Over a year ago, in the tradition of Ed Abbey and Earth First!, college student Tim DeChristopher (aka Bidder 70) monkey-wrenched an auction for oil and gas leases in Utah when he bid on 14 parcels worth $1.8 million and then stated he had neither the intention nor the money to pay for them. He has sense been charged with felonies and faces 10 years in prison and $750,000 in fines.

March 15 is his scheduled court date and his organization, Peaceful Uprising, along with authors Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Terry Tempest Williams and scientist James Hansen have called for support and action at the trial.

This will be an important event. Get involved and support however you can. More »

Ok so you may or may not know, but Nigeria has a crazy huge film industry. In fact it’s third in the world after Hollywood and India’s Bollywood scene. In fact, its been named Nollywood as its very similar.

Well last week I attended the first film in the Nigerian Film Series that the Smithsonian Museum of African Art is hosting. The movie was great but the fact that Chevron is the main sponsor was disconcerting. Yep, the same Chevron that is responsible for massive environmental destruction and human rights violations in the Niger Delta. I find it disrespectful that Chevron would use an event like this to make their public image more appealing, especially within the Nigerian community of DC.

Why is Chevron the wrong sponsor for Nigeria?

• Over the last fifty years, Chevron has spilled 1.5 million tons of oil in the Niger Delta, contaminating waterways, fish-stocks and farmlands.
• Chevron still engages in the illegal practice of gas flaring [the burning and emission of natural gas into the air during the oil extraction process], contributing massive amounts of carbon dioxide and resulting in high rates of cancer, asthma and other respiratory illnesses.
• Chevron employs the Nigerian military’s secret security forces – known to violently repress peaceful protests. In 2008 Chevron stood trial for torture; extrajudicial killing; and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of Nigerian villagers.

More »

Earlier this week, the Brazilian environmental agency (IBAMA) issued the first environmental license for the Belo Monte dam. By doing this, IBAMA gave the first green light for the construction of the world’s 3rd largest dam and ignored 25 years of resistance by the Indigenous and riverine communities of the Xingu river basin. Read Zachary Hurwitz’s article below.

Having attended the Encontro Xingu: Vivo Para Sempre” or “Xingu Encounter: Alive Forever” gathering in Altamira, Brazil in May 2008 with thousands in opposition to the Belo Monte dam, including my friends Zachary Hurwitz, Scott Fitzmorris and the late Glenn Switkes, I know the struggle is not over. I commit to doing everything I can to supporting communities in Brazil to stop this dam. Please join me and my friends at Amazon Watch and International Rivers today!

Brazilian Government Shoves Belo Monte Down Our Throats Ahead of Campaign Season
By Zachary Hurwitz

In July 2009, Lula da Silva promised his personal friend and Bishop of the Xingú Dom Erwin Krautler, as well as Professor Celio Bermann of the University of São Paulo, and representatives of affected indigenous and riverine communities that “we will not force Belo Monte down anyone’s throat,” But on February 1st, the Brazilian environmental agency IBAMA did just that, releasing the first of three environmental licenses required to build the Belo Monte mega-dam on the Xingu River. More »

Last week, Eric Blevins came down from a nine day tree-sit on Coal River Mountain. He then spent a couple of days in jail. While in jail, he wrote this letter to the Register-Herald in Beckley, WV and then dictated it over the phone to a support person at Climate Ground Zero.

This week, we commemorated the 50 year anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins that were an integral part of the civil disobedience phase of the civil rights movement. Many of the students that participated in those sit-ins were trained at the Highlander School in Tennessee near Coal River Mountain tree-sitter Eric Blevin’s home.

As we ponder our next steps in the climate action and climate justice movements, we need to remember that this sort of large scale change requires sacrifice. With sacrifice, we need support. The civil rights activists risked their lives fighting segregation in the south. Many spent long periods of time in jail. During the Greensboro sit-ins, violence and harassment of protesters often escalated.

So far, the coal industry and their political allies, inside and out of Appalachia, are fighting the anti-mountaintop removal legally (both criminal and civil), often resulting in jail time and fines. There have also been threats and acts of violence directed at community members, organizers and activists in the coalfields. Eric and his fellow tree-sitters sat in 60 ft. trees for over a week while coal company employees harassed and abused them with constant noise, bright lights, tree shaking and threats of spraying them down with fire hoses. At the end of their tree-sit, Massey Energy has sued them for $75,000 and filed for a temporary restraining order in federal court. More »

Thanks to a big push from Avaaz yesterday, there are now over 150,000 people who have signed a petition telling Chevron’s new CEO John Watson to clean up the oil giant’s toxic legacy in Ecuador, and around the globe.

It is undeniable that the world wants to change Chevron. People from all over the globe are signing this petition, people young and old, from so many backgrounds. We’ve had celebrities, musicians, investors, and Chevron employees standing up and demanding change from one of the largest corporations on the planet.

As the new leader of the 3rd largest oil company in the world, CEO John Watson can right the wrongs of his predecessors and transform his company into one that cares.

150,000+ are saying “Enough is enough. Energy shouldn’t cost lives.”

From Ecuador to Richmond,CA to Burma and everywhere the oil giant operates in-between they leave a trail of environmental devastation, human rights abuses, and a legacy of health problems.

150,000+ say ENOUGH to Big Oil destroying our environment and the health of our communities.

Chevron, and their Big Oil cohorts, spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbyists and political contributions to buy off politicians and destroy policies that would be good for our climate and our future.

150,000+ people say ENOUGH to Chevron’s control of our government and our democracy.

To truly change Chevron and the oil industry, we are going to need to be 150,000 x stronger and louder and more powerful than we ever have been before. Our communities, our climate, our planet, and our future depend on it.

You in?

Learn more from our friends at Amazon Watch!

This just in from Chicago:

On Thursday February 4th during the lunch hour rush in down Chicago, activists from RAN Chicago attached a banner to the JP Morgan Chase headquarters criticizing the bank’s role in funding mountaintop removal coal mining and coal fired power plants.

Today’s banner hang adds just one more action to RAN’s broader campaign to raise public awareness and pressure Chase to cease funding mountaintop removal. The ongoing campaign includes delivering letters to Chase branches throughout Chicagoland, educating Chase customers and employees, distributing stickers, and writing chalk messages on sidewalks and other publicly visible areas.

Great Work, Chicago RAN!!!

-Annie

West Virginia Governor, Joe Manchin, was spotted in DC today. He was attending a meeting at the White House alongside about a dozen governors from key energy producing states.

Manchin has been requesting a meeting for some weeks now, and while he didn’t get the one-on-one he was asking for he was certainly in a room of his close allies.

What was the reason for the meeting? Well, according to Manchin’s communication director, Matt Turner: “Gov. Manchin plans to share our concerns about West Virginia’s role in the nation’s energy future, and about how we are working to find the balance between the environment, the economy and energy security.”

While Manchin likely wanted to complain to Obama about the “war on Appalachia” that he feels the EPA is waging, Obama had a larger agenda- the future of America’s energy mix. Obama is not as unfriendly to Ol’ King Coal as Manchin makes it seem. In an unscripted dialogue with Republicans last Friday, Obama told Rep. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia that, “Nobody’s been a bigger promoter of clean coal technology than I am. In testament to that, I ended up being in a whole bunch of advertisements that you guys saw all the time about investing in ways for us to burn coal more cleanly.” Here’s a copy of one of those ads to jog your memory.

More »

It’s getting serious. They are bringing out their big guns. King Coal is getting ready to throw their kitchen sink at the pesky anti-mountaintop removal movement.

The coal industry’s top lobbyist, WV Gov. Joe Manchin, is scheduled to meet President Obama and Vice-President Biden with ten other governors on the issue of energy.

Manchin has been a major obstacle in ending mountaintop removal (MTR) in West Virginia and rails publicly against Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency taking stronger action to regulate and ban the practice.

Geez, I wonder what sort of energy he’ll be advocating for?

Manchin’s fortunes are tied directly to King Coal. He has stated publicly that West Virginia is an extraction state. Just this week, he remarked “just cutting out coal is not feasible, it’s not going to happen.” More »

As many of you know, there is lawsuit that has been going on for over 16 years to get Chevron to own up and clean up its toxic legacy in Ecuador. The lawsuit is on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadorean people who are suffering and dying because of Chevron’s refusal to the do the right thing.

The legal team working on behalf of the impacted people in Ecuador has a great blog called The Chevron Pit which is a great source of information about the case, Chevron, and the people seeking justice.

They’ve just launched a powerful new series featuring the first of many personal stories about how the oil contamination left behind by Texaco has impacted the people living near the oil company’s former oil sites. Chevron purchased Texaco in 2001.

The first story is about Modesta Briones, who passed away not long after she and her husband, Segundo Salinas, gave an interview to author Lou DeMatteis for his book Crude Reflections.

The story and images are powerful, and as they say, speak so much louder than words. Every year that Chevron does not clean up Ecuador more people will get sick and die. We can, and we must, Change Chevron

In the weeks since the Supreme Court’s horrible, democracy-eroding ruling giving corporations unbridled spending on political contributions and advertisements under the guise of “free speech,” many of us have asked what impact this will have on climate legislation and contested 2010 races.

After getting unintentionally embroiled in a corporate free speech campaign involving a scrappy little enviro group called Rainforest Action Network, The Washington Post, and one of the largest oil corporations on the planet (Chevron), it’s got me thinking of the political ad campaign implications of the ruling. And what it means for the public’s access to real information in our withering media landscape.

First, the Corporate Speech vs. the People’s Speech story.

Rainforest Action Network (RAN) recently began a campaign to Change Chevron. As part of the launch of the campaign we bought ads last week in The New York Times and WashingtonPost.com. The ads had a picture of Chevron’s new CEO John Watson face (which we bought the rights to from Getty images) and the copy read: “Oil men have polluted the Ecuadorean rainforest for decades. This man can do something about it now.”

Chevron’s behemoth legal team immediately pressured Getty, the New York Times, and the Washington Post to pull the ad. The New York Times ran the ad. The Washington Post did not. The Washington Post (which receives huge ad revenue from Chevron) has sided with the oil giant and frozen our ad. As of 3 pm Tuesday (Feb 2, 2010) The Washington Post has said they will “unpause” our ad after a meeting between their legal counsel and Chevron’s ad rep at the paper.

We are now trying to get The Washington Post to run our new version of the ad featured above. While this may seem small, it is a window into what we will likely see run rampant as a result of the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing corporation’s unbridled campaign finance AND advertising. With the Supreme Court ruling, the controversy over the Super Bowl ads (which allow anti-choice but not pro-gay advertising), and this recent small example of Chevron throwing its money around to suppress critical ads, it feels like a good time to think about what this means.

Advocacy groups like RAN have meager budgets with little money to spare on advertising. Chevron spends hundreds of millions of dollars EVERY year on ads that are deceptive, misleading greenwash. Don’t corporations already control our airwaves enough?

As we’ve seen over and over again in the hugely frustrating climate and energy debate in this country, it matters less if you’re right and more if you can scream misinformation to the general public- either through paid advertising or through Fox News.

A Chevron media relations representatives said it best, “Not to say that news media ignores us,” said Jim Hendon, media relations rep for Chevron, “but our ads tell a story that wouldn’t get told otherwise about our company’s environmental concerns. Oil companies can’t rely on media, so we do it through this [ad] campaign.”

As we look forward, both in our advocacy work and at the coming election season how are we possibly supposed to compete with Corporate America’s “free speech?”

We must work together to right the wrongs of that Supreme CT ruling, support media advocacy groups like Center for Media and Democracy, and continue to work to change Chevron and other corporations that are destroying our climate, our communities, and our democracy.

*Reposted from Itsgettinghotinhere.org.