Direct action for climate change

..this will be my go to thread for direct climate actions from now on. no disrespect meant to any other action threads. i don't want to have to decide which thread to put things in. and may as well use this one instead of creating another. an exception may be indigenous actions. 

Thousands Flood German Village to Protest Plans to Expand Open-Pit Coal Mine

About 4,000 protesters rallied in the village of Lützerath in western Germany over the weekend, seeking to halt the expansion of a massive open-pit coal mine. The village is set to be demolished to make way for the nearby Garzweiler mine, which produces brown coal, or lignite — one of the world’s dirtiest fossil fuels.

Union members pushing their pension plan to divest from fossil fuels

Jillian Maguire and Kim Benson are teachers in British Columbia. As such, they are both members of the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF), and they have recently been organizing to get their pension plan to divest from fossil fuel industries. Scott Neigh interview them about the BCTF Divest Now campaign and about their success in getting the BCTF to pass a motion in favour of divestment.

Maguire teaches English at Kitsilano Secondary School on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-waututh territory in Vancouver. Benson is a teacher on call at the elementary level in the Sea to Sky school district on the unceded territory of the Squamish Nation, north of Vancouver.

Like so many of us, in recent years Maguire and Benson have been grappling with the enormity of the climate crisis and its implications for… well, everything. For Maguire, a key moment happened two summers ago when she encountered a blockade by climate action group Extinction Rebellion on Vancouver’s Burrard Street Bridge. At around the same time, Benson started doing a lot of reading on the topic, which really drove home for her the urgency of the crisis. Both were inspired to get involved, and began taking part in all manner of public actions. As well, Benson started a Teachers for Future – Canada Instagram page as a way to connect teachers interested in climate action to each other and to the youth climate organizing that has been so important in recent years.

quote:

Though unions are, for the most part, democratic, bureaucracy can still make it very hard for activists to get things done. It has meant, for instance, that divestment motions in prior years were never given the chance to be voted on. According to Benson, “I think from at least 2011, motions for divestment have been coming to the AGM but never hitting the floor, always disappearing at some point or another.”

And the bureaucracy also made working through union channels in support of this year’s motions difficult and frustrating. Maguire said, “Even to get the motion past the layers of bureaucracy that are involved in our union was mind boggling. … I wouldn’t say that there’s a resistance to it, but it’s, you know, everybody thinks that it’s somebody else’s job to do this, and nobody wants to take the initiative to take ownership of this particular process.”

For this reason, the BCTF Divest Now campaign decided that the best tactic would be to build pressure outside of regular union channels – they developed a petition and began to circulate it far and wide, and to build public pressure on the union to act. And this time, one of the divestment motions made it to the AGM floor, and BCTF members voted by an overwhelming margin to pass it.

Despite the passage of that motion, given how the pension plan is governed, it is not clear what happens next. While the union cannot implement divestment on its own, it can certainly use its institutional power to demand it, though it is uncertain what this might look like. At the very least, according to Benson, the passage of this resolution makes it clear that “most members want divestment – and also investment in sustainable, restorative companies and investments.” She describes it as “a turning point” and “very encouraging … it puts us in a good spot to engage more teachers in this conversation.” The campaign is still figuring out its next steps, but Maguire and Benson suspect that ongoing pressure both inside and outside the BCTF will continue to be necessary......

..from a dogwood email.

quote:

West Kootenay Eco Society just had a big win that’s making us feel hopeful this week.

The group has been asking city councils across their region to commit to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050, and in a lot of communities they’ve been making great strides. But in one town, they were having a harder time getting support. Workers there depend a lot on resource extraction jobs and see groups calling for climate action as a threat.

So WKES tried something different: they prioritized in-depth, one-on-one conversations where they spent most of their time listening to folks and asking questions, rather than making assumptions or leading with their campaign message.

What came of it was not just a big win for climate action (Trail’s city council passed a motion committing to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050!), but was also personally rewarding for the volunteers and staff having those conversations. WKES executive director Montana Burgess said she’s a lot more open to talking to people with different views than her — and that she has more in common with people in industry than she thought.

Community building is at the heart of what WKES, Dogwood and other groups like ours do. But keeping that in mind can be hard to do from what feels like a battlefield. And we still can’t shy away from important fights, like with corporations like Fortis. The Newfoundland company is currently putting a lot of effort into bamboozling city councillors to expand the fracked gas market — something we can’t just ignore....

The B.C. government’s “climate plan” has a hole in it big enough to build several pipelines through. And it’s largely silent on food security, endangered species and Indigenous sovereignty. So the First Nations Leadership Council drafted their own Climate Strategy and Action Plan. Have a look!

BC First Nations Climate Strategy and Action Plan

Project Acknowledgements

The First Nations Leadership Council (FNLC) acknowledges the time and effort of all who contributed to the development of the BC First Nations Climate Strategy and Action Plan (the Strategy).

This work was developed at a time when climate change and its impacts were observed and experienced by many across the province. First Nations  communities and community members faced multiple emergency evacuations, home loss and damage, food and resource insecurity, and death due to changes in weather conditions and unprecedented environmental disasters such as wildfires, flooding, and record-breaking summer and winter temperatures. This extremely challenging period was exacerbated by the continued COVID-19
pandemic, the uncovering of thousands of unmarked graves at residential school sites across the country, and the continued fight against colonization and its impacts.

Despite this, First Nations leadership, community members, staff, and  organizations continued to attend and participate in the Strategy’s engagement activities and processes. Many Nations came together to build unity in
recognition of the urgent response needed in the face of the climate emergency we are all witnessing today. The FNLC is extremely grateful for all the  contributions made, knowledge shared, and assistance provided. Your leadership and dedicated advocacy are recognized and appreciated.

In collaboration with First Nations in BC, the Strategy was prepared by the FNLC Executive and the FNLC Project Team (Andrea Glickman, Colin Braker, Jaime Sanchez, Cheyenne Arnold-Cunningham, Josh Kioke, and Patricia Rojas) with guidance and assistance from the First Nations Climate Action Technical Advisory Group....

Climate justice on the homefront: Surviving together through fires, flooding, and extreme weather in Canada

Climate justice lies at the nexus of climate change and human rights. Though often imagined as a future problem affecting faraway lands, climate change is an urgent issue affecting thousands of people right here, right now in Canada. 

Join us on Sunday May 15th for a panel discussion about climate change in Canada today. From fires to flooding to extreme weather events, we will explore what climate change looks like across the rural-urban interface and how human rights enables truly livable, radically sustainable climate justice futures. 

Guest speakers

Chief Patrick Michell (Kanaka Bar Band): Chief Michell is a leader of the Kanaka Bar Indian Band. Located near Lytton, BC, the Kanaka Bar Indian Band is currently engaged in sustainable rebuilding plans after destructive wildfires in 2021.

Chief Arnold Lampreau (Shackan First Nation): Chief Lampreau is a leader of the Shackan First Nation on the Nicola River. After historic floods which washed away entire homes in November 2021, Shackan First Nation is now calling on the provincial government to do better for communities.

City Councillor Alison Gu (City of Burnaby, BC): Councillor Gu is the youngest elected official in the history of Burnaby. As a young climate leader in Burnaby and beyond, Councillor Gu will speak about climate justice from an urban perspective.

Details

DATE: Sunday May 15th 

TIME: 4:00-5:30 pm EST

Divestment and beyond

“What do we want? Fossil fuel divestment! When do we want it? Yesterday!”

The chants of over 200 students echoed around Simcoe Hall and up to the second floor, where the University of Toronto’s governing council was meeting; one of the administrators peeked out at the crowd and closed the blinds. Eight days earlier, on March 30, 2016, the university president had announced that the university would not be divesting from fossil fuels. Students were livid: president Meric Gertler had gone against his own advisory committee’s recommendation to divest and had chosen to put profit over students’ futures. Organizers with UofT350, the campus group behind the divestment campaign, were especially indignant. We had followed the university’s policy on divestment, submitted a brief making our case, and built widespread support on campus (even from the president’s own advisory committee), yet it wasn’t enough.

Five years later, in a letter to the U of T community, president Gertler announced that the university would finally be divesting its $4 billion endowment fund from fossil fuels. The announcement mimicked much of the divestment campaign’s messaging, citing the urgency of the climate crisis, the need for substantive and symbolic actions, the moral obligation to divest, and the impact a large institution like U of T can have when doing so. Still, when mainstream media covered the announcement, they largely failed to mention how nearly a decade of student organizing made such a decision possible.

As two former UofT350 organizers active during the campaign from 2015 to 2016, we recognize and celebrate the efforts that were made by organizers before and after us to compel the university to divest. We also believe that there is much to learn from student organizing at U of T, both when building strong divestment campaigns elsewhere and when organizing within the climate justice movement in general.

Setting the agenda, creating a moral crisis

Through the fossil fuel divestment campaign, UofT350 set a new agenda for campus climate action. The goal was to get our university to make a bold and public statement on the climate crisis by taking its money out of the industry fueling that crisis. It would be an act of institutional leadership, raising the stakes for climate action globally for years to come.

Organizers characterized investment in fossil fuels as a moral crisis. The turn to morality will be familiar to those trained in “momentum style” organizing: it is a method of “driv[ing] a wedge into the public’s moral conscience” and asking them to pick a side. For divestment, the question was: are you with them, the fossil fuel corporations frying the planet, or are you with us, the students fighting to protect it?.....

..today

Beyond Gas alliance scores victory in B.C. fracking fight

Energy minister Bruce Ralston kept a poker face and quickened his step. Two Beyond Gas organizers followed him out of the LNG conference and down to the sidewalk, peppering him with questions about his government’s support for the fracking industry.

“Why are you here bending to the will of oil and gas executives, rather than protecting the people of British Columbia? They’re the ones who need your help, not rich oil companies that are raking in record profits,” said Alexandra Woodsworth as Paige Gorsak filmed.

Ralston breezed past them. But nine days later, he stood on stage with Premier John Horgan to announce the phaseout of billions in fracking subsidies. “A broken system,” Horgan called it, finally admitting that handouts to companies like Shell and Petronas are a political liability.

It was a stunning reversal from the BC NDP, after many of their politicians spent the past two years telling constituents the province wasn’t subsidizing fracking at all.

A win to celebrate

Horgan and Ralston’s announcement is a victory for tens of thousands of British Columbians who took action with Dogwood, Stand.earth, Wilderness Committee and other allies to demand we stop funding fracking.

It’s a victory for the B.C. public, as the government claims it will collect about $200 million a year in new revenue once the revamped royalty system is in force. It’s a financial and political setback for the gas companies, who have essentially been paid to extract a publicly-owned resource until now.

Now we face a longer, tougher fight over the fate of the gas industry itself. When will the B.C. government stop approving new fracking projects? When will we start retraining workers and seriously investing in renewable energy? How much planet-cooking methane gas will we leave in the ground?....

I guess he made his point!

https://www.straight.com/news/senior-turns-himself-into-rcmp-in-connecti...

Bravo!

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/tennis/article-environmental-acti...

About this event - register

How can we collaborate more to accelerate urgent action on the climate crisis? We invite every climate group in BC to meet in this first Climate Action Provincial Assembly to put our heads together and seek new ways to work together. No big speakers - just us, our determination and our creativity.

New initiative looks at seed breeding to fight food insecurity

As more people struggle to put food on the table given rising food prices, a new initiative is drawing on the unique knowledge of 35,000 farmers from around the world to increase domestic seed production as a pathway to food security.

The project, run by SeedChange, is the latest initiative of a 10-year-long program working towards rebuilding Canada's domestic seed supply.

Equipped with $750,000 from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, it will set up a dozen local seed demonstration sites in farms across the country throughout the summer.

It will also engage 200 farmers, to evaluate, showcase, and increase "Canadian-grown, farmer-bred seed varieties better suited for climate and soil conditions as well as organic production," according to a press release.

"The goal of the project is to eventually be able to produce these varieties domestically and commercially … (and) to retain our ability to choose how its grown and distributed," Leticia Ama Deawuo, SeedChange's executive director, told The Media Co-op, explaining that only about 10 per cent of organic seeds are produced domestically while "nearly all" vegetable seeds are imported.

According to the organization, 75 per cent of the world’s crop diversity was lost in the 20th century, and "replaced by a small number of varieties bred for industrial farming, and sold through a handful of multinational companies."

The project is meant to put a wedge on that monopoly by connecting small-scale, local farmers who can share their specialized knowledge to revive these seeds and make them the main source of affordable food for Canadians.

"We're trying to build the resiliency here and trying to (meet) the farmers' needs … (so that they can) be self-sufficient without having to rely heavily on large corporations and importations of seeds," says Deawuo......

..protests are intensifying. 

Protesters kick off campaign to block roads, highways until B.C. bans old-growth logging

Minutes after stopping a car on Vancouver's Ironworkers Memorial Bridge to disrupt traffic Monday, protesters holding a “Save Old Growth” banner were arrested.

Police were on standby at the bridge before the action even started, alerted perhaps by news of protesters planning to block vital roadways in various B.C. locations every day until old-growth logging is stopped. Shortly after activists rolled up in a green sedan and stopped the vehicle in a northbound lane just after 7:30 a.m., Vancouver police officers moved in.

Within minutes, officers arrested two protesters who left the car and sat on the bridge deck with the “Save Old Growth” banner.

Two more people, who remained inside the vehicle, lasted only a bit longer. After a short interaction, a Vancouver police officer grabbed a baton, smashed two side windows, dragged both people out of the car and arrested them. Another protester who wasn’t in the car was also arrested.

“Although we avoided major delays, many people were still impacted while we worked to restore order.”

Some drivers trying to make their way to North Vancouver were unimpressed. One yelled at the blockaders; another shouted, “Get a job.”

Earlier in the morning, other members of Save Old Growth (SOG), a group started in January, cut off lanes of the Patricia Bay Highway near the Swartz Bay ferry terminal on Vancouver Island and the Massey Tunnel between Richmond and Delta, where four people were arrested.

An organizer say they will go back on the roads "again tomorrow in Vancouver and every day until the government passes legislation." #BC #OldGrowth #Logging

The Lower Mainland blockades were cleared by 8 a.m., but traffic was heavily backed up, with long delays along Highway 99 in both directions approaching the tunnel and along Highway 1 approaching the bridge.....

Class action lawsuit against oil companies over climate damages launched by B.C. group

A B.C. environmental advocacy group is urging residents and municipalities across the province to join a class action lawsuit against oil companies over climate damages.

The campaign titled "Sue Big Oil" is being driven by West Coast Environmental Law, a non-profit group of environmental lawyers and strategists. According to the campaign website, the aim is to launch legal action against companies for “a portion of climate costs in B.C. communities.”

The group pointed to the costs associated with rebuilding after last year’s flood and wildfires, as well as the human toll of B.C.’s heat dome.

The move would be a first in Canada, but there is a possible precedent. Last year a Dutch court ruled Shell must slash its emissions harder and faster than planned, a ruling considered to be a landmark win for activists turning to courts to force climate action.

UBC professor and lawyer Stepan Wood said the logic of climate accountability is “simple.”

“Companies that profit from selling a product they know is harmful should pay their share of the costs of the resulting harm,” he told CTV News.

Discussing possibilities for how to pursue a class action again oil companies, Wood said they were “numerous” and include "private nuisance, public nuisance, negligence, conspiracy and strict liability – not to mention false or misleading advertising.”

Kukpi7 Judy Wilson, with the Union BC Indian Chiefs, also spoke at Wednesday’s launch saying the people have been pushed to take matters into their own hands.

“Elected governments have not effectively held fossil fuel companies accountable for the role that they hold in driving us toward a global climate crisis,” she said.

The campaign is urging B.C. municipalities to contribute money to the legal fund, and inviting residents to sign the online declaration. No date has been set for when a possible lawsuit could be filed.....

Tuesday Jul 26, 5pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqdOysrjMpGtd52Zm6H1LsW2Cwtw2HT2FJ

With extreme flooding, fires, and heatwaves happening in our communities and around the world, it’s clear that the climate crisis is on our doorsteps. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We know we need a Just Transition from fossil fuels that leaves no one behind — and better yet, we know that our government has the tools to deliver it.

We're kicking off our Just Transition summer campaign with a massive organizing call this Tuesday, July 26 at 5pm Pacific time / 8pm Eastern time. We've got an exciting plan to call out Big Oil's planet-destroying greed, expose the truth about our governments' lackluster plans to tackle the climate crisis and rising inequality, and build power in our local communities.

Congressional Staffers Arrested at Sit-In Climate Protest in Sen. Chuck Schumer’s Office

On Capitol Hill, six congressional staffers were arrested Monday as they held a nonviolent civil disobedience protest inside the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. The staffers are demanding Schumer reopen negotiations on a bill to combat the climate crisis, after West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin blocked Democrats’ latest efforts to pass new funding for green energy programs.

This week, 165+ federal and congressional staffers signed an open letter to President Biden and Chuck Schumer demanding they strip Senator Manchin of his chairmanship of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. They’re also demanding Biden declare a climate emergency and take other urgent actions to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The letter reads in part, “Even if Democrats control both chambers and the White House again in four years, inaction in this moment will cause an era of record temperatures, extreme drought, sea level rise, and other deadly climate disasters. We do not have years to waste. We have little more than a week.”

German Protesters Block Train Tracks Demanding Halt to Construction of LNG Terminals

In Germany, police used batons, pepper spray and water cannons to attack about 150 climate justice advocates, who staged a nonviolent sit-in protest Saturday on a rail supply line leading to the harbor in Hamburg. The protesters are seeking to halt construction of new liquified natural gas terminals along Germany’s coast. This comes as German households face spiraling fuel costs that could see them spend hundreds of euros more per year to power their homes. This is protest spokesperson Charly Dietz.

Charly Dietz: “In Germany, too, the energy crisis is hitting those hardest who contributed the least, a crisis in which many bear the costs while the few corporations pocket billions in profits. It is explicitly not an energy crisis; it is a capitalist distribution crisis.”

"We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change – and it has to start today. "

– Greta Thunberg

10 Arrested at Protest of Fossil Fuel Concessions in Inflation Reduction Act

Here in New York, police arrested 10 climate campaigners Thursday as they held a peaceful sit-in protest inside the Manhattan offices of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. The activists are demanding Schumer and other Democratic leaders reverse fossil fuel-friendly concessions in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act. One provision, added to win the support of West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, fast-tracks approval of the Mountain Valley fracked gas pipeline. Another side deal limits public input on major new infrastructure projects while weakening environmental review procedures. This is activist GiGi Nieson of the group No North Brooklyn Pipeline.

GiGi Nieson: “Making side deals to advance your political agenda with Joe Manchin, who takes more fossil fuel money than any member of Congress, it’s undemocratic, unjust and racist, because it will take public voices out of the decision-making process, especially those from Black, Indigenous and people of color communities.”

..1.12 hr video

Assoc Prof Simon Michaux - The quantity of metals required to manufacture just one generation of...

Hunziker: How Bad Can It Get?

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/02/how-bad-can-it-get/

"How bad can it (climate change) get? The sky's the limit! No pun intended...'This is a call to arms. So if you feel the need to glue yourself to a motorway or blockade an oil refinery, do it.

For the first time in modern history major changes in lifestyle are now a requirement for human survival..."

Climate Scientists Urge More Civil Disobedience to Signal 'How Deep in the Sh*t We Are'

"We have long since arrived at the point at which civil disobedience by scientists has become justified."

That's according to an article published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change by five climate scientists—Stuart Capstick, Aaron Thierry, Emily Cox, Steve Westlake, and Julia K. Steinberger—and political scientist Oscar Berglund, who focuses on civil disobedience and social movements.

The half-dozen scientists, who have all participated in and supported groups engaged in civil disobedience pushing for action "to secure a livable and sustainable future," argue that now is the time for scientific experts to intensify their activism efforts.

"What we say in the article is that getting involved in this kind of thing can actually add weight to the message that this is a crisis; that these are decent people who know more than anybody else about how deep in the shit we are, and are taking this kind of action—nonviolent direct action, civil disobedience," Berglund told The Guardian.

"We have a kind of what we call epistemic authority here: People listen to what we are saying, as scientists, and it becomes a way of showing how serious the situation is, that we see ourselves forced to go to these lengths," the University of Bristol lecturer added.....