This is how we Draw the Line on Keystone XL
After years of organizing, years of building strength in the movement and building resistance to the Keystone Pipeline- today was really something to see. Thousands of people in hundreds of cities drawing one line to protect our future. But today was also more than fighting the pipeline -- it was also about showing the strength and power, and how people can overcome the corruption of the fossil fuel industry.
More amazing photos from Draw the Line
Santa Barbara has a 90 foot pipeline on the beach:
In Waterville, Maine they're standing up against tar sands pipelines headed East, as well as Keystone XL:
In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, folks drew the line along painfully low riverbeds:
Amherst, Massachusetts marched with this GIANT pipeline:
A great crowd braved the rain in New Orleans to Draw the Line against tar sands pipelines and other projects headed for the gulf:
Rallies from Nebraska to NYC for Draw the Line
Amazing photos are coming in from all across the country today, as people "Draw The Line" on Keystone XL, the tar sands, and other dirty enegy projects that are worsening the climate crisis. In Nebraska, BOLD Nebraska and friends rally outside the renewable energy powered barn they're building in the proposed route Keystone XL:
In New York City, activists formed a human tide line to highlight the threat of sea level rise:
In Madison, WI, dozens of people rally with a giant pencil -- it's for the President to draw the line against Keystone XL!
Draw the Line on Keystone XL, actions underway!
Draw the Line on Keystone XL actions are underway! Today in over 200 places, people will draw the line, using their bodies, creativity and spirit to defend the places we love from cliamte change and to tell President Obama to keep his climate promises and reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
Click here for all of the live-updates from the day of action!
Above is a photo from 350JAX in Jacksonville, Florida -- one of the first actions of the day, on a beach at risk of disappearing under the waves.
Here's Bloomington, IN:
And Two Harbors, MN:
With many more to come!
Interesting results from a new climate change survey across Asia
The BBC media action surveyed 33,500 people across 7 countries of Asia (India, China, Vietnam, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal), over a span of 3 years, on their perceptions of climate change based on their lived experiences of its impacts. With an approach that focused on the effects people noticed or felt in areas of food, water availability, agricultural productivity etc (and other direct impacts of climate change), the Climate Asia survey revelead some useful results.
46% of over 20,000 surveyed felt that human activity was behind climate change. But a higher number contributed it to population growth and tree felling (68% and 65% respectively). Insofar, climate change communication has been majorly around its extreme weather consequences. This survey digs deeper into the day to day impacts on some of the indispensable needs of food, water, health and housing. Another useful statistic reveals that the three main motivators for people to take action on climate change, in India for instance are; health, a better future for children and a basic need to survive. It reflects the hard realities of climate change impacts on the day to day living of billions across the developing world. The survey goes into quite some detail across various variables of population, gender, resource availability, media exposure etc to throw unique light on the lived experience of climate change Asia.
The survey comes with a toolkit for NGO's, media and policy makers to use the data and develop communications around climate change. It is not an issue that can remain to be abstract and in the distant future but a clear and present danger that needs a swift response.
The Australian Election was a Climate Disaster: What Now?
Just over a week ago, Australians did the democratic thing and went to the vote. In short, the outcome was a disaster for the hope of Australian government leadership on climate change - it elected a government that is on par with Canada's Harper Government, which has done everything to prevent action on climate change. So we rallied together and hashed out a post election strategy for Australia, and this is what we just emailed to our friends across the country. We thought it worth sharing globally to give a taste of what's to come for Australia.
* We're sorry if our words in an earlier version of this post suggested that the carbon price is not worth defending. We don't think that. 350.org will be focusing on coal expansion and divestment but we strongly support efforts to defend these extremely important policies and we commend the organisations and individuals doing so. Our bad!
I think we all know that the outcome of the election was not a success for tackling climate change, and if we're to be honest, it's probably most adequately described as a climate disaster.
You do have to wonder if Prime Minister Tony Abbott's blood oath to repeal the carbon price counts for anything as there was actually no blood involved. But here at 350.org Australia, we've concluded that the area we need to focus on is their weak spot: coal expansion. We need to win this one, big time.
Here's how.
The Government is fighting a losing battle to expand coal exports
Abbott and the Premier of Queensland, Campbell Newman are desperate to rapidly expand Australia's coal exports. But they’re going to have a tough time. The international price of coal is low and is likely to remain low as demand for coal is not growing as fast as the industry predicted it would. China for one is busy putting in new legislation to decommission coal power plants and ramp up alternatives - meaning that the country is on track to reach its peak of demand for coal much earlier than the consensus outlook had predicted. The international price pressure, coupled with the divestment pressure, and the great work community groups around Australia are doing to fight these projects is making financing big coal projects increasingly risky and undesirable. Just last week, Glencore Xtrata shelved its massive Wandoan coal project for these very reasons.
Over the coming year, we'll continue to build momentum and pressure with Divestment campaigning. We'll also issue a direct challenge to the fossil fuel industry - through Summer Heat Australia (more to come soon).
Alongside those two, we're going to be figuring out ways to challenge the ideology of extraction that would see Australia dug up no matter the social or environmental cost. Naomi Klein defines that ideology as 'extractivism':
It’s an approach to the world based on taking and taking without giving back. Taking as if there are no limits to what can be taken – no limits to what a functioning society can take, no limits to what the planet can take. When crisis hits, there is only ever one solution: take some more, faster. On all fronts. So that is their story – the one we’re trapped in. The one they use as a weapon against all of us.
We mustn't just target Abbott and Newman for their extractivist agenda, we must target the small number of powerful people in Australia pushing extractivism. We must name it and shame it, and at the same time push forward strongly with the progressive, science-based path of development that treats the planet and people like they actually matter. That's a big project, but it's time to begin it. We're always keen to hear your ideas - just hit reply to this email, or post them on our Facebook page!
There's a few other parts to our strategy, which we've summarised in this post-election climate organising checklist:
- Rational argument won’t win the day - the Coalition is deeply ideological. It is a power fight.
- Government lobbying won’t work. We have to challenge power with power.
- Divestment is now more important than ever - it’s our most effective strategy to fight the extra power the coal and gas industry has just received with the change in government, because it gets to the financial base of the industry. We don't have to faff about with the Government.
- Things will move fast. We need to get ready to respond. But we mustn’t get caught up with just responding. We need to go on the offensive.
- Support alternative media. Create alternative media. We have to divest ourselves from reading and believing the Murdoch press. Invest our desire for news into media that is fact-based and unbiased.
- Be ready for non-violent direct action
I think we’re nearing the end-game on Keystone XL
We just sent out this email to our friends in the United States. Not on our email list yet? Sign up here to receive crucial updates from the climate movement.
Friends,
It feels to me like we’re getting close to the endgame on Keystone XL.
Last week the Canadian government sent a letter to President Obama offering vague promises of reducing carbon emissions from the tar sands in return for the right to build the pipeline. Scientists and energy analysts quickly pointed out that this was nonsense -- it’s as if you were to begin your diet with two dozen jelly doughnuts, or plan to quit smoking by buying another carton or two of cigarettes.
I think this means the Canadians are getting a little desperate. They know the tide has turned against this pipeline in the U.S.
We only arrived at this point because of the heroic work you've put in -- a point that is made quite well by this video that I hope you’ll share around. It shows the beautiful work everyone has done for the past two years, and it's an excellent energizer for this critical stage of the fight:
An article in The New Yorker magazine this week called the fight over Keystone XL “the most prominent environmental cause in America.” The article also pointed out that now there are TV ads airing around the country telling the truth: that this is an export pipeline that will threaten every town it passes with ugly spills.
Just two years ago everyone told us this was a done deal. Now we’ve clearly got a chance.
The Canadian government is going all-out right now, and we need to do so as well. September 21st is the day -- that's when we will Draw the Line to oppose the pipeline and the tar sands it would carry. The President has made his promises, and now he needs to keep them. That means stopping the pipeline, and stopping it now.
Click here to find an event near you to Draw the Line on Keystone XL: act.350.org/event/draw_the_line/search/
Extra innings, overtime, at the buzzer: pick your sports cliché, but now’s the moment. Stopping Keystone XL won’t stop global warming -- but it would keep a huge pool of carbon in the ground, and perhaps begin to turn the tide against the relentless greed of the fossil fuel industry. That would be a big deal indeed.
With fingers crossed, and fist clenched,
Bill McKibben
P.S. Here's a link to that New Yorker article, it's quite good: www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/09/16/130916fa_fact_lizza
Sources:
"Canada Offers a Worthless Bargaining Chip in the Fight Over Keystone XL" The New Republic, Sept. 9 2013
www.newrepublic.com/article/114644/keystone-xl-pipeline-and-canada-history-empty-promises
Message to AFL-CIO: Jobs FOR the Environment
The problem of a broken economy and destabilized climate are well known, with increasing evidence arriving daily.
Activists and organizers within the twin movements of economic and climate justice are grappling for solutions and finding them in the way many of our current challenges are solved: through collaboration. The most recent example is a letter from the newly launched Our Power campaign to Richard Trumka at the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations), calling for a meeting to incorporate climate into the AFL-CIO's agenda. The letter comes from a wide array of community-based grassroots groups and their allies, and it turns to one of the most historically powerful institutions to forge a common interest in advancing a new politics on climate change. As one of the letter's authors, Brendan Smith of the Labor Network for Sustainability, is known to say, "there are no jobs on a dead planet."
A jobs program for our time that takes climate change seriously provides a compelling vision. Jobs in the construction sector, to revitalize old, leaky buildings and make them more energy efficient and therefore relying on less fossil-based electricity. Jobs repairing leaky water infrastructure, to restore and retain our shrinking fresh water sources. Jobs to enhance transit ridership, helping enable more people to rely on buses, trains, and ferries over individual automobiles. It's not a new concept, and in fact it was advanced during the Economic Stimulus, yet look at any struggling city to see that there's more to be done.
Not only that, but the AFL-CIO and community groups have another thing in common: an enemy. The fossil fuel sector is a job-cutting and exploitative industry, from the coal mine to Capital Hill. The set of policies advanced by industry trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute are at odds with a vision for working people, and the fossil fuel industry and its allies will stop at nothing to continue business as usual, with perverse examples coming up daily. Within the past few weeks, BP sued the Environmental Protection Agency in order to drill anew, and the Canadian Prime Minister tries to convince the Obama Administration that a climate agreement between the two countries is possible--yet contingent on the construction of the Keystone xl tar sands pipeline. Since facts alone won't stop this industry, a vibrant movement is needed to do so, and that's why this letter matters.
The problem is clear: we need a renewed economy and we need a stable climate, which is dependent on leaving 80% of fossil fuels in the ground. That means we need to find a new source of electricity. One critical part of that is a new politics, that involves workers, as well as the labor and climate movements advocating for the common ground--the land and climate we all share and depend upon.
A Win with a big ‘W’
Do you know that feeling when your biggest problem seems to be that song playing in your head and you can’t figure out which song it is exactly? Sometimes, you try to figure it out without success for months at an end. It slows your system like a never ending virus scan (old and cluttered PC users will get what I mean), so when you finally figure out the song, clouds part and a ray of light hits you and you begin to levitate. Feels like it anyway.
Something akin to that happened here in Turkey last week. Gerze is a small and very green, lovely corner of Turkey on the Black Sea coast. For more than 5 years, the locals there have been battling a 1200MW coal power plant which was being built there by Anadolu Group. The locals have ‘occupied’ the site of construction for more than 2 years now, preventing the entry of construction machines into the site of the proposed plant. Because, although the project’s Environmental Impact Assesment (EIA) report had not been approved, the company was keen to start construction. Gerze locals were also battling the company in the legal arena.
Last week, the court handed the EIA report back to the company for the fourth time. This time the reason for refusal was clear: the proposed plant was within a forest area and that the proposal should be redrafted to stay outside forest areas. For Gerze this is good news as there are forest areas all around, which practically makes it impossible to build a coal plant there after the court’s decision. We still don't know how the company will respond, but by all accounts from our friends and allies the project is all but dead. The Gerze local community won, and it was particularly exciting to all of us who signed on in solidarity with the local Gerze resistance back in 2011 and also for those of us who marched in solidarity with the anti-coal movement of Turkey back in June 2013 during GPS Phase 1 in Istanbul. It’s a Win with a big ‘W’!
But that is not all. Last week also saw a remarkable setback for one of the biggest coal projects in the world. A key funder of the $12 billion and 8GW capacity Afşin - Elbistan plant, the United Arab Emirates company TAQA ‘postponed’ its $8 billion share of financing until 2014, with rumors saying that the company might have withdrawn completely from the project. Moreover, 17 coal plants, including some running since 1995, has been suspended as a result of another court decision following a suit by 12 NGOs. The Turkish Council of State is asking for a cumulative environmental impact assessment on a regional level. This decision by the state council sets a very strong precedent for future projects to provide impartial EIAs based on scientific data. Another win.
We still have a long way to go. There are over 50 new coal plant projects in Turkey. But every once in a while, it is good to sit back, take a deep breath and whistle out a tune in celebration.
Cologne Court prohibits Reclaim Power Camp
Yesterday, Wednesday the 21th August, the Administrative Court of Cologne ruled that no tents or kitchen should be built on the climate camp site in Manheim (Rhineland), at which several hundred people are expected to arrive for the Reclaim Power camp this Friday.
The camp comes hot off the heels of the UK camp, Reclaim the Power, in Balcombe, where thousands took action to stop Cuadrilla’s attempts to start a generation of fracking across the UK. The German camp will target the RWE (nPower) Group, recently criticised for alleged corporate tax evasion in the UK, that is looking to expand the heavily criticised mining of lignite across the region.
The German authorities are accused of a campaign of cuts to public freedoms, attempts which seem to be successfully limiting the effectiveness of such camps as a form of protest. This has happened on numerous occasions in the recent past, with the refugee protests in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and with Blockupy in Frankfurt.
Melanie Schubert a participant at the camp said. "The de-facto ban on the climate camp has far reaching consequences for the fundamental right to freedom of assembly, beyond any specific conflict here over brown coal... This harassment serves only to prevent and criminalise legitimate and effective protest throughout Germany. If enacted, political camps would be made almost impossible in the future. We are calling out in hope of broad solidarity, from citizens who are worried about the future of freedom of assembly. "
Despite months of harassment by the authorities and the judiciary, three bicycle caravans are on route to Manheim and the camp, due to start tomorrow, 23 August, will go on.
For more information about the camp click here. And for more information about the lignite problem in Germany, click here.