Palm oil day laborer in Sumatra, Photo by David Gilbert/RAN

Fortunately the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took into consideration the complexity of the issue in its latest ruling about biofuels derived from palm oil. Late last week, the EPA excluded palm oil biodiesel from the U.S. renewable fuel standard—a small yet significant reprieve for Indonesia’s rainforests, where palm oil plantations are a major cause of rainforest destruction.

The EPA found that biofuels derived from palm oil aren’t a good choice for the climate because, once the carbon footprint of palm oil production is factored in, they can no longer meet the 20% emissions-reduction standard for biofuels.

It’s encouraging that the EPA sees the terrible toll the industrial production of palm oil biodiesel has on the environment. Indonesia is already the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and the U.S. Some 85% of Indonesia’s emissions result from clearing rainforests and draining carbon-rich peatlands, activities driven heavily by the rapid expansion of the palm oil industry.

Widely considered a “clean” agrofuel, palm oil has more environmental implications to consider than just the emissions it produces when burned. According to the Center for International Forestry Research, biodiesel from palm oil grown on peat has a 200 year carbon debt. This means it would take 200 years of production for these palm oil plantations to replace the carbon lost from land conversion. And once you consider the amount of fuel used for palm oil cultivation and transcontinental shipping, palm oil can be one of the worst fuel sources for the climate.

Looking at the harsh and immediate realities of today’s climate science, it’s clear that a 200-year turnaround is 200 years too late. There are already too many demands on Indonesia’s rainforests coming from the palm oil industry.

via fishandbicycles.com

The reports of King Coal’s demise appear to be exaggerated. At least for now.

After a year of fighting for coal export terminals proposals in Washington, coal companies are moving south into Oregon. Last week, it was announced that port officials at the Port of St. Helen’s, OR approved proposals to allow coal export terminals on the Oregon coast.

King Coal’s plan is to take the coal being mined from leases in Wyoming and Montana that are being opened up by the Obama’s Administration’s energy plan, transport it by rail to ports in the Pacific Northwest, and ship it overseas to Asian markets for big profits. There are already active efforts in the Washington port towns of Longview and Bellingham.

The Port of St. Helen’s agreements with Houston-based port logistics company Kinder Morgan and Australia-based coal company Ambre Energy would ship up to 38 million tons a year and is the first proposal to be approved in Oregon. It’s also reported that the ports in Coos Bay, OR are also in talks with unnamed coal companies about coal export terminal development.

Earlier in the year, Oregon’s Gov. John Kitzhaber had stated no coal would be exported through the state without an “open vigorous public debate.” It’s pretty clear that King Coal and the Oregon political establishment don’t want that at all.

For environmental and climate activists in the Pacific Northwest, I’ll remind them of the words of the late Judy Bonds — “Fight Harder.”

via movieposter.com

In the 1974 classic Roman Polanski neo-noir film Chinatown, private detective Jake Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson) discovers one of LA’s dirty secrets: Wealthy developers are legally stealing precious water from poor struggling farmers in California’s central valley to hydrate the posh homes of Beverly Hills and a rapidly growing Los Angeles. It’s a sordid tale of corrupt local politics, exploited natural resources, an earlier version of the 1% vs. the 99%, and seemingly the “future” of the city.

In a similar vein, despite growing green consciousness in southern California, the city of Los Angeles has another dirty secret, and it is called coal. Furthermore, the electricity that the residents of L.A. are using everyday from coal is being burned at the expense of struggling Native communities in the American Southwest.

Despite a resolution passed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the L.A. City Council to get L.A. off of coal, the Los Angeles Water and Power Department (LAWPD) still purchases almost half of its power from coal plants in Arizona and Utah. The resolution has led to two coal plants being shut down, but the LAPWD is still heavily invested in utility companies like Southern California Edison.

And while California itself has very few coal plants and no coal mines, it keeps its homes air conditioned and lights on through plants hundreds of miles away spewing pollution into the airways and waterways of the Southwest. This addiction has a particularly harsh impact on communities in the Four Corners area of New Mexico and Arizona as the Navajo Generating Station is located on Navajo land. Furthermore, companies like St. Louis-based Peabody continue to mine coal reserves on the same land.

Stellar reporting by Altnet’s Josh Frank has highlighted this story and the struggle of Indigenous groups fighting to be heard on the impact of coal plants and mining on native land.

My community is heavily impacted by Salt River Project’s coal and water extraction activities. SRP has extensive ties to Peabody Energy’s massive mining operations and the Navajo Generating Station,” says Louise Benally of nearby Black Mesa. “Coal mining has destroyed thousands of archeological sites and our only water source has been seriously compromised. Their operations are causing widespread respiratory problems, lung diseases, and other health impacts on humans, the environment, and all living things.

Last month, protests erupted in Arizona around the Navajo Generating Station. 16 activists were arrested at the offices of corporate climate marauder and managing partner of the Navajo plant, the Salt River Project (SRP). SRP is also a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and sits on its board. ALEC is most known for aggressive legislative campaigns to undermine labor standards, climate science and civil liberties, as well as a driving force behind the racist Arizona law SB1070.

At the end of Chinatown, the wealthy developers won, covered up scandals both political and personal, and Gittes was told “forget about it Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

But the fight over LA’s future with dirty coal is far from over, and we won’t be forgetting about the struggles of people most impacted by it for quite some time.

Becky White and the Secret Mission have just released this catchy and hilarious protest anthem/call to action track and music video — featuring RAN’s own Executive Director Rebecca Tarbotton on violin — called “Man Up!” The song calls on people to gather at the White House on November 6 to persuade President Obama to make the right decision and oppose the disastrous Keystone XL Pipeline project, the fate of which is being decided by his Administration right now.

The movement to stop this massively destructive pipeline has brought together a wide array of unlikely allies and has exploded into a national political force to be reckoned with in a very short amount of time. Please check this out and share it widely to spread the word on this crucial and time-sensitive issue!

The White House. Nov 6. Be There.

These are the final moments before President Obama makes a decision to approve or reject the construction of the dirty and dangerous Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. On November 6, exactly one year before the election, thousands will come together to completely encircle the White House in an act of solidarity to convince President Obama to make the right decision to reject the Keystone XL.

More than 4000 have already signed up to participate. This is fantastic, but we need thousands more!

Please don’t stay at home this Sunday wondering whether your presence would have made a difference. Come stand with us for clean energy, for human rights, for all of our futures. Sign up now!

“So many lives are on the line right now. The system is crashing. It’s crashing economically and it’s crashing ecologically. The stakes are too high right now for us not to make the most of this moment.” — Naomi Klein at Occupy Wall Street

Driven by relentless and ill advised palm oil expansion, Kalimantan’s carbon rich but relatively unproductive peatlands are being rapidly drained and burned. Across Indonesia, peatland destruction is releasing up to a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year – equivalent to emissions from 200 large coal power plants – in addition to fomenting wide social conflict and destroying critical habitat for orangutans, tigers and other species. Yet economic activities on peat contribute less than 1% to Indonesia’s GDP.  Emissions from sparsely populated rural Central Kalimantan alone now exceed those of Jakarta, a sprawling traffic-choked mega-city of more than 10 million people.

Smoke Over Indonesia Photo: Creative Commons

From September 20-22, Central Kalimantan played host to the annual meeting of the Governor’s Climate and Forest Task Force (GCF).  The GCF brings together California with 15 tropical forest states from the Brazilian Amazon, Peru, Mexico, Indonesia and Nigeria covering 20% of the worlds tropical forests to promote the development of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) mechanisms in carbon markets. Ironically, with heavy smoke from peat fires disrupting flights in and out of the province, the meeting almost had to be relocated to Jakarta.

REDD was initially promoted by industrialized countries as a quick, easy and cheap way to address climate change under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change as part of a wider fossil fuel emissions reduction agreement, but prospects for such a new international agreement have declined precipitously since the debacle at the Copenhagen Conference of Parties two years ago. While the urgency and importance of protecting peatlands and tropical rainforests is undeniable, at the same time, the true challenges and complexities of trying to define and implement REDD payment mechanisms on the ground at the sub-national level were in full display at the GCF meeting.

Suwido Limin shows dam constructed to restore drained peatlands and slow GHG emissions

At the formal level, the outcomes of the GCF meeting were fairly straightforward.  Delegates agreed to accept the Brazilian state of Matto Grosso and Madre de Dios in Peru as new members. The next GCF annual meeting will be hosted by the state of Chiapas in Mexico. The GCF established a new fund, with $1.5 million in seed money from the U.S. State Department, to assist with state capacity building. Efforts to expand GCF membership in Europe were endorsed.

Discussions among stakeholders and rights holders in the GCF side events and corridors profiled some of the greater challenges and controversies. Perhaps foremost among these is the need for rights based approaches to promote durable and just forest stewardship and green development, which was put forward forcibly by Indigenous and forest community organization participants.

A strong statement was delivered to the GCF meeting by forest dependent community representatives from Aceh, Papua, Central Sulawesi and Kalimantan calling for, “guarantee on people’ full involvement and representation in every process and stage, especially in the project’s decision-making processes…rights and access to complete and comprehensive information…the right to manage and to utilize the forest and resources within it, which we have inherited from our ancestors…every decision concerning the benefits for the people should be defined by the people themselves.” Underlying and supporting this perspective, including from many GCF delegates, is a growing recognition that durable forest stewardship can only be achieved with full involvement, understanding and support of the forest dependent communities themselves.

As Odigha Odigha (a Goldman Environmental Prize winner who RAN worked closely with in the 1990s), representing Nigeria’s Cross River State put it, “The people in the forest are the ones that must fully understand what REDD is because they have the final responsibility, not people in London, not people in Washington.” Similarly, the former Governor of Papua strongly emphasized community rights and empowerment in his proposals for promoting low-carbon green development pathways in Indonesia’s most heavily forested province.

The GCF delegates have largely returned home, but here in Borneo the peat smoke remains.  Yet, reasons for optimism in Central Kalimantan can still be found in some locally led initiatives. Native Dayak, Sudwido Limin, is not waiting for REDD to take action.  At the tropical peatland research center that he established, Sudwido showed us how they are damming up drainage canals in abandoned peatland areas, restoring forest cover and fighting peatland fires in a community based approach.  The methods they are developing could be widely applied, and combined with a strict prohibition on further peatland conversion would go a long way to leashing in Indonesia’s soaring greenhouse gas emissions. Jakarta, are you listening?

Activists chat with Wayzata, MN residents on September 10-11 at the annunal J. J. Hill parade.

If a place exists where Cargill has spent the time and resources to look as proper as the front row of a church on Sunday, it’s in the wealthy Minnesota suburbs where the quiet giant is headquartered.

Unfortunately for everyone else, Minnesota is also the only place (besides the Internet) where Cargill bothers to try and resemble a good neighbor. For the rest of us — from your average American carnivore to San Francisco Bay conservationists to palm oil plantation workers — Cargill is a name as rotten as a recalled turkey sausage. As CEO Greg Page will tell you, Cargill’s in it for the money above all else.

Cargill released some updated palm oil commitments in July 2011. The problem is that these commitments are too little, too late. They still don’t comprise a solid policy with safeguards regarding climate impacts and labor conditions, both HUGE problems with palm oil.

Now, it seems like Cargill is even losing ground in its hometown. Local Minnesota activists attended Wayzata’s annual James H. Hill Parade last weekend to distribute a flier setting the facts straight about Cargill and palm oil. Maybe you wouldn’t expect palm oil activists in Cargill’s hometown to be very well received, but they were!

When activists handed out the fliers, they had to actually explain that they weren’t with Cargill, but actually taking action to change the company. Only after the activists explained that they weren’t with Cargill were people willing to talk with them. And once they learned about the campaign, Wayzata parade-goers (and even Cargill employees) were supportive of the activists’ efforts. Multiple people told them to keep up the good work.

Well, we will certainly keep up the good work. Thanks Wayzata!

via dnews.com

They spill, they drill, and we fight back with the only currency we have — our bodies, our minds and our fighting spirit.

Hundreds have been arrested sitting in at the White House this week. Meanwhile, Alberta’s Indigenous communities have been fighting Big Oil’s development of tar sands for quite some time, and today residents in Moscow, Idaho crossed a line of their own in solidarity with those Indigenous activists trying to protect their homes from the utter destruction that is tar sands extraction.

Last night in the wee hours of the morning, as the first “megaload” trucks were beginning to roll, four men and women with Wild Idaho Rising Tide sat down in front of the massive vehicles to stop their passage through the highways and byways of the Northern Rockies to Alberta.

A few weeks ago, after many legal and political battles Exxon announced they were re-routing their shipments through the Port of Pasco in Washington (down river from Lewiston, ID) and ship reduced size pieces of equipment. While it was seen as a victory for the long term community campaign against the oil giant, Exxon still is moving the reduced size hauls through Idaho.

Moscow resident Brett Haverstick said, “Big Oil intends to clear-cut and strip mine a place the size of Florida, and simultaneously destroy native communities and entire watersheds. I feel obligated to speak up and say this is wrong.”

This morning’s action is part of a larger campaign being waged in Idaho and Montana by communities and environmentalists to stop the passage of tar sands heavy haul trucks through their region.

Activists Arrested For Blocking “Megaload” on US 95

Citizens Stand In Solidarity with Canadian First Nations & Others In Opposition to Extraction of the Alberta Tar Sands and the Building of the Keystone XL Pipeline

Moscow, ID- Early Friday morning, six Moscow residents were arrested for sitting in the road and blocking US 95 to protest an Exxon/Imperial Oil “megaload” shipment destined for the Alberta Tar Sands. In an act of non-violent, civil-disobedience, men and women sat down in the crosswalk of the highway when the four-hundred-thousand pound, two-hundred foot long, twenty-four foot wide, and fourteen-foot tall oil-processing module entered the downtown area. In a showing of solidarity with the First Nations people of Canada, and the hundreds of people getting arrested in Washington, D.C., the individuals are calling for the Obama Administration to deny permits for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would stretch from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

“Not only are people calling the Alberta Tar Sands the most unsustainable and destructive project on the planet, but also an act of genocide against the people that live in the region, particularly those down-stream of the tailing ponds,” said Moscow resident Brett Haverstick. “Big Oil intends to clear-cut and strip mine a place the size of Florida, and simultaneously destroy native communities and entire watersheds. I feel obligated to speak up and say this is wrong.”

With the Obama Administration getting ready to make a decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline later this year, the individuals said they have been inspired by the hundreds of people getting arrested in Washington D.C. this past week in protest of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

“President Obama must deny permits for the Keystone XL Pipeline. Go ask the people of Montana or the people of Michigan if they want more oil pipelines built across their lands and waterways, said Moscow resident Greg Freistadt. “People are traveling from Nebraska all the way to Washington, D.C. and getting arrested this week because the pipeline threatens their drinking water and livelihoods. It’s time for communities to come together and oppose this.”

The possible construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline isn’t the only oil pipeline that concerns the activists. The Northern Gateway Pipeline is scheduled to be built west from Alberta, Canada to the Pacific Ocean so that crude oil can be shipped to China and India.

“The First Nations people unanimously oppose this pipeline across their lands,” said Moscow resident Vince Murray. “In addition, supertankers plying the pristine coastline of northern British Columbia would endanger one of the last unspoiled ocean ecosystems in the world.”

The individuals have also been extremely disappointed with their city and state elected officials.

“Megaloads are terrorizing our highways in the Northern Rockies, pipelines are spilling oil into some of our most precious rivers, and our governors and Congressional leaders will not come to our defense,” said Brett Haverstick. If leaders won’t lead, then it’s up to us to step forward.”

Click Image to watch RAN's Lafcadio Cortesi on ABC's program "Paper Tiger" on Foreign Correspondent

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has just aired a damning exposé called “Paper Tiger” about the devastating deforestation caused by the pulp and paper industry in Indonesia. The program is called Foreign Correspondent and it is a sort of Aussie 60 Minutes.

The piece features compelling footage of logging giant APRIL mowing down vast expanses of Sumatra’s primary rainforests and creating an “ecological Armageddon” in order to feed their paper mill in Riau, which is the largest such mill in the world.

RAN forest campaigner Lafcadio Cortesi and I spent a half day with the ABC film crew when we were in Sumatra last month. Quotes from Laf’s extensive interview with them are featured throughout the program.

This great investigative piece includes emotional pleas from lifelong farmers about to lose their land to APRIL’s clear cut logging and shows motion detector camera shots of critically endangered Sumatran tigers just days before their habitat was bulldozed for a paper plantation. It documents both government corruption and explosions of violence resulting from the social conflict surrounding APRIL’s forest destruction. This maddening footage is interspersed with snippets of blatant greenwashing and callous disregard from APRIL’s Director of Operations, David Kerr.

Lafcadio explains the carbon implications of logging peatlands to ABC film crew

The show is a half hour long, but it makes for gripping viewing and offers a strong introduction into the urgent forest crisis underway in Indonesia. I wrote a blog post about this portion of our trip entitled “A Rainforest Apocalypse? People, Peat And Promises For A New Direction“.

Watch the exposé here. You can also read some uplifting news about Indonesia in my post entitled “From the Field: Inspirational Agroforestry at the Corner of Nature.”

via Just Do It

This is better than Harry Potter.

Film maker Emily James has documented the emergence of a bold grassroots climate movement in the UK in her new film “Just Do It.” They are sick of waiting on politicians, lobbyists and international bodies to change the world and end climate change, so these folks are taking action themselves.

They have a simple message: Ordinary people can take action and fight these corporate and governmental behemoths that profit from mining and burning fossil fuels, and so can you. We need climate action (less talk, less clicktivism) now more than ever, and these British activists from Rising Tide, Plane Stupid, Climate Camp and elsewhere have led the way. They super-glue themselves to bank trading floors, blockade factories and attack coal power stations en-masse, all with “manners, courage and humor.”

“Just Do It” is trying to come to the US and has an online campaign to bring the film Stateside.

Check out what you can do to make it happen here.

Less than 400 critically endangered Sumatran tigers remain in the wild. No more habitat deforestation for palm oil & paper!

What do the environmental and animal rights movements have in common? More than you might think, including a profound love of certain vegan products that mark an intersection of our work to create a more just and sustainable future for all of Earth’s inhabitants.

This past weekend I had the pleasure of participating in a keynote panel at the close of the 2011 National Animal Rights Conference in Los Angeles. Every seat in the large ballroom was taken by a dedicated animal rights activist, even though it was late on a Sunday evening. Prior to the presentation, as I walked past tables and booths and chatted with people, I was inspired by the many folks I met who have dedicated so much of their time and energy to their values and beliefs.

I had been asked to speak on a panel about bridges between the animal rights and environmental movements. Also on the panel were Taryn Kiekow, a lawyer with Natural Resources Defense Council, and Dr. Rose Marie White, Southern California Endangered Species chair of the Sierra Club. Taryn spoke about NRDC’s work to protect whales, and Rose Marie talked about how struggles to protect land are also struggles to protect the incredible species of wildlife that reside there.

George Shea, who hosted the keynote panel, spoke in his introductory comments about the paramount issue of climate change, and it’s connection to species extinction risks, thus situating climate change as a primary issue of animal rights.

In my presentation, I echoed George’s concerns of climate change’s risk of driving extinction, and of the right of animals to exist. I focused my analysis through the lens of deforestation. Indonesia’s rainforests are home to incredible, majestic, and endangered creatures such as the orangutan and Sumatran tiger. Currently, Indonesia’s rapid pace of deforestation has made the country the world’s 3rd largest greenhouse gas emitter behind the US and China. That’s right: Not only does rainforest destruction directly threaten the habitat of wildlife, it also releases more greenhouse gases than all of the cars, trains, planes, and trucks in the U.S. combined! Exacerbating climate change will only further endanger all of us, including our animal relatives.

Animal rights , environmental, social justice and climate justice activism all have significant reasons to confront the drivers of deforestation in Indonesia. This issue is a major intersection in our movements.

It was incredible to name those drivers of deforestation in my presentation: pulp and paper and palm oil plantation expansion. Many people in the room already know about Cargill, the largest privately owned corporation in the world, and the #1 importer of palm oil in the United States. Cargill has long been on the animal rights sh*t-list because of their inhumane profit model in the cattle industry. Now animal rights activists have another reason to work to stop Cargill from practicing business as usual: The company has no commitments to change its palm oil supply chain in time to save Sumatran tigers and orangutans.

You can take action by signing our petition to Cargill right now. Then, call Cargill and tell CEO Gregory Page exactly what you think about their palm oil problem: 1-800-CARGILL (1-800-227-4455).

Earth Balance vegan buttery spread contains palm oil sourced from RSPO-members. Not enough.

What came as a surprise to some and an ironic twist to others is the fact that palm oil is in some of our most beloved vegan products, including Earth Balance vegan buttery spread. OH THE SALTY TEARS! While Earth Balance knows its consumers enough to have a palm oil statement on its homepage, the company is still standing behind sourcing from Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) members. Membership is not certification. My mom could join the RSPO for $3,000. Just kidding. Kind of. But seriously, read RAN Agribusiness Campaigner Ashley Schaeffer’s blog about the RSPO Membership Myth. Earth Balance needs to only source RSPO-certified palm oil, RSPO-member-supplied is NOT enough for the expectations of a vegan consumer base.

Vegans and animal rights activists have made inspiring, courageous choices to live by their values. Palm oil ending up in vegan products that are causing orangutan extinction is a time bomb in consumer advocacy that vegan product suppliers would be wise to address rather than avoid. And we know animal rights advocates are not going to settle for anything other than real solutions.

After the talk, I was inspired by how many people were so excited to get involved, to take action, and to learn more. By strategically aligning our movements where our issues overlap, we can make significant strides in protecting rainforests, the creatures that depend on this habitat, and keeping our climate stable. In this way, we are bridging our movements around focused strategy and solutions, and this is an issue we will WIN!

via RAN.org

How much are you willing to sacrifice to save a piece of the world?

Today a federal judge in Salt Lake City sentenced climate activist Tim DeChristopher to two years in prison and fined him $10,000. After a 45 minute statement to the court where he said that it’s not that he doesn’t respect law but that he “has higher respect for justice,” Dechristopher was taken immediately into custody by federal marshals. Typically, federal offenders are afforded three weeks to get their lives in order and say goodbye to their friends and family.

In 2008, as a parting gift to the oil and gas industry, the Bush Administration opened up tracts of land in the southern Utah wilderness for development. DeChristopher derailed the auction for that land by falsely bidding in the land sale. The land sale was later proven to be illegal and invalidated. But after an aggressive prosecution by the Obama Administration, in March, Dechristopher was found guilty on two felonies and faced sentencing today.

Since his action, DeChristopher has become one of the loudest voices for civil disobedience against the fossil fuel industry.

Solidarity rallies happened all over the country today in support of Tim. Members of the Salt Lake City community blockaded the entrances of the federal courthouse in response to the sentencing. We held a rally at the San Francisco federal building. Here are some pics:

SF city supervisor and mayoral cadidate John Avalos said he was "Honored to be here in support of Bidder 70."

The coal industry argues that coal technology is already available while renewable energy technology is a pipe-dream that hasn’t yet been developed enough to supply energy en masse. Well, let’s not forget an important point — renewable energy is already being utilized. And not only on a small scale.

Take, for example, the Thisted municipality in Denmark, which uses 100% renewable resources for its electricity demands and 85% renewable energy for heating demands to supply over 46,000 residents. Thisted’s success can largely be attributed to the community’s focus on the local economic benefits of shifts to renewable energy, the constant re-evaluation of its programs to achieve continual improvement, and inclusion of local leadership.

Thisted is situated in Northern Jutland, an ideal location for utilizing windmills because of its strong, constant wind almost year round. Thisted has 226 windmills throughout the municipality that generate 103 GwH hours of energy each year. Thisted is also home to Denmark’s first geothermal facility, which produces another 10% of electricity needs.

Another significant source of Thisted’s electricity is provided by biomass — a combination of landfill incineration (which RAN acknowledges can have detrimental impacts on local communities, see GAIA to learn more) and straw burning plants.

As an example of the constant inclusion of locals and an expanding business plan, the municipality purchases the 8700 tons of straw it burns each year from the farmers, who otherwise would have discarded the straw as waste.

Since Thisted’s switch to lower carbon energy sources, customers have seen their energy bills fall by two-thirds.

Movements such as Thisted’s are being referred to as the “Third Industrial Revolution,” the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Community-led initiatives offer a better environment to live in by leaving nature in tact as much as possible, while always keeping sight of the financial benefits for the local society. The people of Thisted did not wait for large grants, corporations, or subsidies to start their conversion.

Thisted wants to keep the bar of energy achievement high. The municipality has pledged to further reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 3% each year, until 2025. The largest project being considered is a network that will connect district farmers who are producing more than enough energy to run their respective farms, to a municipal grid where the farmers can sell their surplus energy.

Thisted is a reminder that small steps, perseverance, and local commitment can lead to larger, sustainable change. Their commitment to forward thinking and proactive measures are a beautiful example of community action and decision-making.

The smoke hanging over Pekanbaru

If you think this title sounds hyperbolic, you probably have not visited Sumatra lately. Before traveling here, I had heard stories about the oceans of oil palm that have been planted where rainforest once stood. But I was not prepared for this.

The first sign that something is terribly wrong came before our plane even landed. From 30,000 feet over the Java Sea between Jakarta and Sumatra, there was no sign of land or ocean below. Just a sickly haze stretching to the horizon.

Global climate change is usually an abstraction — a concept that must be imagined or made academic to understand. But here, it’s in your face, tangible and acute. Incredibly, Indonesia has become the world’s third largest carbon polluting country, behind only the US and China — and 80% of those emissions are the result of deforestation.

Stepping off the plane in Pekanbaru, the capital city of the Province of Riau, the assault on my eyes and nose and lungs was immediate. I actually had to suppress an initial panic that I would suffocate from the smoke. Our friends here later told us we were lucky to land at all, as air traffic would likely be cancelled again for lack of visibility. Shipping traffic from Singapore is sometimes similarly interrupted by the intensity of the smog. Our hosts laughed a little uncomfortably, explaining that before the vast deforestation of the past decades there used to be two seasons here: the wet season and the dry season. Now, they said, there are four: the wet season, the flooding season, the dry season and the smoke season.

This land was once rainforest, but has now been cleared, burned, planted, harvested and burned again

The acrid air is the smell of burning peat. It is the smell of palm oil plantations expanding deeper into the heart of what’s left of Sumatra’s once vast lowland jungles. Sumatra’s forests have been so lush, so wildly productive, for so many millennia unbroken, that their photosynthesis has processed immense amounts of carbon out of the air. The trees have quite literally breathed the atmosphere in, sinking its carbon through eons of leaf litter, forming massive reservoirs of underground organic material that has actually built land dozens of miles into the sea.

These steamy, amphibious ecosystems swarm with a cornucopia of life. Elephants and orangutans, tapirs and tigers and every manner of bird and beetle the human imagination can fathom. The truth is, no one has any idea how many species used to live here. Scientists estimate maybe half the species in these forests have yet to be described to science, and with most of these forests now suddenly gone, we will never know what’s already been lost.

These unusual deposits are called peat domes, and Sumatra’s are among the deepest in the world. To make this land fit for industrial palm oil and pulpwood production, however, it must first be cleared and drained, marring the natural landscape with a matrix of massive canals. Exposed to the air, the peat begins to decay, and when it ignites, it smolders in unstoppable fires that open the flood gates of the reservoir, releasing catastrophic quantities of carbon back into the tropical air.

The clearing of these forests has been so fast and merciless, the land and its people are in a distinct state of shock. Both are still reeling from the ongoing assault while struggling to pick up the pieces. Already, what is forever lost is devastating. Many wildlife biologists consider the remaining populations of endemic Sumatran Rhino to be the living dead. Their habitat is too sparse, too fragmented and too disturbed, their numbers too few.

RAN forest campaigner Lafcadio Cortesi walking through decimated forest that is set to become a palm plantation

Yesterday I was able to visit a peat forest for the first time, and to witness the advancing edge of its destruction firsthand. To get there, we traveled ten hours through the night from Riau to Jambi Province, then four hours by car over horrendous dirt roads to South Sumatra. From there we rode motorcycles on thin trails through a barren palm oil plantation to the edge of the peatlands. We continued by foot on a rough trail along a canal dug by illegal loggers to remove logs from the forest. We arrived at the forests edge, battered, sweaty and spent.

Thrilled to see tall trees still standing, I could hardly suppress tears at the tragic effort it took just to reach them. Monkeys howled in the distance. An electric blue butterfly swirled around me. Spiderhunters, dollarbirds, and bulbuls flit overhead while giant crested treeswifts carved gracefully through the air. Then, as if on cue, a chainsaw began to roar just out of sight, followed quickly by the terrible sound of trees crashing through trees to the ground.

A few days ago we watched video footage of an 18 month-old Sumatran tiger slowly dying in a trap set by a pig hunter on an Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) acacia plantation a few hours from our hotel in Pekanbaru. He was one of the last of his kind. 150 breeding pairs are estimated to remain in the wild. These majestic animals have been pushed to desperation in their search for the basics of food, habitat and mates amidst a biological desert of palm oil and pulpwood plantations.

This peat forest took days of travel to reach and was falling as we watched

I would like to tell a happier story, but not at the expense of the truth. Indonesia is at a critical tipping point. But, as severe as the destruction is, all is not yet lost. Taken as a whole, a recent estimate puts Indonesia’s forest loss at 49%. Orangutans still swing freely through the canopy of forests in Borneo and new species of lizards and birds continue to be described to science in West Papua. There remains some hope for the struggling Sumatran populations of pygmy elephants.

And, as communities across Indonesia are struggling to regain their livelihoods and the future livelihoods of their people from being sacrificed for quick profit by companies turning the rainforest into international commodities, there are signs the government is turning around.

Feeling discouraged and distraught after our disheartening trip to the forest, we returned last night to the hopeful news that the Indonesian government has announced a potentially major new direction in forest policy.

Declaring the establishment of a new 89,000 hectares of community-managed forest lands and the enforcement of a decade-old provision of forest law that requires the government to identify areas within the national forest estate that are in conflict with existing forest community land rights, Presidential advisor Pak Kuntoro said that Indonesia’s president supports protecting the land of indigenous communities and that “this is our chance to untangle our convoluted past and make a lasting difference.”

People in the know seem to think the government may be serious this time. After his speech, Kuntoro said to Reuters, “Paradigm shift is imperative, from exploitation to sustainable and responsible use of natural resources.”

Indeed. More power to him.

Two weeks ago Greenpeace International released a YouTube video detailing how pulped rainforest trees are ending up in the packaging of toys sold all over the world.  The video begins, “We got to wondering…who is using all the rainforest that is being destroyed in Indonesia?” The sad truth is that the answer to Greenpeace’s question is me, you, and probably our friends and family.

Greenpeace’s investigations revealed that several famous toy companies, including Mattel, Lego, Hasbro, and Disney, are using fiber from cleared Indonesian rainforests in the packaging for Barbies, Cinderella dolls, Transformers, Star Wars games, and more.

Two major pulp and paper companies, Asia Pulp and Paper and APRIL, are clearcutting Indonesia’s rainforests and replacing them with monoculture acacia plantations to make cheap paper for all sorts of consumer products. Last year, RAN discovered that fiber from Indonesia’s rainforests and the acacia plantations replacing them was also ending up in children’s books sold in the U.S., and in March we launched a campaign demanding that Disney, the world’s largest children’s book and magazine publisher, get Indonesian rainforest destruction out of all its paper products.

It’s absurd that children’s books, Barbie boxes and other paper products are driving the destruction of some of the world’s most biologically diverse rainforests, and it’s infuriating that everyday people are being made into unwitting participants in this travesty.

TAKE ACTION

Join the global campaign to tell APP and APRIL that enough is enough. It’s time to stop destroying precious rainforests, abusing forest peoples’ rights and fueling climate change.

The lab tests revealed that all three Disney books did come from rainforest destruction. See the test results below.

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The test results showed that one of the books contained mixed tropical hardwood fiber (MTH) coming from Indonesia’s natural forests, while all three contained acacia fiber coming from monoculture acacia plantations that are replacing Indonesia’s natural forests.

Like good environmentalists, the RAN team sent a letter to Disney telling the company that it had a serious environmental problem: the paper used in its books was driving Sumatran tiger extinction, contributing to climate change, and driving social conflict between agribusinesses and Indonesian forest communities. Since that initial letter (sent in April 2010), Disney has not resolved this problem, and in May of this year we launched a public campaign against Disney demanding that the company eliminate controversial Indonesian fiber from its supply chain; cut ties with Indonesian pulp and paper companies APP, APRIL and their affiliates; and implement a comprehensive paper purchasing policy that puts environmental and social safeguards in place and increases use of responsible alternatives.

The urgency of meeting these demands was underscored by a Greenpeace report released this past Tuesday. Greenpeace commissioned its own fiber testing of the packaging of ten Disney-licensed products. This time, the results showed that all ten product packages contained both mixed tropical hardwood fiber and acacia fiber. The packages were purchased in multiple countries, including the UK, Germany, and Brazil (test results below).

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Greenpeace’s test results demonstrate that Disney’s connection to Indonesian deforestation through its paper (whether it’s in its book paper, toy packaging, or anything else) is likely to be even more widespread and problematic than the company thought. Luckily for Disney, the answers are already out there. Eight of the top ten children’s book publishers in the U.S. have already committed to eliminating controversial Indonesian fiber and controversial suppliers APP, APRIL, and affiliates. Companies in many other sectors, such as Staples, Office Depot, and the Gucci Group, have also done so. And countless companies have comprehensive paper policies that could help guide Disney.

What can you do? Email Disney CEO Bob Iger today to tell him and his senior management team that rainforest destruction is no fairytale. You can also join our email list to keep up to date with the latest on our campaign to move Disney.

via marchonblairmountain.org

I’ve been part of the movement to end mountaintop removal for five years now.

In 2008, RAN and I helped organize blockade actions against Dominion Energy which was building a new coal fired power plant in Wise, VA. In 2009 and 2010, we worked in solidarity with Appalachian and direct action groups in southern West Virginia taking action on mountaintop removal sites. During that same time, we waged a campaign to end mountaintop removal against the EPA and Wall Street banks like Chase and PNC Bank.

Last fall, we participated in Appalachia Rising, which brought thousands of Appalachians, friends and allies for a mass march and direct action in Washington D.C. 120 of us were arrested doing a sit-in in front of the White House. Now our friends in Appalachia are organizing a mass march, rally and action at Blair Mountain.

Blair Mountain is the site of the 2nd largest insurrection in U.S. history (after the Civil War.) The battle took place in 1921 and saw 8,000-10,000 miners fighting for union rights take up arms against the coal industry’s gun thugs. Now coal companies have stripped Blair Mountain of it’s historical landmark status and want to strip mine it.

A coalition of environmental, labor, student, community and activist groups have come together to stop the strip mining of Blair Mountain.  Beginning on June 4th, a march will begin that will retrace the steps of the 1921 march.

March on Blair Mountain Logistics

1) Attend the March, Rally AND Day of Action

Participants that plan to attend The March should arrive in Charleston, WV on the afternoon or evening of June 4th to be shuttled to Marmet, WV. Our Orientation Day will begin the following morning in Marmet, WV–it is critical that participants attend this Orientation Day in order for us to have a safe and effective march. Marchers will move out Monday morning and, over the next five days, march 50 miles to the town of Blair, WV, arriving on June 10th. The following morning, on June 11th, The Rally and Day of Action will begin in Blair. Shuttles will be available to take participants back to their vehicles in Charleston once the event is over.

• Register for the March
• March Event Schedule
• Things You Should Know for the March

2) Attend just the Rally and Day of Action

Participants that plan to attend just The Rally and Day of Action should arrive in Logan, WV on the morning of Friday June 10th if they are able. Beginning at 1pm on June 10th, we will be hosting a Training Day in Logan, WV so that participants will be prepared for the events the following day. If you need to arrive on the evening of June 9th, or the morning of June 11th, accommodations will be available. Again, we strongly encourage those that are able to attend the Training Day on the 10th.

• Rally Info

Hope to see you there!

Unfortunately, like any classic Disney tale, there is a darker side to this story, one that Disney does not want you to hear. Disney’s paper buying practices are driving some of Earth’s most iconic animals towards extinction, and so far the company is doing nothing about it.

Disney is the largest publisher of children’s books in the world, producing over 50 million books and 30 million magazines a year in the US alone. Last year, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) hired an independent lab to conduct tests on the fiber found in children’s books published by the top ten US publishers. Nine of the ten tested positive for fiber linked to Indonesian rainforest destruction, Disney included. See Turning the Page on Rainforest Destruction: Children’s Books and the future of Indonesia’s rainforests.

RAN approached each of the companies before releasing the incriminating data to allow each a chance to address this serious problem. In the year that followed, RAN worked closely with these companies and eight of the original ten have now established commitments not to source their paper from controversial Indonesian fiber. Seven of the ten have agreed to specifically avoid purchasing from the notoriously destructive logging and paper companies APP (Asia Pulp and Paper) and APRIL (Asia Pacific Resources International Limited) altogether.

Sadly, Disney has lagged behind its peers and to date has offered only empty words that do nothing to ensure the company is not still purchasing paper driving rainforest destruction.

Indonesia is a real life Magic Kingdom, home to some of the most biologically and culturally diverse forest ecosystems on Earth. With only 1% of the planet’s land area, Indonesia’s rainforests are home to 16% of all bird species, 11% of all plants and 10% of all mammals. This wealth of life includes endangered tigers, orangutans and elephants, the real life characters featured in Disney’s Jungle Book.

Reckless logging, largely driven by demand for cheap paper products and palm oil, has threatened all of this by causing one of the world’s highest rates of deforestation. The carbon emissions from this large scale deforestation has made Indonesia the world’s 3rd largest greenhouse gas polluting country, behind only the US and China.

Indonesia’s forest products industry is internationally renowned for its corruption and high rates of illegal logging, as well as for its devastating impacts on biodiversity, forest communities and the climate. The vast majority of Indonesia’s pulp and paper — approximately 80% — is controlled by two large and controversial suppliers: APP and APRIL. Over the past decade both have become infamous for their widespread, rapacious demolition of Indonesia’s rainforests and communities.

It’s time for Disney to realize that rainforest destruction is no fairy tale. Rainforest Action Network is putting Disney on notice, and we hope you will join us to get the company to align its practices with the values it espouses and embeds in the stories it tells. Bulldozers and chainsaws have no place in the habitat of endangered species or in the production of storybooks for children. It’s time for Disney to stop doing business with nefarious bad actors like APP and APRIL and to adopt a comprehensive policy that can guarantee parents that reading bedtime stories to their kids will not make them unwitting participants in tiger and orangutan extinction.

Because in the end, it was Disney who helped many of us learn for the first time, it’s a small world, after all.

-Woody Guthrie

I’ve recently become a fan of AMC’s “Mad Men,” which chronicles, in my humble opinion, the rise of modern corporate capitalism. As far as I’m into it, it shows a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, adulterous business culture where people ruthlessly throw one another under the bus to get ahead on Madison Avenue. I don’t find myself sympathizing with the Don Drapers, Roger Sterlings or Pete Campbells, because they live in a “take no prisoners” world. (Full disclosure: I’m only in Season One and been told things change later on in the series.)

But watching a “man’s man” like Don Draper strut around like the “cock of the walk” on Madison Avenue is quite educational about the business culture that rules New York’s other famous street: Wall Street.

Like the advertising execs on “Mad Men,” these self-proclaimed “Masters of the Universe” have thrown the rest of us under the proverbial bus by wrecking the global economy. Through their perpetuation of a casino economy we saw losses in global wealth in 2008 somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 trillion.

But unlike the Great Depression, we’re not seeing the wolves of Wall Street jumping out of any windows. Quite the opposite actually. While much of the country is suffering record unemployment rates (10% nationally, 21% amongst youth 18-30), 56% of all U.S. bankers saw an increase in bonuses in 2010 with top-end bonuses ranging on average somewhere between $900,000 and $1.4 million. Furthermore, while the working and middle classes are taxed to the hilt, legalized tax evasion is standard operating procedure at Wall Street’s banks. It’s estimated that at least $100 billion is hidden in offshore tax havens every year .

They get away with this because it’s essentially an inside job. Like in the Clinton and Bush years, they’ve infested the political process through appointments within the Obama administration. This includes Obama’s Chief of Staff, William Daley, who until recently was an executive for JPMorgan Chase. And Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric — a media, manufacturing, war profiteering and financial services conglomerate — is now Obama’s liaison to the business community.

Ask yourselves this question: How many bank CEOs have actually faced any sort of investigation, let alone jail time for the economic crash?

With their arrogant talking heads on CNBC, their ruling class opinions in the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages, and their neo-classical economic outlook, they’ve quickly become the epitome of a grade “A” asshole. Between the mortgage crisis, the financial crisis and the climate crisis, Wall Street has ruthlessly taken no prisoners in its war on the working poor, labor, the middle class and the environment. And what’s worse is, they’ve gotten away with it.

In the mortgage crisis, foreclosures and evictions are the name of the game. Systemically, it’s in a bank’s and mortgage company’s best interest to kick as many people out of their homes as possible.

As Max Rameau of Take Back the Land said: “In order for banks to get their mortgage insurance money, they must evict the families. Instead of a system or laws that try to keep families in their homes, banks have a perverse incentive to evict them. We should be rewarding banks that keep people in their homes, not the ones that kick people out.”

Unfortunately for the banks, people are fighting back against evictions. Community groups like Vida Urbana/City Life, Take Back the Land and workers’ centers from Oakland to Miami have made eviction defense part of their overall strategy in fighting back against banks. Some recent examples include:

• In Boston’s Hyde Park, neighbors and the community group City Life/Vida Urbana stopped a family’s eviction by Aurora Bank. By organizing protests and lockdowns, the organizers delayed the eviction. City Life/Vida Urbana has been organizing eviction blockades since 2007 with high success rates.
• In Rochester, NY, Bank of America sent in a SWAT team to evict a grandmother after they refused to allow her make mortgage payments on her home in her dead husband’s name.
• Organizations like the Miami Worker’s Center fight to help residents stay in their homes even after eviction.
• In California, the Home Defenders League has formed to help tenants and working poor folks fight Wall Street banks evictions departments.

The faux budget crisis has also led to growing antagonism against the banks as right wing politicians are using the crisis to “shock” public sector unions, public institutions and direct service organizations into the dustbin of history. While the big banks are living the high life with tax avoidance, bailouts and bonuses, their right wing allies want to widen the gap between America’s rich and poor with Milton Friedman’s economic models. And the U.S. working class and the labor-left are mobilizing to fight this effort with gusto not seen in decades. Here are some groups at the forefront of this movement:

• US Uncut: A new all volunteer grassroots network of groups using memes and tactics from across the pond have targeted Bank of America for its tax dodging. They are taking action regularly and their next nationwide days of action is April 15-18, Tax Day!
• The Mid-Western Tea Party governors have seriously poked the wrong dog with the wrong stick. In states like Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan, we’re seeing labor and working people pushing back hard against the Tea Party agenda with elections, recalls and direct action.
• On April 4^th, as part of the AFL’s national day of action, the Oakland teachers asked Wells Fargo for a “bailout. Over a hundred people, led by teachers of Oakland Education Association, took over an Oakland Wells Fargo branch. Participants included local community members and longshore workers union members who shutdown all the ports in SF and Oakland by refusing to work/take jobs.

In 2010, Wall Street literally lit the world on fire by giving the coal industry billions in loans and bond underwriting. From tar sands pipelines extending Alberta to Texas to coal infrastructure like coal plant retrofits, coal exports in Pacific Northwest, and mountaintop removal in Appalachia, Wall Street is funding the climate crisis while hiding behind greenwashed public relations. Wells Fargo, PNC, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citi and Bank of America are the culprits behind the “death cycle” of coal in North America. Citi recently underwrote a $500 million bond to Transcanada, the developer of the Keystone XL pipeline. And they led the merger between mountaintop removal villains Massey Energy and Alpha Natural Resources. But they’re meeting resistance:

• In Philadelphia, Rev. Billy led an exorcism at PNC Bank, calling out their funding of mountaintop removal coal mining, which has devastated central Appalachia for over 30 years.
• In the Northwest, Portland Rising Tide teamed up with local students to take creative action and let Bank of America and Wells Fargo in Portland know that funding fossil fuels won’t be tolerated.
• On Saturday in Washington D.C., Rainforest Action Network will be leading a tour of shame of these dirty banks at Powershift.

This doomsday machine that destroys people’s homes, their bank accounts, their means of earning of a living, and the very earth itself has run amok for too long. Like the toad sitting in the kettle of water while the heat slowly boils it alive, we’ve let Wall Street and their minions in Washington build too much power and too much momentum. At this point, the sheer power and scale of these institutions is, frankly, beyond us or any organization that we associate with or work for. We need to start small and build out. They are scared of us, not because we pose some violent threat, but because so many people in the country agree with us. Viewed from the vantage of an organizer and direct action-ista, the economic and environmental quagmire they are putting us in is nothing more than an opportunity.

People-powered uprisings from the Middle East to Europe, driven by the collapse of the global economy, have countered the bigger institution in their countries by slowly building over decades. In the U.S. we’re seeing small scale resistance like eviction defense and anti-coal actions at bank branches grow into large mobilizations at mid-western capitals that will hopefully form the foundations for a greater environmental and economic justice movement that might well challenge the system of capitalism.

But at this point, what we desperately need is to move past photo ops and email blasts and vote with our feet on the streets.

Researchers at Cornell University just released a study (pdf) that argues that using natural gas for energy actually causes more, not less, greenhouse gas emissions than coal.

The reason that natural gas is so greenhouse gas-intensive is because of “fracking,” or hydraulic fracturing, the process required to extract natural gas from far underground. The study’s authors found that during the fracking process, enough methane is released from underground to make natural gas actually dirtier than coal.

According to the study: “Compared to coal, the [climate] footprint of shale gas is at least 20 percent greater and perhaps more than twice as great on the 20-year horizon and is comparable when compared over 100 years.”

This news is especially distressing because coal plants across the United States are converting to natural gas in response to upcoming EPA air pollution regulations. Instead of switching from one dirty fuel to another, communities need to replace dirty power plants with truly clean, green energy — and banks need to stop financing false solutions like natural gas and instead invest in the renewable energy solutions that will replace fossil fuels once and for all.

For more information about natural gas extraction and fracking, check out RAN’s official position statement on hydrofracking, or get involved with Earthworks, a great organization working to protect communities from the devastating effects of gas development.

APP is highly proficient at using covert marketing and shady political strategies to grow its business in Indonesia and abroad. Today, NYTimes journalist Mike McIntire exposed some of APP’s questionable business practices with a frontpage piece highlighting APP’s latest antics in the U.S., including revelations of suspicious links between the company and Tea Party-esque groups like the Institute for Liberty and the Consumer Alliance for Global Prosperity.

While McIntire’s article should be enough to pique the interest of any curious reader, it really only scratches the surface of APP’s impact on the planet’s forests and climate and the company’s use of political manipulation as a business strategy. APP has wielded immense influence in the Indonesian government for decades due to the close political and economic ties between the company’s founder, Eka Tjipta Widjaja, and notorious former Indonesian dictator Suharto. APP’s record in Indonesia shows that the company has operated with near immunity from the law (it is estimated that over 50 percent of logging in Indonesia is done illegally) and almost complete disregard for the environment and human rights.

As APP expands into North American markets (the company just bought its 5^th Canadian mill this week), it seems clear that we should only expect more of the same. Environmental devastation, disregard for human rights, and political manipulation are APP’s modus operandi, and groups like Consumer Alliance for Global Prosperity (CAGP) are spinning APP’s corporate interests and misdeeds into populist misinformation — manipulating APP customers and tea party advocates alike.

The good news is that RAN and others have been campaigning for the past several years to get APP to change its nasty ways. Within the last year, eight of the ten major U.S. children’s book publishers have moved away from APP and their main competitor APRIL as well as eliminated controversial Indonesian fiber from their books until it can be shown that reforms have been made in the industry.

Our team at RAN is committed to seeing this work through and to calling APP’s bluff until the company comes clean and stops destroying rainforests and misusing its power. We hope you’ll join us. Sign up to be a Rainforest-Free Paper Rapid Responder and we’ll let you know whenever there are things you can do to help hold rainforest-destroying companies like APP accountable.