When Maine Earth First! heard that tar sands barons TransCanada and timber barons Plum Creek were looking for some “green” cred by building industrial turbines into the endangered lynx habitat of the Boundary Mountains (not to mention roads and clearcuts) they knew, despite the greenwashing and ass-kissing of industry lackeys, it was time to throw down. And they did.
Cops defending industry... You're shocked right?
Now they are looking for your support in the courtroom. Here’s the message from Maine EF! organizer Meg Gilmartin:
“…Last summer four brave folks were arrested while blocking a truck carrying parts for the wind project on Kibby Mountain in western, Maine, a remote area that is being devastated by industrial wind power. Four people, Courtney-Ann Boucher, Ana Isabel Rodriguez [an editor of the EF! Journal], Erik Gillard and Willow Amanda Cordez-Eklund werearrested in this action against the corporate domination of ecological unique mountain areas. These folks have been working hard with lawyers to develop a plan and are now taking the case to jury trial in Farmington. This trial will be an opportunity to again raise awareness about the environmental and social destruction caused by placing industrial wind power in remote locations. This is also an opportunity to recognize the power of civil disobedience and its historical and current role in this political movement.
We are asking for supporters to attend the trial on Monday June 20th at the Superior Court House in Farmington… We hope to pack the courthouse to show the public opposition to wind power that exists in this state. We are also asking folks for donations to help fund travel to court and other logistical expenses. Donations can be sent to Meg Gilmartin at PO Box 622; Corinth, Maine 04427. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or for more info.”
Thank you all for your support!! For the wild, Meg Gilmartin meg.gilmartin [at] gmail [dot] com PO Box 622, Corinth, Maine 04427
Jury Trial for Kibby Wind Protestors, 140 Main Street; Superior Court House; Farmington, Monday June 20th Link to news article
Bangor, Maine—Today, all trespassing charges were dropped against Maine Earth First! activists Jessica Dowling, John Waters, Leonard Murphy, Donald Smith and James Freeman. The five were arrested in November after they blocked construction vehicles at the Rollins industrial wind energy project.
Charges were dropped in the midst of jury selection, as activists were preparing for a public trial to expose the corruption and destruction that accompanies industrialism (wind, or otherwise).
Demonstrators formed a blockade of construction vehicles on November 9, 2010, at the 40-turbine, $130 million Rollins Mountain wind-power project being built by First Wind in Lincoln. According to arrestee Jimmie Freeman, the case has emboldened the resistance to this project, “Corruption continues in Lincoln. We won’t rest until its stopped.”
Who wants to join them for the next show-down?
According to the Portland Press Herald, on November 9, 2010, “About three dozen protesters gathered at the entrance to the project site shortly before 8 a.m. as part of a rally planned by groups that oppose the project on Rollins Mountain and other large-scale wind energy proposals around Maine.”
“Most of those arrested are affiliated with the Maine branch of the national activist group Earth First! Wearing orange ponchos against driving rain and biting wind, they stood across a gravel access road and forced truck drivers to stop for nearly a half-hour.”
Activists with Maine Earth First! stood in protest alongside Friends of Lincoln Lakes this morning in opposition to the “Rollins Wind Project”, an industrial wind project that will clearcut over 1,000 acres of ridge-line above the 13 Lincoln Lakes, erect 40 giant wind turbine generators and construct 20 new miles of power line. The two groups are calling for an immediate halt to the projects that are already underway in the towns of Lincoln, Lee, Burlington and Winn.
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Five hundred million straws every fucking day!? Can you believe that shit. Yeah, it’s terrible. While plastic straws have been an item of convenience which keep ice cubes from hitting you in the teeth, a lot of them straws end up in our oceans, contributing to millions of tons of trash and over 1,000,000 seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals ingesting plastic.
This Earth Day there is a call to put an end to these straws of destruction… Or, maybe to just slow them down a little bit.
But should we really spend our energy getting wrapped up in feel-good crap like banning straws this Earth Day and risk missing the big picture of an industrial society that’s turning the planet into a corporate-sponsored wasteland, speckled with resort islands for the elite. The Be Straw Free Project says, sure.
“I’m not out to ban plastic straws. Just cut back on them. Way back, if possible.” That’sMilo Cress, the kid from Vermont who wants to reduce the use of plastic disposable straws in restaurants. Continue reading →
A statement by Maine Earth First! followed the Tuesday conviction of two of its associates for their role in a Franklin County demonstration last summer. Maine Earth First!’s Jessie Dowling says the group feels strongly that industrial wind is a false solution to climate change. The Sun Journal reports members remain committed to defending Maine’s mountain forests as a habitat for rare and endangered species. On Tuesday a Franklin County Superior Court justice sentenced Erik Gillard of Plainfield, Vt., and Willow Cordes-Eklund of Minneapolis, both 27, to serve 10 days in jail and pay $500 fines. The two were involved in a protest against a wind project in Kibby Township.
By Panagioti Tsolkas, Earth First! Journal editorial collective
In aPalm Beach Post articlefrom earlier this year: A St. Louis company, Wind Capital Group, says they hopes to build Florida’s first wind farm, on thousands of acres of sugar land east of Belle Glade. The region is known as the Everglades Agricultural Area, and thought to be a crucial component to restoring the greater Everglades watershed. But has been increasingly encroached upon by industrial development proposals, including rock mines, an ‘inland port’ andFPL’s controversial 38oo megawatt West County Energy Center.
The company has been meeting with Palm Beach County planners to change to the county’s development rules that would be needed before its turbines could be built. Now they are courting environmental groups to accept the proposed changes.
The Chamber of Commerce loves the idea of the $250 million project. “That is tremendous,” Brenda Bunting, Executive Director of the Belle Glade Chamber of Commerce, said of the project. “We would be excited to see something like that come. We are always looking for things that benefit this community.”
The company wants to build between 84 and 100 wind turbines, on land near the intersection of State Road 880 and Browns Farm Road. The150-megawatt turbines would stretch across 11,000 to 15,000 acres, said Robin Saiz, Wind Capital’s director of project development. Each turbine would stand between 262 feet and 328 feet tall, roughly the height of a 30-story building.
Environmentalists say they are concerned spinning turbines could harm birds and bats. “There are a lot of questions that remain to be answered, before we jump on the wind energy bus,” said Joanne Davis, a community planner with 1000 Friends of Florida.
Migratory birds flying through the region could be struck by the fast-moving blades. The endangered snail kite, for one, could be devastated if even a few were killed, environmentalists say. “When you talk about birds like the snail kite, we can’t afford to have any mortality,” said Drew Martin, conservation chairman for the Sierra Club’s Loxahatchee Group.
In June 2007, Florida Power & Light Co. announced plans to build the first wind farm in Florida, on Hutchinson Island, 8 miles south of Fort Pierce in St. Lucie County. The plan met resistance from nearby residents and wildlife biologists and has been put on hold.
Wind Capital says it hopes to have its turbines running by the end of next year.
In other news on industrial wind: A Campaign by the American Bird Conservancy pushes for mandatory standards on turbines
In a June 14, 2011 press release, the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) stated the US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) says it received nearly 30,000 comments on the draft Wind Energy Guidelines and Eagle Conservation Plan Guidance. About 21,000 comments coming through the efforts of ABC calling for mandatory wind energy standards and mitigation for impacts to wildlife and habitat. The comment letter sent by ABC and other groups is available athttp://www.abcbirds.org/Wind_Guidelines_Comment_Letter.pdf.
Nearly 30,000 was an unusually large number of comments for the Division of Habitat and Resource Conservation, which took the comments down from the FWS wind energy website after running into technical trouble posting them.
Meanwhile in Maine…
Last July, four demonstrators were arrested while blocking a turbine blade from reaching the development site of the Kibby Mountain Wind Project. The four protesters are expected to face a jury trial in Franklin County Superior Court in Farmington beginning Monday, June 20th.
Courtney Butcher was charged with criminal trespassing. Erik Gillard, Ana Rodriguez, and Willow Cordes-Eklund were all charged with failure to disperse. Cordes-Eklund was arrested after U-Locking her neck beneath a tractor-trailer carrying a 15-ton turbine blade on Rt. 27. Over 60 protesters gathered on the morning of July 6, 2010 at the development site to oppose the construction of 22 industrial wind turbines on the ridge of Kibby Mountain. The protestors claim that industrial wind development destroys the delicate Alpine ecosystems of Maine’s western boundary mountains. Protestors also object to Kibby Mountain wind developer TransCanada’s involvement in the practice of tar-sands oil extraction in Alberta, Canada. The activists claim this shows that TransCanada is not interested in green energy, one of the supposed justifications for the Kibby project and other wind developments in Maine.
“We recognize the value of developing alternative energy systems,” said protester Meg Gilmartin of Maine Earth First! at the time of the blockade. “But these projects are an example of how corporations take advantage of the climate and energy crises to make profits while avoiding accountability. This is pristine, sensitive ecosystem being destroyed for a project that will not displace any fossil fuel energies from the grid.”
The protest preceded a Land Use Regulation Commission meeting on July 7th, where a plan for additional 15 turbines on neighboring Sisk Mountain was voted down. A later version of the proposal was approved in January. Friends of the Boundary Mountains has since filed an appeal to the Maine Supreme Court to overturn the approval, citing violation of due process, as there was no public hearing for the second Sisk Mountain proposal.
Noted for it’s extreme ecosystem sensitivity, development on Sisk Mountain was opposed by such groups as Maine Audubon Society, Appalachian Mountain Club, Natural Resources Council of Maine, Maine Earth First!, The Native Forest Network, Friends of the Boundary Mountains, and the Citizen’s Task Force on Wind Power.
For more on impacts of industrial wind on wildlife, check out other recent press releases from ABC:
Conservation Groups, Thousands of Citizens Call on Feds to Protect Birds from Wind Turbines, May 19, 2011. View Release
Dramatic Video Shows Bird Strike at Wind Turbine: One Bird Currently Killed Every Minute by Wind Power in the US, April 5, 2011. View Release
Bird Group Says Cancellation of North Dakota Wind Farm Reflects Seriousness of Bird Issues April 4, 2011. View Release
Call for Public Debate on Wind Power after Misleading Industry Release on Bird Deaths March 3, 2011. View Release
New Federal Guidelines on Wind Farm Will Not Stop Bird Deaths. February 8, 2011. View Release
Wind Power Could Kill Millions of Birds Per Year by 2030. February 2, 2011. View Release
Wind Development Threatens Iconic American Birds. December 29, 2011. View Release
On the morning of June 20th a group of people walked onto the Canadian energy corporation Enbridge’s North Westover pumping station and occupied the facility. They called this blockade “Swamp Line 9”. The facility is part of what is called Line 9, a pipeline that moves oil west towards Sarnia and the refining facilities there. However, the industry has been engaged in an effort to slowly gain regulatory approval to reverse the pipeline, allowing it to carry tar sands oil east for refining or to the Atlantic coast for export. The pumping station for Line 9 had been shut down for work and remained shut down during the occupation as Enbridge employees were unable to access the site. The direct action effectively stopped all activity at the pumping station until June 26th when the Canadian authorities raided the occupation and arrested twenty people (you can support their legal fund here).
In protest of an EPA mandate to bury Portland’s historic water reservoirs, activists and organizers together with the neighbors of this city launched Camp Cascadia at the base of Mt. Tabor last Friday. After years of stagnation from City Hall in procuring a waiver to the plan know as ‘LT2′, the people of this community have had enough. After considerable media hype over the so-called ‘Occupy Mt. Tabor’, Camp Cascadia has turned out to be a consummate success.
To begin his speech on climate change at Georgetown, President Obama evoked the image of earth as seen from space in 1968. “[W]hile the sight of our planet from space might seem routine today, imagine what it looked like to those of us seeing our home, our planet, for the first time.” Imagine what it looks like today—the Alberta tar sands’ vast tailing ponds expanding into the boreal forest, plumes of smoke from brush fires obscuring parts of Australia, algae blooms clogging the rivers, widening deserts, retreating glaciers.
If Obama’s speech made one lasting impression, it was that the US “will reduce its greenhouse-gas pollution to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.” Really, that’s only a 5 percent drop from today. While the reduction in greenhouse-gases in the US will come through a very complex system of tax breaks, emissions caps, techno-fixes, and carbon trading schemes, a recent report published in Energy Policy admits that the US and other developed countries will require a 50 percent reduction in 1990 levels—this report places Obama’s target far from the mark. The national climate change policy has its head in the clouds, and obscures what is happening on the ground.
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