This past week, Emergildo Criollo, an Indigenous Ecuador leader of the Cofan people traveled 3,000 miles from his home in the Amazon rainforest to California. He came to California to share his story and ask for support in getting one of the world’s largest oil companies (Chevron) to clean up one of the largest environmental disasters in history.

For a whirlwind few days this week, Emergildo shared his story with Chevron employees, California Senators and Assemblymembers, journalists, activists, and Chevron’s new CEO John Watson’s Lafayette neighbors.

Emergildo Criollo Indigenous Ecuador leader of the Cofan people.

Here is the story that Emergildo told (translated from Spanish):

“I want to start telling my story from when I was a child.

In 1964, I was 6 and living by the river.

As was the tradition of my people we would migrate from area to area to hunt. We were in (what is now called Lago Agrio) hunting.

At one point we heard this really loud noise coming from the sky. We thought it was a large bird (it was a helicopter). We were scared and hid.

The helicopter landed and we were very scared. They landed and started cutting down trees. They cut down about 10 hectares of trees.

Texaco (now Chevron) set up a worker camp. Me and my father tried to sell our jewelry. I was wearing my traditional dress. The workers came up and lifted my dress. I was so embarrassed. They lifted it because they didn’t know if I was a little girl or boy. It was so humiliating.
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Last night, Emergildo Criollo, the Indigenous leader from Ecuador, met with California legislators and asked for their support in the 16+ year campaign to demand Chevron remediate massive oil contamination affecting over 30,000 people. Along with supporters from Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network, Emergildo spoke with lawmakers about the impact of California’s largest company in Ecuador, and what they can do to support his community’s call for environmental cleanup and action to prevent such tragedies in the future.

Senator Fran Pavley and Assemblymember Jared Huffman hosted the reception in Sacramento entitled, “From Ecuador to California: California’s largest corporation, one of the world’s worst oil related disasters, and what California’s legislators can do.”

Despite the pouring rain, the reception was packed with Senators, Assemblymembers, and their staff. Lawmakers in attendance included Senator Fran Pavley, Senator Loni Hancock, Assemblyman Manny Perez, Assemblyman Paul Fong, Assemblyman Ira Ruskin, and Assemblyman Jared Huffman. These key leaders from both the Environmental and Latino Caucuses not only listened to Emergildo’s story, but spoke of their desire to support the people of Ecuador who are suffering and dying because of Chevron’s operations.

Assemblymember Jared Huffmand spoke of the need “to remedy a very serious environmental and human tragedy.”

At the reception, Emergildo shared his story. He told the lawmakers about how he was only 6 years old when Chevron (then Texaco) began oil drilling in his community. He spoke of how his family was forced to relocate because of the contamination. About he had to part centimeters of oil off of the river to drink the water. About how he has lost two sons and nursed a wife through uterine cancer because of the contamination. His family drank, bathed, and fished in water that was poisoned by oil dumping.

After telling his story, Emergilod asked all of the Assemblymembers and Senators for their help and invited them to visit his home and see for themselves the devastation Chevron’s behavior has caused.

Senator Loni Hancock, from the Contra Costa district where Chevron is headquartered, said she “would like to come and visit. This is an international issue and an issue here as well.”

Assemblymember Manny Perez had a heartfelt exchange with Emergildo in Spanish and lawmaker after lawmaker stood up and said they wanted to learn more and to see what action they could take.

We are excited about the possibilities moving forward and look forward to working closely with California’s legislators to make sure California’s largest corporation is held responsible for cleaning up one of the largest environmental disasters of all time.

Learn more at www.ChangeChevron.org.

Brighter Planet has just come out with a report that examines the climate impact of multiple factors along the entire supply chain of producing, transporting, packaging, preparing and discarding our food. The authors find that “In all, food represents 21% of the typical American’s total annual carbon footprint of 28.6 tons CO2e. Of course, that’s just the average – your personal foodprint depends on how much and what kinds of food you eat, where and how that food is produced, how it’s prepared, and what you do with the leftovers.”

Overall, the report is impressively broad in scope. Unfortunately, it neglects to examine the climate impact of deforestation for food production. I wonder how that would add to the carbon footprint of the average American diet – quite a bit, I’d expect!

A Cargill Oil Palm Plantation - Photo Greenpeace PNG

Still, the authors’ recommendations for reducing your carbon “foodprint” are sound – and they would also contribute to reducing deforestation for food production:
• Eat fewer animals and more plants
• Buy unprocessed foods with less packaging
• Grow and harvest your own food
• Minimize car trips to restaurants and stores
• Cook at home more and eat out less
• Cook with efficient appliances and techniques
• Compost, recycle, and relish leftovers

Isn’t it nice that the same steps that are good for our health and our budget will also help the planet?

You may remember that last June 23, dozens of activists, including myself, organized a daring action to shut down one of Massey Energy’s mountaintop removal sites in West Virginia. That day, fourteen brave activists entered Massey’s mountaintop removal site in Twilight, West Virginia. They risked their lives to shut down a massive, 20-story high earth-destroying piece of mining equipment known as a ‘dragline,’ and to protect the families whose lives are harmed every day for this destructive mining practice.

Read more about the dragline action.

The “Dragline 14″ needs your support! I need your support! Please donate!

Our subsequent legal costs have totaled over $23,000. Since last September, we have raised over half of it, but we still need to raise another $4,000 by early March.

I have donated to the Dragline 14 because I believe that sustaining the critical tradition of non-violent direct action is one of the only ways to ensure that we stop the destruction of eco-systems, the poisoning of communities and the contamination of precious drinking water from mountaintop removal. Together we must make a show of support for true heroes, and ensure that more follow in their footsteps.

Please donate to support the Dragline 14. More »

Last Thursday, Rainforest Action Network along with several online allies including 350.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the Waterkeeper Alliance, the Ruckus Society and others re-branded JP Morgan Chase in social media networks as being the largest U.S. funder of mountaintop removal [which is also the truth, BTW].

In the days before, the re-branding of Chase went viral. Armed with a thumbmail picture and a few status messages, people all over the internet let their friends and family know the truth about Chase and mountaintop removal.

Through the course of the day, we hit Chase in the following ways:

-RAN and allies Tweeted to over 330,000 people
-RAN and allies touched 180,000 people on Facebook
-had over 30 unique blogs posted, including posts on Huffington Post, Treehugger and Grist
-had 3,000 people “defriend” the Chase Community Giving Facebook fan page
-reports of dozens of people cancelling their Chase credit cards and bank accounts.
-one Appalachian activist started a “Boycott Chase” Facebook group.

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JP Morgan Chase is the biggest U.S. financier of mountaintop removal.

They have financial relationships with the poster child of mountaintop removal, Massey Energy. That means their money is funds sludge impoundments like Brushy Fork which is currently holding 7 billion gallons of coal waste above the Coal River Valley. Their money funds the dragline that 14 of my friends shut down in Twilight last June that scrapes away house size chunks of earth after the mountain has been blasted. Their money funds the security guards and noise machines that harassed and abused 3 tree-sitters last month defending Coal River Mountain with non-violent direct action. Their money funds Don Blankenship’s helicopters, mansion and corrupt junkets to Spain with WV Supreme Court Justices .

Chase has hired PR firms to re-brand themselves on the internet as “charitable” and “benevolent” through their “Chase Community Giving sites and Facebook Fan Pages (even though they disallowed “political” groups from participating in any fundraising). Chase touts themselves as a green environmentally friendly bank. Their greenwashing, social media branding and high powered PR firms can’t hide the truth about what Chase really does. They are complicit in destroying Appalachia’s mountains, poisoning it’s communities with dirty water and ruining it’s economy by creating conditions that lead to the worst poverty in the country.
Today, we’re exposing that truth using tools on the internet that will concentrate tens of thousands of people on Chase brand they’ve spent so much money perfecting.

It’s time we amp up the pressure on Chase and take their money out of the coal industry. More »

In today’s “Chevron is a dirty liar” news: The oil giant pulls another dirty PR trick and lies to avoid paying $27 billion to clean up their toxic legacy in Ecuador.

For years, the people of Ecuador have been trying to get Chevron to clean up the billions of gallons of toxic waste and unlined oil pits that were left to poison their water, their land, and their community.

Chevron has used dirty tricks and tactics every step of the way during the decades-long legal challenge to force them to clean up Ecuador. They’ve hired dirty PR, legal, and lobby teams; forced the case to move around the globe; fabricated a story to discredit the original Judge; and filed endless motions that are eventually denied but nevertheless succeed in further draining the plaintiff’s resources and delaying a judgment.

As Steven Donziger, a legal advisor for the 30,000 Ecuadoreans who are suffering because of the 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste Chevron refuses to clean up, says:

“Chevron is again trying to strong-arm the court by misrepresenting facts. This is part of an underhanded attempt to derail a trial Chevron is losing based on the voluminous scientific evidence.”

Today’s trick? To claim in a press release to their investors it had “newly discovered” evidence that the court-appointed Special Master who conducted a damages assessment, Richard Cabrera, owns a remediation company in Ecuador that stands to benefit from a clean-up should the plaintiffs win the case. The filing is the 29th official motion Chevron has made to the court to disqualify Cabrera but the court has never accepted Chevron’s arguments.

Carbera, working with a team of 14 scientists, found that Chevron could be responsible for $27.3 billion in damages.

Pablo Fajardo, who grew up in the contaminated region and is now the lead Ecuadorian lawyer in the case, took a moment to dispel some of today’s Chevron lies and half-truths:

* Cabrera disclosed to the court that he owned a clean-up company beforehis appointment as Special Master. This fact was properly cited by the court as one of the reasons he was qualified to do the damages assessment.
* Chevron thought so highly of Cabrera’s qualifications that it accepted him as a court-appointed expert in an earlier part of the case and paid his fees as required by court rules.
* The fact Cabrera’s company is qualified to bid on clean-up contracts offered by Ecuador’s state-owned oil company is irrelevant. That company, Petroecuador, is not a party to the case against Chevron and would have no role in any eventual cleanup.
* Cabrera by virtue of his role in the case would be barred from having a role in a future clean-up.

To Chevron, this is all about money and pulling out every dirty trick in the book to avoid taking responsibility for the devastation they have caused.

For the people of Ecuador this is about so much more than money.

This is about the children who are getting sick and dying because they are forced to drink poisoned water. This is about justice for the 1,400 people who have died of cancer. And for the families who were unfortunate enough to build their homes on dangerous oil pits that Chevron (then Texco) lied about properly cleaning up. This is about their right to drink clean water. A right that Chevron denies with every lie and legal trick.

Chevron- when will the lies end and the clean up begin?

Visit www.ChangeChevron.org to become part of the movement to change Chevron.

Cross-posted from www.ItsGettingHotinHere.org.

Over a year ago, in the tradition of Ed Abbey and Earth First!, college student Tim DeChristopher (aka Bidder 70) monkey-wrenched an auction for oil and gas leases in Utah when he bid on 14 parcels worth $1.8 million and then stated he had neither the intention nor the money to pay for them. He has sense been charged with felonies and faces 10 years in prison and $750,000 in fines.

March 15 is his scheduled court date and his organization, Peaceful Uprising, along with authors Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Terry Tempest Williams and scientist James Hansen have called for support and action at the trial.

This will be an important event. Get involved and support however you can. More »

Thanks to a big push from Avaaz yesterday, there are now over 150,000 people who have signed a petition telling Chevron’s new CEO John Watson to clean up the oil giant’s toxic legacy in Ecuador, and around the globe.

It is undeniable that the world wants to change Chevron. People from all over the globe are signing this petition, people young and old, from so many backgrounds. We’ve had celebrities, musicians, investors, and Chevron employees standing up and demanding change from one of the largest corporations on the planet.

As the new leader of the 3rd largest oil company in the world, CEO John Watson can right the wrongs of his predecessors and transform his company into one that cares.

150,000+ are saying “Enough is enough. Energy shouldn’t cost lives.”

From Ecuador to Richmond,CA to Burma and everywhere the oil giant operates in-between they leave a trail of environmental devastation, human rights abuses, and a legacy of health problems.

150,000+ say ENOUGH to Big Oil destroying our environment and the health of our communities.

Chevron, and their Big Oil cohorts, spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbyists and political contributions to buy off politicians and destroy policies that would be good for our climate and our future.

150,000+ people say ENOUGH to Chevron’s control of our government and our democracy.

To truly change Chevron and the oil industry, we are going to need to be 150,000 x stronger and louder and more powerful than we ever have been before. Our communities, our climate, our planet, and our future depend on it.

You in?

Learn more from our friends at Amazon Watch!

As many of you know, there is lawsuit that has been going on for over 16 years to get Chevron to own up and clean up its toxic legacy in Ecuador. The lawsuit is on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadorean people who are suffering and dying because of Chevron’s refusal to the do the right thing.

The legal team working on behalf of the impacted people in Ecuador has a great blog called The Chevron Pit which is a great source of information about the case, Chevron, and the people seeking justice.

They’ve just launched a powerful new series featuring the first of many personal stories about how the oil contamination left behind by Texaco has impacted the people living near the oil company’s former oil sites. Chevron purchased Texaco in 2001.

The first story is about Modesta Briones, who passed away not long after she and her husband, Segundo Salinas, gave an interview to author Lou DeMatteis for his book Crude Reflections.

The story and images are powerful, and as they say, speak so much louder than words. Every year that Chevron does not clean up Ecuador more people will get sick and die. We can, and we must, Change Chevron