RAN board member Randy Hayes and actress Darryl Hannah at the White House protesting Keystone XL as part of the Tar Sands Action.

President Obama has just rejected the Keystone XL pipeline!

This puts a halt to current plans for a massive 1700-mile pipeline that would have allowed some of the world’s dirtiest oil to travel from Canada’s tar sands through America’s heartland — jeopardizing our water, our air and our climate.

Six months ago the pipeline project was considered a foregone conclusion. Today — against all odds — the project has been rejected. That is a heroic political shift, which is the result of massive grassroots opposition that spanned from First Nations in Alberta to farmers in Nebraska.

By sending letters, making calls, protesting in front of the White House and standing up at “Obama for America” offices, the movement against the Keystone XL pipeline has demonstrated what grassroots activism is all about — and what it really takes to make change in this country.

When organizing started against the Keystone pipeline there were two main goals: stop the pipeline, and reignite the climate movement, which had been deflated by disappointments from Copenhagen to Congress. I would say that in just a few months we are well on our way to achieving both goals.

As Bill McKibben, one of the lead visionaries behind the tar sands protests, said in November, when the pipeline was first delayed:

It’s important to understand how unlikely this victory is… A done deal has come spectacularly undone… The American people spoke loudly about climate change and the president responded. There have been few even partial victories about global warming in recent years so that makes this an important day.

McKibben’s words are truer today than they were in November. We have seen little from the administration on climate and energy that we can be enthusiastic about, and this is definitely something to be unanimously proud of.

It has been incredible to watch the movement against the Keystone pipeline come to life. In September, 1,253 people were arrested in a peaceful sit-in at the White House expressing resounding opposition to the pipeline project in one of the largest acts of civil disobedience the environmental movement has ever seen. Since then, droves of protesters, including high-end campaign donors, have confronted President Obama at one public speaking event after another. In November, the opposition grew when more than 12,000 people joined in peaceful protest back in DC, linking hands in several concentric circles around the White House.

At RAN, we believe that when corporations respond to our demands, it’s a best practice to thank them. The same is true here. Against loud and dubious threats from Big Oil, President Obama has stepped up to represent us and our future. Please take the time today to thank President Obama for rejecting the disastrous Keystone XL pipeline.

Many are wondering what the political realities are to the pipeline rejection. The State Department is allowing Transcanada, the company behind the pipeline, to pitch an alternative route for the pipeline through Nebraska. This re-application process would likely put the project back to the drawing board.

As Frances Beinecke, Executive Director of NRDC, put it in an email blast this afternoon:

[B]ecause Big Oil lost, this is not the end of the fight. This is the beginning of the real battle for America’s energy future…That battle will be fought in Congress, where Representatives who’ve collected $12 million from the oil & gas industry over the past two years are sure to try to raise Keystone from the dead . . . it will be fought in British Columbia, where the oil giants want to ram a tar sands pipeline and supertanker traffic through the heart of the Spirit Bear’s coastal rainforest home . . . it will be fought in the Polar Bear Seas, where the Interior Department has given tentative approval for Shell to begin drilling this summer…

If the last few months have shown us anything, it’s that we’ve stopped the project once and we’ll stop it again. Yes, we will need to continue to ensure that President Obama feels the full weight of our opposition and keeps the Keystone XL pipeline off the map forever. But make no mistake, today is a day to come together to celebrate in the exact same way we came together to fight Keystone over the past couple of months, because celebrating our success is a critical part of fueling our work. That should neither minimize nor obscure the reality that if we want a clean energy future, which stops extreme energy projects like the Keystone XL, we’re going to have to keep fighting together for the long haul.

What an incredible sign for the start of this New Year. Let’s make sure that this success begets even more success in our work to protect forests, their inhabitants and our climate.

And now here we are, at the dawn of another new year. Who knows what we can do?

Now is the time for change, but the question becomes: How can we keep this momentum going? As we head into 2012, I invite you to think about what you can do to shake things up, make your voice heard, and make 2012 another banner year for people power. Here are five of my favorites, in no particular order:

1. Shrink oversized banks

   At RAN, we’ve been campaigning against banks with outsized influence since 2001, and have never felt such a window for deep, lasting change as we do right now. What can you do to make sure that the biggest banks know that the days of reaping enormous sums from bankrupting our economy, foreclosing on our homes, and polluting our air are over? Take action in your area to begin dismantling the systems that allow the wealthiest citizens to control the rules of the game. Send a message that we will not accept one more dollar invested in dirty energy. Take the pledge to boycott Bank of America — the nation’s leading funder of coal projects — unless the bank cleans up its act, then join the over 50,000 customers who have already closed their Bank of America accounts and invest in your local economy by moving your money to a local bank or credit union.

2. Occupy Our Food Supply

   No less than our financial system, our food system is in dangerous shape, controlled by corporate interests at the expense of small producers, our health, and the future of the planet. Occupy Our Food Supply to help bring an end to corporate exploitations of our food system. Join the fight for a just Farm Bill in 2012. Boycott Cargill, the US agribusiness giant that is bulldozing rainforests and razing entire communities in Indonesia and Malaysia in pursuit of profits.

3. End Corporate Personhood

   This is the year I hope to see an end to the choke hold that corporate power has on our democratic system. On January 21st, the second anniversary of the devastating Citizens United ruling, I invite you to join the swelling movement to demand an end corporate personhood — the egregious legal principle that gives corporations the same rights as individuals, with few of the same limits. Join with RAN and our allies to Occupy the Courts in a city near you on January 20th and Occupy the Corporations on January 21st. Then, gear up for an exciting Spring packed full of actions as we work to force corporate and political leaders to recognize corporate accountability as a key issue this election cycle, and finally let those companies who are buying our democracy know that democracy is by the people and for the people.

4. Keep the Keystone XL Pipeline Off the Map

   We all cheered last fall when the decision on the Keystone XL pipeline was delayed, but with political maneuvers forcing Obama to make a choice by mid-February, the fight is far from over. Now more than ever, it is crucial to stay committed to the fight to keep the Canadian Tar Sands in the ground. Keep up on the ongoing Tar Sands Actions and continue to speak out until President Obama understands that we will not accept this toxic pipeline full of crude oil for export to snake through America’s heartland.

5. Learn, Organize, Lead!

   Rainforest Action Network would be nothing without the committed organizers and activists who participate in our campaigns and form one part of the broader movement challenging corporate power around the globe. It’s a great time to rise to the growing demands of our world and take your activism to the next level. Take steps to educate yourself about issues that matter to you. Get involved in events in your area. Give what you can to help keep RAN’s campaigns running, and subscribe to our newsletters to keep up to date with the work of RAN’s campaigns and hear about opportunities to take action online or plan an event in your area.

This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.

Prior to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision there was already huge corporate influence over our elections. What Citizens United did was give corporations the same rights of ‘free speech’ that individuals enjoy under the Constitution — a particularly undemocratic principle given that most corporations’ pockets are much, much deeper than the average individual’s. Now corporations with a vested interest in, say, keeping the scales of power tipped in favor of coal or oil — despite the devastating effects of fossil fuels on communities and the climate — can ensure their interests are protected by spending unlimited amounts of money to influence elections. Citizens United overturned a century of campaign finance laws and put our democracy on the block for the highest bidder.

This should be of concern to everyone. Big corporations can now essentially buy politicians who will write and pass rules that favor them and their industries.

This is why we have a president who couldn’t pass climate legislation and who is now stuck in an endless game of appeasement — weighing each small action that might shift the country off of fossil fuels and into renewable energy against the mountains of cash that the coal, oil, and agribusiness industries could spend defeating him in the next election. This is also why we have a government incapable of committing to a renewed Kyoto Protocol in spite of its lofty rhetoric — even though scientists are telling us that 2010 saw the highest jump in C02 emissions on record.

For more than a quarter of a century, Rainforest Action Network and many of our allies have been pushing corporations to change the way they do business to protect rather than destroy communities and the environment. We’ve gotten pretty good at it, and there’s no question that corporate campaigning has led to some real victories: protecting millions of acres of rainforest around the world, stopping many terrible industrial projects, and convincing most of the world’s major banks to adopt environmental policies on their investments, to name just a few. All these campaigns are incrementally creating real change in the business world and are undeniably necessary to stop some of the worst abuses caused by the unchecked drive for profit.

But alone, all the voluntary agreements from corporations we can win are not sufficient to generate the type of long-term transformation needed in our economy to tackle the biggest environmental and human rights issues of our times. Most alarmingly, they are not enough to solve global climate change.

Corporations themselves are victims and beneficiaries of a regulatory system that myopically values profit and shareholder value above all else. Even with the best intentions in the world, the CEOs of most companies can only do so much to change their business practices before they risk running afoul of the doctrine of the dollar. This is not news. Any smart campaigner will tell you that we need systemic change to meaningfully confront the breakdown of our economy and our environment. And until now, this larger aim of changing the rules of the game has been largely ignored by corporate campaigners because, quite frankly, it seemed impossible.

But today we are presented with a rare moment — one where the window for deep change has been cracked open and changing the rules of the game suddenly seems possible.

We are in a moment, thanks to the emergence of the Occupy Movement, where critiques of the economy have gone from the fringe to being the substance of major news coverage, and where concerns have moved beyond simple cries of foul play to a deep questioning of the corporate model ruling so much of our world. The question before all of us is: How do we unite our efforts to drive through changes to our tax system, our trade system, our electoral system, and our judicial system that will reverse the balance of power and put citizens in charge of corporations rather than the other way around?

Challenging Citizens United is just a step in the direction of demanding structural change, but it is a bold one. I invite you to join the growing mass of groups and activists on January 21 to stand up to Citizens United and the corporations who are benefiting from it. Let’s Occupy the Corporations that day, letting those companies who are buying our democracy know that democracy is by the people and for the people. Let’s show them what democracy looks like: real citizens with bodies and souls marching on the streets and standing outside boardrooms to create a country that works for the majority, not just the few. Plans are still evolving, so stay tuned at ran.org for ways to plug in and be part of the action.

“We all know, or at least sense, that the world is upside down: we act as if there is no end to what is actually finite — fossil fuels and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions. And we act as if there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually bountiful — the financial resources to build the kind of society we need. The task of our time is to turn this around: to challenge this false scarcity. To insist that we can afford to build a decent, inclusive society — while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth can take.” – Naomi Klein, Author/Activist, REVEL Awardee

Tomorrow, many of the RAN staff will be out of the office. We will be shutting off our computers, leaving our desks, and joining hands in the streets of Oakland. We will be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds who identify with the Occupy movement and Occupy Oakland’s call for a ‘General Strike.’

We’ve been getting questions about why an environmental organization concerned with protecting forests, their inhabitants, and our climate would be supportive of a movement calling out the systems and institutions that maintain our country’s wealth and power inequality?

Here’s why.

Rainforest Action Network believes the social, economic, and environmental crises sweeping the planet are inter-related symptoms born of the same root causes.

Put simply, unchecked corporate power is dangerous and destructive to both people and the planet. Mother Earth is as much a member of the 99% as any one of us.

Central to RAN’s mission is the analysis that in order to protect the environment we must strike a balance between economy and ecology. Since our start in 1985, we’ve found that the same institutions and the same logic that is destroying our economy is also destroying our environment, and that the most effective way to protect the world’s natural resources is by challenging those corporations whose business models rely on this environmental destruction.

So long as corporations are granted free reign to pursue short-term profits at the expense of the long-term health of our environment, our economy and our communities, there will continue to be a race to the bottom where environmental and social costs are externalized and benefits are concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer.

But what if that business model did not exist? What if corporations valued our environment, our health, and our well-being? What if our government worked not for the highest bidder but for the highest interests of its people and the planet? What if people from all walks of life joined together to say we’re ready for a new system because the one we have is not working? That is the promise and potential that Rainforest Action Network sees in the Occupy movement.

At RAN, we are fighting for a world where corporate accountability matters. Where our food system does not include ingredients derived from the destruction of rainforests and Indigenous communities. Where our financial system is just and does not unjustly bankroll industries, like the coal industry, that are poisoning communities and our climate. If we are going to win, if we are going to achieve these goals, we cannot do it one commodity at a time, one bad act at a time, or even one company at time. We need a broad movement willing to ask for what the world needs, and unwilling to settle for anything less.

A few weeks ago, author and activist Naomi Klein told RAN staff and supporters that what she sees with the Occupy movement is a moment that proves we are “more popular than we could have ever imagined.” It is a moment to dream big and feel what is possible. It is a moment to realize that our demands for ecological and economic sanity are not unreasonable, they are essential, they are popular, and they are one and the same.

And it is not only that the problems of economic inequality and environmental destruction are inextricably connected; the solutions to these problems are intertwined as well. The key to protecting our environment and protecting each other is the same. The key is us.

We are the people who can redefine the underlying values that govern our society and rebuild our economy based on long-term needs, not short-term greed. We are the innovative people willing to take risks and to do what’s needed. We are all part of the same movement.

So whether your primary concern is rainforest destruction, climate change, home foreclosures, the concentration of wealth, or corporate power, this is your fight. You are invited. You are needed.

The Rainforest Action Network has been campaigning to get the big Wall Street banks to quit funding coal and driving climate change for years now. So it may seem, on the face of it, like the Occupy Wall Street fight is not quite the same as our fight. But it really is. As Naomi Klein recently said to me, “The same logic that has trashed the economy is trashing the planet and we need to make those connections incessantly, because that’s how you build a truly mass movement.”

Not Everyone Can Occupy Zuccotti Park, But Everyone Can Say No to Bank of America

We’re doing our part by giving bank customers around the country the opportunity to show their discontent with the big banks by pledging to stop doing business with Bank of America. All of the ‘Not One More Dollar’ pledges we receive (to close BofA bank accounts and/or to boycott its ATMs) will be bundled — much like the big banks packaged mortgages for sale — and presented to Bank of America executives in protest of the bank’s funding of coal, the country’s number one contributor to climate change.

Over the past two years, Bank of America has invested $4.3 billion in coal. It is the biggest bank in the world and the biggest underwriter of the coal industry — bankrolling coal mining, infrastructure investments and coal-fired power plants around the country. Why does this matter? Coal kills between 13,000 and 34,000 people a year. That’s one person every 15 minutes.

It’s not just its funding of coal that we should be holding Bank of America accountable for, of course. The list of grievances over BofA’s behavior is a very, very long one. Bank of America has recently announced it will charge customers up to $60 a year to use their debit cards at the same time that it is laying off 30,000 employees. Bank of America is also a leading forecloser of Americans’ homes.

And then there’s the fact that Wall Street banks have infected our political system. Here again, we find that the same interests that have blocked federal action on climate change are being bankrolled by BofA to cook our climate and spew pollution into our communities.

Bank of America’s customers want the bank to take responsibility for the social and environmental consequences of its lending practices, and the Not One More Dollar pledge is a way for people to communicate that. I urge you to sign it now and put Bank of America on notice.

This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.

Naomi and Rebecca were recently together at the Tar Sands Action in Washington, D.C., which inspired the following dialogue…

Naomi Klein Photo by Ed Kashi & Rebecca Tarbotton

RAN is now in its 26th year, and we’ve been thinking a lot about our corporate campaigning model. As someone with expertise in analyzing corporate power, what have you seen as successful models for shifting the behavior of these multinational giants? Where is their weak underbelly?

The terrain is a hell of a lot more complicated than when I published No Logo 11 years ago and targets need to be chosen much more carefully. It sometimes works better not to go after the oil or coal company directly, but to go after the banks that lend them money, or the large corporations that buy their dirty energy (I’m thinking of the Bank of America, Facebook and Royal Bank of Canada campaigns here.) This can be more effective because the banks and corporate customers are less invested in the dirty business model themselves, so they have more flexibility to change course, whereas an oil company or a coal company isn’t going to see the light and stop being an oil or a coal company. It can also work to use national values to our advantage – Scandinavian investors are particularly receptive to ethical concerns. But the truth is that I’ve never believed that we can change the world one corporation at a time. What we can do is use corporate campaigns to make things so uncomfortable for a few big corporate players that this builds leverage for across-the-board regulation, which should always be the goal.

You were recently arrested in Washington, DC, along with 1,252 others, during a two-week sit-in at the White House demanding President Obama deny the permit for a 1700-mile tar sands pipeline. Do you think we are witnessing a historic moment for the climate movement in this country?

I think we’ve never really had a climate movement, at least not a mass movement. We had climate campaigns, which raised awareness, but that’s different. What is changing is that a new generation of young activists fully understands that change isn’t going to come until a mass movement exists, one capable of exerting real political, social and economic pressure from outside the halls of power. The mass civil disobedience against Keystone XL was a huge step in that direction and it was thrilling to be a part of it.

What are the key issues you think environmentalists should be focusing on?

Expanding the movement beyond traditional environmentalists, and tapping into the broader public outrage at corporate greed and economic recklessness. If you are targeting Bank of America because it’s lending money to coal companies, you need to be in coalition with all the other groups out there that are pissed at Bank of America for other reasons, first and foremost home foreclosures. The same logic that has trashed the economy is trashing the planet and we need to make those connections incessantly, because that’s how you build a truly mass movement. In some ways, the task is less to get self-described environmentalists to focus on economic justice than it is to find ways to make environmental issues more relevant to those pre-occupied with economic justice.

I also think we need to keep focusing on the geographic choke points where we can keep coal and unconventional oil in the ground. Once again, it doesn’t always make sense to go after the central target (the coal mine or oil well). The arteries are more vulnerable because the communities they pass through are less economically invested in a dirty business model. I think the Tar Sands has the potential to help build a massive continent-wide climate movement, precisely because it has so many arteries (multiple new pipelines in the works, machinery that needs to be transported, refinery expansions, export ports, tanker routes, etc…)

What advice would you give to young activists who may be daunted by the problems we face and the work it would take to fix them?

The failures of our current economic model are now so obvious to the vast majority of people on the planet that there is political space to think big. This is the kind of moment in which deep transformation is possible. So of course it’s daunting, but it’s also exciting.

Secretary-General Inducts Wangari Maathai as UN Messenger of Peace Photo: United Nations Photo/Flickr

“It is evident that many wars are fought over resources which are now becoming increasingly scarce. If we conserved our resources better, fighting over them would not then occur…so, protecting the global environment is directly related to securing peace…those of us who understand the complex concept of the environment have the burden to act. We must not tire, we must not give up, we must persist.” —Wangari Maathai

In 2004, when Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her founding of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, a debate was sparked. What did planting trees and empowering village women have to do with peace?

At the time, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) board member Anna Lappé and her mother Frances Moore Lappé wrote a spirited defense of the choice, that is well worth a read and contains a message just as beautifully relevant today. Part of the special genius of Wangari Maathai was in the connection she made between local solutions and global transformations. Put another way, Maathai showed how ecological collapse at the local level is at odds with peace on the global scale and how simple village women, sustaining their own piece of land, are every bit as important as UN negotiators or heads of state.

But our work is not over.

I have joined with several of our most valued friends, including Tim DeChristopher and Bill McKibben, to invite you to stand with us in Washington, DC on November 6. Exactly one year before the election, we are asking you to join us to encircle the whole White House in an act of solemn protest. We need to remind President Obama of the power of the movement that he rode to the White House in 2008.

We’re not expecting any arrests at this action, but with your involvement we can send an unmistakable, unavoidable message.

It’s clear that it’s now or never for President Obama to make good on his promises to end “the tyranny of oil.” He can start by saying no to the Keystone XL pipeline, a 1,700-mile fuse to a carbon bomb that is slated to run through America’s heartland.

Our organizing to stop the Keystone pipeline will only work if you’re with us. Below is the full text of your invitation to stand with us, which has been signed by:

• Tim DeChristopher, inmate, Federal Correctional Institution, Herlong California
• Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network
• Courtney Hight and Maura Cowley, Energy Action Coalition
• Jane Kleeb, Bold Nebraska
• Bill McKibben, tarsandsaction.org
• Gus Speth, former chair, president’s Council on Environmental Quality
• Becky Tarbotton, Rainforest Action Network
• Lennox Yearwood, Hip Hop Caucus

Dear friends—

Once again, we’re sending you another long letter to ask for your help.

It’s been several weeks since the last people got out of jail in Washington DC, at the end of two weeks of civil disobedience that led to 1253 brave people ending up in handcuffs to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. It was the largest such action in decades, and because of their leadership lots has begun to happen.

The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu along with seven other Nobel Peace Prize winners wrote a letter to the president asking that he block the pipeline. They acknowledged the actions of those of us in DC, saying: “These brave individuals have spoken movingly about experiencing the power of nonviolence in that time. They represent millions of people whose lives and livelihoods will be affected by construction and operation of the pipeline.”

At President Obama’s first public speech since the sit-ins ended, a hardy bunch of University of Richmond students unfurled a huge banner demanding that the president veto the pipeline – followed by similar actions in Columbus, Ohio, Raleigh North Carolina, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Wilmington, Delaware and many many others.

Meeting on the Rosebud Sioux reservation last week, Native tribal leaders from both sides of the border and private land owners from South Dakota and Nebraska signed a ‘Mother Earth Accord’ opposing Keystone XL and the tar sands. These are the people who started this fight; and they’re being joined by everyone right down to Nebraska Cornhusker football fans who booed lustily when a Keystone ad showed up on the Jumbotron at a recent game. The next day the university ended their sponsorship deal with Trans-Canada Pipeline

Even as we issue this letter, Canadian activists by the hundreds are risking arrest on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and brave protesters are trying to block shipments of heavy equipment to Alberta from Idaho and Montana–these are remarkable signs of continent-wide protest.

And on the not-so-good-side: huge wildfires driven by the worst drought in Texas history have destroyed towns and killed good people; the biggest rainfalls ever recorded have done similar damage in New Jersey, New York, and Vermont.

So—there’s real momentum for action, and real need. We have less than 90 days to convince the President not to approve the pipeline. So here’s the thing: we need your help again. We need you to keep using your creativity and bodies as a part of this struggle—to fight this fight even though there’s no guarantee of victory.

Here’s the plan, in three stages

1) Most important of all: On Sunday November 6 we will return to Washington. Exactly one year before the election, we want to encircle the whole White House in an act of solemn protest. We need to remind President Obama of the power of the movement that he rode to the White House in 2008. This issue is much bigger than any individual person, President or not, and that we will carry on, with or without him.

We’re not certain this is the right plan. We don’t know if there are the thousands of people that it will take to encircle the White House—we’ve never tried something this ambitious before. And we worry that it’s too earnest and idealistic—that maybe we should be going back to jail. But unlike last time, this time we’re working from a position of strength, and we can firmly but peacefully remind the president that we were the real power behind his campaign. We’re not expecting any arrests at this action, but we are expecting to send an unmistakable, unavoidable message.

2) But we have to start building momentum now with action in our communities. Between now and October 7, the State Department is holding a series of hearings on its flimsy report on Keystone XL. Our colleagues in the environmental movement are doing a good job of organizing for those meetings, including the final one in DC—and we’ll be supporting a rally at the final hearing.

But starting on October 8, we’ll begin a rolling series of actions at key Obama campaign offices around the country. We want these to be a bit bigger and more serious than what’s come before, so we’ll be doing training and providing materials to folks in those communities. We need to make sure that the message gets through to headquarters that people remember the promises from the 2008 campaign and want them kept.

3) We need to keep showing up at the president’s public appearances – just like what’s already been happening on campus after campus, town after town. (We especially like the chant that goes: “Yes We Can…Stop the Pipeline.”). Our organizing team is tracking the president’s every appearance to look for opportunities to act. If the President is coming to your neighborhood, we need you to get his attention. (We’ll help you do that).

We’ve already shown we have the courage and the fortitude for civil disobedience.Now we need to mix it up and show a different side of the campaign. Many of us were sincerely moved by Barack Obama’s campaign for president. We’re not yet ready to concede that his promises were simply the empty talk of politicians. We’re not going to be cynics until we absolutely have no choice.

It will be a beautiful and brave sight, the White House enclosed by the kind of people that put President Obama there. Since he’s said he’ll make up his mind by the end of the year, now’s the time. We know it’s hard to get to Washington, but if you can: this is the moment.

Thank you. A lot.

Rainforest destroying palm oil is an ingredient in roughly 50% of all packaged goods sold on grocery store shelves. It is used to make a wide variety of food products from cookies to breakfast cereals as well as cosmetics, soaps and detergents, and is largely responsible for the decimation of Indonesia’s precious endangered forests. In fact, the expansion of palm oil plantations is one of the biggest causes of rainforest destruction and carbon pollution in the world today.

We need these forests far more than we need palm oil. That’s a fact.

The infographic below shows exactly how pristine rainforests get turned into palm oil plantations, how they make their way onto our grocery store shelves and into our homes, and what we can do about it.

Click to view full-size infographic

Until recently very few people had even heard of palm oil — much less understood its connection to deforestation, species extinction and climate change. As public awareness about the problem with palm oil gains momentum, agribusiness giants like Cargill are starting to feel the pressure to transform how business is done in the palm oil industry. But the truth is, most people still have no idea that a huge percentage of the products they bring into their homes contain palm oil connected to the destruction of rainforests.

Knowledge is power. Please share this infographic with your friends and family so we can build the necessary consumer demand for change. Email it, blog it, tweet it, Facebook it. Thank you.

In mid-June, when 350.org and RAN started organizing what would become the Tar Sands Action at the White House, I thought it would be an important act of protest. But this has become something much more. It is the largest act of civil disobedience on the environment this generation has ever seen and a pivotal moment for the U.S. on climate change.

Today I spoke to a woman named Julie, a landowner from Nebraska who is the last person in her county to refuse to sign over her land for the pipeline. She’s never been to a protest, much less been arrested. But she told me that she just had to come because the stakes are so high. Likewise Eleanor, a landowner from Texas, who said defiantly: “I am much more worried about the Keystone Pipeline and the damage it could do to our climate than I am about my children being left with a deficit.”

By some estimates, as many as two-thirds of the folks who have been arrested since the sit-ins began two weeks ago have never participated in anything like this — and yet they gave up their own time and spent their own money to voice their opposition to Keystone XL and tar sands oil. This is what a movement looks like.

The movement to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline has become symbolic of our struggle to avert climate catastrophe, and it’s breaking through and gaining momentum. Here’s how we know that the tide is turning:

• This week has seen the biggest days yet of the “Tar Sands Action” civil disobedience in DC. So far, over 800 people have been arrested in DC (including actress and nature lover Darryl Hannah, who was arrested on Tuesday along with RAN board members Randy Hayes and Jodie Evans). Over 130 were sitting in today.
• Keystone XL is getting a ton of media coverage: It has been a top item on Google News for the past several days, and the issue has been featured in front page articles by The New York Times and The Huffington Post. It has also received great coverage from CNN, ABC, Al Jazeera, Reuters, and more.
• Along with our partners, we’ve collected hundreds of thousands of signatures on a petition that we’ll be delivering to the White House on September 3rd. If you haven’t signed and shared it, please do so today.
• In the last few weeks, the tar sands protests have united the leaders of groups as diverse as Greenpeace and the Environmental Defense Fund. A few days ago, the leaders of the top environmental groups in the country all joined together in a letter to the President in which we told him that “there is not an inch of daylight between our policy position on the Keystone XL pipeline, and those of the protesters being arrested daily outside the White House.” I have never seen this kind of unity in the climate movement.

I think we can get loud enough to stop the Keystone pipeline and build the momentum necessary to make a difference on climate — but we need each and every one of you. If you can’t make it to the White House tomorrow or Saturday, the last day of this first Tar Sands Action, you can still be part of the uproar by signing the petition to President Obama now. You can also be sure that we will be back here again if Obama doesn’t deny the Keystone Pipeline permit, and you can join us then. We’ll keep you posted.

Stopping the Keystone XL pipeline is an essential part of transitioning this country off fossil fuels. American citizens are voting for green energy with their dollars in increasing numbers. This month, California-based Sungevity sold 2MW of solar systems. To put that in perspective, ten years ago the entire State of California had just 10MW installed. Total. The clean energy revolution is underway — now we need our government to do its part.

With these protests, the Keystone XL pipeline has become the current symbol, the line-in-the-sand for the climate movement. If we stand on that line together, and succeed, I believe it will have ripple effects across our entire struggle.

This blog was orginally posted on the Daily Kos on August 19th as part of the Stop Tar Sands Blogathon.

On Sunday, Aug 28th, the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C. will open. The dedication — now long overdue — will serve as a reminder of Dr. King’s enduring legacy of justice, love, compassion — and activism.

The dedication falls right in the middle of a two-week period when, in the spirit of King, over 2,000 activists will meet at the White House to voice their opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The 1,700-mile oil pipeline, if built, would carry tar sands oil from my home country of Canada down along the spine of the U.S. all the way to the Gulf Coast.

It’s an ambitious proposal to build an immensely long pipeline, and if President Obama approves the Keystone XL, the distance between his rhetoric and reality will grow proportionally. Upon his election, the president told us that this was the moment “when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” But full exploitation of the tar sands would put the climate at extreme risk, which is why scientists such as Michael Mann and James Hansen oppose the pipeline.

The arguments for the pipeline have included energy independence, pipeline safety, and cheaper fuel prices. One by one each has been knocked down as people come to grips with the reality that increasing oil supply is no way to deal with oil addiction or climate change — our twin challenges when it comes to our energy choices. Consider these facts:

• According to government body in charge of pipeline safety, between 2000 and 2009, pipeline accidents were responsible for 2,794 significant incidents and 161 fatalities in the United States.

• According to NRDC projections, scaling up our use of renewables and increasing our energy efficiency can go a long way to offsetting the use of tar sands oil, if not meet them completely.

• The physics that control our climate are not waiting around for politicians to parse through the arguments for the Keystone XL and figure out how to message yet another step in the wrong direction. We are experiencing climate change now, and no amount of wishing it away or political posturing is going to change that reality.

Of course, the company behind the pipeline, TransCanada, and its other supporters have done everything they can to manipulate the process (including creating fake Twitter personas). It hired Secretary of State Clinton’s former deputy campaign director as their chief lobbyist, and recently released Wikileaks documents show U.S. envoys working with Canadian energy bosses to insure “favorable media coverage.”

We can’t have business as usual anymore. This is the message that the sit-in will send loud and clear to TransCanada and the president, a former community organizer himself who has a bust of King in the Oval Office. The president knows what a people powered movement can accomplish.

King challenged the conscience of the nation, and he was shot down in Memphis as he was putting together the Poor People’s Campaign, a new effort to tackle economic justice and housing for the poor in the U.S. Today’s climate activists are channeling King’s courage by taking their message straight to the doorstep of the president. The eyes of the world are watching.

Billionaire real estate investor and legendary tax evader Leona Helmsley famously said: “Only the little people pay taxes.” It turns out Helmsley was all too right.

Last month’s discovery that GE paid zero in taxes in 2010 has exploded across the news. But GE is not alone. Rainforest Action Network reviewed the top four banks, oil and coal companies in the country, and found that all of them are gaming the system. In fact, Bank of America, Citi, Massey Energy and Chevron have also all paid zero in federal income taxes this year or in year’s past.

We reviewed 12 of the dirtiest corporate tax dodgers: Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Chevron, BP, Shell, Exxon, Massey Energy, Alpha Natural Resources, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal. These 12 banks, oil and coal companies are responsible for foreclosing on millions of people’s homes and polluting our air, water and climate. At the same time, we found that they pay next to nothing into a tax system that provides the very services that protect the homeless, the sick and our environment.

As the graphic below shows, banks, oil and coal companies are making billions in profits annually and paying much less than their fair share in taxes. In fact, the top four oil companies in the country made $1.26 trillion in gross revenues and paid a shocking 2.04% average tax rate.

Click here to see graphic at full size

If just the top banks, oil and coal companies actually paid the IRS corporate tax rate of 35%, they would be giving back $62 billion this tax season. That is almost double the current $38 billion proposed federal budget cuts.

To add insult to injury, while these multi-billion dollar industries are raking in the profits and evading their taxes they were also paying millions in CEO compensation and lobby dollars. These corporations are happy to pay large sums to manipulate our democracy but aren’t so interested in paying to support that democracy.

So, let’s get one thing straight: America is not broke, and these dirty corporations don’t need any more handouts, bailouts, or subsidies. We don’t have a money problem, we have a priorities problem. We’re slashing billions from our budget, much of which will come out of social services and environmental protections, while allowing corporate giants to slip ever-increasing profits into offshore accounts.

By reversing years of tax giveaways to the largest corporations, Congress could raise trillions in revenue not only covering our budget deficit but also enhancing education, health and environmental programs that safeguard our families and our future.

Pissed off? You should be. It’s time corporate tax dodgers pay their fair share.

Rally in Annapolis, MD to support Wisconsin workers

For one thing, the attack on worker’s rights in Wisconsin matters for environmentalists because it matters for everyone. A war on workers is a war on all of us.

Across the country, many of us are public workers or have family or friends that are. We also depend on public school teachers and every other public worker to maintain the daily business of our cities. A country that can no longer protect, let alone respect, the people who teach our children, repair our roads, maintain our sanitation, and care for our sick threatens the well being of all average people. When governments eagerly go after their own public workers, we have to ask ourselves what else they are willing to compromise.

On another level, if you’re concerned about the environment you should care about what’s happening in Wisconsin because the same people, the same corporate interests that have orchestrated this attack on workers are also lobbying to slash funding for the EPA, working to destroy any notion of climate legislation and securing massive handouts for big polluters.

Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Ag have bought and paid for our democracy, and it is their agenda that our elected representatives are serving. Billionaire polluters like the Koch brothers who funded the crippling of last year’s climate bill and are now going after the EPA, are also funding this attack on our state’s teachers and other public workers. The same big corporations that have a vested interest in minimizing environmental regulations are pushing to cut the power of workers.

Wednesday’s passing of Governor Scott Walker’s shameful bill stripping union workers of their half-century-old right to bargain collectively is not about the state’s budget deficit. As author Naomi Klein told Rachel Maddow this week: “Unions are the final line of defense against privatization of the public sector.”

Instead of using the economic crisis to scapegoat public school teachers who educate our nation’s children on already paltry budgets, why doesn’t Governor Walker and his cronies go after the $4 billion worth of subsidies given to Big Oil?

From our air and water to our teachers and nurses, the corrosive hold of corporate interests on our political system is damaging all of our most precious resources. Undermining the power of unions and the voices of their members is first and foremost about cutting down one of the largest forces standing up against corporate power. Their private sector counterparts have already been all but destroyed by the same corporations and government backers.

What’s happening in Wisconsin is the result of turning our democracy into a dirty poker game. A game where only the very rich and powerful have a hand, the antes are the in the billions and the stakes are our country.

Lastly, what’s happening to workers across the country should matter to environmentalists because our movements need the strength of workers and unions, and their movements need us. For far too long we have been divided into niche issues. It is past time we show up for each other. Not only because it’s right, but also because that demonstration of collective power is the only way to win. Can you imagine the day that all environmentalists, union members and educators, pro-choice activists, immigration and racial justice activists all worked together? That is the day when we win our country back.

Co-authored by Nell Greenberg, Communications Director of Rainforest Action Network.

Have you ever seen the movies Erin Brokovich or The Rainmaker? Basic plotline: evil company dumps poison into town’s drinking water, for years people get sick while the company denies any wrongdoing, but then someone decides it’s time to fight back. The big company has a band of lawyers and dirty tricks up its sleeve. But, in the end, the community wins. The underdog town prevails and restores our belief that bullies, even the rich and powerful, don’t win in the end.

Let’s hope the upcoming verdict in a landmark case against Chevron — brought by an Ecuadorean community in the Amazon for decades of drinking water contamination — has the same victorious end. Unfortunately, right now all I see is a big, rich company and a lot of dirty legal tricks.

This week, Chevron slapped the Ecuadorean community and their lawyers with a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) suit. Congress enacted the RICO Act in 1970 in an effort to rein in the Mafia. That’s right — Chevron is accusing a remote rainforest community in the Amazon of racketeering.

Ines Suarez, 33, and her daughter Angie Christina Castillo Suarez, 2, outside their home near San Carlos, Ecuador. Angie and her family suffer severe health problems from drinking water contaminated by the oil waste that was dumped into local watercourses when Texaco (now Chevron) drilled for oil in the area. Photo by Caroline Bennett / Rainforest Action Network. View more images of Chevron’s Toxic Legacy in the Ecuadorean Rainforest.

Quick straw poll: between the multi-billion dollar oil company and the Indigenous rainforest community in Ecuador, who do you think has more in common with a gangster? The company’s attempts to deflect attention from the overwhelming evidence of its guilt in polluting the Ecuadorean Amazon is looking as desperate as a Mafia Boss running from tax evasion.

As the New York Times put it:

Chevron Corp.’s racketeering suit…is likely part of a wider strategy aimed at helping the oil giant reach a more favorable settlement, according to legal experts. A judge in Ecuador is close to issuing a decision in the long-running case there, and Chevron is becoming ever more desperate to undermine the plaintiffs in U.S. courts. The company could face billions of dollars in damages, potentially making the case the biggest environmental verdict of all time.

Chevron is facing a multi-billion dollar lawsuit in Ecuador after failing to properly clean up billions of gallons of toxic oil waste the company dumped in the Amazon. The lawsuit has been ongoing for eighteen years, and during that time many have died from toxic exposure. What is at stake for the people in Ecuador is the cleanup and remediation of a fragile eco-system that the community depends on for their basic survival. What’s at stake is justice.

For Chevron the stakes include the billions of dollars in assessed damages, the company’s self-ascribed do-gooder reputation, and a precedent for how corporations are held accountable for environmental and human rights crimes. The precedent this case will set for corporate accountability explains why it is the environmental lawsuit that scholars, advocates and the industry are closely watching. With so much on the line for Chevron, the company is ramping up its efforts to absolve itself of any liability, including prosecuting the very victims its actions have harmed.

Ultimately, Chevron’s executives and lawyers have shown that they are willing to do whatever it takes to avoid responsibility for cleaning up the oily mess left in the Amazon, a mess that is making people seriously sick. The RICO suit is the latest in a growing list of corporate bullying efforts aimed at discrediting the case and the affected communities. Chevron’s aim: to shroud the case with enough suspicion and controversy that, should the court rule in favor of the Amazonian communities, a guilty judgment would be difficult to enforce in the U.S. or other countries where Chevron has assets. Basically, even if the company is found guilty, which its recent behavior seems to indicate is likely, the oil giant has positioned itself to avoid paying a cent.

So, who’s the real gangster here? The Chevron Godfathers with their team of fancy legal consiglieres and PR wise guys, engaged in a whole host of cons and intimidation tactics? Or the Ecuadorean plaintiffs, who are largely poor, forest villagers who have literally seen their families and neighbors poisoned?

It’s hopeful to remember that the movie Erin Brokovich was based on a real person and a real story. Dirty companies making people sick is not just a Hollywood phenomenon. Luckily, neither is justice.

Many of us live thousands of miles away from Brazil, Indonesia and the Congo Basin, where the last stands of tropical rainforests still exist. It’s easy to forget that each breath we take is connecting us to those remote ecosystems, and that we should care as much about their survival as our own.

Some of this you probably already know: Rainforests provide homes and habitats for more than 50 percent of the species on Earth as well as for millions of Indigenous communities. What’s more, rainforests also serve as one of our key defenses against global warming by storing massive amounts of carbon. Over 40 percent of the world’s oxygen is produced from the rainforests. It may sound clichéd, but the adage is true: Rainforests are the lungs of the planet. The root meaning of the word conspire is “to breathe together,” so it’s no exaggeration to say that we’re all in a vast conspiracy with the world’s rainforests.

Or, we should be.

Today, more than two-thirds of the world’s tropical rainforests exist only as fragmented remnants. Industrial agribusiness, resource extraction, poor governance, illegal logging and the failure to recognize and respect the rights of forest peoples as well as global warming all threaten the continued existence of our planet’s lungs (here’s a great resource on threats facing the world’s rainforests). It’s as if humans have been on a smoking bender for a few hundred years, and, in spite of advanced lung cancer, we just can’t stop ourselves from smoking that next pack.

North America and Europe are responsible for a large part of the consumer demand that drives rainforest destruction — which also means we can do something about it. Here’s my effort to offer the most important steps you can take to stand with RAN in protecting the world’s rainforests. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but these are my favorites. Please share your solutions as well!

1. Become a Rainforest Lover

   Perhaps the most important step to protecting our rainforests is falling in love with them. Educate yourself, your family and your friends about the beauty and remarkable importance of these ecosystems. Right now forest destruction is more profitable than forest protection. You can change that, and a great place to start is arming yourself with the facts. One of the best repositories of rainforest stories and facts is Mongabay.com. I would recommend starting your love affair with rainforests there.

2. Support Rainforest Safe Books and Paper

   Pulp from cleared rainforests is made into cheap copy paper, books, tissue and toilet paper and luxury shopping bags that are then sold to consumers in the United States, Europe and Asia. But it doesn’t need to be this way. Top U.S. publishers are taking a stand and demanding rainforest safe paper, but they need your help. Here is a guide to rainforest-safe publishers and books so that you can support those companies that are doing their part and pressure the rest to shape up.

3. Stop Destruction of Rainforests for Palm Oil

   Believe it or not, palm oil is found in half of all packaged goods in the US — everything from cereal, cooking oil and candy bars to lipstick and soap — and its cultivation is one of the key causes of deforestation. Concerned customers have pushed companies like General Mills, Unilever and Nestle (to name just a few) to commit to source only responsible palm oil. Now it’s Cargill’s turn! As the company that buys more palm oil than any other company in the U.S., Cargill can make a big difference if they choose not to buy palm oil that hurts rainforests. Let Cargill know you care.

4. Fundraise for Forest Peoples

   Raising money to help protect rainforests and forest peoples is easy and important. The Rainforest Foundation and Rainforest Action Network both have easy ways for you, your friends, and/or your classroom to raise critical funds that help forest peoples defend their rights to their traditional lands and to protect and preserve their natural resources.

5. End our addiction to fossil fuels

   It may not be readily obvious, but fossil fuels like coal and oil are a major threat to rainforests and rainforest communities alike. Oil extraction has increased dramatically in the Amazon, for instance, often with devastating social and environmental effects. The problem is not confined to the Amazon, however: A proposed pipeline for transporting oil from Canada’s tar sands to refiners in the US would go right through the Great Bear Rainforest. Of course, once all that oil is burned it contributes to climate change. Coal is also a major part of the climate problem, contributing some 20% of annual greenhouse gas emissions. The US currently gets about half of its electricity from coal-fired power plants, earning it the title of “Climate Enemy #1.” Our Global Finance Campaign is working to stop big banks from funding coal projects and thereby keeping us hooked on the dirty stuff. Sign up now and help us work to get America off of coal.

Click image to visit ChevronThinksWereStupid.org and view more spoof ads as well as make your own

Have you seen the way Big Oil has tried to rebrand itself since the BP oil disaster started six months ago? Each of the major oil companies wants us to believe it is the good oil company, the exception to the rule — not at all like BP. A few months ago, Shell launched its “Let’s Go” campaign, where it touts itself as providing cleaner energy for the next generation. And last week Chevron pulled out all the stops with its multi-million dollar “We Agree” ad campaign.

Chevron’s ads seek to address the current critiques of oil companies with affirming statements like “Oil companies should support the communities they’re part of” and “Oil companies should put their profits to good use.” All the ads feature “real people” saying what they think about oil companies while Chevron employees earnestly state, “We agree.”

Excuse my language, but what a bunch of hogwash. Chevron’s new ad campaign is an appalling display of hubris and greenwashing. It’s also ripe for the hoaxing. And that is exactly what’s happening. Chevron’s “We Agree” ad campaign is so rife with bitter but mock-worthy irony, in fact, that the comedic geniuses at Funny Or Die spoofed it today:

Update: The “We Agree” spoofing went viral, thanks in part to a website we launched along with The Yes Men and Amazon Watch: ChevronThinksWereStupid.org. Click that link to get in on the Chevron spoofing action and view many more amazing spoof ads!

Chevron’s advertising scheme to win over its critics backfired when it was launched. But the campaign actually started going south from the moment of production.

The oil company initially attempted to hire green bloggers, political street artists and activists for its ad campaign — presumably thinking these folks would somehow forget that the company pulls in around $167 billion a year in revenues by drilling for, refining and selling one of the dirtiest fossil fuel sources around.

Apparently Chevron thought it could throw some money at environmentalists and get them to help clean up the company’s image. Instead, those environmentalists had another idea — they would tip-off some of their close friends and launch Chevron’s campaign for them.

The fun started last week when, as the New York Times put it, “pranksters” lampooned Chevron’s ad campaign. Or, to put it another way, the fun started when the advertising strategy for one of the biggest oil companies in the world was officially punk’d.

Hours before Chevron went live with its $90 million dollar “We Agree” ad campaign, Rainforest Action Network and Amazon Watch partnered with famous corporate pranksters The Yes Men and came out with our own version. We altered Chevron’s “We Agree” ads ever-so-slightly to highlight the company’s greenwashing efforts as well as its role in dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic oil pollution in the Ecuadorean Amazon. For the first few days of the company’s ad launch, our fake press release, ads and website dominated the news and drowned out Chevron’s corporate greenwashing.

Mock chevron ads also started showing up in the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, DC. And a contest was launched to see who could create the best-spoofed Chevron ad. My personal favorite has a sneering picture of Jack Nicholson with the tagline, “We lie because you can’t handle the truth.”

Our intention is not to trick reporters or play a practical joke on Chevron. Our intention is to highlight the egregious distance between Chevron’s rhetoric and reality. A company that wreaks havoc in communities across the globe has a lot of nerve coming out with ads featuring actors saying, “Oil companies should support the communities they’re part of.” It is hubris incarnate.

The question is, did Chevron think these ads would actually be compelling to critics? Do they really think we’re that stupid?

I think the answer may have been, yes. Instead of trying to clean up its mess, the company thought it could run a $90 million dollar ad campaign cleaning up its image.

Message to Chevron: We’re not that stupid.

This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.

While the Mountaineers reach for their win, West Virginia’s Mountains scored theirs yesterday. In what could be seen as the semi-final games for the Appalachian Mountains, the long awaited new EPA guidelines on mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) were announced yesterday, scoring 1 for the mountains and 0 for King Coal.

With these new guidelines, the EPA took a giant leap toward eliminating new mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining projects in the Appalachian states. Essentially, they issued strict new guidelines for coal producers and regulators designed to protect headwater streams by curbing the practice of dumping waste in neighboring valleys – a practice that has been poisoning community drinking water for decades. This may very well be the most significant administrative action ever taken to address mountaintop removal coal mining.

The practical impact of the new standards will be to minimize the dumping of mining waste in valleys adjacent to MTR projects. Because the coal industry maintains that most mountaintop projects wouldn’t be worth the additional cost of trucking the debris to more distant dumping sites, the guidelines – if properly enforced – could end most new mountaintop projects before they ever begin. The new standards will apply to all mountaintop operations proposed in the future, as well as the nearly 80 pending mountaintop permits the EPA is currently reviewing.

This is an incredible step that Appalachians, who have fought a decades-long battle against the devastation of mountaintop removal, are celebrating whole-heartedly. As RAN’s Amanda Starbuck said in a press statement yesterday: “After months of steps, the EPA has finally taken a leap to protect America’s mountains and drinking water. This is a clear response to resounding public opposition to the devastating mining practice. The EPA is finally flexing its full authority under the clean water act to curtail valley fills and protect the health of our waterways from irreversible damage.”

Like the Mountaineers, though, who still have a final game to go, the fight for Appalachia’s mountains is still short of a clear victory.. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said it well during her press conference yesterday announcing the new guidelines. “Let me be clear,” said Administrator Jackson. “This is not about ending coal mining. This is about ending coal mining pollution.”

I feel we have to be clear as well, and when I say ‘we’ I mean science. Ending mountaintop removal pollution can only happen by ending mountaintop removal. As a recent peer-reviewed report in the journal Science concluded, the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal mining are so severe that they cannot be successfully addressed with mitigation practices. “The science is so overwhelming that the only conclusion that one can reach is that mountaintop mining needs to be stopped,” said Margaret Palmer, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences and the study’s lead author.

The final game for mountaintop removal will be in pushing for President Obama’s administration to use their full authority to ban mountaintop removal once and for all.

I mean, really if President Obama wanted to stop most strip-mining in Appalachia, there might be more straight-forward ways to getting much closer to that goal explained Ken Ward of Coal Tattoo today. “The EPA could start a rulemaking to put the “fill rule” back the way it was, or the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement over at the Interior Department could announce it is going to apply the “buffer zone rule” to the footprint of valley fills. Or heck, Obama could seek legislation to just ban the practice… after all, both Sen. Robert C. Byrd and Rep. Nick J. have indicated they think there’s support in Congress for doing just that.”

It is clear that we are in the final showdown on mountaintop removal, and that we are winning. A very good thing considering that unlike basketball, which starts again every season, we can’t recruit new mountains.

Join the fight to stop mountaintop removal at www.mountainpledge.org

Walking in the streets with these people was powerful and achingly painful at the same time – almost all of them are living without access to clean drinking water and many of them can’t afford to buy bottled water. I watched as an elderly indigenous woman drank deeply from a plastic water bottle that had been handed to her by one of the Frente (the coalition of groups working to fight Chevron and represent the affected peoples), wondering when the last time was that she had quenched her thirst without poisoning her body. It sounds dramatic, but it is no word of exaggeration to say that these people are dying. The indigenous groups are losing the last of their land and livelihoods and the peasant farmers are barely surviving on land that is growing more and more toxic as oil from the waste pits leaches out into streams and rivers.

Is there any doubt about this? I don’t think so. Just two nights earlier, I was sitting in the lounge of our hotel in Quito when a clean-cut American man came into the room and began to work on his computer. I asked him what his business in Ecuador was and he replied that he was just here for a visit to the Galapagos Islands. But as it turns out, Rick is a biophysical chemist, specializing in cancer research. So I inquired without telling him why I wanted to know: “is there any way that there is NO connection between long-term exposure to crude oil and cancer”. I expected to get some scientific prevarication, but Rick didn’t even pause, not for a second. “No way at all” he said.

Are you listening Chevron? These people need something very simple – clean water, free from crude oil residue. Or they will die.

Before I arrived in Ecuador, I read about the terrible health problems that settlers and indigenous people living in the oil-affected area are experiencing. I knew about the toxic oil pits and the constant gas flaring. I knew that people were sick. But I wasn’t prepared for Fabiola. Fabiola was born with her heart on the wrong side of her body and doctors said that she would never walk. She proved them wrong on that count, but she is tiny for her age and she and her mother have had to make endless trips to doctors, sometimes traveling for days, to try and diagnose her many illnesses.

Fabiola’s grandmother moved to Taracoa twenty-three years ago, looking for land to farm. Texaco (now owned by Chevron) was already operating in the area, but the family didn’t know that the land they chose was right beside a toxic waste pit. The oil company didn’t advertise the whereabouts of its disposal sites, and hundreds of people moved into the area to set up home, not realizing that they were settling in an area that was so profoundly polluted. Oil from the open waste pits has been seeping into groundwater and streams for decades, gradually contaminating all the potable water in an area the size of Rhode Island. Animals started to die and over time, people started falling sick at unusually high rates.

Fabiola’s mother told us that she used to tend to the cows close by their house when she was pregnant with her daughter. Most days she would spend walking around the oil pit, and drinking water from the family’s well. It smelt like crude oil, and had a constant film of oil floating on the top, but it was their only source of water. Chevron/Texaco for their part assured residents of the area that the crude oil was actually good for them, encouraging people to rub it on their skin to treat arthritis. To this day Chevron claims that there is no connection between exposure to crude oil and human illness, an assertion that would be laughable if the effects were not so tragic.

Fabiola was born with severe birth defects just like many other children whose families live on the edge of Chevron’s oil sites. The company claims that they have cleaned up their mess, but one look at a ‘remediated site’ makes it abundantly clear that the so-called clean up is a cover up at best. There is very little that the residents of Taracoa can do to help the little ones like Fabiola who have already been so affected by Chevron’s legacy. Almost everyone buys their drinking and washing water these days, but money is scarce, and many can’t afford it. Their best hope of a long-terms solution lies in a court case that is being fought to hold the giant oil company accountable for cleaning up its mess once and for all, and for providing healthcare and clean water for all the many people who have suffered from Chevron/Texaco’s irresponsible waste dumping. The company has been fighting the case every step of the way. But I don’t think that any Chevron lawyer or executive who met Fabiola could fail to have a change of heart, and I hope with all of mine, that Chevron will ensure that hers is the last generation to suffer.

Dr Hansen said: “I am not a politician; I am a scientist and a citizen,” said Dr. James Hansen. “Politicians may have to advocate for halfway measures if they choose. But it is our responsibility to make sure our representatives feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not what is politically expedient. Mountaintop removal, providing only a small fraction of our energy, should be abolished.”

More photos and video to follow – stay tuned!