Tag Archives: environment

Five Innovative Voices in the New Environmental Movement

Posted on
Reply

The environmental movement often looks to historical heroes for inspiration–rightfully so. But today’s political world is a far cry from the one where Muir made his stand. (And imagine Thoreau using Twitter.) 

As the year draws to a close, it’s a good time recognize a new group of green movers and shakers. Forget Al Gore (so 2007); these leaders are on the cutting edge of the environmental movement. Here are a few of them:

Image: BillMcKibben.com/Nancie Battaglia

Bill McKibben – Founder and Organizer, 350.org

While we bloggers peck away at our keyboards, Bill McKibben is making waves in climate politics. Already known as an author, he started 350.org in 2008 to promote action on climate change. On October 24, 2009. the organization mobilized rallies in 181 countries for what CNN called “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.”

Over the last few months, McKibben has been spearheading Tar Sands Action, an effort to halt Canada’s disastrous tar sands production. You probably heard about the Keystone XL pipeline delay–Tar Sands Action and its thousands of activists claimed a major role in this decision.

Rebecca Tarbotton – Executive Director, Rainforest Action Network

TreeHugger once compared Rainforest Action Network to a pack of jackals: “Its campaigners jump on a target’s back and won’t get off until it submits.” Led by Rebecca Tarbotton, RAN is targeting heavyweight industry players like Bank of America, Chevron, and Cargill. The San Francisco-based nonprofit has a reputation for hardline stances and savvy market activism.

Case in point: Last year, RAN worked with The Yes Men and Amazon Watch to hijack Chevron’s greenwashing “We Agree” campaign, complete with fake press releases and Web sites. The campaign–the fake one, that is–went viral and was picked up by major news outlets. In the end, the incident made Ad Age‘s list of the year’s biggest marketing fiascos, highlighting Chevron’s abysmal social and environmental record along the way.

tim dechristopher trialTim DeChristopher, aka Bidder 70 – Activist, Founder of Peaceful Uprising

Tim DeChristopher’s interference with a federal oil and gas land auction earned him a heroic status in some branches of environmental movement–and a two-year prison sentence. When the government wanted him to quietly disappear, he ramped up his efforts to inspire further direct action against fossil fuel industries. This polarizing strategy probably sealed his fate, but it also drew a lot of attention to his cause.

DeChristopher also seems to understand the power of branding. When curious onlookers tuned into his trial, they might have expected a post-hippie with dreads and hemp sandals. What they saw was a clean-cut gentleman in a fitted suit. In his speech at the sentencing DeChristopher made an eloquent defense of civil disobedience. Channeling Thoreau at times, he made it clear that, no matter how he was punished, his activism would continue.

For more on the Tim DeChristopher trial, check my article “Civil Disobedience on Trial.“

Graham Hill – Designer, Entrepreneur, Founder of TreeHugger.com

These days, green blogs are nothing special. Besides the big names like Inhabitat and Grist, scores of other eco-themed sites have sprouted across the Web. But TreeHugger was a pioneer of sustainability blogging, and it remains one of the most popular.

Graham Hill is the entrepreneur behind TreeHugger. Trained in architecture and industrial design, Hill has started a number of creative ventures, including a line of ceramic Greek cups. After TreeHugger was sold to Discovery for $10 million, he began promoting sustainability through other avenues. His latest project is Life Edited, a contest to find the most innovative design for a 420-square foot NYC apartment. The goal? To show how we can “save money, radically reduce our environmental impact, and have a freer, less complicated life” by owning less stuff and living in smaller spaces.

You can find Graham Hill’s TED presentations here.

You, Concerned Individual

When we read about high-profile figures in any field, we tend to forget the potential of ordinary people–and that many of these “heroes” are ordinary people. One of the Steve Jobs quotes that’s floating around the Web makes this point:

…everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

Yes, there’s a difference between building computers and organizing social change. But the point is that we are all qualified to make a difference.

This list is meant to be a starting point, not a conclusion. Please tell us about your twenty-first century environmental heroes in the comments.

House GOP Targets Manatees, Sea Turtles, Prairie Chickens

Posted on
Reply

You're looking at the latest threat to American freedom.

We already know that the Tea Party-powered House has been working hard to derail several decades of environmental accomplishments.  You’ve probably heard that the debt ceiling deal not only cut holes in the social safety net, but also defunded environmental protection.

HR 2584, the Interior and environmental appropriations bill, continues this trend. The bill’s title shows its real purpose. It’s not called the Funding the Interior Department Act or anything like that; no, it’s the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act of 2011. Among those burdens are the usual scourges of liberty–the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

But there are also some surprising culprits: Sea turtles, manatees, and dunes sagebrush lizards, for example. These seemingly innocent creatures are apparently part of the sinister big-government scheme that the GOP is on a mission to thwart.

You can laugh, but I’m only half joking. Take a look at some HR 2584 amendments reported by Defenders of Wildlife  (and if that’s not enough for you, Rep. Jim Moran and Mother Jones have lists of anti-environment riders on the bill).

  • Representative Steve Pearce (NM) has introduced an amendment to end lobo recovery efforts, essentially dooming the 50 remaining Mexican gray wolves in the wild to extinction.
  • Representative Blake Farenthold (TX) has proposed blocking efforts to reduce the speed limits on beaches where threatened and endangered sea turtles nest.
  • Boat strikes are one of the leading causes of death for Florida’s threatened manatees, but Representative Richard Nugent (FL) wants to block a Fish and Wildlife Service rule to prevent boat collisions with these gentle sea cows.
  • Representative Jeff Denham (CA) has introduced an amendment to block restoration of salmon in the San Joaquin River.
  • Representatives Pearce and Randy Neugebauer (TX) are fighting to prohibit Endangered Species Act protections for lesser prairie chickens and dunes sagebrush lizards.
  • Representatives Paul Gosar (AZ) and Rob Bishop (UT) have proposed amendments that would exempt the border patrol from laws and regulations that protect imperiled wildlife and federal conservation lands like our national parks and wildlife refuges.
I know that predatory animals aren’t very popular among the ecologically-unconcerned. In an extreme case, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association argued that grizzly bears should be eradicated and that Tilikum, the Sea World orca who killed his trainer, should be stoned. And on a more mainstream level, ranchers have always harbored a resentment toward wolves.
But manatees? What harm have they ever caused? Edna Mattos, leader of the Citrus County Tea Party Patriots in Florida, lent some insight in the St. Petersburg Times:

“We cannot elevate nature above people. That’s against the Bible and the Bill of Rights.”

The Florida Tea Partiers took issue with sea cows when the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to make Kings Bay a wildlife refuge. Parts of the bay have been protected since 1980, and the FWS says that the current population of 550 manatees needs more space. But the Patriots aren’t falling for that garbage.

“We believe that [federal regulators'] aim is to control the fish and wildlife, in addition to the use of the land that surrounds this area, and the people that live here and visit.”

So I guess that explains Rep. Nugent’s amendment (he was elected by these people, after all). But what about the other assaults on wildlife? Normally, the argument for axing regulations is that regulations kill jobs. How does that philosophy apply to sea turtles and lesser prairie chickens? That’s hard to say. If you go to work one day and find that a prairie chicken has taken over your job, let me know. Same goes for when your new boss has flippers and smells like seaweed.

All these anti-wildlife amendments have two things in common (besides being ridiculous). They would all have serious consequences, yet they would not do anything meaningful to reduce the deficit or create jobs. Although the proposals may be laughable, their authors are dead serious. But they need your votes to keep their agenda rolling.

When election season comes, remember the manatees.

Civil Disobedience on Trial: The Story of Bidder 70

Posted on
2

Tim DeChristopher at PowerShift 2011. Photo by Linh Do.

This week, the saga of Bidder 70 reached a climax when activist Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in prison for his interference with a government land auction. The direct action has made him a hero of the environmental justice movement and a target of the federal government.

The Background

On December 18, 2008, Tim DeChristopher, an economics student at the University of Utah, showed up at a federal land auction in Salt Lake City. As a parting gift to the fossil fuel industry, the Bush Administration was leasing hundreds of thousands of acres in Utah for oil and gas drilling.

DeChristopher walked in planning to protest the auction and get thrown out by security. He walked out as Bidder 70, the winner of nearly $1.8 million dollars of oil and gas leases. And under arrest.

It didn’t matter that the land auction was invalid from the beginning. Or that the Obama Administration later cancelled most of the leases. DeChristopher’s goal in delaying and drawing attention to the auction had been realized, but he still owed the Bureau of Land Management almost $2 million.

With the help of Patrick Shea, who directed the BLM under Clinton, Tim raised the necessary funds much faster than he had expected. But the BLM refused his payment.

The Trial

DeChristopher was charged with one count of False Statement and one count of violating the Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act. From the beginning the prosecutors’ goal was to make an example of him. Their reports insisted that the sentence should “effectively communicate that similar acts will have definite consequences.”

As the trial progressed, it became clear that a guilty verdict was inevitable, maybe even predetermined. The prosecution claimed that DeChristopher had “obstructed lawful government proceedings,” but the defense was forbidden to point out that the auction was not a lawful proceeding. DeChristopher was not allowed to mention that he had offered an initial payment to the BLM. Nor was he allowed to explain the moral motivations behind his action, including climate change.

He told DemocracyNow:

I was able to talk about what my intent was there at the auction… But I wasn’t able to introduce any evidence that supported what I was thinking. I wasn’t able to introduce anything that happened before December 19th, about the corruption within the Department of the Interior in the Bush administration, or anything that happened after December 19th…So, I was only able to throw my views out there as unsubstantiated claims of what I was thinking.

In short, the government prevented DeChristopher from saying anything that would have made his actions appear justified. And the only truly neutral party, the jury, never heard the whole story.

Legal details aside, there’s an infuriating irony in Tim DeChristopher’s conviction. If he had killed 29 people by letting a coal mine explode, or buried a river in toxic chemicals, or somehow given thousands of people cancer, then it would make sense for him to be going to jail.

If Tim DeChristopher’s negligence had helped cause the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history, wrecking the lives of countless people, a prison term would be justified. If he had poisoned an Amazon community with oil drilling waste, or conspired to blow up hundreds of mountains in Appalachia, we’d be screaming for his head.

But in reality, DeChristopher is going to prison for bidding in an auction and starting a book club, among other atrocities. Meanwhile, the people (remember, corporations count as people now) who do the things listed above carry on with an encouraging nod from the authorities.

The Impact

Of course, we know the real reason for Tim’s sentence. The prosecutors told us, “To be sure, a federal prison term here will deter others from entering a path of criminal behavior.” That “criminal behavior” is also known as civil disobedience, and the government’s response has been known by another name: intimidation.

If you read DeChristopher’s speech from the sentencing (and you definitely should), you’ll see that his political stance was central to the trial:

The reality is not that I lack respect for the law; it’s that I have greater respect for justice. Where there is a conflict between the law and the higher moral code that we all share, my loyalty is to that higher moral code. I know Mr. Huber [the prosecutor] disagrees with me on this….

This philosophical difference is serious enough that Mr. Huber thinks I should be imprisoned to discourage the spread of this idea.

When you read the rest of the speech and see the reactions from the groups that stood behind Tim, you will see the trial has not intimidated their movement, but galvanized it. The dozens of activists that protested at the sentencing, including the 26 that were arrested in Salt Lake City, were not intimidated. The folks signing up to resist the Keystone XL pipeline weren’t intimidated. Nor were the tree-sitters holding off blasting on Coal River Mountain.

And, if Tim DeChristopher himself, who will spend the next two years behind bars, was intimidated, he didn’t show it:

This is not going away. At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like. In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like. With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow.

New BP Oil Spill in the Arctic: Up to 4,200 Gallons Leaked from Pipeline

Posted on
Reply

BP has a long history of oil spills in the Arctic. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Not content to let Exxon hog all the attention, BP has just sprung back into the spotlight with yet another oil spill — this time in Alaska’s North Slope tundra.

From Reuters:

BP said on Monday that a pipeline at its 30,000 barrel-per-day Lisburne field, which is currently closed for maintenance, ruptured during testing and spilled a mixture of methanol and oily water onto the tundra….

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said the spill occurred on Saturday and amounted to 2,100 to 4,200 gallons, affecting 4,960 square feet of gravel pad and about 2,040 square feet of wet and aquatic tundra.

This is a small spill, but it’s important for the public to take notice. For too long, we’ve been letting the oil industry dump poison into the environment and then sweep it under the rug (or water, or dirt, or snow). Heck, most of us seem to have already forgotten about the Gulf oil spill. Maybe the two recent pipeline leaks will wake us up.

Joe Romm pointed out that BP’s operations in the Arctic, just like their marine counterparts, have a dirty track record. For example:

  • The 2006 Prudhoe Bay incident when 267,000 gallons (~6400 barrels) of oil and chemicals leaked from unmonitored, corroded pipeline.
  • llegal toxic substances dumping on Alaska’s North Slope.
  • According to data compiled from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation spill database, 1.3 million gallons of toxic substances were spilled between 1996 and 2000.
  • The November 29, 2010 Prudhoe Bay spill in which 46,000 gallons leaked.
Wherever fossil fuel companies go, they cause toxic, often irreparable, damage–whether it’s Alaska, Montana, Louisiana or Ecuador. And they don’t care. Yet they want us to forgive and forget. It was an accident. Won’t happen again. We don’t need regulations. Regulations are bad for you. Yuck. Not like oil, oil is good.
How much longer are going to believe that?

Girl Scout Cookies and Rainforest Destruction: Teens Working to Break the Connection

Posted on
1

Why two Girl Scouts are campaigning against Girl Scout Cookies — and how their efforts have taken America by storm.

Four years ago, Girl Scouts Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen were doing research for their bronze award project. Their subject of choice was the endangered orangutan and the threats it faces from deforestation. They discovered a little-publicized fact about Indonesian rainforest destruction: Acres upon acres of orangutan habitat are being cleared for plantations to produce palm oil, an ingredient in about 10 percent of consumer products. Madison and Rhianon decided that their goal would be to raise awareness about palm oil and its impact on endangered species.

Girl Scouts Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen

If that had been the end of it, the project would have been commendable. But the girls’ focus shifted when they found that the Girl Scout Cookies they sold every year contained palm oil. Suddenly, they weren’t just working toward a badge; they were campaigning to change one of the country’s most well-known nonprofits.

Now fifteen and sixteen, Madison and Rhiannon have partnered with Rainforest Action Network (RAN) to bring their message to a wider audience. Their PR efforts paid off in May with a front-page Wall Street Journal story, followed by a flurry of TV interviews on ABC, CBS, and Fox News (yes, even Fox).

The responses from Girl Scouts USA have been more defensive than sympathetic. In early May, for instance, RAN and Change.org helped Madison and Rhiannon launch a social media campaign to put pressure on the Girl Scouts administration. After about fifty messages had been posted on the Girl Scouts Facebook page, GSUSA deleted the comments and added a statement assuring viewers that “our bakers source palm oil exclusively from members of the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil.”

The claim is true but misleading. RAN calls the RSPO “more of a pay-to-play organization than a serious watchdog group:”

There is a very important distinction between RSPO membership and RSPO certification. RSPO certification is a seal of approval that is given to palm oil grown on a plantation that has been certified through a verification of the production process by accredited certifying agencies. In theory, the “certified sustainable” palm oil (RSPO oil) is traceable through the supply chain by certification of each facility along the supply chain that processes or uses the certified oil.

RSPO membership, however, does not require companies to follow sustainability guidelines. In a letter to GSUSA CEO Kathy Cloninger, RAN explained,

[RSPO} member companies have been documented clearing forest, peatland and critical wildlife habitat while ignoring human rights — all of which are prohibited in the RSPO principles and criteria. In essence RSPO membership does not ensure that deforestation, orangutan extinction, and climate change are not found in Girl Scout cookies.

For instance, one RSPO member, IOI Group, is illegally operating a palm plantation on the ancestral land of the Long Teran Kenan people, in Malaysian Borneo. A court ruled that the plots in question were, indeed, on indigenous land, but the conflict has not yet been resolved, and the RSPO has failed to take decisive action against IOI.

Returning to the Girl Scouts, the organization’s executives did finally meet with Madison and Rhiannon while the girls were in New York for their media interviews. The meeting was a step forward, with GSUSA leaders verbally agreeing to address concerns about deforestation and human rights abuses.

The bakers of Girl Scout Cookies began using palm oil in 2006, in an effort to rid the cookies of trans fats. (Palm oil is the cheapest “healthy” oil.) A spokesperson for the Girl Scouts has insisted that the group has little or no say in the cookies’ ingredients — it’s up to bakers. But if GSUSA demanded a recipe change, the bakers would have to comply, or else lose the Girl Scouts business. With 200 million boxes of cookies selling per year, the idea that GSUSA has no influence is a bit hard to believe.

Part of the mission of the Girl Scouts is to empower girls to “make the world a better place,” and the idea seems to be working. Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen are making a difference; they’ve already brought as much attention to the palm oil-deforestation issue as any environmental group has so far. Their biggest challenge, ironically, is getting the Girl Scouts leadership to follow its own credo.

This story should serve as inspiration for any young person who hopes to spark positive change. If and when Girl Scouts USA does make its cookies rainforest-friendly, the impact will be huge. And two teenaged girls will be responsible.

How to get involved: Sign up for RAN’s Girl Scouts e-mail list here. Learn how you can take action online and offline.