Disingenious Greenwashing

I don't know why anyone is surprised by this any more.

Public health experts involved in the response to the Ebola crisis have condemned what they described as a ludicrous, insulting and opportunistic attempt to exploit the disease for corporate gain by the world’s largest privately-held coal company.

As part of a PR offensive to rebrand coal as a “21st-century fuel” that can help solve global poverty, it has emerged that at the height of Ebola’s impact in Africa, Peabody Energy promoted its product as an answer to Africa’s devastating public health crisis.

310,000 can't be wrong

Surely not; 310,000 marched in NYC. Matt Sutkowski,  writing about yesterday's global climate march, praises the intent if the marchers, but wonders if the momentum for policy change will be maintained - and will the politicians listen? He's got his doubts, and so do I.  (Juan Cole's Informed Comment gives background on their effectiveness, with a little history about these protests.). It's all about momentum. Sustained momentum.

Because there's this, from the Guardian:

US will not commit to climate change aid for poor nations at UN summit

BREAKING NEWS: SOUTH BURLINGTON CITY COUNCIL NIXES F-35!

Per Juliet Buck, blogger and activist (via Facebook): "South Burlington City Council just voted AGAINST basing the F-35 in Burlington by a vote of 4-1!!!!!!!!!! So this is what winning one feels like?"

A victory indeed. Juliet and the other activists have struck a blow against the evil jets of Lockheed Martin. The Feds, of course, can do whatever they want, but after years of propaganda and misinformation, the victory is that four city officials said NO!

EARTH DAY

The first Earth Day was celebrated on 22 April 1970.  I was "there," but oh gosh! with these anniversaries, I realise that I'm getting older! That was 42 years ago!

... [I]t activated 20 million Americans from all walks of life and is widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement. The passage of the landmark Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and many other groundbreaking environmental laws soon followed.

Today, read Juan Cole: Earth Day means nothing if We Don’t Limit Carbon Emissions

Tar Sands Action

The Keystone XL pipeline is a project would pump over one million barrels of “tar sands” oil from the Alberta Tar Sands, Canada, to Texas every day. The oil in the Keystone pipeline could poison drinking water, threaten the communities it runs through, and wreck the climate.

350 Vermont is helping to coordinate a 4-day expedition from August 28th to the 31st to be a part of this historic action. Local coverage in Seven Days,  the Burlington Free Press,  Senator Sanders Youtube video. For those that care, there is a Facebook group.

Surprise!

The New York Times came out today with an editorial against the Keystone XL pipeline.

NO LOCKHEED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

In case anyone missed it. It was the lead story in Thursday’s National section of the New York Times.

Ms. [Anna] Guyton and Jonathan Leavitt, a community organizer, have sought to rally opposition with leafleting, forums at local colleges and a blog. They are also circulating a petition for a ballot question that would urge the mayor “not to enter into agreements with corporate war profiteers like Lockheed Martin.”
Meanwhile, Liza Cowan, a local artist, is circulating an eye-catching series of “No Lockheed” prints to draw attention to the issue. She said she was especially unhappy that the letter of cooperation mentioned “possible support” for Burlington’s public schools. Six years ago, she fought the sponsorship of a reading program by General Dynamics, a military contractor that had a branch here at the time, which distributed pencils and books stamped with its corporate logo at local schools. “It just seems like this was going to be the same thing but on a bigger scale,” she said.
Ms. Cowan also raised another common theory: that the partnership was an attempt by Lockheed to win local support for basing its F-35 fighter jets at Burlington International Airport. The Vermont Air Guard already flies F-16s here, and the Air Force has said Burlington is one of two possible bases for the F-35s.

DEAR LOCKHEED MARTIN

A Burlington citizen activist group NO LOCKHEED and Bill McKibben have issued a challenge to Lockheed Martin as its influence seeps into the City of Burlington (Vermont, Planet Earth):

Dear Lockheed Martin,

As a concerned citizen of Burlington, VT I feel obligated to let you know that the overwhelming majority of residents here seem strongly opposed to the proposed partnership between Lockheed Martin and the city of Burlington to address the impeding threat of climate change. Surprisingly, many people aren't opposed to the idea solely because you happen to be one of the world's largest arms manufacturers, but mainly because you don't seem to have much of a proven track record when it comes to addressing climate change. You see, here in Burlington we really pride ourselves on the notable efforts we've already made to reduce carbon emissions and develop sustainable communities, and we're rather reluctant to invite anyone into our town who doesn't already have a wealth of experience doing the same, regardless of their net worth. Otherwise what's the point, right?

Perhaps you've heard of climate change expert Bill McKibben. In a recent Burlington Free Press article McKibben says of Lockheed, "The fear that they could be just greenwashing is real -- for instance, these guys belong to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has opposed every single good idea on energy and climate for decades; to me, that's a sign they're willing to make money on climate, but still work in Washington to prevent meaningful progress." This is your big chance to prove otherwise.

McKibben's NGO 350.org. It's an international non-profit dedicated to stopping climate change. 350 just launched a new campaign 'The U.S. Chamber Doesn't Speak For Me' to "show that when it comes to climate and energy, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce represents the interests of big polluters, not everyday American business." According to a recent New York Times article, ("Justices Offer Receptive Ear to Business Interests" 12/18/10),"[The Chamber of Commerce] board includes executives from some of the nation's biggest companies, including Lockheed Martin." The Chamber of Commerce filed a brief in a Supreme Court case stating, a suit by eight states against power companies over carbon dioxide emissions, 'has potentially disastrous implications for the U.S. business community."

The New York Times article links to the Supreme Court brief (American Electric Power Company Inc., et al. v. State of Connecticut, et al.) which shows the lengths the Chamber of Commerce and its corporate partners, including Lockheed, will go to block carbon reductions.The brief implies that the states’ efforts to regulate C02 emissions are “ill-conceived policies and measures which could damage the economic security of the United States.” It belittles the states’ earnest litigation to address the climate crisis as an example of “nuisance suits,” which are “an especially ill-conceived and constitutionally illegitimate response." Like Mom always said, "you'll be judged by the company you keep." Right?

So we have thought of a great way you could prove your commitment to addressing climate change to the citizens of Burlington so someone other than Mayor Kiss might be a little more supportive of this proposed partnership. Would you be willing quit the US Chamber of Commerce and prove to us you really are committed to addressing the climate crisis? You see, like McKibben says, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has maintained a hard-line opposition to any legislation addressing the climate issue, so it's very hard to take anyone seriously who says that they want to address this issue while maintaining their involvement with them. You wouldn't be the first corporation do to so either! Apple, Nike, and Johnson & Johnson have all quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for this very reason! Even utility companies such as Exelon, Pacific Gas & Electric, and PNM Resources resigned from the Chamber over its environmental policy. Won't you be the next brave corporation to show your commitment to addressing climate change by quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce? It sure would help the citizens of Burlington take your proposal a little more seriously...

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Anna Guyton, Peace & Justice Center Program Manager

Joe Solomon, 350.org

Jenna Whitson, 350.org

David Stember, 350.org

Page Atcheson 350.org

Jonathan Leavitt, Journalist and Community Organizer

Will Bennington, Farmer and Community Organizer

Laurie Essig Phd.

Liza Cowan, Director, Pine Street Art Works

Danielle Bombardier, Community Organizer

Bryan Parmelee

Arthur Hynes

Peggy Luhrs

Juliet Buck

James Vos

Jen Berger

Patrick Wood

Lewis Holmes

Alan Taplow

Colleen Deignan

Michelle Marion

Tristan Pulley

Paul Schanbel

Jennifer Martin

Skye Ellicock

Laurie Larson

Dutch court fines Trafigura €1m for exporting toxic waste to Africa

GUARDIAN

The controversial oil trader Trafigura was today fined €1m (£840,000) for illegally exporting tonnes of hazardous waste to west Africa.

A court in the Netherlands also ruled that the London-based firm had concealed the dangerous nature of the waste when it was initially unloaded from a ship in Amsterdam.

It is the first time that Trafigura has been convicted of criminal charges over the environmental scandal in which 30,000 Africans were made ill when the toxic waste was dumped in Ivory Coast.

The fine was half the amount requested by Dutch prosecutors.

The fine is symbolic, just as the one levied on Goldman Sachs is a pittance. Trafigura's fine won't help the vicims in the Ivory Coast.

David Brower must be wincing from the grave

Sierra Club Foundation writes "Enough is Enough!" and urges people to write Obama to stop coastal oil drilling. Today Jane Hamsher has an excellent post up at FDL:

Josh Gerstein has an article in Politico on the massive silence coming out of the enviros on the BP oil catastrophe, which has been notable ever since the rig collapsed. This weekend the groups took out an ad in the Washington Post, not to criticize the administration for their response, but to praise the President for putting a hold on a drilling project in Alaska:

“President Obama is the best environmental president we’ve had since Teddy Roosevelt,” Sierra Club chairman Carl Pope told the Bangor Daily News last week. “He obviously did not take the crisis in the Minerals Management Service adequately seriously, that’s clear. But his agencies have done a phenomenally good job.”

If they aren’t saying anything negative, it’s because they believe there’s nothing to criticize:

Asked if Sierra Club has any concerns about the administration’s response to the spill, [Sierra Club's Dave] Willett said, “Overall, we’re satisfied with the cleanup and recovery effort.”

[...]

These groups have demonstrated by both their action and inaction that they do not deserve that public trust. Unlike the Center for Biological Diversity, fawning groups like the Sierra Club have been successfully manipulated both by corporate money and by partisan gamesmanship. They’ve become such complete Washington DC creatures that they don’t know how to be advocates from the outside any more — their primary function is to give political cover in the midst of a PR battle. They have abdicated the role of non-partisan watchdogs, and the public should find new organizations independent of party control in which to place their trust.

While the SC may push for clean energy, however, as the the FDL link shows, big money and access to governmental power corrupt. The Sierra Club is included (implicit) in that equation. David Brower must be wincing from the grave.

A Lesson from the Gulf Oil Spill: We Are All Connected (and There Is No Escape)

Katharine Jefferts Schori's career as an oceanographer and university lecturer (a B.S. degree in biology from Stanford University, an M.S. and Ph.D. in oceanography from Oregon State University) preceded her studies for the priesthood (an M.Div. from Church Divinity School of the Pacific) and her election as bishop of Nevada in 2000. Since June 2006 she has been the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.

She writes recently in the Huffington Post

"The original peoples of the North American continent understand that we are all connected, and that harm to one part of the sacred circle of life harms the whole. Scientists, both the ecological and physical sorts, know the same reality, expressed in different terms. The Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) also charge human beings with care for the whole of creation, because it is God's good gift to humanity. Another way of saying this is that we are all connected and there is no escape; our common future depends on how we care for the rest of the natural world, not just the square feet of soil we may call "our own." We breathe the same air, our food comes from the same ground and seas, and the water we have to share cycles through the same airshed, watershed, and terra firma.

"The still-unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is good evidence of the interconnectedness of the whole."

To read the full article go to Huffington Post.

BUMPED UP & UPDATED: Fuckin' Hell! -- NRC/Vermont Yankee Shenanigans!

UPDATE I I - NEW FLASH - as reported by Shay Totten in Blurt/Seven Days, at 1:44 p.m.

Under Pressure, Feds Open Private Meeting on Vermont Yankee

In response to mounting public pressure from state officials and the public, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission today reversed its decision to hold a closed-door meeting in New Hampshire with local officials from the tri-state area surrounding Vermont Yankee.

UPDATE I ON 03/30/10: Maggie Gunderson reporting in GMD: Vermont Delegation Calls on NRC to Reconsider Closed-Door Vermont Yankee Meeting
__________________________________________________________
Maggie Gunderson writes in Green Mountain Daily all about the latest bull shit (read: malice aforethought) to be hidden from Vermonters - all planned in secret! Goddamn corporate scumbags and their obsequious government lackeys!

Once again the NRC is up to its old antics of creating secret meetings for the privileged few it deems as stakeholders. NRC's alleged Government-to-Government meeting is in direct violation of federal and state Sunshine Laws, the NRC Chair's commitment to NRC transparency and inclusiveness, and President Obama's promise for Change to the electorate to usher in a new era of openness in our federal democracy.

This is an ace scoop from Maggie! Read it all.

CONSERVATION CAN'T WAIT

"That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics." - Aldo Leopold, 1948

Note: The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board was last fully funded in 1987!

GREEN MOUNTAIN DAILY:- Here we go again... last week the Governor proposed a budget eliminating permanently affordable housing development efforts and completely eliminating conservation investments that boost our working land economy.

The Governor proposes a 70% reduction to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Budget on top of a series of cuts over the past seven years that had already meant a more than $30 million loss.

Let's not kid ourselves. This is a direct attack on the programs that house Vermont's workforce, provide the means to save family farms, protect recreation and sensitive natural areas and stimulate the economy.

The governor warned against the drastic wholesale elimination of programs and then proceeded to do just that. He said that it was obvious that we should eliminate our conservation program during difficult economic times.

Every day it seems we are hearing about additional losses of good jobs for Vermonters. In these times we need to look what helps Vermont's economy grow!

Waterfront belongs to all of Burlington

Altogether, the politics of individual greed over those of a collective future need to be blamed. - The Oil Drum

Good People: Citizens for a Liveable City - "... is a non-profit citizen's coalition working to achieve a fair and open government process towards the development of the City of Burlington, Vermont which reflects the desires of the residents of the city while at the same time allowing for growth and economic vitality.

"We want there to be good development, where decisions about what is good and what is not good are made by the affected communities."

Get Involved! Contact your City Councilor! Come to the next City Council Meeting when the Zoning Rewrite will be discussed and the controversial amendments possibly voted on:

August 6, 2007 at 7:00pm -- Contois Auditorium, City Hall

Brian over at Vermont Hum comments: Before we know it, all sorts of out-of-state, fat, rich bastards will be hogging all the traditions, including the views, from their stupid looking high-rise condos near the water.

Robert Resnik (program announcer at VPR) has got involved by writing a kick-ass letter to the Free Press -

I have been lucky enough to live in Burlington for the past 37 years. In that time there have been many changes in town, but some things just stay the same: We all need to watch out for unrestricted, short-sighted, or aesthetically rotten development west of Champlain Street.

I am horrified, for instance, when I ask intelligent, usually well-informed friends what they think about the pending construction of the April Cornell high-rise on Battery Street and get blank looks. This multistory brick block will consist primarily of luxury condos, and will serve to further limit the view and alienate the general public from access to our waterfront.

The only people who seem to know enough about the laws to really care are the one who stand to make the most money by taking advantage of the loopholes.

How many offensive and unimaginative buildings must be built right in front of our eyes before we speak up. We are going to be stuck with some of these eyesores for generations.

It is our duty as responsible residents of this city to make sure that we don't get any more Miami Beach-style development which serves to take lake views or lake access away from the rest of the people of Burlington, and serves to benefit only a wealthy few.

I urge everyone to pay attention to any changes in zoning laws that might open the way for further architectural abuse, and to resist any further construction of high-rises, condos, soul-less piles of brick, and other attempts to shut people out from one of Burlington's great treasures -- an unobstructed view of the lake.

The waterfront belongs to all the people of Burlington.

Other Good People: Waterfront Watchdogs

On Eco-Profits

Two excellent articles I recommend - by two talented enviro-writers:

Derek Wall, the Male Principal Speaker for the Green Party of England and Wales - The climate for profits

George Monbiot - Green consumerism will not save the biosphere

China Charade

Vermont, a bastion of progre$$ive capitalist enviro-politics, has formed an alliance with China, a flawless model for human rights and environmental justice. VERMONT SNARKY BOY comments.

Rachel Carson: Green Hero

2007 marks the centenary of the birth of Rachel Carson. The Independent has a profile and an exerpt of her monumental book, Silent Spring -
She was the mother of environmentalism, and in 1962 she published what turned out to be the founding text of modern ecology: Silent Spring. Its title was meant to evoke a time - not far in the future - when the season of new growth would be one in which, to quote Keats, "no birds sing", because they had all died from pesticide poisoning. It was a work which was to be listed - alongside The Wealth of Nations, Das Kapital and The Origin of the Species - as a book which changed the course of history.

When Al Gore was Veep The Green Imposter

Jeffrey St Clair Counterpunch -- The official version of the political battles over the environment in the late 1990s goes something like this:

As the Republican Visigoths swept into control of the 104th Congress, in January of 1995, trembling greens predicted that not an old-growth tree, not an endangered species would be spared. The Republicans' threats were terrible to behold. They proposed to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. They vowed to establish a commission to shut down several national parks; to relax standards on the production and disposal of toxic waste; to turn over enforcement of clean water and air standards to the states. They uttered fearsome threats against the Endangered Species Act. They boasted of plans to double the amount of logging in the National Forests.

Then, the official myth goes on, the president, Gore and the national greens fought off the Visigoths.

Read it all and cringe.

More on Bottled Water

Canadian environmentalist, David Suziki: Buying bottled water is wrong


I'm not surprised David Suziki would be against buying bottled water.
In the article, though, he encourages people to use tap water. Unfortunately, there are 100's of questionable chemicals in our own Burlington drinking water - one of which is fluoride (you all know how I feel about that!). The Burlington Board of Health's actions on fluoride and the local People Concerned about Chloramines' work to stop chloramination of water by CWD are hugely uphill battles when the Dept of Health supports the status quo! We don't know what is in the bottled water either, or how many people might be losing their drinking water, as it is being sold to the bottling corporations.

I blogged about the importance of our water in earlier posts here, here, and here.

Sucke(red)?

This is a follow-up on a post I made about U2's Bono a few days ago. As I'm wont to do, occasionally I check my bookmarked sites. Today, while looking at the webpages of my former parish in London, St James's/Piccadilly, I cheked out a link to Pressureworks, and found this this about Product (RED). I'm sure you've seen the adverts for this trendy fashion line. The NYT ran a series of full page ads of celebrities promoting the cause a few months back. (I've got a photo of ever-so-sexy US speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno on my fridge.) But did you know.... if you

[s]imply buy a product from the RED range – a T-shirt, or a pair of shoes – [...] a percentage of the profit will go to The Global Fund, established in 2002 to channel money from various sources to AIDS programmes. Except we can’t know exactly what percentage, because the companies involved are so busy marketing themselves as saviours of the world that they’ve forgotten to give us the figure (the exceptions being Gap: 50%, from one line of products, and Amex: 1%). [...]

RED is not radically different from any of the other private sector initiatives that surround us. These days a company only has to stick an ‘ethical’ sticker on one of their products to be allowed to continue to make vast profits at the expense of the poor.

Corporations spend millions promoting the tiniest gesture, not because they care, but because it’s good for business and it keeps the regulators off their backs. So Caterpillar can continue to supply the Israeli army with bulldozers to carry out violations of international law, as long as they donate a few thousand to an educational project.

And where do these products come from?

Converse, one of the RED partners, has been owned by Nike since 2004. The latest research from Labour Behind the Label shows that although Nike have improved since the peak of their child labour infamy, up to one half of Nike’s factories currently pay wages below the legal minimum and most have been found to expect a working week in excess of 60 hours. It also shows that Nike has stopped placing orders with several factories in which trade unions had been established.

As a mobile phone company, Motorola depends on coltan, a rare mineral used to make phones. Much of it is mined by militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to fund the prolonged civil war that has claimed millions of lives. Of course, Motorola are keen to dissociate themselves from this, stating that they 'regularly require all of our suppliers to verify in writing that materials sold to Motorola do not contain tantalum derived from illegally mined Congolese coltan.'

The problem is, it’s extremely difficult to know exactly where this stuff has come from: like Chinese whispers, the longer the supply chain the more sketchy the details become. And business is business – maximising profits means using the cheapest materials available.

The fundamental problem -

Like the roots of war, the roots of disease are in poverty. The reason HIV/AIDS is such a massive problem in Africa is because people are poor. RED has at least got this bit right.

But, being the private sector, it fails to ask why they are poor. Or rather, it knows very well why they are poor, but would rather not draw attention to it thank you very much.

When an unregulated free market is allowed to rule the world’s economy, corporations can – and need to – keep the global South in poverty, and no amount of special T-shirts will change that.

Overcoming the Bottled Water Habit

Rebecca U. Cho, Religion News Service -

Rooted in the notion that clean drinking water, like air, is a God-given resource that shouldn't be packaged and sold, a fledgling campaign against the bottling of water has sprung up among religious groups. And though the campaign is at a relative trickle and confined mostly to left-leaning religious groups, activists hope to build a broad-based coalition to carry the message that access to water should not be restricted to those who can afford it.

Cassandra Carmichael, director of eco-justice programs for the National Council of Churches, said she has noted an increasing number of religious groups that consider the bottling of water a wrongful - perhaps immoral - act. "We're just beginning to recognize the issue as people of faith," Carmichael said.

In October, the National Coalition of American Nuns, a progressive group representing 1,200 U.S. nuns, adopted a resolution asking members to refrain from purchasing bottled water unless necessary.

Likewise, Presbyterians for Restoring Creation, a grassroots group within the Presbyterian Church USA, launched a campaign in May urging individuals to sign a pledge against drinking bottled water and to take the message to their churches. . .

Americans consume more bottled water than any other type of beverage except carbonated soft drinks, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, a New York-based research organization. In 2005, Americans drank about 7.5 billion gallons of bottled water, a 10.4 percent increase from 2004. The U.S. leads the world in bottled-water consumption.

At the same time, one-third of the world's population lives in water-stressed conditions. That proportion will double by 2025, according to a 2006 United Nations report on water scarcity. Water is scarcest in arid developing countries plagued by drought and pollution, such as South Africa, where agriculture fuels demand.

Presbyterians for Restoring Creation: Bottled Water Campaign

NCC Eco-Justice Programs

H/T to Undernews for alerting me about this story.

Canadian churches are already turning off the tap on bottled water.

Related post: Groundwater as a public trust resource