Global Justice Ecology Project teamed up with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK on to discuss the ongoing blockade in Texas against a tar sands pipeline there.
Yearly Archives: 2012
KPFK Sojourner Truth Earth Segment: Ongoing Blockade Against the Tar Sands in Texas
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Earth Radio, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, Indigenous Peoples, Oil, Pollution, Tar Sands, Water
Nine arrested during ‘Occupy Monsanto’ protest in Oxnard
By Ricardo Lopez, September 12, 2012. Source: LA Times
Note: Global Justice Ecology Project Executive Director Anne Petermann and Board Chair Orin Langelle will be in St. Louis this weekend to speak at the Occupy Monsanto Conference. They will be connecting the dots between Monsanto and genetically engineered tree manufacturer ArborGen, as well as rallying support for the Campaign to Stop GE Trees. You can read GJEP’s press release outlining the ties between Monsanto and ArborGen here, and you can sign the petition to stop GE trees here
-The GJEP Team
Source: Occupy Monsanto
Nine protesters were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of trespassing after blocking access to a Monsanto seed distribution center in Oxnard, group organizers said.
Those arrested were part of a decentralized network of food activists and Occupy protesters, said Adam Eidenger, a spokesman for the Occupy Monsanto group.
Their aim is to protest Monsanto’s sales of genetically modified seeds, he said. They also sought to bring attention to Proposition 37, a ballot initiative set to come before California voters this fall.
The initiative, if passed, would require foods containing genetically modified materials to be labeled as such. Eidenger said the Occupy Monsanto group, however, is not affiliated with “Yes on 37,” the group urging voters to pass the measure.
About a dozen protesters arrived at Seminis Vegetable Seeds in Oxnard, a Monsanto subsidiary, Wednesday morning and blocked access to the facility, organizers said.
Eidenger said Wednesday’s protest kicks off several dozen planned events around the world to call attention to genetically modified foods.
A request for comment from Monsanto was not immediately returned Wednesday afternoon.
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Genetic Engineering
Press Release: Campaign to target genetically engineered trees at Occupy Monsanto conference
For Immediate Release: 13 September, 2012
St. Louis, MO–The Campaign to Stop GE Trees http://nogetrees.org will participate in the Occupy Monsanto conference here on September 16-17 to sound the alarm about the dangers genetically engineered trees pose to communities, wildlife and forests. The campaign asserts that Monsanto is complicit in this emerging hazard.
Monsanto’s glyphosate-based RoundUp herbicide will be used to control weeds around trees that are genetically engineered to be “RoundUp Ready,” or resistant to that herbicide. Use of this trait in GMO crops led to a documented tripling in the use of the herbicide, resulting in widespread problems with RoundUp resistant weeds, which require applications of more toxic herbicides to eliminate them. [1]
Just as GMO seed giant Monsanto has flooded the global market with their patented GMO seeds, ArborGen, which specializes in genetically engineered tree seedlings, intends to do the same. [2] ArborGen is a joint project of International Paper, MeadWestvaco and New Zealand-based Rubicon and one of their original joint owners was Monsanto.
“It’s clear from researching ArborGen’s public relations messaging that they see themselves as the new Monsanto,” stated Will Bennnington, of Global Justice Ecology Project. “They plan to follow the ruthless Monsanto model and don’t care who gets hurt in the process,” he added.
The links between ArborGen and Monsanto run deep. Numerous current and former staff had long tenures at Monsanto before being employed by ArborGen. [3]
“If ArborGen floods the market with their dangerous and uncontrollable GE trees, these trees will inevitably and irreversibly escape into the environment,” explained Anne Petermann, Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project and Coordinator of the Campaign to Stop GE Trees. “Patent law has enabled Monsanto to infamously sue farmers for possessing their GMO seeds after these seeds contaminated farmers’ lands. Think what that could mean to National Forests, National Parks or even private landowners if ArborGen’s invasive GE trees were found on those lands,” she continued.
ArborGen currently has a request pending with the USDA to commercially sell hundreds of millions of their GE eucalyptus tree seedlings annually for planting across the US South, claiming they will be used for bioenergy production and climate change mitigation. [4] GE eucalyptus, however, are highly flammable and could lead to uncontrollable firestorms, which would release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Jim Hightower has referred to ArborGen’s GE eucalyptus trees as ‘living firecrackers’.”
Contacts:
Keith Brunner, Media Associate, Global Justice Ecology Project, +1.802.777.5244
Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project /Coordinator of the Campaign to Stop GE Trees, on site. Mobile +1.802.578.0477
Notes:
[1] Benbrook, C (2009). “Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use: The First Thirteen Years,” The Organic Center, November 2009. http://www.organic-center.org/science.pest.php?action=view&report_id=159
[2] ArborGen CEO presentation, May 2012: https://www.nzx.com/files/attachments/157094.pdf and Rubicon 2011 Interim Review: http://www.rubicon-nz.com/main.cfm?menu=left&ItemId=268
[3] http://www.arborgen.us/index.php/about-arborgen/management
[4] Rubicon 2010 Annual Review: http://www.rubicon-nz.com/main.cfm?menu=news&ItemId=100
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Filed under Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering
Rio Earth Summit: tragedy, farce, and distraction
By Anne Petermann, September 2012. Source: Z Magazine
As I flew to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on June 12 for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20)—the 20-year anniversary of the historic “Rio Earth Summit”—I read an article in the Financial Times titled “Showdown Looms at OPEC After Saudi Arabia Urges Higher Output.” The article explained that Saudi Arabia was urging OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) to increase their output of oil in order to ensure that the global price of oil would not exceed $100 per barrel in order to “mitigate the risks that high oil prices pose to the global economy.”
The article pointed out that ensuring the health of the global economy requires expanding oil production. This, as we know, will worsen the climate crisis. The takeaway message of the article, therefore, is that the global economy will only thrive by destroying the life support systems of the planet.
At the Rio Earth Summit, this was also the underlying logic of the so-called “green economy” proposals that have polarized and paralyzed the talks since the first preparatory meeting for Rio+20 in May 2010.
According to Jim Thomas of the ETC Group, who wrote about the Rio+20 summit’s preparatory meetings for the Guardian back in March 2011, “Far from cooking up a plan to save the Earth, what may come out of the summit could instead be a deal to surrender the living world to a small cabal of bankers and engineers. Tensions are already rising between northern countries and southern countries…and suspicions are running high that the…‘green economy’ is more likely to deliver a greenwash economy or the same old, same old ‘greed’ economy.”
At the Rio+20 summit, industrialized countries and multinational corporations, accompanied by institutions like the IMF and World Bank, led the push for development of the green economy—that is, to use the very ecological devastation caused by global capitalism to create markets in so-called “environmental services” by turning them into tradable commodities. These new markets would help prop up the global economy in a greenwashed version of business as usual.
“Environmental services,” provided by intact natural ecosystems—which include such things as the storage of carbon, the purification of air and water, and the maintenance of biodiversity—would be given a monetary value in the market, enabling them to be purchased and supposedly protected. In reality, however, it would allow companies to destroy a biodiverse ecosystem in one area, by purchasing the protection of an equivalent ecosystem.
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Filed under Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Events, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Land Grabs, Posts from Anne Petermann, REDD, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Rio+20
August Photo of the Month: Arrest at the Republican National Convention
Woman is arrested during police raid on the steps of the New York Public Library during the Republican National Convention in 2004. The police arrested 75 people, including protesters, several bystanders and library patrons. The police attack was prompted by two young activists who were holding a banner. Photo: Langelle (2004)
Below, read the report on the arrests from the American Libraries Association, September 3, 2004
Protesters Arrested on New York Public Library Steps Some 75 protesters were arrested August 31 in front of the New York Public Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library on Fifth Avenue amid demonstrations taking place during the Republican National Convention.As about 200 people gathered on the steps of the library for a march to Madison Square Garden, two young women tried to hold up a banner when police pinned them to the ground and a scuffle erupted between officers and demonstrators.
Protesters Arrested on New York Public Library Steps Some 75 protesters were arrested August 31 in front of the New York Public Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library on Fifth Avenue amid demonstrations taking place during the Republican National Convention.As about 200 people gathered on the steps of the library for a march to Madison Square Garden, two young women tried to hold up a banner when police pinned them to the ground and a scuffle erupted between officers and demonstrators.
Cyndy Bruce, 26, of Chicago said in the September 1 Long Island (N.Y.) Newsday, “The officer said you can’t hang it but you can hold it. As soon as they held it up, the officers swarmed in. They incited this violence. Not us.” Newsday reported that police moved the protesters away from the library and wrapped the whole block in orange netting.
NYPL Public Relations Manager Carolyn Oyama told American Libraries that no library employees were involved in the protest and that no demonstrators came inside the library. She said that the event only lasted about 45 minutes and that “the egress from the library was not affected.”
Also in New York City, library workers and students from a group called Radical Reference protested September 1 outside the New York Historical Society as First Lady Laura Bush arrived to have lunch with Republican delegates, according to the online anarchist blog Infoshop News.
The group of eight librarians and their friends were initially forced by police to stay on the sidewalk across the street from the society’s back entrance. Later the protesters made their way to the front of the building where another group of demonstrators was already in place.Signs displayed by the group included “Books Not Bombs,” “Laura, Stand Up against the Patriot Act,” and “Another Hysterical Librarian against Bush.” No arrests were made.
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Also check out past Photos of the Month posted on GJEP’s website, or Langelle’s photo essays posted on GJEP’s Climate Connections blog.
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Photo Essays by Orin Langelle, Political Repression
Rainforest Roulette? – new briefing on REDD and markets from Rainforest Foundation UK
By Chris Lang, August 29, 2012. Source: redd-monitor
A new briefing by the Rainforest Foundation UK argues against creating an international carbon market to finance REDD. The briefing is released just before a UN meeting in Bangkok, that will discuss potential options for financing REDD.
The policy briefing, which is available below, is structured around five main critiques of trading forest carbon:
1. It is highly questionable whether a forest carbon market will reduce the cost of tackling climate change or generate billions for forest protection.
2. The proposed forest carbon market is distorting ‘readiness’ preparations for REDD so that they are more focused on creating a tradable asset than outcomes that are beneficial for forests, forest peoples and biodiversity.
3. The ownership of forest carbon – the underlying asset of the proposed market – is contested and unclear, and its trade is particularly susceptible to fraud.
4. Potential REDD emissions reductions credits may not represent genuine reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, due to inflated baselines and leakage. Trading them in an offset market could lead to increased total global carbon emissions, and prolong existing heavily polluting activities.
5. Alternative financing options and approaches exist and are viable.
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Filed under Carbon Trading, Climate Change, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests, Green Economy, REDD, UNFCCC, World Bank
Direct Action for Climate Justice: Confronting False Solutions to Climate Change
by Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project
23 August, 2012, Source: Daily Kos
Climate justice involves taking real and just action to address the root causes of the climate crisis, and transforming the system that is driving it. Direct action has a rich history of achieving the unthinkable, of changing “the impossible.” It is defined as action to directly shut down the point of production. In the case of climate change, it would be action to shut down the point of destruction. With the climate crisis worsening exponentially with every passing day, shutting down the point of destruction is critical.
It was with this in mind that the direct action training camp was organized. Coincidentally, it came just two weeks after the 36th Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers in Burlington, Vermont. A major focus of that conference was energy. Vermont, which has an image of pristine greenness, relies on dangerous and dirty energy sources. This includes its aging Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant; hydroelectricity from massive dams on Indigenous Peoples’ lands in northern Quebec; and large-scale biomass electricity, which dumps more pollution into the air than coal.
Although these various mega-projects do not rely on fossil fuels as the main source of their energy, they are still “false solutions.” They cause vast ecological and social destruction and can worsen the climate crisis. Their primary function, in fact, has nothing to do with the climate. It is to maintain business as usual. While the climate crisis demands a radical re-think of how we live on and with the Earth, a fundamental changing of the system, “false solutions” are specifically designed to prevent real change. They enable the Global Elite–“the 1%” –to maintain their power and profits in the face of mounting social and ecological crises.
Activists disrupt the Northeast Governors’ Conference cruise in protest of Hydro-Quebec. Photo: Will Bennington
Hydro-Quebec plans to build a series of new mega-dams on First Nations land in northern Quebec. They will drown forests, pollute fresh water, and displace villages and release huge amounts of methane–a greenhouse gas 35 times more potent than CO2.
In response, a delegation of Innu people came to the Governors’ Conference to raise awareness about and protest these new mega-dams. When the Innu delegation tried to enter the Governors’ Conference to speak with the decision-makers, however, they were refused entry.
The Governors’ Conference was emblematic of the unjust system that must be changed if we are to successfully address the climate crisis. A group of privileged white males sat down to make decisions that would irrevocably impact the lives of First Nations peoples in Canada, as well as rural communities throughout the region.
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, Events, False Solutions to Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Political Repression, Pollution, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Solutions, UNFCCC
Earth Minute audio: Hydro electric power is not clean or renewable
Today’s Earth minute examines the myth that hydroelectricity is clean, renewable energy, and discusses protests against Hydro-Quebec at the New England Governors’ Conference in Burlington, VT, that resulted in non-violent protesters being assaulted by police.
Global Justice Ecology Project partners with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Los Angeles for weekly Earth Minutes every Tuesday and Earth Segment interviews every Thursday.
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Filed under Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Hydroelectric dams, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Pollution, Water
