Category Archives: Ending the Era of Extreme Energy

by | 2013-02-12 · 10:25

Genetically engineered trees for bioenergy pose major threat to southern forests

Note: Global Justice Ecology Project coordinates the STOP Genetically Engineered Trees Campaign.  Join us in telling the USDA to ban genetically engineered trees by signing the petition here.

-The GJEP Team

February 12, 2013. Source: Global Justice Ecology Project

In response to industry plans to develop eucalyptus plantations across the US South[1], environmental groups[2] are raising serious concerns about the impacts of eucalyptus plantations on forests, rural communities, wildlife and the climate, especially if those trees are genetically engineered.

EcoGen, LLC recently announced plans to develop eucalyptus plantations in southern Florida to feed biomass facilities.  Additionally, South Carolina-based ArborGen has requested USDA permission to sell billions of genetically engineered cold tolerant eucalyptus trees for plantations in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.  The USDA is expected to respond to this request in the coming months.

Eucalyptus trees are documented as an invasive pest in California and Florida.  But because they cannot grow in sub-freezing temperatures, they have been engineered to be cold-tolerant, enabling them to survive temperatures down to 20°f – vastly expanding their range.

Besides being highly invasive–the Charlotte Observer called them “the kudzu of the 2010s”–eucalyptus plantations deplete ground water and can even worsen droughts.  The US Forest Service opposes GE eucalyptus plantations due to their impact on ground water and streams. [3,4]

“GE eucalyptus trees are a disaster waiting to happen–it is critical the USDA reject them,” said Global Justice Ecology Project Executive Director Anne Petermann.  “In addition to being invasive, eucalyptus trees are explosively flammable.  In a region that has been plagued by droughts in recent years, developing plantations of an invasive, water-greedy and fire-prone tree is foolhardy and dangerous.”

Petermann coordinates the international STOP GE Trees Campaign [5], which has collected thousands of signatures supporting a ban on GE trees due to their potentially catastrophic impacts on communities and forests.

“The forests of the Southeast are some of the most biodiverse in the world,” said Scot Quaranda, Campaign Director of Asheville, NC-based Dogwood Alliance. “They contain species found nowhere else. Species like the Louisiana Black Bear, the golden-cheeked warbler and the red-cockaded woodpecker are already endangered. Eucalyptus plantations could push these and other species over the edge,” he added.

The Georgia Department of Wildlife opposes GE eucalyptus trees due to these impacts. [6]

The STOP GE Trees Campaign is planning events around the Tree Biotechnology 2013 Conference this May in Asheville, NC, where GE tree industry representatives and researchers will gather to discuss the use of GE trees and their deployment across the US South.

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Filed under Biodiversity, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, Green Economy, Greenwashing

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by | 2013-01-25 · 16:30

How much will tar sands oil contribute to global warming?

Note: The article below contains urgent, alarming information regarding tar sands.  The science makes it clear: If the tar sands are extracted and burned, averting catastrophic warming will be a hope of the past (if it isn’t already).  However, there are major issues with this article.  The author fails to include voices from communities impacted from extreme energy extraction, and supports false solutions like Carbon Capture and Storage, nuclear energy and market-based mechanisms to reduce emissions and extraction.  He even implies that Shell might be taking serious steps to “clean up” tar sands extraction.

Biofuelwatch recently released a report detailing the ineffectiveness of Carbon Capture and Storage in reducing emissions, from fossil fuels and so-called “alternatives” like biomass.  Only a massive reduction in consumption will stop the extraction of extreme energy, and that massive reduction is not going to be provided by putting a price on carbon.

Kandi Mossett, an organizer with Indigenous Environmental Network, was featured on KPFK Sojourner Truth show’s Earth Segment in November, where she discussed the impacts of fracking and tar sands on Indigenous communities.  The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, who has been fighting to get Shell out of Alberta, is directly impacted from tar sands development.  There are real people and real communities behind the numbers presented in this article, and their stories need telling.

Its time to stop martyrizing the cautious white guys, and start taking leadership from the communities who have been fighting these projects – and the capitalist system that causes them – for decades.

-The GJEP Team

By David Biello, January 23, 2013.  Source: Scientific American

08sands-articleLarge-v2James Hansen has been publicly speaking about climate change since 1988. The NASA climatologist testified to Congress that year and he’s been testifying ever since to crowds large and small, most recently to a small gathering of religious leaders outside the White House last week. The grandfatherly scientist has the long face of a man used to seeing bad news in the numbers and speaks with the thick, even cadence of the northern Midwest, where he grew up, a trait that also helps ensure that his sometimes convoluted science gets across.

This cautious man has also been arrested multiple times.

His acts of civil disobedience started in 2009, and he was first arrested in 2011 for protesting the development of Canada’s tar sands and, especially, the Keystone XL pipeline proposal that would serve to open the spigot for such oil even wider. “To avoid passing tipping points, such as initiation of the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, we need to limit the climate forcing severely. It’s still possible to do that, if we phase down carbon emissions rapidly, but that means moving expeditiously to clean energies of the future,” he explains. “Moving to tar sands, one of the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fuels on the planet, is a step in exactly the opposite direction, indicating either that governments don’t understand the situation or that they just don’t give a damn.”
Continue reading →

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Filed under Climate Change, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Hydrofracking, Indigenous Peoples, Oil, Tar Sands

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by | 2013-01-01 · 09:00

2012 Top ten articles on Climate Connections

Note: The following are the top ten articles from Climate Connections from 2012, based on the number of views each story received. Several articles were written by GJEP, or were sent to Climate Connections by the original authors. They are posted in reverse order, from number 10 through number 1.  Our blog received a record 270,000 visitors in 2012 from over 200 countries.

Please subscribe to Climate Connections, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

Happy New Year,

-The GJEP Team

10. Three responses to Bill McKibben’s new article, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” (July 24)

By Anne Petermann, Executive Director of GJEP, Rachel Smolker of BiofuelWatch, and Keith Brunner, GJEP Communications Associate

Bill McKibben, in his new Rolling Stone article, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” does an effective job at summarizing the hard and theoretical numbers that warn us of the devastating impacts of continuing to burn the Earth’s remaining fossil fuel reserves–yet it somehow falls short of its stated goal to help mobilize a new movement for climate action.  Continue reading here

9. Breaking News: Secret US military testing of radiological materials on poor and minority communities (September 24)

By Anne Petermann, Executive Director of GJEP, and Orin Langelle, GJEP Board Chair

During an interview we conducted last week in St. Louis, MO, Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor gave us a long description of research she had conducted into a major military cover up of the use of U.S. citizens as test subjects for military experiments related to the Cold War.
Continue reading →

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Indigenous Peoples, Industrial agriculture, Nuclear power, Oil, Political Repression, Posts from Anne Petermann, Rio+20, Tar Sands

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by | 2012-12-28 · 09:00

One hour special on KPFK features GJEP and Indigenous Environmental Network

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Featuring the Tar Sands, Hurricane Sandy, climate justice and genetically engineered trees

Global Justice Ecology Project teamed up with the Sojourner Truth show in LA for a series of events in late-November, including the following one-hour in-studio interview featuring Clayton Thomas-Muller, Tar Sands Co-Director with the Indigenous Environmental Network; Orin Langelle, Board Chair for Global Justice Ecology Project, and Anne Petermann, GJEP Executive Director.  They discussed the link between Hurricane Sandy, climate change, social justice and extreme energy.  To listen, click the link below.

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Filed under Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, Indigenous Peoples, Natural Disasters, Oil, Tar Sands

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by | 2012-12-21 · 09:00

KPFK Sojourner Truth Earth Watch and Earth Minute: Anne Petermann on the UN COP18 climate negotiations in Doha, Qatar

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Anne Petermann, Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project on what, if anything, came out of the UNFCCC COP18 climate negotiations in Doha.

Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with KPFK’s Sojourner Truth show for weekly Earth Minutes every Tuesday and Earth Watch interviews every Thursday.  Earth Minute below:

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Filed under Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Industrial agriculture

by | 2012-12-18 · 12:00

Audio: Climate change resistance with Anne Petermann of Global Justice Ecology Project

Note: Anne Petermann is the Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project, and directs the international STOP Genetically Engineered Trees Campaign

-The GJEP Team

December 17, 2012.  Source: Clearing the Fog Radio

Listen to the audio here.

Anne Petermann of the Global Justice Ecology Project discusses the recent climate conference in Doha, Qatar which is characterized more as a trade show for corporations looking to profit from climate change than a conference about solutions, and the increasing exclusion of non-corporate voices. She says solutions to the climate crisis are coming from the bottom up.

Ramsey Sprague of the Tar Sands Blockade (http://tarsandsblockade.org/) describes the growing resistance to the Keystone XL Pipeline and the upcoming direct action training camp and action Jan. 3 to 8. Co-hosts Margaret and Kevin will participate in that action and urge you to support it or participate as well. And ecology activist Diane Wilson who is on her 19th day of a hunger strike describes why she is risking her life to hold Valero Oil accountable to her community.

 

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Filed under Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Coal, Corporate Globalization, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, GE Trees, Green Economy, Independent Media, UNFCCC

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by | 2012-11-29 · 16:30

KPFK Sojourner Truth Earth Watch: Dorothy Grace Guerrero on the UN COP18 climate negotiations in Qatar

Dorothy Grace Guerrero, Climate & Environmental Justice Program Coordinator with Focus on the Global South, discusses the ongoing climate negotiations in Doha, globalization, and social movement for ecological justice.

Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with KPFK’s Sojourner Truth show for weekly Earth Minutes every Tuesday and Earth Watch interviews every Thursday.

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Filed under Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy

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by | 2012-11-27 · 15:30

Earth Minute: Why Doha is not where climate justice will happen

Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Pacifica Los Angeles for a weekly Earth Minute each Tuesday and a weekly Earth Watch interview each Thursday.

This week’s Earth Minute addresses the UN climate talks in Doha, Qatar, and why many climate justice organizations have decided not to attend this year’s climate conference, and are organizing with social movements and communities instead.

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Filed under Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Earth Minute, Earth Radio, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, Geoengineering, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Oil, REDD, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Synthetic Biology, UNFCCC

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