Margaret Prescod, host of the Sojourner Truth show, talks with Eriel Deranger of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation about the ongoing efforts to stop the mining of tar sand deposits in Alberta, Canada and the environmental damage such exploitation has wreaked on the region’s indigenous communities.
Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with the Sojourner Truth show for weekly Earth Minutes and Earth Segment interviews.
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Earth Radio, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, Forests, Indigenous Peoples, Tar Sands
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
Global Justice Ecology Project partners with the Sojourner Truth show for a weekly “Earth Segment” every Thursday. On this week’s segment: Ohio residents blockaded an injection well in a protest against hydro-fracking. The Reverend Monica Beasley Martin of Youngstown Ohio fills us in.
Also, in another direct action against fracking, Earth First! shuts down site:
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Hydrofracking, Pollution, Water
Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with KPFK Pacifica’s Sojourner Truth show for weekly Earth Minutes which are written and recorded by GJEP Executive Director Anne Petermann and air every Tuesday.
This week’s Earth Minute discusses a plan by the Chinese government to remove over one million nomad people from nearly one billion acres of land in order to free up the land for development.
The text from this week’s Earth Minute:
China’s government recently announced a new plan to “resettle” Inner Mongolia’s last remaining nomad populations by 2015. This would free up nearly a billion acres of grassland in China for development projects, including highways, rail lines, mines and power plants.
Traditional Mongol herders are protesting this plan that would resettle over one million people, and accuse authorities of illegally taking away their grazing lands and extinguishing their traditional culture. China’s actions violate their rights under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
In early June, thugs hired by land-grabbers clashed with traditional herders who were tending livestock on some of their last grazing lands. Many herders were beaten and two women were hospitalized with serious injuries.
China’s Five-Year settlement plan not only impacts Mongolia’s nomads, but would also affect remaining nomadic populations in Tibet.
Land grabs such as these are increasing globally as countries and companies covet the territories of Indigenous and rural peoples for land-intensive projects such as biofuel plantations and hydroelectric dams.
For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann of Global Justice Ecology Project.
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Filed under Climate Change, Energy, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs
