Yesterday, Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in prison and taken away from the courthouse without goodbyes or the option to self-report.

In court, DeChristopher said, “You can put me in prison, but it will not deter my future of civil disobedience and it won’t deter others who are willing to fight to defend a livable future.”

Outside the courthouse, hundreds of supporters gathered from Salt Lake City and across the country, singing, chanting, and speaking out as they bore witness to the sentencing. Immediately after the bang of the gavel Ashely Anderson and Ashley Sanders were hauled out of the courtroom for loudly rallying people inside saying, “This court has proven itself incapable of justice, so the people will take it back — it is now our court,” foreshadowing the civil disobedience to come outside. As Henia Belalia left the courthouse, she made an official statement: “If there was ever a day in history to take action, this is it.”

Peaceful Uprising activists followed her lead, initiating a sit-in to blockade the two front entrances of the federal courthouse and emphasize that they had no hesitation in joining DeChristopher in jail, giving meaning to the slogan, “We are all Bidder 70.” Members of the community joined the blockade to show their love and outrage, and by the time police had finished, 26 people were arrested.

A mother who joined the blockade with her three children said to them through tears, “I need you to see this, it’s for your future,” as she was taken away. Sit-in participants moved to blockade a major intersection in front of the courthouse during rush hour. As supporters continued to sing and support those being arrested, DeChristopher was quickly rushed out a side door in chains and loaded into a police van.

Yesterday, a true crime was committed in every federal courthouse in the United States: Why is DeChristopher now in prison for protecting our future, while corporate CEOs walk free with millions of dollars for destroying it? We recognized today that our justice system has failed us. It, like our economy and other branches of government, is controlled by the fossil-fuel industry, and today we affirm that we stand with the millions actively taking it back. Please see our official response to the sentencing for action opportunities and links to all of the remarkable actions that are being taken around the country.

Act! The movement is with you.

Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to 2 years in prison today at the Salt Lake City federal courthouse. He was taken immediately into custody, being denied the typical 3 weeks afforded to put his affairs in order and say goodbye to his friends and family.

Federal prosecutors asked for Tim to receive an extra harsh prison sentence in an effort to intimidate the movement that stands with him. They hoped that by condemning him to years behind bars, they would “make an example out of him” and deter all of us from taking meaningful action. But Tim is already an example. He’s an example of the courageous acts that people across our movements are taking to fight for justice and a liveable future. We support Tim by continuing to organize. Our response to this sentence is an affirmation: we will not be intimidated. What’s your response?

The government’s statement is clear. Tim has been sentenced to 2 years as punishment for his politics; for the uncompromising content of his speeches and organizing in the two years since his act of civil disobedience protected 150,000 acres of land. Ironically, his principled views and motivations behind his actions he took were never allowed to enter a courtroom, due to their “irrelevance.” In a highly political trial, the jury was unjustly stripped of its right to be their community’s conscience and manipulated into making a political prisoner of a peaceful and concerned young man.

Author and activist Terry Tempest Williams said, “To think that a young man in an act of conscience might [do any amount of time] in a federal prison for raising a paddle in an already illegal sale of oil and gas leases, compared to the CEO of BP or the financial wizards on Wall Street who have pocketed millions of dollars at our expense – and who will never step into a court of law to even get their hands slapped, let alone go to jail, is an assault on democracy.”

She’s right. But we have the power to turn this assault on democracy into a battle for democracy. Today the Salt Lake City community is expressing both their love and their outrage.

Fossil fuel lobbyists knew that Tim would be indicted the evening before it was officially filed, Jury members explained that they were intimidated throughout the process. The fossil fuel industry should not control our justice system.

Unless we decide to respond accordingly, as Tim serves his time, the real criminals — the fossil fuel industry wrecking our planet and our communities — will continue to run free, unaccountable for the countless oil spills, asthma attacks, contaminated waterways, cancer clusters, and carbon seeping into the air we breathe every day. If the justice system is intent on prosecuting the people protecting rather than pillaging the planet, we must confront the real criminals ourselves. With our heads held high, we continue to stand on the moral high-ground – and will do what’s right, despite the consequences. We know that mother nature’s consequences of inaction are far harsher than any imposed by a court system.

But we are not isolated individuals. We come together with our communities as groups of empowered agents of change who know our system is broken and does not represent us. Our communities represent us, and our vision of a resilient, just, and sustainable world that we are fighting for.
Tim’s sentence is a call to action.

For those of us who’ve been following his story fervently, our hearts were broken today. It is a sad moment. But we now have an opportunity and a responsibility to act on those feelings of hurt and outrage. For Tim’s sacrifice to truly mean something, for the spark it ignites in each of us to burn, we all must take action.

2011 has already become a year of peaceful uprisings around the country. As Tim once said, we were never promised that it would be easy. We know it will take courage, sacrifice and a willingness to sustain our resistance in our fight for real Justice. Tim has taken a step and we will take the next thousand.
Here are a few upcoming action opportunities to join:

• On Aug. 4, community members are calling for direct action at BP’s New Orleans offices in protest of the oil company’s continued lack of accountability for the devastating oil spill.
• On Aug. 12, Rising Tide North America and the environmental justice community is teaming up with economic justice and labor groups in St. Louis to fight corporations destroying jobs and homes with economic malfeasance and the climate with coal.
• In late August and early September, thousands are converging and risking arrest over 15 days at the White House in protest of the Keystone XL pipeline.

We’ll see you on the streets,
Peaceful Uprising and Tim’s community of courage.

Church this morning must have been quite awkward for some people. The sermon might have gone something like, “I know we’re all disappointed that the rapture didn’t come, but don’t worry — its not like it’s the end of the world or anything.” Ha ha.

I was among many progressives making fun of the rapture all day yesterday, but ultimately the joke might be on us. When it comes to global warming and climate chaos, the script is a bit too familiar. According to a recent poll, 44 percent of Americans believe increased severity of natural disasters is evidence of biblical “end times.” That’s nearly half the people in the most powerful country on earth. Thirty-eight percent believe God uses nature to dispense judgment. It’s an important poll that climate-change activists and sensible people everywhere should take seriously.

The #rapture meme picked up remarkably fast. While billboards declaring May 21, 2011 to be Judgment Day have been up for a while , it wasn’t until a couple of days ago that it started getting into the media and many Americans learned that a small fundamentalist sect believed they uncovered the true date of the Beginning of The End. Within a few days over a million people joined multiple “post rapture looting” facebook events, pranks were being played across the country, it was all over the news, and people were cracking jokes on twitter like there’s no tomorrow.

So why did that meme spread so quickly? Unfortunately biblical notions of the coming Apocalypse are not just entrenched in our culture, but are also rearing their ugly heads in our political landscape. And they’re shaping policy. John Shimkus, the Republican Congressman who hoped to chair the House Energy Committee, told reporters this Autumn that we didn’t need to take action to reduce greenhouse gasses because he knows the planet won’t be destroyed. How does he know? God told Noah that it wouldn’t happen again after the Great Flood. Obviously. Shimkus went on to clarify that “The earth will end only when God declares its time to be over.” And its not just Shimkus – the November election saw a wave of new Republican leadership hell-bent on scriptural justifications for inaction on global warming.

In his excellent article Apocalyptic beliefs hasten the end of the world, Jason Mark discusses the depth of biblical explanations used to explain the recent Mississippi river flooding and tornado in Alabama. He cites “two surveys by the Pew Center [that] reveal what climate campaigners are up against. According to a 2010 Pew poll, 41 percent of Americans believe that Jesus will return by 2050. A roughly similar number — 36 percent — disagree that human activity is causing global temperatures to rise.” Jason points out that while causality between these two stats is dubious, worldview clearly plays a significant role in the public’s response to climate science.

Climate organizers should take this seriously. I’m not an eco-doomsday monger, but its clear that as the impacts of climate chaos deepen in North America, most reasoned predictions make it look increasingly like the End Of Days – poison raining from the sky, acidifying oceans, swarms of locusts (or invasive insects), boils (or other rampant disease), increased seismic activity – it’s all foretold. Indeed, droughts, famines, floods, hurricanes, resource scarcity, world wars over water, millions of climate migrants and refugees, all paint a vivid picture.

Of course, real-life ecological collapse isn’t as neat and tidy as the Bible depicts. It doesn’t happen all at once. It doesn’t go from birds singing one day, to ECOPOCALYPSE the next. The transition is already here. But as weather patterns become more severe, so does our challenge. The battle over which story the U.S. public uses to interpret our changing planet may determine the future of human life on Earth.

Just as the have a narrative, we have one too. Organizers often put it as: you can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet. We got in this crisis by corporations acting in their own self interest at the expense of the rest of us, and that we can navigate this crisis by embracing a saner economy.

Which narrative is more resonant and powerful in capturing the public imagination? Which one is activating (requiring some form of collective organized response), and which one is pacifying (requiring you to do what you are told)? We have an uphill battle.

As Jason points out, “close to half of Americans are immune to the warnings about climate chaos because, in their worldview, it’s a prelude to heaven.” Indeed, there may be a large constituency in our country eagerly anticipating catastrophic weather change. There are many ways for climate campaigners to think about this challenge. Do we appeal to them? Do we ignore them and appeal to other audiences to push policy? How do we do enough groundwork so that as the changes become more and more difficult for U.S. politicians to ignore, our narrative gains traction? One way to think about the challenge is to embrace the real meaning of the word Apocalypse.

SmartMeme’s strategy manual Re:Imagining Change has a small section entitled the Slow Motion Apocalypse which I’d like to quote in full:

Our lifetimes are witness to a slow motion apocalypse—the gradual unraveling of the routines, expectations, and institutions that comfort the privileged and define the status quo.

But the word apocalypse does not mean the end of the world. The Greek word apokalypsis combines the verb “kalypto” meaning to “cover or to hide,” with the prefix “apo” meaning “away.” Apocalypse literally means to “take the cover away,” or to “lift the veil” and reveal something that has not been seen.

And thus these are indeed apocalyptic times. A 2008 poll reveals that 62% of Americans already agree with the statement “The earth is headed for an environmental catastrophe unless we change.” As the veil lifts, the assumptions and narratives that rationalize the status quo are shifting. What has been made invisible (by propaganda and privilege alike) has become a glaring truth: global corporate capitalism is on a collision course with the planet’s ecological limits.

As activists, we often dare not speak this whole truth for fear of se
lf-marginalizing, terrifying people, or worse—dousing the essential fires of hope with a paralyzing despair.

Indeed, to face the scale and implications of the ecological crisis requires a degree of psychological courage. The lifting of the veil can release an emotional rollercoaster of anxiety, anger, grief, and despair. When we take it all in—all of the suffering, all of the destruction, all that is at risk—added onto our ongoing daily struggles, it is difficult not to be over- whelmed. Denial is a common response and an effective poultice, however temporary.

A narrative power analysis helps us understand denial as a dynamic that shapes the terms of the debate around the ecological crisis. The assumption that the United States can ‘go green’ on its current path, rather than fundamentally change our systems to operate within ecological limits, is one such manifestation. Denial is one of the key psychological undercurrents in the dominant culture that is preventing widespread acknowledgement of the scope of the ecological crisis, and keeping the apocalypse suspended in surreal slow motion. Denial is a more comfortable alternative to despair, but its impact on the collective political imagination is equally corrosive.

We also see this dynamic inside of progressive movements. Among many dedicated activist groups, there is an unstated culture of self-preserving denial. We see it expressed in various ways: rigid boundaries around an issue or constituency, an exclusive focus on short-term “wins,” and a suspension of disbelief about the limits of current strategies to face the crisis. The underlying assumption is that if we just keep doing what we’ve been doing, and just work harder at it, it will be enough.

Stagnation is the prevailing creative tendency in too many of our organizations. While some tactics are improved, innovation of strategies is perennially postponed. The undertow of denial can keep our movements trapped in a crisis of imagination. The consequences are a policy paradigm incapable of dealing with the scope of the overlapping problems. The sector plods on while an increasingly unnerved public is left vulnerable to fear-mongering, corporate greenwashing and phony quick-fix techno solutions.

The crisis of imagination that smartMeme refers to can also be though of as a crisis of Vision. It’s often pointed out in activist circles that it’s easier for most people to imagine the End Of The World than it is to envision a meaningful revolution in the way our global economy functions. Think about how many movies depict the apocalypse (in whatever form), and how many movies depict a socially-just ecologically-balanced future. Human beings are able to organize and manifest visions that they can actually see. That’s one of the reasons why religion is such a powerful organizing tool – it shapes perceptions the past (through canonical scripture) in order to lend credibility to a moral or political vision of a society that can be built. Our society is filled with visions of The End (religious or not). Let’s fill it with visions of life and balance and interdependence and justice and sustainability, instead.

This shifting landscape unveils a lot of opportunity for us to tell it like it is. While some may find comfort in a passive wait for Jesus to return and wipe away the evil in the world, I’m willing to bet that there are a lot more people willing to fight like hell for a livable future. That’s the story I want to build. The solace is that we’re living amidst the most rapid transition in human history. It’s all up for grabs. And if King Jesus doesn’t judge us for our actions, Mother Nature certainly will.

The tone inside the conference center at the U.N. Climate Negotiations in Cancun has been a bit dismal this past week. Yet despite the reduced expectations inside, this morning the international peasant movement La Via Campesina gave us a new injection of hope and vision with a vibrant march of thousands of small farmers, Indigenous peoples and community activists through the streets in Mexico. It kicked off today’s international day of action – “1,000 Cancuns” – where grassroots organizations across the world demonstrated local resiliency and real solutions to the climate crisis. 30 coordinated events took place in the U.S. and Canada today, anchored by the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance.

Here in San Francisco, more than a dozen local community organizations joined forces to help convert a Mission District parking lot into a community garden and park with affordable housing units. Click here for photos.

“This action demonstrates a tangible solution to the climate crisis by promoting local food production, challenging our dependence on automobiles and strengthening bonds within the community,” explained Teresa Almaguer of People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights (PODER) “The climate crisis requires community-based solutions and an end to corporate influence within the UN climate negotiations.”

In addition to planting vegetables, participants enjoyed live music, theatrical performances and speakers all focusing on solutions to the climate crisis. A common theme at the event was increasing local food production in the fight against climate change, in contrast to the corporate-driven false solutions being put forth inside the U.N. negotiations.

“Industrial agriculture is one of the top three sources of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan of Movement Generation. “Agribusiness corporations profit from everything from fertilizer and pesticide sales to control of what goes onto supermarket shelves. The people are left paying the true costs in polluted water, depleted soil, diet-related diseases, and climate disruption. Meanwhile, U.S. agribusiness harms small farmers, farm workers and consumers – in the U.S. and around the world.”

The Mission District parking lot at 17th and Folsom streets has been the target of an ongoing campaign by community organizations to legally reclaim publicly-owned land to meet community needs. Similar efforts have been successful in other parts of San Francisco and the Bay Area largely for the creation of community gardens.

“At the UN Climate negotiations, the US government – highly influenced by corporate polluters – has pushed for an accord that would lock us in to catastrophic impacts from disrupting the earth’s climate systems,” explained Xochitl Bernadette Moreno of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER). “The Obama Administration needs to drop the Copenhagen Accord and uphold the Cochabamba Agreement which the world’s people’s movements have put forth as a real solution to solving the climate crisis.”

Click here to sign a message to Obama to stop obstructing a real climate deal in Cancun!

Event cosponsors included: Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Center for Political Education, Communities for a Better Environment, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Mobilization for Climate Justice West, Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights (PODER), People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), Richmond Progressive Alliance, Urban Tilth, West County Toxics Coalition.

I was asked to post the letter below, written by grassroots organizations across the United States (Grassroots Global Justice, Movement Generation, Indigenous Environmental Network, Global Alliance for Incineration Alternatives — full list at the end). We are at a critical moment for reflection on movement strategy. Perspectives from the front-lines are illuminating. – JKR

To the board and staff of 1Sky,

We are grassroots and allied organizations representing racial justice, indigenous rights, economic justice, immigrant rights, youth organizing, and environmental justice communities actively engaged in climate justice organizing. Given the very necessary discussion spurred by your recent public letter (Aug. 8, 2010), we wanted to share with you some of the work we have been doing to protect people and planet, as well as our reflections on a forward-thinking movement strategy. Your honest reflections on the political moment in which we find ourselves, alongside the open invitation to join in this discussion, are heartening.

Organizing a powerful climate justice movement: Like you, we recognize climate disruption as a central issue of our time. With the right set of strategies and coordinated efforts, we can mobilize diverse communities to powerful action. Our organizing strategy for climate justice is to: 1) Organize in, network with, and support communities who have found their frontlines^[1] of climate justice; 2) Organize with communities to identify their frontlines of climate justice, and 3) Coalesce these communities towards a common agenda that is manifested from locally defined strategies to state and national policy objectives through to international solidarity agreements.

Community-led climate justice has been winning

In assessing the broader landscape of climate activism, it is critical to recognize that despite the failure of D.C. policy-led campaigns, there have also been significant successes on the part of grassroots climate justice campaigns across the U.S.

Frontline communities, using grassroots, network-based, and actions-led strategies around the country have had considerable success fighting climate-polluting industries in recent years, with far less resources than the large environmental groups in D.C. These initiatives have prevented a massive amount of new industrial carbon from coming on board — here are just a few examples:

Stopping King Coal with community organizing: The Navajo Nation, led by a Dine’ (Navajo) and Hopi grassroots youth movement, forced the cancellation of a Life of Mine permit on Black Mesa, Ariz., for the world’s largest coal company — Peabody Energy. Elsewhere in the U.S., community-based groups in Appalachia galvanized the youth climate movement in their campaigns to stop mountaintop removal coal mining, and similar groups in the Powder River Basin have united farmers and ranchers against the expansion of some of the world’s largest coal deposits.

Derailing the build-out of coal power: Nearly two thirds of the 151 new coal power plant proposals from the Bush Energy Plan have been cancelled, abandoned, or stalled since 2007 — largely due to community-led opposition. A recent example of this success is the grassroots campaign of Dine’ grassroots and local citizen groups in the Burnham area of eastern Navajo Nation, N.M. that have prevented the creation of the Desert Rock coal plant, which would have been the third such polluting monolith in this small, rural community. Community-based networks such as the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Energy Justice Network, and the Western Mining Action Network have played a major role in supporting these efforts to keep the world’s most climate polluting industry at bay.

Preventing the proliferation of incinerators: In the last 12 years, no new waste incinerators (which are more carbon-intensive than coal and one of the leading sources of cancer-causing dioxins) have been built in the U.S., and hundreds of proposals have been defeated by community organizing. In 2009 alone, members of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives prevented dozens of municipal waste incinerators, toxic waste incinerators, tire incinerators, and biomass incinerators from being built, and forced Massachusetts to adopt a moratorium on incineration.

Defeating Big Oil in our own backyards: A community-led coalition in Richmond, Calif., has, stopped the permitting of Chevron’s refinery expansion in local courts. This expansion of the largest oil refinery on the West Coast is part of a massive oil and gas sector expansion focused on importing heavy, high-carbon intensive crude oil from places like the Canada’s tar sands. This victory demonstrates that with limited resources, community-led campaigns can prevail over multi-million dollar PR and lobby campaigns deployed by oil companies like Chevron, when these strategies are rooted in organizing resistance in our own backyards. Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (REDOIL), an Alaska Native grassroots network, has been effective at ensuring the Native community-based voice is in the forefront of protecting the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Together with allies, REDOIL has also prevented Shell from leasing the Alaska outer continental shelf for offshore oil exploration and drilling. Advancing recognition of culture, subsistence, and food sovereignty rights of Alaska Natives within a diverse and threatened aquatic ecosystem has been at the heart of their strategy.

Stopping false solutions like mega hydro: Indigenous communities along the Klamath River forced Pacificorp Power company to agree to “Undam the Klamath” by the year 2020, in order to restore the river’s natural ecosystems, salmon runs, and traditional land-use capacity. For decades, Indigenous communities have been calling out false solutions — pointing to the fact that energy technologies that compromise traditional land-use, public health, and local economies cannot be considered climate solutions.

Building resilient communities through local action: In communities all over the U.S., frontline communities are successfully winning campaigns linking climate justice to basic survival:

• In San Antonio, Texas, the Southwest Workers Union led the fight to divert $20 billion from nuclear energy into renewable energy and energy efficiency. In addition, they launched a free weatherization program for low-income families and a community run organic farm.
• In Oakland, Calif., the Oakland Climate Action Coalition is leading the fight for an aggressive Climate Energy and Action Plan
  that both addresses climate disruption and local equity issues.

Lessons from the Beltway strategy

Our analysis of mainstream climate advocacy’s failure to win in the federal arena echoes yours, but differs in key areas. We agree there was insufficient investment in movement building, and a “Beltway strategy” was prioritized without clarity on what the bottom lines were. “Anything is better than nothing,” will always lead to nothing, because it is a declaration of our intention to compromise. As a result, a decade of advocacy work, however well intentioned, migrated towards false solutions that hurt communities and compromised on key issues such as carbon markets and giveaways to polluters. These compromises sold out poor communities in exchange for weak targets and more smokestacks that actually prevent us from getting anywhere close to what the science — and common sense — tells us is required. We encapsulate the lessons learned as follows:

Access was confused for influence: We do not have influence in D.C., regardless of how much face-time we get with legislators, or their staffers. To start from a place of power, you must first figure out where you have power, and build from there. We have power in our communities where we have relationships and can hold politicians and corporations accountable. In D.C., corporate power rules because they can concentrate energy, resources, and relationships there — in ways we cannot. However, when confronting these same corporations in our tribes, cities, and towns, we reveal that they are not nimble or powerful enough to defeat our communities.

Density was confused for depth; and mobilizing for organizing: Since we are calling for a redoubling of grassroots organizing efforts, we should be clear what we mean. Grassroots organizing is the process by which people in communities rally around a common cause, acting on their own behalf with allies and networks — often against powerful interests, often building new institutions needed to win a lasting change. The material conditions in communities have to change for the material conditions in D.C. to change. Anyone looking to support real and effective solutions would do well to look outside the Beltway.

Targets were confused for solutions: We will never win by centering our principal energy on CO₂ targets alone. Real solutions must move past carbon targets, whether it is parts per million or percentages of emissions. Here is why: 1) Targets reinforce the “carbon fundamentalism” frame that hides the root causes of climate change. By not talking about root causes, we miss opportunities to connect climate disruption with failures of economic systems, resource wars, and forced migration, for example. Targets also serve to reduce discussion on climate to arenas where corporations have greater access. 2) How we get to the targets is more important than the targets. By staking our claim solely around a target, we leave the political space for false solutions wide open. From technology solutions such as “clean coal,” “safe nuclear,” and “renewable biomass” to market solutions such as offsets — these so-called solutions serve to line the pockets of those who got us into this mess in the first place, without dealing with the root cause. The targets we do articulate along with our solutions should be extremely aggressive and aligned with call from international social movements, such as those coming from the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.

Flipping the script: leading with the grassroots

Given the significant gains we have had with community-led strategies for climate justice, and the failure of resource-intensive, Beltway policy campaigns, we need to re-prioritize building power from the bottom up. The strategy we emphasize includes: 1) Investing in grassroots action at frontline struggles to win the victories that build our power, improve our communities and stop the corporations causing climate disruption; 2) Prioritizing local organizing to build the resilient communities, economic alternatives, and political infrastructure that we need to weather the climate crisis; and, 3) Supporting solidarity with grassroots movements around the world, to link our struggles, and to craft policies and structures we need internationally to support solutions determined locally.

International solidarity for a stronger movement — beyond Cancún

As grassroots forces, we have been building with social movements from around the world. Our groups were well represented at the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia in April 2010. The Peoples’ Conference modeled what a more democratic, transparent policy-making process could look like and resulted in proposals that were formally submitted to the UNFCCC, Conference of Parties 16, in Cancun. These submissions are in the negotiating text, being championed by several southern nations.

The demands in these submissions are clear and strong – no offsets, no (carbon) markets, no commodification of our atmosphere or of life. While “offsets” are often cloaked as opportunities for “clean development,” this claim fails on two counts. First, offsets do not lead to clean development but to greater destruction, displacement, and disempowerment. Second, the very premise of offsets is that it is allowable to continue polluting in poor communities and communities of color in the U.S. to justify over-industrialization of communities and their resources elsewhere. As communities fighting climate pollution in our own backyards, we link our struggles with social movements worldwide to stand against offsets and other false solutions and to build real solutions based in our communities. We call on you to stand with us. If there is anything you can take away from this letter, we reiterate:

The equation of power in our movement, just as in our country, must be inverted: The leadership is coming from the grassroots everyday. We will win climate justice by supporting the hundreds of communities around the country who are targeting the climate polluters in their communities, whether that is an energy source, a toxic industry, a dirty port, a big box chain, a freeway, or a developer driving gentrification. Resources should be deployed to win those fights in those communities — for their own sake.

Grassroots organizing cools the planet.

In power,

Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project

Indigenous Environmental Network

Grassroots Global Justice Alliance

Southwest Workers Union

Southwest Organizing Project

Black Mesa Water Coalition

Resisting Environmental Destruction On Indigenous Lands

Communities for a Better Environment

Just Transition Alliance

Asian Pacific Environmental Network

Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives

Alaska Community Action on Toxics

Direct Action for Rights and Equality

Little Village Environmental Justice Organization

People Organized to Win Employment Rights

Youth For Justice Save Our Sacred Earth

Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development

Alternatives for Community and Environment

Justice in Nigeria Now

Ironbound Community Corporation

Don’t Waste Massachusetts Coalition

Berthold Environmental Awareness Committee

Grassroots International

Global Justice Ecology Project

smartMeme

Ruckus Society

Rising Tide North America

Energy Justice Network

Stand Up / Save Lives Campaign

Earth Circle Conservation & Recycling

Biofuelwatch

Coal River Mountain Watch

Rainforest Action Network

Buckeye Forest Council

Causa Justa::Just Cause (CJJC), Oakland and San Francisco, CA

Asian/Pacific Islander Youth Promoting Advocacy and Leadership (AYPAL) Oakland, CA

Buckeye Forest Council, Columbus, OH

Climate Ground Zero, Rock Creek, WV

Mobilization for Climate Justice West, (MCJW) San Francisco Bay Area, CA

Institute for Policy Studies

Sustainable Energy and Economy Network (IPS SEEN)

Natonal Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR)

Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition

(Partial List of Signatures)

You can sign onto this letter as an individual at Change.org.

There is one unlikely group that has joined in protest against the anti-immigrant law: Environmentalists.

As I am practicing civil disobedience in Phoenix today, I’m proud to be a part of the new generation of eco-activists who see the forests for the trees (and the people). We believe the fate of our planet intimately depends on how we treat our brothers and sisters, and that standing up for Immigrant Rights is a central element of our task.

These new environmentalists represent a new way of thinking. We’re connecting the dots: an ecosystem is your home. Economy is the management of your home. When you globalize your economy, you globalize your ecosystem. Here’s the frank outcome: the ecological systems that support life on our planet have been pushed to the brink by an economy that trashes natural resources and destroys relationships between peoples across the planet in the process. When you convert forests into paper, mountains into coal, and oceans into oil, you force people off their land and deprive those land-based peoples of the resources they depend on to survive. A key lesson from the Environmental Justice movement is that supporting those communities in protecting their land and their livelihoods is one of the most strategic ways to fight the drivers of climate change. The root cause of environmental degradation and climate change is the root cause of forced migration.

Human migration has happened throughout history. Immigration is an ever-present, beautiful fact of Arizona’s history. Migration is not the cause of the climate crisis. But displacement of humans (and the next steps of detention and deportation being put in place by SB1070) will be the result of it.

Those of us who have worked around the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change know that half of the UN debates center on “adaptation.” That means finding ways to accommodate the millions of climate refugees forced to find new homes because of the droughts, floods, famines, and destabilization that comprise the climate crisis. Right now the US immigration architecture is being built out. Forward-thinking climate activists know that now is a critical time to ensure that the precedent for immigration policy in this country protects human rights because immigration is going to get a lot more common, not less.

The environmental tradition in the U.S. has a checkered history: it has a great record of supporting wildlife; less great on supporting human communities that belong to these ecosystems. Today’s environmental activist is connecting the dots between people and planet, and standing for human dignity for immigrants in our community is a key part of that. Today is a day for environmentalists to show up.

For information about the vibrant actions taking place today, stay up to date at www.altoarizona.com, and on twitter follow @puenteAZ, @ndlon

Today I was struck even more by corporations trying to capitalize on Earth Day to green their images. As Becky Tarbotton observed in the Huffington Post, the New York Times summarized the situation well: “So strong was the antibusiness sentiment for the first Earth Day in 1970 that organizers took no money from corporations and held teach-ins ‘to challenge corporate and government leaders’… Forty years later, the day has turned into a premier marketing platform for selling a variety of goods and services, like office products, Greek yogurt and eco-dentistry.”

[Photo: Diana Pei Wu]

Against this backdrop, World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba today is a breath of fresh air.

The Indigenous Environmental Network celebrated today by explaining that “this morning Bolivian President Evo Morales was joined by representatives of 90 governments and several Heads of State to receive the findings of the conference on topics such as a Climate Tribunal, Climate Debt, just finance for mitigation and adaptation, agriculture, and forests. The working group on forests held one of the more hotly contested negotiations of the summit, but with the leadership of Indigenous Peoples, a consensus was reached to reject REDD and call for wide-scale grassroots reforestation programs.”

Jason Negrón-Gonzales of Movement Generation elaborated on how they do Earth Day in Cochabamba: “…from now I’ll be talking to my children and 2010 will be remembered as the year that Earth Day took on new meaning. It will be the year that humanity turned a corner in our relationship to Mother Earth and began struggling along a new course…more than politics, the conference in Cochabamba brought to the table humanity’s relationship with Pachamama. This question, raised most pointedly by the Indigenous communities present, was reflected in the project of creating a declaration of Mother Earth Rights, but also went way beyond it. Can we really reach a sustainable relationship with the Earth unless we stop looking at it as something to be conquered or fixed that is outside of us? How would it change our lives and our struggles if we thought, as Leonardo Boff of Brazil said, ‘Todo lo que existe merece existir, y todo lo que vive merece vivir (Everything that exists deserves to exist, and everything that lives deserves to live)’? Or if we understood the Earth as a living thing that we are a part of and that, ‘La vida es un momento de la tierra, y la vida humana un momento de la vida (Life is a moment of the earth, and the human life is a moment of life)’?”

[photo: Diana Pei Wu]

And the politics do matter. The cross-pollination of grassroots social movements in Bolivia are charting a course and global program that articulates both an analysis of the state of play of the United Nations negotiations as well as a set of solutions moving forward. Jason helped outline the core points of the ABC’s of the Climate Negotiations distilled from analysis coming out of the Cochabamba conference:

1. The key question (aside from decreasing emissions) in negotiations is how to divide up the atmospheric space left for emissions given that the US and other developed countries already used up most of the space that there was for greenhouse gas emissions. This then leads to the obvious follow-up question of whether or not the same countries that overused already should get the overwhelming share of what’s left. The obvious answer that most children would tell you is that no – that isn’t fair, or for that matter, just or equitable. Yet when a country like the US says it can’t or won’t cut emissions to the level it demands of others, that’s what happens.

2. Many countries in the Global South, and certainly the Bolivian government, believe that when developed countries like the US need to decrease their emissions that we should do it domestically, in US industries and the US economy, instead of creating carbon markets that let the US pollute away while paying someone else to decrease for them. This makes sense because history has shown that the projects that are supposed to “offset” emissions in the US or EU are often dubious, or might have happened anyway, or cause other problems for the people who live where they are happening (like with dams).

3. Regardless of the above points, the rich nations pushing the current arena of international negotiations are not seeking to get industrialized countries to decrease their own emissions by their fare share. Right now there are two competing options for a global framework to address climate change– a backroom deal the US is trying to move called the Copenhagen Accord, and the continuation of the international negotiations that have been happening according to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997. You read that right. The US-backed “Copenhagen Accord” has no relationship to the ongoing global negotiations process. As Angelica Navarro, one of the UN climate negotiators from Bolivia told the story, “It (the Copenhagen Accord) was given to us and we were told we had an hour to decide if we would support it enough. How are we supposed to make a decision about the future of the earth in an hour?”

4. The Kyoto Protocol, adopted through the UNFCCC as the global plan to set targets and mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in 1997 has lots of well documented problems: a carbon market has allowed developed countries to avoid making real reductions to their emissions, a “clean development mechanism” which has spurred all kinds of destructive projects in the Global South, and the use of offsets which lead to continued pollution in communities of color in industrialized countries while paying projects elsewhere to cut their real or planned emissions. However, on the positive side Kyoto has: shared legal limits on emissions that are (at least prospectively) based on science; the concept of “common but differentiated responsibilities” meaning that those who have pollute
d the most should have a different burden than those who haven’t; exceptions for Global South countries with the intent of not restricting their development; and an enforcement mechanism if targets aren’t met.

5. The Copenhagen Accord, on the other hand, has: voluntary limits set by each country, no process to reconcile or pressure countries that offer less regardless of responsibility, no enforcement, continued carbon markets with offsets, etc., and an overall target set not by what science says in necessary, but only representing the total of what all the countries offer up. A study done by the EU estimated that if the Copenhagen Accord was approved with the existing commitments by countries it would optimistically only decrease emissions by 2%, probably locking us into a 3.9 degree Celsius temperature increase globally (this comes from a recent MIT study) – which would be a serious disaster.

Just as companies are using Earth Day to green their images, the Copenhagen Accord was an attempt to pretend a lot more is being done than it really is. It gets worse. This Earth Day comes on the heels of the leaked U.S. Government document trying to “Reinforce the perception that the US is constructively engaged in UN negotiations in an effort to produce a global regime to combat climate change,” “managing expectations” of the UN Climate talks in order to undercut critics. Though the story has predictably gotten little attention in the U.S., the 40th anniversary of Earth Day is framed by extremes filling my email inbox: the predatory opportunism of corporations and some governments on one side, and real solutions proposed by Indigenous groups and other front-line communities on the other. Today, I’m grateful for the 15,000 people making history down south.

To keep up with the summit:

For photos and video, check out Diana Pei Wu’s site.
Global Justice Ecology Project’s Climate Connections Blog
Evelyn Rangel-Medina of Ella Baker Center
Check the Weather
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
Indigenous Environmental Network
World People’s Conference on Climate Change
Carwil James’ Blog, Carwil Without Borders
Bolivia Rising Blog
Twitter hashtags to follow: #cochabamba, #wpccc, #cmpcc, #climatejustice, #climate

I have spent the last two years working to end the devastating, unjust practice of mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR). This is a practice that requires dynamiting the tops off of ancient Appalachian Mountains and contaminating families’ drinking water for a tiny tiny amount of our nation’s coal.

I don’t live in Appalachia, and I don’t have to face the coal industry’s assaults every day. So why would I devote the last two years to stopping mountaintop removal coal mining? Because I believe that it is all of our responsibilities to stop a practice that is this unjust, this outdated, this backward and un-American. For our clean energy future, for basic human justice, for common sense we must all join together to stop mountaintop removal coal mining.

That is why I’ve signed the pledge to help end MTR in 2010, and why I am asking you to join me.

Over the last few weeks, I have personally witnessed the heroism of people doing everything in their power to stop this devastating mining practice. I have seen hundreds of coalfield residents lobbying in DC; I have watched a dozen activists lock-down at EPA headquarters for over 30 hours, sacrificing comfort and risking arrest, to demand an end to MTR.

It is awe-inspiring to see the way the movement to end MTR has gained strength. West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, a formerly staunch proponent of MTR coal mining, summed it up well in a late 2009 op-ed when he said: “It is a reality that the practice of mountaintop removal mining has a diminishing constituency in Washington…” In a unprecedented move, a dozen leading scientists joined the call against MTR in a January 2010 report in the journal Science. As the piece said: “the science is so overwhelming that the only conclusion one can reach is that mountaintop mining needs to be stopped.”

That is why I know we’re close to stopping MTR, but we are not there yet.

We must take it to the next level if we are going to stop mountaintop removal this year—before election season fever takes over the attention of our political decision-makers, before Washington succumbs deeper to the pressure of the powerful coal lobby, before another mountain is lost. We must create a groundswell of national momentum.

Real actions, real movement-building is not easy. It’s not easy to appeal to your friends, your family, your co-workers to join a cause they may know very little about right now. But families across Appalachia are standing up to protect their homes and their health, and they need our help. They need to know they’re not alone.

Please take some time today to pledge to take action to help end mountaintop removal. Pledge to spread the word online, pledge to pressure decision makers standing in our way, pledge to hit the streets. Whatever actions you decide to take will be amplified by the actions of your friends, family and fellow community members. We must grow this movement and we must do it now.

Whether you care about clean drinking water, protecting an ancient mountain range and preserving wild forests, or whether you just believe that blowing up precious natural resources for small amounts of coal is outrageous and downright un-American, now is the time to pledge your action.

This comes to us from Nell Greenberg:

At 7:00 am this morning, a dozen brave activists released a 25-foot banner on the lawn of the EPA headquarters in Washington, DC. The message on the banner calls on the EPA to pledge to end mountaintop removal coal mining in 2010. But there’s a catch—the banner and two of its holders are suspended from two freestanding tripods 20-feet above the air, and after seven hours they are still hanging there with no sign of coming down.

Today’s protest is an attempt to further pressure EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to enforce the Clean Water Act and halt mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR). Called the worst of the worst strip mining, the practice blows the tops off of whole mountains and contaminates drinking water all for a tiny amount of coal. Activists in today’s protest say they won’t leave unless Administrator Jackson commits to a flyover visit of the Appalachian Mountains and MTR sites, which, shockingly, she has never done before.

After seven hours, Administrator Jackson has made no such commitment. However, a few hours ago she tweeted her response to the protest gathering attention outside her window. As Administrator Jackson said in her tweet: “People are here today expressing views on MTM, a critical issue to our country. They’re concerned abt human health & water quality & so am I.”

It is very clear that the EPA is listening to the message being brought to their doorstep. However, at this point in the battle to end mountaintop removal coal mining, the question isn’t about whether Administrator Jackson is concerned about the issue. The question is what is her agency going to really do about it?

Despite the Obama administration’s big announcement last year that it was going to take “unprecedented steps” to reduce the environmental damage from mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, the EPA has been slow moving. Two weeks ago, the EPA delayed action on a set of broad-ranging and specific measures to reduce the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal, after details of the plan were leaked to coal-state mining regulators. The EPA has for months been close to finalizing these permit guidelines, which many hope will mandate tougher protections to limit damage to water quality and be a step in the right direction toward abolishing the practice.

Based on EPA Administrator Jackson’s statements on March 8th at the National Press Club, it appears that the EPA is seeking ways to “minimize” the ecological damage of mountaintop mining rather than halt the most extreme strip mining practice. A paper released in January by a dozen leading scientists in the journal Science, however, concluded that mountaintop coal mining is so destructive that the government should stop giving out new permits all together. “The science is so overwhelming that the only conclusion that one can reach is that mountaintop mining needs to be stopped,” said Margaret Palmer, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences and the study’s lead author.

The science has become clear that mountaintop removal is harming water resources in real and measurable ways. The EPA definitely can and must do much more on mountaintop mining and that includes exercising its full regulatory authority to block every single mining permit application that seeks to remove America’s oldest mountaintops and dump the waste into waterways.

As Kate Finneran, one of the two main climbers in today’s protest, said from her 20-foot high perch: “Mountaintop removal cannot be regulated. It must be abolished. Otherwise, we will continue to jeopardize our historic mountains, precious drinking water and especially the lives of the people who call Appalachia home. All of this for a tiny percent of dirty coal, the trade off doesn’t add up”

Want to support today’s protesters as they continue to defend Appalachia’s historic mountains?

TAKE ACTION

1. Facebook Action: Comment on the Lisa Jackson’s Facebook page, and ask her to “Please go to Appalachia and see for yourself, it’s time to end MTR!” Facebook.com/lisapjackson

2. Twitter Action: Follow and Retweet @RAN’s tweets about MTR, including:

Dear @LisaPJackson, Over 470 American mountains are gone forever. How many more will it take for @EPAgov to ban #MTR #coal? #GoToAppalachia!

The Appalachian Mountains are being being blown to bits. To protest, tweet @LisaPJackson #GoToAppalachia!

Inside, First Nations Chiefs and community representatives from four different Nations demanded RBC phase out of its Tar Sands financing and to recognize the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent for Indigenous communities. Afterward, Indigenous leaders lead the crowd in a march to rally outside both RBC Headquarters buildings.

Other cities across Canada supported the First Nations voices inside the AGM as well with solidarity actions from (click on a city for pictures) London, Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton, Victoria and more. Check out photos from those and our events in Toronto.

And see some preliminary media coverage from the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo, the Edmonton Journal, and the Dominion.

Since 2007 RBC has backed more than $16.7 billion (USD) in loans to companies operating in the tar sands—more than any other bank. Called, ‘the most destructive project on Earth,’ Alberta’s tar sands projects will eventually transform a Boreal forest the size of England into an industrial sacrifice zone complete with lakes full of toxic waste and man-made volcanoes spewing out clouds of global warming emissions.

Outside the shareholder meeting school children, bank customers of every age, First Nations community representatives joined Rainforest Action Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, No One Is Illegal, and Council of Canadians made their outrage at RBC’s investments heard – to the thumping beats of street Samba band, the crowd shouted “Cultural Genocide: who do we thank? Dirty investments from Royal Bank!”

 Inside the shareholder meeting, Chief Al Lameman of Beaver Lake First Nation, Alberta,Vice Chief Terry Teegee of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council of BC, Hereditary Chief Warner Naziel of the Wet’suwe’ten First Nation of BC, and Gitz Crazyboy of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation addressed RBC CEO Gordon Nixon directly about the way tar sands extraction projects have jeopardized their health and their rights.

Downstream communities have experienced polluted water, water reductions in rivers and aquifers, declines in wildlife populations such as moose and muskrat, and significant declines in fish populations. Tar sands has all but destroyed the traditional livelihood of First Nations in the northern Athabasca watershed.

RBC is clearly feeling the public pressure over their tar sands financing. They spent half their shareholder meeting addressing the issue. Recently, the bank convened a high-level meeting with more than a dozen international banks for a “day of learning” about the reputational risks associated with the tar sands. In addition, according to information the bank provided to RAN during a February meeting in San Francisco, RBC is currently evaluating new lending criteria that would apply to the oil and gas sector, in particular to the tar sands. However, the bank has been reticent to include Free, Prior and Informed Consent in its policy, which would ensure that First Nations communities are respected in lending practices.

“RBC’s significant financial relationship with companies pursuing tar sands development activities within our traditional territory and without consent warrants close attention,” said Chief Al Lameman of Beaver Lake First Nation. “RBC should update their policies to include a recognition of Free, Prior and Informed consent for Indigenous communities; this globally recognized concept was adopted by TD Bank Financial Group in 2007 and is endorsed by Indigenous communities across the political spectrum.” 

Internationally, tar sands financing is gaining tremendous negative attention. An increasingly vocal group of shareholders and environmentalists turned last month’s BP, Shell and Royal Bank of Scotland annual meetings into a referendum on the oil extraction projects. Today’s marches, rallies, and actions were a triumphant roar of grassroots power from across the spectrum. The day concluded with an apt chant to RBC Headquarters, foreshadowing the growing flame of tar sands resistance across Canada, “Native communities under attack! We won’t stop until you act!”