Category Archives: Tar Sands

FBI Harassing Activists in Pacific Northwest

Alex Reid Ross over a Bark wrote this excellent article, originally posted on Defending Dissent, detailing the recent harassment of environmental activists in the Pacific Northwest. Clearly, this increased harassment comes because the stakes are so high for everyone and because groups like Rising Tide are doing such amazing work. The last paragraph definitely gets at that idea:

“My [attorney] was not able to find out what or why they were bothering my sweet folks, but I will tell you why,” one activist whose parents were visited wrote. “Its [sic] because Portland Rising Tide is outreaching, training, and organizing hundreds of Pacific NWers of all age groups to engage in a level of civil disobedience not seen in decades. We are going to do it to save our neighborhoods, our communities, our salmon, and our climate. And that scares the shit out of the powers that be.”

Ross does a great job working through individual stories that show the effects of harassment on people’s lives, and also provides the larger context of the movement as it continues to evolve.

 

 

Comments Off on FBI Harassing Activists in Pacific Northwest

Filed under Political Repression, Tar Sands

DeSmogBlog on the Edelman/TransCanada PR Story

As usual, DeSmogBlog did a great job covering the just breaking story of Edelman’s PR plan for a desperate TransCanada to win support and stymie public opposition to its Energy East pipeline.

This story only reminds us that, however silly and weak TransCanada comes off, the threat to those fighting the pipeline is real and, as Clayton Thomas-Muller recently said in a KPFK interview, “the stakes couldn’t be higher.”

Edelman’s TransCanada Astroturf Documents Expose Oil Industry’s Broad Attack on Public Interest

By Brendan DeMelle, DeSmogBlog. 17 November 2014.

Documents obtained by Greenpeace detail a desperate astroturf PR strategy designed by Edelman for TransCanada to win public support for its Energy East tar sands export pipeline. TransCanada has failed for years to win approval of the controversial border-crossing Keystone XL pipeline, so apparently the company has decided to “win ugly or lose pretty” with an aggressive public relations attack on its opponents.

Read the whole article at DeSmogBlog.

Comments Off on DeSmogBlog on the Edelman/TransCanada PR Story

Filed under Pipeline, Tar Sands

Labor Day Special: Chris Hedges calls out the Climate March

Chris Hedges posted a new piece at Truthdig yesterday, “The last Gasp of the Climate Change Liberals.” Besides getting directly to the point of the critiques associated with the September 21 Climate March, he gives a little love to Climate Connections founder and Global Justice Ecology Project’s Executive Director, Anne Petermann. This is a most important piece. Please read it.

Thanks Chris!

June 25, 2013, President Barack Obama  wipes perspiration from his face as he speaks about climate change at Georgetown University in Washington.   Courtesy truthdig-AP Photo/Charles Dharpak

June 25, 2013, President Barack Obama wipes perspiration from his face as he speaks about climate change at Georgetown University in Washington. Courtesy TruthDig-AP Photo/Charles Dharpak

 

The Last Gasp of Climate Change Liberals
By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. August 31, 2014.

The upcoming climate change march in New York is the last gasp of conventional liberalism. The time for reform and accommodation has ended. We will build a radical movement or be extinguished in a climate inferno.

The climate change march in New York on Sept. 21, expected to draw as many as 200,000 people, is one of the last gasps of conventional liberalism’s response to the climate crisis. It will take place two days before the actual gathering of world leaders in New York called by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to discuss the November 2015 U.N. Climate Conference in Paris. The marchers will dutifully follow the route laid down by the New York City police. They will leave Columbus Circle, on West 59th Street and Eighth Avenue, at 11:30 a.m. on a Sunday and conclude on 11th Avenue between West 34th and 38th streets. No one will reach the United Nations, which is located on the other side of Manhattan, on the East River beyond First Avenue—at least legally. There will be no speeches. There is no list of demands. It will be a climate-themed street fair.

Read the Full Article Here

Click here to read Anne Peterman’s August 14, 2014 Climate Connections post, “The Need for Clear Connections at the People’s Climate March.”  

Comments Off on Labor Day Special: Chris Hedges calls out the Climate March

Filed under Actions / Protest, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Energy, Events, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Independent Media, Media, Political Repression, Posts from Anne Petermann, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Tar Sands, Uncategorized

Utah Tar Sands Resistance

Yesterday, about 80 activists formed a blockade to halt construction of a tar sands strip mine in the Book Cliffs of eastern Utah. The mine is being built by US Oil Sands, a Canadian company, and would be the first in the US. The action was led by the Climate Justice Summer Camp, which was holding a two-week direct action camp nearby.

The mine is located on traditional Ute hunting lands and in the Colorado River Basin, which provides drinking water to 40 million people. As Peaceful Uprising argues,

Tar sands and oil shale mining and refining, if allowed to begin in the U.S., would rob us of our water rights. The Colorado’s flow is diminishing, not increasing, and these mining and refining processes require massive amounts of water. This inescapable reality would cause widespread conflicts over water, as water rights were seized from farmers and communities. We will not allow tar sands and oil shale profiteers to seize the water that rightfully belongs to everyone.

During the protest, those locked to equipment were arrested along with other supporters, leading to 21 arrests total, and protesters were faced with police brutality. To follow the events of the blockade and give support, go to the twitter feed for Utah Tar Sands Resistance and donate on their website: http://www.tarsandsresist.org/ or here.

For background, check out our KPFK interview from March with Melanie Martin, from Peaceful Uprising. 

Comments Off on Utah Tar Sands Resistance

Filed under Actions / Protest, Tar Sands

KPFK Earth Watch: US’s first tar sands mine facing opposition in Utah

kpfk_logoMelanie Martin, with Peaceful Uprising, discusses growing opposition to tar sands mining in eastern Utah, and the disproportionate impact of Salt Lake City’s oil refineries on communities of color and low-income neighborhoods.

Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK radio for a weekly Earth Minute and Earth Watch interview.

Comments Off on KPFK Earth Watch: US’s first tar sands mine facing opposition in Utah

Filed under Earth Radio, Earth Watch, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Tar Sands

This week’s Earth Watch on Indigenous Resistance to the Tar Sands

Global Justice Ecology Project teams up weekly with Pacifica’s Sojourner Truth show hosted by Margaret Prescod to cover important news about the environment.  Every Tuesday we produce an “Earth Minute” and each Thursday an “Earth Watch” interview segment with an activist from the front lines of the battle to protect mother Earth.

Comments Off on This week’s Earth Watch on Indigenous Resistance to the Tar Sands

Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Earth Radio, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, Mining, Oil, Tar Sands

KPFK Earth Minute: Idle No More movement hosts major day of action for Indigenous rights

kpfk_logoGlobal 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: Idle No More movement hosts major day of action for Indigenous rights

Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Justice, Earth Minute, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Indigenous Peoples, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Tar Sands, Women

KPFK Sojourner Truth Earth Watch: Mathew Louis-Rosenburg on Fearless Summer, MTR in southern Appalachia

July 25, 2013.

kpfk_logoMathew Louis-Rosenberg is an organizer in southern West Virginia with Coal River Mountain Watch and the RAMPS Campaign (Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival).  He is also a convener of the Extreme Energy Extraction Collaborative, a new national effort to network folks fighting on the front lines of battles around energy extraction.

Mathew discusses Fearless Summer, an initiative launched out of the first Extreme Energy Extraction Summit this February, as well as the social and environmental crisis in Appalachia caused by mountaintop-removal coal mining.

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 Sojourner Truth Earth Watch: Mathew Louis-Rosenburg on Fearless Summer, MTR in southern Appalachia

Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Coal, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Hydrofracking, Mountaintop Removal, Oil, Pollution, Tar Sands