It’s Getting Hot In Here

Three Rivers Climate Convergence Call to Action!

Their Strategy:
Isolate themselves behind fences, barricades and police, use millions of our tax dollars to silence dissent and repress us while perpetuating the same systems that consolidate wealth and control in their hands.

Our Strategy:
Inspire a spirit of cooperative resistance to these structures while creatively modeling “another world” that is healthier, sustainable and just.

9/21-23 – The International Coal Conference- a global gathering of Coal engineers and researchers will gather to discuss how to put a green face the black heart of coal

9/24-25- The G20- World Leaders will gather to construct a supposed solution to the climate crises that those who created the problem, large corporations and fossil fuel producers in charge of the solutions.

This September the fossil fuel industry and their political supporters are descending on Pittsburgh to put a green face on global capitalism. World superpowers, whose failed policies are responsible for the economic, environmental and human rights crises, will be convening to make major political and financial decisions. They will be met by global citizens who know we need to do things differently. We’ll break through and demand real, localized and community-based solutions that come from the 6.5 billion people of the earth, not 20 heads of state.

The Group of 20 Nations and members of the International Coal Conference will attempt to solve our problems with the same, failed systems that caused them — legitimizing corporate controlled “solutions” to global warming and green washing the same old dirty energy sources.
Continue reading ‘CALL TO ACTION! Three Rivers Climate Convergence, Pittsburgh Sept. 21-15′

cross-posted on SustainUS’s Agents of Change blog

As reported by the BBC last week, the President of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, will have to skip the United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen because, well, they just can’t afford it.

The low-lying island nation is at serious risk of disappearing under rising oceans caused by global warming, but can’t afford to fight for its own survival at the negotiations, citing the financial crisis. The Maldivian economy ranked 186th in 2008, and more than 20% of Maldivians are below the poverty line, with average income per person at $4,400.

It’s an extreme example of a common problem – those with the most to lose from global warming often have the least representation in the UN climate debate. All of those flights and hotels add up, and poorer countries can’t bear the costs. Many developing nations only have one or two government delegates, and the UN has a fund that only covers at most one delegate per country.

Continue reading ‘Most Threatened, Least Represented’

This post is from the Summer of Solutions Omaha organizer Lance Brisbois. Cross posted here!

This summer, I had the opportunity to participate in the Omaha Summer of Solutions program. The Summer of Solutions began in the summer of 2008 in St. Paul, Minnesota by an ambitious group of student environmental activists. Being from the greater Omaha area, I decided that I would love to get involved with something like that in Omaha for summer 2009. Planning began many months in advance and became a very inclusive process with anyone who wanted to help out…either from a distance or on the ground. Dozens of people expressed interest in the program. The possibilities seemed endless—we could work on energy efficiency, clean energy, transportation, local food, building community, and myriad other sustainability-based initiatives.

Continue reading ‘Creating the Space for Solutions’

I was sitting at home in my pajamas, glossily checking Facebook, when I saw a status update that caught my attention.  It alluded to homework which forced a student to prove that global warming is a hoax.  Eyebrow raised, I investigated.  Turns out, a public school teacher in my state, Utah, gave this assignment to students last week:

“Write a 2-page paper exposing the myths of global warming, and giving scientific information show that global warming is not the major catastrophe the media would have us believe.  Must include a full bibliography and include a copy of your highlighted sources.”

Of course, I had to sleep on this before I trusted myself to react.

The next morning, I decided I needed a couple of questions answered before I could decide what to do about this.  Here’s what I asked and what I found out:

Q: Was the teacher giving some sort of clever lesson aimed at waking the students up to the overwhelming evidence in favor of global warming?  A:  No.  In fact, the teacher specifically told the students that they could NOT turn in a paper to the contrary or they would receive no credit.

Q:  How could the teacher get AWAY with this?  A:  The teacher isn’t getting away with it.  Disciplinary action is being taken by the school.

Here is an image of the assignment, complete with doodles:

Continue reading ‘High School Teacher’s Assignment: “Expose the Myth of Global Warming”’

Cross-posted from the Understory.

Over the past decade, as oil prices have risen ever higher, oil companies have begun a massive – and massively destructive – project of tearing Canada’s boreal forest to pieces, in order to get at a layer of sand that contains 10% oil. To get the oil out, they need three barrels of natural gas for every barrel of oil produced. The process creates vast lakes of polluted water – which already cover 50 square miles – that areseeping into the groundwater and rivers, poisoning Indigenous communities; already, thousands of ducks have died after landing in these wastewater lakes. The wreckage from this horribly destructive process already covers 500 square miles – but the area earmarked for future destruction is the size of Florida. Protests of Indigenous peoples are being ignored. Politicians are redirecting money from clean energy projects to finance tar sands research. And all this is happening in our friendly neighbor to the north, Canada – and U.S. oil companies are raking in huge profits from tar sands oil, and are pumping the world’s dirtiest oil from Alberta straight to your gas tank.

Sounds like a pretty important news story, right?

Continue reading ‘Tar Sands Fighters to U.S. News Media: WAKE UP!’

cross-posted from: here

The University of Maryland student group I’m part of, UMD for Clean Energy, is getting involved in the city of College Park’s City Council Elections by pushing a green platform and mobilizing students to vote for candidates that support it. For an explanation of how much influence a student voting bloc can have in a local election, along with a description of the campaign, please see our FAQ here.

What I want to talk about here is the chief policy we are pushing in our platform, and how every part of the country should be finding ways to implement this financing mechanism. That policy is an energy efficiency loan fund which utilizes a limited amount of public funds in order to leverage far greater private investment in order to finance the upfront cost of energy efficiency improvements for homes and businesses. There are different ways these funds can be set up and structured, but the premise is the same. We all know energy efficiency is the fastest and cheapest way to address rising energy demand, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and create green jobs. Continue reading ‘The Power of Energy Efficiency Loan Funds’

We all know polling booths strike fear into the hearts of politicians. Imagine their faces when they see over 330 climate polling booths and tens of thousands of online votes, organised by young people, for young people, this week, in the world’s first youth climate vote.

Less than half a day in to Youth Decide voting week we’re already at over 3,000 votes.

In 2005, students at the University of Sydney and Monash University held student referendums on whether the Universities should take stronger action on climate change. Both were hugely successful: at Sydney Uni, it was the tipping point in a year-long campaign that resulted in the University committing $1 million to renewable energy research and development. At Monash, the referendum caused the University to commit to reduce energy by 20%, purchase 20% greenpower, and employ new staff to run sustainability programs within the University.

Now, four years later, we’re holding Australia’s first national youth climate referendum. In fact, it’s the world’s first national youth climate vote. Young people aged 12 – 29 can vote to choose one of three worlds they wish to inherit. The worlds are based on the Government’s own climate change modelling, as well as the work of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. You can see them here.

With over 330 local voting events registered across every State & Territory, this is more than double per capita than the Step It Up day of action and it’s set to become the largest per capita youth climate mobilisation in the world. And we’re holding a huge Youth Decide concert this Wednesday in Federation Square with some of Australia’s best bands.

It’s not easy building a movement to solve climate change. We’re up against the stereotype that our generation doesn’t care about these issues – that young people don’t have anything to say, and that if we do, we should wait our turn until we’re old enough to be taken seriously. Youth Decide smashes this perception and sends a very clear campaign message to every politician – your targets = our future.

This weekend saw a mass community protests at Hazelwood Power Station, in Victoria’s LaTrobe Valley. You can read The Age’s report of the action here, an Indymedia report here and see photos on Flickr here.

In 2005 a group of students at RMIT, Melbourne and Monash Universities led a campaign against the State Government’s decision to extend the life of the Power Station. Almost every week we staged protests outside cabinet meetings, and went up to Morwell for several actions, and meeting with the local council. But we lost, and Australia’s most polluting power station continued to operate. But the movement to shut down Hazelwood did not die – and in fact, these protests were bigger now than they were in 2005.

The Hazelwood power station, located near Morwell in the Latrobe Valley of Victoria, is Australia’s most polluting power station, pumping and average 17 million tons of greenhouse gases every year, equal to the total caused by all 1.4 million households in the state capital Melbourne.

Read on for some facts about Hazelwood…

Continue reading ’500 protestors, 22 Arrests at Australia’s Dirtiest Coal Power Station’

Rising Tide invites you to join the climate contingent at the People’s Uprising march on the G20 in Pittsburgh

Thursday Sept 24.

Meet at 2:30 pm at Arsenal Park (40th Street & Penn Avenue in Lawrenceville)

Look for the “Our Climate is not Your Business” banner

The people who are responsible for evicting poor families from their homes and displacing entire peoples through wars of conquest, are the same ones responsible for the climate crisis that evicts thousands from their communities each year as sea levels rise, droughts spread, and rivers overflow their banks.  On Sept 24^th and 25^th they will be meeting in Pittsburgh to salvage an economic system that wreaks havoc upon our communities and ecosystems. We will not be fooled by their desperate PR campaign to paint capitalism green, nor their attempts to solve the climate crisis via the very same free market ideology that created this mess. It is plain to see, capitalism means crisis.

As the Big Greens ready the beds in their luxury hotels to continue their love affair with corporate America, thousands will be flooding the streets of Pittsburgh to take direct action against the G20 and its destructive policies. Rising Tide invites all those who recognize capitalism as a root cause of climate change to join the climate contingent at the People’s Uprising mass march on the G20 on Thursday Sept 24^th. This is an un-permitted march to the G20 summit site being organized by a coalition of anti-capitalist, student, labor, ecological, and anti-war groups. For the full call to action check: www.resistg20.org .

We also encourage everyone to partake in the day of decentralized actions in the morning on Friday Sept 25 (www.resistg20.org) and the Environmental/Climate Justice feeder march that afternoon. For more information about the feeder march and the 3 Rivers Climate Convergence Sept 20-25: www.3riversconvergence.org

You can’t bail out a dead planet!

-Rising Tide North America

Last month, over 500 people marched and biked through the streets of Richmond to take direct action at the gates of Chevron’s Richmond refinery.

Now, we invite you to join community leaders of Richmond, CA and activists from around the country to spend 3 days learning, building, & preparing for action!

The 2009 West Coast Convergence for Climate Justice is a three-day training and movement-building convergence followed by a collective action on Monday, September 21st.

Join us to learn about climate change and climate politics, support local communities in their ongoing fights for climate justice, & build a stronger Climate Justice movement on the West Coast leading up to the international days of action on October 24th and November 30th and international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December. Continue reading ‘West Coast Convergence for Climate Justice & Action; September 18-21, 2009; Richmond, CA’