Category Archives: Ending the Era of Extreme Energy

by | 2012-09-26 · 14:36

KPFK Sojourner Truth Earth Segment and Earth Minute: Occupy Monsanto and resistance to REDD+ in Chiapas

KPFK Sojourner Truth Earth Segment: Kathleen Logan Smith of Missouri Coalition for the Environment

Interview begins at 7:06: http://archive.org/details/Sojournertruthradio092012

Kathleen Logan Smith, Executive Director of Missouri Coalition for the Environment, discusses Occupy Monsanto in St. Louis and the week of actions targeting Monsanto on the first anniversary of Occupy Wall St.

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

KPFK Sojourner Truth Earth Minute: Amidst opposition, governors meet in Chiapas to discuss REDD+

KPFK Sojourner Truth show: Updates from Tar Sands Blockade

KPFK Sojourner Truth show followed up Tuesday with Ron Seifert, who was featured on last week’s Earth Segment, about new developments around the ongoing Tar Sands Blockade in East Texas, which is using direct action to prevent the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Continue reading →

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Earth Minute, Earth Radio, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Genetic Engineering, Green Economy, Indigenous Peoples, REDD, Tar Sands

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by | 2012-09-15 · 09:47

KPFK Sojourner Truth Earth Segment: Ongoing Blockade Against the Tar Sands in Texas

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.

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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

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by | 2012-09-13 · 10:01

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

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by | 2012-09-06 · 09:00

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

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by | 2012-08-23 · 15:14

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

Over August 9-12, fifty participants and trainers gathered in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom for a Climate Justice Direct Action Training Camp.  The camp, organized by Red Clover Climate Justice and co-sponsored by Global Justice Ecology Project provided essential direct action skills including formation of affinity groups, blockading tactics, legal rights as a protester, a history of non-violent civil disobedience, strategic planning for direct action, and the nuts and bolts of media work to ensure actions and their messages are seen as widely as possible.

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

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by | 2012-07-31 · 16:43

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

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by | 2012-07-26 · 15:30

Audio: KPFK Sojourner Truth show Earth Segment on Quebec’s Plan Nord and Innu opposition

Keith Brunner of Gears of Change discusses the Plan Nord, a massive development plan for northern Quebec that includes dams, mines and other industrial development.  He also discusses the opposition to this plan by the Innu People who live in the region, and a delegation of Innu that are coming to Burlington, VT to protest the New England Governors’ conference, where Quebec’s Premier will also attend.

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

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Earth Radio, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Hydroelectric dams, Indigenous Peoples

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by | 2012-07-24 · 12:40

Three responses to Bill McKibben’s new article, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math”

The following three pieces, by Anne Petermann, Dr. Rachel Smolker, and Keith Brunner were written in response to Bill McKibben’s new article in Rolling Stone magazine, titled, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math: Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – make clear who the real enemy is.”

The System Will Not be Reformed

Response by Anne Petermann

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.

While the article is full of facts and figures and the future they portend, it falls into several traps common to US-based environmentalists, which undermine its movement-building objective.

The first and most obvious trap is relying on math to mobilize a movement. Environmentalists, often worried about attacks on their credibility, or afraid they will be labeled “emotional” by industry, tend to focus on statistics, mathematical analyses and hard science to make their case.  Unfortunately statistics like “565 Gigatons or 2,795 Gigatons” do not inspire passion.

While McKibben is focusing on Gigatons and percentages and degrees Celsuis, however, corporations like Shell are running multi-million dollar ad campaigns with TV commercials that feature families having fun, hospitals saving lives, children getting good educations, because of fossil fuels.  Coal = energy security; natural gas = maintaining the American way of life.  And as Dr. Rachel Smolker of BiofuelWatch points out below, some of these very same companies are moving into the bioenergy realm–wreaking yet more havoc on communities and ecosystems in the name of supposedly “clean, renewable energy.”  They are playing both sides of the field in the effort to ensure Americans do not feel their way of life is in any way threatened–ensuring them that they can have their cake and eat it too.  For while China may have surpassed the US in total annual carbon emissions, the US still leads, by far, the per capita release of CO2 emissions.

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