It’s Getting Hot In Here

In case you haven’t heard the thunderous celebration by the North American climate movement, today the State Dept is set to outright reject the Keystone XL pipeline. #booyah

This is a reminder that people power works. Direct Action works. Social movements work. Grassroots organizing works. Lets take some time today to celebrate another huge victory.

Every time we win, it builds our resolve for the next fight. We know the fossil fuel industry owns Congress, and so far the Keystone XL campaign has been like playing Whack-A-Mole, or kinda like going to battle with a zombie who just won’t die. There may yet be another stage of the fight, and there will definitely be other theaters of engagement heating up in the Tar Sands fights, like the Enbridge Northern Gateway. I’m confident we’ll be ready to take em on. Moments like this help us remember our power, and that its worth all the headaches and stress of movement building. So lets keep winning.

If you’re in DC, help build the momentum by joining 500 referees blowing the whistle on congress being soaked in big oil Jan 24th. Or this friday, you can join the J20 (January 20) #occupy actions all around the world mobilizing to take on dirty corporate interests. Here in the Bay Area we will be shutting down the SF financial district with nonviolent direct action (check out the hot Lady Gaga outreach flashmob video here).

Here’s a quick sampling of the breaking coverage of the Keystone XL victory from Bill McKibben, and on Globe and Mail, Washington Post, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, ThinkProgress, Grist, Daily Kos, and Politico.

Congratulations, climate movement. What a great way to kick off the new year, eh?

– UPDATE — since this post we’ve gotten media coverage from the New York Times to CNN, but my favorite headline of all of them is from Gawker: So Long, You Filthy Canadian Tar Pipeline!

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.

Continue reading ‘Climate Activist Punks Big Oil’s “Vote4Energy” Commercial Shoot’

This post originally appeared on the blog of the Population and Development Program, based in Amherst, MA, which works at the intersection of reproductive freedom, environmental justice and peace.

American environmentalists are declaring victory over the announcement that the United States will research alternate routes for the Keystone XL pipeline.  While Obama’s announcement was an encouraging gesture, U.S.-based activists are in danger of missing the forest for the trees.  We must look north, the source of tar sands oil, where First Nations people in Canada are directly confronting the accelerating fossil fuel expansion on their land, as we plan the next steps in our movement.

Indigenous Assembly Against Mining & Pipelines, November 2011

The Keystone XL pipeline is just one in a massive network of pipelines branching out from the oil fields of Alberta, illustrated by this map.  The trade magazine Pipelines International reports on this extensive infrastructure of, as they call them, “energy lifelines.”  While the tar sands (or oil sands) have received international attention since the protests against Keystone XL lit off this summer, pipeline expansion is occurring on many fronts in Canada: tar sands oil, conventional oil and natural gas which is being pumped out of Canadian soil. American activists have shown their mettle in facing down the importation of tar sands oil into the U.S., but where do they stand on the dozens of other pipelines that make up this spiderweb?

Traditional environmental leaders, Indigenous environmentalists and youth came together in unprecedented ways during the Keystone fight; now we must move forward with our eyes on the frontline. The untold story of fossil fuel expansion in Canada is its toll on Indigenous communities, or First Nations.  First Nations in Canada in active resistance show paths forward, as fossil fuel companies only intensify their development efforts.
On the same weekend that 12,000 protesters encircled the White House, the 2nd Indigenous Assembly on Pipelines and Mining took place in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories The Indigenous Assembly over the weekend of November 5th, issued this call to action:

Indigenous communities from across the province are gathering in Vancouver Unceded Coast Salish Territories to oppose this conference and those corporations who profit off the destruction of the land. No mining, no pipelines, no resource extraction on unceded native lands! Defend the people, protect the land!

The Assembly hosted No Mining on Native Land!, a march through downtown Vancouver on November 6th. The pipelines, notably the Enbridge oil pipeline and the Kimimat Summit Lake gas pipeline (or Pacific Trails), endanger the lands of Indigenous people who are dependent on trapping and hunting for survival.

Tribe members block PTP from entering unceded land.

The Pacific Trails pipeline would lead to a new liquefied natural gas (LNG) port at Bish Cove, an ecologically pristine beach, on the Western cost. The Enbridge and Pacific Trails pipelines would run alongside each other near the Morice River.  The proximity of gas and oil pipelines to each other is particularly dangerous, though the companies have made no statement on this risk.  Many tribal councils and governments have approved one or both pipelines, in large part due to promises of jobs, but among Indigenous residents on the land, resistance is fierce.

The same week, Likhts’amisyu and Unist’ot’en clans of the Wet’swet’en nation confronted officials from Pacific Trails pipeline (PTP), who were attempting to illegally enter their territory to move drilling equipment.  This nation is one of many in Canada on land unceded to the Canadian government.  The nation owns the land and PTP was not authorized to enter.   Tribe members blockaded the access road, and formed an encampment until the company removed all equipment and vehicles several days later.

The Unist’hot’en clan has also built a cabin on Wet’suwet’en territory in the path of the Enbridge pipeline, PTP and one other pipeline, to prevent construction.  They intend to defend the cabin and halt illegal construction on their land.  Mel Bazil of the Lhe Lin Liyin (The Guardians), which support the Unist’hot’en Wet’suwet’en writes,

A delay could benefit their [Transcanada and other companies’] plans to assist in what we consider the systemic scope of the Tar Sands expansion activity. Tar sands may require offsets to operate, and proposed pipelines that acquire tenure through band chiefs and councils, and through treaty agencies … could make deals without the input or involvement of grassroots and indigenous peoples, who experience the environmental damage and pollution.

American activists must link to the struggle of First Nations people resisting Enbridge, PTP and other pipelines.  The Keystone XL pipeline, once considered a no-brainer for approval by industry and legislators, now stands in limbo.  That is a success for American activists.   However, fossil fuels are an international industry, and NAFTA and other treaties have deeply linked the American and Canadian economies.  The frontlines of fossil fuel in the U.S. are inherently connected to the struggle unfolding in Canada as part of a global supply chain.

As collaboration between major environmental NGOs and Indigenous environmental leaders deepens and expands, we must not allow Washington insiders to define the terms of victory.  There is no victory until Indigenous communities, and all frontline communities, are safe from the indignities of fossil fuels.

Read Martha’s previous coverage of Tar Sands oil extraction, activism to stop the Keystone pipeline, and Indigenous organizing in the US and Canada in Resisting the Tar Sands: Bridging Communities & Struggles, published in October, 2011.

Direct action as a tactic for confronting the fossil fuel industries is sweeping the United States – and recently took the form of a creative protest immediately after Power Shift West in Eugene, Oregon.  Right after the official Power Shift conference ended, youth activists embarked on an un-permitted march which visited three outposts of industries and government entities that threaten a stable climate and the livability of our planet.  Held in solidarity with the Tar Sands Action in DC that same day, the march was designed to springboard the type of movement-building solutions needed to truly address the climate crisis.

The first stop along the march route was Safeway – a corporation using oil from the Canadian Tar Sands to fuel its vehicle fleets.  Unlike companies including Whole Foods and Bed Bath & Beyond, Safeway has not taken any significant steps to phase out tar sands oil – even after being pressed to do so by environmental groups like ForestEthics.  Since Safeway doesn’t seem to believe its customers care about the impact of the tar sands, we decided to prove them wrong by “returning” dozens of paper bags from Safeway, complete with a giant receipt of purchase.

Next we paid a visit to Bank of America, the biggest financier of coal in the United States.  In the Pacific Northwest, Bank of America is funding companies that are pushing coal export terminals and other destructive coal industry infrastructure.  Every B of A branch is essentially a climate crime scene; so in recognition of this fact, participants in the march strung caution tape and warning signs between the pillars at the Eugene branch.  A die-in outside the bank, some messages scrolled in chalk, and a bit of creative street theater rounded out the B of A action.

Our last stop was at the Eugene Democrats campaign office headquarters, where march participants pledged dozens of volunteer hours to fight for clean energy over the next year.  Calling on the Obama administration to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and harness the power youth activists ready to devote their time to a candidate who stands up for the climate, we joined with thousands of people across the country who are ready to see the President take the kind of bold stance that will re-energize his base for the 2012 elections. Continue reading ‘Youth Confront Fossil Industries in Eugene’

Cross posted from DeSmogBlog.com written by Emma Pullman

EthicalOil.org’s new spokesperson, Kathryn Marshall, authored an insulting piece this week on the Huffington Post titled “Care About Women’s Rights? Support Ethical Oil”. Marshall’s piece is a response to the October 11 article by Maryam Adrangi at It’s Getting Hot In Here.  Adrangi argues that the underlying motive of the “ethical oil” campaign is to deflect negative attention from the tar sands, not to actually engage in a conversation about women’s liberation.

“If women’s rights were of genuine concern to EthicalOil.org” writes Adrangi, “then there would be a conversation about the impacts that tar sands extraction has on women”.

You’ll notice that Marshall’s attempted rebuttal fails to actually address the substantive criticisms made in Adrangi’s piece – Marshall never mentions the impacts of Alberta’s tar sands development on women, but instead repeats the same arguments and general hand-waving that sparked Adrangi’s criticism of EthicalOil.org’s conservative pundits in the first place.

Marshall’s promotion of tar sands oil is framed around a central argument that if we care about women’s rights then we must support tar sands expansion, and by extension the Keystone XL pipeline, because Canadian women fare far better than women in petrocracies, such as Saudi Arabia.  But Marshall’s argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny for three major reasons.

The first is that increasing tar sands output will not hurt the Saudi sheiks’ coffers. TransCanada’s own research proves that the Keystone XL pipeline was never meant to decrease our reliance on foreign oil, just to keep Gulf Coast refineries at capacity. As global demand for oil keeps going up, a marginal shift in Canadian and US consumption will be offset by growing demand from other countries, keeping prices high and continuing to enrich the oppressive Saudi regime. Expanding the tar sands just buys Saudi Arabia a bit more time to profit before we are compelled to shift away from oil addiction towards a clean energy future – the real ‘ethical’ choice.

This leads to the second major flaw in Ethicaloil.org’s argument: it presents the reader with a false choice. Marshall’s bait-and-switch suggests that we must make a choice between “conflict oil” and “ethical oil”. On the contrary, you can simultaneously support women’s rights and oppose Alberta’s tar sands. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, to say the least. If we really want to hurt the regimes of oppressive petrocracies, then the wise choice is to end our addiction to fossil fuels and move rapidly towards a clean energy economy, setting a model that the rest of the world can follow. EthicalOil.org’s entire line of reasoning is a diversionary tactic designed to obscure this hard reality. It’s a red herring, and a dangerous one at that.

Third, Marshall’s emotional appeal tells readers that because women’s rights are worse in petrocracries, then we needn’t concern ourselves with what’s happening in Canada. In Canada, we have female mayors and premiers. We are a liberal democratic nation that respects human rights. I agree that the plight of women in many petrocracies is grave, but that does not mean that the plight of many women in Canada deserves less consideration from Canadians.

We can and should engage in critical discussions on women’s rights in Canada. And tar sands expansion forces us to explore some of these issues head-on.

In Alberta’s tar sands region in particular, rates of sexual violence towards women have increased and women working in the industry have reported sexual harassment and gender discrimination. With expansion of the tar sands industry, instances of domestic violence in Fort McMurray have spiralled upwards, and few women have safe places to go, forcing many to return home to their abusers.

Instead of pretending that expanding the tar sands will somehow help women in Saudi Arabia, let’s talk about how we can help Canadian women impacted right here at home by tar sands expansion.

Marshall boldly demands to know where Canadian women’s groups have been in speaking out against Saudi women’s oppression. Did she ever think to ask these groups? I did. For one, Jan Slakov, the National Secretary for Canadian Voices of Women for Peace, the organization that Marshall attacks in her piece, told me,

“The Canadian Voice of Women for Peace has worked to support women’s rights and well-being, not just in Canada, but around the world. Groups have raised funds to support programs in countires where women face systematic human rights abuses. We also work at the international level to support women’s rights through the UN.”

As a Women’s Studies graduate, Marshall should know that Canadian women’s rights groups are engaged in this fight directly. Instead, Marshall, while claiming to be an advocate of women’s rights, erases the history of the women’s rights movement in Canada and its work in global solidarity with women living under oppressive regimes. I can’t speak for women’s groups, but I think it’s telling that we haven’t heard any credible organizations supporting EthicalOil.org’s message. I suspect they see right through EthicalOil.org’s insincere issue hijacking.

Given recent major actions opposing the tar sands in Washington, D.C. and Ottawa, it seems that increased pressure on the Alberta Tar Sands has held oil lobbyists’ feet to the fire.  EthicalOil.org, a site devoted to advancing the ideas of right-wing pundits such as Ezra Levant who has popularized the term ‘ethical oil’ to refer to tar sands bitumen (aka “dirty oil”), has begun using women’s liberation struggles to justify continued extraction and expansion of tar sands oil.

The premise is that supporting “conflict oil” from Saudi Arabia would prop up a regime that is oppressive to women. The underlying motive, however, is not to talk about women’s liberation, but rather to deflect negative attention from the tar sands.

If women’s rights were of genuine concern to EthicalOil.org (and all the individuals that make it possible such as Ezra Levant, Alykhan Velshi, Kathryn Marshall, and their corporate oil buddies) then there would be conversation about the impacts that tar sands extraction has on women.

The tar sands boom has created dangerous jobs with long hours, fostering a culture of alcohol and substance abuse in the off hours. As a result, rates of sexual violence towards women have increased and women working in the industry have reported sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and unequal pay. Gender-based discrimination have also resulted in unequal access to higher paying jobs in communities in the region, and with skyrocketing housing prices and costs of living, there is also unequal access to housing.  Increases in female homelessness exacerbate the challenges faced by women in the area.

But EthicalOil.org ignores the problems that women in tar sands impacted communities face. In fact, the site’s main idea of “ethics” is based on a sense of Canadian superiority as a country which demands women’s rights.  This idea hides some of the blatant facts:

“Since 2006, Harper has cut funding for women’s advocacy by 43 per cent, shut 12 out of 16 Status of Women offices in Canada, and eliminated funding of legal voices for women and minority groups, including the National Association of Women and the Law and the Courts Challenges Program,” writes Emma Pullman, campaigner with Leadnow.ca. Pullman continues to describe the parts of Harper’s agenda that specifically ignore the systemic violence faced by Indigenous women.

Tar Sands mining operations, pipelines, and refineries disproportionately impact Indigenous peoples by violating Treaty Rights, their right to say no  (free, prior, and informed consent or FPIC, which is outlined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) to industrial activity taking place on their lands. Tar sands projects have affected Indigenous peoples ability to hunt, trap, and continue traditional practices.

Furthermore, while environmental pollution and contamination associated with tar sands projects affects all people, the health impacts on women’s bodies are destructive to the future wellbeing of entire communities as women bear children. Given that the vast majority of communities living downstream from tar sands and most impacted by the pollution are First Nations communities, the tar sands have been called an “environmental genocide” by indigenous peoples.

So if these facts about “Ethical” oil’s impacts on women are so clear, why is EthicalOil.org implicitly calling for a boycott of Saudi oil?

Maybe they are trying to distract us; so, instead of planning how to make housing in Northern Alberta more affordable to women, I am writing a blog to counter EthicalOil.org’s insincere interest in advancing Saudi women’s struggles. Or maybe they are trying to dictate the conversation; so, instead of talking about alternative forms of energy that do not centralize power in large multinational oil companies, I am reacting to EthicalOil.org’s insincere interest in advancing Saudi women’s struggles. Or maybe they have just run out of good ideas, and are now pretending to care about Saudi women’s struggles.

Maybe tar sands opponents have simply done a good job at making right-wing pundits find any ludicrous argument to convince the general public that tar sands oil is “ethical.”

With two mass actions against the tar sands in September alone and another planned for November, all of which have garnered celebrity support and numerous headlines, it is no surprise that EthicalOil.org is trying anything to promote an industry so widely recognized as destructive.

The lesson? When we get attention, they get defensive. And they look silly.

This means that we do not need to waste our time countering their arguments (I am aware of the irony of this comment, given that I just wrote this blog). We can spend our time doing other, more fruitful things. We can organize creative ways to stop large oil corporations from destroying people and the planet. We can come together to demand that oil companies stop exploiting women through the workplace, their communities, and their bodies.

Oil companies and lobbyists may continue attempts to co-opt women’s movements (or others) as excuses for resource exploitation, but regardless, we  can still come together to build a broad base of people demanding climate and gender justice. Once we are united, we watch them expose their own contradictions and develop more poor attempts to justify their actions.

This Tuesday, we are planning an action for President Obama’s fundraising stop in St. Louis. I sent this letter to my family and friends to ask for their support. Now I am asking a larger group to contribute, so we can call on President Obama to lead by rejecting Keystone XL.

Dear family and friends,

Like so many of us, in 2008, I fell in love with President Obama’s vision for the future. After working on his campaign and covering my walls in Obama swag, when the President was elected on my 18th birthday, I sobbed like a baby. But three years later, it is not a stretch to say that President Obama has not delivered on his promises. Of course, not all of this is his fault – he came into a difficult Presidency, Congress has gone crazy, America is increasingly polarized. But now when I hear him speak, I don’t feel inspired by his rhetoric – I feel sad for what could have been.

When I listened to Candidate Obama, I was most excited when he spoke about taking action on climate change. For the first time in 8 years, here was a candidate that not only accepted climate change was happening, but understood how awful it would be. And, if you understand that, if you understand the ramifications that climate change will have on our world, how can you not act now? But he didn’t, and crazy Congress didn’t let him.

In the coming months, President Obama faces his biggest decision yet around climate. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would funnel tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada all the way down to refineries in Texas. Not only does this pipeline cause huge safety problems from potential spills (it goes over the Ogallala aquifer and LOTS of farmland), but these tar sands are so dirty that the nation’s top climate scientist has said it will be “game over” for climate if the tar sands are developed fully. Game over. Meaning that, if this pipeline is built, all the work done by amazing people all across the world could be for naught.

Continue reading ‘Taking Obama’s Grassroots Fundraising Lesson to Heart to Demand He Reject Keystone XL’

That’s me with Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis at the White House on Earth Day 2010

Here’s me getting arrested at the White House on September 2nd 2011 in protest against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Photo credit: Josh Lopez

During my college experience at American University I was pretty active in climate change issues on my campus and in my community. I went to Congress to push for ACES. I interned with environmental groups pushing for renewable portfolio standards and new passenger rail. I helped write the university’s carbon neutrality plan. Perhaps most important to this story, I voted for Obama in the Iowa caucuses and in the general election because of his pledges to take truly significant action to stop climate change. After spending years of my young life working inside the normal political system to push for these things this administration claims to believe in, I was fortunate to be invited to the White House’s Earth Day reception (along with about 100 other environmentalists).It was there that I got to meet folks I admired like Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey, Hilda Solis, and President Barack Obama.  Everyone in attendance was still holding out hope that a climate-energy bill written by John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham could be passed. Looking back now, we know it never passed, wasn’t even voted on, and probably was the most watered-down bill there possibly could have been that claimed to be mitigating climate change.

I was very lucky to get to speak to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. I really admired Steven Chu for being a great scientist who straightforwardly said what he thought about energy issues; many times I told my friends that Chu was by-far the smartest and most qualified Secretary of Energy we had ever had. That’s why I was so utterly disappointed when he told EneryNow that he thought the Keystone XL pipeline was a good idea:

“I know there’s concerns about this, but both the technologies used to extract the tar sands oil – which are improving dramatically – and so I think that can go forward. I think in the end what we need to do is diversify our supply of oil. Right now our transportation needs come exclusively from oil.”  & “In the end, it’s not perfect but it’s a trade-off.”

Kind of an obfuscated statement for a scientist to make, eh? From what I can tell, he tepidly supports the thing, or has been told to do so by others in the administration, or maybe he’s just saying what he thinks the other people in the administration want him to think. I can only hope behind the scenes he is telling Obama to stop the pipeline because it will further chain our economy to oil and only make climate change worse.

But hope hasn’t worked thus far. Hope for a climate bill? Hope for an end to mountaintop removal? Hope for an end to offshore drilling? Hope for an end to oil company subsidies? Sad to say, but none of that hope has worked out for us environmentalists lately.

So instead of hoping, I decided to go back down to the White House and physically express my disagreement with Dr. Chu and his boss.

Getting handled by US Park Police. Still better than a party in the Rose Garden. Photo credit: Josh Lopez

As I sit on the ferry from Oaks Bluff, Martha’s Vineyard back to the mainland it is hard not to think of the people who are currently sacrificing their body and individual rights outside the White House at this very moment. We traveled out to the Vineyard to follow our President Barack Obama and hand-deliver press packets for the Tar Sands Action to the White House Press Corps that surround him in order to remind them the key role that the President can play in future of the Keystone XL pipeline.  Stopping the construction of this pipeline will halt a cascade of environmental impacts (“sure”?  sounds a bit awkward) and begin to fulfill the campaign promises that engaged so many in 2008.  Our mission to the Vineyard today was a simple but impacting way to support this growing movement to inspire the President to do the right thing.  I encourage you to find your way to contribute.

The Keystone XL Pipeline is Obama’s chance to turn tides and start to regain support from the many that voted him into office. The same people that slept on the floors of churches taking workshops on grassroots political campaigning are now using the same trainings to prepare to be arrested outside his front door in D.C. Continue reading ‘Activists Follow Obama and White House Press Corps to Martha’s Vineyard’

Was there ever a better opportunity to talk about how climate change can impact us urban residents of North America rather than now?

The densely populated cities of the Atlantic coast of North Americahave been preparing for Hurricane Irene. As someone who just decided that this was the perfect weekend to visit New York City, I find myself helping my brother and NYC resident tape up his windows, search for flashlights and candles, and fill the bathtub with water. We are checking the hurricane watch and evacuation advisories to see if it is necessary that we peace out of the city.

For someone who is typically living in Toronto, an urban setting which hasn’t faced a hurricane since I have lived there, this rapid response to extreme weather events is new. But, I don’t want to act like ALL people in North America are void of dealing with the impacts of climate change. I want to recognize the reality of communities in the Arctic, where unpredictable cracks in the ice can cost people their lives; farmers are faced with unpredictable weather, resulting in poor growing seasons; and we can never forget all the communities (mostly communities of colour and low-income communities) that live merely a few kilometers from logging sites, coal-fired power plants, fracking sites, tar sands projects, and mountain-top removal sites.

But this blog post isn’t for all of y’all. I am writing to those who have chosen not to take action on climate change because they think it does not directly impact them. I write to many of the other Torontonians, New Yorkers, or others who can talk about climate change as if it is something that impacts others.

Climate action advocates often face the difficulty of dealing on somewhat of an invisible issue, in that carbon emitted in the atmosphere is rendered invisible to cause floods and storms in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and small island nation states kilometres away. Floods and monsoons, pfft…I don’t have to deal with that (And sometimes it is pfft…I dont have to deal with that…yet)! The challenge then becomes compelling people to act on issues of climate change because they are acting in solidarity, which may be difficult given the pervasive aura of NIMBY-ism. Continue reading ‘Irene Came Because Its Getting Hot In Here. We Must Take Action Because Its Getting Hot In Here!’