It’s Getting Hot In Here

via EQAT

Last week, Tim DeChristopher and Peaceful Uprising called for more climate direct action. On Monday, Rebecca Tarbotton, Phil Radford and Bill McKibben echoed that call loudly.

Now after months of watching popular uprising from Tunisia to Wisconsin, the climate movement is experiencing its own small uprisings against corporate financiers and extractive industry. Yesterday, while our friends in Missoula were blocking Conoco’s heavy hauls, the Earth Quaker Action Team occupied PNC Bank’s PR booth at the Philadelphia flower show. They called for PNC executives to sign a “confession” admitting their investments in destructive mountaintop removal.

Nine Earthquakers were eventually escorted out of the flower show by police.

There are many targets and many campaigns in the fight against extractive industry and global warming. Smaller momentum building actions like in Philadelphia and Missoula working within a strategic framework are building the power of the climate movements. We’re on track for serious uprising against Big Coal and Big Oil. Stay Tuned!

Earth Quakers Escorted Out of Flower Show

PHILADELPHIA – 9 members of the Earth Quaker Action Team were escorted out of the Philadelphia Flower Show by Convention Center Security today after staging a protest at the PNC Bank Exhibit inside.

The Earth Quakers, who used police caution tape and banners to set up a “crime scene” around the exhibit, had pledged to stay until PNC Regional President J. William Mills came down to the Flower Show to sign a “confession,” admitting PNC’s investments in the destructive practice of mountaintop removal coal mining.

Instead, Jean Canfield, VP of Community Relations for PNC Regional, came down to the Flower Show to insist that the President would not come himself, and that PNC refused to engage in any dialogue around their environmental policy.
Continue reading ‘Quakers Take Action Against Mountaintop Removal Financing’

People power is on the rise from the Middle East to the Mid-West, but also on the rise in interior west states like Utah and Montana around climate and extraction issues. Groups like Northern Rockies Rising Tide and Peaceful Uprising are leading the way with this new round of western rebellions against fossil fuels.

The message for Conoco and Exxon last night was “Welcome to Missoula, There’s More of this to Come!”

And this 2:30am blockade was the third of the day, earlier ones resulted in several arrests!

Montana Citizens Temporarily Block Tar Sands Refining Shipments

Missoula, MT, March 10, 2011 – At about 2:30 am on Thursday morning, two residents of Missoula, MT, Carol Marsh, 69, and Ann Maechtlen, 50, sat down in the middle of Reserve St. in an attempt to halt the shipment of large, oversize loads of equipment heading to a ConocoPhillips tar sands oil refinery in Billings, MT.

Marsh, a retired journalist and grandmother, and Maechtlen, a two-time cancer survivor, attempted three or four times to block the shipments but the police refused to arrest the two women, instead opting to forcefully remove them to the sidewalk as they were cheered on by a crowd of about 100 supporters. The police cited and released one other man who sat down with the two women.

The action was the culmination of a “welcome to Missoula” street party organized by local grassroots group Northern Rockies Rising Tide (NRRT) in an effort to take back the streets from Big Oil.

“These megaloads are serving refineries that process oil from the Alberta tar sands, the worst ecological disaster the planet has ever faced. The tar sands undermine any effort to stop global warming. I did this because I want there to be a world for my granddaughter to grow up in,” said Marsh. Continue reading ‘Montana Citizens Temporarily Block Tar Sands Megaloads’

Chevron’s latest bullying legal tactic is a RICO suit filed in a U.S. federal court against the Indigenous and rural Ecuadoreans who are attempting to force the company to clean up its billions of gallons of toxic oil waste in the Amazon.

One of the plaintiffs’ lawyers in Ecuador, Juan Pablo Sáenz, filed a declaration yesterday detailing the long history of abusive tactics Chevron has employed, arguing that Chevron’s counter-charges against the plaintiffs rest on Chevron’s “jaundiced worldview,” which holds that a corporate heavyweight like Chevron cannot be held accountable by a group of poor Indigenous and rural people whose power and influence pale in comparison to the Big Oil behemoth’s.

The declaration is a compelling — and galling — read. The depths Chevron has sunk to with its duplicitous maneuvering is staggering. Ever wonder how the company executes all these shady tactics?

Chevron has assembled a crack team of Human Rights Hitmen to employ any dirty trick, intimidation tactic, and shady legal maneuver conceivable to help the company avoid cleaning up its mess in Ecuador. We can’t let them get away with it — help expose Chevron’s Human Rights Hitmen. RAN’s Change Chevron campaign has created a mini-site detailing the work they’re doing to deny human rights to the plaintiffs in Ecuador. Check out the site and then help get the word out. There are buttons on the site so you can share.

Most importantly, you can help make sure journalists and anyone else looking into the environmental lawsuit in Ecuador find out the truth by linking to the Human Rights Hitmen on your blog, your website, or anywhere else you can, building the search ranking for the site. We need to make sure that when anyone looks into this case, they get the complete version, not Chevron’s spin. So when you post links, use keywords like “Chevron,” “Human Rights,” “Ecuador,” “lawsuit,” “oil,” “rainforest,” and anything else people are likely to use as search terms when looking for more information on the landmark environmental lawsuit in Ecuador.

Chevron is working really hard to push a narrative that portrays itself as the victim, and the RICO suit is just the latest attempt to push this bogus version of events. But there is a reason Chevron was found guilty: Because Chevron is guilty. If anyone is trying to defraud the courts and the public, it’s Chevron. These Human Rights Hitmen are the people pushing Chevron’s self-serving narrative on the public and trying to enforce it in the courts. Let’s all shine a bright light on their misdeeds.

Large, wealthy corporations like Chevron think they can get away with poisoning communities in their reckless pursuit of profits. The thing is, in many cases they can, thanks to dirty tricks operatives like Diego Borja, morally-bankrupt lawyers like Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Andrea E. Neuman and Randy M. Mastro, corporate spymasters like Kroll Inc.’s Sam Anson, and of course, Chevron’s own in-house counsel — none other than R. Hewitt Pate, a former Bush Administration lawyer who was once described as “Chevron’s Karl Rove.”

Help expose these Human Rights Hitmen and fight for justice for the thousands of rainforest dwellers who are still sick and dying from Chevron’s oil pollution.

When drought parches wells and streams,
someone must carry water. When storms bring devastation
and disease, someone has to nurse the sick.
Climate change hits hardest on the planet’s vulnerable edges.
If women hold up half the sky, what do we do
when it seems the sky is falling?

- Barbara Kingsolver, Ripple Effect Images

On International Women’s Day, it’s hard not to think about the most vulnerable, the women all around the world whose lives are being most impacted by climate change. As Kingsolver described, it’s women and girls who are travelling farther to bring water to their homes, walking for hours a day, eliminating many girls’ already-slim chance to attend school. It’s women who cook for hours in their kitchens, breathing in the smoke from cookstoves that pollute their lungs and their air. And, it’s women who are often last to eat, even when the first responsible for putting food on their families’ plates, even in the face of increasing food scarcity.

Hillary Clinton recently echoed Madeleine Albright in saying that issues of gender equality are issues of national and global security, and the impacts of climate change are woven tightly between the two. We cannot solve the challenges of climate change without empowering and educating women, and we cannot solve our other global challenges without addressing climate change. As Time recently wrote, “If you want to change the world, invest in girls.”

Empowering female entrepreneurs and political leaders has never been more needed nor more possible. There’s Solar Sister in Africa and Barefoot College in India, training women as solar engineers and entrepreneurs; Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement, planting trees and hope across Africa; dozens of groups of women constructing rainwater harvesting and catch dams. See the impact of giving female leaders better information about development decisions, training women on basic green technologies, and getting cleaner cookstoves into women’s homes.

These programs not only make women stronger, but help their families and communities. The World Food Programme reports that women who earn, invest 90 percent back into their families, and back into their communities. Investing in women means investing in communities, in truly sustainable development. Today, the problems and their solutions are closer than ever: “Help a Woman. Help the Planet.”

Cross posted from Grist

We need big, brash, nonviolent climate protests. Are you in?

by Bill McKibben, Phil Radford and Rebecca Tarbotton

Dear friends,

Last week, a jury in Utah found Tim DeChristopher guilty for standing up to the oil and gas companies in an effort to protect our health and our climate.

If the federal government thinks that it’s intimidating people into silence with this kind of prosecution, think again. This is precisely the sort of event that reminds us why we need creative, nonviolent protests and mass mobilizations.

Over the last six months, we’ve witnessed big changes in the world that call out for creative, nonviolent protest, including:

• The wild and extreme weather and flooding that marked the end of the warmest year on record
• The complete collapse of efforts on Capitol Hill to do anything about climate change
• The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which grants corporations unfettered influence over our elections

We’ve also seen a historic outpouring of people power to combat environmental crises, reclaim our democracy, and disrupt corporate influence. From the exhilarating outbreak of the freedom movement across North Africa and the Mideast to the amazing stand for democracy and workers’ rights in Wisconsin, we are seeing the strength and effectiveness that average people can have when we stand together.

There have also been inspiring examples of civil disobedience across the United States to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the climate that we depend on. On Feb. 17, Greenpeace activists scaled a coal plant in Bridgeport, Conn., as part of an escalating campaign against the dirtiest coal plants across the country. Just five days before, one of our great environmental sages, Wendell Berry, joined a sit-in at the Kentucky governor’s office to protest mountaintop-removal coal mining. Continue reading ‘McKibben, Radford & Tarbotton: “We need big, brash, nonviolent climate protests. Are you in?”’

via treehugger.com

“I left with a smile. I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime.” -Martin Luther King, 1956

Today after a four hour jury deliberation, climate activist Tim DeChristopher was found guilty on two felony counts for derailing a Bureau of Land Management auction in December 2008.

Sentencing will most likely be a month or two away.

DeChristopher acted to stop the oil and gas industry from drilling in pristine Utah wilderness near Arches and Canyonlands national parks and to prevent the release of climate change causing greenhouse gas emissions.

Since his act of civil disobedience, DeChristopher has built a strong community and activist group, Peaceful Uprising, in the greater Salt Lake City area which has organized support events, marches, rallies and sing-a-longs in solidarity with him. Continue reading ‘Climate Activist Tim DeChristopher Found Guilty’

Shortly after noon on Sunday, visitors to Bank of America and Citi branches in downtown Portland found local ATMs temporarily closed.  Notices on the ATMs informed customers that the bank was “temporarily closed until in invests responsibly in renewable energy.”  It seems both Bank of America and Citi have been up to no good again, lending financial support to projects that destroy the planet and human health while contributing to irreversible global warming.

Bank of America and Citi have gotten a lot of flack for their past investments in activities like rainforest destruction and mountaintop removal.  Thanks to years of pressure from groups like the Rainforest Action Network, these two largest banks in the US have taken at least some steps to pull their support for those projects.  However they still haven’t gotten the message that responsible investing means no loans given to high-carbon industries.  Even as they distance themselves from destructive extraction in the eastern US, both banks are funding the drive to make the Northwest a fossil fuel import-export zone. 

To take an example, Citi and Bank of America are major lenders to Arch Coal: one of the companies now looking at building coal export terminals on the Columbia River.  If Arch and its allies get their way, the Columbia could soon be pumping millions of tons of coal from the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming to the gargantuan coal market in China.  Meanwhile as Arch tries to ship fossil fuels out of the Northwest, other companies are bringing extraction infrastructure in, shipping drilling equipment up the Columbia en route to the Canadian tar sands.  Banks like Citi and Bank of America are helping to fund that activity, too. Continue reading ‘Bank of America and Citi: Closed for the Climate’s Sake’