The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 394.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the prospects for action on climate change in the United States – at least at the federal level – were bleak af. Obama had not bothered to fight for the Democratic energy package and climate package, and wasn’t going to punch that tar baby again. The Copenhagen summit had revealed the weakness of the international process and there was more rising despair and rising apathy than Rising Tide.
What I think we can learn from this was
Activist groups are obsessed with “days of action”, perhaps because these give them a sense of punctuation for the meaning of building up to something. It’s not necessarily a bad mobilising tactic but it doesn’t automatically mean that you are movement-building when you are repeatedly mobilising. See my articles about the emotacycle.
What happened next
Rising Tide US I think is dead, but I could be wrong. There are a broad range of other groups sunrise movement etc etc who are are more in the news.
It’s important though to remember that those people who protested were right even if they lost and and that cannot be taken away.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Sixteen years ago, on this day, April 27, 2007, a US gas company had to stop smearing coal…
Washington – The founder of a group that ran a series of newspaper ads attacking the coal industry for selling a product that they called “filthy” says the campaign is ending.
The effort, promoted as pro-environment, was sponsored by a rival energy company, a natural-gas-production company, and sparked a round of protests from members of Congress and trade associations.
Fialka, J. 2007. Ad Campaign Bashing Coal Is Ended After Uproar. Wall Street Journal, 27 April.
“the ads were placed anonymously by a two-week-old group called the Texas Clean Sky Coalition. Only one of the nation’s largest gas producers, Chesapeake Energy Corp., acknowledged helping finance the advertising campaign — which easily cost several hundred thousand dollars.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 386.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that a natural gas company had been trying to use climate concerns to boost its own product. And this is something that the gas industry has been looking at with more or less interest in – throwing coal under the bus, framing coal as the dirtiest fuel. Therefore gas automatically becomes sort of some kind of “transition fuel”.
What I think we can learn from this
It’s a seductive myth. That, yes, we need a long term transition. But while we’re getting there, gas can help. What we learn is that this fossil fuel industry is not in any sense united, though, we should note that people who do gas and oil tend to have the same bosses.
What happened next
Didn’t the guy who founded Cheseapeake Energy do suicide by Porsche? Yes, yes he did.
And threw loads of money the Sierra Club’s way to help them fund their anti-coal campaigns…
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Thirty four years ago, on this day, April 11, 1989, the flash-in-the-pan UK environment group “Ark” released a report about potential sea level rise that tanked its credibility
1989 Ark Sea-level rise report, “by 2050″…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Ark, launched in December 1988, was trying to outflank the existing outfits like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. It needed big claims to grab attention… Ooops.
What I think we can learn from this
It is hard to join a “cartel” and big big claims may grab attention, but they can also come with a big big downside.
What happened next
Ark crashed and sank, within months.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Below is an interview with Ro Randall, a psycho-analyst who has worked on climate issues extensively. She is one of the authors of a new “Living with the Climate Crisis” project, which will be launched on Monday 17th April. The transcript below has been lightly edited/airbrushed…
Marc 0:10
Great. So the first thing Rosemary, is what’s happening on Monday, the 17th of April, the launch?
Rosemary
Monday, the 17th of April is the launch of a new project called “Living with the Climate Crisis,” which I’ve been involved with as one of the main authors. And so, I’m a psychotherapist and I’ve been involved in the climate movement for about 20 years. And my interest has always been in what my profession can bring to the movement, that it doesn’t otherwise have. And primarily, that’s paying attention to how people feel when they engage with what is actually happening to the climate. Because in general, people’s experiences range through all kinds of feelings and distress:,anger, fear, desperation, despair, shock, grief, rage, anxiety.
You can go on, you can name a whole gamut of emotion. And very often, when you’re caught up in the urgency of action, those emotions get swept to one side. They go a bit under the carpet, and maybe it doesn’t feel possible to pay attention to them.
And so what this project is doing is promoting the establishment of groups, led by skilled facilitators, where people can take the time to do three things.
And the first is to look at what they’re feeling and to speak about the feelings that they’re having. And to try to find some resolution, some kind of resting place out of the grief, and the despair and the shock and all of the rest of it – a great range of feelings, I think.
The second is to learn a bit more about what is possible to do across a very broad spectrum of action. And there’s a focus partly on how to communicate better, that’s a big chunk of it, around climate – whether you’re speaking to your family and your close friends, or whether you’re speaking to a public meeting.
And the third bit of it is this sense of looking at the climate movement as an ecosystem, which requires all kinds of different people to be in it, and all kinds of different activities to be going on in it. And so the third part of these groups is looking at, what is it that you can do that is going to be sustainable, that you’re going to be able to be in for a long, long term? And that’s likely to be a mix of different things. And it’s likely to change as time goes on. And so the groups are looking at those kinds of issues. And our hope is that people will be able to come to these and use them in the communities that they’re already part of. We want this to be a locally-based activity rather than an online one. Although obviously, we’re holding the launch online because we reach more people that way.
So that’s essentially what the project’s about.
Marc
Thank you. And it emerged or, is a continuation of work that I know that you’ve been doing since 2007, with “Carbon Conversations.” So how does this work reflect on the successes and failures of Carbon Conversations? And what does it do that Carbon Conversations didn’t or couldn’t do?
Rosemary 4:15
In 2007, when we started the carbon conversations project, we were in the middle of a period of increased government commitment to action on climate change. Government was preparing the Climate Change Bill, which became the Climate Change Act. There was quite a lot of money around in local authorities and coming from government sources to promote community activity about climate change. And although, like all activists, I saw what the government was doing as inadequate, it was there. And it felt like the role for a community organisations was to work with our local communities and get people to understand the basics of what life needed to look like in a much lower carbon society, and to help people take the steps in that direction that they could in their own lives.
So the Carbon Conversations project brought people together to talk about the emotions associated with these major changes that we hoped were coming, and to start acting. And we created materials that could be used by just about anybody, with a short bit of training. Those groups were taken up nationally, and then internationally as a model of how to bring people together in communities.
But so much has changed since then. And so much needs to change because we have seen, since the failure of the Copenhagen negotiations in 2009 and the advent of a Conservative government, such backtracking on climate issues, that people coming to the climate movement now are facing different issues from those that were being faced then. Some issues are the same, some are more intense. And so we’ve been realizing for a time that the Carbon Conversations project had really run its course. It was a good thing in its time, but the materials were out of date, they weren’t dealing with the issues that were troubling people. And so we began to talk about what we could do instead.
In the new project, we’ve drawn together material from different workshops that we’ve run over the years, into a kind of coherent whole, that addresses these three questions I was talking about earlier; how do we cope with the feelings? How do we talk about this very difficult issue? How do we make our action sustainable?
And that’s what we came together to do with Rebecca Nestor, who’s been around in the climate movement for a long time herself, mostly in community action, and is an organisational consultant. And my third colleague is Daniela Fernandez-Catherall, who is a community psychologist with a lot of experience of working psychologically in the community, away from the consulting room, and engaging diverse groups in community action.
So it’s a shift of emphasis away from the carbon reduction aspects of climate issues, and into something which has much more focus on the well-being of activists and their capacities to continue to deliver in very difficult circumstances.
Marc
Thank you. So we’ve talked about the past, let’s talk about the future. Let’s say it’s Wednesday the 17th of April, 2024. And it’s a year after the launch of “Living with Climate Crisis,” what’s changed? Who has been using the materials? And what sort of feedback have you been getting about the materials? And how have you responded to that feedback?
Rosemary 9:21
I’m hoping that there will be groups running in a number of places in the UK. We know that we’ve got groups starting in the places where Daniela and myself and Rebecca are based. We’ve also got some people we know who are going to be using it in Wales. And we’re hoping to see gradually more people using it in different places. Also, over this coming year we’re going to be offering some more in depth introductory workshops, which will be done online for people who wish to facilitate the groups
We’re doing one for some people in Canada shortly. And we’ve got another one for people in the UK coming up in April. And we anticipate doing more of those.
We will be offering monthly support sessions for people using the materials, which will also take place online.
We’re planning on a meeting next September, which we hope will be a face-to-face meeting where people who have been beginning to use it can come together to share experiences.
We’re hoping that people will be taking the materials and using them in a lot of different ways. We’re quite explicit that we want people to adapt what we’re suggesting to their particular circumstances and the audiences they’re working with. And it’s very important to us to acknowledge that these materials have come out of our experience in some groups, that these may be a starting point, not an end point, that people may take one part of what we’ve suggested, and not another.
And we’re hoping that people who come from the psychological professions and associated professions, anybody really who’s got good facilitation skills, will feel that this is something which they can do as a contribution to the climate movement.
So we’re hoping to see groups happening, we’re hoping to see people being supported, and that support work is all being done through the Climate Psychology Alliance, which is sponsoring and supporting the project. And we’re hoping that it will take on a life of its own.
Fifty seven years ago, on this day, March 27, 1966, a letter by Douglas McEwan launching the Conservation Society appears in the Observer newspaper.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that a previous letter by a woman called Edith Freeman. Freeman had led to the creation of the Conservation Society in the context of enormous concerns about air quality species loss, both within the UK and internationally increased population. There were a series of books such as Silent Spring, but also UK books
You also had the rise of the motorway, the increase in concerns about air, water and noise pollution… So a Conservation Society to tackle these issues and to offer advice to civil servants and politicians seemed like a good idea at the time.
What I think we can learn from this
We need to understand that groups come and go suiting an ideological setting
There’s a comparison with Amnesty which is still going. It also started from I think, an article about Portugal and torture and then a letter saying “something should be done.”
What happened next
The Torrey Canyon incident of 1967 proved the Conservation Society’s point. The Conservation Society’s high watermark period was really 1968 to 1971. But then, new groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth were formed that were slightly more radical and sexier. And the Conservation Society continued for another 20 years until 1987 and was then wound up, its message about “population explosion” no longer on the money. In the meantime, it produced a lot of useful reports which are still achingly relevant, and some of which have been covered on this site.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs
Fourteen years ago, on this day, March 2, 2009, protestors blockade a coal plant
The blockade lasted nearly four hours, forming what organizers called the largest display of civil disobedience on the climate crisis in U.S. history.
Police were out in force, but no one was arrested.
The 99-year-old plant is responsible for an estimated one-third of the legislative branch’s greenhouse gas emissions. It no longer generates electricity for the legislative buildings but provides steam for heating and chilled water for cooling buildings within the Capitol Complex.
Environmental and climate celebrities led the protest action, including NASA climatologist Dr. James Hansen, who released a video on YouTube in February urging people to join him March 2 at the demonstration to send a message to Congress and the President that, “We want them to take the actions that are needed to preserve climate for young people and future generations and all life on the planet.”
2009 Capitol Coal Plant protest – demonstrators blockade one of the five gates to the Capitol Power plant. March 2, 2009.http://www.capitolclimateaction.org“
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 387ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there is always ongoing effort to shut individual energy projects. And these can be dismissed as NIMBY. But it’s really important to fight those battles because how else are you gonna stop local madness and build the confidence, competence and credibility to stop the national and international madness?. And also to try to have an influence on national policy, obviously.
What I think we can learn from this
We need to remember and celebrate resistance not just dissent, but actual resistance.
Beyond Coal’s pivotal moment came at a meeting in Gracie Mansion about, of all things, education reform. Michael Bloomberg, the Wall Street savant-turned media mogul-turned New York City mayor, was looking for a new outlet for his private philanthropy. It quickly became clear that education reform would not be that outlet.
“It was a terrible meeting in every way, and Mike was angry,” recalls his longtime adviser, Kevin Sheekey. “I said: ‘Look, if you don’t like this idea, that’s fine. We’ll bring you another.’ He said: ‘No, I want another now.’”
As it happened, Sheekey had just eaten lunch with Carl Pope, who was starting a $50 million fundraising drive to expand Beyond Coal’s staff to 45 states. The cap-and-trade plan that Obama supported to cut carbon emissions had stalled in Congress, and the carbon tax that Bloomberg supported was going nowhere as well. Washington was gridlocked. But Pope had explained to Sheekey that shutting down coal plants at the state and local level could do even more for the climate—and have a huge impact on public health issues close to his boss’s heart.
“That’s a good idea,” Bloomberg told Sheekey. “We’ll just give Carl a check for the $50 million. Tell him to stop fundraising and get to work.”
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs..
Ten years ago, on this day, February 22, 2013, some miners went ape, setting up a ludicrous front organisation. Brain-damage indeed.
A Goldfields lobby group is planning to launch an eleventh hour campaign against what it calls “green extremists”.
The group DAMAGE, Dads And Mums Against Green Extremists, is planning advertisements in a Kalgoorlie newspaper in the last week of the state election campaign
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 397ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Western Australia is heavily dependent – in every sense – on mining. Anything that gets between the miners and their cash is regarded as something to be ignored, then smeared and repressed, by any means necessary.
What I think we can learn from this
Sometimes the goon squad tries to develop a sense of humour, as it did with this retronym. It’s usually not very funny though, more pitiable and embarrassing.
And smearing people who think a habitable planet in years to come is a nice idea as “extremists” is, well, an old ploy.
But, you know, sometimes it goes all step on a rake/Streisand effect.
But the Greens? The Greens were glad of the attempted “damage” to their brand. As one their MPs Robin Chapple said after the election
“I thank Tim Hall, the Greens candidate for the seat of Kalgoorlie. In Kalgoorlie, I also thank an organisation called Dads And Mums Against Green Extremists. DAMAGE was set up specifically to target the Greens, but in fact it helped to retain our vote by focusing on the Greens and identifying some of the issues it stands for. Many years ago former federal member of Parliament Michael Beahan told me that if your opposition is invisible, the worst thing you can do is identify them. Until the establishment of DAMAGE, the Greens to a large degree had been invisible in the Kalgoorlie media. But in the last two to three weeks of the election, the Greens were front and centre in the media and retained its vote. Michael Beahan’s point was that if somebody is not grabbing the attention, do not highlight them, but DAMAGE did exactly that.”
Ten years ago, on this day, February 17, 2013 , a protest march and arrests took place in Washington DC
Following Nebraska’s approval of the route for Phase IV of the Keystone XL Pipeline in January, about 50,000 people gathered at the Washington Monument and marched to the White House. Demonstrators demanded President Obama block the Keystone XL Pipeline and take action against climate change. Four-dozen protestors, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Darryl Hannah, James Hansen, Sierra Club Founder Adam Werbach, and environmental activist Bill McKibben, were arrested at the gates of the White House for civil disobedience.
“In 2015 KXL was temporarily delayed by PresidentBarack Obama. On January 24, 2017, President Donald Trump took action intended to permit the pipeline’s completion. On January 20, 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to revoke the permitthat was granted to TC Energy Corporation for the Keystone XL Pipeline (Phase 4). On June 9, 2021, TC Energy abandoned plans for the Keystone XL Pipeline.”
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
References and see also
Bradshaw, E.A. Blockadia Rising: Rowdy Greens, Direct Action and the Keystone XL Pipeline. Critical Criminology 23, 433–448 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-015-9289-0
February 12 1968 – The Motherfuckers do their motherfucking thing, with garbage in New York.
Fifty five years ago, on this day, February 12 1968, New York City was the scene of an inventive piece of activism.
“On February 12, 1968, a group of radicals led by Ben Morea collected garbage on the lower east side, trucked it, then dumped it in front of the Lincoln Center on a gala night. The event coincided with a NYC garbage strike and was meant to express both the group’s contempt for the bourgeois establishment and its support of the strikers.”
(Gottlieb, 1993: 350)
and
COMPARE NATHAN HALE “BLACK ECOLOGY”
“No solution to the ecology crisis can come without a fundamental change in the economics of America particularly with reference to blacks. Although some of the ecological differentials between blacks and whites spring directly from racism and hence defy economic correlations,44 many aspects of the black environmental condition are associated with basic economics. Blacks are employed in the most undesirable or polluted occupations,45 lagging far behind their educational attainment. About two-thirds work in unskilled and semi-skilled industries. Aggravating, and associated with, the occupational effects on the black environment is the consistently low family income of blacks which must generally support larger families. Since the turn of the century, the family income of blacks has remained about half that of whites” (Hale, 1970: 7)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 323.1ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The Vietnam War, black civil rights, the beginnings of second wave feminism were beginning to kick off, and poor people were getting shat on (for once). At this exact point, Martin Luther King was planning for his march on Washington in the summer of 1968 (he wouldn’t be there). And the Motherfuckers and black Mask were in that milieu. The idea of bringing the unwanted waste back to the people who produced it, for them to deal with, was an inspired one. It has become a famous action.
What I think we can learn from this
Why am I talking about it on a climate change website? Because of exactly this. The super rich – and the rich – enjoying their/our imperial way of living, don’t want to know about or think about the consequences. The costs are out of sight and out of mind. Activism can be about making those costs more obvious.
What happened next
Oh, to the Motherfuckers I suppose the usual schisms and splits and anarchist pathologies. Possibly/probably helped on by COINTELPRO. But the FBI could have saved its money except of course for them it was all about the lulz and the need to dominate and control, but I’m going off on a tangent here
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
References
Gottlieb, R. 1993. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Washington DC: Island Press.
Hale, N. 1970. Black Ecology. The Black Scholar Vol. 1, No. 6, BLACK CITIES: COLONIES OR CITY STATES?, pp. 2-8
Australian activist Jonathan Moylan recalls the non-violent climate action that could have sent him to jail
Ten years ago today, at the age of 22, I hit send on a media release before brewing a pot of coffee. I didn’t realise it at the time, but that spoof release, which was intended to paint a picture of a better world, ended up causing ripple effects that reverberated around the world.
At stake was the Leard State Forest, the largest intact area of native vegetation in the heavily-cleared Liverpool Plains, the centre of a critical biodiversity corridor that was part of the Nandewar-Brigalow bioregion, providing connectivity for species between the Kaputar ranges to the north and the Pilliga to the south. Habitat for koalas, regent honeyeaters and an incredible array of bats and microbats, the forest was being targeted by three large open-cut mines that would rip the forest apart.
I hadn’t heard of the Leard Forest or the neighbouring community of Maules Creek until the previous year, but for years the community had been working together to protect their region from open-cut mining. They were not opposed to mining per se, and would have tolerated an underground mine, but were worried about losing road access to Maules Creek during floods due to the planned closure of Leard Forest Road, as well as the threat of ten metres of aquifer draw-down, property devaluation, noise and dust.
Yet despite their reasonable proposals, thousands of dollars spent on independent consultant reports and some political support across the spectrum, the mine was approved by the NSW Government in late 2012 – all that remained was a determination from the federal government.
At the time, Whitehaven’s Maules Creek project was the largest new coal mine being considered in NSW and would increase coal tonnages through the world’s largest coal port in my hometown of Newcastle by ten percent. Yet despite the contention around the mine and its enormous contribution to climate change, the mine also secured a $1.2 billion loan facility from ANZ bank.
While it was rare at the time, in the ten years following 2013 we’ve seen a growing number of banks worldwide rule out finance for new coal projects following pressure from communities, shareholders and regulators given heightened awareness that climate change poses acute, chronic and systemic risks to the financial sector and the economy as a whole. Cracking down on companies making misleading claims about their climate credentials is now a priority for ASIC, the corporate regulator.
That would have been unimaginable in 2013, when the press release I sent out on ANZ’s letterhead – which was quickly revealed to be a hoax – announced that ANZ was withdrawing its loan to Whitehaven on ethical grounds. I only realised how serious things would get after a call from a journalist at the Washington Post who told me that Whitehaven’s share price had dropped by 9% – before recovering some twenty minutes later. Soon what start as a small protest camp in the forest with a handful of people became a two-year-long effort bringing thousands of people from all walks of life – doctors, lawyers, a former mining engineer and even former Wallabies flanker turned senator David Pocock – to take action in an effort to prevent the damage the mine would bring. More extraordinary was the incredible alliance of Gomeroi traditional owners, farmers and environmental groups who found common cause in a way that has probably permanently transformed the social fabric of the region.
Cracking down on companies making misleading claims about their climate credentials is now a priority for ASIC, the corporate regulator. That would have been unimaginable in 2013,
As I quickly learnt, any misleading statement that could impact on the sharemarket carried severe consequences. Officers from the securities regulator ASIC flew up to camp to seize my phone and computer and ordered me to appear for compulsory questioning – with no right to silence. Four months later I was charged with an offence that carried a maximum penalty of 10 years jail or $750 000 in fines. They were entitled to do this – although nobody had previously been charged under that false and misleading provision of the Corporations Act – it was a strict liability offence, which meant that the fact that I didn’t expect or intend an impact on the share price or wasn’t a participant in the sharemarket was irrelevant to the charge.
Suddenly I found myself in the middle of an incredibly high-pitched and polarising debate that played out in the media and in parliament for weeks. In some minds, I had deliberately set out to cause damage to the market. The bigger issue of the irreversible harm that would be caused to the world’s life support systems – on which we all depend – was at risk of being lost. For many others though, the notion of jailing a young man for drawing attention to a destructive new coal project galvanised support.
For its part, Whitehaven is no stranger to being on the wrong side of the law, having been penalised for illegal mining, illegal dumping, water theft, failure to declare political donations and illegal land-clearing. Yet the penalties meted out in those cases have never come close to meeting their gravity.
The broad-based campaign did more than delay the mine for several years. Public opinion has finally started to turn amidst a realisation that global coal demand has already peaked and renewables will win the race – the only question is when. The community continues to hold out against proposed coal expansions and coal seam gas threats in North-West NSW.
Throughout the ensuing court case, I was told by lawyers that the most likely outcome was a prison sentence of around a year. I was willing to accept the consequences, even though it was virtually unheard of for anybody to face prison time for a protest action in NSW. Ultimately I was sanctioned with a suspended sentence.
Throughout the ensuing court case, I was told by lawyers that the most likely outcome was a prison sentence of around a year
What’s harder to accept is the notion that with everything we know about the consequences of mining and burning fossil fuels, some companies are still entertaining significant new coal, oil or gas expansions. Yet as a United Nations panel determined last November, any bank that continues to claim it is committed to net zero emissions while lending to companies pursuing fossil fuel expansions is misleading the public.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge in ten years. But there is still much more to do.
All Our Yesterdays exists to inform people about the long histories of climate change – the science, the politics, the technology, the protest movements. It hopes to spark discussions among citizens’ groups about what we need to do differently to make the radical rapid changes required,…If you are someone, or know someone who should be writing a guest post/giving an interview, please say so in the comments below…
