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.

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/

‘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/

For Immediate Release:

Climate Activists Drop Banner Over UN Motorcade, Raise Warning of Ineffective “False Solutions” to Climate Change

New York, NY – Early Friday morning, at the end of the first week of the High Level meetings during Climate Week in New York, a caravan of police-escorted limousines and SUVs carrying UN delegates was delayed as they approached the 42nd street bridge.A 25 foot banner reading “UN: Cap + Trade is a Dead End” was deployed as the motorcade drew near.

A group referring to itself as the “Greenwash Guerrillas” claimed credit for the banner, and prior to a hasty departure threw leaflets down onto the stalled traffic articulating their demands:

(TEXT:)

We know a highly-developed campaign has been launched in the United States by the worst transnational corporate polluters, Wall Street financiers, and well-funded professional enviros along with their lesser-funded camp-followers to pass a bill, any bill, possessing the namesake of ‘the climate’;

We hold that polluting corporations have never advocated for anything that would harm their bottom line, their short-term profits or their shareholders;

We recognize that Wall Street financiers, responsible for a world-wide economic recession due to a speculative bubble collapse, have set their sites on a $14 trillion carbon trading system as a means of reviving their fortunes;

We know that corporate polluters have effectively defanged the mainstream US environmental movement.  Many organizations that appear to publicly support environmental defense are welcoming disastrous policy within the US and the leadup to the December COP15 Climate Talks in Copenhagen.  The mainstream environmental movement has become little more than a sounding board for corporate sponsors of profit-generating climate change legislation.

As a people, we cannot define the systematic destruction of our environment, the unprecedented exctinction crisis, and oncoming impacts of climate catastrophe as a  money-making opportunity. We will not forget or forgive those who mindlessly, selfishly advocate a cap-and-trade system. The False Solutions agenda of the corrupt circles  of government at home and abroad will meet resistance.

Signed,

Agent Simple Green

The Greenwash Guerrillas

(New York) Climate justice activists from Rising Tide North America and Climate SOS in New York took to the streets on the final day of the UN Climate summit, making housecalls to the New York offices of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and the Nature Conservancy. NRDC’s street-level banner was festooned with a 14 foot mock “Climate Bill” in the form of $2 trillion bank note (the approximate value of a U.S. carbon market). Imagery on the giant spoof bill critiques roles of many large environmental groups in their push for passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), chiefly for its advocacy of an carbon market. Following NRDC, the offices of EDF and The Nature Conservancy received delivery visits where activists desperately tried to present organizational representatives with their version of the “green”.

These organizations are leading members of the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), which has united them with highly polluting corporations such as Dow, DuPont, General Electric and Alcoa Aluminum under the auspices of lobbying Congress to reduce emissions. This unsavory alliance played a major role in crafting the Waxman-Markey ACESA bill (HR 2454) passed by the US House of Representatives in July, and expected to make its way for a Senate vote imminently. (more…)

Environmental activists, some dressed as “Trillionaires for Bad Math” today delivered a “climate bill” to Copenhagen, ahead of schedule. The mock “bill” was delivered at a 3 pm lecture at Columbia University’s School of International Public Affairs hosted by Danish Climate and Energy minister Connie Hedegaard. Hedegaard is the chairperson of the UN climate summit to be held in Copenhagen this December, where many hope that a strong global climate agreement will be signed.

Representatives of groups including Climate SOS and Rising Tide North America presented a 14-foot banner representing the climate bill currently being debated in the US Congress, which many consider essential for strong US participation in Copenhagen. The banner depicts a two trillion dollar note, representing the size of the new market in carbon dioxide emissions allowances that would be established by the Waxman-Markey climate bill that passed the House of Representatives in late June.

The centerpiece of the banner is an image of a bewildered Al Gore, who introduced the concept of tradable emissions allowances into the UN process in Kyoto in 1997. Hundreds of environmental groups are critical of the current US climate bill. Many view the bill’s cap and trade provisions as a dangerous false solution, that is inherently unstable and ultimately incapable of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Leading Trillionaire, 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,” he continued, “’cause rising seas and booty and plunder are just my thing and soon the land, air and water will be all mine.”

The “trillionaires for bad math” argue that the House bill “just doesn’t add up”, pointing out that it 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 corporate giveaways into its cap-and-trade program. Corporations would be able to defer needed emissions reductions for decades under the bill’s offset provisions. International groups widely condemn the lack of US leadership on climate issues and demand that wealthy countries pay their share of the accumulated “climate debt.”

“If these lily-livered politicians aren’t ready to do something about the climate, those scurvy activists on the streets of Copenhagen are going to make ‘em walk the plank,” said Cap’n Trade. “We’re all going to end up in Davy Jones’ Locker.”

As the Climate SOS crosscountry tour culminates, activists from Climate SOS, Rising Tide, and other groups of environmental activists in New York launched a series of direct action interventions to signal the widespread opposition to the Waxman-Markey climate bill and its inadequate targets and use of dubious financial mechanisms for greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

For press materials, photos and video: contact mutualaid@earthlink.net More info at: climatesos.org, risingtidenorthamerica.org

Contacts (Mobile phones): Rachel Smolker, Ph.D.802-482 2848, Brian Tokar, 802-595-9677

FROM THE  MOBILIZATION FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE

For Immediate Release            22 September 2009

Actions Spreading Across the U.S. Against Corporate-Driven Climate Policy