Meanwhile, more and more companies and business groups (Apple, Exelon, PG&E) are dropping their membership in the Chamber and public opposition to the Chambers’ climate change denial is growing. The latest opposition is coming from the high tech sector, where the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Silicon Valley Joint Venture are running an ad campaign against the Chamber for its opposition. And the Chamber is on the run, having been forced to backpedal on its claims to be the voice of the business community; last week the Chamber claimed to ‘represent’ 3 million businesses, but this week it quietly reduced that number to ‘300,000’ members. Investors are calling for companies that they own shares in to drop their membership in the Chamber, and local Chambers are formally distancing themselves from the US Chamber’s opposition to action on climate change.

As well they should. The Chamber of Commerce is behind the times: most companies have caught up with modern public values on climate change. For nearly ten years, the Carbon Disclosure Project has been surveying the leading global companies for their responses on climate change. In the most recent report issued earlier this year, 82% of the world’s largest 500 companies responded to the questionaire on their carbon emissions, 68% are reporting and tracking their emissions, and 51% have disclosed emissions reduction targets, all to report to investors representing over $55 trillion in capital investments. These companies are implementing global action plans for a carbon-constrained world, but the US Chamber of Commerce representing many if not most of these companies is heading in the opposite direction.

Here’s a note to Corporate America: every single company that claims to be taking climate change seriously yet continues to support the climate-change denying Chamber of Commerce, companies like Cargill, Microsoft (MSFT), Toyota (TM), FedEx (FDX) and Ford (F) – it’s time to come clean.

The US Chamber of Commerce is a national embarrassment, and corporations that continue to support this institution are standing in the way of progress in stopping climate change. It’s time for Chamber members to change or leave.

Just one day before Prime Minister Harper’s first official visit with President Obama, three concerned citizens released a vivid 70-foot banner above the Niagara Falls; the banner is intended to call attention to Harper’s efforts to lock up the U.S. market for tar sands oil, and the threat tar sands holds for the climate. Against the dramatic Niagara Falls background, the most well recognized border between the U.S. and Canada, the banner is intended to send the message that Canadian tar sands oil threatens North America’s clean energy future.

Watch this page for updates.

UPDATE 6:14 am PDT: Here’s another photo, and a phone interview with one of the climbers (who is still hanging under the banner).

Sounds like a pretty important news story, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We need two actions from each participating company:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out episode 6 of the 10 day adventure of RAN and Substance educating and mobilizing people to stop the Tar Sands, with rock bands Propagandhi and Strike Anywhere

Check out episode 4 of the 10 day adventure of RAN and Substance educating and mobilizing people to stop the Tar Sands, with rock bands Propagandhi and Strike Anywhere

Here is the first of our adventures. This tour diary series was originally created for Current TV.