Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK radio for a weekly Earth Minute and Earth Watch interview.
KPFK Earth Minute: GMOs face growing opposition in South Africa, Latin America
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Filed under Climate Change, Earth Minute, Earth Radio, Industrial agriculture
KPFK Earth Watch: Florida Power and Light threatens Seminole nation, panther habitat with plans for Florida’s 2nd biggest power plant
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.
LIVES OF STRAW
Note: GJEP Board Chair and Co-Founder Orin Langelle has the cover photograph on a new chapbook of poetry by Diana Anhalt. His blog post accompanying this book cover, which is found on his website is below.
–The GJEP Team
I received in the mail today Diana Anhalt’s newest poetry chapbook, LIVES OF STRAW, that uses my cover photograph of a street scene in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, which I shot in 1994.
Diana and I have become friends. We’ve never met face-to-face, but have communicated numerous times via internet and phone after I received this request from Diana on 8 September 2013:
I am interested in using Street scene in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico for my book cover because of its resonance, its ability to say so much. I am the author of a small book of poems, “Lives of Straw,” to be released by Finishing Line Press about survival in Mexico—survival in every sense of that word—economic, physical, spiritual. (I lived in that country for 60 years.) What would be involved in acquiring the photo for one-time use? Thank you for your attention.
Diana Anhalt
I want to give a brief background on what may be Diana’s most read book published in 2001, A Gathering of Fugitives – American Political Expatriates in Mexico 1948 – 1965. Diana is described on the back cover as coming “from a long line of wanderers which helps explain why practically everything she has published in Mexico and the United States deals with exile, expatriation and identity.”
She left the U.S. with her family when she was eight years old in 1950, fleeing to Mexico. This was the time of McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC); when it was dangerous to think, much less talk or write, about anything that could possibly be deemed radical.
Dr. Harvey Klehr from Emory University calls of A Gathering of Fugitives, “A fascinating exhumation of a little-known group of American communists – idealists, artists, spies and Hollywood types – who migrated to Mexican exile in the late 1940s and 1950s. Diana Anhalt tells their story – and her own – sympathetically but not uncritically.”
I’m honored that Ms. Anhalt chose my photo for the cover of LIVES OF STRAW. Her chapbook of poetry is available at www.finishinglinepress.com.
And from the last paragraph of Disappearing Act in LIVES OF STRAW, that resonates so clearly to me, she writes –
One day will someone say:
That woman in the photo
looks familiar. Or will I have
passed from mind like a stranger’s
wave out some speeding car’s
window?
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Photo Essay: WV Community Water Relief
Note: Global Justice Ecology Project campaigner Will Bennington spent an all-too-short amount of time doing water relief work in West Virginia last week. The West Virginia Clean Water Hub is doing amazing work, distributing water to communities in need and holding those responsible for the water crisis accountable. Please consider making a donation (be sure to note that it is for water distribution), sending supplies, or volunteering in person. Check them out here: West Virginia Clean Water Hub
-The GJEP Team
By Will Bennington, January 31, 2014.
Mountains of coal line the Kanawha River leaning into Charleston, WV. MCHM and PPH, chemicals that leaked into the Elk River on January 9, are used to process coal. Photo: Will Bennington for GJEP
It’s been almost a week since I returned from doing water relief work in West Virginia, and the news keeps getting worse: Formaldehyde, a known carcinogen at high enough concentrations, might be in the water. The amount of MCHM and PPH, the toxic chemicals that leaked into the Elk River on January 9, poisoning the water of 300,000 people in nine counties, has been increased to 10,000 gallons. Most people I spoke with are still reporting water that has a characteristic licorice smell, indicating traces of MCHM which causes chemical burns in the throat and on the skin, vomiting and eye irritation.
State health officials continue to maintain the water is safe, and appear ready to attack anyone who disagrees. But, it might not matter much what the state has to say at this point. The one thing that everyone I met in West Virginia had in common, aside from lacking clean water, was a deep mistrust of West Virginia governor Ray Tomblin, state and federal agencies, and the safety of their water supply.
Filed under Climate Change
2013 Top ten articles on Climate Connections
Note: Thanks to our readers for another excellent year! Below are the top 10 Climate-Connections blog posts from 2013. Over the course of the year we saw nearly a quarter of a million viewers from 206 countries. Thanks for being one of them. And if you are not following this blog, please do–and feel free to share them around.
Also included below are GJEP’s other Media Program accomplishments from 2013. Check them out!
-The GJEP Team
Top 10 Climate Connections blog posts
10. Photo essay: Three brutally arrested protesting GE trees at industry conference. (May 30)
All photographs by Orin Langelle/ photolangelle.org for GJEP
9. Transgenic DNA from GMOs in Chinese rivers – Why is it suddenly there? (March 25)
By Kurt Heidinger. Source: Biocitizen
UC Berkeley microbiologist Dr Ignacio Chapela has discovered “the escape and establishment of transgenic DNA from GMOs” in rivers in China.
That’s not good news. The introduction of new kinds of DNA into the bios creates new forms of life and diseases, as Dr. Chapela reports. Continue reading here
8. Explosion at West Virginia frack site seriously injures four (July 11)
By John Upton. Source: Grist
Federal investigators are trying to figure out what caused an explosion at a West Virginia fracking site over the weekend. The blast injured at least seven people, including four workers who were sent to a hospital with life-threatening burns.
Residents and activists have long complained about safety practices by frackers operating in the state, where they draw natural gas from the Marcellus shale formation. Traffic accidents involving trucks traveling to and from frack sites in the state are common, and explosions can be deadly. Continue reading here.
7. Fracking equipment set ablaze in Elsipogtog, New Brunswick (June 26)
Source: Earth First! Newswire
Halifax Media Co-op reports that a piece of drilling equipment was set ablaze on the 24th, by person or persons unknown. This comes amidst escalating resistance to hydraulic fracturing by indigenous peoples in Elsipogtog, “New Brunswick”.
This comes after numerous direct actions, the midnight seizure of drilling equipment, and a local man being struck by a contractor’s vehicle. Continue reading here.
6. Breaking: Protesters arrested at genetically engineered trees conference. (May 27)
Source: Global Justice Ecology Project
(Asheville, NC) As the Tree Biotechnology 2013 conference kicked off early Monday, two Asheville residents were arrested after disrupting a major presentation by Belgian tree engineer Wout Boerjan entitled, “Engineering trees for the biorefinery.”
The protestors said that if legalized, GE trees would lead to the destruction of native forests and biodiversity in the US South, and be economically devastating to rural communities. Continue reading here.
5. Breaking: University of Florida threatens to arrest anti-GMO presenters and bans them from campus. (October 28)
Source: Global Justice Ecology Project
Gainesville, FL–The University of Florida, a leading institution researching genetically engineered (GE) trees, threatened to arrest activists from the Campaign to STOP GE Trees when they arrived on campus Saturday to prepare for a presentation to highlight critical perspectives on tree biotechnology that was scheduled for tonight. The police informed the group that their presentation had been cancelled, and warned them that they were banned from University of Florida (UF) property for three years. Continue reading here.
4. US farmers may stop planting GM’s after poor global yields. (February 7)
By Robyn Vinter. Source: Farmers Weekly
Some US farmers are considering returning to conventional seed after increased pest resistance and crop failures meant GM crops saw smaller yields globally than their non-GM counterparts.
Farmers in the USA pay about an extra $100 per acre for GM seed, and many are questioning whether they will continue to see benefits from using GMs. Continue reading here.
3. Three responses to Bill McKibben’s new article, “Global warming’s terrifying new math”. (July 24 2012)
By Anne Petermann, Rachel Smolker, and Keith Brunner. Source: Global Justice Ecology Project
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. Continue reading here.
2. How Facebook may secretly foil your activist plans. (September 16)
By Kevin Mathews. Source: Care2
In recent years, Facebook has become an unexpectedly crucial tool for activism. The social media platform allows activists to efficiently connect and communicate with one another in order to arrange meetings, protests and boycotts. Unfortunately, activists who once found that Facebook helped make organizing easier are now encountering obstacles – and the resistance is coming from Facebook itself. Continue reading here.
1. Vermont: Protestors remove American flags at 9/11 memorial in act of solidarity. (September 12)
Source: Climate Connections
Middlebury College, VT — At 3:00PM on Wednesday, September 11, 2013, five protesters removed thousands of flags desecrating occupied Abenaki lands. The U.S. flags were part of a 9/11 memorial established by Middlebury College students.
Amanda Lickers, a member of the Onondowa’ga Nation, states, “In the quickest moment of decision making, in my heart, I understood that lands where our dead may lay must not be desecrated. In my community, we do not pierce the earth. It disturbs the spirits there, it is important for me to respect their presence.” Continue reading here.
New Voices on Climate Change Speakers Bureau
The mission of GJEP’s New Voices on Climate Change program is to amplify voices from traditionally underrepresented communities and front line activists engaged in various environmental justice struggles.
Part of this work involves our Speakers Bureau, which features social movement leaders from North America, Latin America, Africa and the South Pacific. In 2013, we helped facilitated over 95 connections for activists in the Speakers Bureau, including:
- Requests for interviews with major media outlets like CBC, Russian Television, New Internationalist, and Yes! Magazine;
- Requests to speak at universities including Middlebury College and Tufts University, major academic climate change proceedings like the International Association for Impact Assessment, and social justice events like the Democracy Convention in Madison, WI;
- Opportunities for grant and fellowship support to environmental justice organizers, and
- International connections between activists and organizers.
KPFK Pacifica Earth Watch collaboration
GJEP collaborates with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Pacifica radio on weekly Earth Minute segments and Earth Watch interviews. The Sojourner Truth show is a nationally syndicated public affairs show drawing out how women, communities of color, and those most impacted by systems of oppression are responding.
In 2013, we coordinated 24 guests for the Sojourner Truth show, including live report-backs from the World Social Forum in Tunisia and COP 19 climate summit in Poland, interviews from international and community-led struggles against fracking, tar sands, and coal mining; and analysis of developments like the release of the Obama administration’s climate action plan.
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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice
KPFK Earth Watch: Rhetoric versus reality in President Obama’s State of the Union speech
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.
Obama’s State of the Union: fantasy, fact, fiction or all of the above?
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.
