It’s Getting Hot In Here

It’s Oscar time and people are all counting the days until we can sit down, play the Oscar polls, critique the Oscar De La Renta dresses, and cringe at the hot mess that is Mariah Carey. Oddly enough I’m now eagerly waiting with them this year; not to compare my impeccable eye for style, or guess the winner of the Best Song (Weary Heart, from Crazyheart duh), but to see if James Cameron, director of that little movie that could, will put some action where his mouth is.

In recent weeks James Cameron himself has been calling Avatar a catalyst for environmental action saying he now wants to “use the spotlight that’s been put on him by Avatar’s success to bring attention to environmental causes“. This caught the eye of Rainforest Action Network’s Becky Tarbotton. On yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle website Tarbotton started a call to Mr. Cameron to help expose the “real-life Avatar” that Chevron continues to enable in Ecuador.

In the article Tarbotton asks:

“What if in his acceptance speech James Cameron mentioned the real-life Indigenous Ecuadorean heroes who are battling the real-life evil oil corporation Chevron?

She then continues:

If Director James Cameron accepts an Academy Award next month, he should let his faithful fans know that while Pandora is fictional, what is happening to communities in Ecuador because of Chevron’s actions is as real as it gets.”

Continue reading ‘James Cameron, the Oscar’s, and the Real-Life ‘Avatar’.’

Last Tuesday DC was lucky enough to host an all-star panel of global justice activists in a panel discussion called “Evaluating Copenhagen: What it Means for Ecology, Economy, and Equity“, convened by leading movement organizations and moderated by Ray Suarez of PBS.

Among the panelists were leaders and experts of the global justice movement like Martin Khor from the South Centre, Maude Barlow from the Council of Canadians, Victor Menotti of the International Forum on Globalization, Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, and Gopal Dayaneni from Movement Generation. You can view the full event online here, or by clicking the image below. I’ll discuss some highlights and possible movement-building lessons.

Movement-Melding in Copenhagen

The experts left very little doubt that the fight to avert climate catastrophe is the fight for the direction of the global economy.

Climate justice + development justice + trade justice = true global justice. Continue reading ‘Justice Beyond Copenhagen’

Last October, John Kerry laid out the stakes in a call with over 300 youth climate leaders: a clean energy future is only possible if we — as a generation — make our voice heard.

In response, we launched the Organize to be Heard Challenge, and thousands of young people have stepped up, generating thousands of phone calls, handwritten letters and petitions demanding action on climate and clean energy.

Unfortunately, despite the overwhelming call for action, there is one roadblock where all progress stops: our broken U.S. Senate. The Senate needs to know we’re sick of leaders who fail to lead and tired of government which fails to govern. They need to know that we’re not idealistic, we’re angry.

Call your Senator and tell them to stop standing in the way of our clean energy future! Continue reading ‘It’s Time to Get Angry’

{UPDATE: We are only 100 away!! We can do this folks! Keep on spreading the word!}
We are 120 votes away from being the most voted ‘Energy and Environment’ question about the State of the Union address on CitizenTube.

On Monday President Obama will be answering questions about his State of the Union address, how would you like for that question to be one submitted by young climate activists?

Right now, the most voted question is from someone promoting alternative fuels. Not clean energy. Not just energy. Not renewable energy. But alternative energy, and you know what that means right? If this question is still #1 by tomorrow, President Obama will have an open window to reiterate his support for dirty coal, nuclear, and offshore oil drilling and ignore the true solutions to our energy, national security, and climate crises.

Go to CitizenTube and upvote this question from Energy Action. We are only 120 votes away from the top, so every vote counts. Please spread the word and RT this:

RT @energyaction: Vote up youth leader question to #Obama! Why dirty energy when clean is smarter & creates more jobs? http://bit.ly/bGNR8R

Video by Ekta Kothari.
Cross-posted from Project Survival Media.
Footage of the arch was also posted on The Huffington Post.

Sometimes it’s hard to describe an experience. Sometimes words, film, or photos fail to capture the overwhelming feeling that we are witnessing something truly extraordinary. We say, “You just had to be there.”

Enter the media. No one can be everywhere at once, so there are people whose job it is to go collect stories, verify them by checking a second source, and then paint a picture for the folks back home. People rely on the media to keep them informed about what’s going on in the world. And while the media can’t capture every detail, while there will unavoidably be some omissions and differences in emphasis, as reporters, it is part of our job to tell the whole story, and to pick out the wheat from the chaff.

This is why the coverage so far of the December 12 march in Copenhagen, Denmark is so disappointing to me. During the event, I was working in downtown Copenhagen alongside TckTckTck, 350.org, and Avaaz staff, collecting photos and videos coming in from actions all over the world. Behind me, a huge 2 by 5 foot screen showed local TV coverage of the march.

I was inside a media hub, surrounded by information, and the positive messages that kept flooding in. But until I heard verbal accounts from marchers and observers, and saw the footage that Ekta Kothari, Project Survival Media videographer, had shot during the day, I assumed that this particular action, the march in Copenhagen, had been pretty scary. Most of it wasn’t.

Continue reading ‘December 12, Copenhagen: The Real Headline’

“Eco Hypocrites Fly in Jets Across Atlantic to Attack AFP in Copenhagen”

http://americansforprosperity.org/120909-eco-hypocrites-fly-jets-across-atlantic-attack-afp-copenhagen

A NOTE TO AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY

(from the ‘eco-activists’)

1. We didn’t come to Copenhagen JUST to attack you, AFP.  Don’t be so full of yourselves.

2. Great job admitting carbon pollution is bad (i.e. ‘flying across the Atlantic’)… Seems like you’re beginning to see the light.

In the last three hours, over 100 people at the Bella Center in Copenhagen and more than 3,600 around Europe joined Avaaz to phone calls to European leaders urging them to be a deal maker. Angela Merkel of Germany, Lars Lokke Rasmussen of Denmark, and Gordon Brown of the UK are a few of the popular targets for today’s “Skype Call Center”.

In true It’s Getting Hot In Here fashion, the international youth performed a flash dance during the first day of the UN climate treaty negotiations. We made our presence felt outside the the first open plenary session of the conference.

Over 100 youth gathered for the action and we were literally surrounded by press. The message was clear: these negotiations will determine whether we will inherit a world with clean, safe energy and we must not delay action.

The “it’s hot in here” chant used for this flash dance has become the un-official chant of this movement. And if I’m not mistaken, this blog takes it’s name from that chant.

Ben and Rachel gettin’ down with animatronic penguins, and covering the Conference of Youth – where 700 youth leaders converged before COP15.