Early this morning Greenpeace activists entered the coal-burning Asheville Power Station owned by Progress Energy (soon to be owned by Duke Energy). Activists have locked down to the coal loader and have scaled the 400 foot tall smoke stack. Banners read: Duke and Progress Energy:  Stop Destroying Mountains.

Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/greenpeaceusa09/sets/72157629244871679/with/6869572913/

Follow the Action: http://quitcoal.org/

WATCH: SMOKESTACK BANNER:
http://vp.mgnetwork.net/viewer.swf?u=434e0a46a7ce102faba2001ec92a4a0d&z=SPA&embed_player=1

News here: http://www.mountainx.com/article/40327/BREAKING-Greenpeace-activists-breach-security-at-Lake-Julian-power-plant

http://www2.wspa.com/news/2012/feb/13/trespassers-smokestack-wnc-plant-ar-3221450/

If you had the chance to talk to Big Oil directly to its big oily face, what would you want to say?

I recently had such a chance at a commercial shoot run by the American Petroleum Institute, the major lobbying and public relations front for the oil industry (ie ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, TransCanada and just about every major oil company). Here’s what I had to say:

Through recorded audio, we got to expose API’s upcoming “Vote4Energy” campaign, which debuts January first on CNN during major political programs. Audio recordings from inside the Vote4Energy commercial shoot can be found on the Greenpeace website, and on Yahoo News. More can also be found at the Checks and Balances Project, where Deputy Director and youth climate leader Gabe Elsner has more recordings from inside the shoot.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) is building off of its “Energy Citizens” astroturf campaign, exposed in 2009 in a leaked memo from CEO Jack Gerard to the heads of major oil companies, and launching the Vote4Energy campaign to try and claim that Americans support the oil industry’s agenda. You know, the poor, poor industry that gets billions in taxpayers dollars each year even though its the most profitable industry on Earth, and has to bus oil employees to its own staged rallies.

API is currently spending millions of its $200 million annual budget to push dirty energy projects onto the American people, particularly tar sands through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, fracking for ‘natural’ gas, and offshore drilling in the Arctic, to name a few. Anyone familiar with TransCanada’s reputation for pipeline leaks, the safety concerns and lack of oversight for gas fracking in the lower 48 states, and the implications of a BP-style offshore oil blowout in the frigid Arctic ocean recognizes the danger of the oil industry’s agenda.

Big Oil’s Christmas list does not fit with the desires of most Americans, no matter how hard they work to craft campaigns claiming otherwise. Sometimes, it is up to us to call them out face to face, and tell that story to others so they can recognize how dirty the petroleum industry really is. Tim DeChristopher is the shining example of that confrontational spirit, currently serving a two-year sentence for saving tens of thousands of acres of Utah land from oil and gas drilling by disrupting a Bush Administration auction that later proved to be illegal.

Climate change is only getting worse, and Big Oil, King Coal and other dirty interests are pulling out all the stops to squeeze every last dollar out of this planet while they still can. Their efforts are overwhelmingly funded, and often coordinated. Their business as usual has horrible implications for intensifying global warming and human rights abuses, so the idea that people like us want to spend 2012 voting in their interest is not only ridiculous, but dangerous.

Vote4Energy? More like Vote4BigOil. Don’t buy the lie, pay close attention, and vote for the future you really deserve.

Connor Gibson does research for Greenpeace. Here he is at the Tar Sands Protest back in August 2011.

Toward Ecological and Social Revolution

This is a reconstruction from notes of a keynote address delivered to the Power Shift West Conference, Eugene, Oregon, November 5, 2011.

All of us here today, along with countless others around the world, are currently engaged in the collective struggle to save the planet as a place of habitation for humanity and innumerable other species.  The environmental movement has grown leaps and bounds in the last fifty years.  But we need to recognize that despite our increasing numbers we are losing the battle, if not the war, for the future of the earth.  Our worst enemy is denialism: not just the outright denial of climate-change skeptics, but also the far more dangerous denial — often found amongst environmentalists themselves — of capitalism’s role in the accumulation of ecological catastrophe.¹

Recently, climate scientists, writing in leading scientific journals, have developed a way of addressing the extreme nature of the climate crisis, focusing on irreversible change and the trillionth ton of carbon.  Central to the scientific consensus on climate change today is the finding that a rise in global temperature by 2° C (3.6° F), associated with an atmospheric carbon concentration of 450 parts per million (ppm), represents a critical tipping point, irreversible in anything like human-time frames.  Climate models show that if we were to reach that point feedback mechanisms would likely set in, and society would no longer be able to prevent the climate catastrophe from developing further out of our control.  Even if we were completely to cease burning fossil fuels when global average temperature had risen by 2° C, climate change and its catastrophic effects would still be present in the year 3000.  In other words, avoiding an increase in global average temperatures of 2° C, 450 ppm is crucial because it constitutes a point of no return.  Once we get to that point, we will no longer be able to return, even in a millennium, to the Holocene conditions under which human civilization developed over the last 12,000 years.  Many of you are aware that long-term stabilization of the climate requires that we target 350 ppm, not 450 ppm.  But 450 ppm remains significant, since it represents the planetary equivalent of cutting down the last palm tree on Easter Island.².

It is here that the trillionth ton enters in.  In the last couple of years, climate studies have determined that once we emit the trillionth metric ton of carbon — counting all the carbon put into the atmosphere since 1750 — we will have exhausted our cumulative carbon budget.  This means that if we burn no more than the trillion ton of carbon we will still have a reasonable chance (though this may not in fact be much more than 50-50) of not exceeding the 2° C, 450 ppm boundary.  The trillionth ton of carbon is thus viewed as an absolute cutoff.  Growing scientific evidence, however, suggests that it is essential to remain below the 2° C, 450 ppm level.  Consequently, some prominent climate scientists, such as Myles Allen at the University of Oxford, have stipulated that we need to target 750 billion tons of carbon as the limit, which will give us a 75 percent chance of staying below a 2° C increase in global average temperature.

How far are we from emitting the 750 billion — or even the trillionth — ton?  Since 1750, we have emitted 550 billion tons of carbon and the rate is accelerating.  If present emission trends continue, we will reach the 750 billionth ton of carbon in 2028, that is, in sixteen years.  In order to avoid emitting the 750 billionth ton by 2050 we will need to reduce our global carbon dioxide emissions by 5 percent annually.  In order not to emit the trillionth ton of carbon by 2050, carbon dioxide emissions would have to drop by 2.4 percent per year.  This is much greater than the 1.5 percent drop in global carbon dioxide emissions, resulting from the Great Recession in 2008-2009.  The longer we wait to make the reductions the steeper the decline required.

Another way of putting this is that if we burn even half of today’s proven, economically accessible reserves of oil, natural gas, and coal, we will almost certainly reach/exceed the irreversible 2° C, 450 ppm, boundary.  If we want a 75 percent chance of staying below a 2° C increase, we have to lock up all but a quarter of today’s proven economically accessible fossil-fuel resources.³

If all of this were not enough, climate change is only one of the rifts in planetary boundaries that scientists are now pointing to: the others include ocean acidification, ozone depletion, species extinction, disruption of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, land cover loss, freshwater shortages, (less certainly at present) aerosol loading, and chemical proliferation.  Each of these has the potential of disrupting the global environmental order on catastrophic levels, and the trends for each (with the possible exception of ozone depletion) are presently a source of concern.  Already we have crossed three planetary boundaries: climate change, disruption of the nitrogen cycle, and species extinction.⁴

Faced with such enormous environmental problems and the need for massive, urgent changes in society, our worst enemy, as I have indicated, is denialism.  Here it is useful to look at what I call the “three stages of denial” with respect to the global environmental crisis.⁵  The first stage of denial is straightforward.  It is the denial associated with Exxon-Mobil and climate skeptics — who say either that there is no such thing as climate change or that it is not caused by human actions.  Sometimes they contradict themselves and argue both at once.  This of course is the inevitable response of capital, which is invariably concerned, first and foremost, with protecting its bottom line — even at the expense of the earth itself.

The second stage of denial — often advanced by self-designated environmentalists themselves — is to admit that there is a problem, and even to factor in the proximate causes.  Most of you are no doubt familiar with the environmental impact or IPAT formula.  Environmental Impact = Population X Affluence X Technology.  This is a mere truism, where the drivers of environmental impacts are concerned.  It frequently leads to the notion that the solution is a simple matter of promoting sustainable population, sustainable consumption, and sustainable technology.  Nevertheless, this conception doesn’t actually take us very far, since we then need to explain what drives population, consumption, and technology themselves.  In fact, such multiple-factor analysis is all too often used as a way of denying the underlying background condition: the capitalist treadmill of production.⁶

The third stage of denial has the look and feel of greater realism, but actually constitutes a more desperate and dangerous response.  It admits that capitalism is the problem, but also contends that capitalism is the solution.  This general approach emphasizes what is variously referred to as “sustainable capitalism,” “natural capitalism,” “climate capitalism,” “green capitalism,” etc.⁷  In this view we can continue down the same road of capital accumulation, mounting profits, and exponential economic growth — while at the same time miraculously reducing our burdens on the planetary environment.  It is business as usual, but with greater efficiency and greater accounting of environmental costs.  No fundamental changes in social or property relations — in the structure of production and consumption — are required.  This is the magical world view advanced by such diverse figures as Al Gore, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, Paul Hawken, and Jonathon Porritt — if not Thomas Friedman, Newt Gingrich, and the Breakthrough Institute, as well.

From a policy perspective, this normally divides into two streams, one state-centered and the other market-centered.  Green Keynesians like to think that we can ameliorate our environmental problems (and our economic problems too) by having the state promote economic growth through the creation of green jobs.  Green Schumpeterians, like Friedman, Gingrich, and the Breakthrough Institute, offer as a solution green technological innovations, supposedly a natural outgrowth of the market — but usually seen as requiring additional subsidies to corporations to harness its full strength.  Here too the promise is one of heightened economic growth on greener terms, equated simply with greater energy efficiency.

The main problem, which all of this denies, is the nature and logic of capitalism itself.  Capitalism, as its name suggests, is quite simply, thesystem of capital.  Its sole purpose is the accumulation of capital through the exploitation of human labor.  It is a grow-or-die system dominated by the 1% (the capitalist class) and giant corporations.  It is prone to periodic economic crises, and constant — and today deepening — unemployment.  Capital accumulation and economic expansion occur by means of gross inequality and monopolistic competition, generating a war of all against all and a world of waste.  The wider public/social/natural sphere is an object of theft — a realm in which to dump “externalities” or impose unpaid social costs, which then fall on nature and humanity in general.

Endless capitalism requires unlimited economic growth.  Economists generally consider a 3 percent average rate of economic growth over the long run as absolutely essential for the stability of the capitalist system.  Yet, if we were to have a continual 3 percent rate of economic growth, world output would expand exponentially by around sixteen times in a century, 250 times in two centuries, and 4000 times in three centuries.  Already we are overshooting planetary limits — consuming resources as if we had multiple planets at our disposal, undermining the very basis of our existence.⁸

What then is the alternative?  The answer is a cultural-power shift — opening up the world to the creative efforts of hundreds of millions, even billions of people, and unleashing a process of sustainable human development.  Today the world Occupy movement is showing the way.  It is time, as Noam Chomsky contends, not simply to Occupy Wall Street but to go on to “Occupy the Future.”⁹  As the 99%, we need to take direct action with respect to the environment: locking up the three-quarters of the proven, economically available oil, natural gas, and coal (remembering always that the poorest countries have to be allowed to develop while the richer countries need disproportionately to pay the cost); blocking the Canadian-U.S. tar sands pipeline; and imposing a carbon fee at the point of production (i.e. at the oil well, mine shaft, and point of entry) — the funds from which would be returned immediately to the population on a per capita basis, so that those with the largest carbon footprints, predominantly the corporate rich, would be the ones that paid.  (This is the proposal of U.S. climatologist James Hansen.)¹⁰  In the end we will need to go on and culturally Occupy the system itself through a long-term ecological and social revolution, opening the way to democratic planning at all levels of society from the local community on up.¹¹

Under twenty-first century capitalism the world is being buried in commodity waste.  We are compelled, simply in order to live and breathe in this society, to engage in useless and alienated labor directed at satisfying artificial wants through the production of mere “stuff,” the bulk of which ends up being disposed of soon after it is purchased.  This all takes places simply so that the whole process can start up again, more commodities can be generated, and more profits can be made by the 1%.  As radical economist Juliet Schor says, we have lost any sense of “true wealth.”¹²  In the United States today we spend about $1 trillion on the military spending each year, far more than all the rest of the world put together.¹³  U.S. corporations and businesses today spend more than $1 trillion on marketing annually, simply in order to persuade people to buy things that they don’t want or need.¹⁴  Our very cultural apparatus is shaped so as to conform to the imperative of marketing — not democratic communication.  If we are to save the earth, this gargantuan waste and destruction which dominates our lives needs to be brought to an end, so that we can focus on the real issues: making sure that everyone in every part of the world has enough of life’s basic needs; building community; promoting substantive equality; and creating the basis for sustainable human development.  Some have called this a socialism for the twenty-first century.

In a 1962 speech to the National Maritime Union, Martin Luther King declared: “We are presiding over a dying order, one which has long deserved to die,” and he ended his speech with the words of the great American socialist Eugene Debs: “I can see the dawn of a better humanity.  The people are awakening.  In due course of time they will come into their own.”¹⁵  Now is the time of which Debs and King spoke, the time in which to create a new society where human beings no longer deny, but affirm, their connections to each other and to the earth.

Notes

1  On ecological denialism as a complex social construct see Kari Norgaard, Living With Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life(Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2011).

2  Susan Solomon, et. al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 6 (February 10, 2009): 1704-1709; Heidi Cullen, The Weather of the Future(New York: Harpers, 2010), 264-71.

3  Myles Allen, et. al., “The Exit Strategy,” Nature Reports Climate Change, April 30, 2009, and “Warming Caused by Cumulative Carbon Emissions Towards the Trillionth Tonne,” Nature 458 (April 20, 2009): 1163-66; Malte Meinshausen, et. al., “Greenhouse-Gas Emission Targets for Limiting Global Warming to 2° C,” Nature 458 (April 30, 2009): 1158-62; TrillionthTonne.org; Catherine Brahic, “Humanity’s Carbon Budget Set at One Trillion Tons,” New Scientist, April 29, 2009; Cullen, The Weather of the Future, 264-71; International Economic Agency, CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion (Paris: IEA, 2011), 7.

4  Johan Rockström, et. al., “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,”Nature 461 (September 24, 2009): 472-75.

5  See John Bellamy Foster, “Capitalism and the Accumulation of Catastrophe,” forthcoming Monthly Review63, no. 7 (December 2011): 1-17, where the three stages of denial are put in the context of an overall accumulation of catastrophe under capitalism.

6  Allan Schnaiberg introduced the treadmill of production critique in his book The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity(New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), based on earlier Marxian conceptions.

7  See Al Gore, Our Choice (New York: Rodale, 2009), 346; Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism(Boston: Little Brown, 1999); L. Hunter Lovins and Boyd Cohen, Climate Capitalism(New York: Hill and Wang, 2011); Jonathon Porritt, Capitalism: As If the World Mattered(London: Earthscan, 2007); Thomas Friedman,Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008); New Gingrich, A Contract With the Earth(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, Break Through(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007).

8  Charles Morse, “Environment, Economics and Socialism,” Monthly Review 30, no. 11 (April 1979): 15.

9  Noam Chomsky, “Occupy the Future,” November 2, 2011,NationOfChange.org.

10  James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren(New York: Bloomsbury, 2009),211-20.

11  For a more developed argument on short-term, radical ecological changes and long-term revolutionary ecological change see Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011), 123-44.

12  Juliet Schor, True Wealth(London: Penguin, 2010).

13 For the data on military spending see John Bellamy Foster, Hannah Holleman, and Robert W. McChesney, “The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending,” Monthly Review 60, no. 5 (October 2008): 9-13.

14 ”U.S. Marketing Spending Exceeded $1 Trillion in 2005,” Metrics Business and Market Intelligence, June 26, 2006, http://metrics2.com; Michael Dawson, The Consumer Trap (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 1.

15 Martin Luther King, Jr., “All Labor Has Dignity” (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011), 71.

This article was originally published on  MRzine.

The employee claims she found it in a briefcase that had been turned in to the lost-and-found desk at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort.  It is worth noting that the resort was the location of a retreat hosted by Charles and David Koch just one day prior to the briefcase being found. The letter includes no conclusive evidence that the letter was addressed to Charles and David Koch.  [I transcribed the letter below due to the difficulty of reading the handwriting. Notes added are in italics and bracketed. Links are included for background information.]

TRANSCRIPT:

Dear Charles and David,

Scanned image of the leaked "Chucky letter" Other pages are below transcript

[continued]

I was glad to get a letter from you. In the mail. You guys are great. Who sends letters anymore? And sealed with a wax stamp…ha ha, you creeps

Well, I have been thinking about the dilemmas you mentioned regarding global warming. And yes, of course I’m happy to offer some advice!

Let’s start with the facts, and don’t let them discourage you–we can beat these pencilnecks[sic]:

There is overwhelming. global, peer-reviewed, all that stuff, scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. All of the top um, scientific bodies around the world (even your friends at NAS) [National Academy of Sciences, presumably] are convinced. And you know how they are about things they are convinced of.

So.

You need an elaborate–I mean, Ocean’s 11, 12, 13 AND 14-style–elaborate–HOAX. You gotta do what it takes to keep the public guessing. Otherwise, they’re going to realize you’re boiling ‘em like frogs in a pot. As dumb as they are, those American Idol wannabe fatasses outnumber us, boys. Ha ha? No but seriously.

Here’s what you do:                    ran out of room–>[sic]

The IPCC is the UN‘s big gang of credible scientists that have the loudest voice in climate change findings. They issue statements and conclusions after they get together at a conference, right? Well, You can have a conference, too!

Call it something similar to the IPCC so it’s hard to tell yours apart from the real one. Call it… the International Conference on Climate Change. IPCC? ICCC?  ICUP? ;-p The media’ll never get the distinction across in one headline.

You won’t get many actual scientists to come to your conference, of course. So focus on inviting smart people who either look good on camera or don’t have any friends left in at their jobs. You know the type–insecure academics who’ll do anything to stand out in their field. Letters after their name is preferable–but not crucial. You can always just make something up.

Better yet–just promote them as scientists on your conference’s website. [This is happening now. Read about it.] It’s a free country, right? What they gonna do, take your birthdays away? (I’ve been to your parties, they couldn’t afford it.)

I did you the courtesy of sending along with this a list of ppl to invite. Ya, you owe me another elephant-shoot. Really. [List was not included. See link in previous paragraph]

(Sorry, this was the only other paper I could find. Just don’t lose this letter.) [letterhead at top of page reads: "Chamber of Commerce / United States of America]

Note: your companies can’t directly host the conference.  You need a wholesome-sounding name for a front group or two that you can control from behind the scenes. Call it the “American Dream Freedom Alliance”…no, no good…the “Institute of the Heartland”  yeah… almost…I’ll work on that one. OH! I got it: “Americans for Prosperity.” I’m on a roll. “What’s that, Dr. Scientist? I couldn’t hear all those numbers you were using in your argument because I was deafened by your HATRED for Americans AND Prosperity!”

That should keep them guessing for long enough to keep the UN from getting in your way. Gotta warn you, though. Your[sic] going into pretty public territory now, (and we’re talking about, like, the death of the planet and all, so be careful.)

Talk soon,

CHUCKY

P.S. And don’t overreact when knucklehead bloggers figure you out. No one reads them anyway.

Page 2

Page 3

For those that can’t take a joke: This is a spoof–a prank, a parody, a mockery–produced in the tradition of a political cartoon. It is designed to shine some light on the serious, deadly mockery of science that is being perpetrated at the ICCC. The sources linked to this article are real, consist of credible information, and their authors were not involved in the creation of the content here.

The one thing I do apologize for is the handwriting.

Please hit “thumbs up” below if you value the tradition of unconventional truth-telling. Thanks. – AA

If you have ever driven on most of the northern highways in northern Alberta you will be presented with a picture of a tame prairie terrain, with sprawling fields and farms holding cows and the occasional conventional oil pump jack. A few kilometers on any of the gravel access roads however and you will see a much more bleaker picture of out of control industrialization and poisoning of the land. This is unless of course you witness the tar sands machines of death on Highway 63 near Fort McMurray and Fort McKay, or the massive underground mining operations in the Peace River and Cold Lake regions disrupting and contaminating underground water. What most modern thinkers fail to understand is thousands years of history from the ancestors of Cree, Dene, Blackfoot, Nakoda and Metis people. Living nations of people who simply cannot afford the luxury of packing up and moving as settlers when there is no longer work. These lands are home to these nations and are not sacrifice zones. And like a deadly contagious all-consuming disease, what has been done to Alberta by the oil industry cannot be allowed to spread to other parts of the world killing indigenous ways of life and jeopardizing the future for all.

Enbridge, and the expansion of the Alberta Tar Sands Gigaproject, is attempting to retrace the steps taken by the Hudson’s Bay Company with classic colonial strategy. The Hudson’s Bay Company was the first corporation on Turtle Island, here in North America. The Hudson’s Bay Company fur trading forts also became the first settler governments for the British Empire. In Alberta, the first settlement and colonial government in Alberta was in Fort Chipewyan, which would today is seen as the international poster community for a Cree, Dene and Metis community directly impacted by 40 years of out of control open pit tar sands mining. The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline is renewing a pipeline proposal and expansions originally proposed nearly 10 years ago and is supported by the Stephen Harper Conservative Canadian Government.

Just one week after the largest oil pipeline spill in Alberta in 30 years in unceded Lubicon Cree Territory, a spill that took six days for the Alberta government to respond in a half-assed, indifferent manner, starting with faxing a one-page “fact sheet” update about the disaster, a large contingent from the Yinka Dene Alliance from the northwest interior of B.C. were arriving in Calgary to confront Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline project and tanker traffic.

On May 11th, 2011, on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy in Calgary, Alberta, a historic solidarity statement of opposition to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal was signed by leaders of the Blood Tribe, Alexander First Nation, Lubicon Lake Nation, Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation, Sai’kuz First Nation, Nadleh Whuten, Takla Lake First Nation and the Nakazdli First Nation.

The day after the Enbridge AGM a rally was held in Prince Rupert, B.C. on May 12th, outside a meeting sponsored by Enbridge for the Northern BC Municipalities Convention. With a historic turn-out of over 500 Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents of the island of Lach Kaien, known in the mainstream society as Prince Rupert, publicly and loudly demonstrating their opposition to the Enbridge Gateway Pipeline proposal as well as any tar sands tanker traffic that would support the industry of dirty crude oil and liquid condensate.

Lach Kaien, or Prince Rupert, is known to the Tsimshian as the “Cradle of Tsimshian Civilization,” according to a hereditary chief of the Gits’iis tribe, Sm’ooygit Nisyaganaat. The Prince Rupert Harbor contains the most dense archaelogical sites north of Mexico City and is the second deepest harbor in the world. Lach Kaien is surrounded by Tsimshian communities traditionally comprised of 11 Tsimshian villages, as well as neighboring nations from the Haida, Haisla, Heiltsuk, Gitksan, Nisga’a, Tahltan, and Tlingit. To this day the indigenous population of the town of Prince Rupert is still between 40-50%, with all industries heavily dependent upon the commerce, labor and resources of Indigenous coastal nations.

A few coastal communities however have not yet made a clear position on whether or not to support the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and tanker project and any western tar sands crude oil expansion. These include among the largest of coastal communities of Lach hlgu K’alaams (Lax Kw’Alaams) or Port Simpson, and Gitkxaahla (Kitkatla), where the still active traditional laws and feasting systems of hereditary chiefs is still strong and holds much influence over the non-surrendered tribal territories in the region of Prince Rupert, Hecate Strait, and the Skeena and Nass Rivers.

These are nations still waiting to awaken to take their place and decide for themselves what is allowed into the lands and waters of nations that have lived and thrived on this edge of the world for thousands of years. To uphold the traditional laws and protocols of respect and responsibilities known as Ayaawk and Gugwiltx Yaans and not be steered by any settler government, environmental group, or any funding body with non-Indigenous agendas. Especially is true that Indigenous grassroots leaders are still fighting the oppression of the Indian Act system and the federal Canadian employees of many Band Councils maintaining the silencing of traditional hereditary leadership systems through which the sole jurisdiction of all territories flows through.

Indigenous lands and waters are to be spoken for and by Indigenous minds and communities. Enbridge Northern Gateway, and all tar sands pipelines and expansions such as the Kinder Morgan TMX Northern Leg Extension, the Pembina Pipeline, the PNG KSL Pipeline, the Kitimat and Prince Rupert Liquid Natural Gas Terminals, and the Prince Rupert “New World” Container Ports are just a few of the many modern obstacles in the path of standing up the original structures and ways of life with which to free Indigenous nations on this edge of the world.

Links to the rally and demonstration held in Lach Kaien and declarations of war against Enbridge -

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/enbridge-pipeline-faces-prospect-civil-disobedience-500-strong-crowd-rallies-outside-1514236.htm

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/greenpage/121784899.html

http://www.muskegnews.com/protest-enbridge0512

http://wcel.org/media-centre/media-releases/coastal-first-nations-tanker-ban-creates-new-legal-risks-and-uncertainty

http://savethefraser.ca/

Statement of Solidarity of Indigenous Nations opposed to Enbridge Northern Gateway -

May 10th, 2011 – Calgary, Alberta, territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy

WE THE UNDERSIGNED INDIGENOUS NATIONS STATE IN SOLIDARITY:
Our Nations are bound together by the water which is our lifeblood. We have protected our lands and waters since time immemorial, each according to our laws and traditions. The waters of Indigenous peoples throughout the lands known as western Canada are being threatened by fossil fuel exploitation and transportation.

We exercise our rights to sustain our cultural and economic well-being. The laws of each of our peoples are deeply embedded in our cultures and practices. These laws have never been extinguished and our authority continues in our lands. Our peoples continue to live by them today.

We have come together on May 10, 2011 in the city of Calgary, Alberta, in the traditional territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy, to declare to the governments of Alberta, British Columbia, as well as Enbridge Inc., all of its subsidiary bodies, and the domestic and international financial institutions supporting Enbridge, THE FOLLOWING:

The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline and tankers project will expose Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities from the Pacific Coast across to Alberta to the risk of pipeline and supertanker oil spills, just as we have seen recently with Enbridge’s massive spill in Michigan, the recent devastating spill in Lubicon Cree territory, the recent TransCanada pipeline spill in North Dakota, as well as the effects of the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon disaster. Tar sands bitumen has been demonstrated to corrode pipelines more rapidly than conventional oil, increasing the likelihood of catastrophic spills. Given the seismic volatility of the region, the recent earthquake in Japan also underlies our grave concerns about the risk of oil spills.

The urgency of global climate change, and the fact that Indigenous peoples are among those most impacted by climate change, also compels us to act.

We have witnessed the Coastal First Nations Declaration banning crude oil tankers on the Pacific North Coast, and the Save the Fraser Declaration banning crude oil transportation through the Fraser River watershed. Each of these Declarations is based in Indigenous law and is an expression of Indigenous decision-making authority.

Enbridge states that it intends to proceed with its Northern Gateway pipeline and tankers, with or without First Nations consent. A decision by Canada to approve this project, without the free, prior and informed consent of affected Nations, will be a violation of our Treaties, our rights, and our laws, and will be in breach of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other international accords.

THEREFORE we stand in solidarity with the Coastal First Nations, and the Nations who have signed the Save the Fraser Declaration, and are united in stating that Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline and tanker project, as well as other fossil fuel development projects including Keystone XL, must not proceed without obtaining the free, prior and informed consent of all affected First Nations.

AND FURTHER if such consent is not obtained, no construction of such projects shall proceed.

SIGNED in the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, at the city of Calgary, May 10 2011

Sai’kuz First Nation

Nadleh Whut’en

Takla Lake First Nation

Nakazdli First Nation

Blood Tribe

Alexander First Nation

Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation

Lubicon Lake Nation

The only thing I know for sure right now is that I’m very lucky. I live in campus housing—on the side of Tuscaloosa that didn’t get touched by the recent tornados. In the moments after the storm, my friends and I knew it must have been bad, but it took hours, even days, for the full impact to be realized. Many are dead, and many more have had their lives forever changed.

I cannot accurately describe the way it felt to see my city destroyed—seemingly attacked, with no enemy to blame. Neither can I express the way it felt when I realized that my campus was now more of a refugee camp than a school. Waiting in lines for sandwiches and cups of water, the only available food, we hoped our phone batteries would last long enough to keep bringing us updates until power was restored.

Driving across parts of town that were once bustling hubs of business and student life, and seeing them now dark, deserted, and destroyed was completely surreal. Traffic was worse than it is on Game Day—and if you’ve ever been in Tuscaloosa for a football game, you know that’s saying something.

As we watched the death toll climb, and as we heard news, good and bad, of our friends, armed guards watched us from every street corner, preventing looting in our normally peaceful college town. But over the roar of helicopters piloted by news teams and the National Guard, of generators providing emergency power to campus, and of sirens continually sounding in the distance, there was laughter.

Somehow, despite the feeling of helplessness as we sat in the dark not knowing what to do or how to help, the Tuscaloosa spirit was preserved. Within hours of the double-vortex EF-4 tornado gorging a 1.5-mile wide scar through our town and others, it was evident that it had not destroyed our sense of community. We in the South are known to be resilient, and this time is no exception. Much has been lost, but with it, much opportunity to serve, grow, and move forward.

Tuscaloosa is not the only town affected—much of north Alabama is devastated, with some towns wiped clear off the map.  And as we rebuild, we will do so with a purpose. We will replace the damaged police and fire stations, the water towers, the homes, we will clear the roads of the trees that were thrown, fully uprooted, into the road.

To outsiders, the South is often known more for its poverty and “backwoods” culture than for the beauty and hospitality those that live here enjoy every day. But we now have the chance to rebuild our aging, and in places failing, infrastructure. We will take this chance to rebuild our town, and reclaim our state. We will rebuild Alabama efficiently, with better technology, and do so using less energy.

As droves of volunteers take to the streets, the one thing everyone can see is that it is students taking the reigns on this effort. The youth will not wait patiently for others to fix this problem. We are here to take back Tuscaloosa, bring back Birmingham, and aide all the small towns in between, and make them truly better than ever before.

I lied when I said I only know one thing. I know I’m lucky, but I also know that we’ll move forward from here. I know that Alabama will work together to become better. I know that we will move towards solar energy—so that next time a storm like this happens, millions don’t sit without power. I know we’ll seek real climate solutions, to ease the risk of more of these storms happening. I know that Alabama will be a better state, that our communities will become stronger, and that our youth will step up to the challenge that has been placed before them.

Roll Tide Roll.

Img. © Google

Just as it has been getting grim for advocates for climate science and small nonprofits everywhere, Google just announced two major initiatives that hopefully put a little wind in the sails for those beating against the tide.

Google has announced their new Google for Nonprofits program that offers a one-stop application for Google Adwords, Apps, YouTube, Google Earth and more. While many of the organizations and campaigns I have worked with over the years rely heavily on Google tools, this is an effort to make it far easier and simpler for organizations to get access and learn how to use them effectively. They also have setup a Google for Nonprofits Marketplace to connect nonprofits with organizations and consultants able to put these tools to work.

If you are reading this and you are thinking of starting a nonprofit, or you are at a small nonprofit and you feel like technology is always a struggle, this really makes it easy. I am helping a few groups go through this process and if anyone needs help, drop me a line, but they are making it easier than ever.

The other initiative is very exciting to people who care about climate science and have watched horrified as climate deniers have abused public relations techniques and tricked the media in generating fake controversy, forestall action, and create a generational divide in the understanding of climate science.

Google.org has brought together a team of 21 climate researchers to communicate on the issue of climate change. The Google Science Communication Fellows are a number of climate scientists who will be provided with training on new media, data-sharing, and communications, SolveClimate reported.

“Google.org, the technology giant’s philanthropic arm, has hand-picked a team of 21 fellows working in climate research to improve the way the science of global warming is communicated to the public and lawmakers through new media. “We are seeing very clearly with climate change that our policy choices are currently not grounded in knowledge and understanding,” said Paul Higgins, a Google fellow and an associate policy director for the American Meteorological Society.”

It is really exciting to Google come out swinging on climate science. Edmund Burke famously once said “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Google is starting to live up to their motto of “Don’t be Evil” by doing something. Now, it is time of us to step up and use these tools for good.

For too long climate change and sustainable living have been the domain of secular environmentalism, even though there’s a biblical basis for why Christians should care for the Earth, the professor who created the course told the Oregonian.

According to the University, the 12-credit Christian Earthkeeping concentration creates a community of learning that utilizes two year-long seminars and summer immersion intensives, and facilitates learning in and from the community, the Earth and Scripture. The program will empower students through theological reflection, spiritual disciplines and community praxis.

This bond between religion and the environment is nothing new, as we saw from a popular post on Planet Forward last year. Groups such as the Evangelical Environmental Network have promoted Creation Care, which “seeks to educate, equip, inspire, and mobilize Christians in their effort to care for God’s creation, to be faithful stewards of God’s provision, and to advocate for actions and policies that honor God and protect the environment.”

Taking ideas like Creation Care into the realm of post-secondary education is an important step. According to the Oregonian, “in a 2009 survey by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, 41 percent of responding campuses reported courses in sustainability, and of those who didn’t, 43 percent planned to start one.”

What kind of impact do you think schools like George Fox University having programs like Christian Earthkeeping can have? It may be important, but just how important? Will reaching out to and connecting with this demographic have a big impact? Will it have any impact at all?

Share your thoughts below…

See this post and more like it at Planet Forward

This November, 350.org is hosting the first planetary scale art show to try and get a new perspective on one of our first truly planetary challenges: global warming. Check out the new website here:

http://earth.350.org

I’ve pasted a piece by Bill McKibben that introduces the project below, but I’m curious to hear from all of you. What role does art play in social change? What good “climate art” do you see out there? What’s the best chant or song you’ve heard, the best poster you’ve ever seen, the short film that got you moving?

The Globe as a Canvas
by Bill McKibben

The idea behind EARTH is simple—we wanted to remind everyone that we are dealing with the first truly global problem we’ve ever faced. What better way than to use that globe as a canvas, for the first truly planet-scale piece of art?

Sometimes we forget that we live on a planet. Venus is a planet, Jupiter is a planet—but earth? That’s our cozy, familiar home. But in fact our fate is just as determined by the gaseous composition of our atmosphere as Mars or Saturn. Right now, by burning coal and gas and oil, we’re pumping that atmosphere full of carbon dioxide. Scientists told us the bottom line three years ago this fall: any amount of carbon greater than 350 parts per million is not “compatible with the planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” We’re already too high—our air is now 390 ppm CO₂—and we’re already feeling the effects. Just ask the people flooded out of their homes this summer in Pakistan, or suffering as dengue fever spreads around the planet. Just ask the myriad species chased from their habitats by record temperatures. Nineteen nations set new all-time temperature records this year alone—how much longer are we going to wait to take action.

At 350.org we’ve already coordinated what CNN called the ‘most widespread day of political activity in the planet’s history,’ with 5200 demonstrations in 181 countries last fall. And this autumn we topped that—we pulled together practical minded people in 188 countries who staged 7400 ‘work parties,’ putting up solar panels or digging community gardens. But the practical and the political are not the only ways humans understand the world. We also respond to art, which is why we’ve always stressed creativity. And never more than in the week leading up to the next UN conference in November 2010.

This EARTH project is designed to spread a warning, around the globe. It’s designed to spread a message of hope, too—if we rise to our potential as humans, we’ll be able to cope with the most dangerous problem we’ve ever faced, and begin to work our way towards a clean, renewable future. All we know for sure is that it’s going to be big—thanks to our friends at DigitalGlobe, big enough to be seen from outer space.

In fact, it’s kind of fun to imagine some other intelligence peering down through their telescopes at our blue-white orb, trying to make sense of these giant images suddenly spreading across snowfield and desert and lagoon. What they’d seeing is the planet’s immune system coming alive—conscious, alert human beings doing their best to help safeguard the future. Art can’t do this job by itself—we need science and engineering and economics and all the functions of the right brain fully engaged. But humans have deep spirit too, and we’re counting on that to help.

We don’t know if we’ll win the fight against climate change—the day is late and the fossil fuel industry is a powerful opponent. We don’t have much money. But we do have beauty and meaning and passion, all of which will be on full display as November comes to a close. Thank you for helping

Even though states’ energy efficiency and policies seem to reflect their political stances, there is a lot more to it than what we see on the surface, according to a recent study. Though the top ten best and worst states in terms of efficiency and policy may have been mostly “blue” and “red” respectively, there are a number of reasons states focus on energy efficiency. Maggie Molina of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy told the New York Times that those reasons include supply and infrastructure concerns, as well as economic development and job creation.

Many churches have taken a completely apolitical stance to protecting the environment, calling it “creation care“. Nancy Jackson, chair of the Climate and Energy Project, told the New York Times that you can avoid the climate debate and still reduce environmental impact by targeting key areas such as cost-reduction, job creation in “green” fields, and “creation care”.

Despite the environmental debate becoming highly politicized, especially in recent months, you can still have a big environmental impact regardless of the side of the aisle on which you land, and there is legislation on the ballot next week to reflects this. In Washington State, Referendum 52 proposes $505 million to invest in public schools to improve energy efficiency and usage. This legislation is much more about saving money and investing in education than reducing carbon emissions.

Do politics play a big role in energy usage? Does the need for efficiency really go beyond political beliefs? Can you really be against climate change and in favor of climate preservation? Does it matter if you believe in climate change as long as you are taking steps towards efficiency and energy reduction? Share your thoughts below…

See this post and more like it at Planet Forward