Environment
Louisiana Woman Arrested After Chaining Herself to Keystone XL Pipe Yard Gate
- Category: Environment
In an act of nonviolent direct action, a Gulf Coast mother Cherri Foytlin was arrested after chaining herself to a gate to the multinational energy corporation TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipe yard. She was brought before a judge hours after and charged with a Class A Misdemeanor for “criminal trespass of a habitation, shelter, superfund, or infrastructure.” Her arrest brought the number of arrests during Tar Sands Blockade actions in Texas to thirty-two.
Over 50 Enter Tar Sands Blockade Tree Village in Defiance of Police and Legal Repression to Defend Tree-Sitters
- Category: Environment
PRESS RELEASE FROM TAR SANDS BLOCKADE:
Risking arrest, lawsuits protesters rally for massive tree blockade after expansion of TransCanada’s overreaching SLAPP suit
Katrina Pain Index 2012: 7 Years After
- Category: Environment
by Bill Quigley and Davida Finger
1 Rank of New Orleans in fastest growing US cities between 2010 and 2011. Source: Census Bureau.
1 Rank of New Orleans, Louisiana in world prison rate. Louisiana imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of the other 50 states. Louisiana rate is five times higher than Iran, 13 times higher than China and 20 times Germany. In Louisiana, one in 86 adults is in prison. In New Orleans, one in 14 black men is behind bars. In New Orleans, one of every seven black men is in prison, on parole or on probation. Source: Times-Picayune.
"Making It Right" After BP Oil Disaster Is Up to Us - Not BP
- Category: Environment
by Riki Ott 
Grand Isle, Louisiana. When I returned to Cordova, Alaska, in December 2010 after my first six-month stint in the Gulf coast communities impacted by the BP oil disaster, fishermen greeted me wryly. "See you found your way home."
Fishermen were interested in stories because even then, twenty-one years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, there was still no sense of closure. Exxon never "made it right." How could Exxon "make right" family lives shattered by divorce, suicide, or strange illnesses stemming from the "cleanup" work? Or the sense of betrayal by the Supreme Court to hold Exxon to its promise to "pay all reasonable claims"?
Durban: Fiddling While the World Burns
- Category: Environment
The image of Nero fiddling as Rome burned—albeit apocryphal-- has stuck as the metaphor for willfully irresponsible government. Government representatives, gathered at climate change talks in Durban, South Africa, have been fiddling for the past week. Of the hundreds of closed-door sessions, official meetings and informational seminars, all that’s come out so far is cacophony. By the looks of it, they plan to fiddle right through to the end, wasting one of the last opportunities to respond in time to a threat that affects not only their societies, but the entire planet.
With only a few days to go, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced the obvious on December 5., telling delegates, "It may be true, as many say: the ultimate goal of a comprehensive and binding climate change agreement may be beyond our reach – for now."
Durban Climate Talks: Criminal Inaction and the Imminent Danger
- Category: Environment
by Orpheus Reed 
Representatives from 195 countries are now meeting at the 17th UN-sponsored climate talks in Durban, South Africa. Meetings run through December 9. Since 1992, these UN climate conferences have talked about addressing the urgent problem of climate change—but nothing of substance has been done to stop the problem. Instead, the situation has gotten worse and worse.
Even before the Durban conference began, the representatives of the most powerful countries that control this whole process had announced to the world that we should have no expectations for any major deals to address climate change.
The Tar Sands Action (smile)
- Category: Environment
By Ted Glick
My mind has been a jumble the last couple of days as I’ve tried to think about what I would be saying in this column. I knew I would be writing about the historic and amazing Tar Sands Action in Washington, D.C.
I am literally smiling as I embark on this writing journey. There was so much positive energy, so many wonderful experiences, so much hope for the future in and around the two weeks of sitting-in and standing-in in front of the White House, August 20-September 3.
Be in D.C. at the Tar Sands Protests August 20 to September 3!
- Category: Environment
This article first appeared on the site Revolution
We Can't Wait for the Politicians, We Have to Create the Future that We Need Ourselves
- Category: Environment
Last week, the House voted 248-174 to pass a resolution saying global warming wasn't real. It was one of the most embarrassing votes that Congress has ever taken. |
The following was a speech Bill McKibben gave at the Powershift 2011 conference in Washington DC.
By Bill McKibben
Very, very few people can ever say that they are in the single most important place they could possibly be, doing the single most important thing they could possibly be doing -- that's you, here, now. You are the movement that we need if we are going to win in the few years that we have. You have the skills now, you are making the connections, and there is no one else. It is you. That is a great honor and that is a terrible burden. There is no one else.
Final Day at Cancun: Youth Delegates Ejected Counting off the Victims of Inaction
- Category: Environment
As the final negotiating sessions unfolded at the “Conference on Climate Change”, youth from around the world lined the front of the Moon Palace conference center in a final appeal for a science-based target of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C in any agreements coming out the Cancun negotiations.
Environment