JonStarbuck.co.uk

http://risingtidenorthamerica.org/download/rtna_climatemovementisdead.pdf

The sooner we realize that politicians and corporations will not solve the climate crisis, the sooner we can get to the real work of building a strong grassroots people’s movement – our only hope for survival. In that regard, the failure in of the December 2009 UN climate meetings in Copenhagen may be a great opportunity.

The inability of world leaders to cooperate rather than compete, to put a livable planet ahead of their own economic interests, is the death of their legitimacy. When rich nations draft a secret agreement that commits our planet to warming another 3 degrees Celsius, we can feel the noose tightening.

When Obama comes to the table with a pledgeto cut emissions by 4 percent, we know this spells genocide for island nations. When civil society groups are banned from the climate talks, but corporate lobbyists are allowed to remain, it is obvious where the politician’s loyalties lie.

It is not just the politicians and CEOs who are walking us down the gangplank. Many in the climate movement have grown all too cozy with the status quo. The “bold” action they call for will result in the privatization of the air, to be divided up by mega-polluters. Their demands for carbon neutrality seek to offset our problems onto poor countries while the rich keep burning and consuming. Their vision of a “clean energy future” would perpetuate the corporate control of our energy and of the Earth itself.

Meanwhile hyperconsumerism, corporate power, war-mongering and global dominance by wealthy countries – the roots of the climate crisis – remain side issues skirted around as if they were not the central pillars of the high-carbon economy. Those who still cling to the old climate movement have committed themselves to a sinking ship. Fortunately, just as the legitimacy of their approach is dying, a new movement is alive and kicking.

As world leaders jockeyed for their piece of the atmosphere in Copenhagen, hundreds of thousands were taking the streets worldwide fighting for real climate solutions. Hundreds of delegates braved police truncheons as they attempted to walk out of the UN climate talks to meet the thousands already assembled to create a people’s climate assembly.

In the United Kingdom 200 activists occupied Trafalgar Square to set up a climate camp. In Australia,
forty people blocked the world’s largest coal export terminal. Canadian activists repeatedly occupied government offices. Subsistence farmers from around the world took the streets to demand community control of sustainable food systems.

The US saw a massive day of coordinated direct actions leading up to the COP15 talks on November 30, the 10 year anniversary of the protests that shutdown the WTO meetings in Seattle. Earth First! and Rising Tide blocked the shipment of the generator destined for the Cliffside Coal plant in NC.
The Mobilization for Climate Justice shut down the San Francisco headquarters of Bank of America, while Seattle activists locked down inside Chase and Bank of America branches for their funding of fossil fuels. Activists in Chicago locked down in front of the Chicago Climate Exchange, the largest carbon trading institution in North America, shutting down part of the city’s financial district. Protestors in Washington, DC took over K Street to confront corporate lobbyists. In New York City activists occupied the lobby of Natural Resource Defense Council to protest their cozy relationship with major polluters.

As it becomes increasingly clear our leaders will not protect us, people are taking matters into their own hands. Not only are they fighting back against the corporate assault on our planet, they are actively creating the solutions that will usher in a truly just and sustainable world.

http://risingtidenorthamerica.org/download/rtna_climatemovementisdead.pdf

Coal is cheap energy, it is also the most polluting of all fossil fuels. If we are going to stand any chance whatsoever of averting catastrophic climate change then we need to stop digging the stuff out of the ground and start investing in alternatives immediately.

At the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains in the USA they use the most destructive method of mining this dirtiest of fuels; first they clear fell the virgin forest on a mountain containing coal, then they blow the top off it using high explosives, then they dump the waste in nearby valleys and extract the coal - often many hundreds of meters of mountain are removed for a few meters of coal. They also wash the coal and leave the resulting slurry in enormous ponds among the mountains.

So here we have a grossly destructive and polluting method of extracting a filthy fuel which, because of catastrophic climate change, we cannot afford to burn. But screw the climate, screw future generations, screw the communities who live locally, screw the scenic beauty of the area, screw everything in favour of money.

Click on the picture and get involved via Facebook.

As my friend Scot put it recently “Blowing the tops off of mountain ranges to harvest dirty coal harms the people and places of Appalachia, destroys the economic potential of the Appalachian Mountains for clean energy opportunities and furthers the burning of climate killing coal… Mountaintop removal, the world’s worst strip mining, is unacceptable. Period.”

More on this soon, but for now look up Coal River Valley (West Virginia) and get involved at MountainAction.org and ClimateGroundZero.org and MountainJustice.org.

Great article in the National Geographic from 2006.

Massey Energy have been getting more desperate and aggressive recently in response to protests, sending teams of thugs to hunt down activists in the forest while accusing the peaceful protesters of being violent, getting injunctions against the protesters, and otherwise rising to the protesters’ escalation of actions against the company.

However the one thing Massey don’t do, can’t do, is argue that what they are doing is right or just. Because it simply isn’t.