Why cuts are the wrong cure from False Economy on Vimeo.

Time for the real Green New Deal, One Million Climate Jobs and a million agricultural jobs created by investment in local food production.

Occupy LSX, What is Next? from inka stafrace on Vimeo.

Thanks to CarbonRich for flagging this one up.

After the mass sit-in protest in front of the Whitehouse back in September when over 1,200 people took an action which they knew would result in their arrest, the campaign to give President Obama the political space to say no to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline continues this Sunday 6 November when more than 4,000 citizens have pledged to surround the Whitehouse. On the same day there will be a solidarity action in London in which campaigners will surround a mini model of the White House in front of the US Embassy.

The Keystone XL pipeline will escalate the exploitation of the Canadian tar sands and make climate stabilisation implausible. According to James Hansen:

… exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts. The tar sands are estimated (e.g., see IPCC Fourth Assessment Report) to contain at least 400 GtC (equivalent to about 200 ppm CO₂). Easily available reserves of conventional oil and gas are enough to take atmospheric CO₂ well above 400 ppm, which is unsafe for life on earth. However, if emissions from coal are phased out over the next few decades and if unconventional fossil fuels including tar sands are left in the ground, it is conceivable to stabilize earth’s climate.

As Bill McKibben says in the video above, the Keystone XL pipeline has become the defining issue of the environmental movement. If you can be in Washington or London on November, be sure you are there.

Thanks to Emily of UK Tar Sands Network.

Initial statement from Occupy London Stock Exchange assembly of over 500 people on the steps of St Paul’s, 16th October 2011:

1 The current system is unsustainable. It is undemocratic and unjust. We need alternatives; this is where we work towards them.

2 We are of all ethnicities, backgrounds, genders, generations, sexualities dis/abilities and faiths. We stand together with occupations all over the world.

3 We refuse to pay for the banks’ crisis.

Notes

[1] Article 8 was added to the statement following a proposal being passed by the Occupy London General Assembly on 19 November 2011.

The media tackle Occupy London
by: Tabasco1

Today in the New York Times there was a story that made it completely clear why we have to be here. They uncovered the fact that the company building that tar sands pipeline was allowed to choose another company to conduct the environmental impact statement, and the company that they chose was a company was a company that did lots and lots of work for them. So, in other words, the whole thing was rigged top to bottom and that’s why the environmental impact statement said that this pipeline would cause no trouble, unlike the scientists who said if we build this pipeline it’s “game over” for the climate. We can’t let this pipeline get built. [Read on...]

On November 6, one year before the election, we’re going to be in DC with a huge circle of people around the White House and they’re going to be carrying signs with quotations from Barack Obama from the 2008 campaign. He said, “It’s time to end the tyranny of oil.” He said, “I will have the most transparent government in history.” We have to go to DC to find out where they have locked that guy up. We have to free Obama, because there is some sort of stunt double there now. So on November 6, I hope we can move, just for a day, Occupy Wall Street down to the White House and get them in the fight against corporate power.

The reason that it’s so great that we’re occupying Wall Street is because Wall Street has been occupying the atmosphere. That’s why we can never do anything about global warming. Exxon gets in the way. Goldman Sachs gets in the way. The whole fossil fuel industry gets in the way. The sky does not belong to Exxon. They cannot keep using it as a sewer into which to dump their carbon. If they do, we’ve got no future and nobody else on this planet has a future.

I spend a lot of time in countries around the world organizing demonstrations and rallies in solidarity. In the last three years at 350.org, we’ve had 15,000 rallies in every country except North Korea. Everywhere around the world, poor people and black people and brown people and Asian people and young people are standing up. Most of those places, don’t produce that much carbon. They need us to act with them and for them, because the problem is 20 blocks south of here. That’s where the Empire lives and we’ve got to figure out how to tame it and make it work for this planet or not work at all.

Thank you guys very much.

The one-day mock trial with real witnesses, real barristers, a real judge and a real jury showed how ecocide might be tried in practice. One of the CEOs (the only participants played by actors) was also charged with ecological destruction caused by an extensive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but found not guilty.

After the trial, jury foreman Huw Spanner said his panel felt the evidence in the case of the tar sands was “incontrovertible”. Large bodies of toxic water had been allowed to stand and it was inconceivable that the resulting impacts on animal and bird life would be anything other than substantial. In the case of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, he said the jury “was shocked how culpable the CEO was” in terms of actions leading to the spill. However, from the evidence presented on the day, they were not convinced that the resultant damage – especially in relation to birdlife as outlined in the indictment – was extensive.

Making ecocide the fifth crime against peace – along with genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression – is the brainchild of Polly Higgins. The lawyer said that the mock trial had been a great learning process, identifying a number of gaps in the draft legislation that needed to be filled.

Michael Mansfield QC, who acted as the prosecutor in the trial, said that making the topmost individuals in a company responsible was critical if the law was to act as a deterrent. The proposed legislation has therefore been drafted so that individuals rather than companies are in the dock. In an actual trial, board chairmen, heads of banks and even government ministers could also be on trial.

“I’m not keen to see lots of politicians in the dock,” said Higgins. “What I want to see is people making responsible decisions.” For example, a crime of ecocide could force governments to change the incentive structures for businesses by redirecting subsidises for fossil fuels towards clean energy sources. In this way the dirty energy companies that are wrecking the environment today could be transformed into the clean energy companies of tomorrow.

The crime of ecocide includes the concept of “strict liability” or “superior responsibility” which overcomes the current situation whereby company executives simply use what Michael Mansfield called “the Spanish waiter’s defence” and claim, “I know nothing.” This is something we saw recently, for example in the parliamentary select committee questioning of Rupert Murdoch in the News International phone hacking scandal.

But what is the prospect of such legislation ever becoming law? Higgins presented the legislation in draft form to the UN Law Commission back in April 2010. The lawyer who says the Earth is now her only client thinks we have a critical window of opportunity between now and the Rio+20 Earth Summit in June 2012 to enshrine the crime into international law. This would require an amendment to the Rome Statute – which established the International Criminal Court in 1998 – by a two third’s majority of the signatories.

If this is achieved, the human race will have created a renewed opportunity to overcome our greatest and, up until now, most intractable threat. At a time when international climate negotiations have effectively collapsed, Higgins asserts that a “crime of ecocide will close the door to fossil fuels.”

For more information about the campaign go to: www.thisisecocide.com

PRESS RELEASE 18 July 2011

Reverend Billy leads mass exorcism in Tate Modern Turbine Hall over ‘taint’ of BP sponsorship
American performance group and British artists, activists and art lovers congregate in call for gallery to end its relationship with oil company

Monday (18 July) Reverend Billy and the Church of Earthalujah choir joined with art activists, artists, Tate members and concerned members of the public at 17.30 in the Tate Turbine Hall to lay hands on Tate Modern and cast out the demon of BP’s oil sponsorship of the art institution.

An exorcism of the evil spirit of BP was performed in a special service in the Turbine Hall of the national gallery of international modern art. The Reverend Billy had an oil-like substance dramatically poured over his white suit by his gospel choir before being escorted out of the building. The gospel choir sung choruses of “Tate takes money from BP, and BP’s money is the devil.”

The event was brought to Tate by five different UK-based groups – Liberate Tate, UK Tar Sands Network, London Rising Tide, Art Not Oil and Climate Rush - all of which have staged multiple performance interventions and protests at Tate, part of a growing movement to rid public arts institutions from oil companies with negative social and environmental impacts all around the world.

Reverend Billy, the world famous preacher, said: “For 20 long years, BP has embedded its foulness deep within Tate, using the fair face of the arts to mask the stench of its true nature. Today the possession of this dark beast lurking within the bosom of one of our most cherished arts institutions is coming to an end.”

“While good-hearted, god-fearing, gallery goers glory in the miracle of art, the beast below is encircling the planet with its oily tentacles, destroying righteous communities, poisoning God’s beauteous creations, and bringing us all ever closer to the climate apocalypse. Art will soon be free of big oil interests. Eviction has begun. Brothers and sisters, it’s time to liberate the Tate!”

Chris Sands, a participant in the performance said: “When Tate takes money from the fossil fuel industry it is endorsing climate change rather than backing activity which moves us away from an environmental crisis that is already destroying lives and livelihoods. We have to ensure our public arts institutions are financed responsibly, transparently and ethically for the good of the art world and the planet.”

Tate and other public cultural institutions have seen long-standing public concern about their relations with oil companies. The numbers of artists involved have grown over recent years with many hundreds of artists publicly demanding Tate end links with BP and guerilla art performances adding to creative protests in Tate galleries. The exorcism comes less than a week after a ‘guerrilla ballet’ performance took place at the BP-sponsored Big Screens in Trafalgar Square, highlighting the oil company’s involvement in destructive tar sands extraction in Canada.

BP continues to use its arts sponsorship to project a public image at odds with its operations and lobbying. As part of a multi-million pound effort to create a social license to operate, the company has launched its first television advertising campaign since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill which centres on its arts, culture and sports sponsorship in an attempt to alter public perception about the company.

An op-ed by Bill McKibben, author and founder of 350.org, narrated and illustrated by Stephen Thomson.

The start of a major campaign. Instead of cutting jobs, create a million new ones to lower carbon emissions and kick start the economy. The full 33 minute version, plus seven more films, are on Reel News 27 – available at Reel News. For more information about the campaign download the One Million Climate Jobs booklet.