March 13, 2014.
Danny Billie, of the Independent Traditional Seminole nation, discusses Florida Power and Light’s plan to build one of the nation’s largest fossil fuel power plants adjacent to the Big Cypress Seminole reservation and right in the middle of critical panther habitat.
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.
Anne Petermann, Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project, discusses President Obama’s comments on energy and climate change in Wednesday’s State of the Union address.
You can read Anne’s blog post on the SOTU address here.
Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK radio for a weekly Earth Minute and Earth Watch interview.
by Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project
During Obama’s State of the Union address last night the presence of the star of the reality TV show Duck Dynasty might have been the most real part of a very surreal evening.
Of particular note were Obama’s comments on energy and climate change.
While the US Southeast was being hammered by a highly unusual winter storm which stranded thousands in the metro Atlanta area, (no, this does not disprove climate change you nitwits, climate scientists have warned for years that a warming globe means extreme and unpredictable weather) Obama was proclaiming a desire to address climate change so that “when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, [we can say] yes we did.”
This sounds wonderful until we consider the “all of the above” energy strategy Obama touted earlier in the speech, which gives a nod to some of the dirtiest, most polluting and destructive energy sources. It includes shale oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota–the gas flares of which can be seen from space. This shale oil is so extremely volatile that in the past year two trains carrying bakken oil have exploded. It means more coal; it means more deep water offshore drilling of the type that caused the BP oil spill disaster. It means more nukes, even in the shadow of the ongoing catastrophe at Fukushima. And it means more fracking. Obama made a big show of his support for natural gas “if extracted safely,” which it is not.
Obama spent exactly one paragraph on climate change. He declared it a fact. That anyone even needs to do that in this day and age, decades after global warming was identified as a problem, after the Northeast US was smashed by not one but two hurricanes in two consecutive years, after Super-Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines, after the record droughts in Australia, Africa and the US Midwest–to name just a few climate-related catastrophes of the past 8 years–is astounding. However, climate change is not only a fact. In my opinion it is the single greatest threat to future generations of humans and most other species. Yet it merited only a passing mention. One paragraph out of a 13 page speech.
Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK radio for a weekly Earth Minute and Earth Watch interview.
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Filed under Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy
Johanna de Graffenreid from the Citizen Action for Real Enforcement Campaign in West Virginia discusses the fallout of the January 9th chemical spill which left over 300,000 people without water, and the history of lax regulatory enforcement of extractive industries in WV.
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.
Comments Off on KPFK Earth Watch: Hundreds of thousands hit by water crisis in wake of West Virginia chemical spill
Filed under Coal, Earth Radio, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, Mining, Mountaintop Removal, Pollution, Water
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.
Comments Off on KPFK Earth Minute: World Bank palm oil loans drive land grabs, assassinations in Honduras
Filed under Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Earth Radio, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Food Sovereignty, Forests, Green Economy, Industrial agriculture, Land Grabs, Latin America-Caribbean, World Bank
By Tetet Lauron, 21 November, 2013. Source: IBON International
With only two days to go until the 19th Conference of Parties wraps up, and growing increasingly disappointed that this year’s climate summit will not deliver meaningful climate action, around 800 members of global civil society walked out of the Warsaw Climate Conference.
Wearing white shirts with signs that said, ‘#cop19 polluters talk, we walk’, and ‘#volveremos, we will be back’, the mass walkout included social movements, grassroots organizations, trade unions, women, youth, indigenous groups, and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The statement read at the press conference immediately preceding the walkout said that civil society was voluntarily withdrawing from the Warsaw climate talks and would instead focus on mobilizing people to push governments to take leadership for serious climate action.
Ten days into the climate summit, sentiments are rife that the negotiations seem to have been excruciatingly slow, if not bogged down, on substantive issues such as agreeing on more ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, as well as the provision of climate finance for countries that are most vulnerable to and actually being impacted by extreme weather events such as the recent super typhoon Haiyan that ravaged the Philippines.
Civil society groups lament that what should have been a key moment to steer the world away from climate catastrophe has so far been off tangent in making big and bold decisions to solve the climate crisis. On the one hand, the Warsaw Climate Conference has seen the aggressive backtracking of developed countries such as Canada, Japan, the US, Australia and the EU on commitments to climate action and financing. Corporate sponsorship from big polluters, a high-level coal summit endorsed by Poland, the host government – these were signs not just of the lack of commitment to transition to a sustainable future, but also of the growing corporate influence over the UNFCCC, which was denounced by civil society. Continue reading
Comments Off on Climate Update #5: Global civil society walks out from deadlocked Warsaw climate talks
Filed under Actions / Protest, Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, Warsaw/COP-19
NOTE: GJEP did not go to the UN Climate charade due to the takeover by corporate interests. We walked out in Durban, South Africa two years ago and never came back. Actually two people from GJEP had to be carried out of the Durban talks by UN security in protest of the exclusion of peoples’ voices from the negotiations.
To read GJEP’s analysis of the takeover of the UN process, download Part I of The Green Shock Doctrine, a paper in four parts, which we wrote as a means to help expose and examine the deeper issues behind the climate crisis and their links to many of the other crises we are facing.
–The GJEP Team
WARSAW, POLAND, November 21, 2013 – Today, one day before the planned conclusion of the Warsaw UN climate talks, hundreds of individuals from all continents representing social movements, trade unions and non-governmental organizations walked out of the UN climate conference in protest. [1]
“Polluters and corporations dominated this conference with their empty talk, so we walked out in protest. Polluters talk, we walk,” said Jagoda Munic, Chairperson of Friends of the Earth International.
“While people around the world are paying with their lives and livelihoods, and the risk of runaway climate change draws closer, we simply could not sit by this egregious inaction. Corporate profits should not come before peoples’ lives,” said Jagoda Munic.
“People and communities around the world who are already implementing climate-safe, local energy systems are the real climate leaders. Together, we must now apply political pressure so that our governments follow these leaders instead of the corporate polluters,” she added.
Comments Off on Breaking: Civil society walks out of Warsaw climate talks – Says hope lies with building peoples’ power
Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Energy, Events, Green Economy, Greenwashing, UNFCCC, Warsaw/COP-19
