Today on the Global Day of Climate Justice Action, a rowdy march in San Francisco made it’s way to Bank of America’s skyscraper (the tallest building in San Francisco), where dozens of activists blockaded the doors all around the building.
Some locked themselves within [...]
UPDATE: Both women now cut out of lockboxes. 4 arrested.
UPDATE @:at Cliffside generator: police are slowly working on cutting through lock boxes and are threatening 1 of 2 locked down women with a taser.
UPDATE: 2 People in handcuffs; Police up on generator with ladders and boltcutters for more folks. Pictures [...]
On November 30, major demonstrations, teach-ins and civil disobedience actions will take place in nine cities around the U.S.—in Chicago, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Burlington, VT, two cities in Maine, and Washington DC, as well as several other countries—one week before the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen open, [...]
It’s only a few days until November 30, an international day of climate action and solidarity with the upcoming protests in Copenhagen.
Nine cities are preparing mobilizations, mass actions, protests and civil disobedience targeting a variety of corporate entities complicit in the climate crisis. Right now [...]
This is a nice piece of news. Hopefully the folks in Meigs County, OH will have a good holiday this year in celebrating the cancellation of this proposed plant.
Meigs is ranked as one of the most polluted counties in the country as southeast Ohio is [...]
As negotiations wrapped up in Barcelona at the UN Climate Talks, the opportunity for a robust agreement to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries (REDD) is dangling from a wire. The latest negotiating text, which parties will be working on at the opening of the Copenhagen [...]
The world’s forests are a critical piece of the climate change puzzle. Covering over 30 percent of the Earth’s land surface, forests play a huge role in regulating weather patterns and absorbing the carbon that we release into the atmosphere. Not to mention, global deforestation is a huge contributor to [...]
Last week I was in Sumatra, Indonesia, traveling with representatives from the local NGO Warsi, investigating the impacts of Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), a wholly owned subsidiary of Sinar Mas, on forests and forests peoples.
Two days of 4×4 travel over dirt roads brought my team to PT Wirakarya Sakti [...]
November 23, 2009
Published in the Huffington Post
by Han Shan
Chevron is piling on the lobbyists and PR firms in an extraordinary effort to evade responsibility for its massive toxic contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon.
But in a recent article for Politico, Kenneth Vogel, who tracks the confluence of money, politics and [...]
There has been a lot of grassroots pressure on the EPA in the last few weeks on the issue of Mountaintop Removal. Last Friday I was able to meet a new coalition of youth activists in Philly that has emerged when they were speaking out at the Region 3 [...]
Responding to Harmful Government Inaction, Protestors Stop Blasting on Coal River Mountain
PETTUS, W. Va. – Early this morning two concerned citizens, Dea Goblirsch and Nick Martin, locked down to a drill rig on Coal River Mountain’s Bee Tree mountaintop removal site, effectively stopping blasting. Two others, Grace Williams and [...]
November 20th, 2009
Published in the Huffington Post
By Trudie Styler Actress, director, producer, and humanitarian
The following post was originally delivered at the UN General Assembly’s meeting on climate change on Thursday, November 19th.
It has been 20 years since Sting and I first visited Brazil, [...]
From RAN’s Dana Clarke
We’ve just learned that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has sent a very legalistic letter to Marfork Coal Company, the Massey Energy subsidiary that is blasting on Coal River Mountain. The letter follows up on an EPA site visit to Coal River Mountain earlier this month, [...]
Here are a couple of great articles by lefty author Naomi Klein about the anti-corporate movement of movements which converged in Seattle in 1999 at the shutdown of the World Trade Organization are re-converging around climate change in Copenhagen.
In both, Klein talks about how anti-establishment direct [...]
Bill McKibben, Gloria Reuben, and RAN’s own Mike Brune have all sent letters to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon asking him to stop JPMC’s financing of the coal industry and mountaintop removal coal mining. We got word today that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just sent his letter [...]
Mr. Watson, how will you respond?
Yesterday Rainforest Action Network’s executive director Mike Brune sent a letter to Chevron’s incoming CEO John Watson and made him an offer. Come with us to Ecuador. To our knowledge no senior Chevron official has toured Texaco’s former oil installations in Ecuador’s rainforest. [Chevron [...]
Here in Riau, Indonesia, signs of the struggle to save the last of Sumatra’s forest is everywhere. Daily, the papers cover stories of timber and oil palm companies destroying forests, engaging in corruption, driving land conflicts, sponsoring violence, and marginalizing indigenous peoples.
Today, on the way to a meeting with the [...]
On the first day of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Pak Jamaluddin was quiet. He said the air conditioning of Kuala Lumpor gave him the flu. He seemed lost among the groups of palm producers, with their Blackberries and dark suits.
Exhausted from the canoe rides, bad roads, the [...]
Could it be that a tiny fly is the secret to saving Appalachia’s mountains and drinking water from the destructive mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) practice?
According to Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy Partners LLC, in a Bloomberg piece this morning: “The future of mountaintop mining looks bleak.”
For [...]
Written by Dave Vasey from RAN Toronto.
On Tuesday, RAN activists disrupted a speech by Gordon Nixon, president of RBC at Ryerson University. Nixon was speaking as part of a business conference on Canadian Manufacturing. RAN activists interrupted the speech four times with banners and comments, as well as once during [...]
So we’re in the midst of a campaign to save Coal River Mountain and end mountaintop removal.
About two weeks ago, on a Nation Day of Action to End Mountaintop Removal, dozens of actions happened around the country targeting the EPA, coal financier JP [...]
All of you are AMAZING! At the end of last week, a number of organizations took online action to save Coal River Mountain.
350.org, Center for Biological Diversity,CREDO, Greenpeace, ilovemountains.org, Natural Resources Defense Council, Rainforest Action Network, Sierra Club and Waterkeeper Alliance all had their online membership [...]
Sunday, November 8th, 2009- Philly activists protested and flyered today outside the Opening Session of the American Public Health Association’s 137 Annual Meeting at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was a keynote speaker.
The activists were demanding that Ms.Jackson end blasting on Coal River Mountain in Coal [...]
The Barcelona Climate Talks are wrapping up, and the world is disappointed. We have seen two vocal protests in the first hour inside the closing plenary and expressions of frustration and disappointment from one developing country after another. The Alliance of Small Island States says simply: ‘the level [...]
Last week, Massey Energy began dynamiting Coal River Mountain in West Virginia—the site of a proposed 328-megawatt wind farm—to prepare for a massive mountaintop removal coal mining operation.
Today, more than half a million people have received emails from organizations across the nation, including Rainforest Action Network, Appalachian Voices, [...]
Cross posted from Alternet
Last week, blasting began on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia. This is a part of the country where dynamite routinely goes off — turning the region’s historic mountain ranges into dust for the tiny coal seams that lie beneath their surface.
But Coal River Mountain [...]
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was founded to create a path towards sustainability in the palm oil industry. A voluntary process, oil palm producers, traders, buyers, and NGO’s have joined up to find an alternative to the massive forest destruction, social conflict, and climate chaos the booming [...]
Execs from Arch Coal and Peabody recently joined the board of Washington University in St. Louis and then had a conf on campus called “America’s Energy Future”
Students and community activists had something to say about that (including folks from St. Louis Rising Tide).
[...]As I have written about on Understory before, Sumatra’s Bukit Tigapuluh is one of the last great forests of the world. It’s breathtaking biodiversity, high conservation importance, and value to three indigenous cultures withstanding, Sinar Mas -Indonesia’s largest producer of palm oil and owner of Asia Pulp and Paper- [...]
Contrary to a number of sensationalist media reports leading up to this year’s Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil, the RSPO is not breaking up.
At the core of the controversy has been the effort to include a commitment by all members of the RSPO to reduce their Green House [...]
I never expected Indonesian rainforest protection to become “fashionable,” per se. Yet, with Gucci Group’s announcement that it will eliminate all paper made from Indonesian rainforests and plantations and by controversial suppliers like Asia Pulp and Paper, it has become just that.
Today Gucci Group, the prestigious conglomerate of fashion and [...]
Cross posted from Grist
African negotiators at the U.N. climate talks in Barcelona just refused to continue formal discussions about all other issues until wealthy countries live up to their legal and moral responsibility to commit to deep emissions reductions. Rich countries (also called “Annex 1 countries”) have ground negotiations [...]
The RSPO is the world’s largest annual meeting of oil palm industry, environmentalists, human rights advocates, and, most importantly, community members. Today, I watched as a community member from Borneo stood up in front of oil palm producers, NGOs, and technocrats, identified himself as a victim of oil palm expansion, [...]
RAN’s own Mike Brune sent a letter to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon late last week asking that Chase show some leadership and stop their financing of the coal industry, mountaintop removal coal mining, and to demand that their client, Massey Energy, stop the destruction of Coal River Mountain [...]
On Friday, October 30th, seven Lawrence University students participated in a national day of protest to end mountaintop removal coal mining. Along with concerned citizens at more than two hundred demonstrations around the country, the students demanded an end to the explosion and leveling of mountains. This popular resistance to [...]
Garrrrrrrr....!
It was an unusual site at the EPA on Friday, as a group of mountain-loving zombies turned up to let EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, know that Mountaintop Removal coal mining must stop.
“Where’s your Brains?” One of the walking undead [...]
San Francisco’s preeminent green blogger (and RAN alum) Cameron Scott is running a cool contest over at the Thin Green Line to find the most outrageous greenwash, citing a bad palm oil ad that we blogged about a while ago. Winners will be featured in his blog….
Check it [...]
On Friday October 30th, twenty-five activists from Rainforest Action Network Chicago participated in actions at regional offices of JP Morgan Chase and the EPA.
At 11:30 AM in typical Chicago rain, activists dressed as the ghosts of mountains past “haunted” the Midwest Regional Offices of JPMorgan Chase. They [...]
From United Mountain Defense:
Nationwide Rally in Opposition of Mountaintop Removal
Memorials for the Mountains Held in front of EPA Region 4 Atlanta, GA
Atlanta, GA-October 31, 2009 – This past Friday concerned citizens nationwide rallied at regional Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters and other locations for a National Day [...]
Jennifer Krill, Margaret, David Gilbert, Maria, Kate, Sparki, Nell, RobinAverbeck
