland’s determination. Send your parents and grandparents to the coalfields October 8-12!

Check out this amazing mid week campaign update video, halfway through Youth Decide voting week! We’re up to over 26,000 votes and almost 5,000 people came to the concert last night in Melbourne’s Federation Square. Thanks to Ellen Sandell’s amazing video skillz.

 Students at Pacific University, Linfield College, and University of Portland are organizing to generate 100 phone calls to Oregon’s US senators within approximately one week, asking them to push for a strong American Clean Energy and Security Act.  Though both Senator Ron Wyden and Senator Jeff Merkley are likely to vote for whatever version of the ACES bill is finally adopted, we’re pushing them to take up a leadership role in crafting a bill that:

• Grants at least as much funding to clean energy technologies as to fossil fuel industries

• Devotes $15 billion per year to clean energy research and development – a goal set by President Obama

• Preserves Environmental Protection Agency authority to regulate global warming pollution under the Clean Air Act

• Ensures we make real reductions in pollution here in the US, instead of buying pollution “offsets” in other countries

With 1Sky pushing to generate 10,000 calls to senate offices nationwide in the next two weeks, the efforts of these three Oregon colleges – participating in the call-in week as the first major project of the Northwest Fossil Action Fall campaign – fit right in with the national push to produce a strong ACES bill that helps steer the US to a clean energy future.  Now college campuses across the country need to duplicate these efforts. 

A lot of activists are saying that the current version of ACES is a weak bill that will do little to curb US global warming emissions.  Well, they’re probably right; but the only way that’s going to change is if we get down to work and organize young people to contact their senators with the same energy that brough hundreds of thousands of us together to sign the Power Vote pledge last fall.  Pacific University, Linfield, and University of Portland are doing now what colleges across the nation need to do over the coming month: organizing students to call their senators through tabling events, call-in get-togethers, and more.

Hats off to the student organizers at these three campuses making this happen.  Now, want a stronger ACES bill?  Get some folks together, reserve a table on-campus, and start chalking up the phone calls!

More updates on the Oregon call-in coming later this week.

Cross posted from the DC Action Factory

Carbon Bigfoot Harper and Obama Shake Hands

Big news today: Prime Minister Harper visited the White House to get a photo-op with Obama. But he didn’t expect that photo-op would be organized for him, by the DC Action Factory.

The scary, climate destroying monster met with Obama today to discsuss how they could stop the Afganistan war, how to revive the global economy, and what to do about this pesky energy problem. Unfortunately, he wasn’t smart enough to propose a fair, ambitious and binding global treaty that would create a green global economy with lots of good, clean jobs. No, instead, the oaf that he is, thought he could impress Obama with a milkshake. An oil sands milkshake, to be exact.

Sipping on the Oil Sands

Continue reading ‘Carbon Bigfoot Harper Visits Obama’

Action Factory Press Release

‘Carbon Bigfoot’ Harper and President Obama Sip from Dirty Oil Sands Milkshake

Washington DC — During their meeting this Wednesday, President Obama, and ‘Carbon Bigfoot’ Harper will sip from a larger-than-life dirty oil sands milkshake. Harper appears as a hairy and foolish Bigfoot character with no qualms about his enormous carbon footprint. While sipping their fossil fuel shake, Harper and President Obama will discuss their commitments to solving climate change ahead of the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh later this month.

The Action Factory plans to pose as Carbon Bigfoot Harper and President Obama and call for a fair, ambitious, and binding global climate treaty in Copenhagen this December. “So far, none of the developed countries have shown the ambition and leadership necessary to secure a sufficient treaty,” says Julie Erickson, a fellow with Avaaz.org. “Canada in particular has a track record of hindering the climate process more than helping,” she adds. We’re hopeful that some tangible progress on climate finance will come out of the UNGA and G20 meetings next week. Continue reading ‘Preview: Stephen Harper/Bigfoot to Visit Obama’

LIVE STREAM: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/stoptarsands

Fort McMurray, Canada — On the eve of the Harper-Obama meeting in Washington D.C., Greenpeace activists are locking down and blockading a giant dump truck and shovel at Shell’s massive Albian Sands open-pit mine in northern Alberta to send the message that the tar sands are a global climate crime that must be stopped.

A Greenpeace activist blocks a truck with the message "Tar Sands Climate Crime."

The 25 activists from Canada, the United States and France entered the mine, about 60 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, at 8:00 a.m. They blockaded a giant three-storey dump truck and hydraulic shovel by chaining together pick-up trucks. Two teams then scaled the truck and shovel and chained themselves to them, while another team placed giant banners on the tarry ground reading, “Tar Sands: Climate Crime.”

“Greenpeace has come here today, to the frontiers of climate destruction to block this giant mining operation and tell Harper and Obama meeting tomorrow that climate leaders don’t buy tar sands” said Mike Hudema, Greenpeace Canada climate and energy campaigner, from inside the blockade. “The tar sands are a devastating example of how our future will look unless urgent action is taken to protect the climate.”

Canada is now the number one exporter of oil to the US, most of which is dirty tar sands oil. The climate crimes of tar sands development—rising energy intensity, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and Boreal forest destruction—are leading the world to climate chaos. LIVE STREAM: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/stoptarsands

Continue reading ‘A Bad Day for Tar Sands: Greenpeace Shuts Down a Tar Sands Mine!’

Rainforest Action Network drops Seventy-Foot Banner Over Niagara Falls to Welcome Prime Minister Harper to the U.S.
Canadian Tar Sands Oil Undermines North America’s Clean Energy Future
See more photos here.
update: video below, and climber interview here.

Before dawn this morning, a small team of climate and Native Rights activists rappelled from the US observation deck at Niagara Falls. Dangling hundreds of feet above the ground, they sent a special welcome message to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ahead of his first official visit to the White House to push dirty Tar Sands oil.

Not that he’s feeling so welcome anyway. Obama limited the meeting to just one hour. While some have called it a slap in the face, Aides say Harper will turn the other cheek. “The economy, and the clean-energy dialogue,” one aide told the Globe and Mail, “will dominate the discussions.” Obama needed to dodge controversy over oil imports from Canada’s tar sands in the midst of the Climate Legislation debate. Harper needed a story to go with his photo-op.

During Harper’s first official trip to meet Obama in the U.S., the two leaders are expected to discuss climate change and energy policy ahead of the upcoming G20 Summit. Canada supplies 19% of U.S. oil imports, more than half of which now comes from the tar sands, making the region the largest single source of U.S. oil imports. The expansion of the tar sands will strip mine an area the size of Florida. Complete with skyrocketing rates of cancer (by 400%!) for First Nations communities living downstream, broken treaties, toxic belching lakes so large you can see them from outer space, churning up ancient boreal forest, destroyed air and water quality, the tar sands have been called the most destructive project on Earth.

Tomorrow’s visit to the U.S. by Prime Minister Harper is the latest attempt by Canadian Federal and Provincial officials to lock in subsidies for 22 new and expanded refinery projects and oil pipelines crisscrossing 28 states, which would transport and process the dirty tar sands oil. Many are concerned that Prime Minister Harper wants to protect the tar sands oil industry from climate regulation, even though it is one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.

Continue reading ‘BREAKING – activists drop 70′ banner off of NIAGARA FALLS to tell Canadian PM: NO TAR SANDS oil!’

The New York State Senate and Assembly, too often a model of corruption and dysfunctionality, rose above petty politics last week to pass forward-thinking legislation on climate and energy, setting a precedent for bipartisanship and a sensible cap and trade system.  The State Senate passed the groundbreaking Green Job/Green New York Act, with strong support from Republicans, Democrats, and the Working Families Party, which spearheaded the legislation. The bill — expected to be signed into law this week by Gov. David Patterson leverages $112m in revenue from the Northeasts’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) into $5 billion of private investment to finance home weatherization, energy efficiency projects, and green jobs creation.

We should all be paying closer attention for three reasons:

1) It is one of the first large-scale pieces of legislation that concreteley demonstrates why green jobs are a win-win-win. Homeowners win by reducing their energy costs. The private sector wins by gaining a safer investment with strong expected returns. strong return on investment. And New Yorkers benefit through the creation of 16,000 new jobs and the increased economic activity and tax receipts the program will generate.  It’s a blueprint that can work other states and regions as well.

2) It’s also a model for sensible national climate and energy policy. While the version of the American Clean Energy & Securities Act that passed in the House gives away a substantial portion of the pollution allowances to utilities, the RGGI program in the Northeast auctions off the credits creating the $112 million in revenue, which the state is leveraging 50x to create new jobs and save homeowners on their heating and electricity bills.

3) Finally, the Green Job/Green New York Act highlights the power of bipartisan efforts to achieve common sense solutions. Republican support is what made the bill possible. Rather than fight any effort for sensible policy like the national Republican leadership, local leaders have proven to be in touch with the concerns of their constituents, helping to pass the bill 52-8 in the Senate and 147-0 in the Assembly. But putting politics aside and the needs of New Yorkers first, they showed the way for national cooperation on this issue.

To learn more about the bill and its passage, check out David Sasson’s piece on SolveClimate.org.

This entry is cross-posted on Grist.org.