---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Foran <[email protected]> Date: Sat, May 21, 2016 at 11:29 PM Subject: Climate Justice - More than the News of the World -- May 21, 2016 To: News of the World: May 21, 2016 This started as a link or two for students in my two classes, Sociology 130ST: The World in 2050 - Sustainable Development and Its Alternatives, and Sociology/Environmental Studies 134CJ: Climate Justice. But as I caught up with the various blog posts I had opened over the last several days, there turned out to be more and more materials to share, from a wide variety of sources, angles, and struggles. So now, it's a little compilation of climate justice happenings and musings from the middle of May 2016. The news is mostly very good indeed. I urge you to read any of the stories that look intriguing or valuable to you. Who knows? It might be the start of a regular weekly briefing! With gratitude to all of you, John ***** May 21, 2016, from The Guardian in an e-mail Here's some great news to brighten your weekend. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has sold off its entire $187m investment in BP. There's no word from them on why, but it certainly looks like the foundation is quietly getting out of fossil fuel companies. Since 2014, it has dropped 85% of such investments it had held. Bill Gates says he's not keen on the divestment argument but we know that the pressure you've put on the foundation through Keep it in the Ground - as well as the folks at Gates Divest in Seattle and the wider divestment movement - has been having an impact behind the scenes. There was also good news from around Europe this week. Portugal ran for four days straight on renewable energy alone and last Sunday, Germany powered almost all its electricity needs from clean sources. There was so much renewable energy on the grid that at several times in the day, power prices turned negative - effectively paying consumers to use it. Change is happening. Yours Sincerely James Randerson - assistant national news editor, The Guardian ***** When the Police Came, I Didn't Risk Arrest. So What Was My Role at the Break Free Climate Action? I had held at bay the question of whether I wanted to participate in direct action. But I also knew it was the heartbeat of this diverse movement. Erika Lundahl posted May 18, 2016 http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/dear-tim-dechristopher-does-protesti... I woke up Sunday at 5:15 a.m. to police in full riot gear shouting from every direction, "Get out of your tent! Hands in the air!" More than 60 police officers, who had arrived in two buses, flooded a camp of more than 100 activists who had been occupying the railroad tracks leading to the Shell and Tesoro Oil refineries in Anacortes, Washington. I wasn't really prepared to be arrested-not yet anyway. My adrenaline immediately spiked. My heart was pounding. This was a first for me. My hands were shaking as I put in my contacts; I stepped out of my tent blearily. Amid the confusion, I reminded myself why I was there camping on railroad tracks in western Washington: to send a loud and powerful message that I am ready to break free from fossil fuels by blocking oil infrastructure with my body. But, in that moment, I also realized that I wasn't really prepared to be arrested-not yet anyway. ***** Will Vegans Save the World? Dr. David Suzuki | May 18, 2016 10:06 am | Comments http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/18/vegans-save-world/ "According to a new brief published by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), The True Cost of Fossil Fuels: Saving on the Externalities of Air Pollution and Climate Change, the rapid increase of renewable energy by 2030 could not only save 4 million lives per year, but is also capable of saving up to $4.2 trillion per year worldwide in external costs attributed to fossil fuels." Will vegans save the world? Reading comments under climate change articles or watching the film Cowspiracy make it seem they're the only ones who can. Cowspiracy boldly claims veganism is "the only way to sustainably and ethically live on this planet." But, as with most issues, it's complicated. It's true, though, that the environment and climate would benefit substantially if more people gave up or at least cut down on meat and animal products, especially in over-consuming Western societies. Animal agriculture produces huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, consumes massive volumes of water and causes a lot of pollution. ***** Historic Victory: 4 Teenagers Win in Massachusetts Climate Change Lawsuit Our Children's Trust | May 17, 2016 3:18 pm | Comments http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/17/mass-climate-change-lawsuit/ The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found in favor of four youth plaintiffs, the Conservation Law Foundation and Mass Energy Consumers Alliance Tuesday in the critical climate change case, Kain et al. v. Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The court found that the DEP was not complying with its legal obligation to reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions and ordered the agency to "promulgate regulations that address multiple sources or categories of sources of greenhouse gas emissions, impose a limit on emissions that may be released ? and set limits that decline on an annual basis." ***** The Transition Story: Time to stop talking about climate change? May 2016 https://www.transitionnetwork.org/blogs/rob-hopkins/2015-11/transition-story... Today we launch a theme exploring 'the Transition Story', our opportunity to unveil work we've been busy with over the last 12 months or so. The thought I want to seed in your brain today is whether a more skilful way to inspire a response to climate change, and a more skilful way to achieve all the things we want to achieve in the Transition movement, is to spend less time talking about the issues that drive why we do what we want to do, the problems, that challenges. Like climate change. Stay with me. ***** Dear friends and comrades, Apologies for the subject line's excessive interpunctuation, but damn, last weekend rocked :-) to those currently fighting the good fight in bonn, and to everyone out there, here's a quick rousing (and begging) email describing what happened when nearly 4000 people decided to shut down the coal infrastructure in the eastern german region of lusatia. At least from where i'm sitting, it looks like we've finally broken through the glass ceiling of mobilisations that's kept us down here in europe - whether in france, or germany, or elsewhere. i'm happy to stand corrected, but the buzz, the dynamism, the sense of purpose and power i felt in that field, in the pit and on the train tracks is unlike anything i've felt since we stood in the streets of seattle in 1999 and made another world possible. accordingly, the slogan that was screamed until noone could scream any longer at the party after the actions on Sunday was: WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE, ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE. like last year, i'm still high. in solidarity, Tadzio Mueller Video of the Ende Gelande 2016 protest in Germany https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eExgsVt2nMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6wEd20WTNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-gZ13cGS5E ***** Break Free News Stories - May 2016 Tens of Thousands Take Part in Global Actions Targeting World's Most Dangerous Fossil Fuel Projects 350.org | May 16, 2016 9:28 am | Comments http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/16/break-free-target-fossil-fuels/ Tens of thousands of activists took to the streets, occupied mines, blocked rail lines, linked arms, paddled in kayaks and held community meetings in 13 countries, pushing the boundaries of conventional protest to find new ways to demand coal, oil and gas stay in the ground. Participants risked arrest-many for the first time-to say that it's time to Break Free from the current energy paradigm that is locking the planet into a future of catastrophic climate change. Newsletter: People Power Essential To Saving Planet By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org May 15th, 2016 https://www.popularresistance.org/newsletter-people-power-essential-to-savin... We are in the midst of the largest civil disobedience campaign in environmental movement history: Break Free; and it is occurring at a time when we are at the tipping point for climate as well as many other environmental catastrophes like dying oceans and a great extinction. The growth of protest coincides with public opinion reaching a tipping point, with 64% of people in the United States, a record number, saying they were worried about climate change and 65% blaming it on human actions. Breaking Free: 12 Days of Protest Open a Summer of Environmental Discontent by Derek Royden, originally published by Occupy.com | May 13, 2016 http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-05-13/breaking-free-12-days-of-protes... On May 3 some of the biggest ever global actions against climate change began, and are running for 12 consecutive days through Sunday, May 15. In North America there were protests and other acts of civil disobedience planned in the District of Columbia, Washington State, New York, California, Indiana and British Columbia. The international actions, part of Break Free from Fossil Fuels, target a variety of issues in diverse communities - from protests by Ogani people in Nigeria to get their government to clean up "decades old oil spills," to citizens in New Zealand trying to "shut down the operations of one of New Zealand's biggest investors and lenders to the fossil fuel industry, ANZ bank." But the main message throughout is clear: we must act collectively to end humanity's reliance on fossil fuels . Global Wave of Resistance to Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground Escalates Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams | May 13, 2016 9:59 am | Comments http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/13/break-free-escalates/ Days after the Colorado Supreme Court denied two cities local authority to regulate fracking, hundreds of climate activists descended Thursday on a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oil and gas lease auction in Lakewood, just outside Denver, kicking off four days of major direct actions against fossil fuels across the U.S. In addition to the Lakewood demonstration and a larger mobilization elsewhere in Colorado on Saturday, protests and civil disobedience actions are scheduled to take place between Thursday and Sunday in and around Anacortes, Washington; Albany, New York; Los Angeles; Washington, DC and Chicago, all under the Break Free banner. ***** Seeing Wetiko: On Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition By Alnoor Ladha, Martin Kirk Published in Spring | Summer 2016 http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/seeing-wetiko-on-capitalism-mind-viruse... What if we told you that humanity is being driven to the brink of extinction by an illness? That all the poverty, the climate devastation, the perpetual war, and consumption fetishism we see all around us have roots in a mass psychological infection? What if we went on to say that this infection is not just highly communicable but also self-replicating, according to the laws of cultural evolution, and that it remains so clandestine in our psyches that most hosts will, as a condition of their infected state, vehemently deny that they are infected? What if we then told you that this 'mind virus' can be described as a form of cannibalism. Yes, cannibalism. Not necessarily in the literal flesh-eating sense but rather the idea of consuming others-human and non-human-as a means of securing personal wealth and supremacy. You may dismiss this line of thinking as New Age woo-woo or, worse, a lefty conspiracy theory. But this approach of viewing the transmission of ideas as a key determinant of the emergent reality is increasingly validated by various branches of science, including evolutionary theory, quantum physics, cognitive linguistics, and epigenetics. The history of this infection is long, strange, and dark. But it leads to hope. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "GlobalUFoundingMembers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/GlobalUFoundingMembers. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/GlobalUFoundingMembers/08E8A8A98CFE6A24359... . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/