NYC Carbon Trading Protest – Financial District, 1-13-2010

(video by Freddy’s Brooklyn Roundhouse)

Calling carbon traders “climate traitors,” members of the Climate Crisis Coalition, Rising Tide North America, Climate SOS gathered outside the 2nd annual NYC Carbon Trading Summit to demand an end to the market-based trading of greenhouse gas emissions credits and called for just solutions to the climate crisis. The climate justice activists risked arrest to voice their opposition to the financial trading giants at the Summit, including JP Morgan Chase & Goldman Sachs, comparing their carbon trading plans to those that caused the current financial crisis.

By Bond, Patrick
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Eight million people viewed Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff video since December 2007, and her new nine-minute Story of Cap and Trade (http://www.zcommunications.org/zvideo/3310) received 400,000 hits in the two weeks after its December 1 launch.

The film, produced by Free Range Studios, was developed in collaboration with the Durban Group for Climate Justice and Climate Justice Now! networks, which  joined Climate Justice Action and other networks to put tens of thousands of activists on the streets of Copenhagen, London and dozens of other cities in recent days, demanding large emissions cuts, the payment of ecological debt to climate victims, and the decommissioning of carbon markets.

But critics abound, so what trends can we discern from the sometimes venomous feedback to Story of Cap and Trade, and what do these tell us about US and global climate politics? Consider three categories:

• libertarian climate change denialists;
• Big Green groups and other carbon trading supporters; and
• self-interested green capitalists.

To start, rightwing extremists are easiest to dismiss because they deny that climate change is a product of human/economic activity – but there’s a schizophrenic double agenda. For although they’re pro-business, libertarians like Fox tv’s Glenn Beck oppose market-based cap-and-trade schemes.

The most dangerous, Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, denies ‘that we’re going to pass a cap-and-trade or we’re going to do something on emissions reduction,’ as he told the rightwing NewsMax agency on Sunday.

Australian climate denialists now control the official opposition party, having overthrown its leader last month due to his cap-and-trade endorsement, in the process halting the state’s proposed emissions trading scheme (http://agmates.ning.com/forum/topics/canberra-protest-rally-live?commentId=3535428%3AComment%3A9579).

Those of us fighting carbon markets certainly *don’t* want alliances with cretins like Inhofe or intrepid videoblogger Lee Doran. After a clumsy rebuttal to The Story of Stuff, Doran offered another zany video-attack (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWjGZNDEH-A), in which he first agrees with the demolition of cap-and-trade, but then replies to Annie’s charge that rich-world overconsumption victimizes those least responsible for global warming:

Annie: ‘Did you know that in the next century, because of the changing climate, whole island nations could end up underwater?’

Lee: ‘Yes, and islands will emerge from the water too, it’s part of the natural cycle of the planet.’ (minute 6)

Enough said about flat-earth libertarian ideologues. (more…)

Commemorating the 10 year anniversary of the Seattle WTO protests, SOS activists joined with the national Mobilisation for Climate Justice, taking action in nine cities (and more), targeting “climate criminals” in advance of the opening of the COpenhagen negotiations.   Several were arrested. See here for reportbacks!

http://www.actforclimatejustice.org/n30-day-of-action/reportbacks-day-of-action/

For immediate release: October 8, 2009

Contacts:

Brian Tokar, 802-229-0087 briant@pshift.com

Rachel Smolker, 802-482-2848 rsmolker@riseup.net

A controversial article posted last week on a popular environmental website has inadvertently highlighted environmentalists’ skepticism toward the cap-and-trade provisions of climate legislation now before the US Congress. The article, posted on the environmental news site Grist.org on October 1st, was titled “‘No compromise’ faction attacks climate bill,” and attempted to dismiss the activities of Climate SOS (climatesos.org) and other groups highly critical of the legislation, as far outside the environmental mainstream. A review of comments posted in response to the article tells a very different story, according to members of the Climate SOS network.

Out of 55 original, non-duplicate comments posted to the Grist.org site by mid-day October 6th, 34 were critical of the article and of the “cap-and-trade” approach to limiting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Fourteen comments defended the legislation and/or supported the article’s point of view, and five others were ambiguous or uncertain in their position. While far from a scientific poll, comments on mainstream environmental websites such as Grist are seen as a useful indicator of the views of environmentally concerned readers.

“We feel tremendously vindicated by Grist readers’ response to this article,” said Brian Tokar, director of the Institute for Social Ecology, a founding member of the Climate SOS network. “People seeking real solutions to the climate crisis know that creating a carbon market in the US is not an effective way to reduce emissions. It hasn’t worked in Europe or elsewhere where it has been tried. It is no accident that many of the most polluting companies support cap-and-trade, and worked actively with corporate-friendly environmental groups such as NRDC and Environmental Defense in helping craft the current legislation.”

Since the Waxman-Markey climate bill passed the US House in June, several hundred national and regional environmental groups have signed letters and statements strongly critical of the bill. Letters were initiated by groups such as Friends of the Earth and the Center for Biological Diversity, as well as the Climate SOS network. They argued that the House version of the bill falls far short of scientifically valid targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, removes the EPA’s authority to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act, and incorporates massive, unjustifiable corporate giveaways into its cap-and-trade program. Corporations would be able to defer needed emissions reductions for decades under the bill’s generous offset provisions.

Dr. Rachel Smolker, representing Biofuelwatch and Climate SOS, said, “The Senate bill released last week by Sens. Kerry and Boxer can hardly be considered an improvement. The article in Grist attempted to marginalize our ‘no-compromise’ approach, but many knowledgeable environmentalists recognize that the time for compromise is long past. We were pleased to see the support that people expressed, and hope they will join us in actively demanding real solutions to climate change. The US continues to avoid taking meaningful action and is obstructing international negotiations. If we do not demand the changes that are necessary, who will?”

“The Senate bill claims slightly stronger emission reduction targets by doctoring the numbers, but its targets are still far below what scientists agree is needed,” said Dr. Maggie Zhou of the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities. “The current bill would partially reinstate some of EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, which many recognize would be much more effective than a carbon market at regulating emissions, but it turns out that the EPA authority is simply a bargaining chip.” Senator Kerry was quoted last week saying that EPA authority over greenhouse gases was retained largely to provide “some negotiating room as we proceed forward” with the bill.

In contrast to the current legislation, Climate SOS network members support alternative approaches such as direct, revenue-neutral carbon charges coupled with equal dividend distribution, aggressive energy efficiency and renewable energy standards, and an end to subsidies for fossil fuels, nuclear power, biomass incineration and other false climate solutions.

‘No Compromise’ Faction Attacks Climate Bill

Jonathan Hiskes, 

GRIST; Oct 1 2009

The article is interesting sort of, but most interesting is the reaction. See comments following the article (as well as pics and link to video) at Grist website here:

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-10-01-climate-bill-attacked-from-the-far-left/

Briefly:

Activists handed out fake $2 trillion bills at a rally for climate legislation in New York last week, criticizing the size of the global-warming emissions market they oppose. ($2 trillion is their estimate for the size of the emissions market they oppose.) The bills depict Al Gore holding a wrench and a compact-fluorescent light bulb and the words “Corporate Giveaways! Carbon Ponzi Schemes! FALSE SOLUTIONS!”

Others hung a 14-foot banner of the same bill from the Manhattan headquarters of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

“Cap’n Trade,” an actor in a pirate costume, unfurled a similar banner at a presentation by Connie Hedegaard, chairperson of the Dec. 2009 UN Climate Summit and Denmark’s minister for climate and energy.

Still others blocked a motorcade of UN delegates to drop a banner with the message “Cap + Trade is a Dead End.”

At least three groups worked together on last week’s events—Climate SOS, Rising Tide North America, and “Greenwash Guerrillas,” which pied Thomas Friedman last year. They all hold a “no compromise” philosophy on climate-change action, opposing carbon markets that allow polluters to buy and sell pollution credits and arguing that larger environmental groups such as NRDC have compromised too much in working with businesses and Democratic lawmakers.

“It’s an awkward position to be environmentalists working on climate change but opposing a climate bill,” said Climate SOS organizer Rachel Smolker, a Vermont ecologist and author. “Especially with a new administration that we want to support. But we felt we need to take a really strong position because this [bill] is so inadequate.”

The campaign is awkward for “establishment” green groups too. They’ve been preparing to battle fossil-fuel interests over the energy bill introduced in the Senate this week. Now they must figure out if and how to respond to this attack from the far left.

“It’s troubling,” said Daniel J. Weiss, director for climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank with close ties to the Obama administration. “No one believes that the clean energy bill that will come out of Congress will address the threat of global warming in a single step. But we have to start.”

“The real enemies are Big Oil and Big Coal and the right wing attack machine,” he said. “For them to mock [Gore] in the way they did shows that they don’t understand you need to attack your enemies and not your allies.”

Hansen’s involvement is especially troublesome. The director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies wasn’t involved in the New York stunts, but he endorsed Climate SOS’s recent tour against a climate bill. The $2 trillion bill includes his statement that a cap-and-trade program “would be worse for the environment than doing nothing.”

The opposition by Hansen and Climate SOS is unlikely to influence Washington policymakers, in Weiss’s opinion, but it’s got the potential to make everyday Americans think the situation is hopeless.

“If they hear from such a respected scientist as James Hansen that what Congress is doing won’t matter, then why would they bother to call their senators to say ‘Act on this’?” he said.

What does that even mean?

Aside from the stunts last week, other moves by the “no-compromise” camp are downright perplexing. Last week Greenwash Guerrillas launched a website in response to Cleanenergyworks.us, a three-month-old diverse coalition supporting a comprehensive energy bill. The similar-sounding Cleanenergyworks.biz was a replica of the real Clean Energy Works site, with two notable changes: The phone number and email address for spokesperson Josh Dorner had been changed. His name was left the same. The site changed to a more innocuous version over the weekend and is currently down. (Have a screen grab? Send it in and we’ll post.)

Dorner had no interest in speaking about the site that took his name. “I don’t send too much of my day worrying about a website,” he said Thursday. “There are considerably more important tasks before us to get this bill across the Senate floor.”

NRDC spokesperson Michael Oko shared Dorner’s reluctance to give attention to the stunts. “There are a lot of different groups out there,” he said in regard to the banner hung at NRDC’s office. “Everybody has the right to express themselves.”

About the replica website Oko said, “Frankly, I was a little confused about what their intention was.”

Smolker of Climate SOS said the idea was “to provide a spoof, to reveal the emptiness of the claims Clean Energy Works provides. For them, it’s green jobs and clean energy and everything’s a smiley-face, you know? Our goal is to tell people to look deeper and take the smiley faces off.”

She said she contributed ideas for the mock site, but individuals from Greenwash Guerrillas, who did not want to be identified, created the idea.

The 51-year-old Smolker has seen firsthand how environmental groups can evolve, professionalize, and grow in wealth and influence. Her father was one of the founders of Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), another group targeted by Climate SOS last week. EDF met in her childhood home when it was still a “ragtag group,” as Climate SOS is now, she said. (Smolker, who works for Biofuel Watch, declined to give funding information for Climate SOS but said all members were volunteers.)

“We’ve played that compromise game for a long time,” she said. “There’s too much at stake right now.”

The old saw

The compromise question—whether to sacrifice what is ecologically necessary for what seems politically possible—has been around as long as the green movement itself. The naturalist-and-mystic John Muir and the politician-and-forester Gifford Pinchot clashed over the same tensions in the early 20th century.

As for Hansen’s “worse than nothing” remark, there has been plenty written about the failings of the House climate and energy bill—it gives away too much to dirty-energy backers, it even protects coal-plant pollution from further regulation. But there is historical precedent of legislation that is deeply flawed at first evolving into something effective and durable. The original Clean Air Act did not address the acid rain crisis, an omission not corrected until 1990. The original Social Security Act did not include domestic or agricultural workers, effectively excluding many Hispanic, black, and immigrant workers, as Democratic strategist Paul Begala notes.

“If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist,” writes Begala. “Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start.”

Most progressives, including many major green groups, would gladly embrace an imperfect climate bill as a start.

“Those who see the House clean energy bill as somehow tainted by deals, and therefore want a carbon tax, have to understand that no tax proposal would ever emerge from Congress as we know it without similar or worse deals being made,” said Weiss. “Unfortunately the moral high ground of ‘we must act for our children’ is necessary but not sufficient for our political process.”

Smolker said Climate SOS would continue on a different tack, insisting on an acceptable bill from the get-go. She expected the group would pause to take stock of the bill released in the Senate this week, then regroup.

PRESS RELEASE: October 2, 2009

Climate SOS, a coalition of scientists and activists who support science- and environmental justice-based climate legislation, today characterized the draft Senate bill, called the “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act” which was introduced on Wednesday by Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) as an “irresponsible non-solution.”

They maintain that any bill that embraces cap and trade, offsets, outrageously inadequate emission reduction targets, and counter-solutions such as biomass burning, nuclear power and more coal fired power plants (under the guise of partial carbon capture technology that is as yet unavailable) will fail to meet its stated goal of forestalling catastrophic climate change.

Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the Citizens Climate Lobby, Center for Biological Diversity and others have also rejected the Senate bill for its lack of grounding in science and its failure to consider global environmental justice concerns.

Maggie Zhou, a Climate SOS organizer, and project coordinator with the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities, said “Cap and trade is the worst choice for pricing carbon. It is proven ineffective even in its best incarnations, is influence-prone, creates a huge, risky, game-able carbon market that is extremely complex, subject to manipulations, whose likely bubble-bust will overshadow the mortgage or the dot com bubble.  While cap and trade is the scheme of choice for polluters and Wall Street executives, a revenue-neutral carbon tax-and-dividend program would be much more straightforward, equitable, less prone to fraud and gaming, and would compensate people, not corporations, for the costs of pricing carbon.” She added “The US forced cap and trade into the Kyoto protocol, which we didn’t even ratify.  It’s time to correct that mistake, and lead the world in implementing a much more sensible system that could simplify global efforts on fighting climate change, that has a real chance of success.”

“It is no consolation that the Senate sets superficially more ambitious goals for emission reductions than the House,” said BiofuelWatch co-director and Climate SOS spokesperson Rachel Smolker. “While the House bill required landfill gas to be captured, the Senate bill allows those projects to be used as offsets to allow additional emissions from smokestacks.  This slight of hand allows politicians to claim ‘stronger targets’ when in fact it’s all number-smithing.  Dire predictions from climate scientists make it clear that even if all the offset provisions are stripped away, the stated targets in both the Senate and the House bills (which are at most a few percentage point cuts below 1990 emissions by 2020) are still pathetically trivial, unable to even approach a greenhouse gas stabilization at 450 parts-per-million (ppm), while it is becoming clear that the safe level is no more than 350 ppm, way below what’s already in the air today (387 ppm).  In introducing an ineffective legislation, the senators send a poor message to Copenhagen and condemn us to climate chaos.”

The Senate bill is modeled upon the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), passed by the House of Representatives late June. In the past month, members of climate SOS, lead by Duff Badgley, founder of One Earth Climate Action Group, met with senate staffers in North Dakota, Indiana, Ohio, and Arkansas in an effort to rally opposition to the false climate bill on environmental grounds.  “Voting against such a poor bill would in fact be the environmentally responsible choice”, said Badgley.  Last week, the coalition also joined forces with activists from Rising Tide North America and many climate justice groups in actions from east to west coast, exposing the polluter-protection nature of the “landmark climate legislation”. Their voices were heard inside and outside the police blockade of the UN climate summit in NYC, at the Danish environment minister’s lecture that urged US to pass this false climate bill, and outside offices of big corporate green groups such as NRDC, Environmental Defense, and Nature Conservancy.

Contacts:

-Rachel Smolker, PhD. Co-Director: Biofuel Watch biofuelwatch.org 802.482.2848(o), 802.735.7794(m), rsmolker@riseup.net,

-Maggie Zhou, PhD.  Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities securegreenfuture.org 781.316.8283 maggie@securegreenfuture.org

-Duff Badgley, Founder, One Earth Climate Action Group, 206.283.0621 duff@climatesos.org

Groups endorsing Climate SOS include the Energy Justice Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, Institute for Social Ecology, Massachusetts Powershift, Mobilization for Climate Justice network, Progressive Democrats of America, Rising Tide North America, Ruckus Society and many others. http://www.climatesos.org/about-us/members/

Climate SOS platform: http://www.climatesos.org/our-platform/platform/

By Rachel Smolker, Alternet. Sept 30 2009
A new movement is demanding more from the president, Congress and even most major environmental groups in order to pass truly meaningful climate legislation.

The world watched last week’s U.N. climate summit in anxious anticipation, hopeful that our “yes we can” president would say something earth shattering, or at least encouraging. Instead, President Barack Obama promised nothing more than that the U.S. is “determined to take action” on climate change.

While the Maldives are sinking, and floods, droughts, hurricanes and melting Arctic ice are daily headlines, all he can say is that we are “determined”? This is disturbingly reminiscent of George W. Bush stating that the U.S. “aspires” to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

What did we want our new president to say? That the U.S. would take on strong binding emissions-reduction targets and pony up the funding required to assist the developing world in coping with the consequences of warming; that we have the laws in place, or at least shortly forthcoming, and are ready to do our part to end the stalemate and engage meaningfully with international negotiation processes!

Outside of the summit, in the bright heart of Central Park in New York City, a collaborative effort involving Avaaz and Oxfam was organized, intended to kick off a “Global Wake Up Call” on climate. People reveling in the gorgeous weather were recruited to participate in an “aerial art” project illustrating that time is running out for addressing the climate crisis and that we must act now.

Yes, but what exactly should that action look like? Are they asking for the Senate to pass a bill like the one that cleared the House in June?

The devil, as always is in the details. While many heralded the House climate bill as a great achievement, those who have peeked behind the mirrors and read between the lines, are faced with a serious quandary: while supporting the call for strong action, they find the House’s American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA) to be such an abomination that notables like NASA climate scientist James Hansen, have called it “worse for the environment than doing nothing.” Oops!

Why has Hansen said this, and why do many others agree?

For one thing, ACESA would have us adopt a cap-and-trade mechanism to bring down emissions. Many have been critical of this approach because where it has been tried, it has proved profitable to polluters and ineffective at reducing global-warming pollution.

It creates a very large, complex and inscrutable artificial market that runs the risk of being brought to its knees, just as any other market. ACESA sets absurdly meek targets, a 1 to 4 percent reduction below 1990 levels by 2020. But even that would be rendered meaningless by the large offset provisions.

According to analysis by the International Rivers Network, if the 2 billion tons of allowed offsets were used, the U.S. would carry on business as usual, with rising greenhouse-gas emissions, through 2029.

ACESA would also seek to repeal EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, essentially removing the one regulatory tool that we have in place.

And, the renewable-energy provisions of ACESA is a nightmare for those concerned with the growing tendency to offer up the world’s forests, grasslands and biodiversity as “renewable energy” to be burned in power plants as “carbon neutral,” or refined into biofuels for cars.

The Peterson Amendment forced into ACESA by the House Agriculture Committee, would exempt agriculture, one of the most-polluting sectors, from the cap, and instead establish a massive agriculture and forestry offsetting program.

This would enable polluters to offset their emissions by supporting practices like “no till.” But no till generally involves industrial farming of genetically engineered soy, and without tilling, more toxic chemical weed killers are used. These practices can hardly be considered “climate friendly.” Regulation of these offsets, would be taken from the EPA and handed over to the agribusiness-friendly USDA.

The environmental integrity of such land-based offsets is suspect, one reason that the “clean development mechanism” of the Kyoto Protocol limited the use of forestry-based offsets and has thus far not delved into agricultural offsets. Measuring emissions from a smokestack is easy compared to measuring those from a farmed field or forest!

Even if one were to hold faith in the reliability of offsets, the bottom line is that actual, verifiable reductions, not offsets are essential at this point. Smoke and mirrors simply will not fool Mother Nature.

The international community has made it crystal clear that it expects developed countries like the U.S. to adopt strong emission-reduction targets, and also to help pay the ecological debt that is owed to the “developing” world. International negotiations have been stalemated over this issue now for some time, so one would hope that a U.S. climate bill would provide something substantial along these lines, but not so.

According to Friends of the Earth:

The costs of adapting to climate change in the developing world are estimated at $86 billion a year by 2015; estimates for financing a clean-energy transition and tropical forest protection in the developing world are between $65 billion and $120 billion a year. Starting at $500 million a year for adaptation, $500 million for clean technology, and $2.5 billion for tropical forest protection, the ACES Act does not come close to what the U.S. contribution would need to be for these efforts.

So, as the planet heats up, so does the political landscape: the lack of firm action on behalf of the U.S. led one E.U. minister to refer to the state of climate debate in the U.S. as “prehistoric.”

Indeed, when even in the halls of Congress the conversation frequently devolves into debates over whether climate change is real or not, one cannot help but agree.

Equally frustrating and prehistoric is the role of the most corporate-friendly environmental groups, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Nature Conservancy for example, who are all members of the U.S. “Climate Action Partnership” with Dow, Shell, Alcoa, Duke, BP and the big three automakers, among other major polluters.

With their access to Washington lawmakers, they served to lay out the major features of the climate bill, ensuring that tradeable emissions, freely allocated permits and offsets were embraced, and hence, the impacts of climate-change legislation on corporate bottom lines minimized. Now these “big greens” appeal to their members to encourage legislators to pass the bill.

For the average concerned citizen, a climate bill sounds like a good idea, and calls for strong action on climate are sincere. But not any old climate bill will do.

Without being more informed and more specific about what they are asking for, many are hoodwinked into simply throwing the doors wide open to a panoply of false solutions and misleading scams while slamming the doors on the many more effective possibilities that should be, and could be, considered. Strong climate action indeed, but best be clear what you ask for!

In an attempt to counter the progress of a climate bill that would be “worse than nothing,” a new coalition of activists, calling itselfClimate SOS also showed up in New York this past week.

Believing that the climate bill is inadequate and manipulated by special interests, members handed out faux $2 trillion bills (the future value, by some estimates, of the carbon market), featuring Al Gore brandishing a compact fluorescent bulb in one hand and a monkeywrench in the other.

An enlarged banner image of the bill was presented at Columbia University to the Danish minister of environment, who will be chairing the upcoming U.N. climate negotiations in Copenhagen and is a rock-hard advocate of cap-and-trade and carbon markets.

Offering a U.S. climate “bill” ahead of the Copenhagen schedule, activists led by “Cap’n Trade,” dressed in pirate regalia, told the assembled crowd: ” ‘Tis a bloody shame for the climate that Congress has chosen me to clean up this mess for ‘em. But I don’t mind a bit, ’cause rising seas and booty and plunder are just my thing, and soon the land, air and water will be all mine.”

Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, activists with the Mobilization for Climate Justice gathered under the intimidating threat of police crackdowns. They marched outside of the G20 meeting with banners reading “Corporations out of Copenhagen” and “Our Climate is Not Your Business,” as the leading economies met inside to discuss their vision for the fate of the planet.

A week earlier, a large protest was staged at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, Calif., and a message delivered opposing the ACESA and calling for “climate justice or climate chaos.”

In the countdown to Copenhagen, a movement is growing, as people increasingly recognize not only what is at stake, but also see through the veils of deceit that have left policy makers in the stranglehold of corporate greed, offering nothing more than greenwashed versions of “business as usual.”

This new movement recognizes that the numerous crises — the climate, economy, ecology, food and human rights — are all growing from the same roots. The only path forward from here, they say, is one that places justice equity and ecology at the core, not corporate profiteering.

Summing it up eloquently was Ana Pinto, a speaker with the Global Justice Ecology Project’s “New Voices for Climate Change,” who said: “Climate justice is not abstract. It’s practical, it’s about survival. It’s about need against greed.”

In spite of police crackdowns, the demand for survival, not greed, will not be silenced.

Rachel Smolker is co-director of Biofuelwatch and is an organizer with Climate SOS. She has Ph.D. in biology from the University of Michigan. After spending many years studying ecology and zoology in natural ecosystems, she turned her attention to climate change and activism. She has written extensively on biofuels and biomass, written the report, “The Real Cost of Agrofuels: Food, Forests, People and Climate,” and is a longtime participant in the global climate justice movement. She lives in Vermont.

Last weekend, activists from across the west coast joined residents of Richmond, CA for the West Coast Convergence for Climate Justice and Action, from September 18-20th at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Richmond. The goal of the Convergence was to connect local environmental justice struggles, especially the Richmond community’s ongoing struggle against the local Chevron refinery, to the global fight for climate justice. The global climate justice movement recognizes that the impacts of climate change fall most heavily on poor communities and that true solutions must come from those same communities on the front lines.

The West Coast Convergence for Climate Justice consisted of 3 days of plenary speeches, workshops, and strategy sessions, followed by a non-violent direct action on Monday, September 21st. Workshops and plenary sessions placed the local struggle against Chevron in the broader context of the movement for climate justice leading up to the Copenhagen climate negotiations. Speakers emphasized the role of corporations like Chevron in watering down climate policy and drew connections between the Richmond fight and other frontline community struggles, including those against tar sands in Canada and against the Dooda Desert Rock power plant in New Mexico. Other workshops focused on organizing skills and on local solutions, from urban gardening to local climate action plans. According to Carla Perez, one of the conference organizers, “the convergence was a gathering of stellar minds & hearts rooted in community organizing for social and ecological justice. It brought clarity and a deep understanding of the root causes of the climate problem and inspired Richmond leaders to connect their local work to this global struggle for a livable future.”

(more…)