While the murder of anti-deforestation activists and environmentalists is nothing new in most parts of the world nowadays, the recent news that a plane carrying members of Brazil’s special environmental protection forces recently crashed due to “unexplained” causes does still stand out. Image by CIFOR (some rights reserved) If nothing else — I’d there was foul-play involved,
It’s still Climate Week, though the marches and summit conference are over. If you’d like to spend some time doing a brief climate watch this weekend, here are a few suggestions. These short takes are the result of surveying over 500 free and publicly available videos. Each takes around three minutes or less to watch.
This video from Amy Goodman and Democracy Now cuts to the chase. The horror of this environmental disease known as tar sands ‘development’ is succinctly explained by young and indigenous activists. Tar sands development will push our planet of global warming and climate change tipping point, which is why hundreds of activists in Durban, South Africa (where
Some top activism news from the past week or so: 1. Masked Activists in Germany Sop Transport of Nuclear Waste As the title indicates, some activists in Germany are fed up with the creating and unsafe transport and storage of nuclear waste (well, no one even knows where to ‘permanently’ store the nuclear waste). So,
How would you like to be spending your Thanksgiving in a federal prison? And how would you like to be doing so for trying to help the world and for trying to stop some illegal destruction of treasured wild lands? If you aren’t yet aware, that’s the predicament of Tim DeChristopher. And it is
by Juliana Russar Tired of the poor quality of public transportation in São Paulo, 350 partners and participants of the World Car Free Day movement organized a flashmob in the subway for the immediate release of R$ 15 million that has been provided to the Secretary of Transportation in the 2011 budget to make
Some top activism stories from the past week or so that I haven’t been able to get to but deserve a big share: Two Finland animal activists who were being prosecuted for undercover investigations of factory farms have been found not guilty on almost all charges. Good news! A climate justice youth caravan of approximately 200
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which includes some of the most well-known activists on the planet, is getting ready for its 8th Antarctic expedition to stop the Japanese whaling fleet from killings whales in the Southern Ocean. Sea Shepherd succeeded in making the Japanese cut their whale hunting expedition short last year, one in
This girl has a future! Beautiful song and message! And she’s 10!! I don’t know how I didn’t hear about this when it was created. Watch this beautiful video and song, “Shallow Waters.” A description from the YouTube page is underneath it, followed by more information on Ta-Kayia Blaney and her environmental activism. “10
7 more good activism stories of the week we haven’t covered yet:
Editor’s Note: This is an email from Bill MicKibben of 350.org I received today that I thought I should pass along. Check it out and share with friends.
Here are three good activism stories I wanted to cover in more depth this week but never found the time to:
Clean-energy demonstrations in 175 countries, 2,000 of them, stimulated by 350.org were or are underway today. Here’s more, plus 10 great photos.
The tremendous (and growing) power and wealth divide in the U.S. is closely tied to our energy and environmental problems. Solving one must mean solving the other. Thus, this news about protesters try to start a massive, long sit-in on Wall Street is a good fit for Planetsave.
To keep it simple, just think about what is keeping us from quickly addressing important environmental issues:
I was in the UK for 4 days to visit a friend and then to be interviewed by CNBC for it and Harvard Business Review’s Energy Opportunities series. So, fell a little behind on daily activism news. But here’s a roundup after catching up. A ton of great activism (using the term a little generously today) stories — check them out!
24 Hours of Climate Reality, Al Gore’s new, big push to raise climate awareness and promote the solutions available to address climate change today, is tomorrow, September 14. You can check in right here tomorrow at any time for live streaming of this worldwide event. The live streaming will occur below…
Check out these top activism stories of the past few days or so:
By Bill McKibben
Dear Friends,
The last two weeks have been spectacular.
In Washington DC, phase one of the tar sands campaign has just come to an end, and 1,252 North Americans have been arrested in a massive civil disobedience campaign. This historic groundswell was focused on stopping the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline — but it also sent a larger message that people everywhere are willing to take bold action to move our planet beyond fossil fuels.
By Bill McKibben
Dear friends—
Here’s the battle plan we promised—a few hours late, because it’s been a big job wrapping up phase one of this campaign.
Some tip green activism news of the past few days for you:
Here’s a full repost from Climate Progress by leading climate activist Mike Tidwell, who I had the pleasure of meeting a few years ago when I lived in Virginia. It’s on how activists overwhelmed the authority figures trying to squash their efforts at justice. Enjoy. Following the repost are other top activism stories of the day.
If you haven’t seen these videos yet, here are two great videos by Greenpeace, part of its campaign to address Volkswagen’s anti-environmental lobbying in the EU. Great filmmaking and good campaign, in my humble opinion.
Leading up to and since Tim DeChristopher’s sentencing, there’s been a lot of talk around the internet regarding the direct action that’s needed, and not needed, today. Everyone who cares about the environment seems to be getting into it. DeChristopher has now spent over one week of his two years in prison now, and people are trying to find a way to make his sacrifice worth it, to take his message to a louder megaphone, to bring about the change he (and all of us) have been striving for quite unsuccessfully…
Friends of a fellow Important Media writer, 3 ballet dancers, made a statement this week by interrupting BP’s 3rd Summer Screen in Trafalgar Square, London. The ballet dancers danced a short piece based on Swan Lake, “with the classic tale used as analogy for BP’s controversial investment in the Canadian tar sands,” the UK Tar Sands Network reports.
Some activism news from around from the past week or so….
Over one year since the horrible BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, media attention on the matter has waned, politicians have gone back to their old ways, and oil companies.. well, you know what they do (all while residents and wildlife are still being tremendously harmed by the disaster). But many (beyond those clearly harmed) have not forgotten and have been continuously working to prevent another such disaster in the Gulf of Mexico or anywhere else in the United States.
Soooo ridiculous. Will Potter, THE expert on animal and environmental activists being inappropriately treated as terrorists had a breaking story yesterday on 12 animal rights and environmental activists who have been arrested in Spain and labelled “eco-terrorists.” It seems to have gone viral (gotten extremely popular), and for good reason.
If you haven’t heard the news, Greenpeace International’s Executive Director Kumi Naidoo is now in jail in Greenland. Why? He followed in the footsteps of 20 Greenpeace activists and climbed an oil rig looking to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean.
A statement from Naidoo just before leaving a Greenpeace ship to climb the rig:
A Sea Shepherd Conservation Society boat full of environment activists, the Steve Irwin, is headed towards Libyan waters today, perhaps arriving as early as later tonight.
I reported yesterday that oil company Cairn Energy was suing Greenpeace after 2 activists hung underneath its oil rig for 5 days in an “Arctic survival pod” (stopping it from drilling for oil) and then, a couple days later (Saturday), 18 activists (who are still in jail in Greenland) climbed Cairn Energy’s Arctic oil rig — Leiv Eiriksson — to retrieve its oil spill response plan and, after not receiving it, locked themselves to the rig (preventing it from drilling for oil for 8 hours).
Now, it seems Cairn Energy’s decision to sue for “2 million Euros in fines for every subsequent breach and every day the campaigners stop the Leiv Eiriksson operating” has backfired.
I’ve got a lot of updates for you on the Greenpeace Arctic activists who have been trying to stop Arctic oil drilling. On Saturday at 5:00 am, 18 Greenpeace activists in 5 inflatable speedboats made their way past a Danish navy warship, scaled Cairn Energy’s 53,000-ton Leiv Eiriksson oil rig, and requested to see the company’s oil spill response plan.
When not granted and with police on their way, the activists locked themselves to the rig to stop exploratory oil drilling for as long as possible. It took police 8 hours to get the locks cut and get the activists off the rig.
The Greenpeace activists we’ve been covering who shadowed and then scaled an oil rig in the Arctic have now spent 3 days hanging from the Cairn Energy oil rig, stopping it from drilling for oil, in an Arctic survival pod.
While the pod is made to protect the activists from the weather, I doubt it’s very cozy.
Jack Gescheidt has developed a following for his nude photography aimed at protecting ancient and threatened trees. Watch the video above to learn a little more about how this started and has grown.
Following up on the murder of a world-renowned Brazilian rain forest activist and his wife that I wrote about last week, it turns out another environmental activist in the rain forests of Brazil was shot and killed on Friday.
Following up on my posts on Greenpeace’s Arctic activism (it is attempting to stop Cairn Energy from drilling for oil in the Arctic, or at least get a hold of their oil spill response plan for the region), here’s a video of Greenpeace’s Ben Ayliffe on the phone with workers on the Leiv Eiriksson oil rig in the Arctic and Cairn Energy representatives at its headquarters as well as him reading an email from them. Enjoy.
Following up on a post last week on the two Greenpeace ships that were in the Arctic’s “Iceberg Alley” shadowing a Cairn Energy oil rig looking to do what no other oil company is doing — drill for oil in the Arctic) — the news is now that Greenpeace activists have scaled the rig and are hanging from it in an “Arctic survival pod” that includes food and water for up to 10 days.
7 activists from the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) got jailed earlier this week for standing with 30,000 Ecuadoreans who were affected by Chevron’s toxic legacy. These activists, as you can see in the videos below, climbed and dropped a banner from the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge near Chevron’s Richmond refinery with the statement “Chevron Guilty: Clean Up Amazon” on it.
If you haven’t seen this news, it’s pretty disturbing. A rainforest activist in Brazil (José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva) who had been working to protect rainforests from logging was shot and killed this week, as well as his wife. This, ironically, happened just a few hours before Brazil horrible new legislation that will increase deforestation in the area.
I saw this story a week or so ago and decided to pass on covering it (too many stories to cover, you know?), but after running across it again, as well as a few more interesting ones, on our sister site Fail Drill, I decided they need to be on here (next three coming in
I know, you are extremely curious to find out which posts on Planetsave got the most views in 2010. I was too. Here they are, the top 30. Did you read them all? 30. Amazon River (10 Friday Photos) People love pretty pictures, (especially of the Amazon). 29. Top Environmental Organizations in the United States (7 Green
I just wrote the other day on four Greenpeace activists, dubbed the “Arctic Defenders,” who climbed an oil rig in the Arctic and occupied it (hanging above cold Arctic waters) for 40 hours before coming down and being arrested by the Greenland police. Their friendly Greenpeace colleagues and partners in Greenpeace’s ‘Go Beyond Oil’ tour
An amazing Greenpeace action to stop oil drilling in fragile Arctic waters has come to a close, but the activists are still in police custody after scaling an oil rig that “looked unclimbable” and spending over 40 hours “suspended above the churning Arctic waves through freezing winds.”
50 BP stations shut down in London by Greenpeace activists. Reason? BP is “moving beyond petroleum.” [UPDATE: YouTube video of the actions added below] Who else could do it but Greenpeace? In a big statement to new “CEO elect” Bob Dudley, Greenpeace is bringing back BP’s “Beyond Petroleum” message, but perhaps not in the way
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/PPGODtGKqAA&hl=en&fs=1] A protester from the anti-aviation group Plane Stupid managed to toss a cup of green slime in the face of Lord Mandelson before scolding him for his support for the third runway at Heathrow airport. [social_buttons] Amazingly, the woman walked away without being arrested and has now come forward to identify herself as 29-year-old
While I’ve noticed this phenomenon quite a few times before, yesterday’s sentencing of three Earth First! activists in Maine reminded me of the amazing backwards-notion that forcing activists into community service somehow amounts to a punishment. [social_buttons] Activists who engage in civil disobedience aren’t hoodlums running around the streets or menaces to society — these
Nine anti-aviation activists with the group Plane Stupid Scotland shut down an Aberdeen airport in protest of its plans for expansion. [social_buttons] The airport expansion is being funded and supported by Donald Trump, who is opening a nearby golf resort — which in itself is a point of contention with environmentalists for its location on
The bodies of two well-known social activists were found Guerrero, Mexico showing clear signs of torture. [social_buttons] Raul Lucas and Manuel Ponce were captured on February 13th by three people claiming to be police in Ayutla de los Libres, according to relatives. The men were attending a meeting regarding plans to open several new schools
After a man fell from a Japanese whaling ship into the freezing antarctic waters, the whalers have called off all operations while in search for the man’s body. [social_buttons] Sea Shepherd, usually the arch nemesis of the whalers, offered to help find the body with their two small boats and helicopter, but the Japanese refused
