What Love Looks Like: A conversation with Tim DeChristopher by Terry Tempest Williams

Painting by Robert Shetterly, Americans Who Tell the Truth

Cross-posted from Orion Magazine

FROM THE MOMENT I HEARD about Bidder #70 raising his paddle inside a BLM auction to outbid oil and gas companies in the leasing of Utah’s public lands, I recognized Tim DeChristopher as a brave, creative citizen-activist. That was on December 19, 2008, in Salt Lake City. Since that moment, Tim has become a thoughtful, dynamic leader of his generation in the climate change movement. While many of us talk about the importance of democracy, Tim has put his body on the line and is now paying the consequences.

Unist’ot’en Supporters Deliver Message to Chevron Global Headquarters

#NoPipelines

#NoFrackingChevron

In solidarity with a global day of actions happening all over North America on March 30, a group called Anti-Colonial Queer Action (ACQA) traveled from San Francisco to San Ramon, CA (Ohlone Territories), where Chevron has its global headquarters, to demonstrate against fracking pipelines on Unist’ot’en and Wet’suwet’en territories and deliver a message from the Unist’ot’en to Chevron.

ACQA hoisted a banner that stated “No Fracking Pipelines on Indigenous Territories,” to the flagpoles outside of Chevron’s compound at 6001 Bollinger Canyon Rd.Afterwards, members of ACQA read out and delivered a letter, written by Unist’ot’en spokesperson Freda Huson.

Tar Sands Bloopers Part 2!

A crew cleaning 30,000 gallons of tar sands spilled in MN

by Carter / Earth First! Newswire

If you missed the first edition it’s here

The embarrassing industrial gaffs just keep coming! Earlier this week TransCanda had to wipe the toxic egg of their face when a tailing pond from the tar sands spilled into the Athabasca River. As if that wasn’t enough to make you chuckle at the sheer negligence and/or stupidity of these blundering billionaires, the two additional tar sands spills that happened this week should have you laughing until you cry… and then weeping for hours.

Smuggler Caught with More than 10 Percent of an Entire Species

by P. Tanson / Traffic

Ploughshare tortoises, native to Madagascar, are one of the most critically endangered species on the planet. And, while countless conservation groups are actively working to save them, the arrest of a wildlife smuggler in Thailand is proving just how easily a handful of criminals could bring about their demise.

Authorities say they recently arrested a 38-year-old Thai man at an airport in Bankok attempting to collect a bag containing 54 ploughshare tortoises smuggled in from Madagascar. Although that may seem less severe than some larger scale environmental crimes, this haul of tortoises actually accounts for nearly 13 percent of the estimated 400 or so individuals thought to still be in existence in the wild.

The Ecocidal Side of Florida Gulf Coast University, March Madness Sweetheart

The university trampled over Florida panther habitat at the behest of a Big Ag benefactor. Cinderella who?

by Tim Murphy /Mother Jones

The Florida Gulf Coast University Eagles, the first 15-seed ever to reach the NCAA basketball tournament’s second weekend, are the toast of March Madness on the basis of their high-flying style (nickname: “Dunk City“) and up-from-nowhere story. Less than two decades ago, FGCU was little more than a collection of trailers looking out over a swamp. Today its hoops team is hanging with the heavyweights.

The less inspiring story, however, is how FGCU rose up out of the swamp. To put it bluntly: The school paved over it, using government connections to pressure the US Fish and Wildlife Service into green-lighting the development and in the process wiping out one of the last vital habitat areas of the severely endangered Florida panther. FGCU’s is a particularly extreme version of a familiar story. For a century, South Florida developers have stared down all comers—and methodically reshaped the environment in the process.

Indigenous group threatens collective suicide in Brazil

Cross Posted from Revolucion 3.0

Una carta firmada por los líderes de la comunidad indígena Guarani-Kaiowá de Mato Grosso do Sul, anuncia el suicidio colectivo de 170 personas, (50 hombres, 50 mujeres y 70 niños), si se hace efectiva la orden de la Corte Federal para despojar a la tribu de la ‘cambará granja’ donde se encuentran temporalmente acampados.

Translation: A letter signed by the leaders of the indigenous Guarani-Kaiowá of Mato Grosso do Sul, announces the collective suicide of 170 people (50 men, 50 women and 70 children), to be effective if the Federal Court orders to strip the tribe of ‘cambará farm’ where are temporarily camped.

 

Sierra Club Canada an “Ecoterrorist” Organization?

“Ecoterrorist” slurs won’t scare Sierra Club Canada, executive director says

by Carlito Pablo / Straight.com

Getting branded an “ecoterrorist” is the least of John Bennett’s concerns.

“We already have been. That’s the point!” the executive director of Sierra Club Canada told the Straight.

In a recent phone interview, Bennett discussed his organization’s deliberations on whether or not to use civil disobedience in its efforts defend the environment.

The Straight asked him how he would view being potentially labelled as an “ecoterrorist” if Sierra Club Canada decides to go the path of nonviolent civil disobedience.

“Without having done anything, we’ve been attacked as though were some kind of evil force in the society,” the Ottawa-based environmental leader said.

Sabotage of Undersea Cables to Slow Internet Speed for 30 Days

from the Economic Times

NEW DELHI: Internet speeds in India, especially for customers of Bharti Airtel, Tata Communications and state-owned BSNL and MTNL are set to be disrupted for the next 20-25 days, after a key undersea cable, carrying data traffic across 14 countries, from Singapore to France, was cut off the coast of Egypt. Two other key cable networks, linking Asia to Europe, were also allegedly damaged.

The extent of the damage is still being assessed. “Currently, internet and data usage are low because of the festive season. India will feel the impact from Monday when offices and businesses come back. Telcos have diverted all traffic from the Atlantic route to the Pacific, but our connectivity to the latter route is not sufficient to cater to all of India’s traffic,” explained Rajesh Chharia, president at Association of Internet Service Providers of India.

Why Wind Power is a Sham

From Root Force

Were you really hoping this was going to save your First World lifestyle?

A series of recently released studies make it clear that wind power is not going to save us—not from global warming, not from high extinction rates, and not from the system of high-energy-consumption industrial exploitation that is killing the planet.

Let’s start with the most damning findings: even the most large-scale shift to wind power cannot slow greenhouse gas emissions enough to have any positive effect on the climate, although it may manage to make things worse. Why?

A studypublished in Nature Climate Change in September found that although hypothetically there is enough power in the earth’s winds to sustain current levels of energy consumption, in practice you could never harvest enough energy from wind to affect the climate:

Turbines create drag, or resistance, which removes momentum from the winds and tends to slow them. As the number of wind turbines increases, the amount of energy that is generated increases. But at some point, the winds would be slowed so much that adding more turbines will not generate more electricity. …

[T]he study found that the climate effects of extracting wind energy at the level of current global demand would be small, as long as the turbines were spread out and not clustered in just a few regions. At the level of global energy demand, wind turbines might affect surface temperatures by about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit and affect precipitation by about 1 percent. Overall, the environmental impacts would not be substantial. (emphasis added)

Action Camp to Defend Little Lake Valley!

 

The California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) is attempting to construct a four-lane  superhighway through Little Lake Valley, otherwise known as Willits.