The police cracked down incredibly hard on the Reclaim Power protest today – both inside and outside the Bella Center – and arrested 240 people (on top of the over 1,000 that they’ve arrested in the past week), but they didn’t prevent the protest from being an incredibly powerful and formative moment in the global movement for climate justice.

The Reclaim Power protest was co-organized by Climate Justice Now! and Climate Justice Action, two international networks of people’s movements, Indigenous groups, and grassroots activists from around the world – including Via Campesina, Indigenous Environmental Network, Focus on the Global South, Kalikasan-People’s Network for the Environment. The action sought to subvert the undemocratic and unjust UN COP process by creating a People’s Assembly, which would privilege the voices for climate justice of Indigenous peoples and people from the Global South – those groups that have been most marginalized from the COP-15 talks.

While thousands of activists on the streets outside were marching towards the Bella Center, our goal was to march out of the Bella Center, and hold this People’s Assembly in the streets outside the conference.At 11am, we got reports that the outside protest was nearing the conference’s massive security perimeter. At that point, about 100 delegates – including two members of the Bolivian government delegation – linked arms inside the main hall, and began chanting “Respect Indigenous Rights,” “Listen to the South,” and “Join the People’s Assembly.” We then marched through the halls and out the front entrance of the Bella Center – trailed by a ridiculous entourage of news media.

The UN security didn’t try to prevent us from leaving the building – they were clearly happy to see us leave. Once we got outside the security fence, however, the Danish police – who were working closely together with UN security – refused to let us through their barricades to join the thousands of other protestors, who were only a couple hundred meters away. We spent the next half hour negotiating with the police – initially they told us that we’d be let through once they cleared some people that they were arresting out of the way, but then they changed their story, and told us that we’d have to go several kilometers around police lines to join up with the rest of the protest.

Determined to join our sisters and brothers and hold our People’s Assembly, we refused to take hours to walk around police lines. Those of us who were willing to risk arrest linked arms, and marched across a bridge in an attempt to push – nonviolently, but firmly – through police lines.

The UN security then stepped aside, and allowed the Danish police to beat us quite severely with batons. We pushed back and tried to hold this bridge as long as possible, but were eventually beaten back. I personally was hit with police batons dozens of times on the shoulders, arms, hands, and legs, and was punched repeatedly in the head – one blow broke my ear piercing, and bloodied my ear pretty badly. Several people were hit on the head with batons. As all this was going on, we held our hands in the air to signify our nonviolent intentions; at one point, an officer was beating my arms with his baton as I held them in the air.

You can see CNN’s footage here (can’t embed it). (I’m in the grey suit at the front.)

After we were pushed back over the bridge – and after we had taken several minutes to calm down, and take care of people who had been hurt – the majority of our group of delegates marched off around police lines to go join the protest. Others tried to return to the Bella Center, only to discover that the UN had closed the center to all NGO delegates for the rest of the day.

Like myself, the Reclaim Power action was severely bruised today, but was nonetheless ecstatic about its success. While we were pushing to join our comrades in the outside protest, the thousands of people outside were standing in the Vejlands Alle to the north of the Bella Center, holding the People’s Assembly (without us, unfortunately), and discussing key points of a people’s agenda for climate justice. This outside protest also included a broad cross-section of activists – from Latin American Via Campesina activists to German autonomists, and everything in between. But this broad and diverse group of people from around the world was united in its goals: to amplify an global people’s agenda for climate justice, an agenda that stands in stark contrast to the Global North-dominated negotiations that have prevailed in the past week within the Bella Center.

In the words of Stine Gry, from Climate Justice Action:

“We have no more time to waste.  If governments won’t solve the problem, then it’s time for our diverse people’s movements to unite and reclaim the power to shape our future. We are beginning this process with the people’s assembly.  We will join together all the voices that have been excluded—both within the process and outside of it. We will be both non-violent and confrontational. We will not let fences and physical barriers stand in our way, and we call upon the police to respect our right to make our voices heard.”

It’s clear that the UN and the police do not respect our right to protest, preferring to beat us than to let delegates from inside the Bella Center join – and thus grant legitimacy to – the outside protest. It’s clear that they want the voices of civil society, from the Global South and around the world, to be excluded from the talks. But today, the world heard our voices – as we shouted our message inside and outside the Bella Center, even as we were being beaten by the police. Now, we’ll see if the negotiators inside COP-15 are listening.

Whispers in the hallways at the COP-15 Copenhagen climate negotiations emerged as a full blown controversy yesterday, when the UK Guardian published leaked text that was written by a secret group of negotiators, the so-called ‘Circle of Commitment’.  The U.S., UK, Denmark and other rich countries are apparently responsible for the text, which was written in secrecy in a dirty backroom deal. The Danish Text, as it’s being called here in Copenhagen, utterly excludes the U.N. process, especially cutting out the developing countries that are pushing for a strong, legally binding deal, with targets of 40-45% emissions reductions below 1990 levels in order to avert the risk of catastrophic climate change.

By contrast, the leaked text effectively kills the Kyoto Protocol and its emphasis on compliance and binding targets, while gutting much of the negotiations that have been underway over the last two years. Here’s a short summary of a few of the problems with the leaked text:

• The Danish Text repeatedly refers to “the shared vision limiting global average temperature rise to a maximum of 2 degrees [Celsius] above pre-industrial levels.” This vision is certainly not shared - as the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance stated yesterday, “according to the IPCC a two degree increase in the global mean temperature will mean a three or more degree increase for temperatures in Africa, [causing] 50% reduction in crop yields in some areas.”
• The text also specifies that “developed country parties commit to deliver upfront public financing for 2010-201[2] corresponding on average to [10] billion USD annually for early action, capacity building, technology and strengthening adaptation and mitigation readiness in developing countries.” While this figure is still bracketed, the idea that the Global North is considering initially giving only $10 billion per year in mitigation funding to the Global South is viewed by many G-77 nations as a slap in the face – especially given that the governments of the Global North have spent over $4 trillion in the past two years on economic stimulus and bailouts of the banking and auto industries. (NOTE: In negotiating text, the brackets refer to sections that are still in negotiation.)
• In one of the most controversial sections, the draft specifies that ”a Climate Fund be established as an operating entity of the Financial Mechanism of the Convention. … Support from the Fund may be channeled through multilateral institutions.” This is a key point that has been denounced by much of the Global South: this plan would take trillions of dollars in climate funding out of the hands of the U.N., and put it in the hands of multilateral institutions like the World Bank – which are effectively controlled by the U.S. and Europe.
• The REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) outline in the text allows intact, natural forests to be replaced by tree plantations and includes poor provisions for monitoring, reporting and no verification at all.
• Indigenous peoples – whose rights the U.S. is famously reluctant to respect, as one of four countries in the world to refuse to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – are not even mentioned in the Danish Text. The unique rights of Indigenous peoples, and indeed human rights or climate justice in general, are not  part of this backroom deal.

After the draft was publicized yesterday, African delegates led a super high-energy protest through the halls of COP-15, chanting “One Africa, One Degree” and “Two degrees is suicide!” The Indigenous Environmental Network, Friends of the Earth, 350.org and many, many others led protests today in the main hall. The island nation of Tuvalu, after its call for legally binding targets in the plenary was opposed by the US and China, suspended the talksuntil just a few hours ago – a sentiment that is likely to continue, considering the atmosphere of protest andfrustration in the halls in Copenhagen.

But the Global North just doesn’t seem to get it. Some delegates here in Copenhagen, especially those from rich countries, were even dismissive of the situation, or were curious about which version of the text was leaked. US negotiator Jonathan Pershing, when asked about this text during his briefing yesterday, said: “There is no single text, there are many.” Pershing went on to defend Denmark for working behind the scenes and excluding so much of the world, claiming that as the president of the negotiations, Denmark is justified in developing secret text that is only available to inner-circle countries.

Which would be understandable if the leaked text weren’t so obviously exclusionary, and weren’t so clearly against the position of the developing countries. Which is all the more interesting because the text sugar-coats this poison pill for the Global South with justice-based rhetoric: the text recognizes ”the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,” states that “gender equality is essential in achieving sustainable development,” and notes that “the largest share of historical global emissions of greenhouse gases originates in developed countries.” But the substance of this text – rather than its precise wording – is what’s really important: it shows that, in the end, the countries of the Global North are willing to make pitifully few concessions to the very real needs of the Global South.

And, most importantly, it shows that the Danish government – and the unknown delegates that they collaborated with in drafting this text – have a callous disregard for any kind of duly consultative process, preferring instead to draft a deal that satisfies the U.S. (at the expense of the G-77, which represents 80% of the world’s population).

And so, it’s understandable that the G-77 delegates aren’t swallowing this poison pill. “It is literally a matter of life and death for the friends and families of those that are here. A bad deal is a crime against humanity and we won’t sign a deal if it means signing a death warrant,” said Mithika Mwenda of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance yesterday.

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 the question and answer period.

During the event, Nixon admitted that tar sands projects were the largest polluters in Canada, though declined to take responsibility for financing the projects. Instead, Nixon maintained RBC was not an oil company.

“Nixon admits that tar sands projects are the largest polluters in Canada, yet he seemingly fails to understand that these projects cannot go forward without financing. Pretty disturbing given he is the president of Canada’s largest bank” noted RAN activist Maryam Adrangi.

Tar sands oil has serious environmental, climate and human health impacts. Described by the United Nations Environment Program as one of the world’s top “environmental hot spots,” global warming pollution from tar sands production is three times that of conventional crude oil. Unconventional tar sands oil is derived from lower-grade, difficult and expensive-to-access raw materials, which have enormous consequences for air quality, drinking water and the climate. In addition, as this oil spills into the U.S., refinery communities face air and water pollution from tar sands oil, which contains 11 times more sulfur and nickel and five times more lead than conventional oil.

The action continues a series of actions performed by RAN Toronto who are lobbying RBC to divest funding from tar sands projects. RBC is the world’s largest financier of tar sands projects and has invested financed over $20 billion USD over the last 5 years (UPDATE: see details on more recent numbers). To extract tar sands oil requires churning up huge tracts of ancient boreal forest and polluting so much clean water with poisonous chemicals that the resulting waste ponds can be seen from outer space. The health impacts to Alberta’s First Nation communities are severe, with cancer rates up in some communities as much as 400 times its usual frequency.

A group of Canadian climate change activists – including RAN campaigner Eriel Deranger, and numerous members of RAN Toronto – caused a ruckus in Canada’s Parliament yesterday. In doing so, they brought their demands for bold action on climate change directly to the country’s leaders – and they didn’t stop until they were expelled from the Parliament building, with five of them being arrested and roughly dragged out.

During a Parliamentary debate, several protesters stood up in the House of Commons Observation Gallery and began chanting loudly, voicing their support for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act.

This news video shows the reaction on the floor of Parliament while the protestors were chanting (skip to 0:50):

The observation gallery was mainly filled with youth listening to the Members of Parliament, who were bickering about pension plans. One activist stood up and yelled: “Canada needs to sign and ratify the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.” Security rushed over, grabbed the individual, and quickly escorted him out as another individual stood up and shouted: “Pass Bill C-311 and take action on climate change.”

As numerous individuals were being escorted out of the public gallery while chanting bold statements about indigenous rights and climate change, a third person stood up and began a call-and-response chant – and the vast majority of the public gallery joined in. “When I say ’311,’ you say ‘Pass it.’”

“311!”

“PASS IT!”

The protestors then began chanting “311, PASS IT;” “INDIGENOUS, RIGHTS;” “CLIMATE, JUSTICE;” “SHUT DOWN, TAR SANDS;” and “WHO’S HOUSE? OUR HOUSE.”

A couple dozen individuals were escorted out of the gallery and asked to line up against the wall; however, after about 100 other youth kept chanting, they too were escorted out.

Over 150 youth were forced to leave the House of Commons public observation gallery, showing that Canadian parliament was not ready to hear a democratic voice. While escorting the youth out of the building, police violently arrested several of the protesters, dragging five people away and detaining them – including RAN’s Eriel Tchekwie Deranger and Dave Vasey from RAN Toronto. Blood was left on the walls and the hallways of Parliament after one protestor’s face was slammed into the ground. The rest of the protestors continued chanting as they were forced to leave the building, filling the normally quiet halls of Parliament with chants for climate justice and Indigenous rights.

A handful of individuals were met by the media just outside the parliament building doors, where Joe Cressy of the Polaris Institute explained what had happened inside. His sentiments were echoed by other protesters who expressed outrage at Canada’s inability to take any leadership role regarding climate change.

One participant, Rosa Kouri, said that while the Canadian government may not be ready for it, “our children will appreciate what we’re doing.”

Bill C-311 is the Climate Change Accountability Act, which would require Canada to agree to IPCC greenhouse gas reduction targets. If this bill were to pass, it’s likely that the government would also need to severely limit emissions from the tar sands, the fastest-growing cause of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. “In shutting down the tar sands, the Canadian government would admit that it is willing to safeguard the rights of indigenous peoples,” said one activist.

Tar sands development is jeopardizing the communities, mainly aboriginal, living downstream from the projects. The projects are causing water scarcity and contamination, causing increased rates of rare cancers, asthma, and cardio-vascular diseases, as well as destroying First Nations communities’ ability to maintain their traditional ways of life.

It’s uncertain whether there has ever been a protest of this sort in the House of Commons, and yesterday’s protest was truly a milestone in the Canadian youth climate movement. This incredibly bold protest has been getting media coverage all of the country – on CBC, CTV, the Toronto Star, the Globe & Mail, the Montreal Gazette, the Calgary Herald, and many more.

Canadian youth have been trying to show their disappointment with their government and their country’s disregard for international agreements, including those on climate change and the rights of Indigenous peoples. Many MPs who support climate justice have told youth that they need to be loud and put pressure on the government. Canadian youth as a group got closer to their parliament than they ever have, in order to tell their elected officials what they want.

Canadian youth want climate justice and are communicating their demands to the government very clearly. Canada’s youth want the government to pass Bill C-311 – the closest Canada has ever come to having a policy on climate change. They want Indigenous rights to be respected – which means shutting down tar sands developments, which are violating aboriginal treaty rights as well as destroying the environment and increasing Canada’s emissions in order to make profits for the oil industry. Canadian youth want climate justice, and that means a safe climate for all people of the world – including those within its borders.

This weekend in Ottawa, 100 concerned citizens staged mock deaths at the Royal Bank of Canada, accompanied by chanting and chalk outlines. Following a weekend of activity at Powershift Canada, the action called attention to RBC’s role as the lead financier of tar sands extraction.

The action in Ottawa continues a series of actions performed by RAN Toronto who are lobbying RBC to divest funding from tar sands projects. Tar sands oil has serious environmental, climate and human health impacts. Described by the United Nations Environment Program as one of the world’s top “environmental hot spots,” global warming pollution from tar sands production is three times that of conventional crude oil. Unconventional tar sands oil is derived from lower-grade, difficult and expensive-to-access raw materials, which have enormous consequences for air quality, drinking water and the climate.

To extract tar sands oil requires churning up huge tracts of ancient boreal forest and polluting so much clean water with poisonous chemicals that the resulting waste ponds can be seen from outer space. The health impacts to Alberta’s First Nation communities are severe, with cancer rates up in some communities as much as 400 times its usual frequency. In addition, as this oil spills into the U.S., refinery communities face air and water pollution from tar sands oil, which contains 11 times more sulfur and nickel and five times more lead than conventional oil.

“RBC needs to have higher ethical standards when investing our money. Tar sands development is paving the way for an ecological holocaust and First Nation communities are experiencing a slow industrial genocide” noted Athabasca Chipeywan First Nation member Gitz Crazyboy.

Canada has no regulations to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, and the federal government’s climate change plan would allow total pollution from the tar sands to increase almost 70 percent by 2020. In 2009, the Canadian government cut funding for climate change research and support for renewable energy.

“Climate change, one of the biggest security threats of our time, is something Canada and the United States face together. Extracting and burning oil that sends three times more climate-changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than conventional oil puts us all at risk,” said Eriel Deranger Tar Sands Campaigner for RAN.

What can you do? Check out ran.org/tarsands

But this year, a wide variety of activists, in B.C. and beyond, are reminding us that the 2010 Vancouver Olympics aren’t all fun and games. In fact, they’re resulting in huge developments on unceded First Nations land, massive spending on hyper-militarized security, and displacement of poor people and increased homelessness in Vancouver.

And, of course, it’s an opportunity for some good ol’-fashioned corporate PR. Companies from around the world with gruesome environmental and human rights track records – like Dow, Coca-Cola, and General Electric – are lining up to spend millions on funding the Olympics and sprucing up their tarnished images.

And the lead sponsor of the Olympic torch run: Royal Bank of Canada, the ATM for the Alberta tar sands. In fact, their website for the torch run calls on people across Canada to “make a pledge” to “make a better Canada,” and touts RBC’s “Blue Water Pledge” to “support watershed protection” – a little bit hypocritical, given that RBC has pledged $3.8 billion in financing to tar sands companies in the last six months alone.

So a group of folks in Vancouver decided to call RBC on their greenwashing. They issued a callout last week – endorsed by RAN - calling for protests at RBC branches across Canada every Friday at noon, to protest RBC’s attempts to use their Olympic funding to greenwash their role as the world’s biggest financier of the tar sands.

This past Friday – on incredibly short notice – protestors in Toronto, Vancouver, and Edmonton took their message to their local RBC branches.

In Toronto, the ever-amazing RAN Toronto set up a tar sands cafe: they served up delicious tar sands tailing ponds “tea” to customers and passers-by outside RBC’s Yonge St. branch. They also went inside and offered “tea” to the branch employees, who politely declined.

In Vancouver, a group of concerned people went to RBC’s Vancouver headquarters, and passed out a brand-new flyer about RBC’s role in funding the Olympics and destroying the tar sands. (You can download the flyer here.)

And our reports indicate that there was a protest at an RBC branch in Edmonton, too! (Of course, the coolest part about decentralized days of action like this is that it’s entirely possible that actions happened that we didn’t even know about.)

This was a great start to the campaign – three protests across Canada, only three days after the callout was issued! But this is only the beginning – after all, if RBC is raking in millions in profits from its financing of tar sands companies, then we’re going to have to make a lot of noise before they start to listen.

So email 2010corporatecampaign [at] gmail.com to find out if there’s a protest happening soon near you – and if there isn’t, you can go ahead and organize one! (And it doesn’t have to be on a Friday at noon, either – and if you’d like help organizing a protest, you can email us at answers [at] ran.org.)

RBC: MAKE A PLEDGE: STOP FUNDING THE TAR SANDS!

But I’d like to use this year’s World Rainforest Week to talk about a little-known threat that tar sands development poses to temperate (i.e. cold, not hot & sweaty) rainforests in British Columbia.

The areas marked in green are existing mature rainforest; the areas marked in red have been deforested.

“Rainforests – in British Columbia??” you might say. (Well, actually, if you’re savvy enough to be reading this blog, then you may well know that rainforests don’t just exist in the tropics.) That’s right: BC is home to the Great Bear Rainforest, an area of spectacular natural beauty and biodiversity, home to many species – like the “spirit” bear – that exist nowhere else in the world.

But this spectacular rainforest is facing an urgent threat: the proposed construction of an oil pipeline that would run from the tar sands of Alberta to Kitimat, a town at the end of a long, narrow sea inlet that passes through some of the most spectacular parts of the Great Bear Rainforest.

This pipeline, the Northern Gateway, is proposed by Enbridge – the same company that is building the Alberta Clipper pipeline from the tar sands to the Midwest that was recently approved by the U.S. State Department (and opposed by a coalition of environmentalists and First Nations communities). Apparently, the Alberta Clipper – with its capacity of 800,000 barrels per day – won’t be big enough to pump out all the oil from rapidly-expanding tar sands strip mining in Alberta. So, Enbridge is proposing to build this new 720-mile pipeline, which would carry 525,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day to the sleepy little town of Kitimat, nestled at the end of an inlet that is surrounded by beautiful mountains and pristine temperate rainforests.

Spills along the pipeline route are certainly a concern: the pipeline will run across several fault lines, and Enbridge hardly has a great safety record – its existing pipelines had 65 “reportable spills” of a total of 13,777 barrels in 2007 alone. But the really scary threat to BC’s rainforests is the shipping route that will carry tar sands oil by tanker, through 70 miles of narrow inlets, on its way to ports on the U.S. West Coast and in East Asia.

In March 2006, the Queen of the North ferry ran aground and sank, killing two people, along the shipping route that these oil tankers would be taking (see the green arrow on the map below; Kitimat is in the upper right corner). In fact, just over a week ago, on Sept. 25, a pulp freighter ran aground near Kitimat and needed to be towed to Vancouver for repairs. And under Enbridge’s Northern Gateway proposal, 225 oil tankers would need to make the trip through these challenging channels to Kitimat and back each year. Four or five of these ships each month would be supertankers – which are over 1,000 feet long and carry 2 million barrels of oil, eight times the amount spilled by Exxon Valdez.

Enbridge reassures us that “all vessels using the Kitimat terminal will be required to be double-hulled.” But a section of the Exxon Valdez that ran aground was double-hulled – and that didn’t prevent hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from spilling. In fact, a detailed 2006 study by an industry expert at tanker construction argued that double hulls do almost nothing to prevent major oil spills – due to the fact that any grounding or impact large enough to cause a major spill is easily large enough to rip through two hulls.

And as the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and the 2002 Prestige spill in Spain have shown, all it takes is one screw-up to cause unimaginable damage to a coastal ecosystem. After Exxon Valdez spilled 265,000 barrels of oil into the Prince William Sound in Alaska, 1,200 miles of coastline were polluted; within days of the spill, 250,000 seabirds, 1.9 million salmon, and 2,000 otters died. A 2003 study found that sequestered oil was still causing animal deaths, and that some shoreline habitats would likely not recover fully until after 2030.

And one of the things that is so amazing about the Great Bear Rainforest also makes it incredibly susceptible to oil spills: the forest and marine ecosystems are incredibly interdependent. Bears live off of the salmon and other fish runs; rainforest wolves, which swim from island to island, eat fish and barnacles; and animals carry salmon carcasses into the forest, where they provide vital nutrients to plants. If the marine ecosystem was devastated by a massive oil spill, the entire ecosystem of the Great Bear Rainforest would be tremendously affected.

And these salmon of BC aren’t just vital to the ecosystem of the Great Bear Rainforest – they’re also vital to the local economy.

The people of British Columbia – among the most progressive in Canada – recognize the dangers posed by the Kitimat pipeline: a July 2008 poll found that 72% of BC residents favored banning oil tanker traffic in BC’s Inside Passage, while only 19% supported allowing it. Furthermore, 77% agreed that the communities most affected by a potential oil spill should have first say in whether tankers should be allowed on BC’s North Coast.

And those First Nations communities that would be most affected by such a spill have made it very clear where they stand. In Dec. 2008, the Haida Nation stated that they “will certainly not accept tanker traffic where we would run the burden of risk an oil spills in our waters.” In March 2009, the Gitga’at First Nation stated that “there is nothing but risk in this whole process for the Gitga’at people.” And at a First Nations energy summit in June, the Chief of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation said bluntly of the pipeline: “We don’t want it.”

So why is this dangerous idea being pursued? Well, any RAN supporter could probably tell you the answer: because Big Oil supports it.

Freaked out by the potential for tar-sands-oil-killing climate legislation in the U.S., the tar sands industry is hedging their bets by planning the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would allow them to export oil to East Asia – especially to China, which has recently taken a much stronger interest in the tar sands. While the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (which would limit the use of tar sands oil in California) was being considered in March 2009, the head of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers stated that “the only realistic… alternative to the U.S. in the near term would be exports off the West Coast to the Far East.”

And to make it clear that it isn’t just Enbridge that stands to benefit from the Northern Gateway pipeline, Enbridge announced in July that outside oil companies (they wouldn’t say which) are contributing $100 million to the effort to win regulatory approval for the pipeline. (This could be part of the reason why Enbridge’s CEO, when asked about how he’s going to deal with environmentalists’ concerns about the potential damage to the Great Bear Rainforest, simply said, “I think those can be addressed.”) And then there’s also the huge question of the (as yet unclear) involvement of Chinese oil companies in funding and promoting the pipeline.

Plus, the government of Alberta – the Saudi Arabia of Canada – is taking the cue from their oil industry buddies, and throwing down for Northern Gateway. In May 2008, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach stated that “we will not only depend on the American market, we will expand markets. And if that means building a pipeline to the coast and selling oil to another country, we will.” (Note the use of the word “we” when describing the actions of oil companies – that says a lot.)

And, to top it all off: what bank do you think loaned Enbridge $1.1 billion in 2008 (and thus presumably stands to gain from the pipeline’s success)? None other than the biggest corporation in the country, Royal Bank of Canada.

So who’s going to win? Big Oil, or the Great Bear Rainforest? An alliance of the Alberta government, RBC, and the biggest oil companies in the world – or an alliance of environmentalists and First Nations, backed by the public opinion of the people of BC?

You can help the fight against Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline by signing this petition by the Dogwood Initiative, by sending a letter to Prime Minister Harper, or by joining the Dogwood Facebook group. (Or, if you’d like to do something a bit more interesting, click here for the office numbers and email addresses of top Enbridge executives.)

So RAN Toronto crashed the party, and reminded everybody that building an environmentally-sound headquarters while serving as the ATM for the tar sands industry is the crassest form of greenwashing.

Outside the building, the RAN Toronto crew held up banners, handed out pamphlets, and informed journalists and RBC employees heading to the event that RBC has extended and underwritten $19.5 billion in financing to tar sands companies since 2007 alone – more than any other bank in the world. (Much to the chagrin of building security – who watched and fumed from inside the lobby.

And before the protest started, two super-sneaky RAN Toronto activists – dressed to a T, and posing as interns in RBC’s Environmental Affairs department – snuck into the event on the 41st floor of the building, and handed out pamphlets to journalists and other attendees, describing a fake new RBC greenwashing program – “an important advertising campaign to convince you that we share your values and should be your destination for Sustainable BankingTM.” We thought the brochures were quite funny – but unfortunately RBC’s security didn’t share our sense of humor, and kicked the two activists out.

This is just one of many RAN Toronto actions against RBC: this crew confronted RBC CEO Gordon Nixon at a financial summit in September, held a die-in at an RBC branch opening in August, appealed to Gordon Nixon’s wife to help us stop the tar sands with a protest and banner hang in July, and confronted RBC executives at a conference at the University of Toronto in June. So maybe it isn’t terribly surprising that RBC security was beefed up for the unveiling of their new headquarters.

It should be clear to RBC by this point that this kick-ass band of rabble-rousers isn’t going to stop until RBC finally comes to their senses, stops their pitiful little greenwashing efforts, and starts taking true environmental leadership by ending funding for the tar sands.

Go RAN Toronto!

Sounds like a pretty important news story, right?

The Canadians obviously think so. When RAN hung a banner outside Royal Bank of Canada’s headquarters six weeks ago – only one of countless protests against the tar sands that have taken place in Canada in recent years – the protest was covered by Bloomberg, the National Post, the Toronto Sun, the Calgary Herald, and the Vancouver Sun. Search for “oil sands” on the Toronto Globe and Mail‘s website, and you’ll find over 4,000 articles.

The British also think so. In London recently, five Indigenous Canadian activists joined the UK Climate Camp, to protest British corporations’ involvement in the Alberta tar sands. The protests that these activists organized against British companies that fund the tar sands made news across the country, with reports by the Guardian, the BBC, the Daily Telegraph, and the Times. But this was by no means the first time the tar sands were reported on in the UK: the Guardian did a detailed investigative report on the tar sands over a year ago.

And even… the Norwegians think so. In Norway, the tar sands have become a prime election issue: the opposition Liberal Party is attacking the government for allowing the state-owned oil company, Statoil, to invest in Canada’s tar sands. All you Norwegian-speaking readers out there can check out an editorial by Aftenposten, Norway’s biggest newspaper, denouncing Statoil’s investments in Canadian “oljesandprosjekter” (that’s “oil sands projects”). Skandaløs!

But in the U.S. corporate media? Radio silence.

This is especially ridiculous, given that U.S. corporations are far more involved in the tar sands than their British (or Norwegian) counterparts. Chevron and ExxonMobil have invested a total of over $10 billion in Alberta tar sands projects – Chevron is the majority owner of the 85,000-acre Ells River tar sands project, while Exxon’s subsidiary, Imperial Oil, owns 465,000 acres of “quality oil sands leases.” Citigroup is the biggest tar sands investor outside Canada, with $5.9 billion invested in Canadian tar sands companies since 2007 alone. And oil companies across the U.S. are building pipelines and retooling refineries to be able to process oil from Canada’s tar sands: a new pipeline from Alberta to Wisconsin, capable of pumping 450,000 barrels per day of Canadian tar sands oil to refineries in the Midwest, was recently approved by the Obama administration. And Chevron has been fighting against community activists for years to be able to “upgrade” its refinery in Richmond, California, so that it can process tar sands oil.

The Canadian tar sands aren’t a Canadian problem. They’re a massive project in which U.S. corporations are intimately involved, and hugely implicated.

And yet – with a few notable exceptions, like a recent article in the New York Times – the U.S. news media has ignored the issue. And thus, most Americans know nothing about the fact that the world’s dirtiest oil is being put into their gas tanks.

Next week, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is visiting Washington to meet with President Obama. Harper is as conservative as they come – a lot of Canadians call him “Bush Light” – and is a strong supporter of the tar sands. One of his biggest priorities in coming to the U.S. is to ensure that new climate legislation being written in Washington doesn’t prevent the tar sands oil from continuing to flow to his southern neighbor.

And the Obama administration has signalled that it’s willing to play ball: in June, Energy Secretary Steven Chu stated at the Reuters Global Energy Summit that he believes that the “environmental issues” facing the tar sands would be overcome through technological advancements, stating that “I’m a big believer in technology.”

As Harper tries next week to sneak the world’s dirtiest oil into the U.S., will the U.S. news media report on it? Or will they look the other way, like they have until now?

Now, the idea that they’d actually sue us is fairly ridiculous. Activists use and parody corporations’ logos all the time (see here, and here, and here, and here), but lawsuits against activists for copyright infringement are few and far between. Why? Well, partly because copyright law is written to stop companies from using other companies’ brands to make a profit – not to stop activists from using companies’ brands to make a point. But mostly because, pretty much whenever companies sue us, we use it as an opportunity to create such a huge publicity stunt that they end up dropping the lawsuit.

But that doesn’t stop companies like RBC from using the threat of lawsuits to try to scare groups like RAN into going away. But in this case, they clearly don’t know who they’re dealing with. So, we decided to have some fun with this.

First, we took their letter and rewrote it, using the same wording and format, changing it into a letter from RAN, politely asking RBC to stop funding the tar sands – failing which we would have no other option than to continue campaigning against them. Then, we got the fax number and email addresses of two of their top lawyers, as well as of one of their top PR people (how do we do it? Don’t ask). Then, we emailed thousands of RAN supporters, and asked them to fax and email this letter back to RBC’s lawyers.

As of this morning, 2,400 awesome RAN activists have sent emails and faxes back to RBC. (That’s 2,400 emails cluttering each of their inboxes, and 2,400 faxes sitting in an office somewhere.)

To see the letter we sent back to them, click here. (And please go ahead and send it, if you haven’t already!)

I doubt they’ll try this again. And if they do, we’ll think of something even more clever.

But never fear: there’s a “grassroots movement” afoot to protect Big Oil’s American right to profit off of environmental destruction!

Recently, Greenpeace leaked a memo from that valiant defender of the oil industry’s rights, the American Petroleum Institute, to “API Member Company CEO/Executives.” The memo showed that a grassroots movement is afoot – led by API’s Executive Committee, with help from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and “a highly experienced events management company” – to fight for Big Oil’s right to profits! This grassroots citizen-led movement (after all, the API are citizens, right??) will be organizing “Energy Citizen rallies” in 20 states across the country!

The objective of these rallies is to put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy and to aim a loud message at those states’ U.S. Senators to avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill and the Obama Administration’s tax increases on our industry. … It’s important that our views be heard.

That’s right! After all, spending $700 million on lobbying over ten years – and billions more on advertising – can only get you so much publicity. It’s time for ordinary citizens to stand up and publicly demand justice for the oil industry!

And how will API build this movement? Why, by using all-American grassroots organizing, of course.

The measure of success for these events will be the diversity of the participants expressing the same message, as well as turnouts of several hundred attendees. In the 11 states with an industry core, our member company local leadership—including your facility manager’s commitment to provide significant attendance—is essential to achieving the participation level that Senators cannot ignore. In addition, please include all vendors, suppliers, contractors, retirees and others who have an interest in our success. …

We need two actions from each participating company:

Please provide us with the name of one central coordinator for your company’s involvement in the rallies. …

Please indicate to your company leadership your strong support for employee participation in the rallies. … Once the list of venues and exact rally dates are determined, we will contact your company’s coordinator to distribute the information internally and to coordinate transportation to the venues, if required, for your employees.

Look out, Big Green bureaucrats! A new grassroots movement is forming – and they won’t stop fighting for justice until they end discrimination against the oil industry!

During rush-hour commute this morning, two Indigenous Canadian women – RAN’s own Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, and Heather Milton-Lightening – scaled flagpoles in front of the main entrance of Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC’s) headquarters in Toronto, dropping a banner reading “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon.com”. On the streets below, they were joined by dozens of Toronto RAN supporters, spreading the same message to every RBC employee they could talk to: an appeal to Mrs. Janet Nixon, the wife of RBC CEO Gordon Nixon, to lend her strong and influential voice to those fighting to protect Canada’s clean water and respect Indigenous rights by pushing RBC to phase out its investments in Alberta tar sands projects. They handed out flyers, held banners, and even circled the building on bikes with “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon.com” flags.

And at the same time as the banner was being unfurled, RAN supporters and allies began emailing a video to key RBC executives – in which RAN’s Michael Brune appeals to Mrs. Nixon to help RBC regain its environmental leadership by withdrawing its funding for the tar sands. Over 3,000 people sent over 12,000 emails to these top RBC execs. (If you haven’t participated in this online action yet, it’s not too late! Click here to view the video and email it to RBC executives.)

You can also view the video on YouTube (be sure to go to PleaseHelpUsMrsNixon.com and take action when you’re done watching):

The banner was up for about two hours, and a large crowd of people gathered to watch. (I heard a lot of remarks like “hey, that banner says ‘Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon’ like all those posters I’ve seen all over town”.) Several RBC public relations executives also joined us, and expressed their displeasure with what we were doing (“we support the right to public protest, but we are also proud of our environmental record”). In the end, the police let the two valiant climbers go without making any arrests; the climbers were given citations.

This action is also the culmination of a month-long guerrilla advertising campaign by RAN Toronto, who have covered the city with hundreds of posters bearing the message “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon” – leaving people in Toronto wondering what these posters are all about. (But in case Janet Nixon herself was unsure who she was being asked to help, we had a letter from RAN delivered to her home address yesterday.)

While Janet Nixon is the wife of RBC’s CEO, we are appealing her today because she is also a committed environmentalist, and has been instrumental in shaping RBC’s Blue Water Campaign. But while pledging $50 million to help fight water pollution over the next ten years, RBC has served as the ATM for the the dirty tar sands, loaning $2.3 billion to tar sands companies in the last two years alone.

Tar sands oil extraction has been called ‘the most destructive project on Earth,’ and its expansion is devastating the regional environment, contaminating Canada’s precious water supply, endangering wildlife, threatening First Nations’ health and preventing Canada from meeting its climate commitments. Indigenous First Nations communities downstream have experienced polluted water, water reductions in rivers and aquifers, increased cancer, and declines in wildlife population that threaten to destroy their traditional ways of life.

RBC has a critical role to play in investing in Canada’s clean energy future. RBC must require clients to provide evidence of free, prior and informed consent from First Nations on projects affecting their communities, as the first step of a phase-out of financing and advisory services to all tar sands projects which have adverse impacts on the environment. The bank must develop an action plan to reduce ‘financed emissions’ related to all lending activities that impact the climate.

Tar Sands extraction and processing is one of the greatest social and ecological injustices of our time. Unless they’re stopped by grassroots pressure, oil companies will transform a boreal forest the size of Florida into an industrial sacrifice zone – complete with lakes full of toxic waste that are so big that you can see them from outer space.

We know that Mrs. Nixon cares deeply about clean water, and so we’re appealing directly to her to help us push RBC to make a meaningful commitment to clean water, by ending its financing of the tar sands – rather than giving fistfuls of cash to Big Oil’s dirtiest project ever, while donating its spare change to clean water projects.

Mrs. Nixon, will you help us? (And Mr. Nixon: if you want to help us stop the tar sands too, there’s no need to wait for your wife to take the lead.)

The Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute just released a report called “Resource Industries and Security Issues in Northern Alberta,” written by University of Calgary professor Tom Flanagan (the “man behind Stephen Harper,” who has also been an “expert witness” who helped defend several provincial governments in land rights disputes with First Nations communities). The report was sponsored by Nexen, one of Canada’s biggest Tar Sands oil producers.

The article argues that Canada’s Tar Sands industry will continue to face “violent acts or blockades” (which, apparently, are pretty much the same thing) in the years ahead. It examines “individual saboteurs, eco-terrorists, mainstream environmentalists, First Nations and Metis people” as five “threat groups” that threaten the “security” of the industry.

The report was prompted by several recent bombings of Tar Sands pipelines in Alberta and British Columbia; none of these bombs has yet caused any deaths or injuries, and their very small scale and lack of sophistication has the RCMP convinced that they’re the work of “one or two people.” The RCMP (the Canadian equivalent of the FBI) stated that “under the Criminal Code, [the bombings] would be characterized as mischief, which is an intentional vandalism. We don’t want to characterize this as terrorism. They were very isolated locations and there would seem there was no intent to hurt people.”

But that hasn’t stopped Flanagan – funded by Nexen – from going on a Green Scare rampage.

Flanagan’s report starts by describing “eco-terrorists” such as the ELF and ALF (and acknowledging that these groups aren’t likely to start operating in Northern Alberta anytime soon).

It then describes “mainstream environmentalist organizations,  such as [RAN allies] the Sierra Club or the Pembina  Institute,” which, while condemning “eco-terrorism”,

“sometimes suggest that environmental issues  are  the  ‘root  causes’  of  terrorists’  and  saboteurs’  resort  to  violence. This  stance  is typical of moderate groups in many areas of public life, opposing violence but indirectly lending support to extremism by endorsing its goals, if not its methods.”

Flanagan then notes that environmentalists could start engaging in “direct action,” and could possibly even recruit [scary dark-skinned] “protesters from dissident First Nations” to participate in their direct actions. (Flanagan suggests that “probably the best defence against such disruptions is to make sure that local First Nations receive significant economic benefits from any development.” Apparently, it takes a series of bombings for Big Oil to come to the conclusion that they should actually provide benefits to the Indigenous peoples whose lands they’re literally tearing apart.)

Indeed, Canadian First Nations do indeed have a proud history of engaging in nonviolent direct action when their traditional land rights are threatened by corporate or government interests. One of the primary ways that First Nations groups struggle for self-determination is through “warrior societies“: growing out of the Red Power movement of the 1970′s, these groups are integral parts of Indigenous communities, are accountable to traditional leadership bodies, and have a long and proud histories of using blockades, sit-ins, and other forms of direct action to “protect and defend their lands from unprovoked outside aggression” (of which there has been a lot in Canadian history).

But Flanagan describes these “warrior groups” with thinly veiled racism, and then wanders into fantasy-land. Flanagan warns against the possibility – “a nightmare scenario from the standpoint of resource industries in northern Alberta” – in which “eco-terrorists” and “warrior societies” join forces:

“Members of warrior societies would brandish firearms and  take public possession of geographical sites, while eco-terrorists would operate clandestinely, firebombing targets over a wide  range of  territory.”

Now, let’s take a step back here.

First of all, Flanagan’s article doesn’t mention a single instance in Canadian history where members any of these five “threat groups” have killed or injured anyone in defense of the environment. Rather – just like Bush saying that “either you’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists” – Flanagan is trying to equate opposition to the Tar Sands with terrorism.

Now, terrorism used to be defined as “repeated violent action” aimed at political goals. But these days, government officials are taking the word “terrorism” and running with it: in the Animal Terrorism Enterprise Act, for instance, terrorism can be defined as someone who:

“travels in interstate or foreign commerce, or uses or causes to be used the mail or any facility of interstate or foreign commerce, for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise; and, in connection with such purpose, intentionally damages or causes the loss of any real or personal property [or] conspires or attempts to do so.”

Really? That’s a pretty low bar. And that’s exactly the bar that Flanagan is using.

Now, I can’t speak for anyone else. But RAN is one of the more radical, confrontational environmental groups out there, and we’re committed to nonviolent activism. As our nonviolence statement unequivocably puts it, “Rainforest Action Network does not support or condone violence in any form.”

But our nonviolence statement also states that

“RAN deplores any government-backed efforts that, under the guise of anti-terrorism, attempt to squelch public dissent and curtail civil liberties by criminalizing the constitutional right to peaceful protest.”

And I think that’s the real point here. Flanagan, and the folks over at Nexen who hired him, are exploiting several isolated acts of property destruction – likely carried out by one or two people – in order to cast a cloud of suspicion over environmental activism, whether it’s organized by groups like RAN, or by First Nations communities seeking to defend their traditional lands from the unprecedented environmental destruction that’s being carried out in Northern Alberta, in order to increase the profits of companies like Nexen.

Which brings me to my second point: let’s not forget who the real bad guys are here.

Which would you describe as terrorism?

This?

Or this?

Nexen, you can’t scare the green out of us!

About once a week – on comments on the Understory, or in conversations that I have with friends – I hear someone make a remark that fits into a common theme:

I’m glad you organized this protest, but did you drive cars to get there? Burning oil destroys the earth.

Recently, I wrote an Understory post about the recent Chevron court ruling in Richmond, California – and amongst the many comments that people have posted in response, there have actuually been a number of people who are pro-Chevron, who’ve made arguments along the same lines (these are actual quotes):

Some of these people responding here … think they are protecting the people, they drive gas powered cars, drink from plastic bottles and all the other stuff thats soooo bad for our environment.

Come back to the real world… do you drive, watch tv, use a microwave, drink from plastic bottles! I am sure your kind [environmentalists] do NOTHING to harm the environment.

This way of thinking about environmental change has bothered me for a long time. And in an article in the latest Orion, Derrick Jensen tears it apart better than I ever could.

The problem, as Jensen points out, is that environmental destruction is systemic – it’s rooted in a culture of environmental exploitation that is hard-wired into our economy, culture, and politics. As Jensen points out, it’s great to take shorter showers – but in a society where 90% of water consumption goes to industry and industrial agriculture, it doesn’t really make much of a difference as long as those folks keep on using water the same way they always have.

Likewise, it’s great to drive less, and/or buy a hybrid car. I’m an anti-war activist as well as an environmental activist, and often when put gas into a car I think about the images of destruction I’ve seen from the Iraq War, and I wonder if anyone died to get this oil to me. But here again, the real problem is the powerful alliance between oil companies and the automobile industry – who have continued using petroleum-powered internal combustion since they were first invented in 1885 – and who bought up and shut down many of the light rail transit systems in the U.S. in the 1950′s, replacing them with General Motors buses.

I’m not saying that it’s not important to try to make changes to your lifestyle in order to reduce your impact on the environment. Personally (and I mention this at the risk of sounding like a holier-than-thou environmentalist), I still don’t own a car, don’t eat meat, do my best to recycle and compost, eat locally grown and organic food, bring my own bags to the grocery store, etc., etc. And I’d encourage anyone else to change their lifestyle in ways that will reduce their carbon footprint, and otherwise help the planet.

But I also realize that all that isn’t really going to change the world – at least, not by itself. We live in a world where corporate executives make decisions based on quarterly profit margins and shareholder earnings – not on the impact that their decisions will have on the next seven, or 700, generations. We live in a world where politicians are more beholden to the industries that fund their campaigns than to the planet that provides them with food, water, and air. And until we change that world, our planet will continue to suffer as it has for the past 200 years.

Of course, Jensen puts it better than I ever could:

An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. [...]

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance.

And that’s why I work for RAN. To me, the answer is taking on the corporations whose practices are destroying the planet – and whose practices, as consumers, we have no power over. But as a movement, we can force them to make the changes that our planet – and everyone and everything that lives on it – so desperately needs.

This is a huge step in a long and bitter battle fought between the world’s sixth-largest corporation, and a tough and dedicated coalition – including RAN – of environmental, anti-war, and public health groups.

When Chevron submitted permit applications in 2005 to “expand” its refinery in Richmond, many of us were already suspicious. After all, this refinery – built over 100 years ago – had a bad history of accidents, including an explosion that sent 1,200 people to the emergency room in 1999. Local activists had been fighting Chevron for years, charging that the refinery was a clear example of environmental injustice: the 69,000 people who live within three miles of the refinery have income levels 43% lower than the Bay Area average, and 43% are Latino and 31% African-American.

Plus, this is the same corporation that sued Nigerian villagers that had the gall to try to hold Chevron accountable for its involvement in killing community protestors in 1998, and that is refusing to acknowledge responsibility for dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Soon, researchers from Communities for a Better Environment discovered Chevron’s real purpose: the planned “expansion” of their Richmond refinery wouldn’t actual result in increased gasoline production at all. Rather, the goal was to convert the facility to be able to refine heavier, dirtier crude oil (resulting, of course, in more pollution for Richmond).

Where would this heavier, dirtier crude be coming from? Well, I’ll give you a hint: Chevron is planning to invest billions (but won’t admit how much) in two different projects in the Alberta Tar Sands. And Tar Sands oil is – you guessed it – much heavier and dirtier than conventional crude oil.

So we decided that we weren’t going to take Chevron’s one-two punch (environmental injustice in Richmond and Alberta) sitting down. In March 2008, a coalition of groups, including RAN, shut down the front entrance to Chevron’s Richmond refinery; 24 of them were arrested. And for the last three years – in 2007, 2008, and 2009 – we’ve organized protests at Chevron’s shareholder meeting at their headquarters in San Ramon; this year, seven people blockaded Chevron’s front entrance, while community activists from Richmond, Ecuador, Nigeria, and Burma went inside the shareholder meeting to confront Chevron’s executives, and hold them responsible for the injustices their company had committed in their communities.

And while taking to the streets, we also attended dozens of regulatory meetings and hearings, in order to stop the plant’s permits from being approved. We demanded that Chevron “cap the crude”: that they accept regulations preventing them from refining heavy, dirty crude. The Richmond planning commission at first agreed with the idea of a “crude cap” – and then mysteriously changed its mind several weeks later. The whole time, Chevron executives steadfastly denied that they planned on refining Tar Sands oil – but also refused to accept a crude cap (which wouldn’t have any effect on their operations if they weren’t planning on refining dirtier oil).

Finally, in July 2008, the permit went to the Richmond City Council. During 12 hours of hearings (which I sat through all 12 hours of), hundreds of community members stayed up until 2 am pleading for Chevron’s permit to be rejected – and Chevron employees, paid by their company to be at the hearings, defended the company and attacked (in one case, physically) the community members opposing the expansion. And in the end, the Richmond City Council voted 5-4 to approve the permit. One particularly awesome city council member then publicly accused Chevron of striking a backroom deal with three of the council’s members – and then stood up, applauded the community protesters, and walked out on the meeting.

But then, Chevron’s luck began to change – proving that while you can buy a city council, you can’t beat the people when they have justice on their side.

In November 2008, Richmond voters kicked out two pro-Chevron city council members, replacing them with solid progressives. They also passed Measure T, which forces Chevron to pay the city $26 million per year in taxes.

Then, several months later, three environmental groups sued Chevron and the City of Richmond, arguing that the city approved a highly flawed environmental impact report, and that Chevron should be sent back to the drawing board. And the judge saw right through Chevron’s shenanigans, and ruled on June 11 that the environmental impact report was in fact flawed.

But Chevron ignored the court’s ruling – saying that it was going to appeal – and just continued construction work. So the three environmental groups petitioned the judge to issue and injunction forcing Chevron to stop work.

And today, Judge Barbara Zuniga ordered Chevron to stop work on its refinery expansion within 60 days.

This is a huge victory for environmental justice. It’s a huge victory for the coalition of groups – Communities for a Better Environment, West County Toxics Coalition, Asian-Pacific Environmental Network, Amazon Watch, Direct Action to Stop the War, Global Exchange, and RAN, among many others – who have fought for years to halt this expansion.

This fight definitely isn’t over yet. Chevron is going to appeal the ruling. And if they lose the appeal, it still only means that they have to go back to the drawing board on this project; they can still redo the environmental impact report, and re-submit it to the city.

But this time, they’re going to face a city council in which two of Chevron’s cronies have since been voted out of office.

And they’re also going to be facing off against a people’s movement that isn’t going to stop fighting this plan until Chevron stops willfully trampling on the health of poor people of color in Richmond, and starts running a refinery that is clean enough that Chevron’s CEO would be willing to live next door to it.

CAP THE CRUDE! ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE FOR RICHMOND NOW!

The goal of the website is to create an international network of people willing to commit civil disobedience to prevent climate change. And given that the Mobilization for Climate Justice – which will coincide with the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen – is happening five months from today, now is the time to get involved in taking direct action to stop climate change.

Sign up today! (And if civil disobedience isn’t really your thing, you can always help out by buying an action offset to help other people get trained, or pay bail.)

Around July 4th, the State Department will decide whether to allow the Alberta Clipper pipeline to cross into the United States. The pipeline would be capable of pumping over 800,000 barrels of Tar Sands oil each day into the U.S. – and would lock incredibly environmentally destructive Tar Sands oil into the U.S. oil supply in for decades. This is a key test of the Obama administration’s commitment to green energy.

For the past two weeks, RAN, Sierra Club, ForestEthics, Friends of the Earth, and many other allied groups have been pushing hard to tell U.S. officials – and especially Secretary Clinton – that this Tar Sands pipeline a bad deal for the climate, for the Canadian Boreal forest, and for the Indigenous peoples of Alberta. This week, concerned supporters of the groups in this coalition sent over 10,000 letters to Ms. Clinton, asking her to reject the pipeline’s permit. (If you haven’t sent her a letter yet, please click here.) On Wednesday, ForestEthics delivered a vial of Tar Sands sludge (and a rose) to Ms. Clinton. And last Friday, a RAN activist disrupted a high-profile Canadian-American business conference in DC, and told American and Canadian government officials that we don’t want Canada’s dirty oil.

Will Hillary Clinton make the right choice? Or will she cave to Big Oil, and open America’s back door to the dirtiest oil on Earth? Stay tuned.

At the Capitol Hilton in Washington, DC today, the Canadian-American Business Council held a high-profile forum on energy and environment. Speakers included Canadian Prime Minister Harper’s senior energy advisor, the Premier of Manitoba, and several U.S. members of Congress – as well as senior officials from Shell, Iogen, and TransAlta. (The entire event was sponsored by ExxonMobil.) Overall, it was a big chance for some big-time greenwashing of the Tar Sands – the world’s dirtiest source of oil, and a huge threat to Indigenous rights and climate change.

And also in attendance were about thirty protestors, organized by ForestEthics and RAN, who stood outside the Hilton and protested the Canadian government’s ongoing support for dirty Tar Sands – as well as two super-sneaky RAN and ForestEthics activists, who went inside the meeting to disrupt it.

Notably not in attendance was Canadian Minister of Environment (and former Minister of Industry) Jim Prentice, who was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the conference until he withdrew several days ago. Our good friend Jim may possibly have cancelled because of fallout from last week’s nasty scandal – in which leaked recordings of a Canadian minister revealed that Prentice had taken funds that was supposed to be spent on wind power and diverted them into a $1 billion research fund for the Tar Sands. (Or maybe he just got word of what RAN was up to, and got cold feet.)

But this problem is bigger than Jim Prentice: the Canadian government has been jumping full tilt boogie on the Tar Sands bandwagon. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s idea of promoting the greening of Canada’s energy supply is a ludicrous plan to use carbon capture and storage to reduce emissions from the Tar Sands. Not to mention Harper deriding the Kyoto Protocol as a “socialist scheme,” and pushing carbon reduction goals that are even weaker than those being pushed by Republicans in the U.S.

So today, two RAN and ForestEthics activists, posing as oil industry representatives, surreptitiously planted themselves inside the conference for the keynote address by Manitoba’s Premier Gary Doer – who was singing the praises of Canadian natural gas, an increasing amount of which is now being funneled towards Tar Sands production. One of the protestors unfurled a hand banner reading “Tar Sands: Too Dirty to Be Greenwashed” and shouted out “all fossil fuels are false solutions!” Security guards grabbed him and roughly hustled him out. A RAN activist then stood up, unfurled another hand banner, and yelled: “Hey, Gary! We need a clean energy future! The Tar Sands are the world’s dirtiest oil source!” as he was being hauled out of the room by security.

Meanwhile, outside the meeting, 30 protestors – organized by RAN and ForestEthics – yelled, chanted, passed out 500 flyers to conference participants, and generally did everything they could to let our Canadian guests know that they won’t stop until the Tar Sands are shut down.

I bet Jim Prentice is pretty glad he stayed at home. (And if he even thinks about coming down to the U.S. again, RAN will be ready.)

We were out there because, on June 5, the Peruvian military brutally attacked their own people.

The background to this event is a sordid story of free trade, oil interests, and blatant disregard for Indigenous land rights. In 2006, a free trade agreement was signed between the U.S. and Peru. Since the agreement went into force in February, President Garcia has used it as an excuse to sign deals with foreign corporations to open the forest to oil, mining, and logging operations. In April, Indigenous peoples – who depend on that land for survival, and don’t want to see it destroyed like Texaco did in Ecuador – started blockading roads leading into the Amazon, led by the Indigenous federation AIDESEP.

But the Peruvian government wouldn’t have any of that. On June 5, about 600 Peruvian riot police in helicopters attacked an Indigenous blockade near Bagua (which, until then, had been entirely nonviolent). At least forty Indigenous protestors were killed; eyewitnesses said that the police immediately began firing tear gas, then live ammunition into the crowd. Since then, community members have accused the Peruvian military of mass-burying bodies in order to hide the true number of civilian deaths. At this point, at least 84 people have been reported killed – and the true number may be much higher.

Here in the U.S., RAN ally Amazon Watch has been doing a valiant job of trying to get the story of what’s really happened in Peru in the last few weeks out to the mainstream media – and RAN has done what they can to help get the word out. And so, when the Earth First! Roadshow decided (on Saturday) to call an emergency protest at the Peruvian consulate in San Francisco on Tuesday, people from Amazon Watch, RAN, and Rising Tide scrambled to help organize and promote it.

Over 40 people came out – which we thought was great for a 9am weekday protest, which we started promoting less than 24 hours earlier. And the protestors weren’t content to just sit outside and hold signs, either: 15 of them walked past building security, up to the Peruvian consulate office, and demanded a meeting with the Consul-General. And they got it: they sat down with him for half an hour, and told him why what the government was doing was unacceptable.

Meanwhile, outside, a local street theater group educated passers-by about the killings, while others handed out leaflets and talked to anyone they could about the unacceptable behavior of the Peruvian government.

This action was a really inspiring example of a what a few people can achieve – on incredibly short notice – when they’re inspired by the need to act in solidarity with their fellow human beings.

If you’d like to help out, you can take part in RAN’s action alert, and demand that Hillary Clinton tell Peru’s President Garcia to stop the violence now. You can also send a letter to President Garcia via Amazon Watch or Avaaz urging him to stop the killing, or you can make a donation to Amazon Watch’s Peru Emergency Fund.

And it’s not too late to organize a protest of your own, as part of Rising Tide’s Solidarity Week of Action – at a Peruvian consulate near you!

Free trade… Big Oil… violations of Indigenous rights… deforestation… climate change… they’re all connected! And we need to stop them all!

When my colleague Bria and I sent out action alerts to the Rainforest Agribusiness Campaign’s grassroots activists a few weeks ago, asking them to participate in our Halloween Stickering Week of Action, we had no idea that almost 1,000 people – in 43 states and 5 Canadian provinces – would sign up! We had ordered 20,000 stickers, reading “Warning: May Contain Rainforest Destruction.” Those quickly ran out, and we had to rush-order another 10,000.

Between October 27 and 31, these 1,000 rainforest defenders went to their local supermarkets, and stickered palm oil-containing Halloween candy made by Hershey and Nestle. These two massive corporations buy their palm oil from ADM, Bunge, and Cargill – three of the world’s most notorious rainforest-destroyers – and they’ve spent the last several months doing everything they can to avoid signing our pledge to commit to helping us end the massive destruction of rainforests for palm oil production.

ADM, Bunge, and Cargill are expanding palm oil plantations into tropical rainforests on a massive scale – threatening thousands of species, displacing Indigenous communities, and accelerating climate change. Right now, Indonesia produces more greenhouse gases than any other country in the world except the U.S. and China – and the vast majority of those greenhouse gases come from burning rainforests. And if the palm oil industry gets its way, things are only going to get worse: the Indonesian palm oil industry plans to expand its plantations by over 40,000 square miles by 2020 – an amount of rainforest the size of Kentucky.

It’s so incredibly inspiring to see that so many people across the country care enough about the destructiveness of palm oil that they’re willing to take time out of their lives, and join RAN’s Rainforest Agribusiness Campaign in taking action to help stop the spread of ADM, Bunge, and Cargill’s destructive palm oil production. Their actions send a clear message to palm oil-using corporations like Nestle and Hershey: we demand more responsibility from our corporations, and we’re going to hold them accountable for the destruction caused by the palm oil that they’re putting into our food.

This reportback comes from Colby, who stickered at grocery stores in Encinitas, CA:

It was super fun! This time we went to Target. A few people showed interest. I was talking to them and telling them about Palm Oil. I gave them literature and they walked out palm oil-free. 

RAN’s power comes from our grassroots – and, by that measure, it seems like we’re doing pretty good.

Thanks so much to everyone who participated! Y’all rock.