by Susan Phillips, Cross Posted NPR
Discord over how to best protect the environment from impacts of natural gas drilling has led to a coalition of grassroots environmental groups shunning the Environmental Defense Fund. The groups plan to hold a conference call on Wednesday to “send a message…disapproving of [EDF's] willingness to be coopted by industry interests on the issue of hydraulic fracturing for shale gas.”
by Henia Belalia, Cross Posted from Peaceful Uprising
How do activists use social movement history? What lessons can be learned from past movements for social change in our fight to stop climate change? We often rely on lessons and tactics from the U.S. Civil Rights movement. We think this might be the best source for our lessons from the past.
Think again.
How about the Abolition of the Slave Trade? As an activist, I fight for climate justice. As an historian and a scholar of law and history, I study slavery and the slave trade.
The movement for civil rights—certainly the mainstream movement—was based on the perceived need to have equal rights in an existing system. The right to vote, the right to fair housing. An end to segregation. Integration into the existing status quo at every level. And none of these things are bad things. Having equal rights is better than not having equal rights. But even the more radical wing of the civil rights movement questioned this strategy. S.N.C.C. members often asked, “Do we really want to die for the right to vote?”
The movement for climate justice is different. We are demanding “system change, not climate change.”
Cross Posted from Seeds for Peace
This summer, people from across the country will come together to stop the first tar sands mine in the USA from ever breaking ground. Activists from Utah-based organizations Peaceful Uprising, Canyon Country Rising Tide, Before it Starts, and more have joined forces to make sure this is a powerful and effective moment in the growing movement to stop extreme extraction.
The Canadian petroleum corporation US Oil Sands, Inc is targeting the remote state lands of eastern Utah to be the first tar sands project in the USA. Because political and regulatory objections are diminished in Utah, this project at PR Spring now has the green-light from the state to begin commercial operations.
If companies like US Oil Sands can prove that these types of dirty extraction operations are economically viable in Utah, then more tar sands and oil shale projects will spring up across the region. The legal efforts to stop this project have stalled construction, but time has run out. It is now time for people to come together and say NO Tar Sands in the US, NO Tar Sands anywhere!
by Dan Bacher, Cross Posted from Indybay
Missed in the mainstream media coverage of the release of the revised Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) documents on March 14 was the alarming role the peripheral tunnels could play in increased fracking in California.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the controversial, environmentally destructive process of injecting millions of gallons of water, sand and toxic chemicals underground at high pressure in order to release and extract oil or gas, according to Food and Water Watch.
Cross posted from We Are Fearless Summer
Over the past few years we’ve witnessed a rising tide of courage from the frontlines; communities from the pinewoods of East Texas to the hollers of West Virginia have come together to defend the land and the people from the ravages of extreme energy. Yet with every new frack-well drilled, pipeline laid, and mountain blasted, the extraction industry pushes our planet closer to irreversible tipping points.
But now we are coming together as a movement to push back.
For too long we have struggled separately and we are running out of time. If we are going to reclaim our future, we must begin to speak with one voice. That’s why we are calling for the national movement against extreme energy to join in a summer of coordinated action. As this industry continues to escalate its attack of life on earth, we must respond by asserting our dignity and escalating our action for a livable future. In the face of unfathomable ecological destruction and looming runaway climate change, we must take the kind of bold action that is necessary to save the planet. We must all draw our lines in the sand. We must face our fears together ; we must take our future fearlessly into our hands and change business as usual.
Will you join us in ringing in a #FearlessSummer?
Cross Posted from Root Force
ALBANY, NY – May 2 – Local residents and elected leaders in Dryden, N.Y. are celebrating victory today in a closely watched case over local fracking bans. A state appeals court ruled in favor of the towns of Dryden and Middlefield, affirming lower court decisions upholding the towns’ right to ban oil and gas development activities—including the controversial technique of fracking—within town limits. The legal battle first began in 2011, and industry is widely expected to seek review of the ruling by New York’s high court (the Court of Appeals).
“I’m proud to represent the Town of Dryden and I’m especially proud today,” said Town Supervisor Mary Ann Sumner. “We stood up for what we knew was right. And we won. The people who live here and know the town best should be the ones deciding how our land is used, not some executive in a corporate office park thousands of miles away.”
The case in Dryden has taken on special significance. More than 20,000 people from across the country and globe sent messages to Sumner and her colleagues on the Town Board, expressing support for the town in its legal fight.
Dryden’s story began in 2009, after residents pressured by oil and gas company representatives to lease their land for gas development learned more about fracking, the technique companies planned to use to extract the gas. During fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, companies inject millions of gallons of chemically treated water into the ground to break up rock deposits and force out the gas. Residents organized and educated for more than two years under the banner of the Dryden Resource Awareness Coalition (DRAC), ultimately convincing the town board to amend its zoning ordinance in August 2011 to clarify that oil and gas development activities, including fracking, were prohibited.
“We love our town. We’re proud to be from a place that doesn’t back down from a tough fight. And we’re inspired by the outpouring of support we’ve received,” said DRAC member Deborah Cipolla-Dennis. “Now it’s our turn to support communities across New York, and in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, and elsewhere that are standing up to the oil and gas industry.”
by Stephen Leahy, Cross posted from The Guardian
Monitoring of environmental activists in Canada by the country’s police and security agencies has become the “new normal”, according to a researcher who has analysed security documents released under freedom of information laws.
Security and police agencies have been increasingly conflating terrorism and extremism with peaceful citizens exercising their democratic rights to organise petitions, protest and question government policies, said Jeffrey Monaghan of the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
The RCMP, Canada’s national police force, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) view activist activities such as blocking access to roads or buildings as “forms of attack” and depict those involved as national security threats, according to the documents.
Protests and opposition to Canada’s resource-based economy, especially oil and gas production, are now viewed as threats to national security, Monaghan said. In 2011 a Montreal, Quebec man who wrote letters opposing shale gas fracking was charged under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act. Documents released in January show the RCMP has been monitoring Quebec residents who oppose fracking.
by Rabb!t, Earth First! Newswire
As the saying goes: dress for the job you want [to undermine], not the one you have [been].
Lately, environmental activists have been shedding the flannels and camo and straightening their ties in order to infiltrate meetings, conferences and symposiums, disrupting dirty energy projects at the point of decision. Not only can you stop a lot of bulldozers by interrupting the executives who order the bulldozers—you also get to see the looks on those execs’ faces as they realize that all their power and money suddenly appear insubstantial in the face of passionate cries and steel bicycle locks.
Just yesterday, the Pittsburg Post-Gazette reported, protesters fed up with mountaintop removal coal mining crashed PNC Financial Services Group’s annual shareholder’s meeting. According to participants, PNC is one of the nation’s largest financiers of mountaintop coal mining. The activists, most of whom were from the Earth Quaker Action Team, called out the names of board members and asked them to state their position on mountaintop removal. PNC’s chairman and CEO, James Rohr, tried to continue the meeting in spite of the disturbance, but finally gave up, calling the meeting off about 15 minutes after it started.
[Update: Read George Lakey's personal account of the action here]
by Gal Fawkes / Earth First! News Wire
Poisoned Water Supply Got You Down? Eco-Capitalism to the Rescue!
Michael Klein at a meeting of the board of eco-industrialists of the Rainforest Action Network.
What if there was a man, an environmentalist lets say—as well as an oil, gas, mining, double d-bag executive—that could turn the toxic nature of fracking into something delicious, into something that marketing professionals could label “green” and would be, of course, highly profitable? Would you then stop, for the love of all things industrial and status-quo, with your damned anti-fracking movement? Please? Continue reading
Help a delegation of First Nations and Alaska Natives to attend Shell AGM in the Hague, Netherlands to stop extreme energy development on their homelands
The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation has joined forces with the UK Tar Sands Network and the Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign to attend the Shell Annual General Shareholder Meeting in the Hague, Netherlands this May to send a message to Shell executives and shareholders that enough is enough.
Shell’s Extreme Energy projects are the “bottom of the barrel” kind of oil and gas projects. Many of the last pristine areas on earth are within Indigenous lands. Extreme energy includes fracking, tar sands, and deep sea off-shore drilling. Indigenous Peoples bear the brunt of extreme energy development through loss of land, clean water, and clean air. Many still live sustainably off the land. Continue reading
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