Oil Palm Devastating Indigenous Communities

I just returned to Kuching after visiting with seven Indigenous communities in northern Sarawak (in Malaysian Borneo). What we saw was a tragic and infuriating picture of collusion between the state government and oil palm and logging companies to cheat, harass, intimidate, arrest and displace the people who have lived on and cultivated this land [...]

Justicia Now! Shame on Chevron!

This week has filled me with immense pride for work of the Indigenous and campesino communities who have been waging a campaign for social and environmental justice in the Ecuadorian Amazon since 1993. On Monday, Luis Yanza and Pablo Fajardo were awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize along with 5 other environmental leaders from all [...]

RAN Exposes Weyerhaeuser to Shareholders

Update: better quality video of the event is here. Update: pictures from the event are here. This morning, RAN activists gave Weyerhaeuser shareholders an idea of what the company is really about (not the greenwashing lies it posts on its website). About 20 of us descended on the company’s annual shareholder meeting with a 20-foot [...]

On a mission to expose the human costs of palm oil

I just arrived in Kuching, Malaysia, after 20 grueling hours of travel from San Francisco. I’m here to take part in a fact finding mission organised by Sarawak Dayak Iban Association (SADIA), Tenaganita, People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCFS) and Pesticide Action Network Asia-Pacific (PAN AP). Over the next week, we’ll be visiting communities threatened [...]

Some pretty darn good tips for greening your money

Here’s a good post on Grist, ‘Any Portfolio in a Storm’ about environmentally friendly investing – or if you don’t have any investments, but might one day – where you can go to get advice on how to put your money someplace that doesn’t have hideous environmental, social and climate implications. Now, I do take [...]

Greenwash of the Week: BP tars itself

Climate Activists Blockade Dominion HQ

Blue Ridge Earth First! blockaded Dominion Resources HQ in Richmond Va today. EARTH FIRST! BLOCKADES DOMINION HEADQUARTERS IN RICHMOND IN PROTEST TO COAL PLANT: YOUTH FROM WISE CO. TO NORTHERN VIRGINIA OPPOSE DOMINION’S DIRTY ENERGY PLANS Richmond – At 7:55am this morning, activists with Blue Ridge Earth First! established a blockade at the entrance to [...]

Rebirth of a Dream

I coauthored this with Amy Ortiz, a student activist from the RAN network, who also works with Southern Energy Network. This past weekend, April 4-6th, something historic took place in Memphis, Tennessee. During the same few days where people from across the nation gathered in the place where Martin Luther King Jr’s was assassinated forty [...]

Cops and Former Secret Service Agents Ran Black Ops on Green Groups

This is REALLY disturbing, yet not surprising. Corporations talk a good game with all their greenwashing rhetoric, hiring public relations firms to give the company an environmental face, touring their executives through environmental sacrifice zones and talk about reducing emissions. But these companies are pretty serious about maintaining their public images and bottom-lines by any [...]

Hey New York, Start Spreading the News, Citi’s AGM is coming to town

Shareholder season is upon us. It’s the time of the year where the corporations get together with their stockholders and give their annual reports about how they are profiting from the destruction of communities, the earth and the climate. This year, the two biggest funders of coal from the cradle to the grave, Citibank and [...]