[P2P-F] Fwd: Climate Justice - More than the News of the World -- May 21, 2016

Sat May 21 23:08:02 CEST 2016

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Foran <foran at soc.ucsb.edu>
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-protesting-count-if-you-dont-get-arrested-20160518

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-time-stop-talking-about-climate-change

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-saving-planet/

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-protest-open-a-summer-of-environmental-discontent

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-viruses-and-antidotes-for-a-world-in-transition/

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.

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